CrunchGear |  |
- Contest: 10 free copies of Armored Core: Last Raven for PSP
- An iPod touch with 2MP cam appears in Vietnam
- Mitsubishi installs five 80-person capacity elevators at office building in Osaka
- Photo gallery and video: NTT Docomo unveils 20 (partly amazing) cell phones
- Rumor: Nike+ heart rate monitor coming in June
- Volt & Google to help you remember where you parked
- Military spends $4.5 million on what appear to be helmet-mounted Virtual Boys
- Hark! iPhone OS 4 Beta 4 is here!
- London planning on citywide wifi before Olympics
- Boeing preparing to launch next-gen GPS satellites
- The Sennheiser EZX60 is just another Bluetooth headset
- HP CEO confirms webOS-powered Slates (but you’ll never guess what else)
- Nikon D4x concept looks boxy, unlikely
- Did Rogers Wireless ruin this woman’s life (or is she simply a fool)?
- Are you a citizen of the Roc Nation? Well, then your passport is these Skullcandy headphones
- The Viliv N5 is now launching in June
- iFixIt tears down the Kin Two
- When HD isn’t high definition
- Gameboy-up your iPad
- Epic Games says something silly about piracy
| Contest: 10 free copies of Armored Core: Last Raven for PSP Posted: 19 May 2010 05:00 AM PDT
ARRRRREEEE YOOOOOU REAAADDY TOOOO play a copy of Armored Core: Last Raven on the PSP? Well I have 10 free download codes. I’m going to pick five winners at random and pick another five Twitter folk. Isn’t that so Raven?
So I’m picking five commenters, below, and I’ll tweet a first-come-first-served code to twitter.com/crunchgear or twitter.com/johnbiggs every few hours. Plop over and follow those accounts and I’ll spit out the codes at random times. The game is now available on the PSN and includes:
We’ll close the contest on Thursday, May 20 at noon.
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| An iPod touch with 2MP cam appears in Vietnam Posted: 19 May 2010 04:49 AM PDT
Engadget points out that the serial number lists this unit as a late 2009 third generation iPod touch. It’s possible that the unit in question here is from the batch that caused all those rumors stating the iPod touch was getting a camera. That rumor obviously didn’t pan out and only the iPod nano got the camera treatment. There’s always a chance that ol’ Steve will announce this model alongside the iPhone 4G next month. iPods are still selling like mad and an undated model with not only a camera, but also iPhone OS 4 will no doubt spark even more sales. Guess we’ll have to wait until next month.
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| Mitsubishi installs five 80-person capacity elevators at office building in Osaka Posted: 19 May 2010 03:41 AM PDT
Mitsubishi Electric today announced [PDF] it has installed five 80 person-capacity elevators at an office building in Osaka, which opened two weeks ago. The elevators, Japan’s largest, can carry 5,250 kilograms in load and offer a floor space of 9.52 square meters. That means that theoretically, up to 400 people could go up the 41 floors of said office building at once.
The cars have glass windows, allowing passengers to look outside while using the elevator.
Mitsubishi Electric itself doesn’t say its elevators are the world’s largest, but that might very well be. Let us know in the comments if you know better.
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| Photo gallery and video: NTT Docomo unveils 20 (partly amazing) cell phones Posted: 19 May 2010 02:00 AM PDT  Japan has been flooded with new cell phones over the last few days. We've shown you KDDI au's 10 new handsets Monday, SoftBank Mobile's 13 new models yesterday, and now it's time for NTT Docomo's summer lineup. Japan's biggest mobile carrier (55 million) unveiled 20 new cell phones [press release in English] yesterday, some of which are just awesome. Docomo's complete line-up for this summe over at MobileCrunch.
