Watch out, Nicholas writing about cars, there’s bound to be errors! (No different from anything else, really.) It’s the McLaren MP4-12C, a £150,000 ($225,000) supercar that McLaren is actually positioning as “affordable.” I mean, an Xbox 360 Arcade SKU is “affordable,” maybe even a fancy gaming mouse when you consider what they do… Oh, I know who would consider this supercar affordable: people who play for Manchester City.

The British supercar made its fancy debut yesterday, surrounded by Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button. Supposedly it’s the UK’s answer to the Ferrari 458—Italian, of course.

It can go 0 to 60mph in 3.4 seconds. I believe that’s an impressive number.

The exterior is one single piece of carbon fiber. That’s the new “cool” material, right, carbon fiber? You hear about it all the time on Top Gear.

There’s no video of it in action, unfortunately. Someone call The Stig, or Matt. Whoever’s available.

Viliv makes some hot, little portables. That’s a fact. The X70 and S5 touchscreen along with the S7 convertible netbook are among the best in their respective niche markets. But previously the products were only available from online retailers, which of course limits their visibility from a whole segment of potential customers. Starting Monday though, Best Buy shoppers will be able to pick up the products in store and online. There will even be an instant rebate available on the none-3G modem-equipped models.

The $579 S7 will be available with a $50 instant rebate if the buyer signs up for a Sprint Mi-Fi or Overdrive hotspot. That’s of course a nice offer, but the slightly more expensive $649 S7 features a built-in unlocked 3G modem allowing owners to pop-in any ol’ activated SIM card for mobile hotspot-free Internet connectivity.

As of writing it doesn’t seem that any Best Buy locations have the portables in stock, but YMMV. Give your local store a quick minute or two before bothering computer associates about when they will be getting their first Viliv shipments. [Best Buy]

I was just outside trying to shoot a water rocket I bought at a science museum, recalling the heady days I once spent shooting a similar rocket into the air when I was a young lad. Sadly, the poorly built rocket failed and the pump started just sucking in water, leading me to the Internet for solace.

The sweet Internet doth offer succor, friends, in the form of the Aquapod Bottle Launcher. While you could just make your own water rocket out of a water and some piping, this $24.99 kit allows you, with the aid of a soda bottle and bicycle pump, to become a mini Goddard in your own back forty.

The Aquapod is the most exciting and safest bottle launcher available. This intriguing hobby toy requires no
assembly and is ready to launch with the addition of a regular 2-liter plastic soda bottle and an ordinary
bicycle pump. The Aquapod has a florescent orange futuristic one piece design that captures the eye instantly.
Not only does the Aquapod launch a bottle up to 100 feet in the air, but no other launcher out there has a built
in safety valve that releases pressure at 60psi in order to keep everyone safe from over-pressurizing the entire
system.

Just fill a 2-liter plastic bottle half with water and secure it over the white launch tube upside down. Using
any ordinary pump, pressurize the Aquapod through the valve stem until the check valve inside the front leg
releases pressure and water. Then, stand back with the strap in your hand that is attached to a 15 foot string
and give a short, quick tug on the string to launch the bottle high into the air.

The Aquapod is built with high quality thick durable plastic and is designed to last.

The Aquapod is also available in bulk in case you want to start your own hamster space program.

Hello, my name is Devin, and I’m a bagaholic. I can’t get enough. Despite getting my hands on such awesome and varied backpacks as the Mamba Shift, the Soyuz, and the Vandal, not to mention those sweet things from Acme Made back in the day, I can’t help but lust after the latest book-and-laptop receptacle. This time, unfortunately, the rascals have made it only available in Japan. Curses!

I think what attracts me about this thing is those twin steel buckles. As practical as Velcro is, buckles are awesomer, especially when they’re metallic. I must have some magpie in me, because anything shiny like that just entrances me.

In addition to being limited to Japan, this sucker costs a mind-blowing Â¥48,825 — over $500, over at Beauty & Youth.. This is why my handlers don’t let me loose in Tokyo with a credit card. I have to be kept on a leash and given quarters, which I save up to spend on gyudon at Yoshinoya. Shameful, I know — but savory.

[via High Snobiety and Doobybrain]

There’s a certain amount of pride in seeing a country pump out something like the new F-35B Lightning II fighter jet. At $113.5 million per aircraft, it’s about as far away from the meaning of the word “inexpensive” as possible. It makes you think, well, if we can afford things like that, why can’t we afford things like this? But, whatever. The entire purpose of this post is to watch a legitimately exciting video. So, let’s!

