Common Paradox Tech Blog

A while back we saw charts of smartphone market shares across the world, but now we want to know more. Specifically, we want to know more about Gizmodo readers. Which smart (or dumb) phones do you use? On which continent?

To help satisfy our curiosity (and maybe your own), head over to the poll corresponding to the continent you spend most of your time on and tell us which phone you use:

• Africa
• Antarctica
• Asia
• Australia
• Europe
• South America
• North America

Photo by James Nash (aka Cirrus)

There are 1440 minutes in the day and the AV-Tokei online clock has cute gals in various states of undress holding up a sign with the current time for every single one of those minutes. Yes, it’s a lovely time-waster.

Honestly, I don’t even know why this caught my attention, but somehow curiosity had me refreshing the site every few minutes just so see what happens. Will that girl strip? Will the next minute bring a different lady? Is she going to…do something with that stick?

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Yes, you can certainly check the time by glancing at your system clock, but this is somehow so much more fun, especially since it’ll be quite a while before you’ve seen all 1440 images. Unless you sit there refreshing the page for 24 hours straight, that is. [AV-Tokei via Asiajin]

As the blogosphere waits with baited breath to get their hands on the physical hardware wonder that is Boxee Box, the company is using their blog to let more information trickle out about the Internet geek’s dream machine.

You may recall that the Boxee Box, made by D-link, is a Wi-Fi-enabled hardware device that will include HDMI, SPDIF and RCA Audio connections to run Boxee Beta on your TV set for under $200.

Now we’re also learning that it will play almost anything, including non-DRM media. The RF remote makes it possible to control the device even when it’s out of sight, and it’s much smaller than originally portrayed. In fact, it looks to be no taller than a can of Coke.

So those of you who are scared of purchasing yet another large device that will take over your entire media center: Fear not. According to Boxee’s blog:

“Rest assured the Boxee Box will fit into your entertainment center. If the look doesn’t quite fit with your decor, not to worry. The RF remote means you can place the box out of sight and still control it. Of course, the Boxee Box prefers being on top.”

While we wait for its official January debut at CES and the much anticipated 2010 Q2 launch, check out my interview with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen for NBC San Diego below. We’ve also included a few additional images to further pique your curiosity.

Boxee Box: The Interview

Boxee Box: The Photos

Reviews: Boxee

Tags: avner ronen, boxee, boxee beta, boxee box

Ever since Apple rolled out their iPod touch based EasyPay POS to some of it’s retail stores they have been flooded with inquires from other retailers looking to get in on the Apple goodness. It was just a a few short weeks ago that certain Apple retail stores ditched their crash prone Windows CE [...]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPod touch EasyPay POS May Soon Be Used by Other Retailers

Wired writer Evan Ratliff spent 27 days in constant fear of getting caught as a small army of amateur and professional investigators hunted him. He had a bounty on his head and the Internet nipping at his heels.

Vanish, a combination of a manhunt and an experiment, began at 5:38 pm on August 14, 2009 as a bold headline on Wired proclaimed “Author Evan Ratliff Is on the Lam. Locate Him and Win $5,000.” We would discover if someone could disappear in today’s world, or whether the electronic trails from ATM, email, and cell phone usage would give him away.

Of course, in Evan’s case it wasn’t just a few concerned family members or police officers looking. It was any person on the Internet whose curiosity was aroused, either by the sheer challenge or by the bounty. Any and all traceable information would be shared over the next few weeks. Soon Evan’s phone records, credit card statements, IP dumps, interviews with friends, and anything that his hunters could dig up would be posted on Twitter, Facebook, and Wired’s own site.

The end goal for the hunters was to locate Evan, photograph him after giving the codeword “fluke,” and then submitting that photo along with a codeword Evan would provide to Wired. And after 27 long days, someone did just that. Evan was caught.

You can read the entire tale here. As you do, consider whether Evan made any genuine mistakes or whether his capture was simply inevitable. Is there a way to disappear, without giving up travel and technology? How would you do it? [Wired]

You curiosity can now be slaked: Google’s Chrome OS is now ready for download and review. The bad news is you’ll need VMWare to run it. The good news is you can run it on OS X, Linux, or Windows.

