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- Pioneer Announces Another Two 3D Blu-Ray Players
- Daily Crunch: Low-Hanging Fruit Edition
- Stargate Universe Finally Feels Like The Stargate Of Old
- The Playstation Phone Appears To Exist
- Video: Spaceport America Inaugurated By Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise
- Microsoft Targets Hardcore Mothers With Intense “Mom To Mom” Kinect Ad
- Stand By To Configure Chevy Volt
- Early Bird Showdown: Barnes & Noble Nook Color vs. Amazon Kindle
- Hands-On With the Nook Color
- Nice Knowing You, Nook
- Blueberry Rain At the Nook Event
- Flashpoint iBoard Is A Value-Add Bluetooth Keyboard For iOS
- Barnes & Noble Reveals The Nook Color, Please Act Surprised
- Universal Gripper: Sounds Like It Grips The Universe, But It’s Just A Cool Robotic Hand
- Live At The Barnes & Noble Nook Event
- iDOS brings your favorite DOS games to iOS
- Evo-like HTC Incredible HD hitting Verizon on November 23rd?
- Just In Time For Call Of Duty: Black Ops: KontrolFreek’s FPS Freek Prestige
- Razer Anansi MMO Keyboard Makes Your Thumb A Lethal Weapon
- The Top 5 PC Alternatives To The MacBook Air
| Pioneer Announces Another Two 3D Blu-Ray Players Posted: 27 Oct 2010 05:02 AM PDT
The 3D boom knows no end. Pioneer Japan today announced [JP] two Blu-ray players supporting 3D content, the BDP-LX54 (pictured above) as the high-end model, and the BDP-430. Apart from Blu-ray discs, the players are also compatible to the following formats: DivX HD, MKV, WMV, MP3, WMA, and JPEG. Both devices also feature an HDMI interface, two USB ports, Ethernet, YouTube connectivity, and iControlAV support (iControlAV is an iPhone app that can basically replace the remote control). Spec-wise, the players are identical, but the high-end BDP-LX54 has better vibration control and some high-quality parts (for example the condenser) the BDP-430 (pictured below) doesn’t have.
Pioneer plans to roll out both players in Japan next month (prices: $1,000 for the high-end model, $366 for the other one).
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| Daily Crunch: Low-Hanging Fruit Edition Posted: 27 Oct 2010 12:00 AM PDT |
| Stargate Universe Finally Feels Like The Stargate Of Old Posted: 26 Oct 2010 08:10 PM PDT
Well, I’m officially a Stargate Universe fan. I’m hooked and for good reason, too. The show’s damn good. I’ve wrote extensively about SGU here and started out as a skeptic like many of you. It’s totally different than either SG-1 or Atlantis that came before it. I think it took everyone off guard. Instead of being a continuation of the previous series, it’s a total reboot. The episodes are no longer shot clearly for syndication and full of quirky dialog riddled with inside jokes. No, Universe is more Battlestar Galatica than SG-1; it’s more Lost than Atlantis – and I like, but it took me a season and half to get here. That’s the problem with throwing out the mold and trying something new. It alienates the core audience. Universe doesn’t have a Jack O’Neill, Meredith McKay or even a trademark alien like Teal’c. It’s totally different and managed to trudge through the first season with an unnecessary amount of backstory nonsense. There was always the trademark Stargate story arc of this ancient ship casing the edge of space that kept me watching week after week. After all, I’m a die-hard Stargate fan, ranking SG-1 only after Top Gear as my favorite shows of all time.
It wasn’t until the last episodes of the first season that the backstories were replaced with classic Stargate storylines. Suddenly the Lucian Alliance was in play and attempting to reach the Destiny. It finally felt like Stargate again. It got only better this season, too. The ridiculous use of the communication stones stopped almost entirely. There was more aliens, crazy worlds, and just tonight, a out-of-body experience that casts the shows main characters as random townfolk in a story located in a random midwest town. Stargate is finally back. I stuck around partly because of my Stargate allegiance, but also because the story showed so much promise. It just works for me that there’s this massive and mysterious spacecraft traveling for millions upon millions of years that’s suddenly occupied by dozens of seemingly unqualified personal. It’s almost like the traveling into the unknown part of Star Trek Voyager with the home base aspect of DS9 and staffed with the crew from Enterprise. And finally, with season two, it has the Stargate storytelling. I’m sold although it really doesn’t changes anything for me. I would have continued to watch the show even if they killed off Jack in some sort of fishing accident, let Samatha Carter get pregnant, and found a way to allow the Destiny to turn around and reach Earth within a couple of episodes — but I wouldn’t have liked it. No, I gave the show its fair share of criticism when it first started and so it’s only fair to offer up my humble praise when the show is finally getting it right.
