CrunchGear |  |
- The Back Burner: Things we didn’t post this week
- Orchestral movements by LCD light
- Mamiya announces two new DSLR cameras
- IREX e-reader listed at Best Buy for $449
- Mythbusters test golf ball effect on real car
- Motorola Droid (”Sholes”) hits the FCC with AT&T-friendly 3G – for real this time.
- Just in time for Halloween: The Fleshlight Succu Dry
- Kindle is coming to the Mac and the BlackBerry
- Beware the ‘r word’ when reading up on Net Neutrality
- Quick Look: 13.3-inch Acer Timeline
- First Annual CrunchGear Halloween Costume Contest! Win an XBox!
- Mobiado 350 Pioneer: Gold, sapphire crystals, all sorts of excessive stuff like that
- Yikes: Hulu flirts with, yes, having you pay to watch it.
- Sure, a £3,500 Motorola phone. Sounds good to me.
- Contest: Become potent in your segment with Poken
- Dell Adamo XPS specs leak
- Dutch court orders, again, TPB to delete torrents, block Dutch users
- Exclusive Gallery: Android-Powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 in the wild
- American Booksellers Association concerned that rapidly falling book prices will be bad for consumers. Yes, you read that right. Low prices = bad.
- Citizen Journalism: Making a Psystar Hackintosh
| The Back Burner: Things we didn’t post this week Posted: 24 Oct 2009 05:00 AM PDT
A big thank you to everybody for filling our tips-at-crunchgear-dot-com inbox with wonderful, unique, and newsworthy items. Here are a few that we missed.
Hi Tony, Let me just make sure that you and I are huffing the same glue here. As I understand it, you’re looking for some advice on how to spend two years of your life similar to how an average person spends two years of their own life? What have YOU been doing up until this point? Whatever it is, keep doing it. The average person’s life is pretty mundane and boring and it sounds like you’re looking to fit in with the rest of us. As for activities to avoid: anything that has to do with poo from any species, print journalism, or a combination of the two. You’re pretty much safe with anything else.
Hi Cynthia, The title of your e-mail intrigues me and, although I can certainly appreciate the idea of loving someone from the inside out, you really glossed over that whole "what I am" thing. I probably don’t need to ask, seeing as though you’re identifying yourself as someone named Cynthia while the sender’s name is John Silver. Sure I’m flattered, maybe even a bit curious, but I’ve had bad luck with my profile at (singles). If you don’t mind though, I have a friend named Tony who’s looking for at least a two-year relationship. I can pass your e-mail along to him if you like. Just take it slow, he doesn't want to rush into anything.
Ryan, Boy am I glad you sent this message over. We have a LOT of inventory to unload. In particular, we have an excessive amount of the following words:
Anything you could give us for them would be fine. Click here to read previous Back Burner posts…
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| Orchestral movements by LCD light Posted: 23 Oct 2009 10:15 PM PDT
Of course, Vodaphone isn’t here in the US, but internet video in universal, and this is pretty damn cool. So sit back, turn up the speakers, click play, and see what happens when some very clever people get 1000 cellphones together in one place and decide to make a viral video. Here’s the making of video too, it’s definitely worth a viewing: [via Mashable]
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| Mamiya announces two new DSLR cameras Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:01 PM PDT
Don’t expect to get this level of megapixel madness for cheap. The DM22 has an estimated street price of $9995, and the DM28 will sell for $14,990. This is one of those cases where it’s the only camera for the job, and you need one, no other camera will do. For all the details, hit up Mamiya’s site.
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| IREX e-reader listed at Best Buy for $449 Posted: 23 Oct 2009 07:30 PM PDT
Now please remember that Best Buy’s system has been known to have incorrect pricing, and this might be the case with the IREX. For their sake I hope that is the case here, because pricing yourself above the Kindle DX and the nook is pretty much suicide at this point. So, $499. Gonna rush right out and buy that anybody? [via Engadget]
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| Mythbusters test golf ball effect on real car Posted: 23 Oct 2009 05:30 PM PDT It’s almost like someone got their Top Gear in my Mythbusters lately. First the duct tape holding up a car, and now the ‘golf ball’ effect on mileage. So what exactly does happen when you cover a car with clay, and then dimple it like a golf ball? You can watch the video and find out, or just scroll past the picture of the lovely Kari Byron. The car part is about 40 minutes in.
