Griffin partners with classic crayon maker to digitize the timeless act of coloring The excitement of attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show often has us feeling like giddy school kids, with its overwhelming display of new technology and gadgets. For 2011 this sentiment is seemingly right on with today’s announcement of the new partnership between Griffin Technology and the revered color masters at Crayola , who will be on hand at CES with their Crayola ColorStudio HD . Updating the timeless activity of coloring for today’s tablet technology, the ColorStudio is an interactive drawing application designed for the iPad that works by using their Crayola iMarker digital stylus. While the iMarker acts as a marker, crayon, pen and paintbrush, the application’s intuitive technology can differentiate between the iMarker and a finger, which is used to control the rest of the sound effects, animations and challenges the ColorStudio offers alongside simple coloring. The Crayola ColorStudio HD and iMarker will sell as a set beginning Spring 2011 for $30.

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Crayola ColorStudio HD

Hundreds of police across China have set up micro-blogging accounts in an effort to improve relations with the tech-savvy public, state media report.

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China police launch micro-blogs

Kick the new year off with Feltron’s app that allows you to track and visualize your personal data To keep better tabs on all those New Year’s resolution pounds you promised to lose or miles you want to run, Daytum ‘s new iPhone app offers their personal data tracking service in a concise mobile form. Daytum allows you to document your life one category at a time, and then relays the timeline with a slew of beneficial charts and averages. I’ve started using it to track all my travel—miles flown, hotel nights stayed and airports visited. The app allows you to work offline—adding, editing and deleting entries—as well as keep track of favorite items for quick reference. Other tools, such as those for switching between accounts, graphing data or providing convenient access for common functions help the app retain its purpose of everyday use. Fully integrated with Daytum’s site, the app can be used in tandem or stand-alone and for existing users it will import all of the past data you’ve entered at daytum.com. Having a look at Daytum co-founder Nicholas Felton’s ” Annual Reports ” gives real insight into just how interesting personal tracking can be, as well as the full ways Daytum can help you communicate your unique information. The app is free from iTunes , and Daytum offers both a free or $4/month subscription service .

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Daytum iPhone App

Did the tech news ever stop this year?

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Tech trends

It’s no secret that big companies — in the tech sector and otherwise — spend a lot of money in Washington every year in an attempt to influence legislation. All Things Digital summarized the latest disclosure reports and put together a list of what some of the biggest technology companies today spent over the third quarter of 2010. Here, just the numbers. Visit the full story to get a more complete breakdown. Verizon: $3.83 million. AT&T: $3.47 million. Hewlett-Packard: $1.6 million. Microsoft: $1.63 million. Oracle: $1.6 million. Google: $1.2 million. IBM: $1.0 million. Intel: $830,000. Yahoo: $540,000. Apple: $340,000. Facebook: $120,000. Read the full story at All Things Digital .

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What Are Tech Companies Spending on Lobbying?

