Want your very own sexy watch from Tokyoflash? Here’s your chance to win one! We’re participating in an online scavenger hunt with Tokyoflash and Neatorama.
All you have to do is follow a few simple clues … Start here: [Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt]
Update August 17, 2011 – Contest over! Thank you for playing, guys! The winners have been announced.
Still shifting your bike gears with your thumbs? How archaic.
Toyota collaborated with bicycle-maker Parlee Cycles to create the world’s first mind-reading bicycle. That’s right – a bike that can read your mind so you can change gears simply by thinking about it.
Tags: bicycle, Parlee Cycles, Toyota
Amazon may consider selling a tablet computer for below cost price with the plan of making its money back by selling content — or at least that’s what one analyst suggests.
Not much is known about the planned device, though naturally it will be seen as one of the more high-profile “challengers” to the iPad. The company certainly has the combination of brand recognition and easy access to potential buyers, as shown by its success in the e-reader market, and indeed the Kindle has helped give it a proven track record in making effective but simple-to-use gadgets.
The biggest potential problem would appear to be if there’s not enough of a gap in the market between the “do one thing great” approach of the Kindle and the “do lots of things well” approach of the iPad. In particular, it’ll be interesting to see whether the company pushing electronic books as a key feature on what would presumably be a traditional LCD or similar screen rather then electronic ink.
Research analyst Tim Bajarin says he’s taken a guess at what components would be in the Amazon tablet and reckons that total production and distribution costs will be around $300. (That should serve as a warning about the likely quality of some of the $199 or cheaper models currently on the market.)
Bajarin, who makes clear he is purely speculating, suggests the company may in fact sell the device for $249, thus losing cash on each model. However, he reckons the company would make back the cash within six months, and over the course of the first two years after purchase, would make between $25 and $75 overall profit.
I’m not entirely convinced though. For example, while it’s certainly true that Amazon has plenty of ways to sell products and services to users of its tablets, Bajarin’s suggested example sales seem a bit of a tall order. He’s working on the basis that the average user will “buy or rent 15 movies, stream or download 50 songs, buy 18 books, and pay $5 a month for cloud storage from Amazon,” which seems fairly ambitious.
He’s also chalking in the profits from five sales of physical items. The problem there is he’s assuming both these and the media content sales will be on top of what the person would have bought from Amazon even without owning the tablet.
The numbers also don’t seem that attractive to Amazon. The lower end of Bajarin’s estimates would be a 10 percent profit margin that takes two years to collect in full, which doesn’t sound like much for an electronic device.
And the proposed strategy doesn’t tally with Amazon’s Kindle policies: while pricing estimates vary, it appears the company started out trying to make healthy profits on sales to early adopters, and even at reduced prices it’s losing little if any money on sales, despite the potential revenue to be made from book sales even if the device itself is a loss leader. Indeed, if Amazon was happy to sell at significantly below cost price, it would surely have begun marketing a $99 Kindle by now.
Ernest Cline’s reportedly awesome Ready Player One released today, and geeks of a particular variety will be happy to learn that Wil Wheaton–Evil Wil Wheaton himself–is reading the audiobook version. If you haven’t heard about Ready Player One yet, here’s a brief description and the book trailer:
At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.
It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.
And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.
For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifXryyx4erU&feature=player_embedded
They had me at “virtual space opera.” The hardcover is $13.95, the Kindle edition is $11.99, and for $26.40 Wil Wheaton will read Ready Player One just for you and no one else.*
*Not intended to be a factual statement.
No geek writing instrument ensemble is complete without this, the Metal Pen with Level and Screwdriver nifty tool/pen combo from the NeatoShop. While not quite tactical, we’re pretty confident that it will increase your geek factor by at least 200%.
[$14.95 @ NeatoShop | More Geeky Tools]
Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene in 1976 to present his theory of gene-centered evolution. In the 35 years since its publication, The Selfish Gene has been widely hailed as a revolutionary text in the field, and because of Dawkins’ popularity (or infamy, if you prefer) has remained a well-sold title, rolling out well over a million copies in 25 languages. That said, few people outside of the realm of scientific research and biology geeks (can I get a what-what) have read or even heard of the book.
That may be about to change, though, thanks to BEX Productions and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe: The Selfish Gene has been adapted into a musical, which will run August 16-20 at the Zoo Roxy in Edinburgh. According to BEX, the musical seeks to illustrate Dawkins’ theories of familial altruism and mating behavior from the book through relatable, everyday examples:
The world’s first bio musical! Inspired by Richard Dawkins’ masterful book. A professor’s attempt to lecture on the origins of life is interrupted by the survival needs of the Adamson family. With original music throughout (including Your Monogamous Mother’s A Sibling Producing Machine and Daniel Neil Adamson [DNA]) a cast of five chart mankind’s eternal struggle between selfishness and altruism. A son goes to war, a daughter loses in love, a father betrays and a mother must make a sacrifice – all in a day.
Mairi Macleod, writing for New Scientist’s CultureLab, has a full review and a little insight to the making of The Selfish Gene: The Musical, in which she remarks, “I’d like to think Dawkins would be quite pleased with it.” I’m down with any attempt to explain a scientific concept in accessible media (see The Radioactive Orchestra), so I think this is a great idea.
Are any of you Geeks in Edinburgh, and if so, do you plan to see the show this week?
