PC World decided to figure out what the top 50 gadgets from the last 50 years would be if they polled their editors and asked them their opinion. There were a few rules. “The devices had to be relatively small (no cars or big-screen TVs, for example), and we considered only those items whose digital descendants are covered in PC World (cameras, yes; blenders, no). We rated each gadget on its usefulness, design, degree of innovation, and influence on subsequent gadgets, as well as the ineffable quality we called the “cool factor.”” Then they totaled the results.
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Taking the next step in their bid to own the entire internet, Google have launched Google Base.

It takes the “tagging” concept familiar to photographers (look at flickr for an example) and applies it to data. Any data. If it can be represented in HTML, it can be stored, described and searched. The idea is you upload your data (recipie, car for sale, resume, cool idea for a new nuclear powered toaster, whatever). Then you tag it with text attributes, i.e “toaster”, “nuclear power”, “zany”.

Currently google base is a separate search but in time I’d expect base data to be integrated into the normal google search results.

As to why… ummm… why not? I guess it’s an easy way of publishing specific targeted content but I can see it getting polluted very quickly - if anybody can upload anything and tag it as anything they like, google will have some fun sorting out the data!

We did the best of Stuff Show yesterday and it was a great day out. Had a bit of a panic on the day, first I was woken up with shouts of a water leak in the loft. After fixing that (well turning the water off), rushing for the train, there was then big time security at the station which nearly resulted in me missing the 9:50 to London. We eventually arrived at the Show at 11AM and it was a full day with a load to see.

To start off with I’m just going to do a quick overview of the gadgets and gizmos on display, over the next week we’ll write up on all the best (and worst) gear we found to play with (or at least see).

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I am sure most of you would have watched Star Wars before. Imagine finding yourself landed on a foreign land, or looking through the most powerful tracking system over your screen, overlook an area over a piece of land. This is what NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) World Wind has in for you. With NASA World Wind, installed users can view the moon in 3D image, with Clementine data and full place names.

According to Patrick Hogan, World Wind project manager at NASA Ames, this was the first of its kind, exploring the moon in 3D interactive environment, created by World Wind.

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We reported yesterday how we were going to the Best of Stuff Gadget Show. Well I’m pleased to say the organisers have given us 10 complimentary tickets to give away to our readers.

The tickets are for this Saturday (5th November 2005), so if you fancy a day out in London and a chance to see a load of the latest and coolest gadgets, then be sure to get in touch.

In order to get a free ticket, leave a comment to this post explaining why you want to go to The Best of Stuff Show. We will send out tickets to the posters of the most amusing and original comments. The closing date for ticket requests is 3PM (GMT) Thursday 3rd November, so that we can catch the last post.

Good luck.

Guess where we’re going

After enjoying the Ideal Home show last month I was delighted to find another much more gadget orientated show is opening this Friday. The Best of Stuff is an annual show where various companies showing off their latest gadgets (just before Christmas coincidentally) .

This year promises to be something special with stands from the vendors like Archos, Creative, Gizmondo, I-Deck, JVC, Sharp Electronics, Q-Be, Nokia, Siemens Mobile, Philips, Sky, iriver and more.

You can get tickets from the Best of Stuff site and included in the price are free tickets to the What Hi-Fi Show

For those who can’t attend you can be confident that we will be reporting on all the best stuff we find here on CG.

A quick note for any developers out there: Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Sever 2005 have finally gone gold, meaning that the code has been finalised and the master CDs have been sent off for pressing.

MSDN subscribers can download the CD images now, the rest of us will have to wait until November 7.

(Via Microsoft Watch)

If the rumours are to be believed Google are readying another weapon in the quest to assimilate the entire internet. Google Base looks like a sort of information free-for-all where you can put “stuff”, tag it, and get it indexed.

Ars Technica have a more coherent and detailed look at the idea.