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CrunchDeals: All AT&T phones for a penny

Posted: 22 Sep 2009 05:12 AM PDT

attWe’ll start this deal off with a gigantic asterisk. This deal does NOT work for a) existing AT&T customers looking to renew or b) anyone who wants an iPhone.

That being said, every other AT&T phone at Amazon is going for a penny today (and today only). That's with a new, two-year contract. There's no activation fee, either, which is nice, and you get free two-day shipping on everything.

Some nice handsets in there, too: BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve, Nokia E71x, HTC FUZE – even a couple 3G internet adapters.

Today Only — All AT&T Phones for a Penny with New 2-Year Service Plan [Amazon]

Microsoft Buys Interactive Supercomputing, Kills Its Product Line

Posted: 22 Sep 2009 04:57 AM PDT

peHUB yesterday caught wind of Microsoft's supposed acquisition of Interactive Supercomputing, a company specialized in bringing the power of parallel computing to desktops, but was declined an official comment to the news following a request for confirmation. Redmond has this morning officially announced the acquisition by means of a blog post on the Windows Server Division Weblog and an information website, detailing that it has picked up the technology assets of ISC and that the latter's employees – including CEO Bill Blake – will be joining the Microsoft team at the New England Research & Development Center in Cambridge, MA. Microsoft says it will not continue developing Star-P (ISC's flagship product) beyond version 2.8 which was released earlier this year, and that version 2.9 that was released to a few customers in Beta will not be released for production use by customers. Active Star-P customers who are using earlier versions of Star P were granted the right to upgrade to 2.8 by ISC prior to the close of the transaction. Microsoft did not acquire the customer contracts between ISC and their customers but says it will provide technical support to active customers through the longer of their existing support contracts or 12/31/2010.


Hitachi Maxell develops world’s smallest lens module for camera phones

Posted: 22 Sep 2009 04:20 AM PDT

hitachi_maxell_lens_module

Cameras in cell phones are getting better and better, and now Hitachi Maxell has announced [JP] its contribution to make them more worthwhile: the world’s smallest lens modules for camera phones. And the company managed to reduce the mechanical noise picked up when you make video clips with your phone, too.

The company achieved the reduction in size by rolling the optical lenses and the actuator into one. The coin you see on the picture is 20mm in diameter.

The new modules also have piezoelectric elements in the actuator mechanism to make the lenses focus (instead of voice coil motors). As a result, the lenses move quietly and you don’t hear any noise when recording video with sound.

Hitachi Maxell says they will begin shipping the new lens modules in December this year, with plans to initially produce one million units monthly.

Toshiba announces two new mini SSDs weighing just 9 grams

Posted: 22 Sep 2009 12:20 AM PDT

SSD_toshiba

Toshiba today announced it has developed mini SSDs (pictured on the right hand side) that are just a seventh of the size of existing 2.5-inch drives. The Toshiba drives will features a mini-SATA (aka mSATA) interface connector, as specified by the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) just yesterday. The new specification is designed for notebooks and similar portable devices.

Toshiba initially plans to roll out two models, an SSD with 30GB and another with 62GB on board. Sized at just 30×4.75mmx50.95mm, these drives weigh 9g. They will features 70MB/s writing speed and 180MB/s reading speed.

Toshiba says mass production of both models will begin as early as next month. The 62GB drive will cost $330, while the 30GB version will be priced at $220 (these are sample prices). Both SSDs will be entirely “made in Japan”.

Daily Crunch: Stabby Edition

Posted: 22 Sep 2009 12:00 AM PDT

New Effectology shows off reverb

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 08:36 PM PDT

Who doesn’t love some reverb? EHX’s Effectology explores reverb in all its forms in this charming post. It sounds pretty boring at first but listen to Bill Ruppert go surfy on that git-fiddle then add a little something that sounds like a nice weekend out for the Doves or Blue Oyster Cult.

Check out the Infinite Sustain at the end. It’s amazing, if a little Kenny G.

Interview: A conversation with Larry Halff about the relaunch of Ma.gnolia

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 07:20 PM PDT

logo_300Many of you may remember Ma.gnolia—the nifty social bookmarking tool that unfortunately imploded at the beginning of this year. Founded by Larry Halff almost 4 years ago, the site had a different aesthetic and attitude toward sharing information. It was one of the more community-minded tools I remember from that era, offering features like the ability to “thank” the sharer of a useful link, for example. It also possessed clean design and careful site organization. In my opinion, its take on sharing data really differentiated it.

