CrunchGear |  |
- The TwitterPeek is a Peek that tweets
- New spongy material instantly hardens on exposure to magnetism
- Caught in a Trap Edition
- What exactly makes a camera EVIL?
- Japanese rules volleyball: one player must be robotic
- Build your own battery powered USB charger
- Instructions for creating an autonomous sentry gun
- And now Creative is jumping into e-book readers and tablets and funcookers and such
- DIY: build a medium format film camera from scratch
- Sorenson’s Squeeze 6: A connected media encoding and distribution platform
- Wherein tenuous links are made between BioShock and two new Ayn Rand biographies
- Watch the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trailer here
- Help Key: How to use Windows Remote Desktop Connection to connect to computers without user passwords
- 5 iPhone Accessories We’re Still Waiting For
- Pioneer shutting down its Premier car audio line at the end of 2009
- New study proves that ECC memory may well be worth the extra cost
- Estate of Asimov okays new “I, Robot” books – really now, that’s in poor taste
- World of Worldcraft in China: The story that never ceases to befuddle
- This 648-megapixel image of the Milky Way will melt your brain
- Review: Magic Mouse
| The TwitterPeek is a Peek that tweets Posted: 03 Nov 2009 05:08 AM PST
So the TwitterPeek gives you an always-connected view of Twitter over a nationwide cellular network. You can tweet and twat all you want. The device runs $99 with 6 months of service or $199 with a lifetime of the device service. I’m sure the TweeterPeek is a wonderful device, but most feature phones now include a Twitter app. So if you’re really getting into Twitter, first reevaluate your life, and then check out your cell phone provider’s offers to make sure you simply can’t upgrade your phone to get access to Twitter. Or you can just drop $200 on the TweeterPeek and call it good. Your call.
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| New spongy material instantly hardens on exposure to magnetism Posted: 03 Nov 2009 01:21 AM PST
A new kind of material (of which currently no actual picture exists anywhere) with the consistency of pudding that hardens instantly when exposed to magnetism has been developed by a team of researchers at Japan’s Yamagata University. And once the substance, a mix between high polymer and iron oxide granules, hardens, it can become up to 500 times stiffer than plastic. The researchers say when the magnetic field is 300 milli-tesla strong, for example, the material hardens 300-fold in under one second. The iron oxide granules are spread randomly throughout the gel-like material, but when magnetized, they align in rows and stiffen the gel, which is made of more than 50% water. The gel could be used in card and trains one day to dampen vibrations. Furniture makers could adjust the softness of chairs and other furniture. Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]
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| Posted: 03 Nov 2009 12:00 AM PST
Video: Strange Japanese hamburger vending machine
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| What exactly makes a camera EVIL? Posted: 02 Nov 2009 10:14 PM PST
The writer does raise an interesting point, what exactly do we call the new generation of cameras? How exactly do you classify a camera like the Panasonic GF1, or the GH1? They aren’t exactly point and shoot, but they aren’t DLSRs either. Make your contribution to the democratic process (it’s ok, you can still vote if you’re a felon) and pick the new name and acronym.
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| Japanese rules volleyball: one player must be robotic Posted: 02 Nov 2009 08:30 PM PST There’s not much for me to add here. In addition to walking normally, robots can now play pool, baseball, volleyball, and make ramen. Anybody else feeling a bit like an endangered species?
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| Build your own battery powered USB charger Posted: 02 Nov 2009 08:15 PM PST
It’s a pretty easy build. Solder the battery connector wires to a regulator, and then from the regulator to the female end of a scavenged USB cable to the regulator, and you’re set. The hardest part will be finding a female end of a USB connector, unless you want to just chop the end off of a cable. You can read about the whole process here (there’s a little more to it then I’ve described). One thing to be aware of: I contacted an electric engineer friend of mine, and he advised me to be very cautious with this build. It is a strong possibility that this device could short out and destroy the device you are trying to charge. In this case, it might be better to spend the $20 and buy one from your favorite retail outlet. [via Gizmodo]
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| Instructions for creating an autonomous sentry gun Posted: 02 Nov 2009 07:48 PM PST
So read that again and think long and hard if you want to trust this man to teach you how to build an autonomous weapon that will shoot at anything that movies. Are you thinking? Don’t lie. The gun will be able to tell. And it will follow you and shoot you. It doesn’t actually look like he mounted a gun to his little system, but, as with all fun-time anarchists, it’s easiest to remove the last important step and let the mad man or fool add in the final important part. Luckily, this kit looks a too weak to hold up a Derringer let alone a chain gun.
