Duff Energy Drink Anyone?

Nothing like the Copper Top, from Bratislava.

Its the cure for sleep.

PacMan Energy drinks are fully licensed and floating around Toronto.

And then there is Blood.

Its not often you find a Apple prototype or even a Mac Portable on eBay, its even rarer to find a prototype Mac Portable.

Apple used to test all their machines in limited runs fitted in clear plastic so that engineers could check for fit of internal components, so to get your hands on one is kinda a privilege.

A rare chance to acquire a holy grail to us prototype collectors! Rarely do clear case prototypes come up on eBay, especially not for computers this rare. I’ve only seen two clear case Portables on eBay. The last one was a couple years ago and sold for nearly $8,000.

This is the original Macintosh Portable, model 5120 which cost $7,300 when released in 1989.

If you’re unfamiliar with clear case protos, there were usually about 10 (or less) of each model made during the design process. They were used by engineers to check for fit of internal components. Nearly all plastic case components are clear plastic, including the handle & internal mounts for components! Like other clear case prototypes I have seen, there is no serial number on the case and the colored Apple logo insets are not present, although the space for them is.

Not unusual for a clear case prototype, especially one that’s more than 20 years old, portions of the case show stress fractures (not cracks you can feel) when viewed at various angles and there’s a fair amount of superficial scuffing/scratching. Other issues to note are that the hinge caps are not locked on, though this may have been intentional (the hinges work fine but can slide off), the spring-loaded handle is not working right on one side (though the case locks shut), and some of the right side plastic exterior (see photos) is broken off and not included.

The auctioneer does point out that the unit is sold “as is” but for the right collector this could be gold.

If prototype hardware is your thing check this Flickr pool.

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This is the notebook that created the brand known the world wide as “ThinkPad.” This booklet was given to everyone at IBM in the late 80’s and early 90’s to make sure an idea or though was never lost.

A neat (non technical) portion of computer history.

You know that little “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google’s main search page… Well although it is nifty for the user, its costing Google $110 million a year. Yup, $110 million!

According to Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marisa Mayer she said:

You know Larry and Sergey had the view, and I certainly share it, that it’s possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money. And you know what I think is really delightful about Google and about the “I’m Feeling Lucky,” is that they remind you that the people here have personality and that they have interests and that there is real people. [via

How generous! Kinda interesting!

For all you geeky Mac fans out there! Music is added of course!

Can you see how Verizon is positioning the Droid to go head to head with the iPhone? All in all I find it interesting that people have taken the Blackberry out of the equation when doing smartphone comparisons.

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On November 6th Verizon Wireless will be selling the Motorola Droid. To go for $199.99 on a 2-year deal, the DROID is one hell of a steal considering that its specs include a 3.7″ WVGA capacitive display, sliding QWERTY keypad, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and dual-LED flash, 720×480 video capture at 24 fps, GPS (the DROID is the first device to feature Google Maps Navigation which provides free turn-by-turn voice navigation), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Exchange support, 6.4 hours of talk time and a pre-installed 16GB memory card — all running on top of Android 2.0. [via]

That one hell of a feature set! Wonder if Windows Mobile, Palm and RIM should be scared?

The internet is filled with get rich schemes, lies and other false information. Today it was quickly reported (and just as quickly disappeared) that El Goog made public a beta of the much anticipated Chrome OS available. Sadly, it was a hoax!

Hosted at what seems to be a legitimate Google server, you quickly find out that the site that claims to be official is actually a hosted page on Google and not run or maintained by the company itself. Plus the fact that the downloads are hosted on a LaCie server – I call fake! [via]

Lastly, Google seems to be out to hurt EVERY GPS company out there. With the announcement of Android 2.0 they announced the availability of voice controlled tour by turn navigation in Google Maps.

This new feature comes with everything you’d expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone’s Internet connection.

Among the features included in the application:

- Up-to-date map data: Automatically includes latest map data from Google, which is constantly being refined by Google and by users submitting corrections
- Plain English search: Locate destinations by entering business business name or landmark; no address needed
- Voice search: Speak destinations and Google Maps Navigation will automatically interpret and plot routes
- Live traffic data: Indicator warns of upcoming traffic issues
- Search along route: Find businesses along path of travel
- Satellite view: 3D view of route to aid in understanding directions
- Street View: first-person perspective of route and destination images

I have to say that is THE killer app for Android. Also buried in story is that Google plans to release the same features on the iPhone.

Google is working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone, and it’s not ruling out licensing the software to makers of portable navigation devices used in cars throughout the world, said Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google for mobile and developers. The process involving Apple is slightly different from the usual App Store submission process, because Maps is a built-in iPhone application, he said. [via]

Watch out Navigon and TomTom… Big Bad Google in hot on your tail!

Lets see the Pre (which has more memory, faster processor and Wifi) goes for $99 and the Pixi (with less memory, slower processor and no Wifi) will sell for $99 as well. Odd, Right? Ships November 15th.

Time is up for Yahoo Inc.’s scheduled closing of perhaps the most significant virtual museum in recent history. Years ago a central meeting place for a massive chunk of American Web surfers, GeoCities will lock its doors and take millions of pages offline.

GeoCities allowed anyone to build a custom Web page for free and reserved a small amount of virtual storage to keep pictures and documents. It was perhaps the first mainstream example of an open, participatory and personal Internet. [...]

The collapse of GeoCities, though, is perhaps the most epic failure in Yahoo’s portfolio. After going public in 1998 during a period when GeoCities rose to unprecedented prominence as a top-five player on the Web, the following years practically embodied the grander burst of the Internet bubble.

Yahoo paid about $3 billion in 1999 for a company that seemed poised to continue its domination of the user-driven Net. Failing to turn any significant profit from all of those pop-ups and banner ads (in fact, there’s questions about whether GeoCities was ever cash-flow positive), the purchase — or perhaps Yahoo’s inaction once GeoCities was acquired — turned out to be one of the company’s most costly mistakes. [via

Kinda funny, after all the warnings two of my favorite sites are offline because of the Geocities shutdown. Shout out in the comments you memories of Geocities.

Also, in other news seems like Yahoo hit a small stumbling block with its Mail system today. Although nothing is announced officially on Yahoos end, Twitter users are all in a tizzy about being unable to access their mail.

With the 3Gs Apple introduced video recording. But it’s frustrating that you can’t simply edit the video that you created on the phone and share it with someone. Enter ReelDirector.

It lets you do everything from adding titles and credits, to editing and re-arranging clips on a timeline, to adding transitions.

Available in the iTunes AppStore for $8