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The Envirosight Supervision 250 Crawls Through Sewer Pipes So No Human Has To

What it is: Envirosight SuperVision 250

What it's used for: Revealing damage deep inside city pipes

You go, you flush: out of sight, out of mind. Not for city maintenance crews. With 850 billion gallons of sewer and storm water leaking into watersheds around the country every year, the Environmental Protection Agency is cracking down on cracked pipes. And the SuperVision 250 is riding that great, stinky wave of demand. Placed in pipes 10 to 72 inches in diameter, this little guy will track down splits, debris, corrosion, and breaks. Operators can watch the video feed from the 10X optical-zoom autofocus camera and use a joystick to pan and tilt. A ring of high-intensity, shadowless LEDs illuminates the scene; dual lasers help size up defects. A sapphire window shields the camera lens, while hardened stainless steel parts protect the crawler from the harsh sewer environment. And thanks to an ultrathin, Kevlar-reinforced tether (sorry, no wireless), the bot can crawl up to 1,640 feet through even heavily obstructed pipes. Just make sure to hose it off when it comes back.

120-Hz Hi-Def TVs Bring Onscreen Action to Life

Last year's TV buzz was 1080p. This year's is all about 120 Hz. That refers to the number of images a set displays each second to make your picture move; 120 is twice the norm, netting the smoothest pans since Teflon.

Samsung LN52A750
$3,700, samsung.com
This 52-inch Samsung chewed up stuttering 60-Hz video and spit out glass-smooth motion, leaving few visual artifacts. It sailed through most of our processing challenges, proving especially effective at recombining interlaced video. The set also delivered vibrant color — if a bit more saturated, and thus less natural, than the Sony's — after only minor calibration tweaks, which Samsung's simple menus made painless. The subtle, red-hued "touch of color" bezel imparts a reserved style — think Armani, not Elton John.
Wired: InfoLink system displays news, weather, and RSS feeds via Ethernet connection. Side-mounted HDMI/USB ports make for easy gaming and photo viewing. Eight HD and three standard-def inputs.
Tired: Room lighting + glossy screen = disco reflections. Only one color option, and it might not work for everyone.

Sony Bravia KDL-46W4100
$2,400, sonystyle.com
We loved the color right out of this 46-incher's box, and the video processors aced our tests, removing jaggies and scrubbing noise — even from standard-def sources — with little loss of detail. Plus, the motion enhancer smoothed out movement while introducing fewer visual artifacts than any other TV in this batch. (Purists can turn it off for a true filmlike experience.) One gripe: With great features come overstuffed menus. Time to RTFM.
Wired: Elegant silver and black bezel. Tons of video inputs — seven HD and five standard-def — plus distinct color profiles for each. Add-on lets you watch select clips via the Net.
Tired: Internet add-on is $300! Attention Sony: YouTube is free; you can't charge three bills for an inferior version. PS3-style menus will appeal to gamers but may confuse others.

Sharp Aquos LC-65SE94U
$8,500, sharpusa.com
This 65-inch monster "five-ups" the previous standard for a large LCD set, but you'll pay for bragging rights. Thankfully, that price buys more than just 5 extra inches of screen. The set produced very dark blacks and a picture bright enough to see even in strong sunlight. But it's time to join the 21st century with your interface, Sharp; we're running out of Atari jokes.
Wired: Trumps your neighbor's 60-incher and cranks out enough lumens to let you watch football in the backyard ... just to rub it in. Great-looking narrow-bezel case — important when your TV takes up half a wall. Excellent default picture quality means you can have green Astroturf without taking a course in color calibration.
Tired: No bonus features like USB pictures and music. The array of tiny, identical buttons on the remote probably spells "annoying" in braille.