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| And now Creative is jumping into e-book readers and tablets and funcookers and such Posted: 02 Nov 2009 07:00 PM PST
Except you there, with the freckles. What you’re thinking is wrong. So, so wrong. Like so many other functiondrogenous tablet-shaped devices, you can expect to watch some media, access some services like Facebook and Twitter, and probably a few other things. Beyond that, it’s pretty much anybody’s guess.
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| DIY: build a medium format film camera from scratch Posted: 02 Nov 2009 06:30 PM PST
Peter J’s project is about 80% completed, but its looking really sharp so far. Amazingly, it’s assembled from cardboard, glue, some ground glass, and Legos. It looks like he used a purchased lens, but the rest of it was assembled by hand. I hope he’s able to finish the project, I look forward to seeing the results (and maybe building one for myself). [via Hack a Day]
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| Sorenson’s Squeeze 6: A connected media encoding and distribution platform Posted: 02 Nov 2009 05:20 PM PST
Now, the point is not that you need a PC to encode heinous old formats, but rather that digital distribution is a weird, complex process that could use a bit of simplification. Sorenson’s Squeeze 6 appears to go to some lengths to make this happen. It’s far from the only encoding platform out there, but I think they’re moving the right direction with this version, which not only integrates tightly with your Mac, but also with SMS, Twitter, and other popular services. After all, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to be working in the same office, or even the same country, as people who need to be informed every step of the way.
Imagine this: You set Squeeze up to watch a folder where master edited files are placed after they’ve been rendered out by FCP. Squeeze grabs the 1.5GB file, re-encodes it for YouTube, DVD, iPhone, and HQ H.264. When it’s done, it places them in a DropBox folder, emails the parties involved, and sends a text to your phone, telling you it’s finished. I may be against connectivity where I feel it’s not useful to me, but damn, if I was a video professional I’d be all over this thing. The inputs and outputs look pretty comprehensive (though, it is true, Real is not on the list so it would have been useless the other day) — Sorenson is no newcomer to the encoding game, of course — but it’s the fundamentally collaborative nature of the program that makes it interesting to me. I’m not a media pro so I don’t know what tools are already in place for this kind of thing, but I know that the post-production and distribution phase can be a trying time, and this looks like it could streamline and improve the process greatly. Besides, I can see the crop, aspect ratio, and other frequently-adjusted controls right there in the interface, which says to me “user-friendly.” If you’re in a collaborative video environment (like, I don’t know, College Humor or something), this might be a revelation. Then again, you’re probably also working in an office next to the person who’d be getting your “encode complete” text. At any rate, I think that service integration like this is a great step for a media company to make. It’s for Mac and Windows, but it looks like Macs have the superior version. Since it’s a pro app, however, it comes with the pro price: $500. My budget restricts me to freeware, but maybe yours doesn’t. There’s more info at Sorenson’s site.