Like many great things, Ma.gnolia didn’t start out to be big, but rather started out to be good—and it was. And, as is often the case with things that are good, Ma.gnolia become big by virtue of that goodness. Ironically, even though the membership of the service reached hundreds of thousands of account holders and tens of thousands of regular users, the infrastructure supporting the site was still incredibly small. It was run almost solely by Larry and the hardware and bandwidth he could support by himself. Unfortunately, there were some technical limitations to the honorable yet fragile DIY set-up running behind the scenes that ultimately led to the site’s premature demise. I was really bummed to watch the VOD-cast explaining the catastrophic nature of the data loss back in February and have thought about the site often, since that time.

I was able to catch up with Larry a while back and talk with him, not about what went wrong with Ma.gnolia 1.0 but rather what is in store for Ma.gnolia 2.0, if anything, and also pick his brain about the future of social bookmarking. If you were a fan of Ma.gnolia in the past, you will be happy to know that it is scheduled to relaunch September 22, by invite only.

JD:
What is your take on the future of social bookmarking?

LH:
Well, I think there are two ways it can and is going. One way is the sharing of links. You know, sharing a link with someone may help you record a memory of something but it’s not really an archiving activity, and I think the biggest link sharing site out there is probably Facebook with people posting items to their wall and sending recommendations to each other. And then I think there are the sites that are more about saving and recording things and keeping them around for future reference. I think that’s definitely Delicious and the slew of other traditional social bookmarking or tagging sites out there. I think Ma.gnolia was sort of in between, in a way, in that it didn’t know which it wanted to be because it had a lot of the social functions built in, with sending bookmarks to people and sharing them with groups and thanking people for bookmarks. There was some of that stuff built in that sort of straddled the line between those two things [social functions and archiving]. I think, as “The Web” progresses, and as things become more component-ized people will start assembling the services and applications they want to use around “Identities”, whether they’re OpenIDs, Google IDs or Facebook IDs. We’ll start seeing “sharing and storing” services evolve along those directions. I don’t know that there’s really a huge “future of social bookmarking”—I think it’s that sharing and saving links is just one of those things that people do and I don’t think it’s going to be like Search where there’s a huge industry built up around it.

JD:
OK, so social bookmarking is more of an evolutionary meme or practical tool but not some revolutionary business model? Is that what you mean? Like in the case of link sharing on Facebook—it seems casual yet still purposeful.

LH:
Yeah. I think the idea of social bookmarking as this distinct thing apart from the services that we have gathered around us, is going to disappear. The direction I’m going with Ma.gnolia, with reviving the service…it’s going to be private and focused on the community of users who are drawn to the social aspects it offers as opposed to trying to be a big service all on it’s own in a market that would be seen as big as the Search market.

JD:
That leads to another question I had for you. Are there any ways you want to point out that the new version of Ma.gnolia will be different from the old version?

LH:
Initially when I launch Ma.gnolia soon—imminently, it will be the same Ma.gnolia with a few tweaks, like making registration by invitation, fixing a few items…but it will be the same code and rather than pursue the rewrite from the ground up, as initially planned, I’m just going to be refining the code base and aiming to get existing code to a point where it can be open-sourced  and look at iterating that more toward a distributed, component-type model.

JD:
So, one thing people can expect is not to see a complete re-write… the general concept of it worked well enough before, so you may keep a lot of that infrastructure? Is that what you are saying?

LH:
Yeah, exactly.

JD:
OK. And after you re-launch it, you want to open it up to the community for development and improvements?

LH:
Yeah, but I need to polish the code base to the point where it can be opened up to the community.

JD:
Great. Can I get an invite? (laughing) I’m shameless.

LH:
Yeah, definitely (laughing).You know, I’ll shoot you a note when it’s ready to go. I have 21 days until the end of summer. [our conversation took place on Aug 31]

JD:
And that’s the zero hour?

LH:
My goal (laughing) was to have it up by the end of summer.

JD:
You know, one thing I wanted to point out was that Ma.gnolia was different for me in a couple of ways, namely that it embraced OpenID early on (I seem to recall that it’s the first site I remember using OpenID—it actually got me to sign up for myOpenID) and also it really embraced aesthetics. I come from a design background and I always appreciated that aspect of it.  Did I read correctly that Jeffery Zeldman helped design the front end?