The very first test flight of the aircraft happened yesterday, and lasted 14 minutes long. (Yes, there’s a certain irony in finding out about the latest American military technology in the British press.) That works out to $8.1 million per minute in the air. Granted, that’s a horrible way of looking at the aircraft, but it’s a fun stat nonetheless.

The F-35B Lightning II has been in development since 2001, and it was originally promoted as an affordable option to keeping old birds like the F-16 and F-10A in the air.

The marines will start using the jet, if all goes according to plan, in December, 2012.

And now I’m off to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2, using more terribly expensive weapons to beat up Kirilenko.

Do you like Bravo? Sure you do. Well Bravo sure likes you and they want to give you a standard Kindle (Kindle 2, not the DX) to one lucky commenter. How do you win? Well heck, I’m glad you asked.

All you have to do is comment or retweet this post to the world. Either/or. It’s a random thing, baby.

Why are they giving you a kindle? Here:

Bravo achieved major success in the digital sphere last year, and they broke new ground in social media by creating the first ever virtual viewing party, a multiplatform, live viewing experience. It allowed viewers to interact on social media outlets during their favorite show like “Real Housewives of New York City” and “Top Chef.” The success of these viewing parties attracted over 1 million page views, saw double-digit growth in audience engagement, and created sponsorship opportunities for the network.

Now, Bravo plans on expanding on its success by creating weekly live viewing parties called the Bravo Talk Bubble. The site, BravoTalkBubble.com, launched on 3/18, and they will start the first viewing party on March 25 during a new episode of “The Real Housewives of New York City”. They will also deploy an innovative, new Twitter integration.

To help promote this Talk Bubble, we’re giving away ONE Kindle to your readers.

Fair enough, right? Who doesn’t want a Kindle? We’ll pick a winner on Monday at noon New York Time.

Woof. Analysts have placed a sell rating on Palm and are now valuing their stock, at least in hyperbolic terms, at $0. Quoth CNN: Shares of Palm (PALM) plunged 19% to $4.59 a share early Friday, a new 52-week low. Investors are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the company's future and several analysts downgraded their positions on the stock to "sell." Two analysts even lowered their price targets to $0.

At some point we’ll probably just ingest our memory cards.

via Reddit

I did my taxes recently, and this is the first year that I actually bothered to deduct for all those things that I buy over the year for my job. It was confusing frankly, and I wish I’d read this article before I did it. Hopefully you’ll read this in time to do your deductions correctly, and not make the same mistakes I did (which caused me to miss out on several things I could have claimed).

I’m not going to go into all the grisly details, I’ll leave that to the person who actually wrote the article at PCWorld, but the gist of it is this: be careful what you deduct, and how you deduct it. And yes, you can deduct your internet connection (at least part of it) if you are a blogger. Be careful not to write off 100% value on items like computers or phones, as the IRS won’t believe you that you use those things strictly for business purposes.

ioSafe is running a great deal with Costco right now, you can buy their ioSafe Solo (which John reviewed) for a great price, and also get an additional year of data recovery for free. The drive is currently on sale for $229.99 (ordered online), and is regularly priced at $259.99 and doesn’t normally include the additional year of data recovery. Having personally seen one of these set on fire, I’m seriously considering picking one up, and you should too.

It’s fairly easy to find exactly when most Americans started to get fat. All you have to do is go back to the 1950’s. Some would say this is due to our fast food lifestyle, people spending too much time in front of the TV instead of running from animals, or even possibly a plot by Colonel Sanders. I think it’s directly related to the invention of the remote control. Now, there’s even less reason to get up off the couch thanks to the latest invention: The Clicker.

The Clicker is a 9-function learning remote with one important difference. It has a built in bottle opener. Now, after you train your dog to go and get you a beer out of the fridge, you no longer have to fumble in your pocket, or on the side table for an opener. You’ll know exactly where it is. Unfortunately you can’t be lazy if you want to order one though, as the website doesn’t have an electronic store. There isn’t even a price listed, just a phone number. You can download the instructions on how to program your new remote/bottle opener though.

The GigaPan Epic Pro was the Gigapan we were waiting for it. It’s, well, professionally epic and capable of using nearly any DSLR camera/lens available thanks to its large magnesium chassis. It was originally going to start shipping sometime in April, but apparently something changed because we just got word from the company itself that its available now.