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| Wherein tenuous links are made between BioShock and two new Ayn Rand biographies Posted: 02 Nov 2009 05:00 PM PST
Working under the assumption that many of you have played BioShock, I point you in the direction of this week’s issue of The New Yorker, which has a quick review of two Ayn Rand biographies (here and here) that may interest you. It’s pretty funny because while the game’s story, which is unreservedly great, is in part inspired by the Rand novel "Atlas Shrugged," the New Yorker review doesn’t miss a beat in calling the author, well, a hack. Keeping in mind that I’ve never read the novel, and have zero plans to (I’m more of a non-fiction guy when it comes to reading), my basic understanding is that it’s all about how man is best served by being an individual, and is only hampered when he has to deal with icky other people, especially icky other people in the government keeping him down. How can man be expected to excel when he has to worry about society getting in his way? Which brings us to the game. All throughout, you’re told that Rapture is (well, was) a place where man can be great, where he can rise as far as his talents will allow him without having to worry about the big bad government getting in the way. Then again, you spend the game shooting icicles at large robots, so maybe that whole Utopia business was ill advised. Darn good shooter, though.
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| Watch the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trailer here Posted: 02 Nov 2009 04:30 PM PST I’m surprised. The Prince of Persia movie doesn’t look terrible. But we all know that Disney will likely destroy the franchise and the movie will flop, but at least the trailer doesn’t look that bad. I think I’ll watch it again. [/Flim]
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| Posted: 02 Nov 2009 04:00 PM PST
Gather round, everyone. Gather round. I’m going to show you a trick that 98% of you will never use. But for the 2% of you that actually use the information contained herein, I hope you’ll consider removing at least part of the CrunchGear staff from your "People to Punch" list.
Why? If you’re like me, you have multiple computers scattered about your house — not because you need them but because every time you get a new computer, you can’t bear the thought of getting rid of the one before it. And every once in awhile you want to access one of your old computers, but not nearly often enough to keep it hooked up to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard all the time. Windows' built-in Remote Desktop Connection software makes it easy to access all of your old computers from your new computer but, traditionally, the old computers that you want to access need to have user accounts with passwords for security’s sake. This presents a problem when one of the old computers that you use for, say, some auto-start task either gets rebooted automatically because of a Windows update or the power goes out or whatever. In my case, I have an old computer I use as a TiVo Desktop Plus server. When the computer gets rebooted, the TiVo server doesn't start back up until someone logs in with the correct username and password. This can, of course, be done via Remote Desktop Connection from my main computer but I wanted to just be able to reboot the machine all the way into Windows with no password so everything starts humming along automatically. Like I said, only 2% of you will use this trick. But here it is. How to Allow Remote Desktop Connections with Blank Passwords (Easy) This is the easy way, but it requires that your target computer is running a big-boy version of Windows XP, Vista, or 7 – namely Professional or Ultimate. If your target computer is running a Home or Premium version, skip to the next section. For Vista or 7, click Start then type gpedit.msc into the search box. For XP, click Start then Run, then type gpedit.msc into the Run box. That'll open the Local Group Policy Editor. Drill down through the menu like so: Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options.
In the right-hand pane, double-click "Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console login only" and change it from enabled to disabled. That's it. Now make sure the computer's user account isn't password protected (Control Panel > User Accounts > Remove your password) and from now on, you'll be able to use your new computer and Remote Desktop Connection to access this old computer without a password. How to Allow Remote Desktop Connections with Blank Passwords (Hard) And it now for the rest of us; the huddled masses with run-of-the-mill Windows operating systems (Home, Basic, Home Premium, and so on). Our task involves registry editing. First, a little test. Open your registry editor. If you don’t know what that means or you don’t know how to open your registry editor, then that’s a pretty good sign that you probably shouldn’t be trying to do something like this. It’s not rocket science by any means, but I’d feel pretty bad if you messed up your computer because of this post. If you’ve actually opened your registry editor, please navigate as follows: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > ControlSet001 > Control > Lsa Find the registry key labeled "LimitBlankPasswordUse" and change the value from 1 to 0.
Then you’ll need to repeat the above steps using the following registry path as well: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Lsa Again, change the registry key "LimitBlankPasswordUse" from 1 to 0. That it, we're all done. Now make sure that this computer's user account doesn't have a password set (Control Panel > User Accounts > Remove your password). Once that’s all taken care of, you should be able to use Remote Desktop Connection from your new computer to log into this old one without a password. Special thanks to Dan Dar3 and My Digital Life for the above info.