It took T. S. Eliot about a year to compose his masterpiece epic poem, “The Waste Land,” and by the time he was done he had left a substantial paper trail. He wrote his triumph of modernism in a distinctly modern way, as a kind of bricolage, by stitching together some fifty short fragments ten to fifteen lines apiece. These draftlets he would then assemble, type up, and send in carbon copy to a few friends and prospective publishers. We should be grateful. “The Waste Land” is long and hard to understand, deeply allusive and annoyingly (if brilliantly) fragmented. So any record of its production — in the form of drafts, letters, typescripts, annotations, and the like – could help us unravel its many convolutions. Imagine what happened, then, when in 1971, forty-seven years after the poem’s publication and six years after the Nobel prize-winning poet’s death, his widow released a volume entitled The Waste Land: Facsimile and Manuscripts of the Original Drafts . Eliot scholars went nuts. They scoured his prepublication manuscripts trying to figure out which of its five parts were written first, how they were arranged into a coherent whole, even what Eliot was reading while he wrote them. To help with the chronology they conducted an almost forensics-level analysis of his typewriters. They discovered — among many other ridiculous things — that one model he used produced letters 0.02mm wider than the other, a minute detail which went a long way toward dating his many drafts. Perhaps their most important finding was also the most obvious. Some of Eliot’s typescripts had marks all over them, marks which were known to be the notes of Ezra Pound, Eliot’s champion in the U.S. and a well-known literary critic. He had made massive changes to the original manuscript. Example: that famous opener, “April is the cruellest month,” used to be buried under a section some hundred lines long before Pound cut the whole thing. All told his edits shrunk the poem in half. As a result it became more cryptic, rhymed less, and in some ways mutated into a bleaker, more biting critique of the modern world. Which is to say that Pound completely transformed “The Waste Land.” And the scary thing is that we might have never known — we might have lost our whole rich picture of the poem’s creation — had Eliot not been such a bureaucrat, typing up and shuffling around so many snapshots of his work in progress. Fast-forward to the present day. Some people worry that with the advent of the word processor, early drafts of important work no longer survive. When a writer hits “Save” he creates a snapshot, sure, but a snapshot which overwrites his earlier work. So unless he’s particularly conscientious, the only draft he’ll end up with is the draft, the one he publishes. Things started looking up 663 days ago, when the well-known entrepreneur and venture capitalist Paul Graham, on his popular social news site Hacker News, submitted a story with an atypically dramatic title: “The most surprising thing I’ve seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad.” He linked to etherpad.com. The bulk of the page was taken up by a basic text editor, and on top of that a slider, the kind you might use to move through a song in iTunes or adjust the treble on your hi-fi. As you moved the slider the text changed. Graham explained what you were looking at: I’ve been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. “Startups in 13 Sentences” was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I’m going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in classes where students write papers, because now you can finally “show your work” in writing the way you do in math. Forget about saving drafts — Etherpad promised (or threatened) to save every keystroke: every note and idea, every version of a phrase, every snag and breakthrough. It would all be recorded, and labeled, and automatically backed up as you typed. Imagine the consequences. As Graham said, students using Etherpad in English class would in effect be “showing their work.” It could do wonders for teaching. But that’s nothing compared to the idea of our great poets and novelists using such a tool to record the minutiae of their creative process, the dynamic history of their work, and bequeathing it all to their readers. It’d be like Eliot letting us lean over his shoulder. Before we get carried away, though, let’s keep in mind that Graham’s announcement was 663 days ago — an eternity in software time — and that you probably know precisely zero people who use Etherpad or, for that matter, anything like it. What’s going on? For one thing, nine months after Graham’s post, Etherpad was acquired by Google and folded into the Google Wave team, another project that, while no doubt a high-caliber technical achievement, is now basically defunct. If you go to etherpad.com you’ll see that the service has been shut down. But really that shouldn’t matter. Etherpad’s “Time Slider” was an afterthought, something they hacked together at Graham’s request. It’s fairly simple — as a matter of fact, when they released it there were already several other tools that did the same thing. What’s more, before closing up shop Etherpad open-sourced their entire codebase (a fantastic public good, by the way), making it trivial for just about anyone to make an exact replica. So something else must be going on. We must not want to write using a tool that tracks our every move. Because when people want something, and the tech to make it happen is readily available, it tends to happen. I have a few theories, but they all start with the fact that writing is fundamentally about the final draft. It’s not like writing code, say, where recording one’s every change is standard practice. (Ask any coder worth her salt whether she uses a “version control system.” If she says “no,” well, she’s not worth her salt.) That’s because code is so fragile, and simple changes can propagate in complex and unpredictable ways. So it would be stupid not to keep old versions — i.e., versions that worked — close at hand. Writing is different. A writer explores, and as he explores, he purposely forgets the way he came. I’m reminded of how the word “essay” derives from the French “essayer,” a verb meaning “to try.” It was coined in the late 16th century by Michel de Montaigne, in many ways the father of the form. Montaigne wrote as a kind of maieutic exercise, a way of drawing his thoughts into the light of day, of discovering what he wanted to say as he said it. No need, then, to drop so many breadcrumbs along the way. Especially when such a trail could do more harm than good. Readers could use it to find places where you massaged the facts; they’d be able to see you struggle with simple structural problems; they’d watch, horrified, as you replaced an audacious idea, or character, or construction, with a commonplace. This is not to mention the legal ramifications (teasing out someone’s “intention” just got a whole lot easier…) nor the mere fact that working under this kind of surveillance could drive you crazy with self-consciousness. I should know: I wrote the article you’re now reading using Etherpad’s software. You can watch how I fumbled along, start to finish, by clicking the big “play” button on this page . Main Eliot source: Rainey, Lawrence S. ” Eliot Among the Typists .”

