CrunchGear |  |
- Video: Jurassic Park Debut Trailer
- DIY Sous Vide Cooker
- Does Your PC Meet Crysis 2′s System Requirements?
- Alpina Introduces the Startimer Pilot
- The Nissan ESFLOW Fully Exposed
- Google, Best Buy & Others Form Alliance To Champion AllVid Adapter
- Distributed Computing Project: Climate Change Is Responsible For All The Flooding
- Good Thing Shadows Don’t Normally Fight Back
- Apple Job Posting Asks For TV Power Supply Engineer, Apple HDTV In The Works?
- 2011 Scion xB Tech: Light On Substance
- Radiohead’s Day Early Release Of ‘The King Of Limbs’ Goes Viral
- Obaku Releases The Thinnest Sports Watch In The Whole World
- Games Industry Down 5 Percent In January (But Kinect Is Doing Fine)
- Video Of Escher’s Impossible Waterfall A La Rube Goldberg
- New HP CEO: We Need To Ship Good Products
- Google Lunar X-Prize Confirms 29 Teams (But Winner Not Expected From This Crop)
- Video Interview: Boku’s Ron Hirson Describes Their Mobile Payments Service
- Board Up The House, The Walking Dead Video Game Is Coming
- Inside Dead Space 2
- Netflix Could Be Forced To Pay Additional Fees In Canada (But Maybe They Should?)
| Video: Jurassic Park Debut Trailer Posted: 18 Feb 2011 04:58 PM PST Jurassic Park is getting a reboot. The game is set to come out in April and the official debut trailer just hit the game sites. Too bad there was never a quality Jurassic Park game and this video makes it seem that tradition will continue.
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| Posted: 18 Feb 2011 04:48 PM PST
So you want to make fancy food like all them chefs in them fancy Franch restaurants up in the city there? Do you, fancy boy? Well then you’d best get out into the garridge and start building because me and muther aren’t buying you any Sux Vid cooker for $450 so’s you can cook eggs like some fancy Franch cook. When I was in the army we din’t have food processors, just a jackknife and a pail and you cooked a thousand potatoes in half an hour or the other guys’d come in an beat you in the head. So you go make yourself a Sux Vid cooker if you want but I ain’t eatin’ any blanched beans, let me tell it to you that way.
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| Does Your PC Meet Crysis 2′s System Requirements? Posted: 18 Feb 2011 03:00 PM PST
Crysis was (and still is) notorious for needing a pretty high-spec system to run well, but Crytek has said time and time again that the engine powering Crysis 2, CryEngine 3, is far more robust, and therefore won't require the same kind of horsepower to run well. You know where this is going. VR-Zone claims to have the game's recommended system requirements, and they are as Crytek claimed: not too crazy. My own self-made PC (Radeon 5970, which has greatly disappointed me vis-à-vis CrossFire performance but whatever, i7 860 OC'd to 4.0GHz, 8GB memory, all running at 1920×1200) would appear to meet the "highly recommended" specs. I won't be playing in 3D, but what are you going to do?
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| Alpina Introduces the Startimer Pilot Posted: 18 Feb 2011 02:15 PM PST
I’ve been following Alpina for years now and I’ve always been fascinated if not a little off-put by their styling. Finally, howeover, we have a chrono that’s actually worth a second look. This is the Startimer Pilot running an in-house automatic movement, the AL-860. It will be on sale this year alongside the AL-950, the Startimer Pilot Regulator that they’re most famous for. No pricing, but expect the chrono to hit the $5,000 mark.
