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Billed as the ‘World’s First Full-Spec Compact’, the new Sigma DP1 digital camera was unveiled yesterday. The DP1 has been in design-mode since 1st being announced in July 2006, with camera buffs becoming restless in the interim.

The camera’s “Full-Speciness”, and main claim to fame comes from its use of the Foveon X3 Sensor, which weighs in at 14.06 MP (effective) and 0.8×0.5 inches. This is desirable because the resulting image quality has the potential to be as good as those from pentaprism-equipped full-bore DSLR cameras…but in a smaller package. More camera details/specs are at the Sigma DP1 website. Approx 99,800 yen in about March (year tba).

First Look: Production-ready Sigma DP1 – DigitalCameraReview, Jan 31 2008

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Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters fame gives product designers and manufacturers the what-for, in a new article about the woes of product complexity and incompatibility. He decries things like cordless tools with not-interchangeable battery packs, flashlights that require ‘exotic’ batteries, and, our favorite…the car that required the removal of a front wheel in order to change the car’s battery.

…strikes a chord with many folks.

MythBusters: 7 Tech Headaches—and How to Fix Them – Popular Mechanics

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The World Economic Forum 2008 took place 23-27 January in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF is ambitiously “Committed to Improving the State of the World”, while their motto is the more ambiguous “Entrepreneurship in the global public interest’”.

Their agenda is extensive to say the least, with initiatives on hunger, global warming, disaster relief, energy shortages, poverty, development, competitiveness, global education and governance, health initiatives, disaster relief, monetary issues, tech access, corruption, water and world dialogue. …the proverbial full plate.

The WEF’s Global Risk Network recently issued their Global Risks 2008 report. The report forecasts the 23 top global risks likelihood with severity of economic loss. While the GR2008 report has the potential to be useful, ironically, the top collaborator on this report is listed as Citigroup, who is facing billions in writedowns due to its subprime losses and is thus reciprocally involved in risky management itself! The report certainly lacks credibility not only for that and other reasons (Swiss Re), but also because it seems to assign overly-high likelihoods of global disruption to things like nanotech dangers, hackers and pandemics.

A potentially more useful & interesting WEF report is entitled Technology Pioneers 2008.

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Eager to see what your city will look like in 100 years? …you’re in luck as the History Channel-sponsored CITY OF THE FUTURE: A Design and Engineering Challenge for 2008 is happening right now, with local architectural competitions being held in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Atlanta. The National Champion will be selected via online voting February 4 2008.

The San Francisco portion of the competition was won last week by IwamotoScott Architecture for their SF Hydro-Net proposal.

The ISAR Hydro-Net design, nicely laid out on Flickr, builds a vast subterranean infrastructure to distribute water, power, fuel and goods and people beneath the streets of San Francisco in an effort to achieve a zero-net-energy city. Water comes from aquifers and fog catchers; energy from geothermal, algae farms and hybrid bioluminescent acquaculture; transportation via hydrogen-powered hover cars in tunnels bored by auto-navigating self-drilling robots – tunnel walls are reinforced by carbon nontubes that do double-duty as hydrogen stores. …the infra-city becomes the city.

Cretans, flamebaiters, rival architects and other ne’er-do-wells might well deride the ISAR proposal as “so out there” and impractical, little realizing the double-entendre of being co-opted in the quest to expose the inadequacy of the prevailing system, railing against the canons of conformity and the irony of practising invisible architecture — in other words, we like it.

Local architects offer their visions of S.F. 100 years hence in a competition – SF Chronicle, Jan 21 2008

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Dramatic irony abounds as the world’s fastest car (or close to it) gets not a speeding ticket, but rather a lowly parking violation. And as bonus, the role of traffic warden, normally that of an antagonist, gets recast as the protagonist to the cheers of dozens. Street theatre in Manchester city center.

0-60 quid in 2.5 secs for Bugatti - The Sun, January 28 2008 ..via Autoblog

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The National Aquatics Center was unvelied in Beijing yesterday. Also known as the “Water Cube”, the unique building will host the swimming events in the 2008 summer Olympics.

The impressive Water Cube is the world’s largest membrane structure building – made of ETFE. …a building in bubble-wrap.

China View

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The Wall Street Journal lends a helping hand by pondering the world of tomorrow, so that you don’t have to. They look out over the next 10 years and see things like 3D TV, self-diagnosing appliances, electronic newspapers, and the ever-popular .. more powerful computers.

Thinking About Tomorrow talks to the impact expected on 7 main areas of everyday life as follows-

Yotta-Trends it’s not, and the essay is somewhat reminiscent of the old saw to the effect that the safest forecast that any meteorologist can make, is simply to say that tomorrow’s weather will resemble today’s.

Thinking About Tomorrow – Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2008

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A nicely done, interactive, panoramic view of an A380 cockpit by one Gilles Vidal.

via news.com

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“Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over”, wrote Hiroyuki Shimizu, an analyst at Gartner in Tokyo in their latest Semiconductor DQ Monday Report. Apparently those comments are based on dropping HD DVD sales.

Toshiba and it’s rival HD DVD high-def format had already anticipated this, by cutting prices on it’s HD DVD players last week. and promoting their ability to upconvert standard-def DVDs.

…not looking good for HD DVD.

Oh well, now it’s on to the successor to hi-definition and the next format wars. Somewhere in the far east, somebody is almost certainly working on some powerpoints whose bullets include:

Gartner: HD DVD Price Cuts Only Prolong Agony - PC World, January 28, 2008

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The Macintosh Portable was Apple’s first notebook, or perhaps more accurately a 1st attempt at a more easily portable Macintosh. The Mac Portable sold for $6,500 when it was introduced in 1989 and weighed in at a massive 15.8 lbs.

See how it stacks up to Apple’s newest notebook, the MacBook Air at the link below…in French, but mostly readable.

MacBook Air et Mac Portable – L’Aventure Apple, 27.01.2008

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