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Wired Top Stories

This week Inhabitat got set for the holiday season as we officially launched our Green Gift Guide, which is chock full of 21 categories and over 300 presents – including a great set of DIY projects you can make yourself and a round-up of our favorite gifts for gadget geeks. Speaking of high-tech gizmos, we also showcased several amazing examples of cutting-edge robotics as researchers developed a new breed of disaster detecting cyborg insects and Otherlab created a line of lightweight inflatable robots that can walk on water. Scientists also successfully completed the first round of trials on a new type of contact lens that could one day send emails directly to your eyes, and NASA announced that the new Mars Curiosity Science Laboratory will be powered by nuclear energy instead of solar.

Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: holiday gift guide, 155 MPH biofuel truck and a solar-powered buckyball

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: holiday gift guide, 155 MPH biofuel truck and a solar-powered buckyball originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Connected Consumer Q2: Digital music meets the cloud; e-book growth explodes

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Dubbed the Toughbook tablet, Panasonic’s Android slate caters to those prone to excess dropping, be it electronics or otherwise. The Toughbook joins the company’s line of durable, impact-resistant devices.

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Gizmodo: top

We’ve been hearing reports about Nexus S’ Android 2.3.3 update adding a yellow tint to the screen and even washing out its colors, but according to Google’s Ry Guy, said patch is indeed intended to tweak the display’s color temperature. Here’s the full quote from Google’s support forum:

“With your new OTA complete, you may notice a slight difference in the way colors are displayed on your Nexus S. For Nexus S, we have adjusted the color temperature settings to more accurately reflect darker colors at all brightness levels. The Gingerbread UI being darker, we found that the colors were not as accurate when the device was being used at lower brightness levels. For example, some users reported that the initial color temperature was too high leading to some darker greys having a reddish tone; with the new color temperature this is no longer the case.”

So while this display tweak is well-intentioned, it looks like many commenters on both the forum and XDA-Developers aren’t too happy with this. Being curious geeks that we are, we went ahead and manually updated our own Nexus S (and by the way, be sure to match your build number with the appropriate patch). As you can see in our comparison photos (shot with the same manual camera settings and medium screen brightness), the new overall color temperature is no doubt subtly warmer, although the dimmer brightness settings no longer suffer from the aforementioned red tone. Interestingly, we actually approve this change, and the Super AMOLED display certainly doesn’t look washed out to us, nor do we see any noisy dithering that some have reported. Surely we can’t be alone. Well, there’s only one way to help solve this mystery: if you happen to be a fellow Nexus S owner who’s applied this update, why not chime in below?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Nexus S 2.3.3 update adjusts screen’s color temperature, we go eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 05:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Innovation is 99 percent imitation with 1 percent differentiation

Humans won the battle of the species race. But why? Is it because we use tools, communicate with language or have a bigger brain? Scientists have recently discovered through advanced DNA mapping that we humans are humble enough to be willing to copy and build off each other’s knowledge. It was our ability to acquire collective intelligence that separated us from the rest of the hominids pack approximately 40,000 years ago.

Humans are the only species with a neocortex, the outer and most advanced layer of the brain. The neocortex is really a learning machine –- we observe cause-effect patterns in life, store them in the brain and predict the effect when the same cause appears again. Humans institutionalize this process in our first 12 to 16 years of our life –- we go to school and learn these patterns experienced by our ancestors.

Innovation comes from solving the new challenges we face and combining it with our knowledge of existing state-of-art technologies and paradigms. “Standing on the shoulders of giants” is the only motto for successful innovation, but too many entrepreneurs make the common mistake of inventing in a vacuum.

Our economy has always been global

Human civilization is a “learning” history across time and geographic regions. But if we had only lived in the Roman Empire in 50 B.C., we’d have thought Romans had invented everything. Halfway around the world, the Chinese of the Han Dynasty had the same thought. But the reality is that these distinct civilizations were never developed independently. From Egypt to Euphrates to Greeks to Romans, village after village and generation after generation, people migrated, copied and propagated their skills, knowledge and culture. If you have been to the 5000-year old archaeological site Sanxingdui in central China, you would think that you were visiting ancient Egypt or Greece.

The world economy was actually global even back then; it just wasn’t obvious to the people who lived at the time, because they were limited by their own human life span.

If Marco Polo could have traveled at light speed

What does this mean to modern humans? The Internet has changed the scale of distance and time. Where it took Marco Polo 30 years to propagate the know-how of making noodles, it now takes a web whiz kid only three weeks to get a similar idea around the world twice.

Just look at the example of Groupon, which broke the code of viral growth to promote local services, using stay-at-home moms as the social nucleus while combining the power of Internet and telesales. In two years, Groupon is at a .2 billion revenue runway and turned down billion from Google and other high-profile offers.

The story doesn’t stop there. The rest of the world is copying the formula of this modern “spaghetti” and has started to make their versions of Groupon: European entrepreneurs have formed dozens of successful group buying sites. In China, there are over 1,000 clones — the no. 1 player being Lashou.com, which is breaking out in China, mirroring Groupon’s success in the US.