Too bad the somewhat high, but understandable, $895 price didn’t change. Probably more than a few photographers would have rather seen a bit shaved off that rather than the shipping date.

Apple doesn’t like HTC, not one bit. In fact, Apple recently filed a lawsuit against the Taiwan-based company, alleging that it has infringed 20 iPhone-related patents. This has already been discussed to death, but it gives us an opportunity to look at some of Apple’s other forays into the world of lawsuits. It’s terribly exciting.

So yeah, CNET did the hard work, and I’m merely highling the items that caught my eye.

• Psystar. This is probably the most famous lawsuit in the past few years. Pretty much a flawless victory for Apple.

• Nokia. Oh, Apple on the other end of a lawsuit? Hmm. Nokia says Apple infringed a number of its patents with the iPhone. Nokia sues Apple which then sues HTC. Mind = blown.

• Microsoft and HP. Oh dear, it’s a battle royale over user graphical user interfaces. Apple basically got its teeth kicked in on this one.

Flickr

If you’re a photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or Aperture. Probably Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros — and the latest version seems to be an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly intended to draw casual shooters using iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot. Since so many of these amazing new features are direct side-loads from iPhoto, it smooths the process and makes the program as a whole more approachable, though whether existing Aperture users will find them helpful is questionable. Brushes, on the other hand, are a welcome addition to any photographer’s toolset, and depending on how dedicated you are, may be worth the price of admission.

Invasion of the iPhoto features

As long as I’ve been using Aperture, I’ve considered it a processing application. Its photo management was troublesome here and there, and iPhoto had the best ways of showing off your shots, but I dealt with it since maintaining two separate libraries of the same photos would be disk space suicide. I’ve only used Lightroom a little bit (and a version or two back) but all my friends say that it just has a better workflow for serious photo work — importing a couple hundred shots, scrubbing through them, doing the necessary adjustments, and outputting to the necessary format. Not that I have trouble doing that in Aperture, but apparently it’s faster and better in Lightroom.

Confronted with such a fearsome opponent, Apple decided that it would be better to flank than to risk a frontal assault. Hence the expansion of Aperture’s incorporation of iPhoto features Faces and Places. I question their relevance in a photo processing application, but given Apple’s tendency towards coalescing functionality, I’m guessing that iPhoto will eventually be Aperture: Gimped Edition, and the only real choice for organizing and messing with large numbers of photos will be Aperture.

There are some kinks to be worked out. Faces plainly doesn’t work. After it spent literally five hours going through my photos (about 1000 per hour), this is what it has come up with:

No, it didn’t have a lot to go on (I hadn’t “trained” it much yet) but really now. After giving it a few more pointers on what I looked like, it still mistook a three-year-old tow-headed girl, my friend Monica (who is Indian, and in a wedding dress), some E3 booth babes, and Casio president Kazuo Kashio for pale, bearded, Devin Coldewey. The cork board background is jarring and the interface for going through your shots is terrible. I realize this is a technology still being perfected, and that is why I am wondering: what is it doing in my RAW editing program?

Places is useful if you have a geotagging camera (still rare) or want to spend a few hours dragging and dropping stuff onto the map. It can be fun, actually, if you take a lot of pictures of your friends, and want to drag and drop this or that night onto the location you went to; it’s like creating a different kind of album (“Linda’s Tavern”), and indeed you can make a browsable smart album from locations. If you’re like me, you won’t feel complete until the photos are more or less where they were within the city, and not all grouped in a single pin, smack in the middle of the city. This could have some promise, but with a backlog of several thousand shots, getting a library up to date in Places is a task I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

It’s a mistake to judge Faces and Places by simply saying “well we were fine before them,” because it may just be that we found ways of working in the old system of organization (Project>Folder>Album) that approximated what these new features do. But I don’t think it’s wrong to say they just don’t really do much, and feel out of place to boot. You have to work at them, or shoot for them, in order for them to really be worthwhile. Still I have to give credit where credit’s due: if you just consider Faces and Places new columns to organize by (like rating or date) then they’re worth their salt. As flagship features, though, they’re duds.

Lastly, the slide show thing. It’s like finding a trout in the milk. Not that it doesn’t work — it works as well as iPhoto’s thing, and I suppose it’s better to have than not. It’s just a little weird to have a sort of… aftermarket feature popped in there next to the serious editing tools. Its little presets are, like in most Apple programs, 25% solid, 75% fluff. Who in the name of all that is holy is going to pick “Shatter” as their slide show transition? It’s ghastly.