But will it be worth the effort? If it’s something you really, really got to do, then yes, it will be worth the effort. For the rest of us, with episodes of The Colbert Report to catch up on, maybe not. Our colleagues over at Engadget have tried it out and report Chrome OS is “really a browser with an OS attached rather than vice versa.”

Chrome OS is browser-like in its construction, and Internet oriented. There are minimal app launcher options. And the more interesting apps, says Engadget, required a Google.com account to access. Without one you will be stuck playing with Gmail and Calendar (which Engadget reports suffer from “significant lag and choppiness”).

Still, with a Thanksgiving weekend to kill, Chrome OS might give you an option other than family, food, or football. You’ll find a download link for Chrome OS at gdgt.com.

Image Credit: Engadget, Google

Having known lots of computer science people who interviewed at Google, we know exactly what kind of questions they’re likely to ask potential applicants. Crazy ones. But we didn’t know they would ask these questions for marketing positions too.

The first person account over at Business Insider is an interesting one, because it shows that everyone at Google is subject to some high standards. One sample question is “how much money you think Google makes daily from Gmail ads?” To which she blurted out the answer “$70,000,” before quickly asking if they could ignore it while she figures out a better one.

Of course there are caveats to her story: She should have prepared more, she’s kinda naive about the type of questions they’re asking and maybe she’s just not really right for the Google culture. Still, it’s something worth checking out just for curiosity’s sake. [Business Insider]

Dagondanum writes “Multiple missions have been sent to Mars with the hopes of testing the surface of the planet for life — or the conditions that could create life. The question of whether life in the form of bacteria (or something even more exotic) exists on Mars is hotly debated, and still lacks a definitive yes or no. Experiments done right here on Earth that simulate the conditions on Mars and their effects on terrestrial bacteria show that it is entirely possible for certain strains of bacteria to weather the harsh environment of Mars.” Perhaps this is something that will be tested further in a few years by the Mars Science Lab, also known as “Curiosity” and (as reader Nova1021 points out) “the Mars Action Hero.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After months ofmounting curiosity, I finally got to see the Booklet 3G, Nokia’s flagship netbook, up close. A few questions remain– we still don’t know exactly when it will go on sale at Best Buy, h…

Moto Cliq: Countdown to the Pre-Sale…Adobe Spels Real Gud…Analyst Says Apple Will Own 1/3 of Handheld Gaming Biz by 2012…US Troops May Get To Tweet

Seriously, T-Mobile just launched a page with a countdown to the pre-sale of the not-exactly-”hotly”-anticipated-but-curiosity-generating Motorola Cliq phone, which had a very peculiar launch not a few weeks back. They also announced the actual shipdate and price, which merited a post because it’s hard data. Note that ironically unironic tag-phrase, “The first phone with social skills.” [T-Mobile via Engadget and others]

Adobe, you were always more of the artsy-fartsy type, weren’t you? Time to locate one intern who can spellcheck your app installers. [Adobe UI Gripes via Cult of Mac]

Apple is going to positively annihilate the handheld gaming market as we know it, says some analyst from some firm I’ve never heard of, citing “evolutionary improvements” in gaming functionality, “convenience” of App Store downloads, “leading title selection” and cheaper prices. The result? “Some migration” among gamers and “pressure [on] traditional gaming incumbents’ hardware and software pricing.” Somewhere in the report, Apple ends up with a 1/3 market share, too. The problems with this are:
a) There’s no definition of “game” here; iFart games could be included in the accounting
b) Actual gamers have repeatedly said without physical controls, many great games are unplayable, and
c) There’s no downside to making this statement, and the upside is getting your name in print. Well, I’m not going to fall for that one, Toni… shit, I almost fell for it! [AllThingsD]

Though social media and Web 2.0 in general are currently banned from troop use by many segments of the US armed forces, a proposal now under review would permit soldiers to tweet and blog about their lives in the service. As a matter of national security, I don’t see how they would be able to do this “freely,” as Wired’s Noah Shachtman says (though if anyone would know, he would). Nevertheless, this kind of deliberation is a step in the right direction for the military, for whom the establishment of a coherent social-media policy is clearly a tippy-top priority. [Wired]