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ICYMI: Segway's plan B and flexible concrete
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-2").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Segway came to Intel's Developer's Forum to show a prototype for a self-balancing scooter that is also a robot. If the public SDK works out well, Segway hopes to release a consumer version of whatever it becomes in 2017.
Carl Zeiss shooting for budding DSLR filmmaker audience with new cine lenses
Even if your interest in photography is fringe at best, you've probably heard the name Carl Zeiss. The optics company has planted its lenses all over the places, from DSLRs to numerous point-and-shoots, and now it's catering directly to our love of DSLR filmmaking. Ol' C. Z. took time at least week's NAB to unveil what it's dubbing "the world's first set of cine lenses designed especially for HDSLR cameras." The Compact Prime CP.2 lenses, pictured, and the more handheld-friendly Lightweight Zoom LWZ.2, should be compatible Canon EF, Nikon F and Arri PL mounts, which should cover your video-enabled photo-snapper lineup. We won't get too into the nitty-gritty details here, except to say the former is claiming no vignetting and the latter less than two kilograms in weight. Both sets should be available in June, and as for price... well, mum's the word, but we wouldn't be surprised if these guys didn't end up about midway into the four-figure range.
Sony VAIO W, Z, F, and Y series hands-on: lean and green vs. gaming elite
Sony's unleashed quartet of Scrabble-friendly VAIOs this week -- Z, F, Y, and W -- and while they all have their merits, the two that really caught our eye were the the bulkier, gamer-friendly VAIO F, and the environmentally-conscious VAIO W Eco Edition. The green hue's gonna be a deal-breaker for some, but the packaging is a welcome touch and from cursory glance it is a sturdy and competent netbook. There's never enough time to test the internals, but for now, at least take solace in a bevy of pictures below (VAIO Y and Z after the break). %Gallery-82070% %Gallery-82044%
Blizzard gets an F at the Better Business Bureau
Looks like quite a few of those players who threatened to complain about Blizzard ended up doing so: over on the local Better Business Bureau website for Blizzard's region, our favorite game developer has earned an F. The BBB says that they've been given this rating "for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law's licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company's industry is known for its fraudulent business practices." Ouch. We don't really know that any of those things are true about Blizzard's way of doing business, but there are certainly many people on the forums every day who claim that the first two especially are major issues.Personally, I'm as big a critic of Blizzard as anyone when I think that there's something to complain about, but this rating hardly seems justified -- even if the BBB has received tens of thousands of complaints, that's still just a small portion of the playerbase. And despite the occasional downtime and various class nerfs, they hardly deserve an F rating, especially when a company that many people really do have issues with is riding along with an A rating. The BBB page also says that Blizzard's mass bannings have been a factor in many complaints -- there is probably no distinction made (or that can be made) in terms of complaints between people who have broken the ToS and people who have not.At any rate, even if the F rating is there, it obviously has very little effect on Blizzard's business -- how many of you ran to check the rating before you decided to subscribe to World of Warcraft? It seems like a few customers (who may or may not have broken the rules to begin with) have ruined Blizzard's reputation with the BBB, but it's fairly apparent that the BBB doesn't hold much sway among Blizzard's customers anyway.[Thanks ThisURLNotFound!]
