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Nokia N8 Gets Torn Down To The Underground

Posted: 08 Oct 2010 05:06 AM PDT

Not much to say about iFixIt’s Nokia N8 teardown except that did you know the N8 used a Xenon flash tube?

As opposed to many other smartphones that use either a single or double LED for the flash, the N8 uses a Xenon flash tube similar to the kind of flash found in full-size cameras.


That actually makes me like the N8 much more than I originally did. Nokia clearly really cares about their products. Now if they could just get the world of nerds to care.

CEATEC 2010: Hitachi’s Awesome LCD Projector Demo (Videos)

Posted: 08 Oct 2010 04:42 AM PDT

Projectors might be great for movies and essential for presentations, but they are rarely sexy. A notable exception currently showcased at CEATEC 2010 is the ultra-short throw LCD projector (the follow-up model to the CP-A200) showcased at Hitachi’s booth or rather the combination of the device and a whiteboard with touch control.

Measuring just just 45x303x85mm and weighing less than 4kg, the projector itself is the smallest, lightest and shortest-focus projector out there. It produces 80-inch images from a distance of just 56cm.

The whiteboard type display is 78 inches large. In the videos below, you can see a Hitachi employee showing how the system (projector plus screen) works. He tries hard to boost the wow-factor (which, for me at least, worked well).

Here is a video I shot at Hitachi’s CEATEC booth:

Here’s another one:

CEATEC 2010: Toshiba’s Naked-Eye 3D TVs Up And Close (Video)

Posted: 08 Oct 2010 02:00 AM PDT

There’s one company that won the CEATEC this year: Toshiba. Sure, their Android tablet is nice and all, but it’s nothing special. But what is attracting hundreds and hundreds of people to the Toshiba booth is the two naked-eye 3D TVs the company recently announced, the first of their kind. While all big electronics makers try to push their 3D TVs that require glasses, Toshiba is showing its competitors what consumers really want (at least those who want 3D at all).

To recap, there will be two versions, a 20-inch LCD with 1,280×720 resolution, Toshiba's Cell processor, LED backlight, an HDMI interface, a USB port, LAN, and REGZA Link; the 12-inch model features just 466×350 resolution and no CELL engine. In addition to the ports of the bigger model, it also has a SD card slot and a built-in 1Seg TV tuner (1Seg is Japan's digital mobile TV standard).

As reported, images can be viewed in 3D when users look at the screen in one of nine distinct viewing angles.

And thanks to our friends at DigInfoNews, we now have a professionally-made video (in English) showing both devices in action at Toshiba’s CEATEC booth:

Daily Crunch: Plot Points Edition

Posted: 08 Oct 2010 12:00 AM PDT

Is There Room In Your Life For The Awesome Prizm Full-Color Graphing Calculator?

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 07:08 PM PDT


Kids these days. Why, when I was taking Calculus, we had to use graph paper, and the pixels on our TI-83s were so big that you couldn’t tell whether you were looking at paraboli or hyperboli! The games were simpler back then, too. Drug War. Race. Janky Asteroids. Now you’ve got a full-color screen and more power than I had in my third computer!

Yeah yeah, time goes on. And Casio is attempting to take the crown from Texas Instruments by putting out this ridiculous beast, the Prizm SMPR. Sure, the 9850 does color, but not like this. You’ll probably be playing Game Boy Advance games on its ~165×165 screen and its 65,536 colors.

Casio has made the colors correspond to different functions or classifications of data, and includes a bunch of pictures with mathematical qualities (naturally-occurring curve functions and such). Not bad, but at $130, I suppose it’s more aimed at the seasoned graphing calculator aficionado than the high school junior. Kids, I tell you, they don’t know how good they have it.

4iiii Heads-Up Display For Athletes Indicates Metrics With LEDs

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 06:51 PM PDT


This is a good idea. We’ve all seen bike computers, heart-rate monitors, and so on, the sort of things athletes or just data-loving runners and cyclists track during their activities. The trouble is that they’re rarely easy to consult: you have to take your eyes off the road to check your speed, or interrupt your run cadence to check your heart rate.

The 4iiii Sport-iiii system (pronounced sport eyes, apparently) solves this problem by suspending a little bar in your peripheral vision and indicating key metrics with LEDs.

So you program it ahead of time to tap into your various monitoring devices — speedometer, heart rate monitor, watch — and it displays that information to you not as actual numbers, but in a simplified way. I’m not sure exactly how each one would work, but you can imagine if your target heart rate is 100, the amber lights would light as your approach it, green turn on when you’re hitting it, and perhaps blink fast if you exceed it. The only controls are a tap or double tap, prompting an update or changing data type respectively.

Sure, in a few years we’ll all have transparent AMOLED displays in our sunglasses, but until then this is a cool little system, if you can get used to the non-standard readout.

