This is hardly official, but at a presentation about the evolution of OS X at the LISA '08 conference last week, Apple's director of engineering of Unix technologies, Jordan Hubbard, pushed up a slide noting a Snow Leopard release of Q1 2009.

That's not outside of the realm of possibilities: Snow Leopard is a stabilization and future-proofing OS X release, and with 14 odd months since Leopard, a Q1 release would still indicate a baking time longer than average.

I'm looking forward to Snow Leopard. Sure, it's not a flashy, feature-filled release like Leopard, but smaller program files, a svelter OS and performance gains for multi-processors are all appealing... especially since Leopard has felt sluggish on my ancient MacBook Pro ever since I upgraded from Tiger.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 Due In Q1 2009 [Mac Rumors]

The iCEphone is a curious little mobile that features a triple hinge that allows it to expand from a relatively slim three inch candy bar into a full keyboard mini-notebook. When fully unfurled, the top panel contains a 3-inch touch screen, the middle panel a QWERTY, and the bottom panel the odd assortment keys usually left off of cell phone keyboards: the caps lock, the shift, the alt and function keys, all organized in a D-pad like array which doubles as arrow keys or a mouse tracker pad for gaming, of all things.

The iCEphone runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro, and also features a 3G connection with support for GPRS and EDGE, two SIM card slots, built-in WiFi and a 3.1 megapixel camera. That's a hell of a lot of phone, although the price matches: when it's released in the UK in Spring, it'll go for a little shy of $1000.

iCEphone [The Medical Phone via Slashgear]

After seeing the Gadget Lab how-to project on making a ratty, thief-proof camera bag, the bigwigs at Lowepro couldn't contain themselves. "We make a stealthy camera bag, too," they cried, "You MUST test it!"

So I did. In reality, the Lowepro folks weren't nearly as pushy, but they did send over the Classified 160AW, a nylon and leather day-bag for photographers which is purposely styled to be less flashy than a normal camera bag. Is it the kind of bag which would let you pass unnoticed through the mean streets of Barcelona's pickpocket-laden tourist center? No. Is it a comfortable, capacious and capable bag for the photographer on the go? Let's see.

First, the looks. The Lady said that the Classified 160 looks like a bull and, in the top picture, you can see her point: The extended zipper that gives you access to the main compartment kind of makes the bag looks like a bull's head, if you look at it the right way. She is, though, from Catalonia, a part of Spain, so she could have been influenced by a childhood of bullfighting.

There is a bull connection, though. The nylon bag features some leather accents, most usefully the top-mounted handle and the ends of the zippers. They add some elegance, but also toughness where it's needed. There is also a nifty, stiff leather tab on the shoulder strap which will stop a camera from sliding off your shoulder:

Otherwise, the bag looks a lot more like the kind of thing a middle manager might use to tote his Dell brick -- not a bad thing for a low-profile design, but hardly the thief repellent that is the Gadget Lab rat-bag.

The Classified is meant to be a work bag rather than a storage or transportation bag, and it has enough cubby holes to squirrel away most of your stuff. Here's the front pocket:

The flap is secured by a nylon clip, as you can see at the bottom. It lifts to reveal two pockets - a front, non-padded one which is ideal for tobacco, and another just behind which, on the larger models, is big enough to take a notebook computer. This one is smaller, but that pocket still has room for my currently out-of-action Hackintosh, a 10" netbook (the trackpad is broken, if you must know). The zipper you see isn't another pocket. It actually unzips to reveal...

... an expansion, erm, flap. This will add a few inches to the front-to-back depth so you can squeeze a little more in. Inside the front pocket you'll also find this card holder, which hooks onto a strap inside the pocket via metal clip. It's also good for holding a set of keys.

There's also another, zippered pocket at the back, and underneath yet another pocket containing the usual Lowepro rain cover.

So, all your junk is taken care of. Onto the inside, which is big enough in this model to hold a camera with a lens, a spare lens or two and a flashgun, depending on their size. There are several inserts which use Velcro to grab onto the interior like a moron's tongue on a frozen metal pole. Moving them around can be tricky but once their in, they're not shifting. One of them even has a microfiber cloth for polishing your LCD screen.

The odd shape of the larger dividers is designed to hold a camera up close to the top for easy grabbing. Here is the splendid Nikon D700 sat snugly atop the leather tipped pads (shortly before I put it on the sofa, caught the camera strap on my foot and sent the body and lens flying to the hard tile floor. It's fine, but I just lost a year of my life due to shock):

When I go out shooting, I don't carry much -- usually the camera and either a strobe or a spare lens. So I took out all the inserts except one and just let the camera rest on the floor of the bag. As there is a removable (and thick) pad here, it felt perfectly safe.

