Outer limits of vintage tech uncovered

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The urge to 'be professional' led to many mutations. The PBS Executive IV is executive because it's built into a briefcase.
This, however, cannot disguise its true nature, which is a Spectrum+ with thermal printer and Microdrive storage: without a display, it is not entirely clear how it was supposed to work. Nothing else is known of this odd creation, hence the plaintive sign: if you know of (or even better are) the mystery PBS, let us know and we'll make a Spectrum collector a very happy man.

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The Netpliance I-Opener was one of the pioneers in a class of web-surfing gadgets known as Internet appliances.
Though most such devices survived less than a year on the market, the vision of providing simpler and more specialised on-ramps to the internet has largely been realised, albeit a decade later.

The Evilla

The Evilla holds several distinctions among internet appliances. It was one of few shipping devices that ran the cult classic Be operating system, was built around a Sony Trinitron rather than a flatscreen, and was also pulled after less than two months, with Sony buying back all of the units that had sold.

NEWS

Google has introduced Google TV, the first non-mobile application of its Android operating system.

The platform lets people watch television shows alongside internet video, overlaying live video with the user interface on a standard domestic TV screen. It also provides a way of running applications and interacting with the internet using a standard browser, using wireless keyboards and mice as input devices
Google TV was unveiled at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco on Thursday, with partners Intel, Adobe, Sony and Logitech all taking part in the announcement.
Televisions, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes with Google TV technology built in will go on sale in the US in autumn, Google said in a blog post.
Asked about availability in Britain, a spokesperson for the company was more circumspect. "As usual, we expect to make Google TV available in due course in other countries, but our plans currently only extend to the US," the spokesperson told ZDNet UK.
Running Android 2.1 and the Chrome browser, Google TV includes search across TV schedules and the web, programme planning and the ability to download apps from the Android Market store.
Google said that the Google TV software development kit (SDK) and web APIs for TV will be released "soon after launch" so that developers can create and distribute apps via the Android storefront. The source code for the platform will be made available to all in the summer of 2011, the company told ZDNet UK.

Google, Sony and Intel have previously been linked to a potential TV project. Samsung has also said it is looking at "a Google TV", but the hardware maker was not represented at the I/O conference.
Sony will produce the first complete Google TV, while Logitech is set to build a set-top box to plug into existing TVs. Logitech also plans to produce an HDTV camera for video chat on Google TV, as well as remote control software for smartphones.
The Sony and Logitech products are both based on Intel's CE4100 Atom SoC processor. The chip combines an Atom core with 3D and HD video accelerators, encryption and security, and various forms of audio and video I/O. It has hardware support for H.264 video decoding, among other codecs. However, it does not directly support VP8, the video component of Google's own WebM media standard. Likewise, it has hardware for digital audio in MP3, AAC and WMA formats but not in Theora, WebM's audio codec.
Sony's TV will be available in the US towards the end of the year, where Logitech's box is "expected in autumn 2010", according to a Logitech spokesperson. "We will start to see developments in the UK from 2011," the spokesperson told ZDNet UK.

NEWS

Google has announced that the Chinese government has renewed its Internet Content Provider license, earning it another year of business in China. 

The search giant said on Friday that it was granted the renewal after it agreed to make changes to the way it redirects users to its Hong Kong web site, where web search can be unfiltered under China's "one country, two systems" approach to Hong Kong.
Google's first solution to its China problem — which kicked off in January when Google declared that it no longer intended to censor search results in China — was to simply move Chinese-language search to Hong Kong in March. At the time, it admitted that it did not know whether or not this would actually work, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin citing a "lack of clarity" around what exactly Google was allowed to do and what it was not.

Bottle-By-Bottle: Building Your Small Business in an obscure niche market

Entrepreneurs throughout the world are hard at work putting the foundations in place for a stronger tomorrow. Everyday small business owners are defying the odds of the economy and are making great strides toward creating change. From the most popular industries to the most obscure niche markets, entrepreneurs are paving the way forward.

Consider for a moment an entrepreneur like Jim Martin, founder of BubbleTat.com. Jim Martin is an American business owner that is building a small business that is quickly becoming a change force within the tattoo hygiene market. After years of adorning his body with tattoos, Jim became fed up by the lack of proper after tattoo care products and went to work creating BubbleTat. If you have not heard of this company yet, you should know that it is quickly making a name for itself in a niche market where obscurity is king. By creating a harmonic blend of aloe, moisturizers, and antibacterial agents, BubbleTat is a product that the tattoo industry has been missing. Luckily for Jim, his affinity for getting inked has put him at the helm of a market changing product.

Jim Martin and his success with BubbleTat are just one example, but every day, entrepreneurs just like Jim (albeit most of which likely wear less ink) are pushing through this difficult economy and are paving the way for a brighter tomorrow. For those entrepreneurs out there that need a little extra motivation today, just keep building your company like Jim, bottle-by-bottle!