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The Simple Software That Could — But Probably Won’t — Change The Face of Writing

What kind of personal technology are aging parents likely to embrace?

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The New Old Age: Elder Tech

Last April, when the iPad was released, I placed it on my dresser next to the iPod, Kindle, and BlackBerry Bold 9000, across the room from my desktop computer. My unexpected thought was whether I really needed all this stuff, especially since, only five years ago, I made it through the day with a Treo (e-mail, but few other frills), a laptop for travel, piles of books I intended to read, and a large stack of CDs, plus a radio, which is still the first thing that gets turned on in the early morning for NPR. It wasn’t long before the iPad found its place. I became a huge fan of Pandora, Internet radio that is like having a second iPod, and was a regular visitor to iBooks. I now have nineteen apps, many of which are merely duplicates of print subscriptions I already had, including the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. “It’s mind frying to contemplate the millions of dollars and person years that were spent on products and services that now fill the Great Tech Graveyard” Like so many millions of us, I have succumbed to the gadgetry that, on reflection, really are just add-ons to what I have had for years: a television loaded with cable channels, a half-dozen telephones scattered around the house, bookshelves and magazine racks, and the computer, which is a gateway to infinite communication and information. Lately, as I prepared each week to write about the media issues that are the mainstay of these pieces, I realized that I had become vaguely uncomfortable managing all this accumulated equipment and simultaneously had fallen out of phase with the most popular of the social networking breakthroughs — Facebook and Twitter, in particular. Of course, much of this is generational. Stories about teenagers sending thousands of text messages a month are merely the descendents of complaints about time their parents spent chattering on the telephone. All of the hottest business uses of social networks and the Internet have, we are reminded constantly, co-opted the print and television advertising that had supported the mightiest of enterprises for decades, all of which are now scrambling to stay in the fray. So I was enormously pleased and relieved to read David Pogue in the New York Times marking the tenth anniversary of his influential “State of the Art” column reflecting my own sense of unease: We have been engulfed with devices, which convey contents and communication channels that we are persuaded are breakthroughs to connections without which we are missing what is now said to be indispensable. Pogue writes: Nobody can keep up. Everywhere I go I meet people who express the same reaction to consumer tech today: there’s too much stuff coming too fast. It’s impossible to keep up with trends, to know what to buy, to avoid being left behind. They’re right. There’s never been a period of greater technological change. You couldn’t keep up with all of it if you tried. Well, here’s a dirty little secret: It’s almost too much for me. Heck, it’s my job to stay on top of this stuff — and even for me it’s like drinking from a fire hose. Thank goodness this leading arbiter of the tech revolution (whose column, admittedly, I read in a newspaper feature in an easy chair) has asserted that we can only absorb so much before it begins to become a jumble. Clearly, we enjoy the ability to expand the horizons and the means of what we use, but as the New Year approaches, it may be time to declare that every heralded advance is not necessarily an improvement or even necessary. Among the recent Web-based search and message functions that I’ve taken a pass on are Microsoft’s Bing, Google’s Chrome, Facebook’s e-mail, and incessant texting across a variety of platforms. I’m not ready yet to adopt streaming as an essential way to view movies or television programming. Netflix recently announced that its mail-order DVD rental service would soon be surpassed by delivering video online. The Wall Street Journal said this development “poses a threat to the traditional way consumers watch movies and TV: cable, phone and satellite systems.” Actually, we gave up Netflix a couple of years ago when we realized how many options we had to watch movies on demand, including the neighborhood theaters, the DVR (once we figured it out), and rental services on iTunes and Amazon, which we’ve never used. Obviously, it is pointless to suggest that we call a time-out in the unveiling of new technologies and related content (apps as games, enhanced books, and literally thousands of other uses are still in the earliest stages of sorting out economic models). Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and the host of other major smartphone manufacturers all have successfully marketed their increasingly sophisticated products and output to us, all in the first decade of the 21st century. Just thinking about what may happen in the coming years makes me dizzy. The winners are few. The unsuccessful contenders are many. As Pogue observed: “It’s mind frying to contemplate the millions of dollars and person years that were spent on products and services that now fill the Great Tech Graveyard: Olympus M-Robe, Pocket PC, Smart Display, MSN Explorer … Palm organizers” and so on. Facebook and the iPad were this year’s champions of brilliant marketing, with Mark Zuckerberg as Time ‘s Person of the Year — both icon and demon at 26 — and Steve Jobs’ ascendance into a stratosphere of unmatched technical celebrity. They deserve the recognition, but as we confront the inevitable next wave of what engineers and salesmen conjure, there is a case to be made for placing our digital exploration and consumption on pause; in the meantime, happy holidays.