Above you see the extra strap, and I couldn't work out what it was for. A quick email to Lowepro revealed the truth. One end loops around the main strap and the other clips onto one of the metal rings on the back of the bag. This allows you to keep the pack from swinging around. If you are familiar with a proper cycle courier bag, you'll be at home with the design, which sits between groin and nipples.

Conclusion

There are some downsides. The bag is very well made, but all that padding makes it both bulkier and heavier than our home-made version. On the other hand, this thing is built like a tank. You'd have to decide exactly what you need -- light and thin or thick and protective.

I had some trouble with the shoulder strap, too. I like to be able to swing the bag from my side around to my butt, and back again. The ultra-grippy shoulder pad means that this action drags on the shoulder of your jacket as you do it. A small point, but an adjustable pad would help. Once in place, though, the strap is very comfy.

While the Classified series isn't going to ward off the baddies like the home-made version, it's discrete enough to pass unnoticed in a decent part of town. It's also tough enough that I feel fine throwing it into the front basket of my bike without worrying about the contents. And if I ride fast enough, people think that a there's a bull charging towards them. Or at least, that's what I tell myself.

You can find the Classified 160 AW online for around $150.

Product page [Lowepro]

Some jobs you really need someone there to hold a flashlight for you.  However, there isn’t always someone around to help out with odd jobs like that.  That’s where these bracelets come in.  Yes they do look a bit like something that belongs at a party or something along those lines.  However, they also would be great to illuminate whatever it is you’re working on.  Which would be far more convenient than trying to hold a miniature flashlight in your teeth.

These are sold in sets of two, so you could wear one on each wrist or two on one wrist for extra lighting.  Each bracelet features four LED lights, which should put off a nice strong glow.  Each bracelet measures 3 and 1/4” in diameter.  I doubt any guy could get away with wearing these without a little friendly teasing from friends.  Yet, if it’s effective then it’s probably well worth it.  You can purchase these in sets of two on Computer Gear for $19.99.

Source: BookofJoe

The Toshiba G450 is an odd conglomeration of different functions merged into a silver candy bar shell. It's not just a memory stick, or a memory stick / MP3 player, or a memory stick / MP3 player with built-in tri-band GSM cell phone. It's all of those things secondary, while primarily being an HSDPA USB modem capable of dropping back down to EDGE if 3G isn't available. That's a lot of gadget for £140, even if its usability as a memory stick or MP3 player is severely gimped by a measly 160MB of memory. Still, Gadget Lab's Charlie Sorrel defines the G450 best and puts it all in perspective: "a modem with benefits." Yeah.

Toshiba G450 [Toshiba Europe via Gadget Lab]

The Tesla dealership is quiet as a cage of sleeping panthers. A pack of the electric roadsters, in varying degrees of grey, are strewn across the show floor looking 120mph standing still. I imagine most of them are awaiting for a venture capitalist to pick them up and take them from meeting to meeting for the rest of their uneventful lives. But outside is a bright blue roadster ready for the 10 minutes Telsa and God have handed me. This is my long awaited drive in the Tesla roadster.

[Photos by Monica Laipple and Giz, drive via Tim Ferriss]

Studying her lines it is clear to me this car has Lotus DNA, even though the car is much cleaner and classically beautiful looking than any bug eyed Elise or Exige, and more technologically advanced than the submarine Lotus James Bond drove in The Spy Who Loved Me (Thanks Ray). The British car maker helped to design the aluminum chassis, which weighs less than 200 pounds, and they handle early stage manufacturing. Tesla stresses that the Roadster is not just an electric Lotus, and it shares no more than 10% of the parts. Much more thought went into this car to simply dismiss it as such. But Tesla's engineers did choose to work with Lotus for a reason, the same reason why most auto journalists consider the Elise one of the last pure sports cars around and a great deal. The low power, light weight cars are simply one of the best handling and thrilling drives out there, described as some as a street legal go kart, and I'd agree that its one of the best driving experiences I've ever had. With shared genetics, this is perhaps the best way to judge the limits of electric performance as compared to their gas counterparts.

It's rare that Tesla lets people drive the car without a company copilot, so we'd be tailed by a Lexus chase car since I'm sitting copilot to Tim Ferriss, the guy who set up this ride, for the first shift. Starting the car is silent, and we kept trying to turn it over because we're idiots. If you don't step on the gas accelerator, there is no idle, so the car does not move forward even when your feet are not on the brakes. When Tim takes off from the lot, before I hear road noise and wind, I hear the odd purring of gears, which can almost be described as turbine like. With one gear and no engine noise, its surprisingly hard to gauge speed except by the pressure applied to the headrest by the back of your skull, the churning in your stomach or the unintended roller coaster face of your passenger. (Me.) Looking at the speedometer would be idiotic at these rates, in local traffic, but somehow we make it to about 60 for brief bursts on our way to the highway.

