If you’ve ever wanted a closer look at the International Space Station, NASA Television will be airing a 35-minute HD tour this day and tomorrow.

Filmed by Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke, the show will run at both 1pm and 3pm (CST) on January 22nd and 23rd on NASA TV. Immediately following the broadcast, you’ll also be able to catch the show in a standard def stream on NASA’s site. Not a bad way to kill the lunch hour. [NASA Television via TG Daily]

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Obama staffers, previously residents of a magical technological world filled with IM, Facebook, unicorns and Macs, found a barbaric Stone Age when they entered the White House: No IM, scarce laptops, and dear Christ, Windows XP.

Other brutal conditions include dated computer software and rules banning outside e-mail accounts (don’t want another Sarah Palin mess, do we?). Obama spokesman Bill Burton said, “It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari.” A travesty. How did previous White House staffs ever function???

Actually, even though I’m mocking their bellyaching because I have to meet my snide quota for the month, the conditions there really are brutal for the work they’re trying to accomplish, and the new ways they’re trying to accomplish it, if you think about it. IM, Facebook, email and laptops are the major tools his staffers have been using for the last couple years—and indeed, much of the reason they’re in the White House today. And now they’re gone. (Owen at Valleywag maintains the “stop whining” tack, from a real world perspective, if you’re so inclined.)

Not to mention even the phones weren’t working. In the office of the most powerful man in the world. Now that’s ridiculous. [Washington Post - Thanks everybody!]

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When the App Store launched, there were a handful of Twitter apps for the iPhone. Now there’s ten zillion. We’ve read thousands of tweets on each Twitter app, so here are the ideal, and worst.

The Quicklist
• Best Overall: Tweetie
• Ideal Paid: Tweetie
• Ideal Free: Twitterfon
• Most Powerful: Twittelator Pro
• Best Tweet-Only: Tweeter
• Worst Twitter App Ever in the History of Twitter Ever: Tweetion
• Creepiest: Twittervision

GPSTwit
A tweet-only application (meaning you can’t read other people’s tweets, just post quickly) that distinguishes itself from the other minimalist one-way apps by adding GPS (with a link to your position on Google maps) and photos to the equation.
Pros: It has as much versatility as you’d want to pack into a single-function Twitter app.
Cons: Not as beautifully simple as a single function app should be, and slow, which is fatal for an app that’s supposed to blindingly fast. Annoying ads.
Price: Free
Grade: D+

iTweets
iTweets is basic Twitter app that aims for simplicity, merging all of your incoming tweets into a single, color-coded timeline.
Pros: It has really pretty colors and a bemusing sense of single-mindedness.
Cons: It blends all of your incoming tweets—from people you follow, @replies and direct messages—into a single sticky stream of goop that’s unmanageable because of the way it’s laid out—no icons means it’s hard to tell who the tweet is coming from. And it’s a buck! Boo.
Price: $1
Grade: D+

LaTwit
LaTwit is a pretty standard Twitter app that gives you all of the core functions, with a few useful customizations for easier reading.
Pros: It lets you have tons of accounts and aggregate them into a single feed and gives you control over tiny things, like font sizes, and URL copy and pasting, that might make it endearing to you.
Cons: Kinda ugly. It’s buggy—goes catatonic often in the settings menu. It puts the public timeline front and center (when I check Twitter from my mobile on a little screen, I wanna see what my friends are up to, not the whole world). Missing deep features, like search. Not worth three bucks.
Price: $3
Grade: D

Nambu
Nambu is a hydra, pulling in your Twitter, FriendFeed and Ping.fm accounts so you can social network and read what your friends are up to until your eyes and fingers bleed.
Pros: The real selling point is that it combines three major microblogging-or-whatever-you-want-to-call-them services in one app. The reading UI is decent, clearly ripped from Twitterific, down to the color scheme. And uh, well, multiple social networking accounts in a single app!
Cons: It feels like beta software: One of the five main buttons is for feedback. Limited screen real estate shouldn’t be gobbled up by something like that. Despite ripping the UI from Twitterific, it’s a little messier, with little, unintelligible buttons up top and not quite the same fit and finish.
it’s not immediately apparent what some of the buttons do. Robert Scoble might love this for $2, but if you’re just looking for that one great Twitter client, this ain’t it.
Price: $2
Grade: C-