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| Rumor: Nike+ heart rate monitor coming in June Posted: 18 May 2010 07:30 PM PDT
Word popped up recently on the Nike support forums that we should expect to see the heart rate monitor this coming June 1st. The monitor is expected to work directly with the Nike+ interface that’s been built directly into the iPod Touch since the second generation. No word on pricing or features yet, but the forum post was written by someone who appears to be a Nike employee, so it’s most likely true. Typically heart rate monitors sell for $50 and up, and many require a chest strap that is connected to a wristwatch or some other device. [via TUAW]
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| Volt & Google to help you remember where you parked Posted: 18 May 2010 07:00 PM PDT Feeling a bit forgetful? Worried that you’re not going to be able to find your way back to your car? Worry no longer, there’s now an Android app for that. All you need is an Android phone, and Chevy Volt with OnStar. Once you’re parked, you can speak your destination into your phone which will then keep track of where you are relative to that point, and help you to find your way back. This is actually just part of GM’s plan for the Volt, which is going to be closely linked with the Google platform when it comes out. In addition to the location feature, you’ll also be able to check the battery level, monitor the vehicles overall health, and even run the A/C before you get in. [via DVice]
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| Military spends $4.5 million on what appear to be helmet-mounted Virtual Boys Posted: 18 May 2010 06:09 PM PDT
Although they claim realistic graphics and “endless” maneuvering, I’d be concerned about how realistic the movement actually is. I found the gun-shaped projector from Microvision to be pretty engrossing, but I wonder if their little stereo setup (powered by a Core2 Duo and 2GB of DDR2) is as instantaneously responsive? The military thinks so; they’ve sunk quite a chunk of change into the project. You’d think for this many million dollars, they’d get more than 2GB of RAM. Well, at any rate, it’s better than Halo. If this thing looks interesting, there’s more info over at Danger Room.
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| Hark! iPhone OS 4 Beta 4 is here! Posted: 18 May 2010 05:13 PM PDT
It’s that time again, folks: with another two weeks behind us, Apple has released yet another Beta rendition of iPhone OS 4. Like those that came before it, this fourth Beta release is signed and sealed for developers only — in other words, if you’re not a dev, you’ll have to sit tight for a little while longer.
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| London planning on citywide wifi before Olympics Posted: 18 May 2010 05:00 PM PDT
The project, called “Wireless London” is part of Johnson’s attempt to make London the technological center of the world. It makes sense to do this, particularly with the 2012 Olympics coming and giving London a chance to really show off how progressive they are. Currently, there’s no word on how fast the connection will be, or how much it will cost to use. It is an idea who’s time has come, and I hope that there are more cities that run with the same idea. [via PC World]
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| Boeing preparing to launch next-gen GPS satellites Posted: 18 May 2010 04:00 PM PDT
The satellite is scheduled to be launched on May 20th, and is the first of 12 that will eventually be in orbit over the Earth. Once the new satellites are in place, the new technology is expected to become the new core of the GPS system. The new satellite will be launched from Florida on the Alliance Delta IV rocket this coming Thursday.
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| The Sennheiser EZX60 is just another Bluetooth headset Posted: 18 May 2010 03:30 PM PDT
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| HP CEO confirms webOS-powered Slates (but you’ll never guess what else) Posted: 18 May 2010 03:21 PM PDT
The very instant it was announced that HP had purchased Palm, one idea set the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere aflame: webOS-powered tablets. webOS is a wonderfully glorious OS, hindered only by half-baked hardware – strap that thing onto a big ol’ slab of glass, and you’ve got my money. Aaaaand sure enough, that’s one of the things that HP’s got lined up. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
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| Nikon D4x concept looks boxy, unlikely Posted: 18 May 2010 03:00 PM PDT
I’m not sure that I’m 100% behind this design, but it’s certainly different from the traditional DSLR look. If anything, it’s closer to the large frame landscape cameras like the Mamiya. At any rate, the design comes from Marc Levinson, who has some other interesting ideas on his site. [via Nikon Rumors]
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| Did Rogers Wireless ruin this woman’s life (or is she simply a fool)? Posted: 18 May 2010 02:30 PM PDT
