If it were only so :( This may be a concept, but I want someone to actually make it for any present or future tablet out there: An optional foldable keyboard that acts as phone handset. This is how the it works:

The keyboard is physically independent from the tablet itself, just a peripheral device that you can carry around folded in your pocket. However, it doesn't have any independent functionality. It can only work while connected wirelessly to the tablet. And that's the beauty of it: I can imagine myself carrying the iPad 3G on my backpack, ready to receive calls, and then this cellphone-keyboard in my pocket. In fact, if you add a full screen to its outer shell, it could even act as a secondary display for the tablet. Ah well, maybe in 2012. [Yanko]

This is not to say Heavy Rain is perfect, but think of this piece as less a review than a critical discussion of a new work. How about we start from the beginning? Heavy Rain is by a French company named Quantic Dream. Unless you're a hardcore gamer, there's no way you've heard of them. Before Heavy Rain, they'd made a game that was so plagued by budgets and launch schedules that its narrative lost basic cohesion—yet Sony has most likely sunk millions of dollars (be it in indirect support) into Quantic Dream to create a unique, PlayStation-exclusive IP. Why? There's no other development studio on the planet like them. Quantic Dream creates a game that's equal parts video game and movie. And I don't mean that it's a game peppered with a few, slightly congruous extended cutscenes, like Metal Gear Solid 4 or any Square Enix RPG.

Heavy Rain, and its predecessor Indigo Prophecy (also known as Fahrenheit), are highly directed pieces of media, deploying fixed cameras to tell the story of a scene as your character walks through, nuanced motion capture to add realism to both jumping through windows and merely turning off a sink, and choices that stem from real actions and dialogue that will change the course of the story you see unfold. What's this mean? If a person cries in Heavy Rain, you will most probably feel for them as you would any fictional character in any photographic media. These games aren't Grand Theft Auto, with humans filling the landscape as silly, bleeding sheep-like diversions. Heavy Rain's writing is melodramatic to say the least, but its basic presentation of character is on par with any well-directed drama.

Heavy Rain may chronicle a serial child murderer through the perspective of four characters—an overweight private eye, a young FBI agent, a sexy photographer and a depressed father—it may take you through high speed chases and fight sequences that rival any action flick—it may have all the twists of any good yarn—but it opens with a father waiting for his son to come home. The father walks through his house, exploring his life, completing mundane tasks and thinking aloud at any time with the tap of a trigger button.

Much of Heavy Rain explores the mundane, some of which fills in backstory, other of which just puts you in the shows of another's life—like The Sims for someone 30 or over. However, there is something to be learned in all this shaving and cooking. You're mastering button combinations, strange holds and releases and analog stick maneuvers that you'll need when things don't go so well for Dad and his family. To drink a carton of milk, for instance, you'll want to move the analog stick in the shape of a fishook...but slowly! Too fast and the realtime animation might make you spill on your face. Shaving works similarly.

Eventually, this same motion, coupled with a properly timed X or square button press could be the difference of life and death. And if your character dies during the course of the game, their story merely ends. I know why Quantic Dream uses these quick time button mashing events. They want to make the gamer literally feel like they're really controlling a character. And no matter how coordinated you are, knowing you'll need to hit a random button at the right time is always stressful—allegedly mapping the stress your character feels in, say, ducking a swinging crowbar to your psyche as you press down on the controller. And herein lies Heavy Rain's greatest flaw. I want to choose whether or not my character shoots an innocent man for information. I'd like to decide the best way to hide a body without getting caught. And yeah, when and if I kiss the girl—that should be my call, too.

