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Line 6's BackTrack is here to record all your moments of brilliant greatness
You play guitar, and we know you're very gifted. You haven't been to Juilliard, but it doesn't matter because you're inspired. What you need now is something to capture inspiration, so you can then drag it -- in the form of a WAV -- onto your desktop via USB 2.0. You need BackTrack by Line 6. Just plug your guitar into BackTrack, plug BackTrack into your amp, and start playing. The device begins recording when it detects a signal and it never stops as long as the battery has a charge (up to eight hours). When you let out a truly boss riff -- or a tasty lick -- you don't have to worry about losing that gem. The basic package retails for $139.99, can capture up to 12 hours of audio and comes equipped with 1GB flash memory. BackTrack + Mic comes equipped with 2GB flash memory and an internal microphone, records for up to 24 hours and retails for $209.99. Both models are rechargeable via USB and have the standard 1/4-inch in / out and headphone jacks.[Via CNET]
OMG, US txtng brks rcrd
Ready for some truly staggering figures? VeriSign has reported that it delivered some 95.4 billion text messages between US carriers in the first six months of the year, setting a new record. Single-day and single-hour records were also set in the same period -- 648 million and 42 million, respectively -- proving that Americans are finally warming up en masse to text messaging as a totally valid means of communicating, probably thanks in no small part to the proliferation of devices like the enV2, Rumor, and Blitz. If you can call the complete bastardization of the English language used during texting "communicating," that is.
QinetiQ's Zephyr sets another unmanned solar plane flight record
QinetiQ just (unofficially) smashed the record for an unmanned flight by a solar airplane, sending its Zephyr craft into the air for a staggering 83 hours and 37 minutes, more than double the official record by "Global Hawk" in 2001, and a good margin more than its last flight. The plane was guided by autopilot and satellites to a height of 60,000 feet, and powers off the sun during the day, prepping its rechargeable lithium-sulphur batteries for the night. Zephyr is being built for reconnaissance, communications and unofficially setting really bad-ass flight records.[Via USA TODAY]
Forum post of the day: Broken records incoming
Although at times contentious, the current recruitment promotion has certainly sped up leveling. The triple experience point bonus comes to mind first, but the ability to give levels at a rate of one per two gained is also a real boon. The rule is that the levels can be applied to a character lower than the givers current level, capped at level 60. Theoretically someone who has reached level 60 could donate enough levels to raise another character from 30-59* in a matter of minutes. This new mechanic is pretty easy to use and potentially abuse. Málfurion of Wildhammer is not happy with the change. To quote "I just saw a Warlock go from level 31-59 in 10 seconds in front of my eyes... The new recruit a friend is bull > <.... NERF NERF NERF!" The post was met with some disbelief, but it clearly is a possibility. Some players indicated that they have something similar in mind. Abilene of Aegwynn believes that this practice ruins the game for some.
Texas Memory breaks records, budgets with blisteringly fast RamSan-440 storage device
Texas Memory has been around longer than most of you readers have been alive (or so we're told by our resident omniscient overlord), but it's been quite awhile since it was talked about freely in the same breath as WD, Fujitsu, Samsung, et al. Now, however, the company is making the rounds once more thanks to its "record setting" RamSan-440, which provides between 256GB and 512GB of RAM-based SSD storage, 600,000 IOPS, 4,500MB/sec random sustained external throughput and latency under 15-microseconds. The entire rig arrives in a 90-pound 4U rack-mount enclosure and claims to be "the first SSD to use RAIDed NAND flash memory modules for data backup." Chances are, you were already bracing to hear a pretty ludicrous figure when it comes to pricing, but $150,000 for the 256GB edition and $275,000 for the 512GB iteration? Please -- we'll take a Lightning GT, thanks.[Via DailyTech]
America finally claims 100 local HD news stations