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Are We Reaching Techno-Digital Overload?

Google’s interactive human anatomy site gives a detailed peak inside the body For the aspiring medical student or simply any curious mind, Google Lab’s new Body Browser offers an amazingly in-depth look at the different layers of the human body. The 3D model, currently only viewable as a female, lets the user interact with six different biological systems in multiple planes. Beginning with the skin as its default viewpoint, a toggle bar guides you through the other levels right down to the central nervous system. Alternatively you can switch the toggle to adjust the opacity of each layer independently, letting you fine tune exactly what systems you want to see in conjunction with any of the other five. The detail is truly impressive, loaded with anatomical information on details from the large muscles of the back all the way down to the fragile endings of the plantar nerve. All layers can be viewed with or without labels, you can zoom in on any area and the model rotates 180

Secret mission-worthy gadgets to aid travel-bound photographers and filmmakers Whether traveling the world, making documentaries or just pretending you’re Jason Bourne, we put together a few special-ops tools to enhance any photographer or filmmaker’s on-the-go lifestyle and resulting images. POV.HD Mounted to a helmet or vest, POV cameras offer an exciting—if not slightly frightening—first-person perspective. For skiing down a mountain or hunting down targets, this type of camera keeps you hands-free and makes for astonishing imagery. Marquette, MI-based developer V.I.O. recently released POV.HD , a high-def model that means you can play back your latest mission on a massive flat screen TV at full resolution, if that’s your thing. Features on the new camera that make it easier to shoot include a convenient wireless remote for controlling start/stop as well as tagging clips so you can watch favorite moments over again individually and a unique looping option for continuous recording (which also allows for tagging of clips when something happens to only save the last few minutes and thus conserving card memory). A great device for documentary filmmakers, pre-order the POV.HD from V.I.O. for $600. SeV Vest With the host of film production applications geared for the iPad, having one on set has become a key component of many shoots. Out of Sun Valley, ID, the travel label SeV created a collection of vest and jackets for storing iPads and other gadgets when they’re not in use. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is both a fan and SeV board adviser, offering input on features including a Weight Management System, which evenly balances the weight of items stored in its plethora of pockets, and a patented Personal Area Network, which lets you run your earbud cables through a hidden channel in the fabric. The SeV collection spans $20-450 and sells online . Maglite XL100 The Maglite XL100 packs a mighty punch in a small device. Not only can it emit an SOS signal if you find yourself deserted from your crew on a late-night shoot, but it also has a built-in motion sensor that turns the light on in case you need to grab it in a hurry. Also ideal for when you’re rooting through your bag to find that extra SD card, with a simple twist the torch will remain off in a locked position. With a light range of about 440 feet into the distance, the Maglite XL100 is an essential expedition item and sells online or from most hardware stores for $40. Zaggsparq 2.0 An extended shoot may keep you from an outlet for a few days, so keep all your gear charged with Zaggsparq . Fitted with two USB ports, the Zaggsparq will give you four full charges on most items like iPhones or GPS devices before it needs to be plugged in again. Pick it up online for $100. IsatPhone Pro Because you never know where your next assignment will lead you, a phone with full coverage keeps you connected in the most remote areas. A sensibly-sized satellite phone, Inmarsat’s newest addition—the IsatPhone Pro—works with their extensive global network and offers new features like text messaging, email and GPS information. The phone sells for $700, check the Inmarsat site for a convenient service provider. Retrospective 30 Bag With a bag full of expensive lenses and gear, keeping contents on the DL could save you both money and trouble when traveling. For photojournalists or camera nerds, Think Tank Photo offers a quality bag in a subtle gray or black colorway. The Retrospective 30 style can carry up to two professional size DSLRs and three to six lenses. Combined with their “No Rhetoric” warranty, the Think Tank messenger is an attractive way to transport all of your photo paraphernalia. It sells online for $180, where you can also check out smaller models.