[via Pink Bike]

A Button You’re Unlikely To See On An iPhone

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 03:48 PM PDT


Yes, a few exclusive Galaxy Tabs are shipping with a Porn button. It’s not what you think, though — unless you think it’s the abbreviated Romanian for “Start.” Then it is what you think.

[via Tablet News and Unwired View]

Wheeled Sequel To Skitterbot Isn’t Nearly As Creepy

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 03:00 PM PDT


Remember the Skitterbot? You know, that weird little remote robo-thing that scuttled across the ground like a roach? The Trekbot is the next in the line-up, a wheeled version of the same USB-rechargeable chassis. I know you’re excited.

Basically it’s a tiny remote control car — one of the kind that’s pretty much impossible to flip over. Run it into your wall again and again, make it go off jumps… whatever, man. There’s nothing wrong with spending $20 on a doodad like this. You’re worth it.

Logitech CEO: (Sorry Cisco) $600 For Video Calls Is Too Expensive – TCTV

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 02:44 PM PDT

I know we’re not technically in a recession and Americans love their electronics— especially those that start with the letter “i”— but as a whole, electronic retailers need a reality check, or a swift kick to the gut.

On Wednesday, CrunchGear’s Devin Coldewey and I dropped by two product announcements, one for Cisco’s purportedly consumer-friendly ūmi and Logitech’s Google TV accessory round-up. It was a long parade of flashy products with decent specs and thought-provoking price tags. As I mentioned in an earlier post, ūmi truly does bring high-quality telepresence into the home (assuming you have a solid connection) but it will cost you $599.99 for the hardware and $25 a month just to use the service.

When I asked Logitech’s CEO, Jerry Quindlen, what he thought about Cisco’s ūmi price point for TC TV, the polite executive merely said, “I don’t think anything that’s too expensive or isn’t easy to use is going to be successful, doesn’t matter who it’s from…if that’s where it [ūmi] is…that might be a tough sell in this economy.”

Why does the phrase: “pot calling the kettle black” come to mind? Video with Logitech’s CEO ahead.


Gearbox Working With Retailers To Honor Duke Nukem Forever Preorders

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 02:30 PM PDT

Were you one of the faithful, the unfortunate few, who pre-ordered Duke Nukem Forever? Have you clung to that yellowed receipt these many years, hoping against hope that the poor thing might somehow make it to market? Well, now that the impossible has occurred, your faith is being rewarded… or at least that’s the plan.

Gearbox realizes that a fair amount of people pre-ordered the game, and since things might have changed over the last, oh I don’t know, seven or eight years since that time, they want to make sure you get what’s coming to you. I’ll let Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford explain:

There are a lot of people who pre-ordered the game. We've been starting to talk with retailers because we didn't take them directly, and 3D Realms didn't take them, it was all retailers going “I'm going to take this guy's money.”

We've started to engage them, saying “Hey, you've got customers who you made a promise to, and any bad feeling they have will reflect on us, so can we work together to do something for those people?”

I don't know what we can do yet, but something should be done for the people who pre-ordered.

So nothing is set in stone, but there is hope. I’d hold onto that receipt if i were you.

[image source]

Leaked iPad Photos Show Second Dock Port – I Am Skeptical

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 02:00 PM PDT


Some pictures purporting to show the next-generation iPad have surfaced, showing what appears to be a second dock connector port. The second port isn’t entirely without precedent — some patents uncovered a few weeks ago showed one, though that’s not much to go on.

Personally, I’m leaning towards… well, “fake” is the wrong word, but certainly not real. My main issue is that it’s simply not Apple’s style. They work in simplicity, and a second port not only complicates the visuals, but it’s mostly redundant, something I feel both Ive and Jobs would disagree with. It also makes the whole thing less symmetrical, creating more of a “right” way to use it.

Duplicating wiring inside would be unwise, too: space in Apple products is of the highest value, and having to double the wiring for power and syncing is wasteful.

MacRumors seems pretty sure this was a prototype for the current iPad, built in very limited numbers for real-life comparison and scrapped for the reasons I’ve mentioned.

[via Gizmodo]

Hotas Warthog Is A $500 Super Crazy Flightstick (Now All You Need Is A Good Game)

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 01:30 PM PDT

What happened to flight sims? I remember walking down the aisles of whatever store in the mall, back in the day, and seeing sim after sim. But no more! Kids are too interested in shooting the Opposing Force these days, I suppose. They’re missing out! Yes, they’re missing out on the joy of buying a multi-monitor setup and shelling out primo cash for a fancy flight stick. Say hello to the Hotas Warthog, and say goodbye to $499.

Thrustmaster created the stick, and it’s apparently a full-scale replica of the stick found in the U.S. Air Force A-10C.