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| 5 iPhone Accessories We’re Still Waiting For Posted: 02 Nov 2009 03:30 PM PST  Way back in March, Apple announced that the latest and greatest build of the iPhone OS would open up a whole new world to third parties: richly featured accessories, complete with tie-in software. No longer would accessory makers be limited to headphones, cases, and FM transmitters with hardware controls - now they could make glucose meters, guitar amp controllers, and FM transmitters with onscreen controls! The possibilities were endless. 8 months later, what is there to show for it? There's a $120 car cradle that boosts the GPS accuracy of the iPhone, some fancy running shoes, and.. er.. well, that's about it. Maybe we're just expecting too much; maybe the design/review/approval process is even more of a chore for the hardware guys than it is for app store developers. At this rate, though, we'll be seeing a fourth generation iPhone before we see any more accessories. Partly for the sake of inspiring would be hardware-makers and partly because we just like to think about this sort of stuff, we've come up with a list of 5 (plus) iPhone accessories we're not-so-patiently waiting for. Feel free to add your own in the comments.
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| Pioneer shutting down its Premier car audio line at the end of 2009 Posted: 02 Nov 2009 03:30 PM PST
There was a time when Premier products where among the best car audio products available. But those days are gone too. As of late, the product line has been simply a step up above standard Pioneer line and not really worth of the Premier designation. And that’s why Pioneer is killing the label.
You can’t knock Pioneer for this move really. All its trying to do is save face in a dying market and not let a respected brand slip into a coma of suck.
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| New study proves that ECC memory may well be worth the extra cost Posted: 02 Nov 2009 03:00 PM PST
So starts a summary over at ZDNet. The study (PDF) is available for the reading. A large-scale analysis like this hasn’t been performed (at least publicly) yet, so the findings are pretty shocking. A hearty “thank you” goes to Google for taking the time to analyze this situation, and for publicizing the results. Basically, the majority of DRAM chips on the market are far more error-prone than previously considered. And the consumer-grade mainboards are just as culpable — if not more so — for hard memory errors than the DRAM chips! So what might a memory error look like? Darn near anything. Remember that inside your computer, everything is ones and zeros. If one of those ones becomes a zero, who knows what might happen? Maybe nothing, maybe a little stutter in your game, maybe a corrupted file saved to your hard disk, or maybe a complete system lockup. It’s not all gloom-and-doom, though:
ECC memory usually commands a hefty premium, so it’s no surprise that many people choosing to save money cut that cost first. But maybe it’s time to think long-term about the value of your next purchase.
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| Estate of Asimov okays new “I, Robot” books – really now, that’s in poor taste Posted: 02 Nov 2009 02:30 PM PST
But Asimov’s estate, apparently concerned more for the bottom line than the man’s literary legacy, has authorized a new trilogy: sequels to the Robot series, to be written by a guy I’ve never heard of, a Mr. Mickey Zucker Reichert. Classy. Now, I understand if you want to allow, say, a crappy movie to be made — it provides exposure, introduces some younger people to Asimov, and so on. And I’d be thrilled if they wanted to do a big “75th anniversary” thing or whatever, and do a big promotion, and re-issue the book all nice. But authorizing new content to be added? I don’t think he’d approve. [via Slashdot]
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| World of Worldcraft in China: The story that never ceases to befuddle Posted: 02 Nov 2009 02:00 PM PST
Clearly nobody has any idea what’s going on in China regarding World of Warcraft. The rules over there are such that Blizzard just can’t open up shop, but has to contract a local company to run the game for Chinese users. Fair enough, and Blizzard has contracted NetEase to do such a thing. The problem is that NetEase keeps running into problems getting the game’s expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, approved for public consumption. In fact, the body responsible for approving the game, General Administration of Press and Publication, has just told NetEase to take a hike. Well, more specifically, GAPP has told NetEast that its review of The Burning Crusade is now officially on hold, and that it would do well to stop accepting new subscriptions lest it puts its Internet connection in jeopardy. I’d be lying if I said this story affected me in any obvious way, but I still think it’s interesting. Meanwhile, I’m busy all day and night farming for cloth to level my burgeoning Tailoring profession.