The new features are very well explained in little videos accessible through the “Welcome” screen, which will be handy for new users — if they can find the screen after they close it (it’s in Help>Welcome to Aperture).

The good stuff

So if the iPhoto features are icing, the actual cake is the RAW editing, adjustment tools, and user interface. Let’s start with what I would say is the best new feature: Brushes.

You can see a pretty thorough overview of the feature at Apple’s site, but the gist is that it allows you to apply certain effects in limited areas using a brush of adjustable size and intensity. That’s great! I can’t count the number of times I’ve vacillated between two versions of a photo where an adjustment necessary for one part ended up blowing out another, or I just wanted to bring out the color in the eyes but not in the background. A lot of fiddling could usually approximate the effect I wanted, but it would be so much easier to just use a brush. I’ll be using the hell out of this feature, and it’s perhaps the only real step Apple took against Adobe in this update.

(combination Brushes and Help Video screenshot)

The brushes are non-destructive, like any of the dials and curves you can play with in the adjustments panel, so you can feel free to experiment, layer, and try out different effects. One thing I often have to do when shooting review shots is emphasize the color of LEDs, but if the subject is well-lit, the LEDs are going to be barely visible. No problem; make a little brush, add in a little contrast right there, bump the saturation just in the one area, and boom, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Brushes are useful for lots of little things like that.

The new full-screen browser is handy but not really a revolution. They’ve added the ability to get around your library a little more, which is nice, but it’s not as streamlined as the regular browser, which is always accessible by a single keystroke. The fullscreen presentation has definitely been improved, however, and when showing off photos to friends or clients, it’s a better option than either the plain editing window or a slide show.

The preset adjustments, I think we can agree, are being blown way out of proportion. These are the same kind of “professional adjustments” that you have been able to apply on cheap point-and-shoots since the beginning of time. There are a few quick adjust things like high-contrast black-and-white or exposure +1 that are nice to have previews for (the live preview window is handy), but let’s be honest, these are just filters. I’d like to be able to say that they’re carefully adjusted so you won’t see weird color effects, blackouts, or blowouts, but the fact is every one I tried looked cheap and overdone. The others, like white balance and so on, seem pretty redundant considering the actual controls for adjusting those aspects are mere pixels away in the same window.

Click to see it larger. You can’t really tell here, since this photo isn’t very high contrast, but in several of the other shots I tried this on, the vintage look was really purple, cross-processing was really green, and toy camera pushed the contrast way too far. Subtle adjustments these are not.

The good news is that people new to the program might try a couple, see that they were created by dragging curves and color bars around, and then make their own. I’ve had my own “base” adjustment for years now, which was just as easily accessible and just as customizable. Putting together a “look” for a shoot using this feature might be easier now than before, but it’s still just a toy at this point.

The ability to have multiple libraries is nice; splitting work and personal stuff would be my move, so that if a meteor crashed into TC HQ (or, more likely, I’m fired for insubordination), I could free up a couple gigs in one clean sweep. It’s also convenient for backing up and sharing; “here’s my whole ‘wedding’ library, feel free to do what you like with it” rather than “here’s a folder full of RAW files.”

A quick note

Just a PSA: installation of Aperture 3 took ages. Plan on losing at least a working day to 100% processor usage as it converts your library, searches for Faces, and reprocesses your RAW files with the new profile. I’m not holding this against Apple (it’s a LOT of data to sift through) but it’s just something to be aware of.

Conclusion

Aperture is still a great program, in my opinion, and the budding photographer would be a lot better off with this than with iPhoto if they’re planning on doing anything more than collecting snapshots. I’ve gotten used to Aperture’s workflow and they haven’t changed it much in 3, in fact they’ve provided a couple serious improvements with Brushes and potentially Places and Faces — you know, if you’re into that kind of thing.

The trouble I see is that Aperture, once a rather single-minded program, is being diluted with features that have nothing to do with its core functionality. Why not have a new program, called “Collection” or something, that hooks into all your libraries, allows for creating robust slide shows, exporting directly to Facebook, and all that sort of thing? Putting all this junk into Aperture is doing to it what Apple has done to iTunes: once a sleek and straightforward program, it has now grown bloated beyond comprehension; it’s a bit like seeing a once-great fighter gone to seed. I have more of an attachment to Aperture than to iTunes, but if Aperture 4 continues along the vector indicated by Aperture 3, you can consider me a Lightroom conversion.

