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Sarpaneva Korona Moonshine Watch

Posted: 10 Dec 2010 05:01 AM PST

Helsinki, Finland. Not the typical place for watch makers, but it is where the wild Stepan Sarpaneva calls home and creates his vividly interesting timepieces creations. Playing with his popular moon face, Stepan creates a new watch that utterly features the now popularized serious looking artful lunar gaze. Called the Korona Moonshine, the watch tells the time via a single rotating disc that moves around the periphery of the dial.


Daily Crunch: Protocol Edition

Posted: 10 Dec 2010 12:00 AM PST

The Notion Ink Adam Should Be Triggering Your Scam-A-Meter Right Now

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 07:55 PM PST

This isn’t an “I Told You So” post; that’s for John to write if it comes to that. This is a “What The Hell Are You Doing?” post. There are simply way too many red flags to order a Notion Ink Adam right now. I’m not saying it’s vaporware at this point, but if nothing else, it’s truly a case study in how not to launch a product.

Even the most devote Adam loyalist must have questioned what went down today. The Adam’s pre-ordering was plagued by website issues, surprise terms and conditions, a huge shipping fee, and a return policy that stated loud and clear that Notion Ink doesn’t believe in their product.

We’ve been mighty skeptical about the Adam for some time now but we’re not alone. Engadget caught them this morning swapping renders which changed the size of the screen/bezel. That was just the start of today’s surprises.

Once the pre-ordering started those lucky enough to get an email allowing them early access and a January 9th shipping date discovered a bunch of surprises. The website was often down. The storage size of the tablets weren’t listed. The shipping charge was $50. The original contact phone number was 1-800-123-4567. The original terms and conditioned included a 25% restocking fee and made buyers pay for shipping back to India. The 25% restocking fee was later removed, but replaced with 5% cancellation fee that would apply even if a person canceled their order before the Adam shipped. There was more!

Mastercard payments weren’t accepted, VISA cards were often turned down, banks were flagging transactions as fraudulent and the full cost of the product was processed instantly. But yet according to the comment section on the Notion Ink blog, some people looked past all these issues and ordered one anyway; I somewhat get it.

These hiccups alone wouldn’t have swayed me if I truly wanted a product. Websites have issues and so do payment processing companies. Consumers understand that. But I wouldn’t drop hundreds of dollars on something I haven’t seen. Notion Ink hasn’t shown one product photo or video of the final product. That’s shady. The company attacking Engadget for posting the bezel inconsistencies was a tad troublesome as well; it was actually Notion Ink’s mistake.

Everything above mixes up into one nasty cocktail that just isn’t consumer focused. The Adam might be the real deal and not vaporware. The company’s CEO, Rohan, might be just be a poor marketer with a Steve Jobs complex and not some scammer running an impressive take on a Nigerian prince scam. But what the hell are you doing giving this company your money anyway? The terms and conditions prevent buyers from getting their entire pre-order amount back even if the damn thing never ships and you’ve never seen it. That’s nuts.

Besides, CES 2011 is three weeks away anyway and it’s going to be a tabletpalooza. What’s the harm in waiting at this point? The Adam isn’t shipping for 6-8 weeks. By that time, the dust would have settled, the legitimacy of Notion Ink will be clear and there will be whole batch of the new hot tablets to choose from.

US Military Bans Physical Media To Curb Leaks

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 06:59 PM PST

In the wake of recent high-profile leaks, some branches of the US military have taken a step that may be end up being as controversial as its cause. Ironically, the news comes via a leaked memo obtained by Wired’s Danger Room that insists that everyone from grunts to techs “immediately cease use of removable media on all systems, servers, and stand alone machines residing on SIPRNET,” under pain of court-martial.

SIPRNET would be the military’s internal network, cordoned off from the rest of the world by, I have assume, the most sophisticated firewalls and electronic countermeasures available. Otherwise, how could they think that a simple and unenforceable ban on removable media could possibly stop leaks? But I am facetious. The flip side of this TSA-like response to profound hemorrhaging of information is that perhaps we’ll see some interesting developments in cloud services.

Continue reading…

Sharp Shooter Attachment For Playstation Move Headshots My Heart

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 05:53 PM PST


I get a good feeling from this particular peripheral. I’m already partial to the Playstation Move, which I think will make for some utterly fantastic light-gun games, but this Sharp Shooter attachment is going to make things all the better. It’s changed a lot since we saw the prototype at E3, and yes, I think I prefer the sub-machinegun look better.

The attachment is pretty limited in its applications right now — only four or five games are really going to take full advantage of it — but I guarantee it’s going to be a must-have once some more shooters come out for the Move.

It’ll be available in February for $40 — alongside Killzone 3. I’m not a big fan of Killzone, but… in 3-D, with this zapper thing? That might actually be pretty awesome.

Razer High-Performance Gaming Soap Scrubs You At 5600DPI

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 04:30 PM PST


No, this isn’t an actual Razer product (well, the Orochi is). It’s from an Etsy shop, though interestingly not the same one that did the SNES cartridge soap or Carbonite soap. How many geeky soap-makers can there be?!