If you look closer at these local clones, their actual execution is quite different, much like spaghetti is not Chinese noodles. For example, Groupon credits its success to having a centralized call center for accessing small business owners in the top 100 US cities. But Bo Wu, the founder of Lashou.com, discovered that China is not “one country” after all. There are many regional dialects preventing Groupon-like telesales to work. There were also significant cultural differences that he needed to consider. For instance, while lamb chops are a best-selling food in Beijing, the Shanghainese view it as “barbarian” food. So Bo’s solution has been to deploy 100 local sales teams in the country’s top cities instead of a call center.

Action-driven collective intelligence

In the business world today, we still rely on collective intelligence to innovate albeit in more technology advanced ways — whether it be talking with an overseas partner on Skype or email, or learning what our customers are saying on Twitter. While you and I obviously can’t communicate directly to everyone on the web this way, what we can do is learn from their infinite collective implicit actions and experiences. The entire universe of humans makes billions — if not trillions — of silent “votes” each day as they navigate the web, but a very small percentage of these people are actually publishing their ideas. There’s a tremendous amount we can learn from their silent actions – not what they say on Twitter, but what they do when they see something they like. For example, if a GPS tracked device showed a restaurant was full, you wouldn’t need a Yelp review to guess the restaurant quality.

Another key difference of today’s web from ancient civilization is that we can connect contextually without being personal friends. If I am shopping for a 3-D LED TV, there are many people around the world who can help me on that decision.

This concept has huge implications for innovation. Imagine a world when these “contextual friends” start to invent things together!

Smart “copying” has been the core to the success of human civilization, and I predict that web-based collective intelligence will fuel the next frontier of innovation. By building on the successes of other entrepreneurs along with the implicit wisdom of all web users innovation is poised to reach new heights in the next decade.

Jack Jia is a founder and Chairman of Baynote, a leading software developer for recommendation engine. He is also a partner of GSR Ventures, a top China-focused technology VC. He is an angel investor, a board advisor for Santa Clara University, and the president of HYSTA, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• A 2011 NewNet Forecast
• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast
• A 2011 Mobile Forecast

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Any versions of this microphone that were produced following the month of July in 2007 will work with Windows Vista, but anything with a serial number that is lower than 76-065000 will not. There is no need for special software or a driver to install this microphone. With the Windows XP OS or Apple OSX you merely plug it in and the OS itself will know what to do. If you want to get the most out of your Blue Snowball however you may wish to install some additional software. With the special software you can perform things such as non-linear editing.

If you are looking for an easy to use, user-friendly device, the Blue Snowball USB microphone fits the bill. You won’t need any kind of tech support to get it working. The Snowball’s digital output is very similar to what you’d expect from an audio CD. Audio geeks can plug in and play with the Snowball to set the frequency. Audio editing can be done with the help of the software. Thanks to the ability of the Blue Snowball to create two polar patterns, you will be able to hear music equally from each angle. This type of sound is called “omnidirectional” audio. One of the Blue Snowball’s most desirable features is its capacity for managing pickup.

Different sources are also able to use the Snowball. You can implement it in music production. You may also wish to use it to record lectures, other presentations, to carry out video conferencing, or numerous other reasons. It offers audio reproduction of the highest accuracy. The Blue Snowball USB microphone can be attached to a microphone stand using a thread pattern. You can use any basic USB cable to attach the mic to your PC. You can record anything from soft quiet vocals to full out hardcore rock with the Blue Snowball, making it perfect for podcasts.

Online Stores: Best Solution for Gadget Lovers

These days, it is very common to find gadget geeks who love to collect different kinds of gadgets. Some people buy latest electronic gadgets so that they can put them to use in their routine life and some people do so just because they like it. No matter what is, the reason behind purchasing gifts but all of them need latest gadgets. It is true that numbers of gadget lovers are very high but only small proportions of individuals are able to buy latest gadgets. The only reason behind this is their lack of knowledge about various places from where they can buy them.

If you have been facing same kind of problem then do not worry as there is available a solution to your problem. You must have heard of shopping on internet and this will prove beneficial for you as well. One can find plethora of stores that are dealing into latest electronic gadgets with people residing in different parts of the world. One just needs to find a trustworthy store and then things get easier afterwards. Now the question is how to decide which site is the best or not. Firstly, it is always better to conduct a search and then come to conclusion. One can always rely on search engines for finding few sites from all available options. Once you have desired numbers of sites, it is time to check all of them individually.

Various factors are there that make a store better than the rest. One very important factor is the shipping charges charged by them. You can always shop at online stores that charge lesser amounts on delivery or even provide free delivery. Many people are there who buy toys for boys at online stores and if you have to pay double of their amount as shipping charges then surely shopping on internet would serve no purpose. If you know someone who is experienced in online shopping then taking advice from him or her will prove to be beneficial. In all shopping on internet would be great fun if you were successful in finding the best store.