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| The Playstation Phone Appears To Exist Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:36 PM PDT
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| Video: Spaceport America Inaugurated By Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise Posted: 26 Oct 2010 05:30 PM PDT
Spaceport America, in addition to having a snazzy logo, sports training facilities for Virgin Galactic It’s put together by travel blog Gadling, whose crew got to chat up the ever-charming Richard Branson, his eerily similar son (though to be fair, why wouldn’t you want to grow up just like Richard Branson?), and a few other dignitaries and officials. With any luck, the facility will be bustling with commercial spacecraft over the next couple years, though I don’t suppose there are so many that they’ll need an extra runway any time soon. Note that in the future, Spaceport America is scheduled to look much more like a StarCraft unit:
You may wish to postpone your visit until then.
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| Microsoft Targets Hardcore Mothers With Intense “Mom To Mom” Kinect Ad Posted: 26 Oct 2010 05:00 PM PDT
The fur! The gap-tooth adolescents! The video chatting! These women are Pro Mothers, and they know that Kinect is capable of providing what they need. I mean, some of what they need. Mothers are complicated things. That’s as much as I can say here (AOL is watching). Seriously, though. Microsoft can’t keep putting off their existing user base; if this family friendly stuff is the future of Xbox 360, I get the feeling that for a lot of game lovers out there, the future of their Xbox 360 is going to be a PS3.
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| Stand By To Configure Chevy Volt Posted: 26 Oct 2010 04:09 PM PDT
Personally, I’d go with the rear view camera (sadly not standard), but skip the luxury options and polished aluminum. This car is striking enough without the bling, and heated seats always strike me as kind of decadent. You can always get aftermarket rims; there will probably be weirdo body kits too. Can’t wait to see a wing on one of these. Actually, as I went to post this, it now appears that the site has crashed (I’m getting a 403 from the redirect). Better wait a few minutes.
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| Early Bird Showdown: Barnes & Noble Nook Color vs. Amazon Kindle Posted: 26 Oct 2010 03:30 PM PDT
Barnes & Noble just announced the Nook Color a few moments ago, and my initial reaction was much the same as Devin’s: yikes! I guess a color LCD screen is perfect for reading Goldilocks and The Three Bears, but when it comes to reading grown-up books, books with words in them, meh. With that in mind, let’s see how the Nook Color stacks up against the Amazon Kindle, it’s biggest competitor. Screen
The Nook Color uses what Barnes & Noble calls a VividView Color Touchscreen. It’s seven inches along the diagonal. It would appear to be a plain ol’ color LCD touchscreen. Meanwhile, the Kindle uses the latest generation E-Ink display, coming in at six inches along the diagonal. Now, I can’t speak to this new Nook screen, but I have been known to defend E-Ink displays here and there. They work. You can use them in the sunshine (i.e., on the beach or in the park or on your deck) perfectly, and they put zero strain on your eyes. I guess if color matters to you—perhaps you’re reading Nickelodeon magazine?—then the Nook Color might be worth a punt, but it’s definitely something I’d have to use for a bit before making any judgement calls. Available Content After the screen (or maybe even before), the next thing you think about when buying an e-readers is, what kind of things can I read on it? Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble have a pretty deep selection of books to choose from (although Barnes & Noble doesn’t have Patrick Barclay’s new biography of Sir Alex Ferguson, which I’m currently reading). Amazon claims to have a library of more than 725,000 e-books, while Barnes & Noble claims "more than two million titles." That’s probably counting the Google-scanned books that can be found for free on the store. In any event, I would guess that both stores are comparable. If you have a book in mind best to check to see which store, if any, has it in electronic form. It should be noted that with the move to color, Barnes & Noble is really hammering home its ability to read things like magazines and children’s books, which is probably a fair point: I can’t really see the appeal children’s books, which are necessarily colorful, on a black-and-white E-Ink screen. Certain magazines, too, might benefit from the color screen, but that wholly depends on the types of magazines you read. You don’t really read the New Yorker for its color photographs and illustrations, do you? Then again, the artwork is what makes something like Edge such a joy to read. Miscellaneous Features
