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- The Quadcopter, or build your own Drone
- New Japanese toy: Endless chocolate bar breaker
- Vardia: Toshiba announces four new Blu-ray recorders and players
- Daily Crunch: Coffee on Mars Edition
- VIA launches their wee server, the M’SERV
- Steadicam for your iPhone? Looks like it works, but… why?
- French retailers revolt against e-book hegemony
- DIY: Build your own vacuum tube Tesla coil
- Hourtime Podcast: The “Just before SIHH” edition
- The Chumby One tear-down
- The Escapist reviews Torchlight
- PSA: It’s AMBER alert awareness day
- Recompute cardboard computer enters production, fails to fool anybody
- Someone obviously wants the crowd-developed Cable Caps, but I don’t
- Review: Sony VAIO X Series Notebook PC
- In Soviet Russia, Tetris block rotates you
- The Audi A8 Google Earth integration gets a video demo
- 3D Porn? The studios are way ahead of you.
- Color-temperature adustable OLED lighting? Yes, please
- Four percent of American gamers are pirates~!
| The Quadcopter, or build your own Drone Posted: 14 Jan 2010 05:00 AM PST We told you about the AR.Drone that we saw at CES, but here’s an alternative that you can build today. Sure, it’s not iPhone/iPod controlled, but it does everything else. The AeroQuad is an Arduino controlled, four rotor helicopter, built by a group of enthusiasts as an experiment. Admittedly, it’s not as polished as the AR.Drone, but you can (if you have the skills) build one yourself using commonly available parts. Having flown RC helicopters in the past, and having seen these videos, it’s safe to say that either the electronics are doing an amazing job of compensating for the instability in the design, or the pilot has a really steady hand. You can get a parts list and basic instructions from the builder’s website. Definitely let us know if you build one. [Via Make]
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| New Japanese toy: Endless chocolate bar breaker Posted: 14 Jan 2010 02:02 AM PST
Do you like the feeling you get when you break a chocolate bar in half? Do you want to experience that feeling over and over for some reason? Then you’re in the target group for a new Japanese toy called Mugen Chokoreeto [JP], which (kind of) translates back to “Endless Chocolate Bar”. It’s the brainchild of major Japanese toymaker Bandai. It’s essentially a mini toy made of plastic that looks like a small chocolate bar and that you can “break” into two parts repeatedly. You can choose between three “flavors”: milk chocolate, high-milk chocolate and white chocolate. The “bars” have a case, too, and weigh 22g. The Meiji branding you see on the picture above is actually the result of a licensing deal Bandai made with a real Japanese confectionery company called Meiji Seika.
Bandai plans to start selling the Endless Chocolate Bar in Japan on January 30. The official target group are men in their 20s. The bars will cost $7 each and are the newest addition to the Mugen series Bandai started a while ago. The Mugen Pop Pop, for example, made it to America. But if you don’t want to take a chance, I suggest you contact import/export specialists Rinkya or the Japan Trend Shop in case you’re interested but live outside Japan.
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| Vardia: Toshiba announces four new Blu-ray recorders and players Posted: 14 Jan 2010 12:21 AM PST
Last summer, Toshiba decided to abandon their self-developed HD-DVD format and to go Blu-ray instead. Soon after, the company started rolling out a few Blu-ray devices here and there, but today Toshiba Japan announced [JP] a flood of new Blu-ray-powered devices. The company is ready to roll out a total of three Blu-ray recorders and one Blu-ray player in the next few weeks. The three new Blu-ray recorders are branded VARDIA. The basic model (D-B305K/pictured above) features a 320GB HDD (price: $1,100), while the D-B1005K ($1,400) comes with a 1TB hard disc. VHS fans can pay $1,500 to get the D-BW1005K, which is a VHS/Blu-ray recorder combo that helps you to backup your cassettes on Blu-ray discs (pictured below).
The recorders allow you to copy material from DVD to Blu-ray and vice versa. All models come with an HDMI interface, a USB port, LAN connectivity and an SD memory card slot (the player lacks the USB port).
The SD-BD1K is Toshiba’s new Blu-ray player and will cost $300 (pictured above). Toshiba says they want to tap the growing demand for Blu-ray recorders in Japan with their new line-up. In the US, Toshiba is selling only one Blu-ray player so far, but this might change very soon. The new VARDIA recorders and the player will hit Japanese stores in about four weeks.
