Press Record.

This is a roundup of random crap I have mentioned at the office. For you Gizmod'ians and Engadgeteers this might be review, but it will be on the final so study up.

Zipit Wireless AOL/MSN/ICQ/ Messenger
http://zipitwireless.com/
I bought it, I'm using it. It's going back very soon. Pathetically poor battery life, and quirky thumbpad. Great concept, great form factor, crapatronic implementation.
The new Zipit Wireless Messenger is a low-cost portable IM device that connects to 802.11b/g wireless home networks or free hotspots and enables teens to chat away with no service fee.
With a compact, clamshell design, the Zipit Wireless Messenger measures in at 4.25 inches wide by 3.6 inches long and .8 inches deep and only weighs about eight ounces, making it easily portable. It features a 320x240 LCD screen and a full QWERTY keyboard for fast typing.

The Un Fold Chair Design Contest
http://www.city-magazine.com/projects.html
British designer and Creative Director Phil Nutley, accomplished furniture and brand designer as well as a frequent exhibitor at the ICFF, International Contemporary Furniture Fair sent nine contemporaries from nine cities around the globe an unparalleled challenge: to create a cost-effective, collapsible piece of furniture and ship it to New York inside a large FedEx box within 90 days of receipt of the project brief. What they created was strictly up to them, but the final product and construction had to adhere to the following:
• BUDGET could not exceed $200 (or equivalent)
• EACH DESIGN must support the weight of a person up to 200 lbs (90 kgs)
• CONCISE INSTRUCTIONS must accompany the design in order to assemble it for exhibition
results: http://homepage.mac.com/planetfab1/PhotoAlbum36.html
video: http://www.city-magazine.com/vid_16UNFOLD.html
via Gizmodo a long time ago

Cruel coincidence befalls UPS driver
http://www.keenesentinel.com/main.asp?SectionID=31&SubSectionID=37&ArticleID=48806
So the other day a UPS driver in New Hampshire was on his way to the Cheshire Medical Center in Keene to deliver some much-needed parts for a piece of medical equipment when he got into a crash. He suffered a head injury and was taken by ambulance to the very same hospital he was headed to, but they weren’t able to do any of the tests they needed because the brain scan machine was broken—and the parts needed to fix it were sitting in his wrecked truck on the highway. If only there were some word to describe situations like these…
via Engadget a few days ago

NASA Scramjet reaches 10x the speed of sound.
http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2004/Nov/17-872684.html
NASA's X-43A scramjet-powered research vehicle broke the air speed record November 16 and showed that an "air-breathing" engine can fly at nearly 10 times the speed of sound.
Preliminary data indicate that the revolutionary supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) engine worked successfully at about Mach 10 -- more than 11,000 kilometers per hour -- as it flew at an altitude of nearly 34,000 meters.
The flight took place in restricted airspace over the Pacific Ocean northwest of Los Angeles. It was the fastest of three unpiloted tests in NASA's Hyper-X Program to explore an alternative to rocket power for space-access vehicles.
"This flight is a key milestone and a major step toward the future possibilities for producing boosters for sending large and critical payloads into space in a reliable, safe, inexpensive manner," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe.
QT video: http://www.nasa.gov/mov/84870main_X-43A_Flight_3_Launch_160.mov
NASA project page: http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html


more soon, must be productive now...
also coming soon, the mindboggling complexity of the McDonalds internal worldwide network, and the limitations of Microsofts anti-piracy campaign in Canada