CrunchGear

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• Panasonic announces 48GB and 64GB SDXC cards
• Daily Crunch: Ice Night Edition
• Video: Robo-maid makes breakfast, extremely slowly
• DIY: Portable laser light show
• TMT wallets look strange, should show up on 24
• Video: Prototype Jettupakku
• Photographers, start your wallets: Aperture 3 should be coming out on the 27th
• Wearing your beats on your wrist drum machine
• Today’s lesson: Know your opponent
• How quaint, a review of Sony’s very first CD player
• The Phosphor watch – now in black!
• Why in the name of all that is wonderful would you want a slate with a 5″ screen?
• China said, India said: Cyberattacks have the countries pointing fingers at each other
• FIOS packages strike your fancy?
• You eat dinner on a folding table, why not use one for your computer?
• Google postpones phone launch in China amid recent quarrel
• Want to hack the MiFi? You can!
• Happy Birthday, LISA!
• France and Germany agree: Don’t use Internet Explorer if you want to be safe online
• Leaked: Alleged screenshot and details of iPhone OS 4.0

Panasonic announces 48GB and 64GB SDXC cards Posted: 20 Jan 2010 01:42 AM PST We saw Toshiba announcing the world's first 64GB SDXC memory card as early as August last year, and today Panasonic followed up [JP] by unveiling a 48GB and 64GB SDXC card, together with a USB card reader [JP] supporting the SDXC format. Both cards are in the Class10 speed range and feature a transfer rate of 22MB/sec. Panasonic says they were able to store six hours and 20 minutes of full HD video footage (1,920×1,080 resolution AVCHD format) on the 48GB card and even 8 1/2 hours on the bigger model when they used the cards with a Panasonic camcorder. The company claims it’s possible to store 6,890 high-quality pictures (4,000×3,000 resolution) on the 48GB card and 9,330 of those pictures on the 64GB model. Panasonic also unveiled a USB card reader that supports SDCX/SD/SDHC/microSDHC/SD cards for Windows machines (XP/Vista and 7). The cards and the reader will go on sale in Japan on February 19. Prices: $550 for the 48GB SDXC card, $700 for the 64GB version and $55 for the USB reader.

Daily Crunch: Ice Night Edition Posted: 20 Jan 2010 12:00 AM PST Wearing your beats on your wrist drum machine The Phosphor watch – now in black! If you're going to buy a desk vacuum, it might as well be a Zamboni CrunchGear's "Clean Out My Office" Contest First Day Results Those about to rock, we encourage you to recompile your Linux kernel

Video: Robo-maid makes breakfast, extremely slowly Posted: 19 Jan 2010 08:59 PM PST I will say this: it’s always going to be impressive to me when robots make my breakfast. But after seeing those ramen-bots doing it at high speed and fighting with knives, and after watching those robo-arms pitch fastballs to each other, I just feel like breakfast should be made a little more quickly than these ones manage to do it. I suppose they’re for elderly persons who don’t want a speeding robot zipping about with with a butter knife in its clampers, and who probably aren’t in a hurry in the morning, and furthermore the robots could start before you got up — but still. At least do tricks with the toast or something. Also: thanks to the helpful annotator who has helped us locate the aforementioned toast. [via Robots.net]

DIY: Portable laser light show Posted: 19 Jan 2010 08:30 PM PST So here’s another little DIY project. This one involves making your own little laser light show. Now obviously it’s not going to make shapes in time with Dark Side of the Moon, but it still looks really cool. I might even have to do this one myself, if I knew how to solder. It’s definitely worth your time to take a look at this thing if you have any interest at all in DIY projects involving lasers and sharks. It’s a relatively simple mod. Chop the end off of a laser pointer with a dremel, put together a controller and a 1 RPM motor, and glue a quarter to the shaft of the motor. Shine the laser on the quarter and you have your own portable light show. Pretty impressive stuff. For complete instructions visit the guy’s website. [Via Make]

TMT wallets look strange, should show up on 24 Posted: 19 Jan 2010 07:30 PM PST Wallets are becoming more and more functional these days. We told you about the Flipside wallet before, but here’s one that takes it to a whole new level of ridiculousness. TMTs Tactical Wallet comes in two models, one made of plastic, and one milled from solid aluminum. The plastic version is intended for use by water sport aficionados, and will float. The aluminum one, well, I can only assume it’s intended for use by survivalists and secret agents that have really bad days. So what’s so special about these wallets? Much like a multi-tool, it’s all in the attachments. Both of the versions of the wallet have a compass, ink pen, tweezers, toothpick, carbide glass breaker, and a o-ring system sealing them against water and dust. I suspect the tactical version might even be able to stop a bullet, but don’t quote me on that. TMTs wallets are currently available from their website, the plastic version sells for $85, the aluminum for $125. Oh, and we’ve already contacted them to see if we can get a review unit. I want to see if the aluminum one will actually stop a bullet. [via OhGizmo]

