Wow, what a week it was last week ~ volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, threw a little kink into what started to feel like a never-ending adventure across asia and europe, and early on in the trip, i decided to travel with only my blackberry curve, no data plan - only sms and international email - also, no iphone… and figured i’d be so busy, i’d survive just fine. Somewhere while i was diving in Indonesia, HTC contacted me and offered to send over an HTC Legend to try out (knowing i’d been lusting to try out the unibody phone and opitcal trackball in person)… they were even kind enough to send it over to my hotel in italy, along with an italian SIM card… with data! After 3 weeks traveling without using maps/internet/etc on my phone, i thought i was fine… good to disconnect a bit!

HTC Legend shows up ~ pop sim card in ~ start playing with maps and internet and gps and twitter and youtube videos and more… i’ll admit it, it made life 110% easier, nearly instantly. I’ve learned my lesson. Super snappy connection to the digital world 24/7 - it’s not an addiction… its convenience… like being able to go get lost and not need to ask for directions b/c your phone always knows where you are… or being able to go out to drinks, and keep checking in on the status of closed airports and volcanic eruptions and ash clouds and book/change flights while in the middle of an insane italian club? Excessive, but it certainly helped keep the panic of being stranded in europe indefinitely to a minimum… so, THANK YOU, HTC, for reconnecting me to the digital world when i needed it most! Things got a little stressful as people were hopping 22 hour consulate bus rides to London, rushing on packed trains to madrid and rome, booking private 737’s from newark to heathrow… but it’s good to be home!

And beyond the awesome functionality of the phone ~ the internet browsing seems FAR snappier than my iphone and i’m in love with the screen and trackball! Also, every designer i ran into at design week couldn’t help but comment how the phone was nearly more mac than a mac! It feels SO good in your hand, and the single piece body of the phone is just lovely… take a peek at the bunch of pics on the next page of it compared to my mac book pro at my last lunch in Milan at a cute little cafe in brera…

TO PAGE 2 of "HTC Legend + the Volcano"! ----->

Tags: cells - gifts - htc - phone - reviews - shopping - technology

This post is the third in a series of 4 posts sponsored by Syfy’s Caprica focused on Future Technologies. As usual, our fun advertisers enable us do our thing around a theme by trusting us when it comes to content!

Wow. Reading PopSci this morning, mesmerized by this video from my alma mater, UCSD about how “Bacteria Transformed Into Living, Blinking Clocks Could Provide Preciseley Timed Drug Delivery”. Apparently UCSD researchers have used E. coli to synchronize blinking “genetic clocks” - “Programming living cells is one defining goal of the new field of synthetic biology,” said Jeff Hasty, associate professor of biology and bioengineering at UCSD who headed the research team with Lev Tsimring, associate director of UCSD’s BioCircuits Institute. The video on the next page visually demonstrates their research by showing bacteria reading for the gene of a flourescent dye ~ and it looks much like a wave propagating through the bacterial colony. PopSci proposes the scenario… “swap out the dye gene for one that makes drugs, and all of a sudden you get a yogurt that releases exact medication dosages from within one’s own body based on real time feedback.” Can you imagine the possibilities of where this could lead? Or as the research develops further, what complex systems you could “program” in to these living cells? Which could further develop into living organisms and more complex beings? Take a peek at the video on the next page! (Beyond scientifically fascinating, its beautiful too!)

TO PAGE 2 of "UCSD Researchers Program Living Cells to Sync"! ----->

Tags: biology - caprica - cells - science - ucsd