Knowing a scene can end so many ways to make a story branch so many ways feels like, well, it feels like something very important in the future of storytelling and gaming alike. But when these decisions, my decisions, are impeded, not just by my gaming skill, but by the nature of the Dual Shock itself, it rips me from the story and reminds me that this is just another game filled with characters that aren't real. A simple shake of the controller, that was the difference between life and death for two of my characters. I shook the controller, timing it just right. They both died. Sure, that could be the end of their story—people die, and that's one potential outcome that I witnessed. But while I find the ability to affect choices interesting, if my gaming prowess is put to the test—even when that Dual Shock is working fine—I don't want my heroine to perish because I missed hitting X when prompted. I want her to perish because I stupidly told her to go into a deserted house where a murderer was waiting, or because I told her to fight the guy off with a banana instead of a meat clever. It's a key question that future entities like Heavy Rain will need to answer better than they are now: How much of a story's outcome is based on the story, and how much is based upon player skill? But I have the distinct feeling—as intense as it is to jiggle an analog stick to unhook a bra clasp—we'll realize that watching two people make whoopie is a lot more exciting than making a lame minigame out of it.

And just as we have for millennia, we'll watch a story unfold in front of us, passively, just with a bit more choice and replay value. If titles like Heavy Rain show us anything, it's that, yes, technology is unlocking new ways to tell a story. While most video games focus on a very linear plot, modeling themselves after movies and theater, they have the great potential to allow the audience to explore parts of a story that could have happened, altering fiction to better emulate real life and challenging the construct of a story as we know it—all well allowing the viewer to feel like they're somehow involved beyond mere spectating. Fiction evolves from a series of events to a series of choices, much like life. All my critiquing aside, you should absolutely play Heavy Rain. The PlayStation 3 title, available now, blurs the boundaries of media, offers an extremely entertaining 10 hours (or more if you replay chapters for different outcomes) and, for just a few moments over the course of the game, renders characters that are spitting images for real people. (And the rest of the time, the game still looks damn good.)

Oh, and one of the characters has these virtual reality glasses that are really cool.

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You don’t see a lot of Albam in the U.S., actually I’m not sure of any shop that stocks the line. (If I’m wrong, correct me in the comments please.) So getting to see the shop, the clothes and the folks that work for the company was a real treat. I ended up buying a navy waxed canvas (American waxed canvas I may add) jacket that has yielded me many a compliment back home in New York. Albam makes good clothes and at the same time, it has a great brand philosophy. The company puts an emphasis on local production and sourcing, which sort of aligns with what Rob is doing at Grown & Sewn (or vice versa). I have to think that manufacturing in England is much more difficult than doing it here in the USA — which makes what the guys at Albam (and some others) are doing pretty impressive. That being said, people would probably care less if the clothes weren’t go nice. Albam is definitely a look-good and feel-good type of situation.

Albam Soho | 23 Beak Street  W1F 9RS | Tel: 02 3157 7000

In some backlot studio a "producer" is already filming a POV scene for this.

Chris Harrison's "Skinput: Appropriating the Body as an Input Surface" is one of the coolest, most amazing and innovative interface concepts we've ever seen, skillfully combining art, design and science. Harrison's concept--which works, by the way--uses the body as a sort of echo chamber. Which is to say, when the user taps a particular part of their body, a sensor worn around the upper arm can tell if the tap-point was at a particular spot on the forearm or on one of the individual fingertips, by assessing the vibrations sent throughout the body by the tap. Paired with an on-body projector, this means our already-shrinking personal devices can get even smaller, as we'll use the body as an input device:

Harrison is a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and worked on the project in conjunction with Desney Tan and Dan Morris at Microsoft Research. "Skinput" is schedule to be presented at the 28th Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems at Atlanta, Georgia, from April 10 - 15, 2010.(more...)

I thought it was only a rumor..

Weird Al Yankovic is mortified to find out that a sex tape featuring him has been released on the internet.

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Compasses are cool for, like, finding your way around and all that, but none of my personal usage has ever rivaled the undulating awesomeness displayed in that video. Another benefit of the Compass Table: it's the only one I know of that makes your guests want to use coasters. And that's worth something. [Instructables]

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Related posts:- Weird Al Yankovic on Attack of the Show - Skipper Dan by Weird Al Yankovic - “White & Nerdy” by “Weird Al” Yankovic + Donny Osmond First Take - Craigslist by “Weird Al” Yankovic - CNR (Charles Nelson Reilly) by Weird Al Yankovic

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