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- The Star Wars trilogy told in 2:13 with LEGOs
- Weaker Wii sales: Nintendo’s profit drops for first time in 6 years
- Video: Meet LOLA, Germany’s newest (and very tall) fembot
- Daily Crunch: Celebrity Sighting Edition
- Original Apple TV prototype sells on eBay for $46
- Ah, there’s that tripod notebook stand I’ve been waiting for
- Gamer wins a cool million for pitching a perfect game in MLB2K10
- Fifteen years ago today, the N64 was born
- USB powered boots hit the mainstream
- Zero Punctuation: Splinter Cell: Conviction
- DIY iPad stylus: actually extremely easy to make
- LinuxCon keynote speakers announced
- Super Mario Galaxy 2 to come with tutorial DVD
- Poltergeist gets into NYSE stockbrokers’ handhelds
- The Newton Messagepad that got away
- New solar cells printed on paper
- A closer look at RGM’s new American tourbillon
- The new Roku Netflix experience adds search, Instant Queue modification features
- DIY: Wooden DSLR shoulder mount
- Barnes & Noble and HP join forces to launch specially branded online bookstore
| The Star Wars trilogy told in 2:13 with LEGOs Posted: 06 May 2010 05:06 AM PDT |
| Weaker Wii sales: Nintendo’s profit drops for first time in 6 years Posted: 06 May 2010 04:25 AM PDT
Nintendo in Japan released its annual fiscal report [ENG, PDF] today, and even though pretty much every financial key figure took a nose dive, things still look pretty good on the whole. The company racked up $15.2 billion in revenue last financial year (which ended March 31, 2010), down 22% from last year. Operating profit dropped 36% to $3.8 billion, while net profit – for the first time in six years – dropped to $2.4 billion, compared with $2.9 billion a year earlier. These are dream numbers for most of the other gaming companies out there, but probably not so for Nintendo. The company said that Wii sales came to “just” 20.53 million units worldwide last fiscal, down 21% from the previous year (the console made its debut in 2006). And Nintendo predicts that this number will go down to 18 million this fiscal year, along with a minus of 14% in Wii software sales. For the current financial year ending March 2011, Nintendo expects another dip, namely a net profit of “just” $2.1 billion, operating profit of $3.4 billion and revenue of $14.9 billion. Still not bad, considering Nintendo’s hardware portfolio hasn’t changed that much in recent years. Image credit: Kaynil / deviantArt
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| Video: Meet LOLA, Germany’s newest (and very tall) fembot Posted: 06 May 2010 02:21 AM PDT
Remember AILA, the “female” humanoid we’ve blogged about two weeks ago? It turns out that wasn’t the only fembot that has been in development in Germany in the last few years, as LOLA [GER], a humanoid presented by the Technical University of Munich and the Institute of Technology Autonomous Systems in Munich, shows. LOLA stands an impressive 180cm tall, weighs 60kg, has 25 joints in her body and sees the world through two 5MP video cameras. She walks very slowly in the current version, but the developers are saying they aim to boost her speed to 5km/h eventually (the average walking speed of a human being). And she isn’t really a beauty queen yet either. She doesn’t even look like a female. But LOLA’s killer feature is that she’s able to walk autonomously (she’s not self-powered though), using advanced, real-time image recognition that makes it possible for her to identify and avoid objects. Her developers say that the final goal is to have a two-legged robot that can move just like a human does. The way LOLA walks around, identifies objects and almost immediately changes her path now is already pretty impressive, however. Here’s a pretty cool video that shows LOLA in action (it’s in German, but that doesn’t matter too much in this case):
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| Daily Crunch: Celebrity Sighting Edition Posted: 06 May 2010 12:00 AM PDT |
| Original Apple TV prototype sells on eBay for $46 Posted: 05 May 2010 07:56 PM PDT
Anyway, one of these just sold for $46 on eBay with free shipping! Who knows where he got it – maybe someone lost it in a bar? – but it sure is nice to see it among the living. These things are classic Apple design, just at the precipice between the hard lines of the early Power Macs and the curvy lines of the iMac.