LH:
Happy Cog did our original design and interface design. And you know, there’s no reason that the tools you use should be ugly and unpleasant to look at so that was one of the way I felt that [Ma.gnolia] showed consideration to the user.

JD:
OpenID integration and design aesthetic were two ways Ma.gnolia was different for me, as a user. How was it different for you, being behind the scenes?

LH:
I think we really saw our users as people, in social context. When we built out Ma.gnolia, everything from OpenID to the way groups ran to the “Give Thanks” feature…it was [always on our minds] “how does Ma.gnolia exist in the greater context of our members’ lives”. OpenID was an important part of it because we wanted it to seamlessly integrate with an identity system that they were in control of, that they felt ownership of…that YOU all felt ownership of. We were not there to gather up identity, we were there to help you use your existing resources. Also, with “Give Thanks” we wanted to encourage positive social interactions among our members rather than forcing the social stuff in a marketing-heavy type way. You could instead discover other members by finding out who appreciated what you were doing.

JD:
Kind of like a reverse lookup by appreciation or something?

LH:
Yeah. So instead of being like “Here, follow my stuff. I’m important. You should listen to me”. Instead it’s more like “Oh, I think YOU’RE important and I really like what you’ve been doing. I really like the stuff you’ve found”.

JD:
I ditched Google Notebook for Ma.gnolia. After Ma.gnolia though, I never really found a replacement (I re-flirted with Delicious and Digg and even Evernote). I have since moved on to Pinboard (at Michael Arrington’s recommendation). What do you use to bookmark and share links these days? What would you recommend, in the meantime?

LH:
I actually just use my browser.

JD:
(laughing) OK. That’s cool.

LH:
I’m also using a “not-ready-for-prime-time” instance of Magnolia. I’m alpha testing it myself.

JD:
I want to ask you about the greater issue of “Sharing” in general. Sites like Sharemo in Japan, for example, are bringing the concept of sharing out of the “data” world and into the real world with the sharing of used physical items—books, clothes, etc. The concept is not new—people have been trading things forever—there are just new ways to organize and deliver the concept. The sharing of goods, data, whatever is efficient and necessary in all kinds of ecologies, online and offline. Here’s the question…what else is going on with this kind of sharing of goods and data? Is there beauty in tracking what is shared and following that huge pattern? I get the idea from what you have said that maybe it’s greater than even that… that there is no mystery in the sheer numbers but rather in the the emotional connections that take place around shared items. Does that make sense? How would you respond to that question?

LH:
[With regard to data sharing] I don’t think, at this point, it’s possible to gain any kind of bigger pattern out of that kind of sharing and it’s something we never really attempted with Ma.gnolia. I think it’s a misguided fantasy because whenever you start measuring [in that way]…you have no real quality of measurement…you have no idea really what you are measuring other than that these links are being sent around. You don’t even know if they are actually being shared. You don’t know if the receiver cares about them, you don’t know if the sender cares about them, you don’t know if the sender and the receiver are the same person just behind different accounts. On that scale, I think its impossible to draw any conclusions about what’s happening beyond the fact that your system resources are being used  to send these URLs around. I think that sharing only really makes sense to the people who are the senders and recipients of those links when they are being shared. I think the sites that try to harness that sort of flow in information, like Digg, have a real hard time doing it and they have to put in all sorts of guards and protections and try to figure out gaming patterns and I don’t think, even then, you can draw any sort of meaningful conclusions from what happens there. In the end it’s just another game to watch.

JD:
So you can’t get qualitative out of quantitative?

LH:
Yeah, exactly. I think what you get is information about how people play that particular link sharing game. You don’t get any particular info about the links that are being shared, themselves.

JD:
Do you have any plans for doing any kind of mobile integration? People are coming into contact with and sharing information despite their location.

LH:
We had a mobile version of the site that a lot of our members were pretty happy with. It was just an alternate view in the browser. I think that, considering you view links from a browser at this point, it satisfied a lot of people. Of course, it would be fun to have an iPhone app that could search and get through your stuff in a more native friendly interface, but that’s not a top priority. It’s on the list but I don’t know how important it actually is.