Yes. Apparently, covering your car in clay and dimpling it like a golf ball will result in a significant increase in gas mileage. Who would of thunk it? The real trick it to make sure the dimples are scaled up to the proper size. I could get into the science, but it’s easier to let Jamie and Adam tell you all about it.
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| Motorola Droid (”Sholes”) hits the FCC with AT&T-friendly 3G – for real this time. Posted: 23 Oct 2009 03:11 PM PDT  Looks like Verizon might not be the only one getting the Moto Droid. A few days ago, we wrote a post highlighting the fact that a GSM version of the oh-so-hypetastic Motorola Droid (otherwise known as "Sholes" or "Tao") had cleared the FCC runway. At first, we got a bit excited and misread the details, reading them as if that GSM version of the Sholes had AT&T-friendly 3G bands built in. It didn't (it was the European GSM version) - but this one does!
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| Just in time for Halloween: The Fleshlight Succu Dry Posted: 23 Oct 2009 02:42 PM PDT
The device is just a Fleshlight with teeth but what a profile this thing has. It looks like a nerdy lamprey. Here’s what the website has to say:
Sex in a can: what America is having for dinner.
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| Kindle is coming to the Mac and the BlackBerry Posted: 23 Oct 2009 02:16 PM PDT
No expected release date. It’s just being worked on. And now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
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| Beware the ‘r word’ when reading up on Net Neutrality Posted: 23 Oct 2009 02:00 PM PDT
The beauty of the Drudge Report right now is that Mr. Drudge is working against his very interests. He’s got some ridiculous headline right now, JULIUS AT FCC WANTS TO ‘REGULATE’ INTERNET, that’s meant to wile up his easily excitable readership. What’s going on is that the FCC has moved one step closer to bringin Net Neutrality to fruition, and has invited the public to weigh in until January 14. Here’s my problem with the Drudge presentation: he’s using the word "regulation" to scare up opposition to Net Neutrality. Here’s a quick scenario that I pulled out of thin air the site would do well to consider:
That’s a gigantic oversimplification, yes, but it illustrates my basic point: Drudge here is so off the mark that he’s putting his own business at risk. Not smart, sir.
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| Quick Look: 13.3-inch Acer Timeline Posted: 23 Oct 2009 01:30 PM PDT
I know everybody is excited to start their weekend but the bell doesn’t dismiss you, I dismiss you. So before you go, I’m gonna tell you about this new 3.5-pound Acer Timeline ultraportable that just came out yesterday.
First, the keyboard is gorgeous. It’s like looking at a pretty girl but not the kind of girl that’s too good for you, but more the girl who shows up at your party, does a keg stand, and then asks "Who wants to play Madden?" Pretty but accessible, is what I’m saying. It looks nice, but perhaps more importantly it’s easy to type on. Second, it’s a good deal (I bought it on Amazon for $600). You get a 3.5-pound frame, a 1.3GHz Intel SU4100 CPU, 3GB of DDR3 RAM, 320GB SATA hard drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, and a six-cell battery which Acer claims is good for up to 8 hours. Thirdly, thusly, and finally, please check out the above video for a quick hands on. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to review this computer because it’s a gift for my mother-in-law's 60th birthday. I’d like to make it clear that I didn't spend all $600 of my own money on the computer. I don’t want to get any aspiring bloggers' hopes up about making enough money to throw down $600 on a birthday present for your mother-in-law. You'll need to split $600 presents multiple ways for your entire life. But you do get to play with toys a lot. Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810TZ-4925 [Amazon]
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| First Annual CrunchGear Halloween Costume Contest! Win an XBox! Posted: 23 Oct 2009 01:00 PM PDT  Halloween is coming up and if there's one thing I know it's that geeks love Halloween. The opportunity to hide behind a mask, to subvert the status quo, and to dress up like sexy nurse/sexy witch/sexy balloon boy is a cause for celebration. That said, we're offering one Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Console to the winner of our First Annual CrunchGear Halloween Costume Contest. Here's how to enter.
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| Mobiado 350 Pioneer: Gold, sapphire crystals, all sorts of excessive stuff like that Posted: 23 Oct 2009 12:30 PM PDT  Oh man, yet another "élite" phone for us to look over and never be able to afford. It's the Mobiado 350 Pioneer. It looks sort of like an Indiana Jones relic (note: I've never seen an Indiana Jones movie), and is part of Mobiado's Grand Line.
