German Designer Stefan Ulrich came up the idea of a with a white shape-changing blob to alleviate the impact of loneliness using artificial muscle technology. With today’s ageing society and an increasing trend of singledom in urbanised areas I can easily see people turning to robots to satisfy their need for emotional companionship in 20 years time. Still: it’s creepy!
Latest Entries »
I posted this really funny video on my facebook and some of my friends strangely enough didn’t get that this was satire. Isn’t it actually obvious?
Olympus released a really cool stop motion ad for it’s Pen series. Beautifully done!
Some guy out there turned his toaster into a SNES (or Super Nintoaster). How cool (or geeky) is that?!?! Check it out:
Researchers at the University of Essex have developed a robotic fish to analyse pollution levels in the open waters, such as ports. Not only is it completely autonomous, but to help it do its job, they have also given it the looks and behaviour of a normal fish. Communicating via Wi-Fi, the fish also know when they are running low on power and automatically return to their base.
My Mobile Me account is about to expire soon and I’ve spent a considerable amount of time evaluating various alternative cloud-based storage and synchronisation systems out there. The services they offer vary considerably and many of them offer several differently priced subscriptions. I didn’t want to spend too much money on this so I only evaluated the lower end (ie. cheap) products, with most emphasis on the free versions (were available). Please note that I have not included any trial offers with limited availability in the list:
| Name | price in USD | ||
| Free | $50-$90/year | $90-$120/year | |
| box.net | 1GB | - | - |
| Dropbox | 2GB | - | 50GB |
| Humyo | 5GB | 100GB | - |
| Mobile Me | - | - | 20GB |
| Mozy | 2GB | unlimited | - |
| SugarSync | - | 30GB | 60GB |
| Wuala | 1GB | - | 50GB |
| Zumodrive | 1GB | 25GB | - |
Box.net is targeted more towards business users and people with money. But to be frank, if you are someone with money, don’t pay them. Their pricing structure is so out of date that you get crappy conditions for a high price. Verdict: definite nay
Dropbox is one of the better services out there. The installer will create a folder on your computer that automatically syncs all its content with the cloud. If you have an iPhone, Dropbox features an excellent online interface that allows you to access all your data on the go. I subscribed to the free version with 2GB and was surprised by its reliability and fast sync speed. Referring people (like I’m doing now) will also increase your storage capacity by 250MB per referral (both you and your friend will get an additional 250MB). So, if you want 2.25GB of space sign up using this link. Verdict: definite yay
Humyo prouds itself by emphasising the security of its data centre, apparently located in a former vault of the Bank of England. Their prices are incredibly competitive – their only paid price plan charges only USD $80 for a 100GB account. Unfortunately – and that’s the only downside – they have no OS X nor Linux client yet (promised for some time this year). Verdict: yay
Mobile Me is Apple’s cloud service product for the normal customer. Signing up will give you 20GB that you can use for email and files. The good thing is: if you are on a mac it will integrate more than just email and allow you to store files. It will also allow you to syncronise your calendars and your address book with the cloud. Since Apple scrapped .Mac and introduced Mobile Me the service has steadily improved. However, even were it to work at 100% peak performance (which it is not), it’s still massively overpriced. Verdict: nay
If online backup is all you need from an online storage service, Mozy is definitely an alternative. For about $60 they give you unlimited storage to backup 1 computer. However, this means you can’t backup your desktop computer AND your laptop. Nor can you synchronise between them. Verdict: nay
I spent a lot of time evaluating SugarSync because they give you an excellent 45 days trial. The basic (cheapest) plan gives you 10GB of storage accessible from everywhere for only $25/year. iPhone users will be particularly happy as they have released an iPhone app last year, allowing you to access all your content on the go. Another great advantage is the way you can tell the system to back up this particular data without synchronising it to all the other computers. This means the file is still available for download but doesn’t unnecessarily clutter up disk space on your netbook. Verdict: definite yay
Wuala was definitely fun to evaluate but hard to compare with its competitors. While its promise is the same as all the other providers mentioned so far, it’s approach is totally unique. In addition to its own servers it utilises idle storage capacity that users are willing to share. The user can thus trade in additional storage for free. Of course it’s also possible to simply pay for additional storage. For 10GB you pay only $25 a year. Verdict: yay
On first sight, Zumodrive appears like any other online storage service. You get 1GB for free, 10GB will cost you around $36. There is an iPhone app that allows you to conveniently access your files on the go, similar to SugarSync. On your computer, Zumodrive will look like another hard disk drive and thus allow for easy access. Verdict: yay
Final verdict: Reacting to what to my own personal requirements are in this case, there are two clear winners and one candidate with a lot of potential. The two clear winners are Dropbox and SugarSync. Dropbox wins the free category, whereas SugarSync wins in the paid category. Wuala deserves a special award from me for its innovative approach.
Yahoo seems to be wrapping up its services a little bit in a move to at least not leave the whole field to Google, who recently launched a location and social network friends service called Google Latitude.
To counter it, Yahoo has released a new Facebook app called Friends on Fire. So far, it looks like a great app that allows you to share where you are, utilising Yahoo’s open geolocation service Fire Eagle. Don’t worry if you have privacy concerns: when you first authorise the application it will redirect you to the Fire Eagle page where you can set the level of detail you want to share. You can share, for example, your exact location, neighborhood, zip code, city or just your country.
Yahoo has also recently released a Firefox plugin for Fire Eagle and there’s an iPhone app for it, too! Check it out!