Some guy named Adam Harvey designed an anti-paparazzi purse that, when the flashbulbs of the photogs go off, immediately flashes it’s own bulb back, ruining their pictures and effectively protecting your privates from showing up on TheSuperficial. Obviously, it’s a terrible idea. Terribly terrible. Right up there with the current public decency laws. IT’S HOT OUTSIDE, GIMME A BREAK. Also, a rub-down with that lotion ;). Seriously, I need you to SP my F.
Lovers of pyrotechnics everywhere have always struggled with the quandary: what to do on a rainy day? Well, firebugs, get a load of this: Sega Toys Japan has heard your prayers and answered 'em in the form of the Uchiage Hanabi. This is essentially a projector that displays "fireworks" on the walls and ceilings, with realistic movement and sound. And if that weren't enough, you can create your own fireworks and program your own shows. Now you can have Bastille Day, every day, in the privacy of your apartment! Out August 1, with a list price of $168. Video after the break.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS in Chemnitz led by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Baumann have unveiled tiny, printable batteries that they hope to put into production for pennies apiece. The new battery prototype is primarily composed of a zinc anode and a manganese cathode that can be screen printed and covered with a non-printed template cover. Each mercury-free battery weighs less than one gram, and can individually produce about 1.5 volts of electricity. By placing several batteries side by side, however, up to 6 volts can be generated. The institute has already produced these little power houses in the lab, and hopes to see them into production by the end of the year. The batteries have a relatively short lifespan, making them suitable for applications such as powering greeting cards. All we can say is that this battery would have made the card we got two years ago that sang "Word Up" much, much awesomer.
Apple’s on-again, off-again deal with China Unicom to officially bring the iPhone to China may still be up in the air, but it looks like it could now also be facing some trademark issues that could potentially further hold up its release. Apparently, China’s Hanwang Technology owns the trademark for “i-phone” in the country, which could force Apple to make a deal with ‘em before it enters the market (sound familiar?). Interestingly, Apple does actually own an “iPhone” trademark in China, but it apparently only covers computer hardware and software, while Hanwang’s trademark covers mobile phones. According to Hanwang, however, the two aren’t actually in talks just yet, and it’s not saying what it plans to do if Apple decides to go crazy and announce a move into China without its blessing.
As many of you know, a lot of the sites that use Rackspace as their hosting provider were down for about an hour yesterday. That’s because Rackspace went down. Apparently, it was a power outage at a data center that caused it, an incident report that we’ve obtained explains.
While Rackspace has backup systems in place, a series of event apparently caused those backups to fail, resulting in the servers going down. Here’s the key nugget:
The breaker on the primary utility feeder tripped, initiating a sequence of events that ultimately caused a power interruption in Phase I and Phase II of the data center. All systems initially came up on generator power without customer impact. The ‘A’ bank of generators, which support UPS clusters A and B in Phase I and UPS cluster E in Phase II, then experienced excitation failure which escalated to the point where the generators were no longer able to maintain the electrical load. Rackspace then attempted to switch to our secondary utility feeder, but was unable to do so due to an issue in the Pad Mounted Switch (PMS). At approximately 3:15pm CDT, power supply through UPS clusters A, B and E was lost when the batteries in those clusters discharged, and equipment receiving power through those clusters experienced an interruption in service.
The service says only one of its nine servers were affected by this failure, but main high profile sites collapsed as a result, including EventBrite, Justin Timberlake’s site and Michelle Malkin’s popular political blog. As Rackspace noted yesterday that “We owe better, and will deliver.”
Below, find the full incident report.
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We knew this day would come. Japan builds one giant robot and, like a first taste of heroin, the country follows a destructive path of building opulent robo statues until there’s a 60-foot robot for every man, woman and child.
Now that the Gundam is complete, Kobe’s Wakamatsu Park is next on the list to build their very own life-sized Tetsujin (also known as Gigantor, I believe). 60 feet tall and weighing in at 50 tons, Tetsujin will be on permanent display starting in October (an installation that may turn to semi-permanent should Tetsujin grow tired of photo ops).