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| Yikes: Hulu flirts with, yes, having you pay to watch it. Posted: 23 Oct 2009 12:00 PM PDT
Hey, remember Hulu.com? It was a Web site that sort of came out of nowhere, and offered streaming TV shows from NBC and other networks. It was ad-supported, and free. People liked it. And then, one day, in October, 2009, a completely bonkers TV executive all but killed it with one sentence: "It's time to start getting paid for broadcast content online." Those are the words of News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey, uttered at some sort of broadcasters pow wow. The idea that News Corp. (and the other broadcast execs) expects to be paid for something that travels through the air 100 percent freely, and has for decades is, that’s right, ludicrous. And I’m referring only to broadcast content here. Shows like The Office and The Simpsons, and not Curb Your Enthusiasm or Weeds. Ads pay for the broadcast shows, and that anyone expects us to pay for those shows again! Ha! It’s like this: Hulu already runs ads. I’m not gonna pay for access to the site when there’s already ads on there. Never mind the fact that people only put up with the ads because the site is a convenience. "Sure, I’ll put up with a few ads so long as I can watch 30 Rock in between CrunchGear posts." Otherwise, yeah, I’ll head right back to alt.binaries.multimedia and start downloading away. No ads there, and in 720p! I mean, was I stealing all those Seinfeld reruns or 24 (aka the Jack Bauer Power Hour) when I had an HDTV antenna hooked up to my TV? I don’t recall paying to watch those shows; that’s what the ads were for! In essence, charging for Hulu is a one-way to Irrelevant Town. I don’t care either way, seeing as thought I really haven’t watched TV for several years now (outside of live sports).
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| Sure, a £3,500 Motorola phone. Sounds good to me. Posted: 23 Oct 2009 11:30 AM PDT  Let's be honest for a second here: unless we're talking about the Motorola Droid, which should be on Verizon Wireless within a few weeks, we might as well not be talking about Motorola. It'd be like talking about Real Madrid and only mentioning Granero or Drenthe and not Cristiano Ronaldo or Kaká. (Good, making references that all of 11 people will understand.) But we're going to that such a thing right now in talking about the Motorola Aura Diamond Edition. It's £3,500, which converts to, roughly, $5,700. Yeah…
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| Contest: Become potent in your segment with Poken Posted: 23 Oct 2009 11:21 AM PDT
To enter, simply tell one of your friends to read CrunchGear and tell them to comment introducing themselves to the site. When they comment, you need to reply to their original comment. We’ll pick 5 pairs of winners – one goes to the new reader and one goes to the person who told them about CrunchGear. You can invite more than one person but you have to comment after each new person. You can also, feasibly, put a fake name so you get two Poken for yourself but you won’t because you’re not a douche. See below for an example in comments. We'll close this contest on noon Monday. Special thanks to Start Poken to and their new service, Pokenize, a B2B customizing service that helps companies extend their social reach by connecting with Poken users.
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2009 11:04 AM PDT
So here’s what we know. The XPS will be running either a 1.4 or 1.9GHz dual core Intel CPU, integrated X4500MHD graphics, and 4GB of DDR3. You’ll be able to choose from either a 128 or 180GB SSD, and the screen only comes in a 13.4 inch size. There is some bad news (which might be why Dell is holding back currently), the machine apparently comes back with a Windows 7 Experience test rating of 3.3, which is not a good thing. Additionally, that fancy flip screen thing won’t work if the batteries are dead. Not a huge issue, since I’m not sure why you’d need to open your notebook if it’s got no power, but still a little odd. [via Engadget]
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| Dutch court orders, again, TPB to delete torrents, block Dutch users Posted: 23 Oct 2009 10:30 AM PDT
More news about The Pirate Bay to bore you all! (Seriously, it’s not like people are still talking about the old Suprnova or Torrentspy anymore, yet the TPB has stuck around.) Some time ago, a Dutch court ordered TPB to delete a number of torrents and block Dutch IP addresses from being able to visit the site. Using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack, yes. Then TPB protested, as it does all the time, saying that it had no idea about the court case to begin with, so it couldn’t make a proper defense, etc. The Dutch court agreed to give TPB a a little bit of time to work out its issues, and has now reached another, similar verdict: remove the torrents, and block Dutch IP addresses. Fun all around, really. Of course, BREIN is behind all of this. (BREIN is sorta Holland’s equivalent of the RIAA, and has been after TPB for as long as I can remember.) In a perfect, BREIN-approved world, TPB would just go away and never return. That doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon, no here we are. The Dutch court gave TPB’s owners, whoever they are at this point, three months to comply with the ruling, lest they face a €5,000 (~$7,500) per day fine. TPB is currently studying the ruling, which they may well appeal. I look forward to more courtroom shenanigans. Then again, I also look forward to the day when Hollywood, and its international equivalents, figure out a business model that clicks with the world in 2009, one that doesn’t involve trying to sue dumb Web sites into the ground. One day!