JD:
Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about Ma.gnolia or otherwise? Any new ventures that may cross-over with it?

LH:
No. You know, I’ve just been recovering, taking care of other things in life and figuring out a strategy for the best way to bring Ma.gnolia back. And I’ve weighed some of the pitfalls of our past setup. It was a very heartening experience in the sense that the community was, overall, very present and understanding of what happened and most people pretty much said “there isn’t a replacement for Ma.gnolia and we want to see the service come back”. And that’s sort of what I keep hearing and it definitely…I mean, I put three years of my life into it [Ma.gnolia] and seeing that it really did matter to people was a wonderful thing. I’m really looking forward to having Ma.gnolia up and running again and having a good community of people using it.

CrunchBase Information
ma.gnolia
Information provided by CrunchBase

Update: Netflix announces exactly who won that $1,000,000 prize

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 06:20 PM PDT

netflixWell, it’s official buckaroos, Netflix announced today exactly who won that $1,000,000 prize. If you remember, they announced that one of two teams had finally reached that magical 10% rate they were looking for, but they didn’t tell anyone exactly won. Well, the cat is finally out of the bag.

The official winner is “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos”. This team was a combination of several other teams that weren’t doing as well, and decided to combine their efforts in order to win. The 30 members managed to find the right combination of variables to meet the 10% accuracy rate required to win the contest.

So what’s next? Netflix is trying to make their predictive software even more accurate. The first contest included 100 million movie ratings, with no personally identifiable data included. The next set of data will include demographic and behavioral data, and will require the people attempting to win to create a “taste profile” based on the movies that a user has rented or looked at in the past.

[via NYTimes Bit Blog]

Man sends 662,000 txts in 30 days

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 06:05 PM PDT

Some anonymous AT&T user managed to send 662,258 txt messages in a 30 day period using his iPhone. To me, the crazy part is not that the guy sent then many messages, but that he still receives his bill on hard copy. 12,000 pages of hard copy.


King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 05:00 PM PDT

kaust invitation
I’m in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for the inauguration ceremony of KAUST, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. This is a 30-square kilometer state-of-the-art research institution with faculty and students from all over the world. For the next couple of days I’ll be getting some behind-the-scenes access to technology in use here, both for education and research, as well as the tools used to bring this place together.

KAUST was brought about, rather obviously, by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Says the king:

It is my desire that this new University becomes one of the world’s great institutions of research; that it educates and trains the future generations of scientists, engineers and technologists; and that it fosters, on the basis of merit and excellence, collaboration, and cooperation with other great research universities and the private sector.

The university, as the name implies, is science-focused. It offers degrees in nine fields of study:

  • Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
  • Bioscience
  • Chemical and Biological Engineering
  • Computer Science
  • Earth Science and Engineering
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Environmental Science and Engineering
  • Materials Science and Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering

As a well-funded, brand-new university, there’s a lot of top-notch tech here. From a nanofabriacation lab with a Level 100 clean room (no more than 100 particles per square foot), to a room filled with ten Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometers, to Shaheen, the fastest supercomputer in the Middle East, the facilities at KAUST are a researcher’s dream.

I plan to dig into more, but here’s two quick overviews of things I found remarkably impressive: Shaheen, and the CORNEA immersive virtual reality facility.

Shaheen
Shaheen, currently the 14th largest super computer in the world, is comprised of 16 IBM BlueGene/P racks, offering 220 teraflops in its current configuration. The plan is to raise that to a petaflop by 2011. That’s a huge performance jump in just two years. It has more than 65,000 processors. It’s also the largest system that the U.S. Department of Commerce has ever permitted to be exported, and as you might expect Uncle Sam places some usage restrictions on it. Right now, Shaheen draws 1.2 megawatts of power, and has an enormous cooling requirement.

The room in which Shaheen lives is pretty bland, and doesn’t make for very good photography. But here’s a photo, nonetheless:
kaust shaheen

We weren’t permitted inside because it’s operated inside a clean room environment. Aside from the fact that KAUST has been a construction site until just recently, there’s also serious concern about the effects of salt from the Red Sea coming into the room, so the project coordinators are playing it safe by restricting access and strictly controlling the environment.

