We’re well into 2009, but it’s never too late to look ahead at some of the new gadgets and product launches we’re looking forward to during the year. With one already-launched exception, here’s our roundup of the most interesting and/or useful gadgets that will be hitting stores during this calendar year. Just try and tell us there isn’t one here ready to pry that money out of your hand.

A Very Possible Apple Netbook/E-Book/10-inch Something

This one has been flying around the rumour sites recently, but was launched into the realm of very-possible when a source in a Taiwanese touchscreen manufacturer claimed that Apple has ordered a whole ton of 10-inch touchscreens. (the image above is a mockup created by someone at Gizmodo.)

The market is new, young, and could be (like the smartphone market of two years ago) theirs to take over. What’s it going to look like? Will there be a keyboard, or is it going to be like a giant iphone? My bet is a fantastic sort of larger iphone with a slide-out keyboard of some kind. Although to make that elegant and cheap might be kind of hard, and Steve Jobs has reportedly said that it’s impossible to ship something that costs $500 or less “without it being junk”, and thus it won’t happen.

But then… what are all those touchscreens for? One theory is a competing e-book reader, which would line Apple straight up against…

Amazon’s Kindle 2.0

This one has already launched, but will likely remain one of the top gadgets of the year. Not only did Amazon completely revamp the previously-awful industrial design of their first kindle, moving it much more towards an Apple-inspired direction (why does it always take companies that are not apple several tries to pull this off?), but they continued the free wireless service and increased the battery life to an insane level.

Until an e-book comes out that you can bend like paper and throw across the room, there probably won’t be any kind of massive revolution in the way we read, but as was argued here recently, there doesn’t need to be, as people have already proven themselves incredibly willing to read small text off woefully inadequate devices. I thought about reading a novel off my little cellphone the other day, for god’s sake.

The New ‘Premium’ Netbooks

2009 is finally going to be the year where netbooks move out of their initial phase, in which they showed up on the market, sold a ton, and began taking advantage of the internet-anywhere mentality as popularized by the iPhone.

The early efforts (as chronicled by us some time ago) were good, but lacked certain things: properly sized screens, long batteries, big HDs, etc. Towards the end of the year most manufacturers began releasing upgrades, and by now the near-ubiquitous acer aspire one has been replaced with an entirely new model. Same goes for the extremely popular MSI Wind, and the EEEPC, plus all the other netbooks coming out this year.

Battery life is constantly on the rise, and Intel is releasing the next generation of their tiny Atom chips, which will mean better performance in the same tiny packages. By Christmas of this upcoming year, you’re going to see an entirely new line of great netbooks on the market. And if Apple decides to join the fray? Look for standards to jump even higher.

USB 3

Sure, it’s hardly revolutionary, but it’s useful, and sometime in 2009 we’re going to see cable connections that will make everything much, much faster. Last year intel released all the specifications for USB 3, and in a few months we’ll be seeing the first devices featuring them.

How much faster is it? Let’s say you’ve just setup a new high-definition-equipped media center in your living room (media/streaming centers are likely to really explode this year), and you want to transfer that massive 24-gig HD movie you just downloaded to it. With a normal USB 2.0 connection, you’re looking at about 17 minutes, whereas with USB 3.0, the whole thing will take just over a minute.

It’s all backwards compatible, of course, and is one more step towards a seamless, incredibly fast data transfer between applications. Of course, back when USB 2.0 was an exciting, new thing, the biggest movies could get (if you’re talking about your standard old DIVX here) was around 700megs.

Why does that matter? Well, it may very well be possible that as we continue to invent new and exciting ways to transfer all our data, we’ll just keep getting more and more of that data, in bigger and bigger sizes. So maybe we won’t ever notice higher speeds after all.

(top image from Objectified: A Documentary Film)

This article will make you smarter. We guarantee it. Sure, it’s a big claim to make. How can one article guarantee to improve your intelligence? What are we going to offer you if we can’t? Well—not much, really. It’s not like we can reimburse you for the time spent reading this, but trust us on this one.

Reading through this article just once—even just skimming it—will completely change the way you think about certain things. Why? Because here we are going to present to you the list of the most common misconceptions many people hold, and how to correct them.

