CrunchGear |  |
- HP MediaSmart Windows Home Servers gets a TiVo companion app
- New emergency robot is wearable, opens doors at disaster sites
- Linux.com store adds more clothing options for your geek lifestyle
- Move over Humping USB Dogs. Here comes the Dodobongo USB Dog.
- Daily Crunch: Down Below the Ocean Edition
- The iTable continues to develop and show gaming potential
- Crunchdeal: Save $500 on a Toshiba R600 with OpenSolaris
- Analyst: PS3 to win over Xbox 360 and Wii
- Adam Savage on recreating the gun from Blade Runner
- New Elgato EyeTV hybrid is smaller, more compatible
- XNA 4.0 games on Windows Phone 7 Series look awesome (but won’t be for Zune HD)
- Copy our tablet for your iPad, will you? Well how do you like… this?
- Hard drive design leaving XP behind
- In a world of tracks, Pink Floyd fights for the album
- 360-degree virtual combat room is like Iraq: The Arcade Game
- Gunnar Optiks joining forces with Carl Zeiss to make new lenses
- The rise and fall of iTunes LP (cue dramatic music)
- Inverted, ocean-bound “seascrapers”: aqua-communes for the future?
- Did you know there was a Last Starfighter video game?
- IBM researching ways to help the aged, illiterate
| HP MediaSmart Windows Home Servers gets a TiVo companion app Posted: 10 Mar 2010 05:07 AM PST
HP keeps the fun rolling with its MediaSmart Windows Home Servers. It’s called the HP MediaSmart Expander for TiVo, but don’t let the name fool you, it doesn’t directly increase your TiVo’s storage. The app, however, still has some nice features and might be a worthy replacement for the TiVo Desktop program. The new companion program allows MediaSmart owners to transfer recorded programs between the network-attached TiVo and a MediaSmart server. Recordings can also be managed to some degree as well. Sounds like the free TiVo Desktop program, right? But the new app also always any computer on the network to watch the programs stored on the MediaSmart server. Chances are those computers will also have to have the WHS app installed as well to circumvent TiVo’s DRM. Truth be told, this can be done as well with the TiVo Desktop program, but each computer will need to have it installed as well, while the WHS app takes the solution to the server rather than each individual client. Makes sense. Best of all, the app is free and currently available for all EX MediaSmart servers. pics via MSWHS
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| New emergency robot is wearable, opens doors at disaster sites Posted: 10 Mar 2010 04:03 AM PST
Autotec says the robot can be used in the case of nuclear, biological and chemical disasters. The hand has a built-in CCD camera and an LED light so a human can operate it remotely in dark areas. Using a total of four shafts, the hand can move up to 1m. It's also able to move hazardous materials to some extent, for example rubble. BL Autotec says the hand can also be used for industrial applications.
The company plans to sell complete sets consisting of its hand and a special, self-developed emergency robot to Japanese and foreign buyers for $110,000. As you can see in the picture above, rescue workers can actually carry the robot on their back (it weighs 34kg though). Sales are expected to start in 2013, with BL Autotec hoping to sell 25 sets in the first year.
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| Linux.com store adds more clothing options for your geek lifestyle Posted: 10 Mar 2010 04:00 AM PST
There’s also a t-shirt design contest underway! The Linux.com community will select the winning entry, and the winner will get a free trip to LinuxCon!
