CrunchGear |  |
- Romain Jerome “Steampunk” Watch
- Toshiba To Outsource LSI Chip Production To Samsung
- Daily Crunch: Anticipation Edition
- iFixit’s iPad App: A Nice Last-Minute Gift For The Tinkerer In The Family
- Keeping Christmas Green With A Couple Eco-Friendly Wrapping Tips
- Dell Tablet Name Leaked In Ad
- Review: Marshall Major Headphones
- Review: Roland R-05
- Video: Call Of Duty: Real Life Edition
- Another Day, Another Internet Explorer Exploit
- The Romain Jerome Steampunk: You Know, For Steam Punks
- Inside the Foxconn “Prison”
- Sony Drops Even More Hints About Possible PSP Phone (But Doesn’t Want To Confuse Consumers)
- Videos: Two Super-Quick Robot Sumo Duels
- DIY: “Soft-touch” Your Cell Phone, Game Controller, Or Adult Toy
- Latest iPad 2 Rumor Puts A Speaker On The Backplate, 9.7-inch Screen Around Front
- Alcatel E66 Man-Handled By Charming Greek Lady
- Sony To Pay $600 Million For Toshiba Plant, To Double CMOS Sensor Production
- 12 Days of Christmas: Blu-Ray Player and a Redbox Subscription
- Happy Holidays From The International Space Station
| Romain Jerome “Steampunk” Watch Posted: 24 Dec 2010 05:07 AM PST
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| Toshiba To Outsource LSI Chip Production To Samsung Posted: 24 Dec 2010 04:40 AM PST
Toshiba seems to be determined to completely overhaul its semiconductor segment. Yesterday, it was reported that Sony will buy back a semiconductor plant it sold to Toshiba two years ago for $600 million (the deal was confirmed today). And today, Toshiba itself said it is ready for a second step: the company is in talks with Samsung to farm out the production of LSI chips to its Korean rival. Toshiba will continue to design chips but outsource production to Samsung. The Japanese company will, however, not stop producing system chips it currently ships to customers. Toshiba aims at focusing on the production of image sensors in its Japanese plants, scaling back the production of system chips. Not a big surprise, considering that in fiscal 2008, Toshiba’s chipmaking segment logged an operating loss of $3.4 billion.
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| Daily Crunch: Anticipation Edition Posted: 24 Dec 2010 12:00 AM PST |
| iFixit’s iPad App: A Nice Last-Minute Gift For The Tinkerer In The Family Posted: 23 Dec 2010 04:30 PM PST
Of course, all this information is already available for free online, but this makes it a little more portable. So if the tool-wielding gadget-investigating member of your family has an iPad (or perhaps has one coming their way very soon), you might “give” them this app by bringing it to their attention at a more appropriate time of giving. You can download the app here, or read more about it at the iFixit blog.
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| Keeping Christmas Green With A Couple Eco-Friendly Wrapping Tips Posted: 23 Dec 2010 04:00 PM PST
Inventor Spot has put together a sensible list of things you can do to minimize the environmental impact of your gifts — never mind the fact that the gifts themselves manufactured in factory towns in China, filled with toxic materials, and surrounded with blister packaging. But I digress, and that’s a whole other problem. There’s nothing wrong with minimizing the waste you create. I particularly like the road maps idea. They’re big, they look cool, and they’re robust enough to be reused. I’m also a fan of plain brown paper — buy a huge roll of it and you can use it both for wrapping and packing material, and when you’re done, it’s perfectly recyclable. Got any tips on how you keep things green during your festivities?
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| Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:46 PM PST
This is Dell’s seven inch tablet, running Android 2.2 on a 1.2GHz CPU at 1280×800. There’s a chance that Dell might decide to go with a dual core CPU, depending on when the device is released. Dell was expected to formally announce the tablet on January 6th, but once Engadget got the ad copy, the world now knows it’s called the Streak 7.
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| Review: Marshall Major Headphones Posted: 23 Dec 2010 12:36 PM PST
Pros:
Cons:
Full review: I’ve been looking forward to these things since they first got teased a couple months ago (on my birthday, actually). At the time, I thought they were much larger, and on opening the packaging I found that they’re actually quite petite compared to the larger surround-sound headsets I’ve used. For example, here they are next to the (admittedly large) Logitech G35s:
It’s not a good or bad thing, but they’re not the fully-over-the-hear style, nor as small as other on-ear designs. They just barely cover up my ears entirely, and the leather or faux-leather (I’m the worst at telling the difference) earcups are quite soft, almost distressed-feeling. There’s an attractive little grill inside the earpieces, and the outsides have the famous Marshall lettering. The headband stays close to the head and is generously padded. Overall, I’d say they’re quite comfortable, though if your ears tend to get sore or sweaty from on-ear designs, these will be no exception.
