Wow, Asus was really active last year! According to the Wall Street Journal, Asus released a new Eee model every six weeks. A little too much you might say? Asus chairman and founder, Jonney Shih agrees with you:

“We might have offered too many models because of our competitive engineering culture,” Mr. Shih said, adding that the company won’t repeat this mistake. This year, Asustek plans to release three new versions.

Aside from competitiveness, another reason cited for this rapid pace of release makes sense: Asus realized that customers weren’t really going for the original Eee’s relatively miniscule keyboard and lack of hard drive.

In any case, the WSJ story relates a classic tale. A small company strikes gold with a big innovation, then struggles to keep up as competitors with more clout start establishing themselves within the same market (Can anyone say “Internet Explorer”?). But Asus won’t go down fighting, and if Jonney Shih and co. continue displaying the inventiveness that led to the Eee, I don’t think Asus’ future in the market they created looks bad.

There are plans in the Philippines to offer a PHP 100 million reward (a bit over $2 million) to anyone who can find holes in the automated election system for the country’s 2010 elections. This Monday, Philippine Senator Alan Peter Cayetano will file a resolution seeking to allocate that much money from the automation project’s $230 million budget.

As Technograph reports:

Cayetano, at a press conference Friday, said that if any IT expert can establish that the system to be used in the 2010 polls is not secure from fraud and tampering, “Comelec should cancel the contract, save the P11 billion and sue for damages the contractor in the event of such successful hacking.”

He said he would rather revert to the manual counting of votes if the computerized system would lead to wholesale cheating.

The senator does not seem to realize that even the most well-designed system will have flaws that someone will eventually discover—especially if they have such a massive incentive to do so.

Why would the senator insist on canceling the system’s implementation if (actually when) an exploit is found? Wouldn’t it make more sense to collect the data on any holes discovered, plug them, and thus maximize the $2 million reward’s impact?

It seems Mr. Cayetano’s paranoia about automating elections in the Philippines is clouding his judgment. What do you think, dear readers?

Crank up your volume a bit, so you can hear what’s going on here:

So what do you think of the above? Personally, I don’t think the scanner actually played the Imperial March from Star Wars. My “proof”? Watch the beginning of the sequence again: the scanner moves consistently, yet the “note” changes to accommodate the melody.

Although I do think some modding was done to make the scanner assembly follow a routine. And the planning and hard work that made that necessary—even though ultimately useless—deserves some credit.

(PS: If you’re wondering what the Imperial March is, let me first pity you, then ask you to watch Star Wars)

• Current Earphone Controllers Don’t Work with 3G iPod Shuffles
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Lawmaker John Manangsang, seeking to curb his province’s high-rate of HIV infections, has proposed a law where HIV/AIDS patients will be implanted with microchips to facilitate their tracking. The plan is to stay on top of their location, and “punish” them if they infect a healthy person.

How knowing someone’s location will help curb the spread of AIDs isn’t clear, unless you use that information to maintain constant surveillance, in which is very wrong. It’s easy to understand Manangsang’s reasons for pushing this program, but before we know it people could be implanted with RFID chips simply because they suffer from the common cold. Read more

Check out these iPhone-themed cupcakes, which recently won some cupcake decorating contest. A little rough on the edges, but you can be forgiving when pastries are involved. Besides, they look so yummy, it’s to imagine competitors wishing they could eat Apple’s “significant” competition away. (laughingsquid.com)

Goldsmiths, of the University of London, has developed a software system that translates sound into radiating concentric circles on a screen. The Lumisonic theoretically allows the deaf to “see” sounds and hopefully react and interact with them, and controls how it presents the circles based on the pitch of the input audio. Read more

Ok, check out the video below of Obscura Digital’s VisionAire technology, which allows real-time manipulation of holograms:

But wait, wasn’t Minority Report’s slick 3D interface (which the above is very reminiscent of) listed as one of the Top 10 Movie Usability bloopers by expert Jakob Nielsen? His point was that “it’s very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer”. And, as this post gets typed out, it’s easy to see that the keyboard is still the fastest way to do things. (dvice.com)

Looks like The History Channel is jumping on the Batman bandwagon, coming out with a feature on batman’s gadgets tonight (July 21) at 9:00 pm. Replay available a few hours later, July 22 at 1:00 am. Mark your bat-calenders, fellow bat-lovers, and get ready with your bat-criticisms or -praises if the THC gets things wrong/right.

In the meantime, feel free to check out The Great Batman Equipment Archive. Definitely a labor of love. Or the less-than-average rundown of PC World.

A little bird recently told us about VoIP Now’s 25 Killer Gadgets for the VoIP Fanatics. Sounds good, but do we really need 25—or even 3—gadgets to maximize VoIP? Won’t amassing 25 gadgets for VoIP be a genuine killer for our time and budgets?

Personally, we’re still all for VoIP-ing via Skype with our laptop, or even just a simple IP phone. We’re all for the relatively barebones approach, as experience teaches that the less you use for VoIP interaction, the better. But then again, we also like adding fring into the mix—and there really are VoIP fanatics out there.