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| Exclusive Gallery: Android-Powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 in the wild Posted: 23 Oct 2009 10:27 AM PDT  Hello, gorgeous! What a nice way to wake up on a Friday morning. You roll out of bed to make yourself some eggs, hop online to start the daily rituals, and bam! Shots of the unreleased, Android-powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 are sitting in your inbox.
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2009 10:00 AM PDT
Books, books, books! The American Booksellers Association, a trade group that represents small bookstores (not Barnes and Noble and the other big guys), has asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether or not Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target have "[devalued] the very concept of the book" with their ongoing price war. Well, they’re actually asking for an investigation into their selling practices. That is, because Amazon wants to outsell Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart wants to outsell Amazon, they both sell the latest book (think Stephen King, Dan Brown, etc.) for some really low price, like $10. When you consider that the average hardcover "should" cost something like $20-$30, just based on the wildly outdated economics of book-selling, then you understand why the ABA is so upset. Here’s what the ABA is thinking: it represents The Little Guy, the indie bookstore on Main Street, USA that doesn’t have the clout of Barnes and Noble or Borders. If these big guys keep trying to undercut each other, it lowers the price Main Street can set for a book. Why would someone pay $30 for a book when they can buy it for $10 from Wal-Mart? The problem becomes, after Main Street goes out of business, that limits the amount of information (books) out there. And what if some author releases a crazy book about some controversial topic, one that Wal-Mart refuses to carry because it doesn’t want to "offend" its customers or whatever? Now there’s no Main Street bookstore to turn to, and that information never gets out there. Then the marketplace of ideas suffers, and we’re all worse off. That’s the ABA’s thinking, at least, and it’s not entirely unreasonable, I don’t think. If you want, this topic could easily balloon into a much deeper, philosophical discussion on the entire book industry—remember, Barnes and Noble said the other day that the book industry is still bigger than Hollywood, video games, etc.—but other, better people have already begun to tackle that debate. And why is this on CrunchGear? Yup, e-books. You can make the argument, and the ABA has done just that, that it was the initial release of the Kindle that got this whole dangerous price war started. Amazon needed to jumpstart the public’s acceptance of e-books, so they did the inverse of what game companies do when they release a new system: game companies make money on the software and lose money on the hardware (at least initially), while Amazon was selling these e-books for something like one-third their "actual" value. Gotta get those Kindles out there! So that’s basically it. The ABA is concerned that a price war, started by the introduction of the Kindle, will eventually limit the number and quality of ideas available to y’all. You’re free to disagree, and I get the feeling that many of you will.
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| Citizen Journalism: Making a Psystar Hackintosh Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:30 AM PDT
Here’s Louis’ take:
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![nosoliters[1]](http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/nosoliters1.jpg "nosoliters[1]")
Mamiya announced two new DSLR cameras today, the DM22 and DM28. Pushing the megapixel wall again, DM22 is 22 megapixel, and the DM28 is, you guessed it, a 28 megapixel. Both cameras use the stock Mamiya lenses so if you are already a Mamiya shooter, you’re set.
With all the talk about 
More details today on the 
Reader Louis sent in this longish missive about his own experiences installing a Psystar Hackintosh. We were stymied last night by the authentification procedure so we didn’t even get as far as Louis but it seems that the install, while fairly seamless, is fraught with problems. The speakers on our HP, for example, don’t work and while Apple’s Ink feature shows up in the control panel, the touchscreen is about useless.| 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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