Video: Prototype Jettupakku Posted: 19 Jan 2010 07:15 PM PST Don’t lie. You laughed. Also: I can’t be the only one that would prefer one of these to a Segway. [via Geekologie]

Photographers, start your wallets: Aperture 3 should be coming out on the 27th Posted: 19 Jan 2010 06:49 PM PST In addition to all that tablet nonsense (maybe), Apple’s January 27th event should see new versions of iLife and apparently Aperture. Books have been leaking out on e-tailers over the last couple days that point to a debut this month of the next version of Apple’s photo editor. I use Aperture and am quite happy with it, though I hear Lightroom is even better — but we’ll see what happens a week from tomorrow. If you’ve recently started shooting with a DSLR and haven’t used one of these advanced photo editors, you’re missing out. It makes my shots blow up like whaaat!

Wearing your beats on your wrist drum machine Posted: 19 Jan 2010 05:30 PM PST I suspect this would have been the watch that Herbie Hancock wore when he made his famous “Rockit” video. Back in the early 1980’s, Seiko was trying to put everything from TV’s to radio’s into watches, and along with those ill advised choices, they also made the drum machine watch. Ugly and over priced, the watch never caught on with the public. Now, to be fair, the technology was pretty advanced. You’ve got a little drum machine with a built in speaker, six drum patterns, and a metronome mode. It could even tell the time and had a built in alarm! We never saw them in the US, but you can find them on Ebay now. Just expect to spend some serious cash for a bit of nostalgia. [via Retrothing]

Today’s lesson: Know your opponent Posted: 19 Jan 2010 05:00 PM PST I’m a big believer in open source development. The bazaar development model allows quality ideas to float to the top, albeit in sometimes contentious ways. The Linux kernel, the Apache httpd web server, and the PHP programming language are all developed in the open, and anyone is allowed to participate in their development. Filing bug reports is as important as writing the actual code. It helps, though, to have some sense of understanding of who you might be dealing with when you engage in a pissing match in a bug report. PHP bug #50696 seems fairly straightforward: some PHP internals were changed, which changed the way the number_format function works. The person who submitted the bug report raises some legitimate concern about this behavior change. What follows is a rather funny exchange between the original bug reporter and the PHP developer who took on the bug. In this case, it was Rasmus Lerdorf, the guy who invented PHP to begin with. Oh how I wish I had someone to escalate to. Hopefully you’ve had a better day than either of these two!

How quaint, a review of Sony’s very first CD player Posted: 19 Jan 2010 04:00 PM PST This is great. Original reviews of classic gadgets and computers are fun because you can marvel at the things that were new and mysterious then, but beyond commonplace now. In this review of Sony’s CDP-101, it is noted that there are many buttons, but no knobs. How things have changed, and now we value knobs as high-end and disparage buttons as peasant interfaces. This one is lower and wider, has a horizontal drawer that slides out to accept the disc, and has much more flexibility of control. Audiophiles will however be dismayed to note that there is nothing on it to adjust; there isn’t even a knob to diddle. But there are plenty of buttons. After the unit is turned on, a touch of a button opens the loading drawer. The disc goes in label-side up, playing-side down. To close the drawer, you can push the same button again or simply select a band for playing. They also remind you of how far we’ve come. The digital encoding of music may have lost something in the early days (some would argue has never been recovered), but the medium made possible a perfect replicability and precision that some would say vinyl lacks. The most immediately noticeable characteristics of the CD sound are its awesome lack of background noise and its almost unbelievable freedom from strain during the loudest passages. After a while one starts to notice other things. For example, the low end seems to have no bottom limit. In fact I am willing to bet I was hearing stuff at the extreme bottom that the record producers hadn’t heard, because some of it was soft but obviously extraneous infrasonic noise—occasional thuds that were totally unrelated to the music. I mean, when was the last time you thought, “Ahh, what a refreshing lack of background noise!” Definitely an interesting read for anyone interested in the history of technology. [via Retro Thing]

The Phosphor watch – now in black! Posted: 19 Jan 2010 03:30 PM PST So we told you about the Phosphor watch back in May, and many people asked themselves, “but can I get it in black?” Admit it, you did. I could hear you. Really. Anyway, the answer to that burning question is “yes, the Phosphor watch is now available in black as well as silver.” We liked the Phosphor product when we last saw them, so it’s a safe bet that we’ll like them in black too. The new version features the aforementioned black case, and a reversible display that shows either black on white, or white on black text. It’s going to cost a little more for the black version however, $194 to be exact. The old silver cased versions were only $185, but I can totally see where the money is going. The Phosphor DH05 Black Leather is available now from Watchismo.