The rates to 60 are rated at 3.9 seconds by virtue of the electric motor's 248 HP and 280 Torque. By comparison, it bests the fastest road legal Lotus by a 10th of a second, but the power to weigh ratio is on par with the standard Elise because the battery pack brings it to 2700 pounds (over 700 pounds heavier than the Elise). The key here is that the car doesn't have to take the time to switch gears and electric motors deliver 100% of their torque at start. That power curve caused some problems earlier in two previous transmissions, which were being destroyed after a few thousand miles. To overcome that problem with the latest, more durable single gear tranny, Telsa wisely used a motor with a 14000 RPM redline that could keep rotating faster in a low gear to achieve a top speed of 125MPH, while improving on the 2008's single gear transmission time to sixty miles per hour down from 5.7 seconds to 3.9 seconds.

Behind the wheel, I found that the entire system works together to deliver power like thick gobs of thick yogurt, with no drive lash on throttle or lift, but not too buzzy either. I have to admit it's the perfect amount of torque for a car this weight, somewhere in between detroit muscle and a peaky four banger in a rice rocket. With traction control off, something I was prohibited from doing, I hear you can do doughnuts in the car, something not too easy in many roadsters. That's what I heard, anyhow. In some ways, it feels automatic, without the third pedal, but when you lift off the throttle, the car's regenerative systems seize power through engine braking. It feels like you're lifting off after revving high in second or third gear in a manual transmission sports car. Tim often didn't have to use the brakes, preferring to wind down to almost nothing by engine braking alone. I'd test the brakes later. We'd entered the highway, and the car's acceleration to 80 was great, but power tapered off closer to 110 as aerodynamics of a open top car caught up to it and torque fell. Hypothetically.

I knew the acceleration was appropriate for a car of the future, besting many gas vehicles out there. But one thing I'd never heard about was what all the battery weight (again, 2700 pounds vs sub 2000 pounds) was doing to the car's handling; the Tesla would not likely turn and brake like a space age wonder considering similar chassis, brakes, wheels and suspension There's no escaping the laws of physics. Even magical electric cars want to stay in motion, when in motion.

I snaked the car through a set of S turns, but behind other cars, so I was not able to find much data other than the car's does not oversteer easily. Through a banked onramp to highway 280, the ghetto skidpad, I wasn't light on the gas accelerator, and on the smooth, 270 degree banked circle, I could feel the car's rack and pinion wanting to push a bit. I wasn't sure of my speed, so its impossible to say when confidence was starting to fade. The chase car driver later implied they had to slow down 60 on the ramp, but I doubt I was going much faster than that. I'll conclusively say that the car handles less confidently than an Elise, but will destroy many road going sedans and coupes.

Back off the highway, with the chase car still catching up, I got a chance to try the brakes quickly rounding a corner and heading towards traffic. With a second lane opening up, I slammed them. Warm tires and chattered across the rough, slightly downhill road and I was forced to take the other lane or eat SUV. I felt the weight, and expected the car to stop shorter.

But here's something to chew on. I have no conclusive data of how fast we were going, given the singlegear, quiet propulsion of the vehicle. I could have been going 35, I could have been going 60, so it's not fair to judge the car's handling or braking. And Tesla and the internet have no skidpad, slalom or braking distance test results for the car. Conspiracy? I can't say. None of this really matters, because the Tesla Roadster is unique as a performance oriented electric car and deserves heaps of praise for what it is and how it feels to drive despite its efficiency from battery to wheels of 80-90%. Most gas engines sit at about 20%. Provided your public utility has some measure of efficiency to their electric production, you can do a lot of good in this car.

I wouldn't be describing this car properly without describing the interior. The Roadster's insides look similar but have been improved over its sister cars from the UK. Door sills have been lowered to make entrance easy (although still requiring some level of acrobatics) the leather seats are more comfortable and heated, the premium stereo is a single DIN JVC KD-NX5000, which features DivX and DVD playback, as well as navigation and a 40GB HDD and iPod dock. The position of the stereo is sort of low on the dashboard. The stereo's imaging is superb and there's a sub somewhere in the tiny cockpit thumping away. There's an electric touch LCD on the left managing battery charge, tire pressure monitors, etc. Your ass is dragging probably 8 inches from the ground.

