News URL

Product: Beckman Style 9010

Manufacturer: Red Wing

Wired Rating: 8

There are really two ways to go about building a boot. You can go the sneaker-meets-Gortex route found in kicks like the Kayland Zephyrs. That’s fine if you want to hike up Mt. Whitney. But what if you need a pair of boots that can be worn with a tie? Then you should strap on something like Red Wing’s Beckman 9010s.

Even though Williamsburg lumberjack-chic hipsters will never truly put these guys to the test, the 9010s are built to withstand some harsh conditions. Constructed from thick leather, rubber and even a little bit of wood, they’ve been treated and sealed to keep the elements out and keep heat in. We trudged through a myriad of winter conditions — hail, rain, bitter (for California) cold, and all the while our tootsies remained toasty.

This is in part due to the thick wool socks we had to wear with the boots. The 9010s have two problems: almost zero cushioning in the sole and harsh stiffness out of the package. We solved the first problem with some Dr. Scholl’s inserts. The second? We had to break in the boots with extreme prejudice.

It took, we’re not kidding, two months to get the 9010s broken in. And while it wasn’t always easy (blisters and sore arches), the payoff was amazing. After applying ample amounts of boot oil — but mostly just walking long distances — we were treated to footwear that feels like sneakers, but are tougher than a pair of cinder blocks.

WIRED Clint Eastwood levels of ruggedness. Boots you can wear while trudging through rain and muck or to a board meeting. Wear and tear only makes ‘em better.

TIRED Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight: a shade under 2 pounds. Do not wear these things if you need to run fast or walk silently.

Go to Source

Product: Pen E-P2

Manufacturer: Olympus

Wired Rating: 6

If you have trouble deciding between a digital SLR and a compact point-and-shoot, Olympus’ new micro four-thirds camera may be the perfect camera for you … provided you’ve got a cartoon-sized sack full of money.

The E-P2’s predecessor, the E-P1, was a 12-megapixel-flaunting, retro-style-touting, compact shooter loaded with pro-level features like HD-video capability, superb low-light performance. It also had the ability to use a wide range of interchangeable lenses from Olympus and Panasonic. The updated E-P2 is nearly identical to the E-P1 with the addition of an accessory port, which allows the use of add-ons like an included LCD viewfinder and an optional microphone. There are also new in-camera effects, autofocus tracking and a nifty all-black finish.

The E-P2’s bundled digital viewfinder, which was previously an optional accessory, is actually very similar to the viewfinders found on film cameras. Sadly, the its image quality is terrible. It’s poorer than the main LCD on the camera, and is an order of magnitude less detailed than an actual SLR’s optical viewfinder because of the limited number of pixels squeezed into the device. When panning or moving the camera, the image in the LCD noticeably lags, creating an annoying disconnect between reality and what is seen in the viewfinder. Worse yet, the viewfinder prevents the use of a flash, as the viewfinder plugs into the camera’s hot shoe.

The two new in-camera effects are Diorama and Cross-Processing. The former gives you fake tilt-shift: a photographic sleight of hand that makes ordinary scenes look like tiny dioramas. The latter gives your images the look of cross-processed film. How does it look? Take a gander at your myparentswereawesome.com and you’ll get an idea of the aesthetic.

These new features add up to push the EP2’s price tag to $300 more than the E-P1’s already steep $800 kit price. Is it worth it? Well, that goes back to the cartoon-sized sack full of cash. If you’ve got it, spend it, and get a new robust point-and-shoot, while helping rebuild the shattered economy. Everybody else (that’s pretty much you, me and really anyone who didn’t receive a government bailout) would be wise to hold off.

WIRED Compact, 12-megapixel camera with interchangeable lenses. Giant LCD screen. Great low-light performance, professional features including full manual control and RAW mode. That design is hot, son. Hot!

TIRED A good deal more expensive than the nearly identical E-P1. Costs about the same as a full-sized DSLR. LCD viewfinder is lower-resolution than the main LCD and is annoyingly laggy. Viewfinder also hogs flash hot-shoe.

Go to Source

Product: Devour Smartphone

Manufacturer: Motorola

Wired Rating: 5

Motorola’s newest Android phone, the Devour, is pretty. Its sleek body, aluminum build and fun slidey screen practically yell, “Pick me up! Play with me!”

And the first thing you’ll want to play with is Devour’s screen. The sliding 3.1-inch LCD can trace its design inspiration back to the T-Mobile Sidekick. It may not open with a flamboyant 180-degree spin but it’s fun to flick up and feels sturdy — there’s no hint it will snap if you push it open too hard.

That said, the phone is a bit heavy and bulky. Dudes: If you’re trying to carry this 5.9-ounce brick around in a pant pocket, it could get awkward (sagging is so ’90s). And ladies: It definitely adds a little unnecessary weight and a lot of unnecessary bulk to the standard clutch. Translation? You’d be better off leaving this leviathan at home on a Saturday night.