CORNEA
CORNEA is a CAVE system that projects images onto all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor of a room in order to create a truly immersive virtual environment. Users within the room wear active stereoscopic glasses to produce a 3D effect. CAVEs aren’t particularly new, though they are still super cool.

kaust cornea

Two things set KAUST’s CAVE apart from all the rest. First, it has the world’s highest resolution at 100 million pixels, and second, it has a phenomenal audio system inside the room. Speakers placed in the room pick up sounds and project them back in any of a number of programmable acoustic configurations. So if you’re walking through a visualization of an actual cave, your voice will echo and reverberate. This is actually amazingly hard to describe in text, and even harder to capture on video. Here’s a quick video I took while inside CORNEA:



When the audio is on, you really do feel like you’re in a larger space. Then when the audio is muted, you feel like you’re in any other room in the world. It’s very impressive what a dramatic effect sound has on our sense of sight.

If you guys have any techie questions for the KAUST staff or faculty, leave ‘em in the comments and I’ll do my best to get them answered!

NYC intern needed

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:29 PM PDT

GWB_SKY_VIEW_FALL
Are you a student or shut-in? Are you a fan of electronic devices? Have you ever spent time in a Turkish prison? If you answered yes to all or two of these questions, have we got an offer for you. CrunchGear needs a Fall intern to help out on the site, attend swanky press events, and make coffee and prepare the editor’s shots of HGH.

How do you apply? Send an email to john@crunchgear.com with a brief description of your gadget collection along with a sample post based on a recent tech news story. Extra points for good spelling, grammar, and the ability to place commas and periods in the correct order. Put “NYC INTERN” in the headline.

World of Warcraft is back in China~!

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 04:00 PM PDT

wowchina

Chinese gamers can once again feel the joy of buying an epic on the Auction House for 100G, then selling it for 300G to some sap. Yes, World of Warcraft is officially, 100 percent back in China. This is clearly huge news that’s totally worth your time of day.

You’ll recall that WoW had been offline in China for quite some time, owing to a dispute between Blizzard, the local company handling the game’s operation, and the Chinese government. The game had to be censored to a degree, and then it was put into a beta, and then is came out. Oh, that’s where we are today—it’s out again.

Kotaku says more than half of WoW’s players comes from China, so you can imagine that this must have been quite the headache for Blizzard to deal with.

This is where I make the tenuous link between China, MMOs, and gold farming. Although I will say this: I am so damn sick of corpse spam in the game. It totally takes you out of the game, so to speak. I was going to do a "Please Kill the Corpse Spam, Blizzard" post, but then I’m like, "You idiot, you don’t think Blizzard’s already working on the problem? What good will your complaint do?"

Anyway, WoW is back in China. Let us celebrate by having many brews at Brewfest, which is still my favorite in-game holiday.

The real Fake Linus Torvalds has been selected

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 03:15 PM PDT

fake-linus
The jig is up, and the Silver Penguin award has been presented to the winner of the Fake Linus Torvalds competition! Before you learn who won, though, you need to know who was actually playing. As you recall, four famous people were pretending to be Linus on Twitter and Identi.ca, and the community selected their favorite.

The participants were:

  1. Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs), reporter for Newsweek
  2. Matt Asay, blogger for CNET.com
  3. Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, openSUSE Community Manager at Novell
  4. Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical

And the winner of the Silver Penguin is: Matt Asay! The runner-up was Jono Bacon.

Here’s a terrific quote from Matt:

Linus Torvalds is such an impressive figure, even being his facsimile is an honor. Linus is, of course, the founder of the Linux kernel, but he also represents the soul of open source: open without being dogmatic, collaborative while still being sharp-witted and sharp-elbowed, and quality and performance above all. I won’t be faking his voice anymore, but I do hope to emulate it.

Congratulations, Matt, and great work to everyone involved!

Great Moments in Nerdery

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 02:30 PM PDT

WoW

Above: Nicholas and Dave talking about World of Warcraft in the CrunchGear chat room. I threw in some stuff about EverQuest to try to be funny and they ignored me.

Nerds [CrunchGear.com]

MSI Wind U110 ECO promises 15+ hour battery

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 02:00 PM PDT

U110 - 2

Okay, here's the MSI Wind U110 ECO. It's a netbook, through and through, with the added twist of a nine-cell battery good for what MSI claims to be over 15 hours of battery life. Not bad considering the weight of the computer is kept at a very-portable 3.2 pounds.