LG Scarlet 47LG60
$2,500, lge.com
The bulky, shiny case and visible-from-space power button mark a bold departure from most manufacturers' minimalist styling. And while LG's TruMotion removes stutter, we saw more artifacts than on other LCDs we tested. Default settings produced harsh, oversaturated color — correctable using the bevy of adjustment options but disappointing for a TV of this price.
Wired: Straightforward menus simplify navigation and configuration. Separate color adjustment for each input. This 47-inch set boasts one of the few alternatives to picture-frame bezels that isn't designed for a 14-year-old Japanese girl (cough cough, Hannspree, cough).
Tired: You'll need expert help — or a lot of time — to dial in good color. No S-video jacks and only one composite input, so forget most of your non-HD sources.

Take Your Web Apps Offline

Ever want to run Google Docs or Zoho from your desktop? Unfortunately for travelers, web apps by nature are shackled to its internet connections. Now, you can cut the ethernet cable and free web apps from the web using Fluid and Google Gears.

Hans Reiser Sentenced

Linux Guru Hans Reiser was sentenced to 15-to-life Friday for murdering Nina Reiser, his wife who was divorcing him. Reiser, the developer of the ReiserFS file system, maintained throughout a six-month-long trial that his wife abandoned their two young children after he confronted her with allegations she bilked his Oakland, California software company Namesys. After his conviction, he brought authorities to her unmarked grave as part of a deal for a reduced sentence.

Death, Taxes and Bandwidth Caps

Are the days of all-you-can-eat broadband over? Comcast joins a growing number of ISPs that are introducing usage caps in order to crack down on so-called bandwidth hogs. Caps may help service providers manage traffic, but they won't do much to enhance innovation or broadband adoption, charge critics.

Snail Car Is Born When Math, Dreams Collide

California artists create The Golden Mean, a rolling tribute to an aesthetically pleasing ratio, and take the piece on the road to Burning Man.

New BBEdit Packed With Power Tools for Writers, Programmers

One of the most-beloved software apps among programmers, writers and Mac geeks, the "Bare Bones" text editor BBEdit receives a substantial upgrade. New features include a management utility for keeping track of multifile projects, an auto-completion engine for writing code and integration with Apple's MobileMe backup service.

Flexy Motorola Phone Bends in Half, Breaks Our Hearts

The innovative Motorola Z10 is out and it's giving us the bends. The new slider actually features a hinged midsection which bends at an angle when you answer the phone. Aside form this unique feature though everything else about this handset is a bit hard to deal with. The OS is confusing and obtuse while the 3MP camera is woefully inadequate for the video recording capabilities the phone is designed to perform.

AutoAdmit Defendant Asks Court to Free Him From Byzantine Lawsuit

An obnoxious commenter being sued for sexual harrasment by two Jane Doe Yale law students wants to be freed, saying that his comments were just crude. He claims the women's lawyers are intentionally dragging out the suit and won't even serve him with papers.

Tech Making Traditional VCs Obsolete

Bob Rice has had many careers. He was an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, a partner at law firm Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, C.E.O. of a tech startup, and now runs merchant bank Tangent Capital, which he founded in 2005.

In his spare time, Rice managed to write Three Moves Ahead: What Chess Can Teach You About Business, one of the more interesting business reads to come down the pike this year, in which he uses the tried-and-true strategies of chess for insight into running a business.

Today, he's squeezing in some blogging. One day. One place: Portfolio.com.

Ah, those Sand Hill Road visionaries, the venture capital guys who finance the future and dictate the trends. It must be fun out there, getting the first glimpses of tomorrow. But suddenly there's a wonderful irony at work: That very future is destroying their industry.

Newspapers are rife with stories about the decline of big V.C. investments, pointing to the trend as a sign of a more conservative investment environment. But I don't think that's really the issue.

Instead, something much more profound is going on: The basic V.C. model is broken. And new technology is driving a much more efficient system for capital allocation to startups.

In fact, technology is largely at fault both for what's wrong with the V.C. world and for what's replacing it. The problem with the industry is this--it's just too cheap to start new companies these days.

Virtual offices allow talent to gather from around the country to work on a new idea without having to quit full-time jobs too early. Servers, computers, and bandwidth are essentially free, and a robust telecommunications platform can be rented for a few tens of dollars a month. Software development can be outsourced without taking on big fixed costs. There are countless programs to manage customer relations, mine contacts, handle the books, and plan and monitor projects. And of course, the internet has reduced the costs of finding customers and testing new concepts to nearly nothing.

