CrunchGear |  |
- Hong Kong Meet-up is Friday at 6pm
- Daily Crunch: Stinkbot Edition
- Tuesday Giveaway： MittenBerry
- ThinkFlood Answers Our Prayers and Unleashes RedEye: Universal Remote for the iPhone
- Autom, the fat-fighting robot, is coming in 2010
- Microsoft already looking at Windows 8
- Wham: FlipShare video is handled by Mossberg
- NEC’s new green monitors run cool, save energy
- Review: Dexim P-Flip Foldable Power Dock
- Donkey Kong plus Star Wars equals the nerdiest shirt I’ve seen in a long time
- Cabling as art form
- Look, it’s Red Dead Redemption!
- Ubisoft: 10 games for Natal, 4-5 for Sony’s magic wand in first six months
- Review: Energizer Flat Panel 2X Charging System for Wii
- The Windows 7 black screen of death will destroy us all!
- The 2011 Audi A8 bests K.I.T.T. in the gadget department
- Yet another game, CrimeCraft, refused classification in Australia
- It’ll linger for a week: Japanese security system sprays stinky smell on thieves
- Navy UAV sets endurance record of 26 hours 1 minute
- Psystar, Apple reach settlement: No more PCs pre-loaded with Mac OS X (but Rebel EFI may be safe)
| Hong Kong Meet-up is Friday at 6pm Posted: 02 Dec 2009 12:46 AM PST
We’ll have a nice, old timey meet-up in Hong Kong this Friday, December 4 at 6pm at the California Bar 30 D’Aguilar Street Hong Kong. I’ve set up a Plancast event for us so watch that for any changes. If anything changes at the last minute, check my Twitter feed.
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| Daily Crunch: Stinkbot Edition Posted: 02 Dec 2009 12:00 AM PST |
| Posted: 01 Dec 2009 09:03 PM PST
Anyway, we’ve got three pairs of MittenBerry gloves for your texting pleasure. To win, read on. First, here’s what these things are:
Next, comment below. We’ll pick three winners at random to own these gloves. I don’t think you HAVE to get pink, but you can if you want to.
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| ThinkFlood Answers Our Prayers and Unleashes RedEye: Universal Remote for the iPhone Posted: 01 Dec 2009 08:54 PM PST
The average universal remote is $150 so the price isn’t too bad, but at the same time, it does utilize the iPhone’s touchscreen and hardware to power the remote (read: shouldn’t it be cheaper?). The RedEye remote may be a solid option for those who are already looking for a universal remote and don’t already have one. At the same time, at a lower price point, I could see this going from a nice-to-have for iPhone owners to a must-have, given the quality of the device. I’m still putting the RedEye through a variety of well-thought-out (not) and rigorous (not) tests, so we’ll hold off for a full review. For now, hit the jump for more pictures and impressions. RedEye was previously in private beta for testing purposes only, but is available for purchase as of today at their website. The RedEye device itself has great design, and I was impressed with the quality of the hardware. It probably shouldn’t be stuck in the middle of a living room wrestling match, but it could probably handle an accidental ass-squishing or two. Unless of course your 300 lb. Aunt Edna decides to take a seat on it. First impressions: I’m happy to say the device works – which is, well, fairly important. It connects to your iPhone via Wi-Fi and doesn’t seem to have any significant latency from pressing the button on your iPhone to firing a signal off to your TV/DVR/Blu-Ray player. That said, I’ve only tried it on Dish Network’s awful set-top box thus far, which already has a ridiculous lag time. Setup was a bit difficult, but that’s to be expected given that it’s a universal remote. The RedEye definitely has great potential, and as long as it delivers on some core universal remote features, it may just be worth the hefty price tag. Check out the pics and promo video below.
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| Autom, the fat-fighting robot, is coming in 2010 Posted: 01 Dec 2009 07:13 PM PST
You’ll recall that there was a bit of a buzz a few years ago about a fat-fighting robot named Autom designed to sit on your counter and convince you not to eat that last slice of pizza. Well, the old girl is almost ready for production and should be arriving next Fall. Autom, in her first incarnation, looked a bit weird and was basically a fancy computer case. Now, however, this thing is like a fat-fighting Furby with expressive eyes and a cute little mouth that definitely wouldn’t ever eat the last slice of pie, unlike me. The device works fairly well – I saw a prototype as well as some mechanical improvements – and apparently people become so attached to little robot friends that they forget that they’re actually on a diet. The retention for the average diet, for example, is three weeks. When Cory Kidd, the CEO of Intuitive Automata and creator of Autom gave the robot to dieters he found that they didn’t want to give her up and survived on a diet for eight weeks or more. Clearly we love little robots. No pricing yet but Kidd explained that there will be a base price for the robot and a subscription price for back end services including monitoring and medical advice. You interact with the robot with a touchscreen but voice activated controls will soon be implemented. No pricing yet, but look for a beta roll out later next year.