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| This 648-megapixel image of the Milky Way will melt your brain Posted: 02 Nov 2009 01:30 PM PST
The story goes that a physicist, Axel Mellinger from Central Michigan University, pieced together a 648MP image of the Milky Way from 3,000 pictures he took from all over the globe. He traveled 26,000 miles to South Africa, Texas, and Michigan over 22 months to take the necessary pictures. After all that, he still had to construct the picture, which included compensating for the two-dimensional images taken from different locations. But enough talk, the full zoomable image is available at his website. [Axel Mellinger via IO9]
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| Posted: 02 Nov 2009 01:00 PM PST
Not so Magic I gave the Magic Mouse a fair shake. Heck, I even gave the Mighty Mouse a fair shake. And, like its older brother, the Magic Mouse promises you the world but falls far short, creating a strange vortex of suck that will frustrate and deter the average user. First, a note on my current mousing habits. I’ve used a Logitech MX Revolution for about six months now and I’m hooked on its dual scroll wheels and various buttons. I am, obviously, not Steve’s target market. However, I’m happy to try any mouse for a few days and I often find that my hand and work-style changes to match the idiosyncrasies of the pointing device in question. I’m sure if you gave me a mouse shaped like a carrot (or just a carrot) I could get used to mousing on it. Sadly, if you give me a mouse the shape of an orthopedic shoe insert, I’m going to have a little trouble. The mouse’s much vaunted multi-touch surface is a gimmick. At best you can do a two-finger swipe left or right to scroll through files and pictures or change from browser tab to browser tab. One finger, wheel-less scrolling is odd in that it adds momentum (you can turn it off) that will spin you past your desired point with an errant flick of your finger. There is no pinch or twist and you’d have to do something like a Vulcan salute to do a pinch or spread on this thing anyway since your thumb and ring finger always have to be clutching the mouse. This brings us to the second point: you can never let go of this thing. The mouse resolution is very low so you have to pick it up often to get across a large screen (I have two screens, so it takes about three lift and moves to get the mouse over to the other screen). And you’re supposed to hold it with the afore-mention crab-grab with your thumb and ring finger and perhaps the pinkie. The mouse is too small for my man-hands to grab and cover so there’s always a bit of space between the surface of the mouse and the palm. This all adds up to a frustrating departure from standard mousing procedure. While I’m sure some of you consider this the Delicious Mouse of Happiness, I just can’t wrap my head around this odd device. Insult to Injury Bottom Line If you do any serious mousing at all, avoid the Magic Mouse.
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So we know what a DSLR is, we know what a P&S is, but what exactly do we call those new little cameras with the removable lenses? Is it an “Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens” camera? Well, CNET is asking just that question, and you can contribute to their poll if you’d like. Or hang out with us 
Apparently Monday is DIY day here at CrunchGear, as we have another project for you. Battery powered USB chargers are nothing new — but building one yourself, that’s something different. Using a few components from your local electronics store and a 9v battery, you too can solder together your own little frankencharger.
We’re withholding judgment on the Zii platform until somebody really gets a chance to use it in a final form (
It’s amusing to me how sometimes how I’ll be considering a particular subject and then randomly find a DIY project related to that subject. For example, I’m been considering getting a medium format film camera, just for the experience of shooting in that format. Apparently I’m not the only one, because Peter J at the Medium Format Camera Project has been building his very own camera.
Now, I’ve only read a little bit of Asimov, but as an occasional sci-fi fan, I certainly acknowledge him to be one of the founding fathers of the genre. His ideas about robots have actually shaped and informed robot research for decades, which I think is one of the marks of a great sci-fi writers. Now, as you may know, Asimov died in 1992. The Robot series, as it is known, was written primarily in the 40s. Now, if Asimov had wanted more Robot stories written, don’t you think he would have done so himself?
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