Okay, so what? Well, the classic V.C.'s simply have too much money under management, and too expensive a talent pool, to waste time looking at investing anything less than $10 million in a project. Meantime, no entrepreneur wants to give up equity by taking in more money than he absolutely needs. So, when it only costs a few million to get a serious new company off the ground, how can the V.C.'s really play? They have to find places to make gigantic gambles, usually overpaying because the other big V.C.'s are also trying to invest in the few really big-dollar opportunities out there. It has become a system doomed to failure.

The flip side of the story is the rise of angel investor groups. These investment consortiums have always been ideally positioned to provide $500,000 to $5 million equity injections; but until recently, that wasn't enough to get a serious effort off the ground. More fundamentally, however, they have historically not been terribly investor-friendly, largely because the individual members have other occupations.

The individual members didn't work in the same place or even at the same times, so angels were terribly inefficient at evaluating transactions, sharing information, and negotiating and documenting deals.

Those days are over, thanks to software developed by David Rose, founder of the New York Angels (yes, I belong). Angelsoft is a wonderful collaboration platform that manages deal flow, helps match talent and expertise to projects, provides easy-to-use data rooms for potential investors, and generally drives the investment process. It combines project management and social networking in a way that, for the first time, makes the angel process efficient for both the company seeking capital and the potential investors.

The big news now is that, in a period of just a couple of years, over 400 angel groups around the globe have standardized on the platform. That means, of course, that they will also be able to share deals between themselves, vastly expanding the capital and expertise available for any given project.

And entrepreneurs can now create one submission to get access, literally, to a world of sophisticated, organized investors. It sounds like a revolution to me. Check it out at the group's website.

And so, once again, technology is driving a paradigm shift. But this time, it's France in 1789: The progenitors of change are becoming the victims.

Top 5 Gadgets That Could Get You Arrested

OK, we'll admit it. Some of us are drawn to dangerous gear like bears to a picnic basket. There's just something devilishly appealing about mixing a few of our favorite things (tech toys) with one of our least (a ride in the back of a squad car).

Although we'd never condone breaking the law with these five gadgets, we can't deny our morbid fascination with them. Just remember: If misused, these gizmos could get you slapped with a set of handcuffs along with a criminal record.

1. The WASP Knife

Designed to quickly dispatch marauding undersea predators, this 5.25-inch hunting/tactical blade conceals a catastrophic one-two punch. After you shank say, a Great White Shark, a flick of a button injects the beast with an 800-psi blast of compressed air. This basketball-sized sphere of freezing gas decimates the interior of whatever it's injected into; whatever's left simply floats to the surface. It works great on watermelons, too.

Why It'd Get You Arrested:

Stabbing random objects on dry land (and then making them explode) is the fast track to a vandalism charge. Turning the WASP Knife on an innocent creature for non-defense purposes, though? Depending on the state, you're looking at aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon, animal cruelty or even the rarely used "mayhem" charge.

2. Sonar II Burner

Look, everyone wants a lightsaber. But we can't have them because: A) midi-chlorians don't exist and, B) law enforcement agencies are already less-than-enthused over high-power handheld lasers. Consider for a moment, Wicked Lasers' Sonar II Burner. Essentially a more powerful version of the lasers found in Blu-ray players, this six-inch tool doesn't have to compensate for anything; it can light matches, burn holes through paper and melt plastic.

Why It'd Get You Arrested:

Where to begin? At 60mW, the Sonar II is totally capable of starting fires (arson), burning retinas (assault) and disorienting airline pilots (Gitmo).

3. EMT Paintball Sentry Turret

May the Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodley appendage help the poor schmoe who ends up in the cross hairs of the Sentry Turret. This remote-controlled, tripod-mounted paintball cannon unleashes oil-based vengeance at 30 rounds per second on full-auto. And all you paint-balling pros take note: The EMT is not some glorified sloppy-shot Brass Eagle. Integrated-vibration dampeners plus rotation/tilt mechanisms make rounds fired from this gadget highly accurate.

