CrunchGear |  |
- Big Brother says no texting
- Sony develops cord-free power transfer system for home electronics
- That is a damned good-looking amplifier
- Let’s talk about those leaked Apple ads
- Review: The PSP Go isn’t bad, but it won’t light the world on fire
- CrunchDeals: iPod dock with LCD remote for $109
- CrunchDeals: It’s Bricktober!
- Finnish startup throws small ball at gaming console giants (video)
| Posted: 05 Oct 2009 03:07 AM PDT
The list of compatible phones is pretty limited. Support is primarily for the BlackBerry series, with Android and iPhone capabilities coming later. But if you bought your teenage driver a brand new smartphone, you probably can afford to shell out the $24.99 setup fee + $9.99 a month. P.S. Be forewarned, if you go to the TXTBlocker website, it plays a audio file of a mother explaining exactly how totally awesome this service is. On every page. You also can’t turn it off.
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| Sony develops cord-free power transfer system for home electronics Posted: 05 Oct 2009 01:20 AM PDT
It’s about time the big companies are killing the power cord. After Dell unveiled a notebook that can be charged wirelessly, it now seems to be Sony’s turn to do away with those cables. The company has announced this past weekend [JP] a power transfer system that can bring electricity to electronics wirelessly. The system is still in experiment stage, but Sony says it’s already capable of sending 60W of electricity to a 22-inch LCD TV that’s about half a meter away. The distance can, at this point, be extended to 80cm when using a repeater. Another potential device the system could be eventually used for is a laptop. Sony uses magnetic-resonance-based technology to transfer electricity from the transmitter to the receiver. The company is now working on commercializing the system but hasn’t said when we’ll see it in action.
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| That is a damned good-looking amplifier Posted: 04 Oct 2009 05:34 PM PDT
Case-Real, the studio which designed the amp, has many more pictures for you, and Dezeen translates the description thusly:
“The sale is undecided” probably means plans for offering it aren’t quite ready (i.e. pricing, availability) — though based on the kit amps’ prices, I’d put this one at around $700, maybe? At any rate, it’s a piece of art. [via Gizmodo]
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| Let’s talk about those leaked Apple ads Posted: 04 Oct 2009 02:53 PM PDT
You can see screenshots of the original ads at the original post at Apple Insider, but for simplicity’s sake I’m just going to put the translated text here.
What strikes you about these ads? They say nothing at all. Technically, the current MacBook is indeed Apple’s “newest.” Thinner, lighter, and faster than what? These statements are general enough to apply to any Apple product. The “brand new” iMac poses more of a conundrum. Can they really say brand new when it hasn’t been updated in ages? Why not? Apple said twice as fast, half the price when neither was true. How would you expect them to advertise a current product? “The old standby” isn’t going to sell any units. “Ultra Thin 20 & 24 inch models” could also refer to available iMacs. The “New Mac Mini” priced at €499 is the only compelling one, really — there is no Mini currently available for that price in the store the ad directs you to, but pricing does vary between countries. Okay, okay, I’m just poking holes in this just for the fun of it. In all likelihood they are real Apple ads, run a little early. But let’s all calm down because there’s nothing of substance in any of them except for a lowered Mini price. Every Apple product since the dawn of time has gotten thinner and faster with every iteration, and everyone has already speculated on products with those predictable improvements.
