Oh! Gizmo

By Evan Ackerman

The world’s first webmail service using real live snails as delivery agents is up and running (er, maybe not running…) at Bournemouth University in the UK. Here’s how it works:

Our snails are equipped with a miniaturised electronic circuit and antenna that enables them to be assigned messages from hardware located within their enclosure. The moment you click ‘send’ your message will travel at the speed of light to our snail server where it will await collection by a snail agent.

Once associated with the tiny electronic chip on the snails shell your message will be carried around until the snail chances by the drop off point. Hardware located at this point collects the message from the snail and forwards it to its final destination.

This is absolutely for real; send your own message by clicking here. I wouldn’t hold your breath, though… Muriel, one of the snails, hasn’t bothered to deliver any messages at all. Cecil has delivered 4 messages so far with an average delivery time of 3.26 days, and Austin is blazing along, having delivered 10 messages in about 1.96 days each. When if your message gets delivered, it’ll include a complete log of your snail agent’s progress and details about the particular snail involved. I’ve just sent one off, myself. Let’s see, is it delivered yet? Nope. …Now? Um, nope. Hmm. Well, I’ll keep you updated.

[ Real Snail Mail ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

By Evan Ackerman

I’ve been a Netflix member since somewhere back when living in the “2000s” was still a novelty. I was a bit skeptical when they introduced online streaming last year, but I have to say, I’m hooked now. Despite a somewhat frustrating reliance on Internet Explorer, it’s easy to use and works great, with a surprisingly competent library of about 10,000 old movies, relatively new movies, and TV shows.

If you don’t have a computer, or have no idea how to hook up your computer to your TV, you can still get your streaming fix with Roku’s set-top Netflix player. For $100 (it’s a one-time thing just for the hardware), you get a cute little box the size of a short stack of CDs. Connect one end of the box to your internet (either with an ethernet cable or wirelessly), and the other end to your TV (it’s got RCA jacks, S-video, component video, HDMI, and optical audio), and you’re good to go. You basically just browse around the Netflix website on your TV with the player’s remote to pick what you want to watch. From the sound of things, it’s so easy your parents could probably do it.

Although Netflix doesn’t currently stream in HD (and the quality depends entirely on the speed of your connection), the box is set up for HD when it becomes available. For $100, plus $9 a month for unlimited streaming, it’s not a bad combination to add to your home theatre setup.

[ Roku Netflix Player ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

By David Ponce

About a year late, we’re getting on the Twitter bandwagon. If you want to follow us, hit this link. I’ll try to post “behind the scenes” stuff that relate to OhGizmo!. We’ll also use it whenever we’re at a conference or whatever event that warrants its use.

[ OhGizmo! On Twitter ]

By David Ponce

This is just a quick post to let y’all know about Alltop, Guy Kawasaki’s latest startup. It’s a headline aggregation service, similar to (and inspired by) Popurls. It’s simple, minimal, and pleasingly complete. And of course by that I mean that OhGizmo is duly included in the gadget section.

Check it out.

[ Alltop ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Even if you work in an office full of high-tech gear, a simple whiteboard still seems to be one of the best ways for a group of people to brainstorm ideas. So Qipit provides an easy to use online service that will convert a digital photo of your whiteboard into a PDF file that can be easily shared.

The service relies on “sophisticated, highly optimized image-processing algorithms” that are also able to convert photos of smaller paper documents, in addition to whiteboards. Obviously the quality of your cellphone’s camera will effect how the PDF turns out, so the website includes a section where you can select your phone from a list, and see what services it’s compatible with. For example the camera on the iPhone is fine for converting whiteboards and hand-written notes, but is not recommended for converting docs with printed text.

At the moment the Qipit service is completely free to use, and only requires you to create an account since you have to login to download the converted PDF files.

[ Qipit ] VIA [ MobileWhack ]

By Evan Ackerman

If you spend any time at all on the internet, you know just how full of crap a lot of it is. I blame most of that on Web 2.0, since before that, people had to invest at least some modicum of effort to make a public spectacle of themselves. The StupidFilter Project is stupidly simple: it’s designed to be “open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English.” From the sound of things, it’ll either work server-side (preventing users from, say, posting comments on a forum that contain excessive misspellings, exclamation points, use of text abbreviations, or suffer from terrible spelling or no punctuation) or client-side (quietly replacing “OMGLOLZ!!!!!!!!111″ with “!,” for example). The big question is, of course, exactly what qualifies as stupid. After the jump, read what the developers have to say on the matter: Read the rest of this entry »

By David Ponce

Here’s a little bit of geek fun. If you Google the term “Cancel Google”, the first result brings you to the page of Kevin Cheng, and Tom Chi. The website is called “OK/Cancel”, and on September 26th, 2004, Kevin wrote a post titled “Google Answers HCI PhD Program”. And just like that, their site has become the #1 destination of morons worldwide who’d like to cancel The Google.

They’re leaving comments by the droves, asking to… well, cancel Google. Damn, people are stupid! It’s a wonder they managed not to confuse their PC mouse with the foot pedal of their grandma’s sewing machine. Here’s a sampler:

- “I WANT TO TAKE GOOGLES OFF OF MY HOME PAGE.”

- “Google is stopping me from shopping at my oLancome site with your pop up blocker.!! Would you quit it!!!”

- “Google is the front door of my conscience. I am regretting the Google. Am Google me it? For wanting no Google, simply Google “no Google”.”

And it just goes on, and on. Keving initially deleted the comments, but later decided to leave them. They’re damn funny, that’s why.

Check it out.

[ Cancel Teh Googlez ] VIA [ Gadgetopia ]

By Evan Ackerman

Every time I go to the UK, I fall in love with Tesco all over again. All those tasty and cheap and sorta kinda healthy pre-made sandwiches… Mmm mmm good. But Tesco is good for more than sandwiches (and cheap wine); they’ve just launched the Tesco Internet Phone, which is a USB stick with a mic, earphone, and some VoIP software. You can use it to make phone calls from any broadband connected PC in the world, which I guess means that the software is all internal to the USB stick. The hardware is £19.97 (which includes 1gb of storage on the stick itself), and unlimited worldwide calling and voicemail is £8.50 a month. A UK phone number is required which could be a good thing if you’ve got annoying friends. Oh, and Tesco is set to open their first US stores in California and Arizona by the end of this year, hooray!

[ Tesco Internet Phone ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Evan Ackerman

A while back we wrote about PixelLetter, a service which takes your digital documents and turns them into physical mail and sends them off for you. Earth Class Mail is a service that does the same thing, only backwards… They’ll receive all of your physical mail (you can pick a physical mailing address in any of 19 cities), scan each envelope, and then make the scans available for you online. You can chose what to do with each piece of mail, from having them recycle junk mail, to forwarding you more important items, or (most appealing to me) opening your letters and creating PDFs of the contents for you to download from their website.

The downside is that you have to wait a bit regardless of what you decide to do with the items Earth Class Mail receives. If you want a scan, it takes a business day, and if you want the physical item, well… Back through the post office it goes. According to Earth Class Mail, however, most people using the service don’t want the mail itself, which I can totally understand, since I’d much rather have a digital copy that I won’t misplace. The company plans to integrate some kind of check depositing service in the near future. And if you’re worried about security, they hire employees with government security clearance (including many retired veterans). In fact, they don’t allow any recording devices into the mail handling area, not even pencils.

Monthly pricing plans start at about $15 a month for 30 pieces of mail or less. Forward shipping mail and package handling does cost extra… Check out the pricing plans here.

[ Earth Class Mail ] VIA [ RFJ ]