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| Microsoft already looking at Windows 8 Posted: 01 Dec 2009 06:58 PM PST
Microsoft hasn’t officially announced any of this, but if you look at the paper trail we’re starting to see all the signs. In particular, Microsoft has posted some pretty heavy job listings for things like developers, localization testers, and program managers to start a big new project in July 2010. What is that new big project? Well, it’s all but confirmed that it’s going to be Windows 8. In fact, when you compare the job postings coming out now, and the postings that came out after Vista was launched, you’ll see an interesting comparison.
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| Wham: FlipShare video is handled by Mossberg Posted: 01 Dec 2009 06:23 PM PST
If you’ve been waiting for some way to put your low- to middling-resolution videos onto a big TV, your prayers have been answered. Flip, through their mouthpiece Walt Mossberg, just dumped out a big bucket of howsyerfather and announced the Flipshare for all to enjoy. The device will cost $150 and plugs into an HDMI or component video input. It streams videos wirelessly thanks to a white wireless dongle and includes a remote. The device can share Flip video files with ease, other files not so much. Does the world need another specialized streaming device? With Roku boxen working so well and especially with channels enabled, the Flipshare makes sense if you’re totally into your Flip. Our original hope was that this thing would stream everything to everyone. It won’t. Oh well, at least we can still use their cameras to film the moments of our lives.
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| NEC’s new green monitors run cool, save energy Posted: 01 Dec 2009 06:20 PM PST
The LED backlighting reduces heat on this 22″ LCD and it consumes considerably less power as well. LEDs will do that, NEC; I don’t think you get to claim it as some sort of accomplishment of your own.
Is it 20% less power or 52% less power? Make up your mind, NEC! I would recommend the monitor except for the fact that its resolution is only 1680×1050. Add one more inch and you can get full HD on there. Of course, those ones aren’t LED-lit. Well, you can’t have everything. [via SlashGear]
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| Review: Dexim P-Flip Foldable Power Dock Posted: 01 Dec 2009 06:00 PM PST
Short Version: Equal parts backup battery and iPhone dock, Dexim's $55 P-Flip Foldable Power Dock serves as a nice daily desk accessory and then easily pulls double duty as a portable travelling companion.
Review: Guess what? There are a million iPhone accessories. And it’s not easy to stand out in the crowd if you’re a company that makes iPhone accessories. But sometimes the best course is to offer a simple solution that addresses more than one need for the common iPhone owner and to offer your product at a decent price. In this case, Dexim has merged a small, unobtrusive iPhone dock with a portable backup battery. Exciting? Not really, but it doesn’t have to be because, at $55, you’re getting two accessories in one for close to the price of most competing backup battery offerings. The dock is compatible with the iPhone 3G and 3GS and all generations of the iPod touch. The battery pack is 2000mAh, which is about 1.5 times the capacity of the iPhone's internal battery. So you get about a charge and a half out of the dock. A full recharge of my iPhone 3GS took about an hour and a half. Dexim rates the product as capable of 8 hours talk time, 15 hours of video, 15 hours of gaming, or 60 hours of music. I can confirm the 60 hours of music claim. I set my phone into airplane mode (turns off all data connections) and let it play music nonstop starting Friday night after work and noticed it had finally petered out on Monday morning. Side note: going without a phone for an entire weekend is weird for most of Saturday morning but becomes pretty nice after a while.
The dock folds down to a very manageable travel size and can itself be recharged with a mini-USB cable. If you dock your phone into it while it's charging, you're able to synch with iTunes and all that good stuff. The main downside is that if you use any sort of protective case, you'll have to remove it in order to charge up your battery on the go. That’s the tradeoff for having a backup battery that doubles as a dock, though. Also, the $55 price tag may seem a bit high at first glance but considering that a fair amount of competing backup batteries go for around $50, the added bonus of the docking feature makes for a pretty decent purchase. P-Flip Foldable Power Dock [Dexim]
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| Donkey Kong plus Star Wars equals the nerdiest shirt I’ve seen in a long time Posted: 01 Dec 2009 05:48 PM PST
This does seem like a good idea, though — not the shirt, the idea of a Han/Luke game where both guys are playable. Luke would be the close-up damage dealer, Han would have his blaster… like Mercs or Commando. Or Cookie and Cream! That would be amazing. [via Super Punch and The Daily What]
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| Posted: 01 Dec 2009 03:10 PM PST
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| Look, it’s Red Dead Redemption! Posted: 01 Dec 2009 02:30 PM PST Things are a little bit crazy here today. The biggest problem is that, oh, 40 percent of our posts aren’t posting when we schedule them to. It’s an aggravation that we really all could do without. But moving on, we have a new trailer from Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption. We also have a release date: April 27, 2010 for North America, and three days later everywhere else. What do I know about Red Dead Redemption? Very little, to be honest. We speculated that East Side Dave would be in the game, but there’s zero evidence to that effect.