After reading this article, you can go out and cut people down to size during friendly bar conversation, becoming the rationalist curmudgeon people always knew you were! But even if you don’t impart this information to anyone else, keep this in mind—we only use 10% of our brains, we should be sure that what we add to them is actual, verifiable information.

What You Thought Was Once True Might Not Be.

That’s right, it’s time for some myth-busting, some balloon-deflating, some general puncturing of sorts. It’s very, very likely that at least one of the misconceptions on this list is currently in your head as a true fact, and therefore having it debunked or corrected is a demonstrable increase in your intelligence. Let’s go!

#1: Columbus Didn’t Believe the Earth Was Flat.

That’s right. It wasn’t that he thought the earth was flat and there was some kind of risk of falling off, he was just trying to find a passage to India. From about Ancient Greece onwards, it was generally known that the Earth was actually round.

#2: Napoleon Wasn’t Short.

Probably the main myth that still surrounds Napoleon, the idea that he was really short figures in a lot of fast evaluations of his character. Surely many short people have taken some kind of solace from all that Napoleon was able to pull off, and others have taken his lack of height as a motivation behind his striving for power. Turns out he was actually 5 feet, 6.5 inches, or 1.686 metres, so there goes that idea.

#3: Scottish Clans and Much of Its Famous History are Largely a Myth.

A huge amount of Scottish history was simply worked out after the fact, and a great deal of mythical Scottish connections to various tartans and clans has been built up, over the decades, on some pretty dubious history. A lot of it was chronicled here, recently.

#4: Cooking With Alcohol Means You Will Be Consuming the Alcohol.

Although everyone likes to say that the alcohol burns off during cooking, this isn’t the case. Some of it does, but there’s no way 5 minutes in a frying pan will somehow ‘eliminate’ the alcoholic strength of a cup of white wine. No problem, really, but if you’re ever serving dinner to a recovering alcoholic, pay attention.

#5: We Use More than 10% of our Brains.

Whoops, pure myth, the idea that 90% of our brains are just sitting there. This one gets repeated plenty. When you read it at the top of this article, did it seem like something you’ve heard so many times that it just seems acceptable? It used to be the same for me.

#6: We Don’t Lose Most of our Body Heat Through the Head.

So that episode in Seinfeld where George is wearing the big Russian hat and no jacket in the middle of winter? If you were using that as a reliable guide to how to dress in December, stop it now.

#7: Eating Late at Night Does Not Make You Fatter.

Nope. Doesn’t happen. It’s based on some kind of idea that, because we’re sleeping, our body is going to convert that just-ingested food into fat, whereas during the day, when we’re awake and using more energy, our body is going to… what, exactly? Decide to use the food for something else?

When you exercise, you are burning fat that you probably took in days or weeks ago. Same goes for storing fat: your body isn’t fast enough to convert a heavy, late-night meal into an instant belly. It’s all much slower and more complicated. The Spaniards eat at 10PM or later. Are they the fattest people in the world?

#8: The Daddy Long Legs Spider Isn’t the Most Venomous in the World.

The idea that it somehow ‘can’t bite you’ but if it could, it would kill you, isn’t true. First of all, it can bite you, and second, if it does, it won’t kill you. You’ll probably barely notice it.

#9: The Inuit Don’t Have Dozens of Words for Snow.

There are more words in English that define snow (or snow-like conditions) than there are in English. This one gets pulled out in every lazy article about languages.

#10: Being Cold or Wet Doesn’t Suddenly ‘Give’ You A Cold.

This is one of the biggest medical misconceptions ever. Being cold or wet can weaken your immune system, which can make you more susceptible to the cold virus. That’s it. Wind and cold air do not have a magic reaction with our skin that suddenly gives us a cold. We don’t suddenly catch a cold from a gust of air or some water.

This one, above possibly all other misconceptions, is possibly the hardest to shake. The amount of people who will insist that they’ve gotten terrible colds directly from gusty days or some rain is absolutely legion.