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| Review: The PSP Go isn’t bad, but it won’t light the world on fire Posted: 04 Oct 2009 01:00 PM PDT
Rumored for God knows how long, and teased for months, the Sony PSP Go is finally available at your friendly neighborhood retailer. We have one—well, I have one—and have been playing with it for a couple of days now. As such, consider this a review. Spoiler: It’s not bad, but not great either. What is the PSP Go? Nearest I can tell, it’s Sony’s attempt to usher in the Download Era. No more visiting the local shop to buy Game 3: Yes, It’s a Sequel to the Sequel, or waiting for the UPS man to bring your Amazon or Newegg order. Nope, all you’ll have to do is fire up your device, which, in this case, is the PSP Go, connect to a virtual store, then download the latest game directly to the device’s storage. Congratulations, you’re now the proud owner of Game 3, all without having to leave the comfort of your home. The concept itself, I think, is fantastic, and has been used by the likes of Steam for some time now. Who needs a pile of discs, and their plastic shells, when all you want is the game itself? That’s my attitude, though I can totally understand when people say, "I want the disc!" Your business is your business, and who am I to judge how you want to play your games? Even Sony recognizes that there’s bound to be more than a few people who aren’t quite ready to give up their discs, which is why the PSP-3000 isn’t going anywhere for a while. (In fact, there’s gonna be a wicked Gran Turismo bundle coming out later this month, which, if I didn’t already have an old PSP (and now the Go), I’d be all over.) Expect the PSP Go and PSP-3000 to co-exist for some time, just like how the Nintendo DS and GameBoy Advance co-existed for some time. Should the PSP Go prove to be any sort of success, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sony axe the PSP-3000 in the future. So that’s the philosophy of the PSP Go: a neat little device that’s able to download PSP (and PS One classic) games from the Internet. While the philosophy is fine, and is one I subscribe to, the actual execution isn’t all there. If the PSP Go were a pro wrestling match, and I were using the Wrestling Observer five-star rating system (which I’ll be doing from now on with my reviews, thank you very much), I’d give the PSP Go a solid three point five (3.5) out of five stars. It’s not a perfect device, and it’s just shy of being very good; it’s good. (For comparison’s sake, I’d give the Zune HD a four point five (4.5) out of five: if only the screen were a little more legible in direct sunlight it would the best piece of hardware I’ve ever owned. It really is that good.) So what’s wrong with the PSP Go? Let’s talk about what’s right first, then get into its shortcomings. Eu gosto de… • See you in Hell, UMDs. The UMD could be the worst disc format I’ve ever used. It’s clunky and brittle all at the same time (doesn’t it feel like a slight wind could shatter a UMD?), dreadfully slow, and, in 2009, entirely unnecessary. With flash storage being so cheap these, not to mention so fast, I’m very happy to see Sony kill of the UMD in the PSP Go. That’s right: If you didn’t already know, there’s no UMD drive in the PSP Go. At the moment, that means that your collection of UMD-based PSP games are 100 percent obsolete, provided you don’t plan on keeping a PSP-3000 (or older) handy. Sony has said that it’s planning some sort of trade-in program for the future, but it’s currently being held back by legal reasons. Or, if you’re a cynic, perhaps Sony wants us to buy Vice City Stories or Soulcalibur all over again, this time from the PlayStation Network? • The general size and shape of the device. The PSP-3000 isn’t exactly huge, but unless you’re wearing Rocawear jeans you’re gonna have a hard time fitting it in your pocket. The PSP Go’s display has the same resolution as previous models (480×272), but on a smaller screen, so images "look sharper," in layman’s terms. It slides open and shut sorta like the T-Mobile G1 (or pick your slider phone), but never feels like it’s going to break on you. The PSP Go also just looks neat, maybe not as neat as the Zune HD, but neat nonetheless; you tell it was recently designed, whereas the PSP-3000 looks so 2005 by this point. • The screen. The screen, she is not bad. I played Gran Turismo, Rock Band, and Silent Hill (the PS One game), and all the games looked pretty good to me. I understand "pretty good" is more or less a worthless phrase, but at no point did I think, "Well this screen is rubbish." Once again, playing the thing in direct sunlight just isn’t going to happen, but you probably assumed as much by now. Besides, I imagine playing this while on-the-go, as it were: on the train, at the airport, etc. If you’re on the Copacabana in Rio playing a portable video game system you may have to check yourself. Eu não gosto de… • The download speed. This, I feel, is the single worst part about the PSP G0: it only has 802.11b Wi-Fi! I’m sorry, is this 2003? For a system that’s supposed to usher in the dawn of a new era, this is the absolute dumbest thing Sony could have done. What’s the price difference between an 802.11b and 802.11g chipset? (The Rock: It doesn’t matter that the price difference is!) How much money did Sony lose already with the PS3, $400 zillion? Man up and go with 802.11g. Let me illustrate how slow this is, and keep in mind that I have the fastest residential Internet connection in the United States of America: Gran Turismo for the PSP weighs in at 937MB. It took 21 minutes to download the game, and a further 20 to actually install it. This is not good enough! At that point, I may as well have driven to the store, bought a physical copy of the game, stopped at Taco Bell, then watched a good chunk of The Ultimate Fighter all in the time it took to download and install. • Game prices. Downloaded from PSN, Gran Turismo