NatsuLion
Another generic Twitter app, it does all of the basic things you want in a Twitter application, but there’s nothing really special about it.
Pros: It has a separate section for unread tweets, which makes managing them easy. The lion is adorable!
Cons: Too much text crammed into each box (which need to be more cleanly differentiated themselves), which makes it hard to read. Blends direct messages and @replies into a single timeline, which might annoy some people. Skips out on features like search, and even picture uploading, which is typically taken for granted.
Price: Free
Grade: C-

Tweeter:
It’s a no-reading, just-tweeting one-trick pony.
Pros: It’s really fast for firing off tweets instantly.
Cons: It’s tweet-only.
Price: Free
Grade: C+

Tweetie
Tweetie is a powerful Twitter app with each feature you’d want, from multiple accounts to a landscape keyboard, packaged in a really well-designed UI that makes it a joy to use.
Pros: Feature-packed, with bonuses, even, like flashlight and fart apps—in a UI that’s never messy or scrambled by feature overload. It does the ideal job of squishing a full-featured app into a mobile one with a user experience comes that comes closest to what you’d envision the perfect iPhone Twitter app would feel like. Totally worth $3.
Cons: It doesn’t cache tweets, meaning you lose your reading list as soon as you close the app. Some more theme choices would be nice—iChat bubble and “simple” doesn’t quite cut it. Not quite as superpowered as Twittelator Pro.
Price: $3
Grade: A

TweetionTweetion wants to be a Twitter search app more than anything else, since that the first thing that pops up when you open it. It, uh, tries to do a lot of stuff too. Tries being the operative word.
Pros: It archives all of your tweets from ever ever ago. It’s like a trainwreck in your pocket that you can look at whenever you want for just $5.
Cons: Takes forever to load. Unsightly interface that’s like a flashback to Geocities circa 1999. Animations are slow and choppy. Awkward button placement—one of them is dedicated solely to your profile picture, no joke—while most of the actual Twitter functions are buried in a more menu. Settings menu is a scrolling, choppy, confusing mess that awkwardly mixes buttons, text entries and the slot machine list UI. Couldn’t figure out the Facebook deal. It’s buggy and froze a lot too. Clearly, no one used this before they put it out. A genuine atrocity.
Price: $5
Grade: F-

Tweetsville
Tweetsville’s designers it seems weren’t quite sure what they wanted it to do, so it does a tiny bit of everything, but it’s not particularly great to use.
Pros: It has every major Twitter function, solid search capabilities and in tweets, makes it abundantly clear who it’s going to. That’s about it.
Cons: It’s hard to immediately find core functions—a no-no on an app designed to be used on the go—and its uncertainty of purpose or design leaves a sorta sour taste in my mouth: Half the buttons on the bottom are dedicated to search and trend-tracking, while your @replies, which I think should be front and center, are buried under a “more” menu. The UI is also inconsistent from function to function, and there’s just not a whole lot of reason to pay $4 for this when free or cheaper apps are much better.
Price: $4
Grade: D

Twinkle
Twinkle had a lot of fanfare early on for its cutesy speech bubbles and location features that let you see what people are tweeting around you, which it was the first to do.
Pros: One of ideal clients right after the App Store launch because it was one of the first with deep location features, it still has strengths there, like a landscape view map of real-time tweets. The stars and bubbles theme is… unique.
Cons: Its future development is questionable because of internal strife at developer studio Tapulous. It also requires a separate Tapulous account, which is really aggravating. In our view, Twitter apps shouldn’t need anything more than our Twitter username and pass so you can begin using them instantly.
Grade: C

Twittelator
Twittelator’s free app gives you more functionality than most free Twitter apps in a pretty solid little package.
Pros: It’s one of the better free Twitter apps, retaining Twittelator Pro’s core functions—picture upload, search, GPS, friends list—though it doesn’t stack up to its pay-for-it-dammit larger brother. Less apt to freeze-ups than Twittelator Pro.
Cons: You lose all of Twittelator Pro’s more powerful functions—not just themes, but multiple accounts, nearby tweets, in-tweet photo display, deeper profile diving and more—but you’re using the UI designed for the feature-packed version, with a kind of unsightly skin, too. The emergency tweet button is weird, and in an awkward place (dead center).
Grade: B-

Twittelator Pro
The large daddy of Twitter apps, it has more features than any other app we tried and it’ll let you do just about anything—search, check nearby tweets and trends, create custom sub-groups of people you follow, multiple accounts and more
Pros: The most powerful Twitter client with lots of customization like multiple skins, and little touches like a friends list that makes it easy to @reply or direct message someone on the fly.
Cons: The listicle-style menu for all the features is a tad bland, though it gets the job done. When it’s trying to do something, it can be annoyingly unresponsive. The UI isn’t the cleanest, either (admittedly, because it’s trying to do so much) and some of the buttons are hard to hit. Pricey.
Price: $5
Grade: A-

