The Demo Site

A legitimate artistic movement known as Open Source Embroidery has sprung up to explore the relationship between, no joke, software engineering and needlework. It's pretty awesome.

The crux of the largely British movement is that both needlework and software creation are an amalgamation of tons of tiny little pieces of work that all come together to create something much larger than the sum of its parts. They also see that both are gender-specific—needlework is traditionally female, while software engineering is traditionally male. Some of the knitters were actually involved in the computer industry at some point in their lives, so their needlework is informed by their interest in technology. It's pretty cool stuff, check out the mini-gallery below. [Wired, images also courtesy Wired]

GALLERYEND

Well, they may not have gone quite that far, but an independent study conducted by Forrester Research found that iPhone owners are better educated, younger, more affluent, and even more productive than their non-iPhone-using counterparts.

The straight demographics are hard to argue with—on average, iPhone users do tend to be slightly younger, wealthier, and better educated than users of BlackBerrys or Windows Mobile devices. But the "more productive" conclusion is totally erroneous: It's based on the fact that iPhone users are more likely to use the Internet at least once per week, which in our definition is most certainly not a rubric of productivity. I've spent entire weeks on the Internet and all I've produced is the beginnings of a bed sore and maybe an extra five pounds around the waist.

The survey was, obviously, taken before the introduction of the $99 iPhone, and we're all curious to see if the slightly-cheaper option will impact the iPhone's demographics. Ted Schadler, who commissioned the study, promised to revisit it later this year to see if there's been any change. Until then, enjoy your iPhones, Supermen and Superwomen. Just try not to use them while you're flying to work, it's dangerous. [AppleInsider]

It looks like Lisa Simpson's worst nightmare has come true. Now all of America can say, "I wash myself with a rag on a stick."

We especially feel awful for the actors in this infomercial. That poor fat guy has to implicitly say that wiping himself is a struggle without a candy-colored plastic stick, and then justify it by saying that being a fat guy has certain advantages, which is only true in the winter. Although after having used a bidet, I can say that we might be in need of some new butt-wiping technology: Three-ply just can't compare to a Super Soaker up the butt. [via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Holy frak. If you thought the 59-foot-tall Gundam in Tokyo was impressive when it was finished, you haven't seen it fully armed and operative at night. Beautiful and actually scary. Check the impressive close up:

Come on people, let's start building these robots now. I'm sure the bad aliens are going to come any second now, so better hurry up. Don't forget to check the rest of the beautiful shots at Pink Tentacle. [Pink Tentacle]

There've been some reports about an upcoming "Twitpocalypse" in which Twitter would finally crash and burn due to the limitations of a 32-bit signed integer. Allegedly, Twitter will collapse once the number of tweets passes 2,147,483,647.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the Twitter revolution is going to die out as soon as I'd like—there are reports that the "Twitpocalypse" rumor was started as a joke, although some individual clients, including the iPhone app Twitterific and Mac's Tweetie, are down. Several other Twitter clients are announcing that they'll be just fine, so it looks like the Twitpocalypse is definitely real, but avoidable. The number of tweets has now passed the crucial 2,147,483,647 mark mostly unscathed, so it looks like things in the Twitterverse are about as bad as they're going to get, which is, unfortunately, not that bad. [Gawker]

AT&T is telling customers that any iPhone 3GS pre-orders placed after today, June 13th, will not be available at the June 19th launch, instead shipping out between one and two weeks later.

In addition, those lining up for a 3GS should note that it'll be available at 8:00AM, not 7:00, as had been previously thought. Looks like those crappy ugrade fees haven't deterred too many people from ordering the newer iPhone. If you do want to pre-order, you'll receive an email once the 3GS is back in stock, saving you the trouble of having to wait in line, though of course it is still being sold at Best Buy and Walmart. [AppleInsider]

As far as AM/FM/CD/iPod/AUX combinations go, this artfully-misspelled Sonora Eklipse is pretty good-looking, with its 7.5-watt output, shiny black finish and glowy lights. But is it really worth its whopping $550 pricetag?

It's got an auxiliary jack for other audio inputs, a nice little OLED screen to display the time and track information, and of course comes with a nice enough remote control. But $550 seems like a sort of outrageous price for such pedestrian technology, fancy package or not. It'll be available soon, if you're a gazillionaire who likes shiny things. [Oh Gizmo!]

We're not really sure about the market for a svelte-yet-comparatively-large-screened laptop like MSI's 15.6-inch X-Slim X600, but now we've got the full spec list so you can decide for yourself.

The sub-inch-thick laptop will be packing one of two variations: One's got a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Solo proc, 4GB RAM, and a 500GB hard drive, and one will have a 1.2GHz Celeron, 3GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive, as well as losing the more powerful version's native Bluetooth. Both will have the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics chipset with 512MB memory and HDMI out, which isn't too shabby, plus Windows Vista and a 6-cell battery.

The laptops are a bit underpowered, though that's the price you pay for such lithe bodies. They'll cost about $1,320 and $1,120 respectively when they're released in Italy at the end of June, and should make their way Stateside in a reasonable timeframe. [Electronista]

Well, looks like it is possible to run OS X on Sony's teeny Vaio P netbook, but it's no perfect Dell Mini 9 hackintosh. It looks like a difficult and imperfect crack, yet it still somehow runs better than Vista.

Posters on the Insanely Mac forums managed to get OS X onto the Vaio P, though the netbooks GMA-500 video chip remains an obstinate problem, refusing to allow real 3D graphics. And while you might expect the Vaio P's GPS and 3G connections wouldn't work, what you might not expect is the lack of ethernet or Wi-Fi capability and apparently distorted audio. So as far as hackintoshed netbooks go, it's not for the faint of heart—but if the enterprising hacker community can get these problems fixed, it'd be an awfully enviable machine. Even now, they claim it runs significantly faster than the packaged Windows Vista, though of course with this many sacrifices it's not really a fair comparison. [Insanely Mac forums via Boing Boing Gagdets]

1Up ran a story yesterday that Microsoft is planning to release an updated Xbox console this fall that will focus on Project Natal's motion-sensing technology. We're not sure we believe it.

The rumor states that Microsoft will be debuting a totally new console that will include native Project Natal support, full backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 software, and with slightly updated muscle to handle newer games. Supposedly, it'll be released in fall 2010.

Microsoft did mention that with the debut of Natal, the Xbox 360's lifespan is "less than halfway done," but we think it'd be a mistake to release a game-changing new control system as an entirely new console rather than a more affordable peripheral when we've seen that a peripheral is all that's needed to handle Natal. Further, the way Microsoft has phrased talk about the Xbox 360's lifespan implies to us that the humble white console is going to be around for awhile: "There's still an awful lot left we can do with that piece of hardware, so we're going to continue to do that," said Microsoft's VP of Interactive Entertainment John Schappert.

We don't think the rumor really makes sense, but maybe it's just wishful thinking; we don't want to have to buy an entirely new console, but we just might have to if that's the only way to get our hands (well, our entire bodies) on Project Natal. [1UP]

I'm sorry, but I just gotta know—are Dell Dude #1 Michael Dell and Iron Man director Jon Favreau secretly related? Does their freakish resemblance not trouble anyone else?