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| The Nissan ESFLOW Fully Exposed Posted: 18 Feb 2011 01:37 PM PST
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| Google, Best Buy & Others Form Alliance To Champion AllVid Adapter Posted: 18 Feb 2011 01:00 PM PST
The FCC proposed something called AllVid last year, a device that would help deliver "multichannel video programming and Internet content" to whatever it's connected to. The cable companies freaked out, calling AllVid a one-way ticket to "ignor[ing] copyright, patent, trademark, contract privity, licensing, and other legal rights and limitations that have been thoroughly documented." Since real life works by pro-wrestling rules, the proponents of AllVid, seven companies ranging from Best Buy to Sony to Tivo, have taken offense to these allegations, and have subsequently formed an alliance, or stable, to fight back against these misrepresentations and half-truths. Cable companies versus the AllVid Tech Company Alliance will headline WrestleMania this year. The companies in the AllVid Tech Company Alliance are Best Buy, Google, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics, Nagravision, SageTV, Sony Electronics and TiVo. They recently sent a letter [PDF] to the FCC imploring it to ignore the cable companies' many complaints:
On one hand we have the entrenched interests of the cable companies, looking to keep your and yours paying X-Amount per month for the privilege of having access to a few random episodes of The King of Queens on demand. On the other hand you've got "innovative" companies, and Best Buy, looking to kick-start the Internet-delivered television revolution. With the help of the FCC, of course. Cynics might say that they can't innovate into people's homes without the help of the government, but larger forces are at work here. It just seems that a monumental amount of time and energy is being spent on making it so that we can all watch Dancing With The Stars 24 hours a day.
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| Distributed Computing Project: Climate Change Is Responsible For All The Flooding Posted: 18 Feb 2011 12:45 PM PST
Whether or not you believe the hype from global warming, there’s new research out this week that’s pretty convincing. A couple papers released this week in Nature show that extreme weather is becoming more common. The research was completely impossible a few years ago for lack of computing power, but now with modern distributed computing technology the researchers were able to get a clearer view of what’s going on with our Earth. One of the paper’s key concept is measuring 50 years of weather data to identify single-day and five-day extreme precipitation. Using this data, the researchers compared the history with eight climate models run under three different conditions: stable climate, natural disruptions, and man made disruptions. The comparisons showed that the natural disruptions, solar flares and volcanos, would decrease it following current trends. Instead there was an upward trend in these events. A second paper looked at one specific event: a series of extreme floods that took place in England and Whales in 2000. Using the single model of northern climate, including ocean temps and ice cover, they were able to recreate conditions from 1900. Those outputs were then run through another model to figure when other events similar to the UKs’ occurred.
To get all this data run through the different models, the researchers turned to climateprediction.com, a distributed computer project similar to SETI@home. Using people’s idle times as screensavers, the researchers then had the power to run the programs. ResultsAll scenarios showed flooding. With the models, however, the scientists were able to show both how the weather would be with and without humans. All results with humans showed that risk went up 20% or more and in two out of three cases the risk went up to 90%. So, they conclude that climate change very likely contributed to the floods in 2000. Now that we have these scary results, now might be the time to run to the store and grab gallons of water. [via ars technica]
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| Good Thing Shadows Don’t Normally Fight Back Posted: 18 Feb 2011 12:26 PM PST You’re going to wanna pause your life for two and half minutes. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here, but it doesn’t matter. The one dude is fighting the other dude who turns out to be a shapshifting shadow? Oh man, it’s like a Nyquil-induced dream. [Geekologie
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| Apple Job Posting Asks For TV Power Supply Engineer, Apple HDTV In The Works? Posted: 18 Feb 2011 12:05 PM PST
via 9to5mac,
I still have my doubts that Apple’s getting in the cut-throat HDTV business, but that job posting is pretty clear. It’s also widely known that Apple has unparalleled access to the best LCDs available, which might help keep the price of the TVs competitive against traditional HDTV brands who also manufacturer panels themselves like Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and Sharp. But for Apple, it’s always been about generating revenue from a vertical ecosystem and a proper, if you will, Apple TV would further their reach into livingrooms.
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| 2011 Scion xB Tech: Light On Substance Posted: 18 Feb 2011 11:49 AM PST
The Scion xB is a car for young people, so it better have the tech to match. Electronics in a car can be a beautiful thing – when done right. We got a fully equipped Scion xB for the week and checked the gear. The xB is one of those boxy-looking cars that can be customized with a slew of accessories from the factory. From a $449 XM radio receiver to a $290 illuminated doorsill, the xB’s À la carte menu can add what ever your young-at-heart heart desires.