Twitfire
Twitfire is another one-way application that just lets you send tweets, not read them.
Pros: Hrmmmm… It makes it simple to send messages to your friends—which the other one-way apps don’t do.
Cons: Another post-only app that wants to be essential, but is just confusing. Do I push the button before I type? After? What’s that button?
Price: Free
Grade: D+

Twitterfon
The most straightforward full-featured Twitter app, it has each major function you’d want—search, profile diving, picture uploads—presented in the simplest way in possible.
Pros: It’s incredibly lean and loads a zillion tweets way faster than any other Twitter app in a easy, easy to read layout. It caches them too, meaning you can flick it on to do a tweet dump before you hop in the subway. The ideal free all-round Twitter app.
Cons: Missing some power-user functions, like multiple accounts and themes (the baby blue does get on my nerves), and an option for a more massive font size would be nice.
Price: Free
Grade: A-

Twitterific
Twitterific is designed around the reading experience more than anything, presenting all of your incoming tweets—from friends, @replies and direct messages—in a single stream with a fantastic UI.
Pros: It’s a great reading experience—it launches straight into the timeline and uses massive, readable-from-two-feet away fonts on top of a an essentialized user interface that’s single-hand-friendly. Caches tweets so you can read your backlog even without a signal, which is great if you catch up on Twitter in the subway (like me). The free version and $10 one are essentially exactly the same—the free one has ads and is just missing an extra theme.
Cons: It was clearly designed for reading more than doing, so it’s stripped of features like search, nearby users and more in-depth profile probing that makes it feel a bit shallower than other apps, especially if you pay $10 for the premium version, which is the most costly standalone Twitter app in the App Store. Also, everything’s in a single timeline—your friends’ tweets, direct messages and @replies—so there’s no digging back for an older direct message or anything remotely tweet management.
Price: Free or $10
Grade: B-

Twittervision
Rather than check out what the people you’re following are up to, it bounces you around the world, following random, geo-located tweets in real time, or you can see who’s tweeting near you in creepy detail. All to give you a “sense of the global zeitgeist.”
Pros: It’s neat.
Cons: The amount of detail in local tweets, with a Google Map pin and all, is kinda creepy! You can’t read what the people you’re following are doing (granted, that’s not the point).
Price: Free
Grade: B-

source pc.qj.net

HTC is updating the nav-focused Touch Cruise, which now features a new active-geotagging app called Footprints, which can easily stamp your location on notes, audio clips and pics.

Aside from footprints, also new over the original cruise is a redesigned case, Touch Flo, and forthcoming U.S. 3G on AT&T’s 850/1900 MHz bands (that version will sell in the spring, unlocked, for $500-$600). Full specs and release follow below, and a full hands-on over at Mobile Review can be had as well. [via Phone Scoop]

ALL NEW HTC TOUCH CRUISE WITH HTC FOOTPRINTS™ HELPS CAPTURE AND RELIVE LIFE’S JOURNEYS

Compact and Sophisticated Design Delivers an Advanced Location-Based Experience That Changes How People View Their Locations and Memories

tcpTaipei, Taiwan – January 22, 2009 – HTC Corporation, a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design, today announced its latest personal navigation handset with inbuilt GPS. The new HTC Touch Cruise™, an update to 2008’s popular HTC GPS device of the same name, boasts a new, more compact design and a host of new abilities to offer a richer and more intuitive experience in one powerful package.

Introducing HTC Footprints

The new HTC Touch Cruise is the first mobile phone to offer HTC Footprints, an application experience that enables people to permanently chronicle their special moments by capturing a digital postcard on their phone. Once captured, Footprints provides the capability to take notes and an audio clip of that favourite restaurant or special place while identifying its specific geographical location. In addition to identifying each postcard with its specific GPS co-ordinates, Footprints also auto-names each postcard with its general location or area.

Flipping back through their photos, HTC Touch Cruise users will be able to retrace their steps to that exact location in just a few touches. Unlike other devices with geo-tagging functionality, HTC Footprints works effectively outdoors and indoors, offering a more accurate record of location for future reference and navigation.

“Just as we’ve seen GPS technology transform how people navigate to new places, we’re now seeing location-based applications like HTC Footprints changing how we interact and carry our memories,” stated Peter Chou, President and CEO, HTC Corporation.