Has anyone seen these working?
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| Ah, there’s that tripod notebook stand I’ve been waiting for Posted: 05 May 2010 07:00 PM PDT
Now you can use that tripod for almost anything. Big laptops, small laptops, sheet music, holding a sheet of brownies — the possibilities are endless, as long as you have no end of light, flat objects to put on this thing. At ¥1980 (about $21), it’s the bargain of the century. Of the galaxy! [via CNET]
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| Gamer wins a cool million for pitching a perfect game in MLB2K10 Posted: 05 May 2010 06:40 PM PDT
2K showed up to his house with a big-ass check and everything. A million bucks for some destitute gamer, who, incredibly, is doing the right thing and paying off his mortgage right off the bat. If Valve showed up at my door with a check for playing a perfect game of TF2 (as well they should, since I’m the best medic this side of the sun), I’d probably blow it all on beef jerky.
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| Fifteen years ago today, the N64 was born Posted: 05 May 2010 06:20 PM PDT
1UP has posted the full press release from that historic day, and it makes for good reading. Feeling nostalgic? Remember, you can find an N64 for probably $30 at your local used game shop. Go ahead, indulge yourself.
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| USB powered boots hit the mainstream Posted: 05 May 2010 06:00 PM PDT
Omni-Heat is Columbia’s latest clothing line, and includes two men’s boots, and two women’s boots that are electrically heated. The battery pack is powered by a USB connection, and takes about 4 hours to charge. No word on how long the battery lasts once it’s fully charged. I have to tell you, I think I might have to pick a pair of these up when they are available this September 1st. No word on MSRP. [via Gearlog]
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| Zero Punctuation: Splinter Cell: Conviction Posted: 05 May 2010 05:30 PM PDT |
| DIY iPad stylus: actually extremely easy to make Posted: 05 May 2010 05:00 PM PDT
Essentially all you need to do is connect your conductive surface (i.e. your skin) to the screen via some sort of extension — in this case some copper wire and a bit of conductive foam. If you’re going to be gripping the stylus in one place, you might just put the wire there and drill a little hole for it to go through, if you don’t like the whole wraparound thing.
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| LinuxCon keynote speakers announced Posted: 05 May 2010 04:30 PM PDT
LinuxCon runs August 10-12, with early bird registrations open now for $300 ($100 for students, with proper ID). Hurry, early bird registration ends tomorrow! If you can’t make it to LinuxCon, keep in mind that Stormy Peters will also be keyoting at the Ohio LinuxFest this year! OLF is September 10-12, and is free to attend!
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| Super Mario Galaxy 2 to come with tutorial DVD Posted: 05 May 2010 04:00 PM PDT
I guess I have a problem with this, though I can’t really blame Nintendo for wanting to ease new players into this weird new universe. But from the beginning, Nintendo’s games have always been about elegance of design toward the beginning, where you learn what to do as you go on. When you include a DVD that explains everything, it sort of cheapens the experience, don’t you think? It’s like reading the instructions before playing a game of Monopoly. It reminds you that there are rules and restrictions, things you can do and things you can’t — which were all there anyway, whether they told you or not, but at least before this you found them out organically. Eh, whatever. That game’s going to be fun as hell no matter what, and that’s what matters.