The cord is a nice, thick satin-finish rubber, and has a coil near the earpiece, as you can see. This gives the cord an actual length of six feet, but it feels much shorter, since the coil is stiff enough (which isn’t really that stiff) that pulling away from the “resting” length of 3 feet will tug on the headphones a bit. They fit too well to be pulled from your head with even a violent motion, but the effective length of the cord is still reduced somewhat. It has a lovely instrument-style audio jack, with grippy metal and a spring that prevents cord fatigue at the plug end. There’s also a 1/4″ adapter included for all you musician types. One thing I liked about these was that there was an almost virtual-surround feel to the sound stage, as if stereo separation was being spread out a bit. I felt this made the sound take up more of your little world, and combined with the good isolation offered by the earcups, these make for good headphones to use on the subway, while watching a movie on a plane, and so on. Conclusion The Marshall Majors aren’t in-a-quiet-room headphones for appreciating music — though being a closed design, they let little sound escape (good for roommates). They’re also not gaming headphones; for a little less money you can pick up the excellent Nox Audio Specialists, which are also foldable but offer a mic and on-set controls. No, the Marshalls are about two things: the brand, and listening to music out in the world. You’re paying extra for the Marshall logo, make no mistake, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad. They’re good-looking, have a nice big sound, nice isolation, and a good cord for portable use. If you’re willing to overpay by a small amount, you’ll have a nice little pair of cans to show for it.     
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| Posted: 23 Dec 2010 10:55 AM PST Short Version: The Roland R-05 is a pocket recorder for professionals and semi-pros looking to record voice and/or music live. It’s a far sight better than any smartphone recorder and the feature set, including effects, speed changers, and rudimentary editing including song splitting, is strong for a small, compact, $299 recorder. So why do you need a portable recorder? Well, maybe you’re a music fan and want to tape your favorite band live. Or maybe you’re really cheap and want to compile a bunch of songs from the radio that you can listen to while you walk around the city at 4am peering into people’s bedrooms as they sleep. Or maybe you’re a musician who wants to practice a particularly hard piece on the violin. Whatever your pleasure, the R-05 will record high quality WAVs and MP3s on the fly. The R-05 is a very basic piece of kit. It has a small LCD screen, a front control panel with dedicated volume and input level keys, and six special keys that control various features. On the back you have gain, limiter, and low cut switches for on the fly control and there is a peak light that shows you when you’re blowing out the sound. The recorder has a line-in and microphone port as well as a headphone port on the side. It is about four inches long. The interface is very basic. You start recording by turning it on and pressing the center record button. You can split recordings based on size or using the split button and you can add reverb and change the speed of audio playback. It records directly to SD cards and can record WAVs and MP3s simultaneously. Quality It records at up to 24-bit/96kHz resolution and can hold about 30 hours of recording on one 2GB SD card, included. Bottom Line
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| Video: Call Of Duty: Real Life Edition Posted: 23 Dec 2010 09:30 AM PST OK, this is great. It's a "real life" version of Call of Duty, complete with a guy running around in an old Andriy Shevchenko shirt. Oh, how I laughed! The most realistic part, of course, is the corpse humping that follows a stab in the back. Is there a more anti-social behavior than corpse humping?