HTC Touch Cruise Automobile Cradle

The HTC Touch Cruise is also an advanced in-car navigation system. When placed into its accompanying vehicle cradle, the HTC Touch Cruise automatically transforms its user interface into an easy-to-use, one-touch interface that provides seamless turn-by-turn directions.

Boasting a compact and sleek design with a 2.8 inch QVGA display, the HTC Touch Cruise is a further demonstration of HTC’s continued commitment to innovation, providing consumers with a variety of devices designed to meet their individual needs. Using HTC’s TouchFLO technology, the HTC Touch Cruise provides fingertip access to phone, contacts, email, messaging, calendar and GPS applications, making it a strong all-around device.

The new HTC Touch Cruise will be available to customers across all major global markets in spring 2009.

Notes to editors

Key HTC Touch Cruise Specifications

* Size: 102 x 53.5 x 14.5mm
* Weight: 103 grams
* Connectivity: WCDMA/HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
* Operating system: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
* Display: 2.8-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with QVGA resolution
* Control panel: HTC TouchFLO™, 4-Way navigation wheel with Enter and HTC Footprints™ buttons
* Camera: 3.2 MP, with fixed focus
* Internal memory: 512 MB flash ROM, 256 MB RAM
* Expansion Slot: microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
* Bluetooth: 2.0 with EDR
* Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
* GPS: GPS/A-GPS
* Interface: HTC ExtUSB (mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
* Battery: 1100 mAh
* Speak time: GSM: up to 400 minutes
* Standby time: GSM: up to two weeks
* Chipset: Qualcomm® MSM7225™, 528 MHz

source pc.qj.net

Sometimes, when life’s getting you down, you just need to hole yourself up in a modified wardrobe, sitting on a chair with a hole cut in the seat for you to poop through.

The wardrobe, designed by Australian artist Adam Norton, features everything you need to live, from the aforementioned toilet chair to a cooking setup, bookshelf and even a periscope to see if anyone from the outside world is coming to get you.

I’m just going to keep telling myself that this is just an art project and that no one would actually hide in it for an extended period of time. I just have to.

[Treehugger via Make]

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Ballmer discussing Windows in the economic climate that led Microsoft to cut 5,000 jobs: “The price premiums that people pay for Macintoshes over PCs will be looked at more carefully.” Hmm. Guess we’ll see.

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German company 2eleven isn’t some foreign knockoff trying to sell “Groß Gulps”—they are actually the masterminds behind this futuristic foosball table.

Besides just looking cool, the table features monitors on both sides, an automatic ball lift, score display and, of course, cup holders. I’m not sure how much it costs, but think expensive thoughts. [2eleven via BeSportier]

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Microsoft, the industry’s unassailable juggernaut, apparently can bleed. It’s laying off 5,000 workers of its 94,000-employee workforce. Rumor is, mostly from the extraordinary Entertainment and Devices teams.

If the rumor is true, that pisses me off. The E&D team, home to Xbox and Zune and Media Center might not be wildly profitable, but its the division at Microsoft that makes the best stuff.

Steve Ballmer said on the earnings call given other roles they’ll be filling the net loss will be lower than that 5000 cut, however. On the other hand, that number doesn’t include any outside contractors, which could be seeing more drastic slashings. 1,400 are gone this day, the rest will be cut over the next 18 months.

Its net income for the quarter was $4.17 billion, 11 percent lower than the $4.71 billion it posted last year, although revenues were 2 percent higher, $16.63 billion. The major culprit is falling PC sales—Windows sales dropped 8 percent, from $4.33 billion to $3.98 billion. (To contrast, despite the crappier economic climate Mac sales were up 9 percent Apple reported yesterday.)

Mary Jo Foley’s got the full Ballmer memo to employees:

“From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 6:07 AM
To: Microsoft – All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: Realigning Resources and Reducing Costs

In response to the realities of a deteriorating economy, we’re taking important steps to realign Microsoft’s business. I want to tell you about what we’re doing and why.

Today we announced second quarter revenue of $16.6 billion. This number is an increase of just 2 percent compared with the second quarter of last year and it is approximately $900 million below our earlier expectations.

The fact that we’re growing at all during the worst recession in two generations reflects our strong business fundamentals and is a testament to your hard work. Our products provide great value to our customers. Our financial position is solid. We’ve made long-term investments that continue to pay off.

But it is also clear that we’re not immune to the effects of the economy. Consumers and businesses have reined in spending, which is affecting Personal computer shipments and IT expenditures.

Our response to this environment must combine a commitment to long-term investments in innovation with prompt action to reduce our costs.