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| Poltergeist gets into NYSE stockbrokers’ handhelds Posted: 05 May 2010 03:30 PM PDT
Okay, there was no wailing or static, but the devices did stop working for no particular reason. Sure, it’s not headline news, but I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more crazy things like this happening in that high-stakes environment. Like what about spreading the flu on the floor so none of the traders can come in the next day, and then cleaning up with some backroom deals? And how come the NYSE report servers don’t get hacked more often? It seems that if the traders are using the same brand or type of handheld, they’d be ripe for exploitation. Hmm, I sense a best-selling novel coming on! [via ComputerWorld]
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| The Newton Messagepad that got away Posted: 05 May 2010 03:00 PM PDT
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. Back in college there was this guy Joel who was always working on cooler stuff than we were. He was in Scotch and Soda, the drama club at Carnegie Mellon and one day he brought out his Newton Messagepad. Man was I impressed. This was just on the cusp of the dot-com era when handheld devices coolness levels maxed out at the TI-81 calculator. To see a windowed environment on an LCD screen with a programmable OS? That was crazy town. Anyway, I only recently got an old Messagepad for old times sake. It’s nigh on unusable today, especially considering I don’t have a floppy drive anywhere. I never owned one back when they first came out. They were prohibitively expensive and they were generally too incredible for me to fathom a use for them. Why would you need an address book? A calendar? I had paper versions of those. I didn’t really need to remember a lot of phone numbers and all of my friends emails were in Pine and I’d never send an email by plugging a small handheld device into a telephone port and making a call let alone wirelessly. Right? My first PIM was the Palm V and then I got an iPaq and installed Linux on it. But by that time the Newton was gone, disappeared by Jobs’ product line cuts. But a bit of his DNA still lives on: when you drag an item out of the dock in OSX dock you see a puff of smoke. That’s what happened when you scratched out text on the Newton’s screen. Instead of a silent delete you heard a “pop” and it would just disappear. It was, in the end, far to ahead of its time.
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| New solar cells printed on paper Posted: 05 May 2010 02:30 PM PDT
According to Wikipedia, high efficiency solar cells run between 20% and 40% efficient, so these new paper cells still have ample room for improvement. The big advantage to printing solar cells on paper is a dramatically reduced weight, which means more application opportunities. I haven’t heard any word on new battery technologies to go with these new solar cells. No doubt there’s some group of really smart people working to tackle that aspect of solar energy.
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| A closer look at RGM’s new American tourbillon Posted: 05 May 2010 02:00 PM PDT If you’re into watches, you know that the tourbillon is the nitrous charger of the watch world – you’ll probably never use it, it doesn’t make an amazing amount of sense, but darn it if it isn’t cool. RGM Watches is a small watch company in Pennsylvania and they just launched their own manufacture tourbillon, a tourbillon made from scratch from stem to stern. These guys are consummate professionals and for an American brand to create a tourbillon, especially in these days of waning manufacturing prowess in the US, is amazing. The video, above, gives you an idea of what goes into this watch and I post the HourTime podcast in which Ariel and I talk about the tourbillon, albeit slightly snarkily. I also interviewed Roland Murphy of RGM here.
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| The new Roku Netflix experience adds search, Instant Queue modification features Posted: 05 May 2010 01:42 PM PDT Woot! Netflix for Roku’s wee little box will be updated “soon” for Netflix subscribers, adding search functionality that the service badly needed. As you can see from this jaunty video, the entire UI has been improved and the standard “press left to see all of the other movies” is gone, giving you more movies per page and a considerably more streamlined experience. The best thing? You can now add movies to your queue from the box.
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| DIY: Wooden DSLR shoulder mount Posted: 05 May 2010 01:30 PM PDT
DIY DSLR Wooden Shoulder Rig from Jonathan Clifford Bergqvist on Vimeo. Most shoulder mounts for DSLR video are strange metal and carbon fiber contraptions, which work I guess. But what if you want something a bit more organic, something that you can make yourself. Here’s a shoulder mount that was constructed from a single piece of wood. It’s quite clever really, and more then just a shoulder mount. The device has a standard grip, and a secondary handle for adjusting the focus. The end result is a completely functional hand made shoulder mount, with a focus puller. Watch the video for a complete breakdown of how it’s made. [via Switched]
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| Barnes & Noble and HP join forces to launch specially branded online bookstore Posted: 05 May 2010 01:00 PM PDT
Some Barnes & Noble nook news for your Wednesday afternoon. The giant bookstore has teamed up with HP (you know, the guys who now own Palm) to bring us the HP B&N Bookstore. It just makes things a little easier for HP folk to browse and buy B&N wares. So what’s up? Henceforth, HP customers will find a direct link to http://hp.bn.com, which looks to be an HP-branded B&N store. There doesn’t appear to be any exclusive content or anything, but I could well be wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. My guess is that this just gives B&N a little more exposure to the zillions of people who rock out to HP computers.
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