WiMax on a Train

CalTrain "Baby Bullet" locomotive at 4th & King, originally uploaded by party of the third part.

Forget Snakes on a Plane.

Soon commuters in the San Francisco Bay Area will be able to enjoy high-speed wireless on the train.

Caltrain said last month that it has become the first rail line in the United States to test wireless broadband service on trains traveling up to 79 miles-per-hour.

The commuter rail service, which zips commuters between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, worked with Intel and Nomad Digital to test a high-speed wireless service based on WiMax, a long-range cousin of the popular WiFi wireless technology.

With the ‘proof of concept,’ completed, Caltrain said it will now work on the engineering required to make access available along 50-miles of rail line. Caltrain estimates the project will cost less than $334,000.

As a result, the train may soon have driving beat two ways: you can drink and watch streaming video.

Kill Your Television (It's Time to Buy a New One)

televisions-000820, originally uploaded by rabinal.

Like old-fashioned tube TVs? Too bad. A great piece in the New York Times on the end of an era.

"The end of picture-tube TVs is accelerating faster than a lot of us expected," said Randy Waynick, a senior vice president for Sony Electronics. The company, which offered 10 tube models two years ago, will pare that number to two next year, both of them wide screens. "Picture-tube TV sales reductions were far greater than forecast," Waynick said.

Roll Your Own Robot

Lego Mindstorms NXT, originally uploaded by msabramo.

Lego's Mindstorms NXT, launched August 2, is better than a robot. It's a robot you build yourself. A hacker's dream. Can't wait to see what people come up with.