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| Another Day, Another Internet Explorer Exploit Posted: 23 Dec 2010 09:00 AM PST
Oh, dear. Microsoft has revealed a new security flaw in Internet Explorer that, if taken advantage of, could let evildoers take over your computer. That's nice. The good news is that Microsoft hasn't heard of any consumer attacks brought about as a result of the glitch, so there's no reason to freak out just yet. And while a fix hasn't been released—the glitch targets IE's memory management when dealing with CSS—Microsoft has advised folks to download its Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit. (If you're on Windows XP, and I don't know why you'd still be running it, you'll have to upgrade to the latest version in order to use the kit.) I'll now use this time to talk a little but about the year in security news. Probably the biggest security-related story happened only a few weeks ago when Gawker was attacked. Usernames and passwords had been targetted, and we learned that a startling number of people used passwords like "password" or "12345." If the first step to keeping yourself safe online is to use a genuine, up-to-date operating system, the second step is to use strong passwords across your many online accounts. And don't use the same password! All it takes is a quick Google search to find out that you use the same username across several different message boards and whatnot, and then to use the same password for all of them? You're crazy. A handy tip is to visit random.org and use their random password generator. Then memorize your password! It's not like you have to remember phone numbers anymore, so put your memory to good use and memorize your passwords. You don't want to end up like Sarah Palin. Another thing to keep a look out for: mobile malware. As more and more people upgrade to smartphones it's more and more tempting for evildoers to target the big operating systems out there. There may not be a Hollywood scenario where all of a sudden every iPhone in the world sprouts legs and attacks people in the streets, but it's not exactly impossible to imagine a rogue dialer being released that causes your iPhone to call 1-900 numbers, racking up huge bills in the process. As I said a few months ago, just keep your wits about you while online. Assume that everyone is out to get you, keep your anti-malware software up-to-date, and don't click random nonsense. It's not that hard.
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| The Romain Jerome Steampunk: You Know, For Steam Punks Posted: 23 Dec 2010 08:38 AM PST
Although the press release is gloriously ridiculous, the watch is pretty cool. RJ, maker of the Titanic watch, styled this piece on the Steampunk Meme of 2010. The watch is “steampunk” because it has little pistons, gears, and odd numerals on an otherwise bog-standard timepiece. No price, but production is limited to 2,012 pieces. STEAMPUNK Galvanised by the ever-growing Titanic DNA shock wave, RJ – ROMAIN JEROME has decided to enrich its collection with an explosive timepiece named Steampunk. The new Steampunk model is born of a high-tension creative impulse and catalyses all the attributes of a devastating personality. Expressed through polished steel paws, pistons and Roman numerals, design becomes a powerful weapon of conviction in this no-holds-barred model. The entirely dial-free Steampunk is housed within a 50 mm-diameter case providing unobstructed views of the sturdy, rigorously constructed mechanism that naturally commands respect and is held in place by four screwed-down pistons symbolising the RJ's signature "X" motif. Imbued with the Steampunk inspiration, the Roman XII and VI numerals are left "raw" and coloured according to the model. These vigorous aesthetic codes energise the upper bridge satin-brushed or circular-grained, depending on the model, by the watchmaking craftsmen at RJ – ROMAIN JEROME. Faithfully reflecting the inimitable Titanic-DNA style, the small seconds is distinguished by its stand-out propeller shape. The Steampunk features an impressive ability to integrate and optimise the signature features of the DNA collection. With a bezel in stabilised [1] oxidised steel secured by four polished steel [2] claws, the Steampunk both appeals and reassures. After a year at the helm of RJ – ROMAIN JEROME, Manuel Emch and his team are thus introducing an exceptional new model. Carved in legend and built to make history, the Steampunk combines the inventive daring and stringent demands of a passionately dedicated and uncompromising creative talent.
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| Posted: 23 Dec 2010 08:07 AM PST I present to you, friends, unadulterated, the horrors witnessed by French journalist Jordan Pouille and recorded in his video, “Inside the Foxconn Prison,” are truly manifold. In what will soon be the The Jungle of its day, Pouille’s video of Chinese factory workers living their oppressed lives while shopping for food, listening to pop music, and meeting for lunch reminds us that jobs suck everywhere and that factory jobs suck the most.
Obviously Pouille definitely knows about social outburst, given France’s success with the Banlieues. As you recall, I’m of a mind that this is a job, these people are working, and that the factories are not, as we like to pretend, labor camps. Ask any of the grandparents of these workers and any survivors of WWII and the Stalinist purges what labor camps are really like. That said, we do owe these people a debt of gratitude and we should also hope that when their children become an economic juggernaut while we forget how to manufacture even the most basic of items that they will think back fondly on how supportive the Western world was of their “plight.”
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| Sony Drops Even More Hints About Possible PSP Phone (But Doesn’t Want To Confuse Consumers) Posted: 23 Dec 2010 08:00 AM PST  More hints—even you can even call them that—about a possible "PSP phone," however that manifests itself. Kazuo Hirai, the top gentleman over at Sony Computer Entertainment, has said that if Sony were to create such a device it'd be very important not to confuse people about its capabilities, or even its purpose. "We don't want gamers to be asking, what's the difference between that and a PSP," said Hirai.