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| Move over Humping USB Dogs. Here comes the Dodobongo USB Dog. Posted: 10 Mar 2010 03:23 AM PST
The Humping USB Dogs became so popular 2 or 3 years ago that the maker, Japan-based Cube, not only started selling the silly things internationally but also added a plethora of other animals to the line-up. And now, the same company has another USB-powered gadget ready, the so-called Dodobongo USB dog. The Dodobongo isn't quite as silly as its humping counterpart, as it actually starts barking and blushing once it detects a person approaching you PC. Just like the other Cube gadgets, it doesn't offer any kind of memory. And it works with Windows PCs only. If you're interested but live outside Japan (Cube currently offers the Dodobongo in this country only), head over to Geek Stuff 4 U. The Tokyo-based import/export specialists list the gadget for $73.90. Via Akihabara News
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| Daily Crunch: Down Below the Ocean Edition Posted: 10 Mar 2010 12:00 AM PST |
| The iTable continues to develop and show gaming potential Posted: 09 Mar 2010 09:30 PM PST We’ve told you about the iTable before, and PQ Labs. They showed off their latest stage in the development process at CeBIT this year, by installing the screen into a coffee table. The newest version can register up to 32 touch points and actually determine the shape of the object being placed on the screen. But to me, that’s not the real story. The real story is that they installed a game that’s near and dear to my heart, Warcraft III. To me, this is the true future of the touchscreen interface, and the part of the technology that I’m excited about. It’s definitely worth your time to watch the video and see how far they’ve come in the development process, and how they are stacking up against their competitors. [via Gizmag]
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| Crunchdeal: Save $500 on a Toshiba R600 with OpenSolaris Posted: 09 Mar 2010 08:30 PM PST
If you don’t want to use Windows 7, and would prefer OpenSolaris, you can buy the exact same machine for $500 less. Odd, I know. And it definitely makes you wonder exactly how much you’re paying for that copy of Windows 7 Starter. [Thanks to Chris for the tip]
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| Analyst: PS3 to win over Xbox 360 and Wii Posted: 09 Mar 2010 07:30 PM PST
Unfortunately analysts are a trusted source in the tech industry, but stuff like this makes me wonder why. SA predicted that 127 million PS3 units will be sold, 103 million Wii units, and an unknown number of Xbox 360’s. That’s right, despite the prediction that the PS3 will win 4evar, they didn’t bother to predict how many Xbox 360s will be sold. SA furthermore goes to predict that the PS3 will continue to be a commercially viable platform for years after the Wii has been replaced by it’s successor. I buy that, but only due to the Blu-ray angle. For years now, the PS3 has been one of the best Blu-ray players other there. The author of the report goes one step further, predicting that while Nintendo has done a great job with the Wii, it’ll probably peak sometime during 2011, with the Xbox 360 doing the same in 2012 and the PS3 in 2014. All I know for sure is that I’m in the wrong business – Strategy Analytics is charging $6,999 for this report. Please don’t go buy it. [via PC World]
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| Adam Savage on recreating the gun from Blade Runner Posted: 09 Mar 2010 07:00 PM PST
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| New Elgato EyeTV hybrid is smaller, more compatible Posted: 09 Mar 2010 06:30 PM PST
The new version is now clad in brushed aluminium, but is still capable enough to catch HD broadcasts over the air. EyeTV will also capture video feeds and record them via the bundled RCA adapter. It’ll even capture input from analog sources. Elgato has priced the new EyeTV at $150, and it should be available soon through the Apple store or from Elgato directly. [via Electronista]
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| XNA 4.0 games on Windows Phone 7 Series look awesome (but won’t be for Zune HD) Posted: 09 Mar 2010 06:28 PM PST
Read the rest of this post on MobileCrunch…
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| Copy our tablet for your iPad, will you? Well how do you like… this? Posted: 09 Mar 2010 06:00 PM PST
Well, things have taken a turn for the absurd. GLB has re-skinned their Windows tablet to look like OS X, though somehow I think we’ll be able to tell the difference.