There’s a grand total of 55 programmable buttons here, which is mind-boggling to me. I guess I’m used to PilotWings 64-style depth: hold A to fly and move the control stick to steer. Simpler times.

I mean, it’s basically ridiculous. I suppose all you’d need is a proper game to play it with.

Or maybe it’s backwards compatible with all those old Star Wars PC games.

Now I Want A Solar Tuk-Tuk

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 01:00 PM PDT


There was some chatter a couple months ago about the possibility of solar-powered tuk-tuks — you know, the little three-wheeled mini-vehicles used all over Asia. But the pictures were bad and the idea was still in execution. No longer!

Wired’s Jeremy Hart is in the midst of a round-the-globe trip (sponsored by Ford), and happened across a solar tuk-tuk in the wild. They’re still pretty rare, it seems, both because they’re twice as expensive as the normal two-stroke ones, and because they’re not quite as practical as they could be. The solar panels can’t directly drive the motor, so it has to rely on gas anyway.

It’s still a step in the right direction. The millions upon millions of dirty engines spewing carbon all over the hyper-dense cities of India and China are a serious ecological hazard, and of course they make the air so thick that you have to slice a piece of and chew it before you can breathe it. Let’s hope electric vehicles (and cleaner energy to power them) spread to these megacities soon.

[image: Wired]

Cherrypal’s Cherrypad Gives You Android For Under $200

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 12:19 PM PDT


You may be familiar with Cherrypal, maker of super-low-cost Android computers. They started out quite a while back with what was essentially a smartphone in a tiny box, and have since put together a couple netbooks, including one for $99. Well, they’re back with a new design, and surprise! It’s a tablet!

The Cherrypad seems to follow their long-standing design decision to make things as cheap as possible without compromising on quality. Well, without compromising any more than they have to, anyway.

It runs Android 2.1, with 2.2 coming before the end of the year, and unlike many other tablets, it has an Android-standard size and resolution, allowing it to access the Marketplace. It has a 7-inch display, 256MB of RAM, and promises 6-8 hours of battery life. It’s got a USB 2.0 port, headphone jack, and an SD card reader. The Samsung ARM11 chip actually is no slouch at 800MHz, they say it’ll even run 3D games. If only there were any worth playing on Android.

The case is aluminum and the thing weighs just over a pound. Really not bad at all for $188. If I thought any Android tablets were worth buying these days, I might recommend this one just because.

[via Laptoping]

We Want Your Apple TV Video Reviews For A Video Metareview Compilation

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 11:46 AM PDT

The Apple TV has been out for, oh, about a week now and we’re really curious what you think about it. Reviews from the usual technology pundits are good measuring sticks, but they often lack the perspective of the average user. We can attest that “reviews” are often penned from snap judgments just to meet a deadline. This is why the Internet deserves opinions from actual Apple TV owners.

All you need to do is upload your take of the Apple TV to any video sharing site and send us the link. We’ll contact a bunch of you asking for the raw video file that we’ll use in making a comprehensive meta-review. This is probably the best way for you to get 15 seconds of Internet fame while either loving or trashing the new Apple TV. (Yes, trashing is allowed)

Remember, this is your opinion on the Apple TV so be yourself. The video doesn’t have to be long, but it should be a bit more than just a walk-through demo. After all, it’s a review, not a preview. We’re not looking for professional videos so use your iPhone as a camera if you must.

Instructions

  • Host your video review at YouTube, Vimeo, or any other video sharing site
  • Submit the link to tips@crunchgear.com with the subject of Apple TV Review
  • We’ll request the raw video from a few of you for the metareview. Use Dropbox or other services for this.
  • Videos need to be submitted by Sunday, October 10th for consideration.

Tips and tricks

  • Follow the basic outline of talking about the hardware, software, and then wrap it up
  • Write and use a script
  • Use a tripod or stabilize the camera somehow
  • Show the hardware and user interface
  • Great lighting can compensate for a sub-par camera
  • Please, no background music

You Are Here

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 11:00 AM PDT

Not to rip off Gizmodo too, too much, but I’d like to take this moment to dovetail off a recent post of theirs. This is Saturn. You know, the planet with all the rings of ice and dust. But look closer. You see the outermost ring, the really faint one? Well move one ring inside. Now you’re looking at the second outermost ring. Do you see that small spec of light? Here, I’ll put an arrow to make things easier. Yeah, that’s Earth.

This isn’t a new photo, but seeing that photo of the Pacific Ocean on Giz—you sorta forget just how vast the Pacific is—totally reminded me of this one. It could be my favorite photo ever. Pretty fantastic, no?

And while we’re on the subject, anyone else read that new Stephen Hawking book? Pretty great stuff, obviously. Highly recommended if you have the time to read through it.