And as you can see in the clip and gallery below, building a fake giant robot can’t look much different from building a real giant robot. Sparks. Hardhats. Subtitles. Imminent human death. Yeah, this is about as real as fiction gets. [Kobe Tetsujin Project via toysrevil via The Awesomer via botropolis]
Here’s video proof MacBooks are made with space technology. Now I don’t want to ruin it for you, but I’m going to anyways: they are among us. And by they I mean them. The French.
This post is a bit different from the technology news that we generally cover here at TechCrunch. But it’s something that I think needs to be said.
Last night I got word that my parents had witnessed a tragic accident while driving in Northern California. I won’t get into the details, but suffice to say one person was killed and others were left bleeding, in various states of unconsciousness. Thank God my parents were not hurt in the accident, but they witnessed it first hand, as well as the disturbing aftermath.
Immediately after the accident, my parents and other witnesses began trying to dial 9-1-1. Attempt after attempt resulted in a busy signal. This isn’t unusual in the event of an emergency, as multiple dialers often tie up the lines to report the same incident. Except it seems that nobody managed to get through for far too long: emergency personal didn’t arrive for 20 minutes. The first officer to arrive at the scene said it took him two minutes to get there from the time he got the call. Which means that it took approximately 18 minutes for the news to reach him in the first place.
During a conversation with my father following the accident, he said one of the most profound things I’ve heard since I arrived in Silicon Valley: “Why is it that I can pull out my cell phone and call France or browse the Internet whenever I want, but I got a busy signal for 9-1-1 for 20 minutes?” I wish I had an answer for him.
In the United States, we’re taught from a very young age to call 9-1-1 whenever there’s an emergency. Something bad happens, you call that number, and someone on the other line will be there to help you. Getting a busy signal after dialing 9-1-1 is the closest thing you can have to a mental null set. It doesn’t compute.
But it’s apparently happening more often than most people would believe. A recent report in the Sacramento Bee says that more than 26% of all wireless calls to 911 in California are “abandoned” — in other words, more than a quarter of the people calling 911 hang up in frustration before they even get to talk to someone. In a world where we can interact with people across the world at a moment’s notice, I just don’t understand how one of the things we’ve always taken for granted can fail so miserably.
Now, I’ll be totally upfront and admit that I know relatively little about the way 911 dispatchers work. I am sure that the incident can be fully explained by a lack of staffing at the CHP center that routed the call, or maybe the fact that the accident occurred near a county line caused some jurisdiction issues. I don’t know what the reason was. But as far as I’m concerned, the discussion shouldn’t get that far. This is the kind of problem that we shouldn’t have allowed to form in the first place. It’s as if we’ve forgotten the fundamental reason why most of us keep cell phones with us at all times: to keep each other safe.
At its core, this is more a political issue than a purely technological problem: more money needs to be routed to the right places. But at the same time, there’s no denying that technology plays an important role here — the call routing systems could probably be made more efficient. Calling filters could be improved. Perhaps the system could detect when multiple phones were calling from the same area and inform callers that an accident had already been reported. Whatever the answer, things need to change. And given how upset we get over homepage redesigns and SMS fees, why not exhibit a bit of outrage when technology fails us in a matter of life or death?
As one final note, I hope this doesn’t come across as an attack on the men and women who staff emergency call centers, or the law enforcement officers and paramedics who respond to the scene. I have the utmost respect for everything they do. I just wish that the infrastructure supporting them was as up to the task as they are.
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Yuck! Today, I’m told, is National Handshake Day. It’s also National Handshake Day & National Chocolate Pudding Day, apparently. And, err, it’s National Watermelon Seed Spitting Week.
As many of you know, a lot of the sites that use 
We knew this day would come. Japan builds one giant robot and, like a first taste of heroin, the country follows a destructive path of building opulent robo statues until there’s a 60-foot robot for every man, woman and child.
This post is a bit different from the technology news that we generally cover here at TechCrunch. But it’s something that I think needs to be said.
Yuck! 