Operating the phone is wrought with issues too. The touch-sensitive navigation pad (square button beneath the display) is finicky. Sometimes it slides through screens and icons with precision, and other times it gets stuck on an app and simply doesn’t work. The same holds true of the touchscreen: Movement is jumpy and sticky. After mere minutes of use, the finger sludge that built up on the screen was just plain gross. No part of us wanted to put it up to our face to make a call.

But we did make some calls, and the clarity was decent, albeit with a slight echo. The phone’s UI made navigating calls a breeze. Web browsing is also quick and efficient.

With Motoblur (a proprietary skin Motorola slaps on some of its Android devices) twitter feeds, e-mail and news can be displayed directly on the home screen. If the screen were larger than 3.1 inches, this might be a cool feature. But trying to read updates that appear at less than an inch wide verges on painful and could result in — get ready for it — blurred vision. Blur offers five screens for icons and customizable content, but moving content between screens is difficult because of the fussy touchscreen. There’s just way too much hassle when dragging and dropping icons.

Devour has a QWERTY keyboard option (for when you tire of the miserable touchscreen), but despite its fairly large size, we found it hard to type on the keys. Pressing them down is difficult because the buttons are flush to the base. And the edges of the phone had a tendency to dig into fingers. Ouch!

This phone is not for the aspiring Annie Leibovitz. The 3-megapixel camera failed to take a decent picture; photos consistently appeared dim and unsaturated. There is a handy little button on the side for taking quick photos, but with such abysmal performance, we’d rather tote around a separate point-and-shoot.

Watching videos on the Devour is also severely crippled by that too-small screen. The speaker produces good volume and clarity, but squinting at choppy episode of Lost is just irritating.

As far as Android phones go, there are better choices out there — even from Moto. (The adept Droid leaps to mind.) The Devour, for all its outer beauty is ultimately just another pretty face without much substance behind it.

WIRED Slide-out screen is sturdy, satisfying. Easy aggregation of social networks. Attractive chassis and beautiful build materials.

TIRED Physical keyboard does not make up for atrocious touchscreen performance. Weakling camera. Good gravy, can someone get a crane to lift this heavy thing?

Go to Source

Prodigious plumes of planet-warming methane are bubbling from sediments across a broad region of Arctic seafloor previously thought to be sealed by permafrost, new analyses indicate. The resulting increase of methane gas in the atmosphere may accelerate climate warming, scientists say.

Though immense amounts of carbon are known to be trapped in the peatlands of Siberia, a larger, often unrecognized carbon reservoir lies hidden just north of that frigid region, says Natalia Shakhova, a biogeochemist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf — a 2.1-million-square-kilometer patch of Arctic seafloor that was exposed during the most recent ice age, when sea levels were lower — is three times larger than all of today’s land-based Siberian wetlands. When the region was above sea level, tundra vegetation pulled carbon dioxide from the air as plants grew. That organic material, much of which didn’t decompose in the frigid Arctic, accumulated in the soil and is the source of modern methane.

Now, field studies by Shakhova and her colleagues, reported in the March 4 Science, suggest that the submarine reservoir of carbon has begun to leak.

During six cruises in the region from 2003 to 2008, the researchers gathered data at more than 1,000 spots in the Greenland-sized stretch of shallow ocean. The team also took atmospheric readings of methane concentration during one helicopter survey and a wintertime excursion from shore onto the ice-covered sea, says Shakhova.

The researchers found unexpectedly high amounts of methane dissolved in seafloor waters across 80 percent of the area they studied. In some spots, methane concentrations during those six years averaged more than 80 times normal. Because the water over the shelf is relatively shallow — average depth in the region is about 45 meters, Shakhova notes — much of the methane reaches the ocean surface and then wafts into the atmosphere.

Previously, scientists presumed that the carbon trapped in sediments on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf was sealed by permafrost, as nearby deposits on land are. But there’s a big difference between the two, Shakhova says: Much of the permafrost on land remains intact because it’s exposed to bitter winter cold, whereas the seafloor permafrost is bathed in cold, yet definitely not freezing, salt water. The annual average temperature of seafloor permafrost is between 12 and 17 degrees warmer than that of nearby land-based permafrost, she notes.

The warmth of the seawater, as well as heat flowing up from within the Earth, has thawed the seafloor permafrost, releasing the methane, the researchers speculate. “We don’t know how long it’s been bubbling like this,” Shakhova adds.

Sonar images show plumes of methane bubbling from the seafloor, indicating that the gas originates in sediments there. Other measurements show that the methane isn’t generated in the water by microbes or brought to the seas by rivers, Shakhova says.

Each year, the researchers estimate, nearly 8 million metric tons of methane make their way to the atmosphere over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. That’s more than previous estimates for all of the world’s oceans, Shakhova notes.

Siberian seafloor sediments are spewing much more methane than previously thought, but they’re providing only a small fraction of the estimated 440 million tons of that planet-warming gas emitted to the atmosphere each year, Martin Heimann, a biogeochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, comments in Science. Nevertheless, he notes, release of a sizeable fraction of the carbon trapped in these sediments would lead to warmer atmospheric temperatures, which would in turn cause more methane to be released.

Images: 1) Igor Semiletov, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 2) Science/AAAS.

Go to Source