During the second quarter we started down the right path. As the economy deteriorated, we acted quickly. As a result, we reduced operating expenses during the quarter by $600 million. I appreciate the agility you’ve shown in enabling us to accomplish this result.

Now we need to do more. We must make adjustments to ensure that our investments are tightly aligned with current and future revenue opportunities. The current environment requires that we continue to increase our efficiency.

As part of the process of adjustments, we will eliminate up to 5,000 positions in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, LCA, HR, and IT over the next 18 months, of which 1,400 will occur today. We’ll also open new positions to support key investment areas during this same period of time. Our net headcount in these functions will decline by 2,000 to 3,000 over the next 18 months. In addition, our workforce in support, consulting, operations, billing, manufacturing, and data center operations will continue to change in direct response to customer needs.

Our leaders all have specific goals to manage costs prudently and thoughtfully. They have the flexibility to adjust the size of their teams so they are appropriately matched to revenue potential, to add headcount where they need to increase investments in order to ensure future success, and to drive efficiency.

To increase efficiency, we’re taking a series of aggressive steps. We’ll cut travel expenditures 20 percent and make significant reductions in spending on vendors and contingent staff. We’ve scaled back Puget Sound campus expansion and reduced marketing budgets. We’ll also reduce costs by eliminating merit increases for FY10 that would have taken effect in September of this calendar year.

Each of these steps will be difficult. Our priority remains doing right by our customers and our employees. For employees who are directly affected, I know this will be a difficult time for you and I want to assure you that we will provide help and support during this transition. We’ve established an outplacement center in the Puget Sound region and we’ll provide outplacement services in many other locations to help you find new jobs. Some of you might find jobs internally. For those who don’t, we will also offer severance pay and other benefits.

The decision to eliminate jobs is a very difficult one. Our people are the foundation of everything we’ve achieved and we place the highest value on the commitment and hard work that you have dedicated to building this company. But we believe these job eliminations are crucial to our capability to adjust the company’s cost structure so that we’ve the resources to drive future profitable growth. I encourage you to attend tomorrow’s Town Hall at 9am PST in Café 34 or watch the webcast.

While this is the most challenging economic climate we’ve ever faced, I want to reiterate my confidence in the strength of our competitive position and soundness of our approach.

With these changes in place, I feel confident that we’ll have the resources we need to continue to invest in long-term computing trends that offer the greatest chance to deliver value to our customers and shareholders, benefit to society, and growth for Microsoft.

With our approach to investing for the long term and managing our expenses, I know Microsoft will emerge an even stronger industry leader than it is today.

Thank you for your continued commitment and hard work.

Steve”

[NYT, ZDNet]

source pc.qj.net

You should never hack a road sign as part of a prank. But what if you know that there really are Zombies ahead? What then??

Apparently, while most road sign control pads are placed in a lock box, that box is rarely actually locked. And while most road signs are under password protection, that password is most generally just the default code “DOTS”—or you can easily reset the password by holding “shift” and “control” while typing “DIPY” (so that it just defaults to “DOTS” again).

Of course, it makes sense that road signs aren’t all that protected. Most of us would hope that you wouldn’t be such a jackass as to take swap useful information for some joke about ninjas and/or pirates. [iHacked via Geekologie]

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Today marks the 25th anniversary of the perhaps biggest advertisement in history. One that generated millions in free coverage and still does today: 1984—presenting the Apple Macintosh—is still a gem that leaves most people speechless.

The production values of this ad, created by Steve Hayden and Lee Clow at advertising bureau Chiat/Day—Apple’s current ad agency—and directed by Ridley Scott—director of Alien and Blade Runner—, are simply amazing. At the time, the narrative and the cinematography were a complete breakthrough, to the point of Television commentators exclaiming “What the hell was that?” after the commercial cut, which ran during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, January 22, 1984.

Apple spent 1.5 million on it, even while the board didn’t want to run it and Steve Jobs—who obviously believed the ad was genius and was present at the moment of the filming—had to use all his Reality Distortion Field powers alongside John Sculley to get them to approve the spot. Reportedly, Steve Wozniak liked it so much that he offered to pay for it with his own money.

At the end, Steve’s vision—as most times, spot on—prevailed and the ad became the biggest hit ever in the history of Television, setting the bar for each Super Bowl commercial since then. With one single emission, it generated millions of dollars in free coverage and re-runs in Television stations through the nation and abroad, and became a historical landmark to advertisers, companies, and public alike.

source pc.qj.net