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Special Ops Tools

He has over six million followers on Twitter and nearly three times as many Facebook fans, but President Obama — the tech-savvy president — can’t claim that most magic of social media buzzwords: engagement. Former President George W. Bush only has 640,000 (or so) Facebook fans, but they interact with his posts far more than Obama’s fans do of his, a new report shows. Engage, a political analysis and strategy agency focusing on new media, reports the following statistics from a study of popular Facebook posts: On average, President Obama’s last 10 posts have been liked an average of 11,579 times, to Bush’s 6,655 times. That works out to more than 1% of Bush’s fan base interacting with his page on any given post. For President Obama, it works out to a pretty weak 0.07% fan interaction rate — and a 13-fold advantage for Bush on that score. In addition, Engage’s study found that Sarah Palin’s Facebook fans also demonstrated disproportionally high interaction rates when compared with Obama fans. “[Palin] comes close to besting him [Obama] in raw ‘Like’ counts — seeing an average of 9,444 Likes per post off a fan base of just over 2.5 million,” according to Engage. Read the full story at the Huffington Post .

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President Obama’s Facebook Fans Far Less Engaged Than George W. Bush’s Fans

Troika’s dripping lights at Design Miami We’ve long been fans of the tech-savvy collective Troika (check out our 2006 video ), and the trio recently inspired us again with their beautiful installation piece “Falling Light” at Design Miami. The Cool Hunting Rough Cut here will give you a little glimpse of the piece (as well as a preview of our coverage of the fairs), which creates the mind-bending effect of light droplets dripping from the ceiling onto the floor. The installation is composed of 50 seperate mechanical devices with custom cut Swarovski crystal optical lenses, a computer controlled motor and a white LED light. The LED moves away from the crystal lens, which acts as a prism, and the resulting diffraction gives the light droplets a flowing life. Created in response to poet John Keats’ commentary on Sir Isaac Newton’s experiments with rainbows, the light experience, combined with the hum of the motors, provides a multi sensory experience and enforces, “Troika’s agenda that science does not destroy, but rather discovers poetry in the patterns of nature.”