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| Daily Crunch: Coffee on Mars Edition Posted: 14 Jan 2010 12:00 AM PST
Here’s a selection of yesterday’s stories: DIY: Build your own vacuum tube Tesla coil
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| VIA launches their wee server, the M’SERV Posted: 13 Jan 2010 08:30 PM PST
The M’SERVE also has a bootable CF socket, allowing you to install your OS on a compact flash card, and then boot from said card. A pretty neat feature. The S2100 also has dual gigabit LAN, and very low power consumption so you don’t have to feel guilty about leaving it on all the time. VIA hasn’t announced how much the M’SERVE is going to cost, or when it will be available. From the press release:
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| Steadicam for your iPhone? Looks like it works, but… why? Posted: 13 Jan 2010 07:30 PM PST
It seems to me that if you care at all about the quality of your video, you won’t be shooting it on such a tiny, shaky device that has poor video quality when compared with slightly larger camcorders with real lenses. For streaming video off your phone, I guess I can see it, but that video is so low-rez and so highly compressed that if the image is jittery, no one will notice. So, while I can’t think of anyone who requires smooth video, yet is content with 640×480 or smeary, fixed-focus 1080p, perhaps there are a few of you out there and this thing is for you. [via OhGizmo and Electronista]
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| French retailers revolt against e-book hegemony Posted: 13 Jan 2010 07:20 PM PST
Let them E-cake French retailers, like most in the world, are in an awkward position. They know how widely-available, easy-to-download, easy-to-steal e-books on popular, cheap devices will affect their business: in five to eight years they’ll be begging for scraps from Google and Amazon. So they’ve gone arm-in-arm to see the wizard, in hopes that France will set up some sort of national e-book “hub,” by which I suppose they mean website or software. They’ve all already got something or other in place, but they think the only way to stand against the big bad Google is to join forces. There would be protections in place for pricing, which would be lower with the French retailers working together, and the single-point service would be helpful to consumers. And although it’s doubtful that anyone trusts a major retail chain that much more than Amazon.fr, there is something to be said for keeping familiar brands alive. There’s something noble in this scramble for self-preservation, like an antelope kicking a lioness in the jaw, but it seems to me that it’s too late: the pride is closing in. The fact is that Amazon and Google hold all the power in this relationship — them and the publishers, who have no sympathy for retailers who have likely been trying to gouge them for years. Why should the publishers give a hand? Pour La France? These are book chains owned by multinational corporations, not mom-and-pop corner book stores scraping by. No, the publishers must look to their own survival and profit, and for e-books, Google and Amazon are the 500-pound gorillas they need to appease. The rhetoric being employed attempts to cast the retailers as the little guy. Says Guillaume Decitre, head of retailer Decitre:
It’s unclear what they propose as an actual benefit to having a French hub run by them, other than a stay of execution for the retailers involved. An analyst makes noises about “preserving the culture,” but how much culture do you feel the US lost when Circuit City closed? Brick and mortars were our biggest loser of the decade for a reason. Smart ones, like Barnes and Noble, have ensured a position in the new e-book world order by creating powerful, unique IP that they can wield like a club. Want to put your books on our sweet nook? Well, let’s talk turkey. But these French retailers saw the writing on the wall too late and now all they can do is beg and hope for more scandals like 1984 to put off the inevitable. As the publishers and analysts note, however, it seems unlikely that everyone is going to set aside their differences and put something together. There are just too many conflicting interests involved, and at any rate none of these monster businesses could launch a product fast enough to deal with the steadily advancing Amazons and Google of the world. I feel sorry for them, and I appreciate them not taking out their looming obsolescence on the consumers, but that isn’t going to change the fact that their business model is simply out of date. Megastores like Virgin’s and the others are dinosaurs, and they shouldn’t be surprised when they start going extinct.
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| DIY: Build your own vacuum tube Tesla coil Posted: 13 Jan 2010 07:00 PM PST
Safe is relative of course, but this isn’t quite as intimidating as some other Tesla coils out there. The steps are fairly clear, the author included a schematic, and I might just have to make one of these myself. Rather then rehash the steps here, I’m just going to direct you to go to Make and see the complete 10 step process (including parts list). [Via Hackaday]
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| Hourtime Podcast: The “Just before SIHH” edition Posted: 13 Jan 2010 07:00 PM PST Another day, another episode of the HourTime podcast. Take a listen, if you dare.
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| Posted: 13 Jan 2010 06:00 PM PST
It so sad when they expose the guts of devices like the Chumby One. The Chumby has personality, you know? You kind of feel for it? Oh well. iFixIt tore the Chumby into little bits, splaying the processor, screen, and even the speaker for all to see. There’s not much to see here but the motherboard features:
This means there is plenty of room in here as well as a potential for adding your own firmware to this little fellow, thereby breaking him free of the Chumby chains forever. You can read the whole thing right here, but it will just make you sad.