cost the same price as it does at retail stores: $39.99 (plus tax! bite me, New York state!) Couldn’t Sony throw us, say, a $5 discount because we’re not buying a physical item that costs money to produce, then ship, then sit on Wal-Mart’s shelves? Isn’t that one of the allures of downloading content, that it cuts out the middleman (the retail stores like Best Buy), and has zero costs associated with production? It’s not like there’s a truck that deliver the ISO from Sony’s servers to my PSP Go, a truck that needs gas, has a driver who’s on a salary, etc. These prices need to be lowered because, otherwise, what’s the point? I already said how it’s not terribly fast to download the game, and now it’s not any less expensive? Lame. • The nub. If it’s at all possible, I will never use that thing. The physical location of the nub is fine, I have no problems there, but it just feels useless. (Needless to say, I’ve been using the D-Pad to play Gran Turismo, like I did in 1998 when the first game came out.) Would it be impossible to include an actual analog stick? (The D-Pad, for the record, feels more "clicky" than "pushy," if that makes any sense.) Conclusão Again, using the Wrestling Observer five-star rating system, I’d give the PSP Go a fair three point five (3.5) out of five. It’s not going to light the world on fire like the iPhone or anything, but it’s not a huge bucket of fail either. The Wi-Fi is murderously slow, and for something that’s supposed to be all about downloads, well, I think that’s an oversight on Sony’s part. Once your games have downloaded, though, then you’ve got as much space on there as you want. The PSP Go comes with 16GB of built-in storage, which is expandable up to 32GB with the addition of a Memory Stick Micro card. (Are there even 32GB of PSP games worth playing out there? So that’s plenty of space, unless you want to watch movies and whatnot, which I patently have zero interest in.) So, not bad, but could have been a little bit better, absolutely.
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| CrunchDeals: iPod dock with LCD remote for $109 Posted: 04 Oct 2009 12:02 PM PDT
Here’s what appears to be a decent iPod dock with an LCD remote that’s priced at just a little over a hundred bucks. Today only, Amazon’s taken almost $80 off the price of the Philips DLO iBoom — $109 with free shipping, down from the regular price of $187.69. You get a helmet-shaped speaker/dock combo that recharges your iPod and pushes sound out of a pair of 1-inch tweeters and 3-inch woofers. The real draw here, though, is the remote control with built-in color LCD screen. It works up to 75 feet away and displays album art and artist info — looks pretty nice. There’s also a line-in jack for hooking up non-iPod players, though that’ll render the remote control useless aside from controlling the volume. DLO iBoom JukeBox Speaker System for iPod [Amazon.com]
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| Posted: 04 Oct 2009 07:49 AM PDT
Head over to TRU for instant savings on almost all the kits including big buckets of Lego for $15.
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| Finnish startup throws small ball at gaming console giants (video) Posted: 04 Oct 2009 04:30 AM PDT
One of the items in the packed schedule was a visit to the Demola facilities, essentially a type of incubator where students from the three universities in the city of Tampere and beyond can come work on projects in an ‘open innovation environment’. One of the demos there that made a lasting impression on me – and the other bloggers who were invited to the tour – came from startup Ball-it. The fledgling company markets a golfball-sized device that is able to interact with your computer, TV or mobile phone thanks to physical wireless sensing technology that was popularized in large part by the Nintendo Wii gaming console. The technology has been under development for quite a while; tech blog Venturebeat profiled Ball-it about 10 months ago. As a game controller, the little ball makes most sense to me. Since it detects things like rotation, direction movements, squeezing, tapping and reaction speed, there are loads of gestures that you can make wielding the ball trigger an on-screen activity, as you can see in the video(s) below. I only tried it for two of the games that have been developed for the device so far, but it was intuitive enough for me to get the hang of what I was supposed to do in just a few seconds. It was also loads of fun. I specifically liked the fact that you can place the ball in your pants pockets, after which the device will be able to detect your running speed, how high you jump, and more to control elements of basic sports games. Besides doubling as a pedometer, it also measures how many calories you burn so you can use to improve your fitness, too. Ball-it aims to be able to distribute the device in the near future for Also check out the review and video over on ChipChick.com.
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Texting while driving seems to be the hotbed issue of today’s world. Even though texting is only one of a multitude of distractive factors in the car, 
The boy woke us up this morning with a flyer from Toys ‘r’ Us informing the world that this was Bricktober and that all Lego kits are 30%. What does this mean? Well, some crazy pirate ship now costs $70, down from $100. Isn’t that still really expensive? Back when I was a kid Lego was free because you always inherited a huge bucket of it from someone. There was so much of it around you found it in your spoor. Sadly, this appears to be no longer the case. 
Yours truly was in Finland most of last week, visiting a bunch of technology startups at their offices, paying a visit to Nokia’s research center and attending the great | You are subscribed to email updates from CrunchGear To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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