Both use Wi-Fi to download books, and certain models let you download over 3G, which is of limited utility—how often do you get the urge to download a new book when you’re not within range of Wi-Fi? Both come with a great deal of storage space (8GB for the Nook Color, 4GB for the Kindle, 3GB of which can be used for user storage). For the Nook Color, Barnes & Noble is really pushing its "social" features. Tell your friends that you’re reading Whatever using Twitter and Facebook. Useful, I suppose, if you’re active on online social networks. You can also lend certain books to your friends. I say "certain" because not all books can be lent. Battery life seems OK for the Nook Color, rated at eight hours (with the Wi-Fi turned off). The Kindle blows this out of the water, with battery life (with the Wi-Fi turned off) rated at one month That’s not even a difference of night and day, but a difference of, well, night and 30 days~! Last Thoughts Let’s be frank: the biggest, and most important, difference between the Kindle and the Nook Color is the screen. Well, and price: the most expensive Kindle (the one that can download books over 3G) costs $189 to the Nook Color’s $249. Not a huge difference, but a difference nonetheless. I pretty much laid all of this out a few months (weeks? I’ve lost all track of time) ago. A black-and-white display is fine when you’re reading text-heavy books. You know, histories, biographies, novels, etc. Maybe if you have children and you want an e-reading device a color screen would be worth something to you. You can read Dracula just fine in paperback form, or in black-and-white e-book form. The same probably can’t be said about all those Dr. Seuss books: color is huge there. But I’m not a child, nor do I have any, so I’m probably not going to need a color screen like, say, John might. That’s about all I can say without having used the Nook Color. I can’t answer questions like "How does it look in the sunlight?" The Nook Color is scheduled for release on November 19. The Kindle is available now, of course.
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| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 01:54 PM PDT
It’s obviously a little early for a full assessment of this new device but we do know a few things. It’s quite small and compact – much lighter than and iPad – and the UI is very handsome. Android users will be kind of miffed that the device doesn’t support the Android App Store, however, because B&N wants a “curated experience.” So much for the openness of Android. As a recent Nook convert, I’m excited for B&N if a little wary. At $249 the Nook Color is half the price of the iPad. However, don’t expect this to act as a full tablet computer. It isn’t. It’s B&N’s show and outside software isn’t invited. We are at a tablet crossroads when closed environments will begin to trump “open” devices like the HP Slate. Once Amazon plays catch up on this then the game will really be afoot. Update: Video!       
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| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 01:45 PM PDT
It was the wrong move for Barnes & Noble to change horses mid-race. The only thing e-readers (and this is supposed to be an e-reader, make no mistake) have as a defense against the tablet onslaught is their superior (and rapidly improving) e-ink displays. Amazon knows this, and they know that a huge proportion of their sales are black-and-white. The color stuff market is ceded to tablets — they can have it, too, because e-readers already own the book market. Barnes & Noble just got greedy. E-readers survive because they don’t compete directly with the iPad, which is the only credible tablet competition now (though that will change in the coming months). Again, Amazon knows this, and although they have been expanding a bit into games and other services, they like to define their product in terms of the things its competitor doesn’t have. What does the Nook Color have that the iPad or another Android tablet doesn’t? As for the social aspect, it’s hardly unprecedented, and adding similar features would be trivial for other companies and devices; services like Facebook, Twitter, and e-book stores love to make that stuff happen. Copia is building a whole platform around social reading. What about the Android Market? Nope. That particular feature didn’t make the cut. It’s a “curated experience.” In a year, there will be a “curated experience” of all the Android tablets that failed because they didn’t leverage the best parts of the OS. So, what Barnes & Noble has put out is an Android tablet, no more and no less. It looks to be a fairly nice one (half an inch thick, less than a pound, no physical buttons) and reasonably priced at $250, but even the top-shelf Android tablets are fighting over Apple’s table scraps. Tablet scraps, if you will. You can slag me for meh-ing at the new Nook without even seeing it, but the truth is it’s not a bad product, it’s the wrong product. The old Nook was closer to the mark, and remains so; it’s still for sale, though it’s looking rather long in the tooth next to newer Pearl-based e-readers. The last thing the world needs right now is another Android tablet, especially when the focus for e-readers should be on distinguishing them from tablets and not trying to compete with more capable and connected devices. Amazon is already neck-deep in Kindle sales, and this gamble by Barnes & Noble essentially forfeits their portion of this generation of e-readers.