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| The Escapist reviews Torchlight Posted: 13 Jan 2010 05:30 PM PST “More clicks than a school for dolphin telegraph operators.”
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| PSA: It’s AMBER alert awareness day Posted: 13 Jan 2010 04:30 PM PST
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| Recompute cardboard computer enters production, fails to fool anybody Posted: 13 Jan 2010 04:00 PM PST
The thing is, these guys have to know this stuff. They couldn’t design a case without knowing something about all this, but they’re doing it anyway. It’s a very disingenuous statement, and one that’s open to misinterpretation. “Now your computer is disposable!” That’s what people will take away from this. If they’re serious about this, these guys should be applying their green sensibilities and engineering experience elsewhere. If they’re just cashing in on the fact that green sells right now, then I we can just put them in the pile with Asus, whose transparently un-green “bamboo laptop” creates only the thinnest veneer of ecological awareness. Look, I’m all for making things greener. But putting a cardboard shell around a bunch of toxic metal and plastic and calling it eco-friendly is bullshit of the highest order. We need to focus on consumer education so people don’t throw out entire PCs. People should know what they were buying, how to upgrade their computer or keep it working, or how to keep it in use after they buy a new one (home media server, anybody). This unbelievably inadequate band-aid (if we can even call it that) is the exact opposite of what needs to happen. [Recompute, via The Next Web]
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| Someone obviously wants the crowd-developed Cable Caps, but I don’t Posted: 13 Jan 2010 03:30 PM PST
And I have never once had the male end of a USB cable damaged. But still, somewhere out there, there might be people that actually use these things. The real story here is that the product was the 22 product designed and developed by the Quirky community. This is the same Internet collaboration that brought the world the Split Stick and DigiDudes and the iPod nano case, the Kickster. Cable Caps are currently in the pre-order stage, with 82 orders placed out of a need 450 for them to be made. The Kickster is still in the same boat with only 118 orders placed out of a needed 300.
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| Review: Sony VAIO X Series Notebook PC Posted: 13 Jan 2010 03:00 PM PST
Short Version: It's got an Atom CPU and it starts at $1300. That being said, Sony's X Series is one of the coolest computers I've ever used.
Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Review: In all my years of reviewing, buying, and admiring computers, this is one of the most impressive. And lest you think Sony and I are all buddy-buddy, I rarely ever speak to anyone there. John checked this thing out at a press event and they were supposed to send it to him to review but he was out of the country, so it got rerouted to me. And I'm glad it did. I'm more forgiving to netbooks than most of my coworkers, which is a good thing because this machine is basically a $1300 netbook on steroids. Sony calls it a notebook, which is a smart idea because people associate the word "netbook" with something that costs under $500. If you were to give this machine to someone without telling them what kind of CPU was inside, though, you'd probably not hear a peep out of them. It doesn't "feel" like a netbook at all. What's Good: If you have something around you that weighs a pound and a half, pick it up. Now imagine you're holding an almost-full-size laptop. Does not compute. The VAIO X Series is bewilderingly, astonishingly, how-the-hell-did-they-do-that light. That's thanks to carbon fiber, which Sony uses liberally in many of its ultraportables.
You give up battery life with a 1.6-pound notebook. The standard battery lasts around 2.5 hours under normal use but Sony's thoughtfully included an extended battery that bumps the life up over 12 hours without adding much weight at all. It adds a bit of thickness to the computer, yes, but it'll still be one of the lightest computers you've ever carried around.
The extended battery, pictured above. Pictured below, you'll notice that at 39% capacity there's still 3.5 hours of battery life left. You'll go a couple days between charges.
So the portability and battery life are outstanding without too much sacrifice. You still have a pretty sizeable screen to work with at 11.1-inches and 1366×768 resolution and the 2GHz Atom N550 CPU, based on Intel's new Pine Trail design, doesn't feel lethargic unless you get a lot of programs open and running at once or you try to render video. Most everyday stuff hums along very nicely. The main takeaway is that the compromise between portability and power seems less gaping with this machine. It's very, very tiny, yet still pretty nimble. What's Bad:
I'm sure there's some reasoning behind the keyboard, but it'd be nice if it used all the available space on the chassis. The island layout works okay after you get used to it but I can't help but think the space would have been better used by making bigger keys – even if they touched – and stretching them all the way across. And Sony seems to love putting that tiny right Shift key on all its ultraportable keyboards. I can't stand that thing.