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| Videos: Two Super-Quick Robot Sumo Duels Posted: 23 Dec 2010 07:43 AM PST
There were two kinds of robots battling it out, autonomous and radio-controlled models. In total, 102 robots were registered for the tournament (which took place earlier this week) this time. Here is the final bout in the autonomous robot class: Final battle in the RC type class: Via Robonable [JP]
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| DIY: “Soft-touch” Your Cell Phone, Game Controller, Or Adult Toy Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:54 AM PST
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| Latest iPad 2 Rumor Puts A Speaker On The Backplate, 9.7-inch Screen Around Front Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:37 AM PST
The backplate is also said to be flat, rather than convex like the current model, which should allow for much easier use when it’s flat on a table. Both parts to this rumor seem to match up nicely — perhaps too nicely — with the leaked gel case and back surface from a few weeks ago. There the skin is nearly the same size and there’s a nice spot for the speaker on the bottom. Both parts to the rumor are certainly plausible and fit in nicely with the slow evolutionary crawl traditionally employed by Apple. Still, it’s probably not the best idea to bet the Christmas gift money on said rumors — like you could do that anyway. [via Wired]
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| Alcatel E66 Man-Handled By Charming Greek Lady Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:08 AM PST A Greek website, DigitalLife, has posted a long hands-on with the Alcatel E66, an Android tablet running at 800×460 resolution with a seven-inch screen. Nothing absolutely amazing, but I do love the woman’s voice demoing it. It sounds like a cross between a British Airlines flight safety warning and a mysterious archeologist heroine in a Dan Brown book.
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| Sony To Pay $600 Million For Toshiba Plant, To Double CMOS Sensor Production Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:06 AM PST
Japan’s biggest business daily, The Nikkei, is reporting that Sony plans to double its production volume for image sensors used in smartphones and digital cameras. Big S is currently thinking about buying back a semiconductor plant it sold to Toshiba in 2008. The plant, which is located in Nagasaki, was originally used for producing the Cell processor that’s being used in the PS3 and other devices, until Toshiba started fabricating CMOS sensors there. Sony is said to be ready to pay $600 million – a pretty large sum, but The Nikkei is saying that it takes double the amount to construct a new plant. The company is planning to fabricate around 40,000 silicon wafers monthly after acquiring the plant from Toshiba. Last year, Sony was the sixth-largest producer of CMOS sensors world-wide.
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| 12 Days of Christmas: Blu-Ray Player and a Redbox Subscription Posted: 23 Dec 2010 05:49 AM PST
Grab ringside seats to the death of optical media with one of three new Blu-ray players complete with 1 year of free Redbox rentals. The folks at Redbox, who are running some other kind of concurrent Blu-Ray promotion, want their business model to remain vaguely viable for at least the next few years so they want to ensure that you and yours are enjoying fine Blu-ray entertainment as streaming moves in to eat their lunch. To that end, we must insist that you read on to find out how to win. All you need to do is leave a comment below describing your favorite holiday movie. For example:
Three winners will be chosen randomly and awarded the following prize: One of three Sony BR Players and 1 year subscriptions to Redbox Official rules:
Be sure to use your real e-mail address! It will not be shared with anyone, period. It's just for this contest. Keep your eyes out for more giveaways over the next week and don't forget about our big Santa item: a gaming rig valued at nearly $2,300. This contest runs through Christmas Eve!
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| Happy Holidays From The International Space Station Posted: 23 Dec 2010 05:49 AM PST Astronaut Pro Tip: Shave your head before entering zero gravity environments. You’ll feel like Captain Picard (because you’re on a spaceship) combined with the nearly mind-over-body control of Professor Xavier. Plus, you won’t look like a fool on the annual Christmas card.
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It’s almost Christmas, and if your family is anything like mine (I really don’t know how likely that is), there will be mile-high piles of wrapping paper and ribbon by noon on Saturday. We’ve tried to recycle paper and ribbons year-to-year, but there’s always more to be done to make sure your holiday cheer doesn’t take down more of the Amazon than it has to.
Even though it wasn’t supposed to be released until CES, Dell’s new tablet leaked today via some ad copy, and it turns out the tablet will be called the Streak 7.
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