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| Blueberry Rain At the Nook Event Posted: 26 Oct 2010 01:39 PM PDT |
| Flashpoint iBoard Is A Value-Add Bluetooth Keyboard For iOS Posted: 26 Oct 2010 01:30 PM PDT
It also comes with a raincoat — a full-keyboard silicone cover that is, depending on whether you go with the press release or the product description, either a $29.99 or $49.90 value. There’s an app that makes it all work, too, which is provided free but which they value at $9.90. That’s a lot of extra made-up value for $69.99! Adorama has the exclusive on these things, so head on over if you feel like typing stuff on your iPad Bluetoothily.
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| Barnes & Noble Reveals The Nook Color, Please Act Surprised Posted: 26 Oct 2010 01:11 PM PDT
Android powers the second-gen Nook and it uses a 7-inch color, yep, color LCD for displaying the content. Since Android is inside, it’s slightly more than an ebook reader and slightly less than a tablet. There are social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter, along with the ability to display videos as well as the standard ebook content. Sounds a bit like some other devices, no? B&N is marketing this as an entirely new product category. They want to turn reading ebooks into a social affair and taps the standard social networking streams. Dubbed Nook Friends, this function allows users to share quotes and even books with their Internet friends. But B&N didn’t go with Android just for those functions. The Nook Color has an array of apps including Pandora, games, access to Google and Wikipedia, a contact manager and more. There’s even a full-featured magazine reader that will probably be highly advertised. Bad news for the Android fanboys, though. The Nook Color is what’s called a curated experience, which is a fancy way to say there’s no Android Marketplace. As for the hardware, the Nook Color is void of any phyiscal buttons. Instead there’s a 1024×600 7-inch screen, laminated to reduce glare traditionally associated with LCDs. There’s a MicroSD card slot as well as WiFi. The entire thing weighs in at 15.6 oz with a thickness of .48-inches — that’s just 5.4 oz heavier and .12-inches thicker than the new Kindle. The internet rumor club got the pricing right, too: $249.99. That places it at half the price of the iPad, but over $100 more than the WiFi-only Kindle. Good spot? The market will start deciding on November 19th when it starts shipping alongside the older dual-screen models.
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| Universal Gripper: Sounds Like It Grips The Universe, But It’s Just A Cool Robotic Hand Posted: 26 Oct 2010 01:00 PM PDT Talk about a misleading title in that video. It reminded me of the obscure comic series (Avengers Infinity) in which they fight a dude as big as a planet, and then a bunch of other dudes the same size come and grow together to form a huge handle the size of a solar system, and then a giant hand comes out of nowhere in order to drag the entire galaxy into a line with some others. So awesome. In contrast, this is just a bag of coffee grounds being manipulated by a vacuum nozzle, but it’s still pretty cool. Wired has a more in-depth appreciation of the ideas behind this method of gripping things, which sounds prosaic but is remarkably effective. The five-finger approach is useful when robots and mere men have to use the same equipment; in which case, something like a Robonaut is in order.
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| Live At The Barnes & Noble Nook Event Posted: 26 Oct 2010 12:56 PM PDT
Nook Friends. Seamless connections to Twitter and Facebook. Authors can actually comment on comments posted inside the book. 4:19 – Tech Specs: Includes MicroSD slot and WiFi. You can change text, margins, and spacing in the books. Everything is changeable. You can look up words in Wikipedia, the dictionary, or on Google. Patent Penting “Aricle View” in Magazines. You tap an article in the layout and it appears properly formated for the screen. 4:26 – Nook developer program. Content providers and developers can create “reading-centric” applications for Nook Color. Partners include LonelyPlanet, Dictionary.com, etc. 4:30 – Nooks available at Best Buy and Wal-Mart as well as at Books-a-Million.                