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Cool Hunting Rough Cut: Falling Light

Elegance, power and sustainability combined in Jaguar’s 75th anniversary concept car First debuted at the Paris Auto Show and more recently presented in LA, Jaguar’s C-X75 concept car is a celebration of design, innovation and class. Loosely based on the classic XJ13 concept the C-X75 exhibits the power and elegance of a supercar while showcasing cutting edge technology that makes it super efficient and environmentally friendly. Each wheel on the C-X75 is driven by an individual 145kW electric motor which are all powered by one large 19.6kWh lithium ion battery. This system delivers all wheel drive and promises to provide extra control and traction as well as intense torque (0-62 in 3.4 seconds). On a single charge, which takes 6 hours from a conventional household plug to achieve, the C-X75 can travel up to 68 miles with zero emissions. For extended range Jaguar has utilized some fantastic aeronautical engineering technology by equipping the vehicle with two 70kW gas powered micro turbines. The turbines can used to quickly recharge the internal battery or can be used in conjunction with the battery to achieve the cars top speed of 205 mph. If you plan on taking a more leisurely drive the turbine charged batteries provide the car with a theoretical range of 560 miles. The vehicle has an complex ventilation system incorporated into the exterior design to cool the micro turbines. There are no side-view mirrors, instead cameras built into the back feed directly to a screen inside the cabin. The beautiful angles highlight the slick hyper aerodynamic look and are complimented by the beautiful 21 and 22 inch aluminum wheels. Up to 50% of the the light weight aluminum used in constructing the car is recycled and increases the performance and economy. As with previous Jaguar models the interior is designed completely around the driver. The seats are fixed into the frame so upon entering the vehicle a flip of a switch brings the entire steering wheel, instrument panel and pedal box toward the driver for optimal positioning. The aeronautical theme is continued in the cabin, the started switch is positioned on an overhead control panel and the gear shift is modeled after the throttle control from a fighter jet. The information panels are also air craft inspired with a 3D simulated heads up display. Never to be out classed Jaguar added a nice analog detail, a custom designed watch from Bremont that mounts into the center console and is wound by the stopping and starting movements of the car.

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Jaguar C-X75

Trtl Bot’s new cases bring flexible storage and handy stands to the iPhone 4 With every new iPhone comes a flood of new accessories designed to unleash the mobile device’s full potential. The new iPhone 4 cases from Trtl Bot stand out among the crowd for their forward-thinking ability to expand the phone’s functionality without adding superfluous plastic or obtrusive packaging. The two iPhone 4 models are the new Trtl Stand 4 and the Minimalist 4, a continuation of their previous line for the 3G/S. Both cases fit the phone snugly, keeping the sleekness of the phone’s design more or less intact. The Trtl Stand 4 performs exactly how it sounds, letting you prop your iPhone up in three different ways. The different modes (Portrait, Landscape and Tripod) let you use your iPhone hands-free whether you are using Facetime, watching a movie or want to snap a steady photo. The super slim Minimalist 4 is designed for those who hate having a bulky back pocket or carry a small bag. The hard plastic case provides not only sufficient protection from falls, but the slit on the back provides enough space to stick in an I.D., credit card and metro card. Made stateside from recycled bottles, both eco-friendly cases sell online from Trtl Bot for $35.

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Trtl Bot Cases

A multifunctional and protective system for iPads Brenthaven is already an industry leader in highly-functional ways to tote your tech, and the recent introduction of their 5-in-1 iPad Case promises total safety for your pad plus, four other functionalities designed to improve user experience. Once assembled, the case provides two-sided protection using hardshell materials that feel pretty sturdy. Pop the iPad out of the enclosure and it fits nicely into a slot on the back, standing at attention in “viewing stand” mode. When you’re ready to type, fasten the built-in strap to the indented loops on the back of the iPad portion and flip it all over to enter “typing stand” mode. The set also comes with a long strap that can hang around a car headrest (or anywhere) for viewing on the go.The most convenient feature, the “EZ-GRIP,” utilizes the elastic strap on the rear of the case as an extra-secure way to hold the iPad while reading or browsing. Using “EZ-GRIP” definitely offers a firmer, comfortable way to hold the slippery little tablet. Made from recycled materials and with a few updated features from the original version, the 5-in-1 system is well on its way to offering a well rounded, super-functional iPad case solution. Though it’s currently out of stock, it typically sells for $60 from Brenthaven .

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Enclave 5-in-1 iPad Case