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Campers are usually unsightly hunks of metal spewing smoke all over the highways. We'd much prefer traveling in the dutch countryside in a Tonke Camper.

Tonke of Holland manufactures eco-friendly campers that offer a timeless look and lifestyle. Completely handcrafted, for its old-world styling there are plenty of modern facilities that combine comfort with classic looks. Luxurious features include polished mahogany fittings, teak wood floors, porcelain sinks and fully chrome faucets. Both the toilet and shower conserve more water than your average variety, there is a water boiler for hot water, large fridge and gas burning stove. Even better, after you're done with your trip you can detach the camper unit off the van chassis to serve as a stand alone guest room or office.

Inspired by old yachts and gypsy caravans, Tonke offers two different models—the Explorer (fitted for the Renault Master van) and the longer Fieldsleeper (fitted for a Mercedes Sprinter). Both provide living space, a kitchen, bathroom and can comfortably sleep two—three is a squeeze but doable.

Expectedly, they're not cheap starting at €70,000. If you don't want to make that sort of investment you can always rent one starting at €500 per week. There is currently some availability for 2009. Visit Tonke for more info and contact them directly for sale or rental inquiries.

More images after the jump.

via selectism

The device features many similarities to the original Knight Rider TV show including the original KITT graphics, and even the opening theme music and intro video.

I can’t find a place to get on a waiting list or to order one when more become available…for now, this looks like something you’ll have to find on eBay.

Colors are "sensational and bright" and the reviewer goes so far as to describe the TV ""the best home-entertainment display in America." Strangely there's no mention of the TV's built-in 3D capabilities and still no pricing information for the fabled 73-inch model, but it's only a matter of time. Check to full review at Time, though it's of a distinctly non-technical flavor (prepare lots of overly descriptive asides about his neighbor's "man cave"). The important thing is that this TV apparently is as good as it sounds. [Time - Thanks, Josh!]

It's not just industry groups like the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition that's quoting them either. Everyone from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Patent and Trademark Office to the FBI will repeat the same numbers back at you, pointing evasively to each other when asked which body funded the extensive economic analysis needed to arrive at such figures.

Ars pointed out that, even without looking for their sources, the numbers don't make much sense. 750,000 would mean 8% of all unemployed people in the U.S. lost their jobs to counterfeiting. $250 billion is more than the combined 2005 domestic revenues of the movie, music, software and video game industries. Yet policies are made from this information every day. [Ars Technica]

A company recently sent me DVD called Living Earth. It's a disc full of high-resolution pictures of spectacular nature scenes that you play as a slideshow. The idea is that you'd have it on while throwing a party, presumably to give your guests something to look at other than your crappy living room.

After popping in the DVD and hitting play, I was horrified. Both sides of my widescreen 47-inch flat-panel TV were completely black, while photos cycled in and out inside a squarish area in the middle. That's right, the disc was made with a (gasp!) 4:3 aspect ratio, with no widescreen (16:9, to those in the know) option. When was this DVD made — 1998?

The real tragedy is that Living Earth is just one example of how technology gets aspect ratio wrong. All. The. Time. Why is it that my browser can resize websites when I change my window size, and my iPhone can resize photos when I turn in 90 degrees, but somehow the tech world gets video aspect ration wrong again and again? Click Continue for the answer — and the solution.

The leather case conceals a rechargeable battery that you can charge either by solar power or via USB. Then transfering the power to your iPhone takes just a few simple steps – just insert the iPhone into the case and you are done. The iPhone fully charges up in less than 3 hours provided the battery within the case has been fully charged. Cons ? The battery itself takes an agonizing 12 hours to charge on solar power, and you will have to part with an unreasonable $48 to bring home this beast.

Via The Red Ferret Journal.

Posted by kanchana    Category: accessories | cell phones
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]]> Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:04:03 +0000 iphone solar leather takes iphone takes solar power leather iphone power rechargeable battery Solar powered leather case that can charge your iPhone http://mobileratty.com/article/5964e51d6c274d19dae2818545c8bbb7 http://mobileratty.com/article/5964e51d6c274d19dae2818545c8bbb7 I was hoping that American Airlines would stand up against religious groups' stupid demands, keeping their in-flight online service completely un-filtered. After all, they had great arguments: filtering porn sites will jeopardize the access to legitimate web sites, hindering the usability of their airplane wireless network. Not to mention the fact that people wanting to look at naughty bits in airplanes can always watch the porn stored in their computers, cellphones, and personal multimedia players. The network filtering is not going to change that. Sadly, they now have changed their tune:

Since the launch of Gogo, American has not experienced any reported incidents of customers viewing inappropriate content via the Gogo service. However, we believe this is an appropriate measure to take.