Why It'd Get You Arrested:

With the amount of paint the Sentry is capable of unloading, you'd definitely be facing accusations of assault, disturbing the peace and any other charges your welt-covered victims care to press.

4. Fiber Laser Marking System

If you're going to deface public property, you might as well get an assist from technology. Laser Photonic's unintentional contribution to this practice is the "Handheld Fiber Laser Marking System." This portable, high-power laser was originally designed for etching graphics into industrial surfaces like metal, glass and stone. Sure, it lacks the DIY charm of spray paint. But it makes up for this by running off a car battery, and being able to etch almost any graphic you can load on a multimedia card.

Why It'd Get You Arrested:

Tagging public property with such creativity and zeal is likely to bump up the charge. A number of states reserve the right to boost vandalism charges to the felonious level if the damage exceeds $400, is especially malicious or is performed by a repeat offender.

5. Lil' Buttie LB110

You don't have to work for the NSA to listen to other people's phone calls. A nifty lineman's handset like the Lil' Buttie LB110 is enough to do the trick. This cheap, easy-to-find gadget is the cornerstone of tapping a phone line. All it really takes is hooking the handset's alligator clamps to a set of exposed telephone wires and syncing up the handset. Once you're on the line, you can snoop on conversations, record them or even dial out at your leisure.

Why It'd Get You Arrested:

Despite what you may think, owning a "butt set" isn't illegal. Don't be fooled though -- unless you're using it for running diagnostics on your own phone line, someone's bound to drop the hammer. Getting caught using (or even installing) an unauthorized line is the express lane to a felonious wiretapping charge, and/or a lifetime of government scrutiny. Trust us on this one.

How to Flick a Beer Cap

It's a hot late summer day with your buddy on the porch. You just popped a cold one and are fingering the ridges of the bottle cap. That's when your compadre bets he can flick his beer cap farther than yours. Here's how to show him how it's done.

McCain Picks Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as Running Mate

The 44-year-old former beauty queen, announced today as John McCain's presidential running mate, loves America and hates polar bears.

Blogger Turns Up the Social With 'Following' Feature

Google's widly popular free publishing service launched a new feature that lets bloggers display friends they are "following" on their Blogger-powered websites. The feature brings Blogger closer to a social networking platform, and it mimics similar features in newer social apps like Twitter and Tumblr.

America Running Low on Innovation, Ex-Cisco CTO Says

The U.S. needs to find new ways of funding basic science research in academia and corporate America, says former Cisco CTO Judy Estrin, author of the book Closing the Innovation Gap.

Comcast Makes Monthly Internet Use Cap Official

Comcast, the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, says it will set an official limit on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month. On Oct. 1, the cable company will update its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of traffic per month, the company announced on its Web site.

Employers Finally Giving Bike Commuters Some Love

How is it fair that employers offer incentives to take mass transit but not to ride bikes? It's a question corporate America is starting to ask itself.

Apple Still Benefits from 'All is Forgiven' Customers

There has always been a solid corps of Apple adherents for whom the company could do little wrong. But as it extends its reach further into the mainstream even casual users have come to identify so strongly with Apple's high-end, individualistic vibe that they're willing to look the other way when products and execution are less than perfect.

Military Eyes Football Helmets for Battlefield Protection

The Pentagon is seeking help from NFL gear makers to create helmets that will make U.S. combat soldiers safer.

McCain's VP Wants Creationism Taught in School

John McCain's vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin, has gone on record in support of teaching creationism in schools.

Mars Phoenix Heads Into Extra Innings

Having finished its nominal mission time of 90 days this week, Mars Phoenix enters extra innings as one of NASA's most successful missions, even if it didn't discover evidence for past or present life on Mars. Review the mission with this story and interactive timeline.