A Canadian woman has sued Rogers Wireless over privacy concerns. Sounds normal so far, right? Let’s add a little color to the sentence, then gauge your reaction. A Canadian woman has sued Rogers Wireless for inadvertently disclosing an affair she was having, citing privacy concerns. Hmm, that’s a little less normal, now isn’t it? But that’s the story! A Canadian woman had a cellphone with Rogers. Then she got married, and her husband opened up a landline and Internet connection for the house. Rogers then combined the bills—the woman’s cellphone, the shared landline and Internet connection—into one invoice that was sent to the husband at their domicile. Now, was Rogers “in the right” when it combined the cellphone bill, which was originally in the woman’s name, with the newly opened landline and Internet connection? Moving on, the husband, flipping through one month’s invoice, noticed several, hour-long conversations that were with one particular phone number. He called the number, getting the person on the other end of the line to confirm that, indeed, there had been an affair. The husband left, then the woman claims her life fell apart. Among other things, her work performance suffered, which caused her to lose her job. For that she wants $600,000 from Rogers, technically for “invasion of privacy and breach of contract.” The contract being her cellphone service that she never requested be billed to her husband. Time to play armchair analyst. Did Rogers do anything wrong here, and if so, does it owe the woman any money, specifically $600,000? I can see the woman’s point in that her cellphone was her cellphone, and Rogers probably didn’t have to combine it with the family’s landline and Internet connection. Does that warrant a breach of contract? I’m not a Canadian contract lawyer, so beats me. At the same time, Rogers wasn’t responsible for the woman’s affair, and it certainly wasn’t responsible for the woman reacting in the manner she did, causing her life to fall apart. Could the woman have been caught, gotten a divorce, then moved on with her life? You know, be an adult about the situation? I suppose, but then again I have no emotional attachment to the story.
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| Are you a citizen of the Roc Nation? Well, then your passport is these Skullcandy headphones Posted: 18 May 2010 02:06 PM PDT Skullcandy has officially announced the availability of their Roc Nation Aviator headphones, the only headphones officially sanction by Jay Z. Jay Z is a rapper who raps about, among other things, his 99 problems, New York, and detritus under your ear. Remember – Jay Z approved these headphones and did not, in fact, carve them in his small mountain workshop out of plastic the way Dr. Dre does for his beats. This is could be a bit of a problem for true audiophiles who require their headphones to be made completely by hand by the artist in question.
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| The Viliv N5 is now launching in June Posted: 18 May 2010 01:40 PM PDT
Hopefully the company has improved upon the model since we got a few minutes to play with it on CES’s show floor. While the form factor is fantastic, it felt cheap and flimsy — almost breakable. We should find out in June.
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| Posted: 18 May 2010 01:19 PM PDT
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| Posted: 18 May 2010 01:00 PM PDT
What set this post off was that yesterday, Omnivision announced that they were packing 1080p onto a 1/6″ sensor. An admirable feat of miniaturization. But the reality is that this “high definition” is anything but.
1. Light approaches and hits the “event horizon” of the lens. 2. The light passes through a number of lens elements in order to be straightened and resized. 4. The sensor dumps the data. 5. The data is processed. Sorry, that ended up being longer than I expected it to be. But now, if you didn’t before, you know the rudiments of the process. Now, let’s get on with the news. Omnivision, an established creator of image sensors, has created a sensor that is 1/6th of an inch diagonally that records 1080p video. To give you an idea of how large a 1/6″ sensor is, here is a very handy little chart.
My Rebel XSi, the T2i I just reviewed, and many other DSLRs fall under the 1.5 and 1.6x crop factor (APS-C) squares. The new Micro four thirds cameras are there as 4/3″, and a large majority of compact digital cameras and camcorders I’ve seen and reported use a 1/2.3″ sensor, a bit smaller than the 1/2″ one. The rugged cameras I reviewed recently, for example, all had 1/2.3″ sensors or thereabouts. A sensor 1/6″ of an inch across would be approximately half the size of the (already tiny) 1/3″ sensor there. Now, every camera that I’ve shot with, including the impressive T2i, has problems with HD. Somewhere along the line, in one of those steps I mentioned above, something goes wrong. And with imaging, it only takes one weak link to create a bad photo or video. High definition shouldn’t just be a name for a resolution. It should mean the level of definition in the image is high. The pocket cams out there, for instance, can barely ape “HD.” Under the correct circumstances, in good lighting and with no motion, you would look at the 720p image and think “yes, that’s high definition.” For the most part, though, motion is blurry, colors are mixed, edges are indistinct, and there’s a weird sort of texture over the whole frame. What the hell? You paid good money for “full HD” (as the pocket cams are now advertising: 1080p in a phone-sized package). Why aren’t you getting images like the ones you see on TV? The reason is that although the technology in one area or another may have advanced (lately it’s been sensors), the other bits of the camera are torpedoing the image quality all day long. Let’s go through the problems that occur during the process described above, in a $200 camcorder or phone shooting at 1080p. 1. and 2. The lens of the camera is garbage to begin with.