When Raleigh, North Carolina's WRAL took its local news to high-definition some eight years back, we'd be willing to bet it never thought the rest of America would be so immensely slow in following suit. Sadly, it has indeed taken eight full years for a country known for its pioneering spirit in HD to see 100 local news stations make the high-def leap -- but we suppose it's still a milestone worth celebrating. That being said, if it takes another eight years to hit 200, we just might drown in our own tears.[Thanks, Jeremy]
Wii Fit quick out of the blocks in Britain
Of course, we always expected as much. Preorders for Nintendo's fitness title were sky-high in Blighty, with the game pretty much selling out before it even appeared on store shelves. Even so, the record-breaking success of Wii Fit may have surprised the most optimistic of Nintendo executives.Over the weekend, Wii Fit became the sixth fastest-selling UK videogame of all time. That's an impressive achievement for any title -- until you remember that the Wii Fit bundle costs almost as much as two games (£70). Then, the achievement stops being merely impressive, and becomes jaw-dropping. It also set a new record as Nintendo's fastest-selling game ever in the UK, beating out poor old Mario Kart Wii, which held that particular title for ... two weeks. Ouch.%Gallery-4745%
Seagate: 1 billion drives served
Seagate claims it's the first company to hit the magical "one billion drives shipped" mark, and doesn't plan on slowing down any time soon. The company was founded in 1979, with its first drive offering up 5MB of storage for a whopping $1,500. We've certainly come a long way in 29 years, and Seagate expects to ship its next billion drives in less than five years. Of course, with all this "cloud computing" talk we'd think drive sales have to slow down at some point, but there's certainly no sign of our GB appetites abating just yet. Now if you'll excuse us, we need to download this 7GB MMO demo to a secondary hard drive.
Friday Video: Guitar Hero world record-setter
It may not be the Wii version of the game, but anyone that can throw down in Guitar Hero as good as this kid can is certainly deserving of all the fame and fortune that comes from being featured on Wii Fanboy. The fame of being recognized by avatar-less commenters and the fortune of having 14 people see your video are just some of the small things Wii Fanboy can bring to the table.All kidding aside, this guy is good. In fact, we wonder what would happen if him and that little kid got together in the same room. It'd like totally cause a rift in the space/time continuum or something. [Via Joystiq]
Tosog goes 0 to 70 in 28 and a half hours
Rumor has it that the record for leveling from one to seventy has been broken yet again. Tosog of EU Kil'jaeden has reportedly maxed out in one day, four hours, and twenty-nine minutes. This was posted in a thread where Athene boasted a (NSFW) new video (NSFW) on how he went from 1 to 70 in 1 day 19 hours 39 minutes.Both are inarguably amazing feats of power leveling. How did Tosog do it? Well, if you speak German, you tell me:
Nokia grabs 40% of global handset market, nets $2.6 billion in Q4
Although it does sound as if the much protested plant closing in Bochum, Germany will indeed leave around 2,300 workers sans a job, the street was still loving what Nokia had to talk about today. In its latest earnings report, the firm announced that it raked in €15.7 billion ($22.76 billion) in revenues and €1.8 billion ($2.6 billion) in net profit from October to December 2007. Furthermore, the firm managed to move a record 133.5 million handsets in the aforementioned period, which is up some 27-percent from Q4 a year earlier. That sales surge enabled the handset maker to grab hold of 40-percent of the global cellphone market, and apparently, bigwigs at the company aren't expecting things to plateau in 2008. Needless to say, things are pretty spirited in Helsinki right about now, so feel free to tag the links below for even more jaw-dropping figures.Read - Nokia 4Q profits up 44 percent, market share reaches 40 per centRead - Nokia's Q4 2007 report
Question: What do this lady and the DS have in common?
Answer: they're both record breakers!Obviously, that's pretty much where the similarities end. See, rather than spend 27 years growing its fingernails, Nintendo's handheld has just shattered an entirely different record: the record for most hardware sales in a 7-day period in the UK. Last week, it sold just over 200,000 units, leaving thousands of would-be customers disappointed (reader, I was one such customer).Incidentally, if you're feeling an uneasy sense of déjà vu, we understand -- after all, it was only last month that the DS broke the exact same record, notching up 191,000 sales in a single week.