I can't afford this car. If I wanted something similar to this in shape, feel and performance, I'd probably buy a used Elise for $30k if I could get over the bug eyes. But I can assure you that a Tesla is still a hell of a a car, by electric or gas terms, even if its just a bit more portly and more expensive than a comparable Lotus. I mean, its fast. It's electric. It's efficient. It's sexy. And you can actually buy it if you're rich. And while Tesla as a company may have had some problems in manufacturing at first, they didn't wait for old industry to get off its ass and build something revolutionary. Like Android, I hope it catalyzes the fossil fuel makers traditional makers into a game of catch up with cars that are just as fast and efficient, and hopefully a lot cheaper. And if that doesn't leave you somewhat impressed, then you belong with the dinosaurs.

Note: Impressions from a 10 minute drive are going to be impressions from a 10 minute drive, nothing more.

[Special Thanks to Tim Ferriss for facilitating this drive and donating half of his drive time to me, and for photographer Monica Laipple for the better shots above. Some more videos over at Tim's site. ]

Years and years ago I found this set of puffy video game stickers and a retro video game styled background board at a thrift store. I didn't look at the set very intently. It looked like something you'd buy in a grocery store.  The perforated plastic background makes it easy to reposition the puffy stickers... so I guess it's a sort of Presto Magix that's reusable.

It looked vaguely Taiwanese knock-offy so I bought it, but then it went into a box and I forgot about it for more than a decade. I ran across it recently, and thought again about my love of retro gaming culture and the chintzy goofiness that came with it. I thought about the lost art of puffy stickers, and how odd and cheap the art in this set is, and then... hello... I finally saw what I hadn't been seeing in all this time.

Take a close look at these stickers. It's not some fakey versions of video game characters we love... it's naked ladies being chased by police. Ladies who look a bit like an upside down Ziggy, but ladies nonetheless. There are a few video game standards – like bonus objects, which in this case are ladies' underwear. Some of the stickers are styled to look like game graphics, and others look like saucy greeting cards gone wrong. My guess is that it's from the early 80's at the latest, but then why style the stickers to look like 60's clip art?

We've had a lot of “what the hell” objects here on Retro Thing, but this is one of the "what the hell-iest". I've been wracking my brain for the intended audience, and the closest thing I can think of is that maybe it's a poorly thought out carnival prize. Clearly it's not for kids.. at least I hope it's not.  Dirty novelty gift? But what's the point? Is there some holiday or anniversary of dumpling-shaped women on the run from cops that look like Mr. Magoo? It seems like someone could have easily bought this as a gift for children – then had to answer a lot of awkward questions later.

Feel free to add your "what the hell" guesses to the comments section. Don't tell me that I'm the guardian of the last of this kind of thing on earth...

related:

Presto Magix - cartooning for the artistically declined
The art of paint by number sets
Swanky Lady barware
Sugar Shack souvenir glasses
Novelty necktie with a saucy secret

The Blackbird Rider Nylon is an odd guitar, a mix of the traditional and the high-tech. First, the "nylon" in the name refers to the strings -- the guitar itself is made from carbon fiber, from the single piece body to the hollow neck. If we were making a carbon fiber guitar, we'd probably show off about it in the name.

Second, the guitar looks more like a Lute -- not a bad thing, but certainly a design departure for such a traditional instrument as the classical guitar. Less baroque is the "Soundscoop", a curved hole which sits up by the tenth fret instead of in the middle of the sound board. Blackbird says that this, combined with the all-in-one body and neck and the super-thin (1/32") carbon fiber contruction, provides better tonal response.

The Rider is built for travel. Blackbird claims that it is "nearly indestructible" (maybe Pete Townshend should try it out) and it fits in an airplane's overhead locker. It also weighs just three pounds. How much is this high-tech axe? $1900 for the nylon stringed classical version, and $1600 for a smaller, steel-stringed model.

Product page [Blackbird Guitars. Thanks, Jeremy!]

Apple has issued MacBook Pro Trackpad Firmware Update 1.0, a fix for the trackpad troubles experienced by many users of the new glass-trackpad equipped unibody notebooks.

Many owners have reported that the muti touch trackpads were failing to register clicks on the giant, full-pad button, with some seeing a failed click around one time in 10 (Kevin Rose and Leo Laporte both mentioned this on the This Week in Tech podcast).

It's an odd firmware update which acts more like a plain calibration fix -- normally a firmware update requires a restart. Our suspicion is that Apple was a little conservative with the click-detection settings in the original release to stave off complaints about accidental clicking, and has simply tweaked them with this release.

One of the things I always turn off on older Mac notebooks is the "Tap to Click" option. And our ongoing mission to add two-finger scrolling to the Gadget Lab Hackintoshes shows just how difficult it is to calibrate a trackpad to work perfectly.

If you have experienced these troubles, grab the download from Apple's site now, or check your Software Update.

Firmware update [Apple]