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| Ubisoft: 10 games for Natal, 4-5 for Sony’s magic wand in first six months Posted: 01 Dec 2009 01:30 PM PST
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said in an earnings call that the company would have, barring possible changes in timing, 10 games available for Natal within the first six months of its release. He also said that they’d have 4-5 games for Sony’s motion controller, whatever it’s really called (can’t just be “wand”) in the same time frame. While I wouldn’t say we’re about to see a renaissance in gaming or anything like that, I think it’s good that these new peripherals are coming out deep into the consoles’ lifespans. Unlike the Wii at launch, developers have a clear idea of what the 360 and PS3 are capable of, and so their real focus will be on gameplay. I’m guessing that the first batch of games will consequently be of higher quality than early Wii titles. It’s still not simple which system to go for, however, if you’re still wavering like me. New Super Mario Bros Wii and Excitebike World Rally are enough to make me get the Wii, yet XBLA has so many indie titles — and serious, super-deep games like Demon’s Souls make the PS3 an excellent proposition as well. Well, I don’t even have a TV on which to play these games, so I should probably slow my roll. [via 1UP]
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| Review: Energizer Flat Panel 2X Charging System for Wii Posted: 01 Dec 2009 01:00 PM PST
Available starting today, the $30 Energizer Flat Panel 2X Charging System from Performance Designed Products is an inexpensive, quick, and cool way to juice up your Wii remotes.
This is an inductive charging system, meaning that there’s no need to connect any cables between the charging pad and the remote. The NiMH battery packs slips into the Wii controller and is magnetized to align with the special charging area on the black pad you see in the above photo. It’s a pretty neat feature that'll add some much needed class to "Busch Light and Wii Bowling Thursdays" that have made your house so popular. Simply place the remote on the pad and watch it wiggle itself into the correct charging position like magic.
At $30, the system is priced somewhere between entry-level and mid-range Wii remote chargers. I can tell you that without knowing the price beforehand, I assumed it'd retail for around $50 when I first took it out of the box and set it up. So there's that. The battery packs are nice and hefty and hold a charge for about as long as standard AA batteries – maybe a tad shorter, but not enough to make a huge difference. If you’ve been using regular batteries for your Wii remotes up until now, you'll definitely appreciate switching to rechargeable ones over the long haul. And with inductive charging, you're able to charge your Wii remotes without taking off any protective silicone jackets or the MotionPlus add-on. Recharge time is refreshingly quick for an induction system. Inductive charging generally takes a bit longer than standard recharging systems but the technology has come a long way over the past year or so. The system I reviewed in March took a long time to recharge – overnight, pretty much — whereas this Energizer system takes about 3-4 hours. Overall, I can safely recommend this product as a solid purchase for anyone looking for an attractive induction charger at a decent price. Battery life is good, recharge time is quick, and the magnetized charging surface adds a touch of cool for good measure.
Energizer Flat Panel 2X Charging System [PDP.com]
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| The Windows 7 black screen of death will destroy us all! Posted: 01 Dec 2009 12:27 PM PST
Have you run into the black screen of death in Windows 7 yet? I haven’t, but that’s probably because I only use Windows as a conduit to playing Team Fortress 2 and spend only as much time as I can in there. I also haven’t applied any security updates to it, and that may be the culprit. So Microsoft has admitted that is’s looking into this mess. This mess, yes, is the black screen of death. The glitch, as described by the BBC, "means that users of Windows 7 see a totally black screen after logging on to the system." I cannot think of a more aggravating glitch. The glitch doesn’t just affect Windows 7, either, with reports out there of it also affecting Vista and XP. A security firm, Prevx, says it has the glitch can be triggered by as many as 10 things. Most fingers are pointing to the November 10 security update. I’m trying to think when was the last time I saw a "(blank) screen of death" in Windows, or a kernel panic in Mac OS X. In fact, the last time I saw a kernel panic was at a computer lab in school in 2005. So it’s been a while.
