Ready or Not - The Future is Now...

How many times have you pondered what things might be like in the future? Do you envision space travel? Robots in the home? How about libraries without a single physical book?

In Robot and Frank, we are given a glimpse of a near future where a library is getting just such an upgrade: some rich, slick young guy is taking over the town library and is moving all of the books out and making the library a place more about "the library experience," about community, rather than about the books themselves, since you can now get books on a wireless device from the comfort of your home... or the beach. How far are we from such a "near future"? Will libraries ever actually do away with books?

Well, maybe not all libraries, but, for some libraries, that time has already come... and, for some, passed.

New library, called "BiblioTech," being built in Bexar County, Texas will provide special e-readers to patrons. The electronic version of the books to be loaned will be loaded onto these e-readers, which will become unusable after the loan period if not returned to the library. The look of the library will be fairly reminiscent of an Apple store.

Others have similarly abandoned print, as well. The University of Texas at San Antonio offered a bookless library in 2012. The Tucson-Pima Public Library System had a bookless library in 2002, but ended up adding actual books - at the community's request.

As for the robot side of things, the robot in Robot and Frank appears to be modeled after Honda's robot, Asimo. See some amazing footage of Asimo, as well as HPR-4 and NAO, two other amazing, real-world humanoid robots, in the YouTube video, below.

World's Top3 Humanoid Robots - Asimo vs HPR-4 vs NAO! - SupernovaAnnie

For more details:

• San Antonio to open first bookless public Library (Gizmag.com)
• Bexar set to turn the page on idea of books in libraries (My San Antonio.com)
• Official Asimo Website
• Official NAO Website

PLYR2 Unleashed - or - How a 3.5mm Gave Me Super Powers

Okay, well maybe not super powers, but a lot more to play with. While reviewing the Skullcandy PLYR 2, I noticed that the manual (actually, tri-fold quick setup guide) indicates that, in order to connect the PLYR 2 to a PC, you needed a 3.5mm audio cord, which was not included. This annoyed me quite a bit, at first; why would it list that it works with a PC on the front of the box, but then require an audio cable that you have to supply, yourself?

As it turns out, there is a quite decent built-in audio card in the PLYR 2, so all you truly have to do is plug it up to an available USB port and change your default audio playback and recording settings. For PS3 and 360, there's an included RCA piggyback pass-thru adapter.

However, with the addition of a 3.5mm cord, you can use the PLYR 2 to listen to music from your iPad, smart phone or Android device or even hold phone conversations on them. True, they're wireless, so you need to have a USB port to supply power for the transmitter wherever you put the device and you'd have to start and end calls at the device, but the wireless aspect will let you hold that call while walking around your house.

Or, if you're on-the-go, you could combine the PLYR 2 with the PowerBag to power the transmitter and you can use the PLYR 2 for your phone conversations while carrying your iPhone in the bag. I realize it's not intended for that and is a bit awkward to start and end calls, but I tested the PLYR 2 at a range of up to 100 feet; I could start a playlist or a podcast through the headphones and mow the front yard with that distance.

Check out my Review of the PLYR 2 Headset from Skullcandy

Inspired by Philip K. Dick

I just got done reviewing the 2012 remake of Total Recall on Blu-ray. It's much more action-y than the 1990 version, but is a good popcorn flick. In fact, I find that I tend to like movies that are based on short stories by Philip K. Dick. Mind you, I've never actually read any of his stories and I've been told that most of the movies don't do them justice, but typically, the movies only claim to have been inspired by the short story, anyway - sometimes building an entire movie off of a single aspect of the short story.

Anyway, here are some of the products we've reviewed that were inspired by Philip K. Dick stories and the story from which they got their inspiration...

Movies:

• Blade Runner (inspired by Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
• Total Recall (1990) (inspired by "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale")
• Paycheck (inspired by "Paycheck")
• Next (inspired by The Golden Man)
• Total Recall (2012) (inspired by "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale")

Games:

• Minority Report (inspired by "The Minority Report")
  
  • Minority Report (PS2)
  • Minority Report: Everybody Runs (Xbox)
  • Minority Report: Everybody Runs (Gamecube)

On The Fall (Total Recall 2012)

Total Recall follows Douglas Quaid, a factory worker at a robot factory, married to a beautiful E.M.S. technician, living in an overcrowded, mega-slum post-apocalyptic Australia, which is now referred to as simply "the Colony" and is one of only two places on the globe that is still inhabitable. The other is comprised of England and some nearby land, which together comprise the United Federation of Britain. Those who have even a passing grasp on geography may immediately assume that these populations don't interact, but, as it turns out, much of the populace of the Colony perform high-risk, low-paying jobs in the UFB, commuting daily via a large elevator / subway train, of sorts, that goes straight through the Earth, in a tube that is curved a bit to avoid the hot, gooey molten core.

This "elevator" is known as "The Fall," since it essentially falls down from one station, then comes to a stop when it reaches the station on the other side. While the plausibility of creating such a mode of transportation has several technical hurdles to overcome, the physical principal is sound; in much the same way that something thrown upward slows to a stop and then returns to its initial height at the same speed it was initially thrown at (not considering wind resistance), if you could drop something into a hole that went all the way through the Earth, it would accelerate until it got to the center of the planet, then would start slowing down, reaching the initial speed (zero) when it arrived at the same height it had started at, but on the other side of the planet.

Even considering losses due to wind resistance, this would be a very energy-efficient mode of transportation.