Seven cool features of Leopard that might get stubborn friends to upgrade
There are dozens of little niceties in Leopard: like how Front Row now lives on my iBook (sans remote) and allows me to operate the thing as a sort of thin-client media jukebox (courtesy a Mac mini server). Or how Font Book now prints books of your fonts (especially nice for those non-techies). With the 300+ new features, I still have yet to fully explore this thing, but I'm certainly starting to believe this is the Mac OS Apple really wanted to deliver a few years back. There's no doubt in my mind this is a big turning point for the platform, and I really believe user adoption in 2008 will be unprecedented as a result.Following is a list of features and specific "cool things" I think you can point out if you are trying to explain to a friend why they should upgrade. For the record, I installed Leopard on a 1.24 GHz iBook G4, and it runs beautifully, which in itself is a selling point.1. Finally, a Record button for your actions Automator now has a UI recorder. Anyone who remembers the good old days of macro recorders before OS 8 will look at this and sigh, but I, for one, welcome my new robot overlord. Automator is finally useful for mortals with UI recording. Oh sure, it isn't perfect, but it really beats trying to explain just the concept of Automator to the average human. Never mind the metaphors and the workflow within Automator itself -- eyes will glaze over. UI recording is absolute heaven when you do a lot of drudge work, like contracts, filling, prepping photos, etc.2. Mail gets GTD fever If power users turn up their noses at Stationary in Mail, point out how they can now put their notes, to-do's and RSS into Mail. I haven't really set all this up as I'd like yet (the iBook isn't my primary work machine), but my unfettered hatred of Mail.app is somewhat lessened now by the fact that it is starting to behave like a "real" email client. The notes and to-do's are icing on the cake, but also very important if you like to get things done and stay organized. A few smart folders and you have a truly powerful system. Still, it is disappointing to see Apple take half a decade to figure out the whole "archive mailbox" thing, but pobody's nerfect I guess.3. Web clipping makes Dashboard relevant again My wife quit using Dashboard long ago. It simply served no purpose for her. But web clipping, baked right in to Safari? That had her mildly interested. Tracking the top 3 Twitters, or whatever the top story on Perez or TMZ happens to be with a keystroke is a selling point for folks who aren't using RSS. The only downside is that you need a pretty big screen if you want more than a couple of pages to appear.4. Shared drives finally "just work" and Shared Screens work with other OS'esGranted, there have been issues with networking in Leopard, but seeing shared Macs in my sidebar? That's pretty sweet. In previous versions of OS X you had to click on Network, now it just shows up. Is a few clicks a big deal? Well, for the average user, yes, this is a big deal. The average user doesn't like to explore. They can be timid, and frankly, don't necessarily know (or care) what the Network thing even is. Displaying networked components directly in Finder will greatly increase the probability that users will at least see everything. It has already saved me time when trying to reconnect and move things around my home LAN. For me, the real fun was seeing how VNC "just worked" when I was able to access my Mac mini (which was already running as a VNC server) via Screen Sharing. Even though the mini runs Tiger, and despite a slightly wonky connection, overall it was super easy to set-up. Think about it another way: average users don't want to run a third-party application like Chicken of the VNC. Average users don't necessarily trust those apps (thank you, Bonzi Buddy) and it is a lot easier to remotely control a machine if the functionality is built into the OS. Oh, and did I mention you can share screens with Linux? I finally have a use for that old Dell laptop and my Ubuntu CD!
ONFi 2.0 sets the stage for 133MB/sec NAND performance
Flash memory just keeps getting bigger, faster and more irresistible -- and that's just the way we like it. Now, the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFi) working group is announcing the availability of the 0.9 draft of the ONFi 2.0 specification to member companies, which is a tell-tale sign that the updated spec will be officially loosed in just two months. What's important here is the newly defined NAND interface, which promises to deliver up to 133MB/second compared to the 50MB/second that the legacy NAND interface is limited to. As if that weren't enough to get you all jazzed up, ONFi 2.0 will also be backwards compatible, and infrastructure is reportedly in place to "reach 400MB/second in the third-generation." And just think, soon you'll be chuckling at yourself for asserting that 133MB/sec was "quick" -- onwards and upwards, we say.
