Poor incandescent bulbs. They had about 100+ years of dominance, but now it's the era of energy-efficient compact fluorescent. And this triumph of the CFL has been archived for future historians in the most permanent record known to our culture: a T-shirt. If you'd like to see this clever garment actually be produced, make sure to vote over at Threadless. [Threadless via superpunch]
With recruitment levels sagging, the U.S. Army is going the hyper-interactive route with an experimental new store that's right out of the Apple playbook. That is, if Apple Genius Bar employees greeted customers with Apache attack helicopter simulators, full-scale Army vehicle mock-ups, and wrap-around 270-degree video screens, instead of those paperless receipt scanner things.
"If you think of a classic recruitment center, [all of] its forms and brochures are about as exciting as the post office," said Marc Babej, partner at marketing consultancy Reason Inc. "Why talk about it when you can demonstrate it."
So instead of campy handouts, potential Army recruits will get an accurate, interactive representation of what awaits them on today's battlefields. By the Amy's definition of "realism" that includes battle simulators, replica firearms and America's Army, the 2002 video game that lets players act out battlefield scenarios DOOM-style. In a word, games—not maiming and killing. The first interactive Army store location has yet to be established, a spokesperson said.
All I ask is, when this doesn't work, what's next? Never-ending WWDC Baghdad keynotes? Black turtleneck body armor? iPhone controlled UAVs? More "BOOMs?" What? [BrandWeek]
Filed under: Cellphones
There's still plenty of emerging details and news on the iPhone 3G kicking around, but here's what you need to know from the minor bits floating around over the past few days:
According to Ars, one AT&T attorney told the FCC yesterday that early termination fees we pay for leaving our contracts before the designated time are actually a great deal for us. His reasoning was that "ETF-backed term contracts give consumers the ability to lower their monthly charges and upfront handset costs in exchange for their promise to pay monthly charges for the life of the contracts or alternatively to pay the ETF in lieu of the remaining charges." On the one hand, that's a punch in the nuts. On the other hand, he kinda has a point.
By taking a subsidy on your phone up front (such as on the iPhone 3G), you're paying less in exchange basically telling AT&T that you're going to stick with them for 2 years. If you want to leave, you can pay that $175 and get out of your contract. In this case, with the iPhone 3G, it basically lets you walk away with a iPhone 3G that you can use on T-Mobile for $374. That's not too shabby.
But a recent AP report said that Sprint waived all ETFs to a government agency that was signed up with it, essentially because "the government will never, never accept such penalty amounts." [Ars Technica]
Even if you don't speak a word of Japanese, there's a lot of intensity and information to be had in this newscast of the tragic Akihabara killings last Sunday. I'd just offer up a word of warning before you hit play, as there's graphic material found throughout the clip.
Filed under: Digital Cameras