Why in the name of all that is wonderful would you want a slate with a 5″ screen? Posted: 19 Jan 2010 02:41 PM PST Dell debuted some sort of slate product at CES. At first I was intrigued, and then someone told me the size. Five inch screen. Five inches, people. That’s one and a half inches more than an iPhone. Take your thumbs and index fingers and make a little window with them — you know, like a photographer or director does. That’s about five inches if your hands are at all like mine. Consuming any real amount media- and text-rich content on a device that size sounds about as pleasant as eating glass. Others, too, are bringing knives to the gun fight. Asus has a 6-inch, full-color e-book reader (why?), and HP is of course collaborating on a medium-sized, mundane tablette with Microsoft, which itself has apparently left the Courier, a genuinely innovative product, on a drawing board somewhere. Haven’t these guys heard of Archos and Viliv? There are already MIDs out there that do essentially what these allegedly next-generation devices are supposed to. The iSlate supposedly has a 10.6-inch screen. Did the competition really think half that would be enough? Check out this handy little size chart I made. I used the scale 100px/inch along the dotted line; with my DPI, that’s about life-size when you blow it up, but you get the idea: I’m not sure exactly what the draw is to small-screen devices like this. With phones and PMPs, the idea is that you operate them like an iPod: in your palm, with your thumb or the index finger of your other hand. Usually there is one point of contact, so UIs are designed around that. Multi-touch is in the process of becoming mainstream, so there’s a change to look for in those devices. But tablets and slates aren’t PMPs. They aren’t phones. The idea is that they are complete PCs without keyboards. I mentioned Viliv and Archos: their tiny PCs are capable, but even the best MIDs have cramped screens and input trouble. Optical track nubbins? Stylii? You’ll never break through with that kind of anti-fun going on with your device. Remember OQO? Beautiful devices, no sales. What exactly a tablet is will be, for better or worse, defined when Apple puts theirs out. I don’t suggest that theirs will be all things to all people, but for lack of credible competition it’s going to set the bar (and set it high, if we’re lucky). Other tablet-like products out there — convertibles, Windows 7 tablets, MIDs, high-end smartphones — either shrunk the desktop OS or added some functionality to a mobile one. So you’ve got a TG02 with a nice big 4″ screen (it’s gorgeous) — is that a tablet because it’s bigger than any other smartphone? No, it runs WinMo. Similarly, is a 6″ MID running XP a tablet? No, because XP and its applications aren’t tablet-friendly; maybe 7 is more so, but it’s still a desktop OS at heart. Imagine the difference between using a stylus to simulate a mouse-driven cursor on an OS where corners are the most accessible UI elements and pixel precision is assumed, and using your fingers to manipulate objects with natural gestures. That, after all, was the primary UI difference between the iPhone and other mobile OSes. Microsoft’s Surface team contributed a lot of touch elements to Windows 7, but it’s still designed by and large for a mouse. Compare that to the 10/GUI concept, or even Chrome OS, which seems much more susceptible to multi-touch adaptation. And I should add that even with a tailored UI, a 6-inch screen is going to require a lot of zooming in and out. I don’t enjoy doing that, and neither do you. Why would you want a device that continues this troublesome tradition? But it’s the form factor, you say! It doesn’t matter if the OS was made for the tablet as long as you can sit on the couch and check your blogs without a keyboard. To some extent, yes — but it’s a bit like cutting your food with a spoon, isn’t it? I imagine the caveman, saying “But fire not necessary! Mammoth meat delicious raw!” To him I say: taste the grilled mammoth first, sir, and then decide. True, content providers have adjusted their content to be accessible by mobile devices — and we all know how tiring it is to read more than a page or two of the Times on an iPhone, and how arbitrarily limited apps for certain web services are. That crippled content will still be offered for mobiles and MIDs, but true tablets/slates (of which Apple’s may be the first) will have a separate, richer stream that relies on the increases in the device’s input options, screen real estate, and computing power. As I noted above, it’s not enough to shrink or grow existing UIs or OSes: all you end up with is ten pounds of OS in a five pound bag, or vice versa. When I say Apple will define the tablet, I mean that literally: it’s going to create definition. It’s actually much the same as with the iPhone: a stagnant device class with lots of potential, weighed down by traditional UI and input elements. Apple comes in like Alexander and cuts the Gordian Knot, defining an entirely different experience that resonates with consumers. Apple didn’t create the smartphone, but smartphones are now defined in terms of the iPhone. The field is a little fresher with tablets, of course: it’s not as big of a market and the stagnation is largely due to technical limitations only now being overcome. And there will be real competition as well; Google-branded Chrome OS tablets are probably going to come out later this year along with laptops, which will be cheaper and less media-oriented. But at any rate, it looks like they are among very few companies offering an experience substantially different from MIDs of the past — an experience people might actually pay for. The point is that the big guys, unless they’ve really improved their poker face recently, have started out on the wrong foot — and they’re about to take one in the jaw when Apple drops a tablet that is not only larger and sexier but far more usable than the toys Microsoft and Dell think people will want. If they can’t learn to take risks with major departures from UI and design establishments, they shouldn’t be surprised if they get left in the dust. Matt here: Listen, Devin is right. Most 5-inch tablet computers — not strictly mobile devices — are horrible. But the small screen size is not to blame. It’s Windows. Windows is horrible on a small screen device. It was designed to be used on a 15-inch monitor with a mouse, not on a portable, touchscreen devices. Windows 7 has slightly better touchscreen controls, but it’s still not meant for small screens. Take the Inkia MID500 I just got in for review. It’s nearly useless because of the 5-inch screen. Watch the video to see how it renders webpages. But the 9-inch screen in the Viliv X70 is nearly large enough for most Windows’ tasks. I use one everyday for TweetDeck and Slacker Radio, but I also have the tablet mounted to my desk and I use a wireless mouse to navigate Windows. Android is great on a small screen. So is Nokia’s Maemo. Even the Linux-powered Jolicloud or the browser-based Blump.it dramatically improves the user experience on the small screen because of the simple control schemes designed to be used with a finger on a smaller screen. Apple likely knows all this and probably didn’t simply port OS X to its upcoming slate offering.

