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Amaryllo launches Purity Bluetooth GPS receiver in Europe
Joining the fairly saturated Bluetooth GPS market -- but not exactly competing for that "world's smallest" crown -- is Amaryllo's Purity. Sporting a 3.39- x 1.73- x 0.52-inch enclosure and weighing 2.08 ounces, the sleek, matte-finished device sports internal Bluetooth for connecting with PDAs, smartphones, and other GPS-lovin' gizmos, and receives its intel via the SiRF Star III LP (low-power) chipset. Reportedly, the unit can muster 15 hours on a single charge, and should also ship with a car charger, AC adapter, rubber anti-slip stickers, and a silicon protections sleeve. While we doubt this €90 ($118) receiver will see US shores anytime soon, it's slated to land in Europe next month, but we American (and Taiwanese) lads have plenty of alternatives to choose from, anyway.[Via NaviGadget]
Researchers develop metamaterial with negative refractive index
We've got next-to-invisible objects and cameras with ridiculously large sensors, and thanks to a team of brilliant researchers over in Germany, now we've got "an exotic material with a negative refractive index for visible light." Gunnar Dolling and his colleagues at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany have created a metamaterial with layers of silver sandwiching a thin sliver of nonconducting magnesium fluoride on a glass sheet, and once an array of square holes were etched in, his tests showed that the "structure had a negative refractive index of -0.6 for light with a wavelength of 780-nanometers," besting the previous record of 1,400-nanometers. While the scientific babble may not mean much to you, the long and short of it is that this discovery could "lead to further breakthroughs in invisibility cloaks, which could hide objects from the human eye" and make escaping your troubles quite a bit easier. Moreover, the technology could be used in "superlenses" to see details "finer than the wavelength of visible light," but Dolling is reportedly more interested in studying the effects of his discovery than attempting to build any mystical devices, which is probably for the good of mankind, anyway.[Via Slashdot]
HD VMD format gets support from German film distributor
That other high definition disc format, VMD has announced some of the content customers can expect at launch in 2007. German independent distributor VCL is launching with familiar titles like Sleepy Hollow, Paparazzi, Reefer Madness and Hostage in January. No word on price, specific dates or features are available yet. The company behind VMD, NME Inc. has previously indicated it plans to support the low cost format with Bollywood titles and Broadway shows. Using older red laser technology and a multilayered structure, VMD aims to provide HDTV content at a much lower price than Blu-ray or HD DVD. We'll likely find out more about the company's plans at CES 2007 and get a look at the first player.[Via Home Media Retailing]
Confirmed: Wii has MP3 playback support
In the most recent "Iwata Asks" interview, Iwata talks with Kouichi Kawamoto about the Photo channel for the Wii. Aside for some basic Photobooth functionality, Kawamoto mentions an interesting tidbit: MP3's stored on the SD card along with the photos will be played in the background during a slideshow. While this seems horrendously not cool, consider the fact that this functionality is in fact very similar to the Xbox 360's ability to play personal tracks during gameplay. In fact, a developer could most likely easily implement this functionality into any game they desire, so keep on the look out. If nothing else, it's an easy cop-out if Nintendo wants to add an extra "music channel" to expand functionality.
Medion's Akoya RIM 2550: 22-inches of all-in-one Media Center
Medion is one of those low-end, consumer electronics manufactures whose products sell in the likes of Aldi, Woolworths, and Toys 'R Us around Europe. Still, they bring some design cred as demonstrated in this Akoya RIM 2550. This unspecified "Dual Core" all-in-oner brings Windows Media Center to that big 22-inch display and features 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, a DVD-burner, ExpressCard slot and suite of USB and Firewire jacks, Gigabit Ethernet, an integrated webcam in the bezel, and a dual analog/digital TV-tuner for good PVR'in fun. Yeah, the keyboard is wireless, but if you're a lefty just forget about using the touchpad, unless of course you bat from both sides of the plate. No drop date but expect the 2550 to pull €1,399 / $1,785 sometime before the sun burns itself out.[Via gadgetzone (in Dutch)]
DS as language tool
In Leipzig, Nintendo announced a new DS game designed to teach the user English. Wunderbar! The game is due in Germany on October 13th.While the possibility seems obvious, Nintendo has not announced any plans to release games geared at other languages. Here's hoping, however -- how convenient would it be to study language on the go with a DS? Whether you're using the DS game to brush up on a language you already know, or delving into something new, the opportunities here are vast. But instead of going into that, Ninty was careful to distance the DS from education, stating that the handheld would not turn into an educational tool. And why not? So long as the games continue to be fabulous, what's wrong with educating the masses in a fun and portable way?Let us know what you think!
Bungie secret code or bungled codec?
Look everybody! It's a super-secret message from Bungie...disguised as a Dashboard update bug. I don't speak German, so I'll let reader Papa Moll explain: After the spring dashboard update the halo 3 trailer shows an strange artifact. a lot of users out there think it is a new message from bungie but they are all wrong! the same artifact happens on winxp running the bungie video in windows media player. it looks like Microsoft has implemented the actual winxp wmp codecs into the spring update. The guys over at xbox-lan.com asked their contact a microsoft a few days ago if thats correct and got the information that "The WMP Team is on it...." but nothing more. So this is not a Bungie message, its a codec message. And I was sure they were trying to tell me something. This reminds me of the people who see the Virgin Mary on a piece of burnt toast.
First German HD DVD: "The Ghost of Mae NAK"
Not just Americans love high-def. Germans want in on the party too and are set to release their first HD DVD. The Ghost of Mae NAK is set to come out on June 26 at the cost of 39.99 EUR. That price includes though, the normal DVD and the HD DVD in a bundle pack. There is a good chance that the HD DVD will be available for purchase by itself later on. This is a European disc and therefor a bit different then ours. The film is recorded in 1080p25 rather then our 24 frames a second and the disc employs MPEG2 on a single layer HD DVD. Now if we only knew what the movie was about...[thanks for the tip WifiSpy] [thanks for correcting the google translation Fred]
Camino 1.0.1 with security, Java, Keychain updates
Hot on the heels of Firefox releasing a 1.5.0.3 security update, Camino has been bumped to 1.0.1 with mostly security and bug fixes which include: Fixed several critical security issues, including those fixed in version 1.8.0.3 of the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine. Upgraded the bundled Java Embedding Plugin (http://javaplugin.sf.net) to version 0.9.5 d Improved ad-blocking, especially of German ads Enabled the opening of local SVG files Fixed an issue where Camino on Intel-based Macs was unable to read Keychain entries stored by Camino on PowerPC-based Macs As always, you can snag a copy from CaminoBrowser.org.
Welcome to the party Europe, first major HDTV broadcast
Take your shoes off though, I just put in new carpet. And the first thing broadcast in HD? Why Tom Cruise of course, while I don't agree with their choice of Minority Report (I'm a Top Gun/Days of Thunder guy), it does make a great show in high definition what with the CG and blowing stuff up.Germany's ProSiebenSat.1 will be the first to broadcast nationally on Sunday, although a regional cable channel apparently started showing science programs on Tuesday (don't they know? Tom Cruise has done the scientific research). Rival German broadcaster Premier will launch its own HDTV transmissions on December 3. BskyB, CanalSat and Ski Italia have all promised to have their high definition ready for next years World Cup, which will be a showcase for the technology in Europe.