Give Aperture 3 a 30-day trial for free here. $199 to buy, $99 to upgrade.

The year 2004 called, and it wants its iPod dock back. (Yes, I know it works with the iPhone, too.) Seriously, do people still buy these things? Inquiring minds want to know.

Roku’s HD player is a great deal at $99, but it’s an even better deal if you buy one now from Amazon. In addition to having a great Netflix box, you’ll also be able to use Amazon’s Video of Demand service, and to get you started they’ll throw in $20 worth of credit.

That’s a pretty good deal, considering that a movie like The Hurt Locker rents for $3.99, or you can rent a TV show for about $3 an episode (watch Human Target, seriously). You’ll give $99 for the Roku HD or $129.99 for the Roku HD-XR, and then Amazon will credit your account so you can start renting as soon as you get the box hooked up. Better hurry though, because the deal is only good until the 31st.

Japan and its alarm clocks. Most of these devices force you to wake up through an extra-annoying noise (or by moving away from you), but this new one, the so-called Twist Alarm Clock [JP], makes you solve (simple) math problems.

The way it works is that when the alarm starts ringing in the morning, the clock uses its two displays and two rotatable parts to create a math problem, for example 8+2=?. It won’t stop ringing until you give it the right answer. 5-4=2, as seen in the picture above, won’t work. Maker D-Forme says the main idea behind their clock is to force buyers to activate their brains in the morning.

Sized at 13.5×6.3×7cm, the Twist Alarm clock is available only in Japan (price: $30). If you’re interested, I’d suggest contacting import/export specialists like Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya.

Mosquitos are one of the major ways that malaria is spread, causing an estimated two million deaths per year. Wouldn’t it be cool if those mosquitos could be genetically modified to spread a malaria vaccination instead of the disease itself? Scientists have theorized about just such a solution for years, but recent work from Jichi Medical University in Japan proves that it’s actually possible, not just theoretically possible.

Associate Professor Shigeto Yoshida and his research team “successfully generated a transgenic mosquito expressing the Leishmania vaccine within its saliva. Bites from the insect succeeded in raising antibodies, indicating successful immunization with the Leishmania vaccine through blood feeding.” Of course, this vaccination idea isn’t perfect, since you’ll still have one or more mosquito bites to scratch at, but at least you won’t have malaria.

Maybe I’m alarmist, but I can’t help but think that this kind of approach throws the natural order of things seriously out of whack. As I read the story, I kept hearing Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park in my mind, saying “life, uh … finds a way.”

Loyal readers, I give you a Steampunk Sin City concept made on 1000 Euros. Now if one of you could kindly tell me what in the world is going on in it?

via [Dvorak Uncensored]

There’s been so much push for digital, downloadable content lately that we’ve almost forgotten about our old friend, the compact disc. Even though CD sales are plummeting each time our little planet makes another obit around that bright, flaming thing in the sky, the big boys don’t seem to be willing to throw in the towel just quite yet. In fact, UMG is working to implement a new pricing structure that will hopefully bring CD prices down to a maximum of $10 a pop.

UMG plans to make up the difference with more units moved, and with a push for “deluxe” versions of albums that will cost a bit more, but come with all sorts of fun and exciting extras.

“We think [the new pricing program] will really bring new life into the physical format,” Universal Music Group Distribution president/CEO Jim Urie

The new structure plans to keep a 25% wholesale profit margin. So an album you pay $10 for, wholesellers will get for $7.50. We’ll see if that’s enough to get everyone on board with the move. People already behind it include Newbury Comics CEO Mike Dreese and Trans World Entertainment CEO Bob Higgins. The rest of the music industry doesn’t seem too excited though.

But they’d better do something if they want to get CD sales out of their current nosedive. 2008 saw 360.6 million units, barely over half of the numbers in 2000. iTunes and other retailers seem to have set 10 bucks as the magic number people will buy albums at. Granted, if people are willing to shell out $10 for a digital album, a little more isn’t so unreasonable for a physical copy. With art, liner notes, and all the rest.

Universal’s move here seems to show the music industry is finally starting to look into some longer term solutions that just suing everybody left and right. We’ll have to wait and see if any of the other big labels make similar moves.

[Billboard]