There are about 100 strains of cold virus out there, so weakening your immune system can certainly make you susceptible to them. But that’s it. Want to prevent colds properly? Every time you’ve done something that could make your immune system weaker, or something that could give you a virus (been out in the cold, shaken hands with someone, all that stuff), wash your hands with soap and warm water.

Doing this a few times a day instead of worrying about magic cold-winds will prevent more colds than putting on 20 jackets ever will.

Take This Precious Information and Spread It.

And now, go out into the world and arrogantly correct every instance of these misconceptions you stumble upon! You will be hailed as the smartest, wisest sage the 21st century has ever seen, or told to shut the hell up because you’re ruining everyone’s fun. Hey, either way.

(with thanks to wikipedia.)

The Timeless Art of Girls on Walls.

We all have that undeniable urge to put up posters and photographs of naked women on our walls. Admit it. We want them up there to greet us when we walk in, to look down on us as we sleep or partake of other in-the-bed activities, and we want them just because they’re naked and nearly life-sized, damnit.

But it’s not exactly classy to head online, order up some posters from the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, or Playboy, or wherever, and just throw them up on your wall. Too fraternity-house, too “Mom finally let me put a lock on my door so I can do whatever I want in here now!” kind of thing. We’re not all 15 anymore.

But wait, wait… just because we’re also trying to act like respectable, classy men (sometimes), are we forced to never put up a large-scale reproduction of the female form? Forced to never contemplate the excellency of that wonderful creation, resigned to examining it only in small, magazine format, online, or in person?

Here’s a Very Fine Solution.

No, we’re not forced to. Societal constraints might prevent us from doing so without a tinge of remorse, but we here at ryoni.com, who know all about the importance of the female body, have discovered what is surely the classiest solution that still allows you to have nearly naked women all over your walls.

It might take a little leap in taste and tolerance, but trust us, that one day when you finally move in with your girlfriend and have to start making decorating decisions together? That day will involve you putting up a representation of a nearly naked woman designed to make people slightly excited while looking at her, and your girlfriend saying “I love it!” and it staying on the wall forever.

How is that possible? Easy: pin-ups!

That’s right. There’s a whole world of glamorous art available to go up on your wall right this very moment, and practically all of it is 100x classier than any cheesy frat-house poster you’ll find elsewhere.

The King of the Pin-Ups.

For something that’s a little less arousing than a full on 2000s-era swimsuit model but still fun to look at, check out some of the unbelievable illustrated work done by the best pin-up artists of the 1940s and 50s. Alberto Vargas is one famous name, but for my money, no one is better than Gil Elvgren.

There’s something about his colour schemes, about the gorgeousness of his women, and the fact that in nearly every piece of work, they’re being ‘caught’ by the artist’s eye in some wonderful phase of undress.

He strikes the perfect balance between the pin-up aesthetic and showing skin, never getting too boring but keeping things just on the edge of tastefulness all the same, which is why his art is perfect to adorn your walls. I’ve got three of his prints on mine.

If illustrated pin-ups aren’t your style, go for actual pin-up photos. There’s a goldmine of good stuff out there, and there’s a certain voluptuous sexiness about many of these girls that you won’t find on a modern calendar.

Curvaceous, Gorgeous Women.

Standards were simply different back then, so what might look like flaws or a more compartmentalized sexiness today (generally, I’m talking about an extra few pounds here, a bit more curvaceousness there) was not only the mainstream back at the time, but was actually celebrated.

As such it means your sexy wall posters are not only more human-looking, but if you ever find yourself in the position of having to defend, for whatever reason, the fact that you have a lot of girly photos on your walls, you’ll be on much more solid ground when it’s time to make your argument.

And If Pin-Ups Don’t Do it For You?

If you’re the kind of guy who doesn’t just put up swimsuit photos on his wall but goes all out and plasters his room with posters of completely naked women, is there a tasteful option for you? Well, yes and no.

Putting up various pieces of vintage erotica, old nudes, and Playboy shots from the 50s is probably your best bet here, but a lot of the old erotica photography just isn’t going to get the eyes of today very excited.

Partially because it’s not very well done in the first place, and second because it’s just a little weird in general. Every woman photographed looks practically the same at first glance.