Aug. 29, 1965: Long-Distance Calling ... Very Long Distance

1965: An astronaut in space holds a conversation with an aquanaut underwater, marking another milestone in human communication.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper, orbiting the Earth with Pete Conrad in Gemini 5, hooked up by radiotelephone with an old pal, astronaut-turned-aquanaut Scott Carpenter, who was living and working 205 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near La Jolla, California, aboard Sealab II.

The two men had known each other since 1959, when they were among the seven pilots chosen by NASA to be America's first Project Mercury astronauts. Carpenter, a former Navy pilot, had already been in space, the solo astronaut on a mistake-plagued, three-orbit flight aboard Aurora 7 that resulted in his being effectively grounded.

He was on leave from the space agency when he joined the Navy's Sealab II project as training officer. Carpenter eventually resigned from NASA in 1967. He retired from the Navy in 1969.

Cooper and Conrad, meanwhile, were nearing the end of an eight-day orbital mission to test human endurance in space. Eight days was recognized as the time needed to travel to the moon and back. (Five days was the longest Soviet space flight before then, and the American record was four days. By years' end, American astronauts would complete a 14-day mission in space.)

The radio hookup was partly a gimmick, to take advantage of Carpenter's astronaut status to publicize the Sealab II project. But it was also a method of testing the effectiveness of an underwater electronics lab installed aboard the submersible.

Gemini 5 was not the only long-distance call made from Sealab II. The Navy aquanauts also spoke with President Johnson at the White House and with Jacques Cousteau's Conshelf 3 team, French colleagues conducting a similar underwater-habitat test off Cap Ferrat in the Mediterranean Sea.

Following their chat with Carpenter, Cooper and Conrad readied Gemini 5 for its return to Earth and splashed down in the very same Pacific Ocean later that day.

Thirty years later, in 1995, Carpenter recreated his seabed-to-space call, chatting with astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavor while staying at Jules' Undersea Lodge off Key Largo, Florida.

Source: Various

Obama Address Sets Internet On Fire

Find out the reaction online to Obama's speech.

Gallery: American Dreamers Run Free at Burning Man

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada -- Wild rides, fireworks and letting it all hang out. That's the updated American dream at Burning Man 2008.

The annual desert gathering always celebrates that most-American ideal: freedom. Freedom to ride a giant red, white and blue tricycle across the playa; freedom to blow your mind however you want; freedom to traipse around wearing nothing but body paint.

That kind of ingrained whimsy, rather than politics, seems to be the point of this year's American Dream art theme at Burning Man. "What has America achieved that you admire?" is the event's official statement. "What has it done or failed to do that fills you with dismay? What is laudable? What is ludicrous?"

Groovy, man. Let's get it on.

Left: Red, white and blue abounds at the festival this year.

Red, white and blue abounds at the festival this year.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

A stagecoach rolls up the esplanade on Tuesday evening.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Duane Flatmo from Eureka, California, steers his fire-breathing dragon around the esplanade Tuesday.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

After hunkering down during Monday's sandstorm, burners break out their colorful costumes Tuesday -- including some that are just painted on. Robin Bowles, right, and her friend Cowboy Curtis chill on the playa on a "fuzzy bunny." The Man can be seen far off in the distance on the left.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

A group of burners break out a desert "boat" to parade across the playa.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Black Rock City is humming Thursday.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Lamp Lighters walk down the esplanade Tuesday.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com>

A panel van decked out with a lit-up Golden Gate Bridge makes its way across the sand Tuesday.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Tutu-wearing burner Diana Zanelli of Texas delights in the swirl of lights from inside artist Crispell Wagner's "modern version of the dream machine," an interactive piece of light art.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Home is where the art is at Burning Man.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

The Man glows with neon as Helen Corley from San Ramon, California, twirls her flow lights below the festival's namesake icon in Black Rock City.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

A giant duck lights up the night Tuesday as it rolls across the dusty desert floor.

How to Download MP3s From Streaming Music Sites

Your favorite music sites let you listen to songs all day for free, but only as a stream -- if you want to load one of those songs onto your iPod and take it with you, you'll have to go buy it. But your browser stores streamed MP3s temporarily on your hard drive. Learn where to look and save them for later with our guide.