CrunchGear

CrunchGear

Link to CrunchGear

First trailer for Resident Evil 4: Afterlife is here

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 11:01 PM PDT

We’ve given you the first plot details and pictures on Friday, but now the first trailer for Resident Evil: Afterlife (aka Resident Evil 4) is online. It’s pretty cool (well, it shows more of the same), mentioning the movie was filmed with the “James Cameron / Vincent Pace Fusion Camera System”, the “World’s Most Advanced 3D Technology”.

The movie will hit American theaters (both 3D and conventional) on September 10.

Here’s the trailer (good quality, 2:04min.):

My top iPad pet peeves… so far

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 03:21 PM PDT

I’ll update – or shorten this list – as I work with the device.

Sticky fingers – The iPad screen is big. It takes lots of fingerprints. It takes a nice brushing with a soft cloth to clean.

Keep out of direct sunlight – As you saw from my photos, the screen washes out like mad in direct sunlight. It happens with the iPad and most laptops, as well, but you really notice it with the 10-inch screen.

iPhone Apps are annoying – Now I understand why I kept getting PR emails about iPad apps. iPhone apps on the iPad are either horribly dinky or horribly pixelated. There’s no real middle ground. Developers need to hurry up.

The iPhone UI doesn’t scale well – I don’t mind the UI, but it’s a little “spaced out.” All of those separate icons are a little weirdly “kerned” on the iPad screen.

HD apps are twice as expensive – Twice the pixels for twice the price? Come on, guys. This isn’t science of the rockets. Why do I need to pay $4 for an HD version of Fieldrunners? Gold rush much?

The smartphone: a shackle once more

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 12:42 PM PDT


Here’s a phrase many of you will remember, probably from the late 1990s: “Yeah, I’d get a cell phone, but I don’t want to be on, like, an electronic leash, you know?” People had land lines, pagers, car phones — the pocketable mobile phone was still a luxury and, to some, an unwanted responsibility. Over the next 10 years or so, the mobile phone gradually reached such high levels of market penetration that it’s quite difficult to find anybody without one. It is simply too practical and affordable to refrain from at this point. However, in the last few years, as smartphones and texting have become the default mode of communication for many people, the tone has changed again; the electronic leash is returning.

Why is this? It’s actually pretty simple: once a tool reaches a certain level of integration with the social and communication norms of a person, it receives the same level of cognitive consideration as, say, speech. Do you wonder whether you should end a text message with an exclamation mark, a period, or nothing at all? This is because texting and email are approaching the same level of integration with our daily lives as the speech and gestures we’ve been using for millennia. I realize one could have said this at any time over the last decade, but I’m saying it now for a specific reason.

As someone who works online, I have a bit of an unusual communication situation, to be sure. Most of my interactions take place via text boxes. IM, email, the CrunchGear chatroom and task manager where we administer the site — these are my main methods of social interaction during most of the day. Even at my previous job, where I worked in an office and spoke to clients regularly, the volume of email and otherwise written communication approached that of “real” interaction. I’m sure, dear reader, if you were to submit your life to this analysis, you would also find a startling amount of what people like to categorize separately “virtual” (or some such descriptor) communication.

Now, the level of expression possible in 140 characters, or a two-paragraph email, or in a chatroom, is clearly not equal to the level of expression possible in a face-to-face conversation. That is a fact, as far as it goes… partially because our brains are actually designed for the latter sort of interaction, so it’s not really a fair fight. And although the expressive bandwidth, if you will, of a series of text messages is very small, we are beginning to imbue these impersonal, telegraphic communications with the subtlety and power of a normal conversation. You see? As text begins to more completely supplant conversation, conversation more completely informs how we create and interpret the text. Observe this overly simplistic diagram that took way too long to make:

This is, I believe, why our phones are beginning to be electronic shackles yet again. Oh, I don’t mean that because we can write a :) or :(, it’s just like looking in someone’s face — but what was impersonal only a couple years ago is rapidly becoming extremely personal, as we project ourselves more completely onto it, as we must necessarily when it takes up such a large portion of our social interactions. Think of the way correspondence made up such a huge portion of communication before the age of the computer. The Victorians, my god! Half their life was in trunks of letters, and lovers of 19th-century literature will recall the minuteness with which letters are scrutinized; it was at least as important a form of communication as face-to-face conversation, and it got the weight it deserved. Similarly, the delimiting of microcommunications like texts and tweets over the last few years (socially and monetarily) has put them more firmly on our cognitive maps.