China said, India said: Cyberattacks have the countries pointing fingers at each other Posted: 19 Jan 2010 01:30 PM PST You know how when you watch Fox News and CNN and whatnot there’s all these reports of evil Chinese (or North Korean or whoever our enemy is this week) hackers attacking poor, defenseless American servers? Well, if you believe what the Chinese government just said, then it turns out that, in fact, China is the biggest victim of cyberattacks each year. This all stems from an Indian complaint that Chinese cyberattackers had attacked computers belonging to the country’s National Security Advisor. Right, so last week the Indian National Security Advisor claimed it was attacked by China-based baddies, a claim China disputes. China then turned the complaint on its head, saying that no! In fact, China is the biggest victim in all of this. Its biggest search engine, Baidu, which makes Google look like Ted’s Search Engine Emporium, was the recent victim of a cyberattack. Stop blaming China for everything, so to speak. Why this is on CrunchGear, I don’t know. Actually, to be honest, we (and by “we” I mean the entire tech press) are just sorta killing time till Apple’s announcement next week. Such is life.

FIOS packages strike your fancy? Posted: 19 Jan 2010 01:00 PM PST Verizon has a bunch of new FIOS packages that may interest you. The top of the pile is the Ultimate package, which gives you “90 or more” HD channels, plus an Internet connection of 35/35, which is 35 mbps download, 35 mbps upload. The upload speed is impressive, but I still have triple the download speed. (I seriously run at 11 MB/s when downloading from Usenet. It’s almost unnecessary how fast it is.) This top package is $149 per month. There’s two other new packages, modestly titled Extreme and Prime. Prime, the cheapest, runs at $109 per month, and grants access to 40 or more HD channels plus a 15/15 mbps Internet connection. Extreme? That’s $124, with 65 or more HD channels, with a 25/25 Internet connection. And while I have no problem with the Internet speeds, especially if FIOS is the only game in town, the thing about the HD channels is, there’s nothing on TV worth watching. The initial HD buzz dies pretty quickly, which means you can only watch nature documentaries so many times before you’re like, “OK, I get it.” That’s for the average person, of course—maybe you’re a big nature mark? I mean, outside of live sports, what else in TV is worth sitting through? Maybe Top Gear, and only because it’s shot so well (and the hosts are pretty cool).