There Are 12 Million World Of Warcraft Subscribers Out There

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 10:45 AM PDT

World of Warcraft, still going strong. Just a few weeks before the release of the newest expansion, Cataclysm, Blizzard has announced that the MMO has just crossed the 12 million subscriber line. Maybe Blizzard should have used some of that money to buy Liverpool FC?

The game’s previous expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, recently came out in China, pushing Blizzard just past the 12 million subscriber mark.

Pretty amazing considering the game is nearly six years old. Think of it like this: what other entertainment product (or gadget, even!) were you using back in 2004 that you still use today? Maybe you have an old iPod that still does the job?


Razer Releases “Unibody” Aluminum Mousepad

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 10:10 AM PDT


Been wearing through those mousepads lately with great rapidity? Perhaps this world was not prepared for the velocity of your mousing. Like Sonic the Hedgehog, you need special equipment to do what you do. He had special low-friction shoes; you need an aluminum mousepad.

The “Ironclad” actually isn’t the first metal mousepad, nor, I would submit, the greatest. That honor would go to the solid steel pads from Greensforged, which double as cookie sheets. They’re cheaper, too: at $60, the Ironclad is among the most expensive out there, more so even than the fancy-pants Vespula.

It would be a nice match for your Magic Mouse when you’re playing your new Valve games, though. Too bad you’ll get owned by those of us with real mice. That’s right, I went there.

Am I Blind, Or Am I Just Not ‘Seeing’ What’s So Great About Google TV?

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 09:45 AM PDT

You can’t see it, but I’m tapping out over here. Why? Because for the life of me I cannot understand the hype surrounding Google TV (and by extension, the Logitech Revue and other, similar items). It’s not that I’m anti-Google TV—that would be silly—it’s just that I don’t "get it," for lack of a better phrase.

What is Google TV? That is, what is Google TV besides another potential revenue stream for Mountain View? It promises to bring the Internet to our TV, right? Watch TV shows from this service, listen to music from that—all well and good. I may not the biggest TV watcher out there (outside of soccer on the weekend), but I can see this being at least handy for some people. Anything to eliminate that cable bill, right?

But we’re nowhere near close to that happening. As Matt has said time and time again, the future of TV will very much be decided by the likes of Comcast and Motorola and not, much as you may like to see, the likes of Google and Logitech (again, not to pick on Logitech, they’re just one of the first guys to really get behind Google TV).

You say you’re willing to cut the cable, but only until you find out that your favorite show isn’t available on Hulu.

We’ll leave unmentioned (well, barely mentioned) that your favorite TV show is probably available online, but you’d have to be OK with firing up uTorrent or SABnzbd or paying for a Hotfile account. And if you know how to do that, and are cool with "acquiring" content in that manner, then Google probably isn’t expecting you to be all over Google TV.

So we’ve established that Google TV will bring the Internet to your TV. Great. But you know what? I already "have" the Internet. You do, too.

It’s called a computer—and to a lesser extent, a smartphone.

Imagine a company making the following announcement:

Great Company, Inc. is pleased to announce the availability of the MEGADEVICE. With the MEGADEVICE, consumers will have access to innumerable applications, everything from games to productivity—and more! You’ll be able to, with our special interface, view all your favorite movies and videos, look at photos of your grandkids, and even talk to people in real time! It’s future-proof, too, as you can add specialized hardware as you see fit.

Sound familiar? Like I said, it’s a computer, and you already have one.

So why the excitement over Google TV?

Does Hulu (or whatever) not work on your laptop? Can you not listen to music via pandora.com? Will YouTube be any "better" if it’s seen on your TV rather than your monitor? (My monitor is my TV, for all intents and purposes. Soccer streams are very, very helpful!) I simply don’t see the point.

Again, I’m not anti-Google TV, it’s just that I really don’t see any particularly compelling reason to hop on board yet.

Maybe that’ll change. Maybe we’ll see high quality, exclusive content make its way to Google TV. But if you think the ability to tap into Napster (really, Napster, in 2010?) is going to convince me to hunker down and hop aboard the Google TV bandwagon, ha!

I just need a little more convincing is all. Maybe one of you out there in Internet Wonderland can help me out here.

CEATEC 2010: A Look At Fujitsu’s Windows 7 Tablet Prototypes

Posted: 07 Oct 2010 09:03 AM PDT

Straight from the unicorn department: what you can see on these pictures are two tablet concepts Fujitsu is currently showing at CEATEC 2010 in Japan. The hardware looks quite nice in both cases, but the “devices” were not only hidden behind plexi-glass boxes but also not really working – not at all, actually. Fujitsu just used printed glossy paper for the screens.

What’s known is that the final versions will run on Windows 7 and that Fujitsu is “currently working” on finalizing the tablets, whatever that may mean. When asked, the Fujitsu employees at the booth were not able to give more details.

Their social teddy bear robots and especially the dual touchscreen cell phone are much cooler anyway.
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