So why is it suddenly a shackle, then? Have things really changed so much in the last year or two? Well – it’s an ongoing process, obviously. The best way to see it in action is to hearken back to when BlackBerrys started getting popular. People were glued to them, because as major email users and connected people in general, they were the early adopters not just of the technology, but of the repercussions of relying on that technology. So you’ve got CrackBerrys blowing up, and then you’ve got the iPhone and the popularization of the smartphone that it brought. Over the last couple years, many more phones have integrated push email, instant notifications from things like Facebook and Foursquare, and so on — to say nothing of the increasing popularity of unlimited texting. The reliance on the phone as primary (or close secondary) method of communication is an expanding circle, and it’s starting to envelop the “man on the street,” whereas not long ago it was only the tech-savvy guy, or the business guy, or what have you. The personalization of impersonal communication is happening on a large scale, and the implications of that are interesting.

I say “interesting” because it’s hard to say they’re important, or huge. They’re just that: interesting. The change from phone as passive receptacle of information to active conduit between you and everyone you know means that what the earliest adopters in the 90s feared is coming true. Once a text message or email is as immediate, personal, and important to a group of people as face-to-face conversation, that means by definition that everyone you know can address you at any time, with the reasonable expectation of response.

After all, you don’t just turn away from someone’s face when they’re talking about something uninteresting at a bar, or if they invite you to an event you can’t make it to or don’t want to attend. You nod politely, make excuses, change the topic — all the skills of conversation come into play, because that person is right there and you can’t ignore them, or rather to ignore them is itself a positive act (that is to say, not simply inaction but deliberate inaction). Well, it’s getting to the point where to ignore a text message, email, or evite is also a positive act. How many times have you seen recently someone angry that another person didn’t text them back, or on the other hand, say disdainfully “I’m not even going to respond”?

In other words: our phones no longer simply make us available, as they have for years; they make us present. As close to physically present as corresponds to your level of reliance on the phone. A bit weird, isn’t it?

For the younger generation, this will be even more pronounced. This isn’t a bad thing at all, I should say: people complain loudly about how kids are texting each other all day and not really communicating. Okay, grandpa — I won’t take any wooden nickels, either. This method of communication is new, and we’re adapting to it as best we can, but just like the parents of my generation deplored the constant phonecalls (imagine the fortune telecoms made on second lines) and their parents deplored the baby boomers’ obsession with… I don’t know what, cruising in your hot rod maybe? Free love? I’m out of my depth. But you get my drift: the communication paradigm is changing, not for the worse, just for the new.

So I call our phones shackles, and then I say it’s not a bad thing. Well, it’s not a good thing, either — it’s just a thing. You’re “shackled” to your neighbors and your city. You’re “shackled” to your car payments and your futon. But you’re also “shackled” to your kids, your computer, your hobbies. Not every shackle has a ball and chain on the end — it’s just another name for attachment. This new shackle, a shackle of constant connection with the people in your life, is, like most technologies, neutral. In D&D terms, it’d probably be chaotic neutral, since it’s disruptive to the way we’ve been living, but neutral nonetheless.

What are the implications? Beats me, I’m a blogger, not a sociologist. Different implications for different people, probably, or none at all since the change is so gradual and natural as to be imperceptible. But see it or not, the change is happening, and the urgency and primacy of once-virtual communication is mounting as, increasingly, the virtual becomes indistinguishable from the real.

Help Key: Everything you need to know about the iPad

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 11:04 AM PDT


When will I be able to get one?

If you hit the stores, I suspect your local Apple store may have some in stock. This isn’t iPhone level hysteria. If you order one now on-line, though, you won’t get one via UPS until April 12.

If I go today, will I still be able to get one?
Call first, but I doubt they’re totally sold out everywhere.

WiFi/3G or WiFi-only?

I’d say 3G, but that’s just me. I’d love to be able to use this at press events without WiFi. Your mileage and use case will vary.

Can I jailbreak it?

Not yet, but GeoHot has been working on a method that may soon work.

Will I break it?

Probably not but get the case if you plan on traveling. It’s really nice.

Will I scratch it?