What Next Generation? Nintendo Sees 2.7 Million Console Sales In November

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 04:07 PM PST


Although the concern for Nintendo’s well-being is legitimate (they’ve been resting on their laurels for more than long enough), apparently they had enough juice for one last big holiday season. Last month they sold a whopping 2.7 million consoles just in the US, including both Wii and DS sales. That’s pretty nuts, considering both those systems are practically end-of-life.

A few high-profile DS games like Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (awesome, I just finished it) and Donkey Kong Country Returns, combined with lowered prices for original DS Lites and such, helped drive sales to what will certainly be the high-water mark from now on. I’m no doomsayer, but Nintendo’s going to need to pull some tricks in order to see those sales next year.

In the meantime, the 360 is also having a second spring brought by the Kinect, and sold ~1.37 million in November. PS3 sales probably aren’t as high, but honestly, if I had a few hundred bucks to spare right now, I’d be buying Sony. The PS3 has really come into its own over the last year.

You can read the whole (very PR-ish) letter over at GoNintendo.

Tame Viruses May Help Increase Battery Capacity

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 03:06 PM PST

This is rather a creepy line of research. The tobacco mosaic virus, which normally preys on tobacco crops, has been modified in such a way that it is essentially being used as a tiny helper, and millions of them can line up and bind themselves to the walls of battery cells, increasing the surface area and consequently the potential charge.

The ethical issues are strange here, because after all viruses are barely classified as alive by our definition of the word. They’re self-propagating organic molecules, to be sure, but that’s where the similarities end. Still, breeding billions upon billions of these things to go and destroy themselves by binding their rods to the battery walls seems somehow evil.

Maybe I’m just being sentimental. And of course it’s nothing compared with the liberties viruses take with our bodies.

At any rate, ethics considerations aside, the viruses attach themselves securely to the battery cell, and there they stay while the experimenters coat them in a conductive material. Essentially, the battery (Li-ion in this case) would be half metal ion, half molds of virus skeletons. Kind of creepy, don’t you think? I mean, self-assembly is cool, but the level of “intelligence” required to effect it makes you think.

More on the research can be found at the University of Maryland’s news section.

[via PhysOrg]

Video: MacBook Air Vs PowerBook 140

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 02:00 PM PST

Guess which one wins? The brand new MacBook Air running at 1.4GHz or the vintage PowerBook 145B circa 1993 with a 25Mhz CPU? [via TUAW]

Now Go Home And Get Your Cole Haan Shinebox

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 01:14 PM PST


Looking for a good way to put down the high roller in your life? Get him a shinebox, so whenever he gets out of line, you can pull a Billy Batts, though hopefully without all the stabbing.

Seriously though, this is a nice-looking accessory for anyone who cares about their leather. It doesn’t come with blacking or any other stuff, but you’d want to pick up something specific for that anyway.

Trouble is, since it’s all stainless steel, high-quality brushes, and leather box up in here, this particular shinebox costs $228 over at Cole Haan. Maybe you could just use it as a reference point and get something a little more modest.

[via Uncrate]

This Chinese Knock-Off Looks Like A Bizarro Magic Mouse

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 12:45 PM PST

If you’re familiar with Superman, you probably know about his twin from the Bizarro world, where everything is backwards and Superman has a kind of angled, misshapen face. That seems to be the perfect analogy for comparing Apple’s sleek Magic Mouse with this Eastern Times DS-2375.

It’s a clone, yeah, and I honestly wonder how well it works. Capacitive touch surfaces aren’t cheap, and this mouse almost certainly is. Does it use a different method? Does it just use a series of touch-sensitive dots in the areas you’re supposed to touch?

It does have some features even Apple can’t match, though. I think I’ve successfully performed the “tickle roll function” before, and she liked it.

Smugglers Try To Sneak $143,000 Worth Of iPads From China Into… China

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 12:12 PM PST


Fourteen women were caught smuggling a total of 88 Pads and 340 iPhones from Hong Kong to Shenzhen. The women had the devices strapped to their bodies. The smuggling has forced the Chinese government to put a tax on all iPads entering the country, whether they are for personal use or not which, if you think about it, totally sucks.

It may seem odd that smugglers would need to sneak iPads from Hong Kong (a Chinese Special Administrative Region) and Shenzhen a few dozen miles away, but thanks to limits on 3G iPads in China proper there is actually a lucrative grey market for the devices.

via TheRegister via WSJ


Costco Will No Longer Support Your Apple Habit

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 12:00 PM PST

Well that’s that. Costco will no longer sell Apple products including iTunes gift cards. Why you ask? Great question, friend and let me answer that with a question. Who sells the iPad: Sam’s Club or Costco? Sam’s Club, right? That clearly didn’t sit very well with the Costco suits so they decided to cut Apple completely. Plus it probably didn’t help that Apple never allowed Costco to sell Apple products online even at their full retail price. Seeing how Costco is the third largest retailer in the States and the largest memership warehouse retailer, Sam’s Club comes in second, this is sort of a big deal.