4. and 5. The sensor is slow and the CPU is slow Now, I’m not trying to break Omnivision’s balls here. Creating such a tiny sensor that is capable of producing such a high-res image however many times a second is a serious achievement. Mission accomplished. The thing is, unfortunately, said sensor doesn’t really enable devices to do anything different. You’re just going to magnify the problems that are already there, and fill up your SD card faster to boot. Will it take pictures and video? Sure. High resolution pictures and high definition video… of a low-quality image. It’s a bit like taking a picture of another picture, and expecting the second picture to be better than the first. So if it’s not really high definition, why is it being recorded and stored in high definition? So they have a big number to sell you, of course, like 240Hz and 18 megapixels. How can you avoid this? Well, just like the megapixel race, you really can’t. Video recording devices are simply going to overdo it the way still cameras overdid it, and now we all have hundreds or thousands of dubious images which despite being 10 or 15 megapixels, if you look closely or print too big, have all kinds of weird artifacts in them. It’ll be the same for video. You can choose to record at a lower resolution; 720p (even VGA sometimes) is just fine, after all, and often will record at the same framerate, meaning better image quality. And actually look at the lenses on the cameras you buy. Lenses that are bigger across are (generally speaking) better, and every lens has its F numbers printed on it or in its spec sheet. If you’re trying to decide between a few cameras, look at their lenses: if one device maker is shirking on the lens, arguably the most important part of the camera, then you can be sure they shirked elsewhere too. Also, don’t buy anything that shoots in 1080i. Interlacing is a monster deserving of its own post. I’d like to say that my issue with inflated video resolutions (and megapixels) is something that will be alleviated by time, like some of Ebert’s objections to 3D. But the cost of good optics isn’t really coming down, and really, the size of the lens is a physical barrier not likely to be surmounted any time soon. The methods we have for collecting and measuring light aren’t sufficient, and the improvements yet to be made for them will do nothing to help the fact that with bad components, it’s garbage in, garbage out.
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| Posted: 18 May 2010 11:43 AM PDT |
| Epic Games says something silly about piracy Posted: 18 May 2010 10:30 AM PDT
Anyone else tired of video game publishers complaining about piracy? Like, human nature is such that you’ll always have a bunch of knuckleheads who will hop on BitTorrent and download away. Forget them, they’re jerks. Just focus on the non-jerks out there and go about your business. Anyhow, today the spotlight falls on Epic Games, makers of Unreal and Gears of War. Seems those guys think that all the money these days is in consoles, so PC gamers will have to get used to crummy ports or nothing at all! Said Epic Games President Mike Capps:
Where is it written that Gears of War is the end-all, be-all of video games? Not going to “look” like the game? What, dozens of shades of brown and gray? Gears was a lot of things, but I don’t know if I’d ever call it “pretty.” Slow down, Epic. It’s not like you’re making Okami over there. But let’s not single out Epic Games. It’s the same story over and over again: piracy is killing us, so we’ll have to do something else. Of the Xbox 360 and the PS3, what has the most piracy? Pretty sure it’s impossible to pirate PS3 games. And what system has done better, sales-wise? That would be the Xbox 360. So clearly piracy = ruination. Not that I’m defending piracy, of course, but I would appreciate if publishers would find a new demon to blame their ills on. Maybe sun spots?
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If you’ve been wondering where the heart rate monitor referenced in the iPod Touch and Nano documentation is, you’re not alone. The first reference to this mythical device showed up last year, and we’re just now getting word on when we might see one.
Mayor of London and 
Good news for GPS users, Boeing is getting ready to launch the latest generation of GPS satellites, the “GPS IIF-1″. The new technology provides improved accuracy for military and civilian users, as well as being more resistant to jamming and an improved lifespan.
3. The light hits the sensor.
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