The screen is really big but on par with a standard laptop screen. The back is made of aluminum. It won’t scratch any more than a MacBook Pro will.

How are ebooks?

Aah-mazing! The Winnie the Pooh title I read so far was great – pictures were excellent – and the rest of the media, including The Elements, are fascinating. This is not CD-ROM era stuff. This is the Diamond Age.

How are the games?

The HD games are great. I’m trying more out as we speak, but Real Racing HD is great.

How are movies?

I wish I could take a long flight. Having this on my lap would be great.

What size?

Go big or go home. 64GB.

I travel a lot and want to read. I can sometimes leave my Kindle “on” but will they make me turn it off when the plane takes off and lands?

Heck yeah. This thing will definitely set off bells.

Should I get one?

This is 1st Gen Apple hardware. You pay the price for early adoption. There is the potential for a built-in camera down the line. Are do you already own a Kindle and just want it for ebooks? Don’t get this right now. Are you a fan of Apple and must have everything they produce? Get thee to the ebookery. Do you want this to be your book iPod? Don’t get the iPad. Do you want to watch movies on the plane? Get this thing.

Again, there’s no telling what iPad 2.0 will be like but if history is a guide, it will be slight hardware improvement and some new features. It’s not like the iPod Touch got a camera last upgrade, right?

Do you have more questions? Ask me in comments or Tweet me. I’m happy to answer as they come in.

Nintendo controller car mod goes too far

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 10:00 AM PDT

I’m all for letting your geek flag fly, but this is a bit much. Perhaps he wanted to be able to control the car from the front? At least it’s something that you can hide under you hood. I dunno. Props for knowing your roots and such.

Of course, a modification you can remove is a good thing, since it won’t impact the retail value. I mean, we’ve seen worse.

[Via Gadget Review]

iFixit sees London, France: Tears apart iPad limb from limb

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 09:15 AM PDT

Need more iPad news? Who doesn’t! It’s practically a life-giving force at this point. Anyhow, the fine chaps over at iFixit have taken apart an iPad for all to see. It nicely complements the FCC’s own handiwork from a few hours ago.

While the FCC took apart a pre-production unit, the iFixit guys have taken apart an honest-to-goodness retail iPad. It’s the same thing so, so many people will be playing with later today. “Look, I can browse the Internet!”

To everyone waiting in line to buy an iPad today, boa sorte!

Apple store lines muted, yet pregnant with anticipation

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 08:00 AM PDT


I was down at the Fifth Avenue Store in New York and after about 10:00am the lines sort of calmed down after a huge push. One guy had been in line for four days, which suggests that he may have been underemployed under this administration. We need a Peace Corps for people like these.

Anyway, the guys from YouRenew.com were there in big iPad v. Kindle outfits and I think this image, below, sums up the future of human interaction from now on out. So long and thanks for all the fish, indeed.

Hands-on with the Apple iPad: Groundbreaking or not, it’s still amazing

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 07:52 AM PDT


I just grabbed my iPad, dock, and case and I’m ready to start living in the 21st Century. Say what you want, but the iPad is clearly a new way forward in terms of user interaction and portability. In fact, I regret that I don’t have a long haul flight to test this thing out on because this device may be the elusive missing link between full-bore laptop and underpowered netbook for which we’ve all been searching.

On the whole, the iPad is nothing revolutionary: if you know iPhone, you’ll know this thing. But Numbers, Pages, and Keynote, the office suite that isn’t Office, is amazing on the iPad and iBooks are already a big hit around our house. Thankfully, Apple includes an A.A. Milne Pooh book for the kiddies.

Hyperbole without experience is hype so I’m going to ruminate on this thing this week and report back shortly. However, if you’re in the market for a netbook, this may be your solution. The jury is still out on WiFi v. 3G/WiFi (I’m leaning 3G/WiFi) but it’s still a fascinating product.

Weekend Giveaway: Free to be you and me

Posted: 03 Apr 2010 06:44 AM PDT

We’re not perfect. Let’s just admit it. But South Park fans are more perfect than others. That’s why I recommend you click through to start commenting in order to win one of three South Park 13th Season Blu-Ray box sets.

How do you win? Simple pimple: post a comment below in your best South Park voice (I know it’s text, be creative.) Extra points for Kenny. I’ll close the contest on Monday morning.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)