Since 2007′s release of the iPhone, Nintendo has adamantly opposed the device in favor of its own mobile consoles, much as they’ve done with every competitor’s hardware in the past. And Nintendo has a legacy to stand on, with the NES and SNES and even the N64. But things kind of break down after that, as competitors moved to optical media and basically left Nintendo in the dust. With the Gamecube, Nintendo attempted to get back in the game, but it wasn’t until the Wii that they were finally back in the good graces of the gaming populace. But even that momentary lack of judgement on our part has faded, as Nintendo’s ability to capitalize on the Wii’s innovations leave us with a few nice gimmicks, but ultimately little staying power.

The argument for Nintendo has been two-fold:

1. Nintendo will use the momentum of the Wii to finally offer competitive hardware in their next console.
2. Nintendo still has the mobile gaming market locked down.

Early reports of the Wii successor leave little to drool over, and the mobile market has slowly been pushed into iPhone territory, even though Nintendo ironically called it a novelty. It’s one thing for Nintendo to have dismissed the iPhone in 2007, but year after year is no longer excusable, especially when their countermeasures are a poorly performing 3D Gameboy. Nintendo’s now no longer leading much of anything, other than a steady march to the grave, much as SEGA did when they fell over thanks to the Dreamcast flopping.

There are investor calls for Nintendo to develop for iOS, but we’re still seeing push-back. It’s the same stubborn push-back that Nintendo of America has been cooing for the last couple years, and now it’s coming straight from Japan. “No, we want our software to run on our hardware.” Nintendo must be quoting a long-lost SEGA exec. The problem is that Nintendo’s hardware is, in a nutshell, crap.

Nintendo does one thing well: it makes great games. Old ports would be wonderfully on the iPhone, let alone new games using Nintendo IP. It’s a no-brainer to bring these titles over, and if Nintendo really wanted to brand some hardware to go along with it, we’d gladly support an iPhone sleeve with hardware bluetooth controls to go along with it.¹

If Nintendo doesn’t wake up soon, they’ll be forced to go this route anyway. Why not capitalize on the transition early instead of blowing more capital on failed hardware projects?

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It’s no surprise that the Japanese have beat other countries to the first duty-ready exoskeletons. Indeed, while the rest of the world is conducting research on exoskeleton designs for whatever mad-scientist reasons we can imagine, the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology believes they can begin issuing exoskeletons to Japanese farmers in two years. That is, if the farmers in question are rich, and, per Gizmodo, ready to shell out as much as $11k to “pull radishes” and conduct “other farm work”.

What we’d like to see is an actual study showing the efficiency of this kind of exoskeleton. That is to say, with the added weight and potential discomfort wearing such an exoskeleton could entail, is a full day of farm-hand labour really going to net a greater among of radishes pulled than continuing to farm without a robot strapped to one’s back? And, if the efficiency is greater, is it worth the fancy price-tag? Might we not buy a mule for cheaper?

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As fans of machines, we’re inevitable drawn to vehicular transportation, which is why we were crazy enough to buy a 25-year old DeLorean despite already owning two other vehicles. (We won’t chalk the DeLorean up as anti-green though – we’re reusing old stuff!) We also used to own a 2005 Ford Mustang GT, which was one of the most enjoyable rides we’ve ever had. In short, we have nothing against American-made cars (well, some of them), and are actually quite fond of Detroit’s history as the automotive capital of the world.

That said, with American car companies losing money left and right, we don’t agree with bailing the guys at Ford and GM out, not because we don’t appreciate their contributions to the industry, but because we won’t agree with bailing out businesses that seemed to make decisions aimed at purposely going under. For example, with Ford’s steady decline and the obvious rise in green consciousness (what with the Toyota Prius’ great sales), Ford still won’t bring their 65 MPG diesel wonder to the States. Nevermind that Ford’s home base is the United States – Ford America President Mike Fields stated simply, “We just don’t think North and South America would buy that many diesel cars.”

If American car manufacturers don’t want to get on the green bandwagon, they deserve to be doomed.

At the very least, if Ford and GM can’t muster the innovation to compete with Japan on the basic consumer level, then they should ditch that part of their business and instead focus purely on their commercial (truck) and luxury/sports (Mustang, Corvette) offerings. But don’t beg for bailout funds – where is your sense of pride?

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Somehow, at the 2008 Good Design Expo, Japanese company Willcom showcased a concept phone to what Forever Geek refers to as “the adoring public”. The phone is not only oversized, but in the shape of a teddy bear, and requires the user to talk into the bear’s crotch as though to give it fellatio. Fortunately, the bear is anatomically incorrect.

How such a design monstrosity (it’s not even a good-looking teddy bear) is being displayed at the Good Design Expo is amazing. Even more frightening is that the concept phone sells for $500 (which would tend to suggest there’s little concept about it). While we hate to say it, only in Japan could such a monstrosity be considered a desirable product to both manufacture, and ultimately buy.

What’s with designers coming up with wholly unpractical products, anyway? While the phone’s design is an expensive novelty aimed at being “cute” (presumably in an attempt to infer that the bear is whispering to the user), there’s no clear way to dial un-programmed numbers via the bear-phone. All in all, the novelty of the phone could probably be re-created with some clever hackery of an existing phone and teddy bear, for much cheaper than $500 and with arguably better results on the cuteness scale. Plus, enterprising folks at home could either find a way to make communication work in a way that one doesn’t need to talk to the bear’s crotch, else slip full-on into the realm of bear-phone bestiality. Either way, we bet it’d sell in Japan.

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Traditional hard drives, as you may have guessed, have only one head, like women. However, some genius (and I use that term loosely) decided that hard drives should have two heads. This was back in 1985.

Now, Japanese company ScarabS, whose web page I cannot read because it is not in English (yet does not have a .jp extension like other nice Japanese companies), has finally built a dual-head hard drive. Fortunately, the web page has enough Western characters on it to point us in the direction of a demonstration video that clearly shows two mechanical arms moving back and forth. Fear the technology that is the future.

While this design is supposed to make security concerns less noteworthy, since one head (public Internet viewing, for example) is read-only, and the other allows local admins to change files, I fail to see how it will prevent hackers from hacking in and pretending they are local users. They’re hackers, after all.

On a sidenote, does anyone else find it amusing that the article in question quotes a price of $863 dollars “to build the simplest version of this system”? That’s a pretty frikken precise estimate considering the “simplest version” doesn’t appear to have specs available yet.

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