This is the coolest thing ever!

Apple just announced their new product the iPad (click on the image to go their site). As everyone has probably heard it was one of the most anticipated releases of a new gadget in quite some time. And it turns out it was worth the wait. I can't wait to own one of these. It will be great for browsing the web, email, organizing photos, watching movies, listening to music, reading books, navigating, taking notes, and maintaining your calendar and contacts.

It has a 9.7" LED backlit IPS display with a 178 degree viewing angle.

It weighs 1.5 pounds is 0.5" thick.

It has a 10 hour batter life.

It will come with either Wi-Fi 802.11n or 3G for fast internet connectivity

The interface has an onscreen keyboard for typing or you can buy an external keyboard dock.

Comes with either a 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive

Price

16GB 32GB 64GB

Wi-Fi $499 $599 $699

Wi-Fi+3G $629 $729 $829

I can use this to surf the web and check email on the couch or while traveling. I can watch a movie almost anywhere. It is a ebook reader and so much more.

They start shipping the Wi-Fi versions late March and the 3G in April. I'll probably wait a year if I can stand it just to see what kinds of issues they have and get them worked out first and let the price drop.

Robots, Spaceships, and Ray Guns, Oh my!

This blog post is the coolest collection of Robots, Space ships and Ray Guns I've ever seen.

I am so inspired and envious.

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009/02/chrome-delicious-robot-art-ray-guns.htmlrobot-art-ray-guns.html

The Future

Well, its 2010 and everyone's talking about where's their flying car and robot maid, even me. This year seems so futuristic. But the Jetsons, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon that we base all future expectation on, was made in 1962-1963 based on a future in 2062. So we have a while to wait for our car and maid.

The other image that comes to mind with this milestone of a year is Arthur C. Clark's 2010 the sequel to 2001 in which the US and Soviets send the Discovery 2 to Jupiter to find out what happened to David Bowman and the Discovery 1. The book came out in 1982 and the movie was made in 1984 which does seem like a long time ago. But we haven't sent any maned spaceships to anything further away than the moon. And although we have a space shuttle named Discovery which is about to retire and a International space station we are no where as close to the type of space travel that the movie and book describe. We are still thinking about going to Mars and that's still in the early planning stages. Plus, our relationship with the Solviets is so different today than the early 80's the storyline hardly makes sense now.

And of course we have not colonized the moon or found any large black monoliths. Nor have we found any new life on other planets. So even though 2010 sounds very futuristic I still feel we are in the stone ages.