AT&T's ARMZ: An Emergency Cellular Tower in a SuitcaseAT&T Just started selling the ARMZ, a cellular tower that fits into a suitcase. It's meant to fill the air with cellular signals in the case of a disaster where existing towers cease to work or, well, exist. There are fixed location and vehicle mounted ARMZ kits, but the fly away set up is the most interesting because of its portable nature—Even if by "portable" we mean well over 100 pounds and powered by generator. The kit has a dish for satellite uplink, 2 radios that support up to 28 callers and an antenna. And the ARMZ, which stands for AT&T Remote Mobility Zone, runs off a generator. Sat uplink occurs in under 30 minutes, and the system has a range of half a mile, claims AT&T. ARMZ costs between $15,000 and $45,000, depending on the configuration, plus a service plan of $2700 a month. Not that you'd be able to get one to patch in during a camping trip, even if you had the cash—The setup
New MacBooks from Apple are most certainly coming in the next six to eight weeks, and probably have the most extensive design overhauls in years. The new MacBooks will have a glass, multi-touch trackpad. The MacBook touch concept, is really impractical—a multi-touch screen that size will get really tiring, really fast, since it's a lot of ground to cover, and people are lazy, minimizing motion. Artists could use it to zoom in and directly manipulate images and stuff on the screen (sorta like this). It could display system stats, do Cover Flow, or anything a secondary or touchscreen would be useful for. Or, you know, act like a regular trackpad when you want it to. This is ideal, and would be a logical way to move their multi-touch technology and notebooks forward, together.
