Griffin’s new polycarbonate iPhone case promises to not only protect your precious Stupendabrick but to boost the cell reception too. The ClearBoost makes the iPhone look quite ridiculous in the process, adding a retro-style external nub housing the antenna. Griffin…

Griffin’s new polycarbonate iPhone case promises to not only protect your precious Stupendabrick but to boost the cell reception too. The ClearBoost makes the iPhone look quite ridiculous in the process, adding a retro-style external nub housing the antenna. Griffin seems to be suffering from some kind of “Emperor’s New Clothes” syndrome, as the product blurb claims the antenna is invisible:

This clever case conceals a built-in booster antenna.

[emphasis added]

If you want to make your beautiful glass and steel slab look like something used to read the gas meter, Griffin will sell you a ClearBoost for $30.

Product page [Griffin]

Via [wired.com]

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When I groped Sprint’s Instinct at CTIA and was flipping through the features, one of the reps made sure to show me visual voicemail—a necessity for any device taking on the iPhone. Apparently, he didn’t just mean visual voicemail in the generic sense, it’s the real, patented deal, licensed from Klausner—who’s currently suing the balls off of Apple and AT&T for patent infringement. Smart move, since they’ll likely win the suit, given that RIM, AOL and Vonage, among others have also paid to license the patent. Course, the Instinct’s still no iPhone-killer. [Forbes, Thanks John]

Via [gizmodo]

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What is the bare minimum amount of data you need to reproduce a piece of music? Researchers at the University of Rochester think they know, and are developing a new compression technology that can digitally reproduce music in a file…

What is the bare minimum amount of data you need to reproduce a piece of music? Researchers at the University of Rochester think they know, and are developing a new compression technology that can digitally reproduce music in a file almost 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3.

The announcement was made at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing this week in Las Vegas, even though researchers admit they haven’t quite reached flawless reproduction nirvana.

Says Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and personal engineering at Rochester:

This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music. Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn’t really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music.

Actually, Bocko’s new technique sounds horribly tedious. The technology actually reproduces the original performance based on everything it knows about the physics of a given instrument and how it is played. In this case, researchers used a recording of a clarient. Then they measured aspects of a clarinet that affects things like its sound, ranging from the backpressure in the mouthpiece to different fingering, to the way sound radiates from the instrument. Then it was time to build a computer model of the clarinet, and voilà: a virtual instrument built entirely from the real-world acoustical measurements. Kind of. But that’s for one friggin’ instrument!

Let’s agree to not even consider what it would take to “compress” a multi-instrumental song with actual human voices…

Music file compressed 1,000 times smaller than mp3 [University of Rochester]

Photo: Flickr/CyboRoZ

Via [wired.com]

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LG’s New Black Label Cellphone: First Look [Lg]

Samsung is following up the love-it or hate-it Chocolate, and the Shine, with its third “Black Label” device: the as-yet unnamed cellphone you can see here. It looks a more serious and slender beast than the first two, and sports a five megapixel camera, tempered glass and a carbon-fiber finish. Other than that we can’t state much, as LG is being shy with the details: though I’m sure they’d call it “teaser marketing”. More data will be available at its European April 24th launch. We’ll keep you posted. [Aving]

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We were just about to stuff Nintendo’s Flash Focus vision game into the snake oil file when White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski revealed he actually improved his hitting through daily use of the software. Like many of the White Sox batters last year, Pierzynski stunk, and to come around he played Flash Focus in the off season. Now, one week into the 2008 schedule, the hapless catcher has two home runs, a .529 average and a team-leading seven RBIs. And just in case Pierzynski’s knees give out, as catcher’s knees are wont to do, we’re sure he’s well aware of the fact that surgeons are busy with Nintendo training of their own using the company’s other hardware, the Wii. [The Chicago Sun-Times]

Via [gizmodo]

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Asus R50 to Be Reincarnated With Keyboard Later This Year [Asus R50]

The image associated with this post is ideal viewed using a browser.The Asus R50 UMPC is already being updated—even though Mark 1 has yet to be released. Digitimes reports that the handheld with GPS and 3.5G connectivity, due out in June, will be sporting a keyboard come November of this year. As well as running Linux and Vista, the R50 has a webcam and Television tuner and is expected to sell for $500-plus. [DigiTimes via JKK Mobile]

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