It's not going to set any performance records, with an Atom Z530 CPU at 1.6GHz, 1GB of RAM, Intel GMA500 graphics, and a 10-inch screen with a resolution of just 1024×600. It'll probably appeal to those of us who hate carrying AC adapters around everywhere, though.

Comes with Windows XP and a 160GB hard drive and is priced at $430 (MSRP) from MSI or, better yet, $399 at Newegg.

A week with the Viliv S7

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 01:30 PM PDT

viliv-s71

So I have been using the Viliv S7 regularly for about a week now and I have concluded that it is the best netbook I have ever used. But yes, it’s a netbook. The S7 might have a touchscreen, convertible design, super long battery life, and a modest size SSD, but at the end of the day, it’s a luxury netbook.

I guess that a lot of people might have concluded that just after looking at the pictures, but somehow I guess I was expecting more after spending some time with the fantastic Viliv X70 tablet UMPC. It’s not that the S7 isn’t a quality kit with built-in 3G and a touchscreen, but it lacks a lot of the sex appeal of the X70 – and some key components like GPS.

viliv-s7-keyboard-2The good news is that I have finally gotten use to the tiny keyboard and trackpad. Although I haven’t tested this, I believe I should be able to pound-out 25-30 WPM. The trackpad is just fine now after I turned up the sensitivity, and it’s location is rather handy as you can even use your thumb if you’re gripping the computer by the sides.

But I have found that I don’t really use the touchscreen all that much. I’ve never swiveled the screen out of necessity, and the lack of built-in on-screen keyboard kind of limits the touchscreen’s usefulness a bit. It’s not that the touchscreen isn’t quality. It’s just fine.

In fact, the screen is bright, crisp, and just fine even though Gizmodo’s Mark Wilson thinks differently. The screen is coated in something that’s somewhat of a cross between a matte and glossy layer so glare isn’t really a factor any more than most LCD screens. The touchscreen is accurate enough too. I can’t find one thing wrong with the screen and originally stated that I thought it was one of the best features.

Don’t think this is my final review, but I think it’s going to conclude something like this: The Viliv S7 is the best, and most expensive at $799, netbook I have ever used.

Review: Auvio in-ear Armature headphones

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 01:00 PM PDT

auvios
In-ears are the way to go as far as I’m concerned, but there’s still a wide range of quality and styles and lots of companies are getting in on the game. Auvio is a brand I wasn’t aware of, but their Armature headphones, at $80, are an attempt to get a little of that mid-range market. Do they succeed? Partially.

The headphones are a bit anonymous-looking. A little chubby, too, but very solid-feeling. I always felt like I was going to break my Klipschs — not so with these Auvios. They’re unmarked with left or right, but they’re also asymmetrical in a way that lets you know which goes in what ear. I prefer this to the kind where they have to label it, personally.

There are a variety of tips for the headphones, as is becoming standard these days. Small, medium and large black silicone tips provide the standard seal, but one thing Auvio has on the competition is the inclusion of Conform microfoam tips, the kind of material used in earplugs you might wear to a concert or in a shop. I found that these offered superior sound insulation, but at a cost: once I got the foam tips on (no easy task for some reason), I found they would not come off. I ended up tearing off a large piece of the smallest foam tips and eventually managed to get them off, but I’m not going to try that with the medium-size ones, which fit my ear better. I think they’re the best option of the six available, but that doesn’t mean I don’t ever ever want to take them off to clean them or anything.

Audio quality is a very subjective matter, so of course take everything with a grain of salt, but I didn’t particularly like the way these sounded. They certainly didn’t sound bad, but there were two effects going on that I could identify: first, I felt like there is a sort of empty area of sound right in the middle of my head, as if things could be right channel or left channel but not be centered. This changed somewhat based on the tips I used, but it was always present. Second, and more of an issue to me, there was a sort of mid-level boost that tended to drown out the other sound. It made it sound great when the primary sound is in that range, but I felt like it added a sort of mid-level “halo” to all the other sounds, which really subtracted from the clarity in the high end.

auvio bag

On the positive side, they come with a great case, almost as good as the one that came with Klipsch’s X5s. Roomy but not bulky, a little case like this is a great addition to any pair of headphones, and protects the silicone tips from being covered in pocket lint.