You eat dinner on a folding table, why not use one for your computer? Posted: 19 Jan 2010 12:30 PM PST Work at home? Live in a shoebox? You don't need a big computer desk! Just get one of these folding ones. At 9:00 every morning, set up your gigantic printer and your laptop on this multi-level computer cart. Hell, get a desktop computer and a CRT monitor while you're at it!  Then at 5:00 every evening, fold it all down to 4.75 inches thick and stuff it under the couch. I don't know where you should put that huge printer, though. Why'd you even buy that thing? To print out driving directions? You live in the middle of the city in a tiny apartment and you don't even have a car! Come on, man! So how much does the ultimate in computing mobility cost? It used to cost $90 but now it costs $70. The thing weighs 27 pounds, too. That's a lot more than your TV tray. Fold-ez Computer Cart [SkyMall]

Google postpones phone launch in China amid recent quarrel Posted: 19 Jan 2010 12:00 PM PST Looks like there won’t be a “Google phone” in China, not for a while at least. Well, an official phone; I’m pretty sure the gray market will take care of that. And yes, it has to do with the ongoing Google-China troubles. The deal is that the phone, presumably the Nexus One, was supposed to launch on Wednesday. Google has postponed the launch because it says the applications on it won’t work as well as they’re designed to because of the restrictions China places on Google. Google it trying to get China to ease up on its restrictions, lest it pull out of the country altogether. It should be noted that Google is nowhere near as big in China as it is here in the U.S. (Baidu is the top search engine in China, and by quite a distance.) Now, Google may look at that and say, “See, that means there’s plenty of room for growth in China!” Or perhaps more pessimistically, “We’re throwing money down a bottomless pit, let’s cut our losses and get out of here.” Neither Google nor any unnamed source claiming to speak on Google’s behalf have said how long the postponement will last. It could be a temporary thing just to pressure the Chinese authorities into backing off (fat chance), or it could be a more long-term indication that Google is not a happy camper in China. Again, as if the Chinese care that Google is upset. Google can’t storm into the harbor aboard gunships and demand policy changes, like the Europeans did back in the day.

Want to hack the MiFi? You can! Posted: 19 Jan 2010 11:30 AM PST Team CrunchGear, with a 1-1 record with one no-contest (accidental headbutt in the first round), used one or more Mi-Fi units at CESthis year. The Mi-Fi is a cute little portable Wi-Fi access point that you can use wherever you can get a cellphone signal. It takes the mobile data connection, then outputs it as plain ol’Wi-Fi, which you can then connect to from any computer. It’s also pretty hackable. The big thing you can do is enable GPS on the device without the owner knowing, and then find out the user’s GPS coordinates. In the realm of remote attacks, this ranks, for me, at least, fairly well down the list. You can also find out the device’s access key, and from there you can do other nefarious things, like fire up something like ettercap and have the owner’s login credentials for whatever Web site be forwarded right to your screen. Not that I’d know anything about doing that. Oh, I’m sorry, this has nothing to do with the Apple Tablet; nobody cares now.

Happy Birthday, LISA! Posted: 19 Jan 2010 11:00 AM PST Is it ironic that this $10,000 computer only sold 10,000 units? Released on January 19, 1983, LISA (Local Integrated Software Architecture) was a gigantic flop, but paved the way for the success of the Apple Macintosh, which paved the way for the success of the MacBook, which paved the way for the success of the iPhone, which paved the way for the success of the Apple Tablet! Thanks Wired, for the reminder!

France and Germany agree: Don’t use Internet Explorer if you want to be safe online Posted: 19 Jan 2010 10:30 AM PST In the intricacies of high-level European diplomacy, there’s two things Paris and Berlin can agree on: Conan is better, and you’d better not be using Internet Explorer. A French government agency is now advising citizens of the French Republic not to use Internet Explorer because of security concerns. It’s 2010, and we’re still writing “IE isn’t secure!” stories. Amazing. The French agency, Certa, has warned against using all versions of Internet Explorer, noting that, even if you activate the highest level of security in the latest version of IE, you’re still at risk from some of the Web’s nastier elements. Both Certa and Germany’s Federal Office of Information Security didn’t say what other browsers to use in lieu of IE, but you can safely assume they mean the usual suspects: Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. (See, Opera fans, we mentioned your favorite browser!) But for all the security precautions you could take, the best safeguard against contracting an Internet disease is common sense. Don’t download shady files from 0daycoolwarez.tk, don’t click ads that say “HOT GURLZ IN [TOWN NEARBY] 4 U~!” Seriously, common sense is worth its weight in gold, which clocked in at $1,647 per ounce yesterday.

Leaked: Alleged screenshot and details of iPhone OS 4.0 Posted: 19 Jan 2010 10:11 AM PST I could really write this post in all of about eleven words, and it would still have the same effect. It'd go something like this "Apple, leak, new iPhone OS, screenshots, multitasking, banshees, multi-touch gestures". However, I'm from the Internet, and we're paid by the word* around these parts.

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