So unfortunately, those of you who need (or just like) full-on nudity up on your walls are probably a little out of luck when it comes to trying forsome ‘tastefulness’. But don’t worry.

If you ever decide to dial down the erotic quota that covers your wallpaper, there are plenty of extremely sexy and wonderfully sharp pieces of work out there that can keep your desire for nudie ladies intact while saving your decorating sensibilities, too.

Girls Have Secrets.

You might think you know all about the G-Spot or the ubiquitous lower-back tattoo, but do you have any idea what the Dimples of Venus are? The Whale Tail? Do you know that buttock cleavage (there’s got to be a better name for that) has been sexually attractive for centuries? If not, never fear—we’re here to tell you about a few of the strange mysteries of the female body, the uncharted territories and places that actually have real names and concepts attached to them.

A lot of these things come into common knowledge as trends—the kind of things you hear someone mention at school or work before you realize it’s a full-fledged meme, a concept that has been known for some time but has only recently got a proper name.

You Probably Know About the Sex Moves.

Maybe you’re thinking of the sex moves: the dirty sanchez, the rusty trombone, all those non-existent and generally misogynistic myths that always involve some sort of outlandish act. No—these are something else entirely, little hidden parts on the female form that have only recently gained the proper nomenclature to go with them. Check them out:

What About the Dimples of Venus?

Dimples—those little indentations that appear on the cheeks of certain people when they smile—are generally known by everybody. So what are the Dimples of Venus, then? Simple: dimples that appear at the bottom of the lower back, just where the butt starts. For a more formal explanation, I turn to the always-reliable (well, no) Wikipedia:

They are sagittally symmetrical indentations sometimes visible on the human lower back, just superior to the gluteal cleft. They are directly superficial to the twosacroiliac joints, the sites where the sacrum attaches to the ilium of the pelvis.

Hm, sure. In layman’s terms?

The term “dimples of Venus,” while informal, is a historically accepted name within the medical profession for the superficial topography of the sacroiliac joints. The Latin name is fossae lumbales laterales (”lateral lumbar indentations”). These indentations are created by a short ligament stretching between the posterior superior iliac spine and the skin.

Guess not. But it’s clear enough from this—they’re irregular and actually pretty damn desireable. Coming, as they do, at the exact point just above the g-string or bikini line, they form a rather perfect complement to what’s down below.

Or the Whale Tail?

The exact opposite of what you’re thinking, probably. When I first heard the term “Whale Tail” I thought it was referring to some kind of strange deformation of the rear end, a kind of ass that ballooned outwards and somehow, somewhere, made someone think of the tail of a whale. No.

Turns out the actual thing itself is much more appropriate to its name: just like a whale’s tail sticking out above the water, the whale tail on a female—one who has let her pants ride down somewhat, thus exposing her underwear—looks exactly like one. You could call it a Y-shaped thong, and again, according to Wikipedia, it was worn quite intentionally by various celebrities over the past decade, apparently now having fallen out of favour.

Good, I say—who wants an intentionally created piece of underwear exposure when the improvised, happenstance, random one is really the only reason it’s sexy?

And We Can’t Forget Buttock Cleavage!

This one is 100x clearer than the other two we just looked at. You know what it is, the cleavage formed at the top of the butt. But did you know there are desirable depictions of it going back almost three centuries? Check out this Danish painting by Christoffer Eckersberg. Those old Danes were surprisingly adept at prediciting our early-21st-century enjoyments (or trends, at least) when it came to the female form.

Although buttock cleavage and the whale tail have fallen out of favour recently, they’re responsible for a couple of things: besides creating a new term that’s cool in a linguistic sense, they trained our eyes on previously unknown areas of female attractiveness. Any time a ‘new cleavage’ or erogenous zone gets ‘invented’ like this, we as men benefit, as something that wasn’t so special only days before, becomes, right in front of our eyes, yet another entry in the great catalogue of female sexiness.

Moving Our Tired Bodies Once Again

Humans, like certain hibernating animals, tend to store fat during the winter and shed it in the summer. Unlike, say, grizzly bears, we do it through a complicated process known as “getting back in shape”, but it’s generally the same thing, minus the months of sleeping and consuming our own fat.

