by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Dec 3rd 2007 at 1:02AM
BMW has started testing an IP solution for its cars that uses standard
ethernet to connect car components to the central computer. The testbed could potentially lower costs: if not due to the physical component cost, then as a result of the IPv6 protocol's future-proof design. BMW even feels satisfied that the IP network can cope with safety features, which may be undermined somewhat by the inevitable attempts at high-speed
LAN parties in the back seat.
[Via
Autoblog]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Dec 2nd 2007 at 7:50PM
All steam ahead for the OLPC Foundation, which recently received an order from Peru for 260,000 of the little XO laptops. Also news is that Mexican billionaire and Negroponte's chum Carlos Slim has purchased 50,000 for his country. That's against a background of
$2 million sales a day on the Give One, Get One program. Clearly, the OLPC Foundation is the most successful program out there for getting laptops into the hands of schoolchildren.
[
Image credit]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Dec 2nd 2007 at 2:50AM
Is the mobile phone really mature enough for brick phones to make a retro comeback? According to the makers of the ironically named Mini MOB, the answer to that is yes. The Mini MOB is definitely designed in the retro brick phone style, but at only 3.5 cm wide, it could probably be considered a scale model. It includes some pretty standard specs -- camera, MP3 player, 128 MB card for the SD slot -- but also happens to have an amazing battery life of 30 days standby, and a full
72 hours of continuous talk time! That's almost enough to get us interested in picking one up, but at £160 ($320+) it ain't an easy decision.
[Via
TechDigest]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Dec 1st 2007 at 6:50PM
Even 6 months ago, it would have been inconceivable to imagine the CEO of the biggest cellphone operator in the US sniping at its primary competitor's hints at becoming more open. The key point being that none of the cellphone operators in the US are actually "open" by any objective definition, so maybe AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson should have bitten his tongue rather than stating that his company is "probably one of the most open networks in the world," in a mild rebuke to
Verizon's open network plan for 2008. Also Randall, stating that "all of the handsets we sell are Java-equipped" might be a little unwise considering that
AT&T's flagship handset, and probably the most widely publicized handset (ever?) is clearly not. At least the debate is moving forward: hopefully his statement that "[all carriers] are all going to be open over time" will come to fruition with
a little more gentle prodding coupled with
the occasional kick up the arse.
[
Image source]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Dec 1st 2007 at 4:03PM
As if
the last two reports about a 32GB Zen from Creative weren't enough for you, here's another for a lazy Saturday. This time, Crave claims to have an unspecified confirmation that a 2GB and 32GB Zen is coming, and it's coming in flash form. Would that make this the highest capacity flash PMP out there? It'd certainly be
pipping Sansa to the post.
[Thanks, Cody B.]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Dec 1st 2007 at 8:55AM
Sony's XEL-1 OLED TV -- with its 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and
a ridiculous 3mm thin enclosure -- has been unboxed over at TV Snob. Next to all of its accessories, the XEL-1 looks rather less appealing when compared to
the clean press shots. In particular, we're left a little confused as to what the deal is with that ugly external power brick: isn't that what the big box underneath the screen was for?
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 25th 2007 at 9:35PM
Old
laptops are a geek modder's best friend: this particular example is one of the better mods we've seen to incorporate an old lappie, with a guy called Ben sticking his old machine behind the strings of an electric guitar. He then linked up the sound produced by the guitar to a visualizer in the laptop, allowing it to pump some psychedelic-looking sound waves out to onlookers. Beats the usual
sticker decorations, dontchafink?
[Via
Technabob]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 25th 2007 at 5:54PM
Quick, before some pretentious post-postmodern indie band rips the idea and integrates it into their set: check out the video after the break of
the will it blend dude sticking a Gibson X-Plorer's fender into one of their machines. Yeah, we're total suckers for the Guitar Hero games, and we love to see Guitar destruction as much as the next rock fiend, so you can probably guess the result.
[Via
Joystiq]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 25th 2007 at 4:04PM
In a month that has seen several people killed after being
tasered, a UN committee of ten experts has ruled that tasers constitute torture and are capable of killing. This flies in the face of the manufacturer's statement, which is that any resulting deaths after a taser is used are "attributable to other factors." Intended to prevent officers from having to use lethal firearms, the taser has arguably become well established as just another tool in a regular officer's arsenal for use in scenarios where a firearm would never be considered. As for what effect this ruling will have on the sale of tasers, we're guessing "not much" until all the involved parties come into agreement about
the lethality (or lack thereof) of the taser.
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 25th 2007 at 2:46PM
A group of
Linux users have spoken out against
Asus and their apparent non-compliance with certain aspects of the General Public License attached to Xandros Linux distro that comes with the Eee PC. This flustered controversy centers around Asus modifying a module of the Linux kernel without distributing the source code, something that breaks the rules of the license. Your average Eee PC owner isn't going to give a damn about such a trivial point, so end users can safely ignore this debate. As for whether Asus will step up and do what it should have done from day one, that'll depend on how loud the developers involved make their case. Type harder guys!