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| Hard drive design leaving XP behind Posted: 09 Mar 2010 05:30 PM PST
It’s been coming for a while now, hard drives are constantly evolving and becoming more efficient, and drive manufacturers want to be freed from the 512 byte sector size. This of course isn’t an issue for more modern operating systems like Vista or Windows 7, but XP won’t be able to handle the larger sector sizes. This of course won’t be an immediate issue, but as XP machines age and require new hard drives, we’re going to see shortages of compatible hardware. Don’t expect this to be a major issue until 2011 though, because the drive manufacturers aren’t planning on adopting the new standards until then. After that, it just depends on how long it is until your XP hard drive dies. [via BBC News]
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| In a world of tracks, Pink Floyd fights for the album Posted: 09 Mar 2010 05:00 PM PST
As Nicholas notes, iTunes LP sales are pretty poor. Sure, they’ll look nice on an iPad and sure, having a good official version of the video is nice, but music is simply taking another tack these days, and a big premium package doesn’t fit. Digital distribution means the album is an eccentricity — to distributors. The thing is that not every artist is ready to change that — they call themselves artists for a reason, and to completely abandon the album is, I presume, for them like admitting they’re just making a product. Hey, depending on your opinion of a lot of the music out there today, you may or may not think that’s true already, but the artists are the ones making the music and it’s for them to decide when they’ll stop making albums. I’m sure there have been scuffles along these lines ever since iTunes became popular and contracts started getting renegotiated to accommodate 99-cent track downloads and such. In fact, it seems ridiculously late for Pink Floyd to jump down EMI’s throat about offering its tracks up for sale individually, which they claim is a breach of contract. EMI contends that that clause only applied to physical albums. It’s being hashed out as we speak, but it’s a fun little conflict, isn’t it? I’m rooting for Floyd. If they leave EMI after 40 years over this, I’d freak out. Probably not possible.
Whether or not it’s a breach of Pink Floyd’s particular contract is immaterial in the end, though — the question is whether the artist should even have the ability to say “No – no singles, no individual tracks, no videos. Album only.” —or some variant thereof. I mean after all, almost all of Dark Side of the Moon flows one track into the other, to say nothing of albums from some of my favorite artists, from Sigur Ros to Deerhunter to Hotel Hotel. In fact, much of my favorite music has an album structure or concept — and I would argue that it’s because having that kind of concept indicates more care and craft taken with the music, more time and more planning. Shouldn’t they be able to say no to individual track availability, even at the cost of overall sales? But I digress; this isn’t a music blog. The question that will soon be answered is whether any artists will pull the trigger. There’s going to be a stigma to overcome (that of a mere songsmith) but when we’re already seeing iTunes exclusives and stuff like that, it doesn’t seem so far off. I support Pink Floyd and personally I wouldn’t want to buy their tracks one by one, but that’s a whole other era of music. Distributors are embracing the new system; how long can it be before artists start to do so as more than a fluke or experiment? [image: Lost Highway Records]
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| 360-degree virtual combat room is like Iraq: The Arcade Game Posted: 09 Mar 2010 04:30 PM PST
Training has, since the introduction of America’s Army in 2002 (remember, everyone thought it was going to suck, and it really didn’t at all), incorporated more and more virtual or simulated training, though admittedly the technology used is decidedly last-generation still. But when you can save a million rounds of ammo by having your recruits shooting pixelated guys in a 360-degree combat room like this one, the benefits are clear. I wish we didn’t have to send 19-year-olds into a war zone, but every advantage we can give them is helpful. And for the record, if I had to have someone watching my back while bullets whiz past, I wouldn’t mind if it was one of my old Counter-Strike clanmates.
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| Gunnar Optiks joining forces with Carl Zeiss to make new lenses Posted: 09 Mar 2010 04:00 PM PST
Maybe this means a new line of clear lenses, suitable for use in color-sensitive environments like graphic design, are coming soon. Via SlashGear.