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| iDOS brings your favorite DOS games to iOS Posted: 26 Oct 2010 12:18 PM PDT
If it were December, I’d call this a Christmas miracle. As it’s October, we’re just going to have to pretend that “Halloween Miracles” are a thing. IT’S A HALLOWEEN MIRACLE! A few hours ago, something awesome managed to find its way into the App Store. Something which I never imagined Apple would approve. No, not another baby shaking app. Something wonderful: a DOS emulator.
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| Evo-like HTC Incredible HD hitting Verizon on November 23rd? Posted: 26 Oct 2010 12:16 PM PDT
Take the Sprint Evo 4G, slap a Verizon logo on it, and you’ve got an HTC Incredible HD. Now, we’re not usually ones to take anonymous Internet forum posts as truth — but when the guy who previously nailed the original HTC Incredible’s launch date comes out saying they’ve got the launch date for the HTC Incredible HD, we’ll give him the listen he deserves. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
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| Just In Time For Call Of Duty: Black Ops: KontrolFreek’s FPS Freek Prestige Posted: 26 Oct 2010 12:15 PM PDT
A few weeks ago we saw more than a few Medal of Honor-theme accessories. Now that we’re rapidly approaching the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops we can expect to see Black Ops accessories, too. First up: KontrolFreek’s Limited Edition FPS Freek Prestige. It’s basically a raised texture that you put on your PS3 or 360 control stick to give you a better handle of the situation. That, or you can use a mouse and keyboard like a grown-up. Should you be allergic to the ol’ mouse and keyboards, then yeah, this probably isn’t too bad, particularly since it’s only $13.99. I do believe that qualifies as an impulse buy, yes.
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| Razer Anansi MMO Keyboard Makes Your Thumb A Lethal Weapon Posted: 26 Oct 2010 11:40 AM PDT
I’ve never been an MMO guy, but I’ve seen enough of them (even in streamlined games like Guild Wars) to know that you tend to have a lot of commands at your fingertips, and sometimes you don’t have the time to switch to your second skill set or take your finger off backpedal to hit the 7 key. Razer has put seven meta-modifier keys below the space bar, which can be set to any combination of shift, control, and alt. I’d be afraid I’d accidentally hit some obscure universal self-destruct command, but you probably have a little more confidence.
Like many other gaming keyboards, it also has some macro keys to the left of the full keyboard section, which can, like any other key, be set to any keystroke or key sequence. Looks like a pretty solid keyboard to me; I never use my thumb in games for anything but hitting the space bar, so this might make the little guy a bit more useful.
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| The Top 5 PC Alternatives To The MacBook Air Posted: 26 Oct 2010 11:12 AM PDT
Apple raised the bar on ultra-portable computers with the latest MacBook Air. There’s no questioning that. Steve Jobs & Co. took the already-thin MacBook Air and shrunk down both its physical size and price tag. Win win, right? Well, yeah, but the MacBook Air isn’t for everyone. Good thing the PC world has been doing the ultra-portable thing just as long as Apple and offers some quality alternatives. Sure, there really isn’t one model that soundly beats the new MacBook Air in every category, but the same can be said about the Air versus the five computers listed after the jump. Apple MacBook Air
Dell Adamo XPS
While this computer is officially discontinued, it’s still available from select retailers like Best Buy. It’s even more thin than the Air.
Sony Signature Collection X Series
Sony knows how to make thin computers and the 11-inch X Series is downright slender. The model starts out at $1,299 but is also available in Sony’s Signature Collection for $1,499, which offers a large SSD and premium look.
Asus UL30A-X5K
Yes, this notebook isn’t as thin as the Air, nor is it as sexy. But it does offer a lot more computing power for half the price and it’s still under an inch thick. Worth it? That’s between you and your credit card.
MSI X360
MSI’s X360 X-Slim is about the closest thing in the PC market to the MacBook Air. There are some sacrifices, though, as it uses a spinning disk hard drive instead of an SSD and MSI’s trackpads can be bad. But it’s still a solid alternative.
Acer 3810 Timeline
This is another notebook where it might not be as super-thin as the Air, but more than makes up for it in the specs department. Core i5, 8 hour battery, 500GB hard drive in a case less an inch thick and all for $768. Yessir.
Please, drop us a note in the comments below if there are ever better options out there.
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We’re live and set up at the Barnes & Noble Nook event in New York. I’ll be updating this page in lieu of using our standard liveblogging software, mostly because it will be only one device this time – probably an LCD color 
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