These Auvios aren’t bad headphones, but they have serious competition at the $80 level, notably Klipsch’s S6, which shares the asymmetrical design but has, I feel, more balanced sound. I look forward to more stuff from Auvio, though; although these headphones didn’t hit my auditory sweet spot, the case and Conform foam earpieces do suggest a company that knows what it’s doing.

Comcast responds to FCC’s Net Neutrality proposals: Slow down, partner, let’s talk about this

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 12:30 PM PDT

comcastfcc

My God in Heaven! It’s been about four hours since the FCC announced its intention to add two more pillars to its idea of Net Neutrality: one, ISPs should not be allowed to wily nilly permit/disallow traffic on their networks (non-discrimination); and two, traffic management should be done is as transparent a manner as possible, so you don’t wind up with people discovering that their software is being tampered with, without their knowledge or consent, after the fact. I don’t know about yous guys (not a typo), but that seems pretty reasonable to me. And if you disagree, then you’re probably a high-ranking executive at Comcast.

One of Comcast’s executive vice-presidents, David L. Cohen, posted a message to the company’s Web site that, in so many words, attempts to throw cold water on the FCC’s proposals lest they become popular with its customers. The post, entitled "Does the Internet Need More Regulation? FCC to Decide," is skeptical of the whole operation even before it begins. If not the FCC, then who should regulate the Internet? I’m certainly not Mr. The Government Solves Everything, but I’d much sooner trust the FCC to see to it that consumers don’t get screwed by this nation’s ISPs than the ISPs themselves.

So yes, the FCC should decide; that’s what it’s there for.

Then there’s a bit of a contradiction within two breaks:

There's been a debate in Washington for the last six years over whether rules like these are necessary to promote an "open Internet" and an innovation economy. And before that, there was a debate that began more than a decade ago over whether Internet Service Providers should be required to let others resell their services.

But before we rush into a new regulatory environment for the Internet, let's remember there can be no doubt that the Internet has enjoyed immense growth even as these debates have gone on.

How you can characterize six years of discussion as a "rush," I’ll never know. In six years you have two congressional elections, and one general election. That hardly seems like "rushing" to me. And if what the FCC is true about Internet traffic doubling every two years, then six years is plenty of time to Figure Something Out™.

It’s not all negative, though, as Comcast says it’s "committed" to working with the FCC. So that’s good, and promising.

For the record, I’m not some scorned Comcast customer; I’ve never used it. I’ve used two ISPs since 2002 when I first got broadband: Cablevision’s Optimum Online, and Time Warner. So, really, what Comcast does isn’t any of my business.

Direct2Drive: It’s $5 RPG and MMO week

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 12:00 PM PDT

d2dLast week we brought you news of Direct2Drive's 5th birthday sale-stravaganza wherein various direct-download action-themed games were going for $5 each.

The five-week sale is in its third week, and today kicks off a bunch of RPG and MMO titles for just five buckaroos apiece.

Some notable notables include: Neverwinter Nights 2, Assassin's Creed Director's Cut, PlanetSide: Aftershock, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Next week is Indie Games Week, with the following (and final) week being War Games Week.

5 Year Anniversary – 50 games for $5 each! [Direct2Drive.com]

Square Enix doesn’t think too highly of all this motion control nonsesne

Posted: 21 Sep 2009 11:30 AM PDT

ff6
Ah, simpler days.

It’s been about three years since the Nintendo Wii was first released here in the good ol’ USA. Its number one claim to fame, motion control, sure isn’t unique anymore, what with Project Natal for the Xbox 360, and whatever Sony’s improved motion control thing is called coming out fairly soon. But are these motion control deals mere gimmicks (I think so, just based on how I play game; the public may well think differently), or something more? "Gimmicks!" yelled Square Enix’s Yoichi Wada.

Think of what your PS3 can do: play games, rent movies, play Blu-ray, surf the Internet, etc. It’s basically a computer, so why should one tacked-on feature (motion control) make any difference in its lifespan?

But back to the Wii. Wada says that, by 2011, all three consoles will be and behave more or less the same: graphics, controls, DLC, etc. all for around the same number of buckaroos (say $150-200ish). We’re moving toward the One Console. Whether or not Nintendo decides that now is the time to update its glorified GameCube is another issue. (That’s not a knock against the Wii, of course, but it does look to be a little old these days.)

via Joystiq
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