The trackpad, too, is pretty rough. As you can see, there's not much surface area to work with. Multitouch comes turned on by default, which makes a hard-to-use trackpad almost impossible to use since moving your finger often results in some flavor of zooming, scrolling, or whatever else they've baked into it. I turned off all that stuff within a few minutes – even vertical scrolling. After that, it worked well enough to not have to carry a Bluetooth mouse.
I have rather large hands but even normal or small hands will seem big when typing or using the trackpad. You do get used to things after a while, though. Other Considerations: If you travel frequently for work, consider that the X Series comes with a 3G chipset from Verizon as well as a GPS chip. It's conceivably small enough to use in the car as a navigation device, so with the 3G and the GPS fired up you've got quite an in-car computer. Conclusion: If you're at all intrigued by this machine and the relatively high price tag hasn't scared you off yet, I urge you to swing by a Sony store to see if you can try it out in person. The photos and videos here really don't do it justice. If you've got the money to spend and you like to travel as light as possible, the size, weight, battery life, and myriad of connectivity options make the Sony X Series a very compelling purchase. Sony X Series [SonyStyle.com] Video: Goodbye, Sony X Series. I'll miss you.
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| In Soviet Russia, Tetris block rotates you Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:48 PM PST
Click but beware. Tetris music starts instantly and your mind will never be the same again.
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| The Audi A8 Google Earth integration gets a video demo Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:30 PM PST
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| 3D Porn? The studios are way ahead of you. Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:15 PM PST
For years the central question when any new television technology comes out is whether explicit entertainment providers will adopt it. In the case of 3D TV, friends, there’s no question: 3D TV is here and its here to stay… but will it be popular? We talked to someone close to the industry, Kathee Brewer, who offered some insight on the future of 3D pr0n. Kathee is a former editor-in-chief of trade journal AVN Online and a co-founder of irreverent sex, politics and culture site DailyBabylon.com. These days she plagues readers and editors across the spectrum with freelance articles about all sorts of useless information but today she sat down with us for in IMterview about the future of 3D in porn – and why it’s already a moot point. CG: So 3D porn. Great or amazing? Kathee: uh…. How about “Too soon to tell?” There are some really good things about it, and some, frankly, scary things about it. Kathee: How could I forget? I think 3D porn may loom toward the “too weird” end of the scale this time. Don’t get me wrong — it’ll be popular, but I’m not sure how quickly it will catch on CG: Did porn define the winner in that last race, do you think? Kathee: In the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD battle? I think Hollywood got that one. It’s still a challenge for adult content producers to find Blu-ray duplication facilities CG: What’s holding that back? People don’t want to touch the stuff? Kathee: Most duplication facilities make the majority of their money off mainstream content, and studios like Disney absolutely will not allow their product to be produced in the same facility as pr0n. CG: nice. CHILLING EFFECTS! Kathee: Very much so! lol CG: So in terms of HD cameras, it probably wasn’t so hard for them to move over. But 3D cameras? Have you talked to anyone about that? Would they invest in the hardware? Kathee: 3D cameras are no challenge for adult, really. Sometimes, the difference in the way adult producers think has to evolve in order to make 3D pr0n interesting, and THAT can be challenging CG: They did, now, did they? Kathee: LOL! Now there’s an image for you…. CG: So bottom line: How popular will this be? Hasn’t streaming killed most physical media for these guys? Kathee: I honestly think it’s too early to tell. The gay studio says it’s doing well, but consumers tend to either love or hate the stuff CG: Well, there’s the vertigo! Kathee: Consumers aren’t so wild about having to wear special glasses to view pr0n although some really love feeling like they’re “in” the scene. I’m not quite sure how comfortable I’d be with a 3D pr0n closeup. CG: I mean HD is bad enough with the stretch marks and the hair and whatnot Kathee: Exactly! Now imagine viewing in 3D all those physical things most people hope others never see…. CG: Good lord Kathee: Not a particularly pretty picture, is it? CG: Kittens are pretty, though. i like kittens in baskets. wearing bonnets Kathee: Did you get to check out Bad Girls in 3D’s new “home 3D porn delivery system” [SFW] while you were in Vegas? CG: No. No i did not Kathee: That company is hoping to combine 3D adult content with IPTV delivery CG: See, i could definitely see that. I can see it in my head right now. Kathee: IPTV actually is a growing market segment for adult, especially in Europe and 3D IPTV has lots of promise, if the kinks get worked out. In order to make 3D ANYTHING work in a home environment, though, there are variables that have to be just right or the experience is disappointing. CG: And who wants that? Kathee: Sexually explicit content, though, probably won’t be held to as high standards in 3D as mainstream content, just as it hasn’t been held to Hollywood’s standards on any other scale. CG: So low quality 3D porn. Sounds delightful Kathee: Doesn’t it? Porn has gone big time into HD content. In fact, I’m not sure anyone is producing anything in standard-def anymore. I know they’re not shooting in standard-def, except in rare instances. Even the Web studios are shooting in HD, though HD can’t be delivered via the Web yet. CG: So they take new technologies and just future proof. Kathee: Many studios that started out on the Web now are producing DVDs for the brick-and-mortar market, as well. So right — porn is big into “future-proofing.” CG: I mean what else do they have to spend their money on? Sets? Scripts? Kathee: One of these days, some enterprising future archeologist is going to uncover some enormous stash of future-proofed porn and come to all kinds of interesting conclusions about 21st Century humans. CG: So 3D porn is already here and the big guys like Sony and Samsung are rushing to offer ways to view the content. Kathee: I’m sure the big guys like Sony and Samsung are hoping no one ever discovers they’re rushing to offer ways to view adult content, if they are. Sony isn’t hot on porn appearing on ANY of its platforms: PlayStation, Blu-ray, you name it. CG: But soon it will all be 3D. Imagine the possibilities. So there you have it: porn is basically way ahead of the studios on this one and when you buy your 3D TV rig, porn will be right there alongside you, offering gentle encouragement and larger than life 3D genitalia. Welcome to 2010.