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| The rise and fall of iTunes LP (cue dramatic music) Posted: 09 Mar 2010 03:30 PM PST
Exciting news about Apple’s iTunes LP: apparently it’s a bit of a bust! The fine folks at GigaOM had the foresight to talk to people in the music industry to ask them, six months on, how’s iTunes LP doing? Not so great, is the answer. What went wrong? The first shocking revelation: iTunes LP wasn’t really Apple’s idea in the first place. Makes sense: why would Apple, which all but created the idea of a legal, digital music store, based on selling individual songs (read: not albums) all of a sudden be all, "Hey, albums are cool again. Buy them, and at a huge premium, too. Rather, iTunes LP was pushed by the same record labels that complained enough to get Apple to change from an all-99 cents pricing policy to a flexible pricing policy in exchange for DRM-free music. What happened? A couple things, maybe. One, maybe, after years of getting used to cherry picking what songs they wanted to buy, people are just done with the concept of the album. Not everyone who buys music from iTunes is so into music that they’ll make 1,000-word blog posts defending the album—they just want the latest Lady Gaga song. These people have no interest in full-length albums anymore. Another reason: iTunes LP albums are expensive, both to buy and to create. One source told GigaOM that an iTunes LP album cost something like $50,000-$60,000 to create, and $20ish to buy. And what are you getting, a couple of photos and videos that you may well have found on the band’s Web site? And then there’s not too many iTunes LP albums to begin with! Apple’s probably not too concerned. Again, this whole iTunes LP adventure wasn’t its idea to begin with, so Steve Jobs is probably like, "Whatever, dude, it’s all about the iPad. Don’t talk to me, jerk." There’s a larger issue, and that’s if the album is dead or not. There was a digital music thing here in New York a few weeks ago, but I was busy playing soccer with the guy from Univision. Questions like "Is the album dead?" were probably debated there. C’est la vie.
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| Inverted, ocean-bound “seascrapers”: aqua-communes for the future? Posted: 09 Mar 2010 03:15 PM PST
Wrap your mind around it! It’s glorious! It’s beautiful! It’s quite possibly green! And once you got your sea-legs, it’d be just like living in any other arcology. Oh, there aren’t any yet? Well maybe that’s because they didn’t think to build them at sea! Clearly these are idealized, and likely fail to account for a number of factors like storage space for food and products, waste management, and that sort of thing, but I see no reason why there shouldn’t be a cluster of these things (as they indeed suggest), each one specializing in this or that. Really at this point I’m just laying the foundation for the sci-fi novella I’m going to have to write on account of all the imagineering going on in my head following this post. Want so bad. [via Inhabitat]
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| Did you know there was a Last Starfighter video game? Posted: 09 Mar 2010 03:00 PM PST
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| IBM researching ways to help the aged, illiterate Posted: 09 Mar 2010 02:25 PM PST
The research will include creating new user interfaces that use images rather than text.
Generally I’m down on electronic solutions to problems of education. However, by giving some of the most important educators on the planet – grandparents and parents – more and better tools
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So here’s a deal, but it’s a bit odd. The Toshiba R600 is advertised as being Toshiba’s ultimate notebook, and for the price it better be. You can buy it from Toshiba’s website for $2,099 for the base model which includes a 160GB hard drive, 3GB of RAM, and a 12.1″ screen, and comes standard with Windows 7. But that’s not the deal.
Technology analyst firm Strategy Analytics just announced their latest forecast: Sony’s Playstation 3 will will outsell the Wii and Xbox 360 by the time they all end their product cycle. Say what?
Elgato just released the updated version of their USB tuner, the EyeTV. This new version has been resized (smaller) and added compatibility with Windows 7, making it ideal for that HTPC project you’ve been thinking about.
Bad news for the XP diehards out there, hard drive manufacturers are tired of supporting you, and the next generation of controller technology is not going to work properly with DOS and Windows XP users. Of course it won’t be a major issue until 2011, and maybe not even then.
IBM’s Open Collaborative Research is working on ways to get mobile Internet to the aged and illiterate all over the world. The initial research is happening in Japan and India and will be used to plan future endeavors including open source platforms for information sharing. Japan was chosen because of its high number of older folks and India chosen because, despite recent impressive advances, many citizens are still illiterate.| You are subscribed to email updates from CrunchGear To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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