Sprint Plans 4G Tablet For 2011

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 11:33 AM PST

Sprint has quietly announced plans for a 4G tablet to be released some time in 2011. In an interview cited but not quoted at Forbes, Paget Alves, Sprint's President of Business Markets, said that they were planning to expand their 4G and tablet portfolio and embrace more operating systems than Android. What device she means by this is not clear, but somehow I doubt they’re getting the iPad.

There’s nothing beyond that news, which leaves us only speculation. 4G isn’t really something that RIM, Microsoft, or HP/Palm have a stated interest in, though I’m sure they’ll all want to upgrade eventually. If I had to guess based on nothing, I’d probably go with the Playbook, since they seem to be taking some risks on hardware. But that’s really just a shot in the dark. I don’t think it’ll be Windows 7, because come on. In all likelihood it will in fact be Android, but Alves mentioned other OSes simply as a by-the-way.

I suppose we’ll know more in a few months. Maybe we’ll be able to corner some Sprint people at CES and MWC and squeeze some info out of them.

Space X Becomes First Commerical Space Program To Orbit Earth, Return Safely

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 10:00 AM PST

Space X: great success! Yes, the Dragon spacecraft successfully made its orbits around good ol’ Planet Earth and has safely crashed into the Pacific Ocean. It marks the first time a commercial spacecraft has done so.

CNN handily points out that only five countries have done the same thing, and they are the U.S., Russia, China, Japan, and India. Throw in the European Space Agency’s efforts and that brings the number of entities to six.

And now Space X has joined the club.

The next big step would be for the Space X program to rendezvous with the International Space Station, which would pretty much be insane.

Video: Is That A Kinect, Or Is That Minority Report?

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 09:30 AM PST

Another day, another Kinect-as-Minority-Report video. Nothing wrong with that.

It uses Linux drivers, so if you’re down with Linux presumably you could try this at home yourself.

Not having a Kinect, I can’t partake.

Hospi: Meet Panasonic’s Awesome Healthcare Robot (Video)

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 09:19 AM PST

Not too many people know that Panasonic is a quite prolific maker of robots, but big P has actually been quite active in this area in recent years. Case in point: Hospi, a cute hospital robot and one of the winner’s of this year’s Robot Awards (as selected by the Japanese government). It was first publicly shown in 2004.

The new version that you can see in the video embedded below (shot by Diginfonews in Tokyo) is pretty awesome. Hospi is actually part of an integrated medication management and delivery system.

He can pick up medications (including fragile ampoules and vials), arrange them on a tray and deliver them within a hospital – all autonomously.

What’s cool is that Hospi can even use elevators to change floors – again, without human help. For that, he’s equipped with a total of four laser range finders and 27 ultrasonic sensors.

Watch Hospi in action below:

Howard Stern Signs New Five-Year Contract With Sirius XM, Show Will Now Be On iPhone App

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 09:00 AM PST

Howard Stern, arguably the biggest "name" on Sirius XM, has signed a new five-year contract with the company, keeping him on satellite radio for the next half-decade. I’m sure some of the Sirius XM management are jumping for joy right now.

Stern made the announcement on his show this morning, calling the new contract "fair." Terms of the contract weren’t released, but Stern had said earlier this week that he wouldn’t be taking a pay cut.

Good work if you can get it, I guess.

Probably most relevant for CG readers, the new contract means that Stern will now be broadcast on Sirius XM’s various mobile applications. That wasn’t the case before, meaning that, say, Sirius XM for iOS was all but useless to Stern fans.

As I’ve said approximately one million times now, one of the only reasons to subscribe to Sirius XM in this age of Rdio, Pandora, and the like is their exclusive talk content. Stern, Opie and Anthony, Ron and Fez: you can’t hear these guys anywhere else, so it’s in Sirius XM’s best interest to promote that fact as much as possible.

The iPad 2 Case Back Surfaces

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 08:36 AM PST

What we see here is a “crystal case” for an iPad 2 with what appears to be a hole cut out for a camera. Obviously we need to take this with a grain of salt because if there’s anyone out there with skin in the iPad game, it’s case manufacturers.

As you see here there is apparently a new speaker configuration and/or a small Wi-Fi window in the corner to ensure connectivity. We’re also looking a softer, rounder styling, perhaps more like the Macbook Air. More as we know about it.
via 9to5mac
Product Page


Battlefield Vietnam’s Flamethrower Is ‘Devestating’ In Confined Spaces

Posted: 09 Dec 2010 08:30 AM PST

One of the last "big" releases of the year is Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam, a multi-player expansion pack that’ll be available on December 21 (or three days earlier if you pre-order on Steam). It’s safe to say Matt and I are looking forward to it (I’d be looking forward to it even more if I could fix that weird crash-to-desktop bug I keep running into with my Radeon.) In any event, Pocket-lint has the hands-on. There’s just a tinge of jealousy here, but I’ll persevere.

Four of the new maps aren’t overly big, it’s said, but "there is plenty to play for." Echoes of Battlefield 1943 abound.

There’s also a flamethrower this time around, which is "devastating in confined spaces."

It’s the same game types as before: rush, conquest, and so on.

So, yeah. My guess is that it’ll be worth the $15 EA wants.
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