If you’re the kind of guy who’s been going to a gym all winter, this article isn’t for you. In most places, the winter is cold, dark, and often depressing. It’s fine to hit the gym as much as possible, but oftentimes we find ourselves sitting around just a little bit more, eating a bit more, and moving around a little less.

Now that spring is on the horizon (depending where you are… sorry, Canadians), you need to start thinking about getting active again, about running, exercising, walking—whatever you gotta do.

That’s why ryoni.com is here with five ways you can stop lazing around and quickly get back in shape and back into your routine.

5. Use the Better Weather to Your Advantage.

Each day brings more warmth, right? Any time it’s feasible to get out there and go for a run (people do it throughout the winter, too, but we all know they’re crazy), try it out. Notice it’s suddenly warm enough to go for a long, robust walk without taking your hat and gloves or a heavy coat? Do it!

If you stay conscious of how the weather is consistently improving after the long stretch that is winter, you’ll appreciate every single change in temperature, and with appreciation comes a desire for exploitation. Take advantage of it.

4. Longer Days Are Your Friend.

Come this time—early March—every day is giving us about 2-3 minutes of extra sunlight. You add that up, and in one week you’ve got an extra 15-20 minutes of sun. What’s 20 minutes good for?

Hell, a run, a quick walk, a fast game of catch, or pick-up anything—every week that we move closer towards summer is like a gift of free light allowing you to exercise all the easier.

3. Do Something Every Day.

This is extremely simple but often the hardest step. When coming out of a long period of inactivity, we’re often tempted to set a big plan for ourselves, with specific workdays and all the rest.

Life doesn’t ever work out that easily, and after we miss a few of our scheduled appointments or exercise plans, it’s easy to fall off the wagon. That’s why it’s more important to measure activity in a smaller way, and on a daily basis.

Didn’t have time for your run today, but have 20 extra minutes? Throw on your coat and walk, at a fast pace, for those 20. It’s better than nothing, you don’t have to do a bunch of stretching and deal with the extra details of going for a run or going to the gym, and you’ve still burned some calories and taken some steps towards getting back to the level you want. That’s all that matters, not sticking to the exact weekly schedule you made for yourself.

2. Start Small.

Besides excessive planning, which almost everyone can be guilty of, the other big sin when coming out of a long period like the winter is to overdo it in the quantity department, too. It’s really easy to setup a thorough exercise regime at your desk, followed by a stressful week of trying to follow it, finishing with eventual abandonment of the entire project.

Make a rough outline of your plan, don’t make it too big (in terms of strict schedule but also just straight-up activity levels), and leave enough flexibility, both on paper and mentally, so that if you screw up, miss a few days, or just get caught up in whatever else life is doing, it doesn’t throw you off terribly.

1. Follow the Magic Formula: Cardio/Weights.

Once you’ve internalized all those pieces of advice above, are thinking about getting active every day but not going crazy with your planning or setting excessive goals, and are taking advantage of the extra sun and warmer weather, what exactly do you do?

Do you embark on an ever-increasing amount of running per day, measuring by kilometre? Do you figure out a ton of circuit exercises and do pushups in your basement for hours instead? What’s the best option?

Go to any gym or ask anyone how you can quickly, safely, and effectively get yourself back in shape and they’ll all tell you the quickest, simplest way is a cardio/circuit mix.

Try and get 20-30 minutes of cardiovascular work in every day. That’s running, biking, elliptical training, hell, even power-walking will do it fine.

Then, three times a week, right after you’ve done that cardio, do some weight work. Pop into a gym, or figure out a series of exercises (the internet is full of them) you can do with only your own body weight at home, or buy a set of dumbbells or a resistance band.

Don’t focus exclusively on one or the other: just running or just weights won’t get you back into shape so quickly, and when it finally does, it’ll already be October.

Why This Works So Well

Ask anyone at any gym and they’ll all tell you: for a general ‘get back in shape’ plan, nothing beats the cardio/weight split. Nothing works faster and nothing feels better: every run will feel good because of the weights, and the weights won’t feel as draining because of your cardio capacity.

Any other suggestions for how to get back into it after a long winter? Let us know!