Folding@home and PS3 reach Guinness Records
Folding@home continues to get the attention of the mainstream media. PS3's large network of Cell-enabled PS3 systems has significantly boosted the abilities of Stanford University's research program. So much so, in fact, that the program recently was recognized by the Guinness Records. Over 670,000 unique PS3 users have registered to the Folding@home network, and combined they have achieved the petaflop mark on September 23, 2007. This has placed the program as the most powerful distributed computing network ever. "To have Folding@home recognized by Guinness World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network ever is a reflection of the extraordinary worldwide participation by gamers and consumers around the world and for that we are very grateful," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. "Without them we would not be able to make the advancements we have made in our studies of several different diseases. But it is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds." "To have PS3 play such a large role in allowing Folding@home to be honored by Guinness World Records is truly incredible," said Masayuki Chatani, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Technology Platform, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "This record is clear evidence of the power of PS3 and the contributions that it is making to the Folding@home network, and more importantly, scientific research."
Teac's GF-650 tabletop player enables vinyl-to-CD transfers
It's been a hot minute since Teac introduced its first tabletop vinyl-to-CD sound machine, but the retrofied device is getting an appreciated upgrade in the GF-650. This unit touts an AM / FM radio, auxiliary input jack, wireless remote, CD player, and of course, a record player. As expected, users simply load in a CD-R / RW, queue up their favorite record, and walk away (or hang around, it's up to you) as the real-time transfer takes place. As for output, it's got a meager 3.5-watt x 2 amplifier, and it should be on sale right now in Japan for a staggering ¥83,790 ($740).[Via Impress]
Samsung adds three phones to Guinness Book of World records
Samsung can add a few notches in its belt with news that a couple of Ultra line of handsets -- and an older model -- made the Guinness Book of World Records for 2008. Award for thinnest handset in a leading role goes to the 0.2 inch thin -- as a size comparison, the MotoRAZR MAXX is only 0.2 inches thinner than the V3x -- Ultra Edition 5.9. Setting a record for thinnest 3G phone is the Ultra Edition 8.4, with the record breaking 10 megapixel SCH-B600 taking top honors for, you guessed it, most megapixels. Not a bad outing by the Korean monster, now we'll all have to wait to see who can beat the venerable "Phone that totally blew Engadget Mobile's mind" record which is currently held by... err, nobody.
Warner Home Video moves 250k copies of 300 in first week
If you thought the previous HD film records set by MI:III, The Departed, and 007: Casino Royale were impressive, 300 just raised the bar in a big way. According to sales figures from the title's first week on shelves, more than 250,000 copies were moved on HD DVD and Blu-ray. Moreover, this mark makes it the fastest selling high-definition disc to date, and enables Warner Home Video to claim six of the top ten selling HD flicks. Of course, the news we're truly interested in -- which format made up the majority of the sales -- was unsurprisingly omitted.[Via MovieWeb]
LAPD getting the 'Cops' treatment at all major events
Considering that UK traffic wardens are already wielding handheld camcorders to record their daily activities, it's not too shocking to hear that the LAPD will soon be implementing a similar, albeit more extreme, version of employee recording. In the wake of the "MacArthur Park melee," the department's chief has stated that a camera crew will now "follow officers through major incidents, recording their actions from the early roll call to the after-incident report." Supposedly, this all-seeing crew will ensure that police remain on their best behavior, and moreover, it promises that videoed evidence will always be available in the case of a discrepancy. As if that wasn't enough Big Brother for you, the station has also announced plans to equip a helicopter with a long-range HDTV camera that will beam back images to a command station. At this point, they might as well yank the UK's hovering drones too and save the effort.[Image courtesy of Polizeros]
Universal releases over 100 HD DVDs to date
Break out the party hats and streamers folks, as according to the well-compiled statistics over at HD DVD Stats.com, Universal has cranked out 104 high-definition titles to date. Of course, the number in and of itself is essentially meaningless, but when you consider just how critical the studio is to the HD DVD camp, one could easily envision the format war shifting should the firm eventually decide to support Blu-ray. Unfortunately, it still seems that we're quite a ways from seeing that come to fruition.