If they have had no incidents—as expected, just as you don't hear of many people watching porn in their portable DVD players in a plane—, why give up? What happened to their technical arguments? Is the filtering going to limit web access to legitimate services or not? Most probably, American Airlines will avoid answering those questions.

But besides that, are they going to regulate people looking at porn on their own devices too? What about reading Playboy? Are they going to ban Playboy from flights? And are they going to filter Gizmodo because we post NSFW topless girls covered in oil playing Wii Sports once in a while?

Of course, logical questions like these will probably find no answers from American Airlines either. Religious groups like Focus on the Family, on the other side, would probably love to answer them with axes, pitchforks, and torches.

Another sad day in the history of a country that has defended personal freedom and responsibility as a core value since its very beginning. [Sky talk]

Galcon isn't an iPhone-exclusive game — a desktop version is available for all three major desktop OSes for $20 — but it translates perfectly to a mobile device, offering modestly epic space strategy battles that can be completed in under a minute or two of play.

Gameplay is simple: To win, destroy your enemy. To destroy him, capture his planets with your tiny wedge spaceships. The larger the planet you hold, the faster more ships are produced. I've seen the desktop version described as "arcade RISK" and it's a description that holds.

But you can't discount the "arcade" part. Part of what makes Galcon work is the speed at which you play. That makes selecting which action to take next — throw all your fighters at a big, juicy planet; hold back to build up more defenses; go for an unoccupied planet or wage war against an enemy stronghold — occur under the time pressure of interface needs. Which is to say: you can only swipe from your planet to another target planet so quickly, leaving you only half-a-second or so to typically judge your next move. That might irritate some, but in my short time playing I've found it encourages flexibility in strategy. One wrong move may lose a war, but with entire battles taking place in just a minute or two, it's easy to hone new strategies without forgetting the lessons of previous scraps.

There was some grousing when Galcon first hit the iTunes App Store over its price. Ten bucks is a fair chunk, especially when version 1.0 didn't even include sound. But developer Phil Hassey is up to version 1.4 now, which has added a variety of single-player variants, music and sound effects, a color-blind mode, a player ranking system, and a splendid multi-player mode that lets you go up against up to three other players at once. (Wi-Fi only, I believe; I couldn't make it work over 3G.)

Plus he's dropped the price to $5. Give this man your money. He's working for it. And there's a free demo now. You have no excuse.

I squealed a bit about Galcon to Brownlee a couple of days back. He bought it but didn't catch the bug. "Too easy," he sighed. I asked him if he had actually raised the difficulty level at all from the game's default settings. He hadn't, which was his understandable mistake, but one that doesn't expose Galcon's nuance. I'd ask anyone that gives it a whirl to crank up the difficulty up to a level where you actually start losing matches. It's only then that the tactical possibilities of Galcon begin to show themselves. When you're matched up with an enemy of nearly equal skill — especially easy in multiplayer, although the single-player A.I. is just fine — those simple routs start turning into protracted, desperate, staggering interplanetary genocides that start to show you how much Galcon has to offer.

Galcon (Full Version) [iTunes]
Galcon Lite (Free Version) [iTunes]

After the jump, a sample game I just played, annotated with screenshots — just in case all that praise I just slopped on Galcon wasn't enough to get you to try a free demo.

Here's the menu screen, where I select a moderate difficulty and the basic "Classic" game that pits me against a single computer foe.

You bet your ass I'm ready. One of the first things I tend to do is switch the percentage of units each planet squirts out up to 75% when I'm busy capturing planets. And today I've been trying after that to go all in with 100% attacks. It works...sometimes.

Of course I forgot to switch this at all this game because I was busy taking screenshots.

I've grabbed a few local planets and am trying to build up my fleets. I probably should have skipped the smaller ones, even if they often are easy to capture.

The first dust-up! That yellow bastard is going for my outer rim — and because I stretched myself so thin capturing planets I don't have much to mount a defense.

He grabbed one of my big producers, but two can play at that. It seems that going after enemy planets is more important than building an early empire, but I haven't played enough both ways to be sure.

Got it! And my largish attack force automatically garrisons itself on the planet I just captured, providing a decent defense. I even snagged back my other planet before it had time to build up defenses.

But that's a pretty big fleet coming my way. And "4" and "6" aren't much of a defense.

Yeah, so...I'm getting trounced. Yellow's fleet sizes remain consistently larger than mine, so I've gone toward grabbing stray planets just to keep alive — a desperate move.

"'Believe in yourself and the power of positivskrrrrshhhhh.' Transmissions from BFE-xr9 have ceased."

This would be the point in a multiplayer game where I would start sending out lone ships to various worlds just to stay alive for a few seconds longer.

Tell my wife I loved her. Oh, she's dead, too.

This entire battle took place in about sixty seconds. Even I — the wussiest, coddled gamer out there — am completely fine with losing a game of Galcon, because all it means is I can try out my new strategies again in seconds.