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| Color-temperature adustable OLED lighting? Yes, please Posted: 13 Jan 2010 02:00 PM PST
J.H. Jou, a Taiwanese researcher, has found that with a particular species of OLED, he can vary the voltage and produce a huge portion of the temperature gamut:
If they can get these bright enough, it’d be a huge boon to photographers. Although we work in RAW now for the most part and can change the color temperature of the whole image, individual light setups with different temperatures are integral to setting up a scene. These panels won’t reach the brightness of the megabulbs used in cinema lighting for a while, but the variable color temperature will certainly make them worth keeping tabs on. [via OLED-display.net]
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| Four percent of American gamers are pirates~! Posted: 13 Jan 2010 01:30 PM PST
Four percent of U.S. gamers admit to pirating video games, according to a new NPD report that apparently we’re not cool enough to get directly from the NPD. I’m going to guess that more than one of you fall into that four percent. So yeah, the NPD (those are the guys who release monthly sales reports) had a little survey that asked 8,000 people if they had ever pirated a video game. Only four percent of respondents admitted to it, which is patently ridiculous: the number has to be much, much higher. Still, the results are the results. Also, it’s not that four percent of respondents admitted to piracy. However many people admitted to piracy in the survey, the NPD then applied the usual statistical wizardry that pollsters use for elections and whatnot. So that four percent should be interpreted as, four percent of Americans admitted to video game piracy. Presumably the study also took into account people’s truthfulness. So for the purposes of this here post, let’s just say that four percent of Americans have pirated video games. Simple enough. As you might expect, 72 percent of all piracy took place on the PC/Mac, probably because it’s so damn trivial to find a torrent of Popular Game, and let it download for a few minutes. Then off you go. Compare that to Xbox or Wii piracy where you have to fiddle with your system to make a pirated game work. The same report also touched on the idea of video game distribution. On the console side, 90 percent of all sales were via retail (that is, not Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, and Wii Shop), while 70 percent of other sales (including PC) were retail. Meaning that things like Steam are gigantic. The last PC game I bought at retail was The Sims in the year 2000. Granted, I wasn’t a PC gamer till a few weeks ago, but now? It’s all Steam, baby.
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VIA just launched their latest little computer, the M’SERV S2100. Designed for the small business and home user, the M’SERV uses a VIA 64-bit processor with support for DDR2 and SATA.
Here is a product, and here is a question. The product is a steadicam for the iPhone and Flip. Certainly video on those devices is shaky enough to warrant such a product. The question, then, is this: is there anyone who cares enough about their video to want a steadicam, yet still shoots with a Flip or iPhone?
Like them or not, e-books are here to stay. Personally, I don’t like them — but that’s mainly because e-book readers have been ugly, clumsy, and limited in function and selection. The tidal wave of readers we saw at 
Who doesn’t want their own Tesla coil? Particularly if you can get one that isn’t incredibly dangerous or expensive to build. Well, this electrical savant built one in the 8th grade using vacuum tubes and a microwave oven transformer.
Today is AMBER alert awareness day, so this is as good a time as any to get a ID kit for you child. The kits are sold on the official AMBER alert website, and allows you to store all of your child’s information (as well as information about the rest of the family) in one easy to carry USB device. You can purchase the My Child ID kits for $39.95 from the 
We’ve noted before that LED lights are, while 
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