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| The 2011 Audi A8 bests K.I.T.T. in the gadget department Posted: 01 Dec 2009 11:30 AM PST
Cars are increasingly becoming more circuits than gears and the 2011 Audi A8 is a prime example of this transformation. There is likely more tech packed in the full-size Audi sedan than the International Space Station. In fact, if you think the laptop steering wheel table is the ultimate driver distraction, click the read link below to see what the flagship Audi packs. First, let’s start with the creature comforts.
Entertainment system
Safety equipment
Of course the A8 has the powertrain to back up this massive saloon with an 8-speed triptronic system and quattro permanent all-wheel drive, along with a direct fuel injection 372 HP V8 engine. Too bad Audi hasn’t announced the price yet, but chances are it doesn’t matter. The only people that can probably afford all this luxurious Audi technology are those that will likely be overwhelmed by it. Or douchebag bankers.
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| Yet another game, CrimeCraft, refused classification in Australia Posted: 01 Dec 2009 11:00 AM PST
There’s almost a comedy about this next story: Australia has banned another video game because it’s too violent. (What is it with Australia and banning violent video games?) The game is CrimeCraft, and it has been refused classification by the ratings board down there. The game was refused classification because "there is insufficient delineation between the 'fictional drugs' available in game and real-world proscribed drugs." In other words, the in-game drugs aren’t "fake enough" for the Australian Classification Board. CrimeCraft is sort of an FPS MMO. You’ll recall that this same board refused classification for several other games, including Left 4 Dead 2 and Risen. No, I’ve never heard of Risen. I wonder, what is it about this board that makes it so ornery? You never hear about the ESRB refusing to rate a game here in the U.S. I could go on, but Australia is so far from me, you know.
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| It’ll linger for a week: Japanese security system sprays stinky smell on thieves Posted: 01 Dec 2009 10:25 AM PST
Does anyone remember the Japanese anti-burglar mat for stores and restaurants I blogged a few months ago? Well, there’s another security system from Japan and it clearly raises the bar: It’s a new mechanism, dubbed Capture, for these places and it sprays stinky agent on thieves who won’t be able to get rid of the stench for a week. The idea is to able for the police to easily identify the bad guys even after they manage to escape from the crime scene. All that store owners need to do is to push a button, and Capture will spray stinky agent from special gas carts onto the thief or burglar. The carts can be placed behind the counter, in the store’s ceiling or at the entrance, for example. It takes three to five minutes for the agent to begin stinking and trying to wash it away won’t work as it will linger on for a week. And there’s even a reason for this five-minute time lag: It’s supposed to avoid making the bad guys so angry that they physically assault store clerks or restaurant staff who would then suffer from the stench themselves. The system is the result of joint development by three Japanese chemical companies who plan to offer it for about $1,150, mainly to convenience store operators. (Apologies for the small picture. It’s the only one available at this point.) Via Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun [JP]
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| Navy UAV sets endurance record of 26 hours 1 minute Posted: 01 Dec 2009 10:00 AM PST
Twenty-six hours and one minute. That’s how long a new, unmanned, experimental Navy aircraft flew through the air during a recent test run. It’s called the Ion Tiger. There it is, right there. As anyone who’s played Modern Warfare 2 knows, the U.S. military is all about unmanned air vehicles these days. Why risk soldiers’ lives when you can send a UAV up into the air, and remotely spread freedom to the people down below? That was a joke. Please chill out. The aircraft flew an average of 27 miles per hour for the 26-hour duration. Oh, that’s an endurance record, by the way. I probably should have mentioned that in the beginning.
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| Psystar, Apple reach settlement: No more PCs pre-loaded with Mac OS X (but Rebel EFI may be safe) Posted: 01 Dec 2009 09:30 AM PST
Some more Psystar news for y’all. You’ll recall that the renegade company was more or less shut down last week, slapped with an injunction and expected to pay Apple an awful lot of money. Put all of that aside for a minute, for there’s new news: Apple and Psystar have struck a deal! The deal, which ends a 17-month-long legal battle, means Psystar will stop selling computers pre-loaded with Mac OS X. This ends our long, national nightmare. So here’s what happens: Psystar has to pay Apple a boatload of money; Psystar will stop selling PCs pre-loaded with Mac OS X; and Psystar may be allowed to keep selling Rebel EFI, which lets users instal Mac OS X on their generic PC. That’s pretty much it. Or, in a single sentence, Psystar won’t be allowed to sell PCs with Mac OS X pre-loaded, but may be allowed to sell the $50 Rebel EFI, software that lets people instal Mac OS X on regular PCs. Or, rather than paying for Rebel EFI, you can OSx86 your PC, which I may well do when I get around to building my PC in the coming weeks. I’m either running Linux or Mac on the PC. I’ll be damned if I have to run Windows 24/7!
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