[Via
Slashdot]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 25th 2007 at 12:56PM
When you're out trawling for a copy of the rapidly selling out
Rock Band, you may run into a cheap knock-off or two of the rhythm game genre. Our tipster spotted several units including a Guitar and DDR imitation in Macy's, and a Drum game in another store. All of them plug directly into a TV, but none are particularly cheap at around $40 each. The usual target audience for these kind of gadgets are unsuspecting parents looking for a present for the kids, so make sure you include a rigorous education program in the perils of game rip-offs when you hand in your holiday wish-list.
[Thanks, Seth]
Read - Guitar Superstar
Read - Dance Mania
Read - Drum Star
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 25th 2007 at 10:53AM
If you're gonna make a
remote that stores away in your laptop's PCMCIA slot, you probably shouldn't make it so it sticks out. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the USB Media Remote from USB Geek does, and it also includes a USB dongle that sticks out too. Frankly, we'd rather go for
any other option than deal with all the hassle that this $30 gadget promises to bring.
[Via
Everything USB]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 24th 2007 at 11:42PM
OQO has been sending out invitations to a London press conference which will include a pre-launch unveiling of an unspecified product. They're also announcing what jkOnTheRun calls an Anytime / Anywhere Computing Environment, which is so vague that it could mean almost anything. The CEO of the company will be at the event too, so we know this probably isn't going anything as insignificant as
a point update to existing models.
[Via
Boy Genius Report]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 24th 2007 at 9:34PM
Using a simple but bulky cart from Japan, it's possible to make your
DS play
Famicom games. It'll also play NES games if you can get your hands on an adapter for the different cart shape. Mark this down on your shopping list before you make your compulsory, once-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Akihabara.
[Via
Technabob]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 24th 2007 at 5:19PM
If we ignore all the nonsensical parts of this Inquirer article, then we see that
T-Mobile USA might be about to make an announcement regarding their US
3G offering. According to a rep, the company will be making an announcement on December 6th on the subject, which sounds to us like
the Government might have finally shifted off of T-Mobile's turf. That's all the relevant details we have, so set your calendars if 3G networks news announcements are your kinda thang.
[Thanks, Frank P.]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 24th 2007 at 3:35PM
We have no idea if this thing is real, but if it is you can probably expect to pick one up from nondescript street markets across China. With a claim to fame of one less than a billion games included, the "999999999 in 1 Super Game" should give the "
big three" consoles a run for their money.
[Thanks,
Rico]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 24th 2007 at 1:48PM
NVIDIA's recently rolled out
GeForce 8800M GTX has already made its way into a laptop, specifically Rock's Xtreme 770, specially updated to integrate the new chip. The 770 features a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, a 7200RPM 200GB HDD, 2GB of RAM, a 17-inch 1920x1200 display, and that all important GeForce 8800M GTX graphics card. The new card is certainly no disappointment, kicking the 8700M by a factor of two in most gaming benchmarks (although that also says a lot about the 8700M's lackluster performance.) The bottom line with the 8800M GTX is that it enables acceptable performance in Crysis at reasonable resolutions, which is more than can be said of most desktops. However, you might want to hold off until the GPU reaches lappies other than the Rock Extreme 770, which costs £2,199: that's over $4,500 at the current exchange rate.
[Thanks, Angelus Cat]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 18th 2007 at 9:49PM
If you count yourself as one of a legion of the "clothes clueless," then this smart closet could be the end of your troubles. It sounds as if you'll need a wardrobe full of
RFID tagged clothes for it to work -- although the specific technology isn't clear -- but once your clothes are
wired sown up, your wardrobe will inform you when you "accidentally" choose the same clothes the second time you meet the same person, and will give you advice on the correct shoes to go with your outfit, among other hints. Of course, the inventors have overlooked an array of paradoxes here (if you're
organized enough to set this up, you've gotta have
some common sense) but we like the wackiness of the idea anyway. If the future's anything like this, we better be ready for a whole lot of patronizing machines.
[Via
The Raw Feed]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 18th 2007 at 4:52PM
Although the article doesn't contain much more information about the
Amazon Kindle that we hadn't seen before, Newsweek's cover story on the device is the first
official confirmation that the device exists. Featuring an interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the article lays down the feature set -- $399, 6-inch E-ink screen, no backlight, EV-DO "Whispernet" on Sprint for over the air book purchases -- and the company's vision for digital books replacing "the last bastion of analog." Books will go for $9.99, and users can even subscribe to newspapers and "select blogs" for monthly fees. Also news is that the Kindle gets 30 hours of battery life, and can fully recharge in only two. One thing's for sure, this is looking way more compelling a package than
previous attempts at the eBook idea.
[Thanks,
Alex]
by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Nov 18th 2007 at 2:44PM
The
predicted bidding war between
Garmin and
TomTom over a takeover of
Tele Atlas has certainly come to fruition, with TomTom all set to go ahead with a $4.2 billion bid taking place on Monday. Garmin stepped back from the brink on Friday,
after offering a measly $3.3 billion. Tele Atlas's management must certainly be happy that the company didn't jump earlier, because it was only a few months ago that
TomTom's offer was $2.5 billion. Does anyone else get the feeling that these numbers are starting to lose their meaning?