When tech is an afterthought, the result can feel unskillfully aftermarket. For a few of the Scion xB's tech options, that notion is apparent. Not only that, but the price to pay for those “aftermarket” accessories is often more than real aftermarket. Does this mean the Scion isn't worth a $27,000 price tag? Yes and no. While there are some really neat things going on in and outside of the cabin, some of the tech options are plain boring. For example, the $299 BLU Logic handsfree system was just a set of three buttons. Setup included pressing and holding buttons and waiting for beeps. (If it's so complicated that the manual needs to be broken out, then it's usually worth skipping.) After all the beeps and holds, the system was okay and once connected, we even got Bluetooth A2DP to work — though it required changing tracks on the paired device. There wasn't any voice activation built-in for calls; instead it uses your phone's voice recognition; that works much better anyways. Call quality was great and those on the other end could hear us fine.
The Scion was also equipped with the $449 Alpine Premium HD Radio with iPod connectivity. We liked this more than the BLU Logic. Though it looks slightly out of date and out of place, it was easy to use. The connectivity for USB devices was better than expected, and songs can be selected by touching through the menus — pretty self-explanatory here. It wasn't with out flaws though, when seeking around XM channels it could be a bitter faster between stations. And, our biggest affliction with AUX-in usability involves searching for another artist: the Alpine takes you all they way to the start of search again. Many cars do this and it's annoying.
If you're keeping track here, the Scion has $1197 in radio, hands-free and XM options — no navigation on this one (that’s $700 more.) You can get an aftermarket touchscreen navi system for around $1000 that can do all these functions with better integration. If you decide to go the real aftermarket route, grab some subwoofers too because the low-end in the car isn't great. The standard six-speaker system doesn't rattle teeth, something the look of the car proffers.
In the back seat we found two 7-inch LCD monitors mounted in the front headrests that offered DVD playback. Again, these aren't connected to anything else in the car, the DVD player is built into each monitor. So for $1599 you can have two different movies going. Quality wasn't bad on the monitors, but we'd pass on that option. We'd recommend getting two iPads with rear seat mounts — who watches DVDs anymore. So while the Scion xB is a great car for young people – we firmly believe this – some of the tech options aren't. Those who are tech-savvy aren't going to want the radio setup when a better one can be added later, for cheaper. But, a lot of people aren't going to want to mess around with installers and warrantees, so it would make sense to go for the Scion-customize options. Personally, we'd hold off on some of them.       
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| Radiohead’s Day Early Release Of ‘The King Of Limbs’ Goes Viral Posted: 18 Feb 2011 11:02 AM PST
On the Internet everyone expects everything a day early.
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| Obaku Releases The Thinnest Sports Watch In The Whole World Posted: 18 Feb 2011 11:01 AM PST
This watch, designed by Christian Mikkelsen and Lau Liengaard Ruge, is an ultrathin, fairly handsome sports watch with a thin quartz movement and PVD-coated case and band. I, personally, am not a fan but it does look better than the thin stuff Skagen has been selling for years now and it could make someone with a fetish for ultrathin watches quite happy. No pricing, but expect it at the big watch show, Basel, in a few weeks.
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| Games Industry Down 5 Percent In January (But Kinect Is Doing Fine) Posted: 18 Feb 2011 10:30 AM PST Everybody panic. The video game industry was down 5 percent this past January compared to January 2010, even if Activision still managed to sell an inordinate number of Call of Duty: Black Ops copies. It's hard to look at NPD data these days given its recent policy of not releasing its information as frequently as it used to. Here's your January 2011 top ten: 1. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard) – Xbox 360, PS3, Wi, DS, PC Probably most impressive on the list is Dead Space 2. It only came out on January 25, and yet it still managed to grab the third-place spot. EA sold 425,000 copies in just about a week. Another proud showing was DC Universe Online, but as we all know Warhammer Online did quite well its first few months then all but fell off the planet soon after. As far as hardware goes, Microsoft says it shipped some 14 percent more 360s this January compared to last January. Must be all those people buying Kinect, which has done quite well for itself. In fact, peripherals in general were the biggest "winners" in January, shooting up a solid 6 percent from the previous January. March is shaping up to be a pretty big month. Crysis 2 (which just became available via Stream for pre-order), Dragon Age 2, Total War: Shogun 2, Need for Speed Shift 2, Pokemon Black and White, and the 3DS. Maybe if I could slow down time I'd have the time to play all these.
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| Video Of Escher’s Impossible Waterfall A La Rube Goldberg Posted: 18 Feb 2011 10:25 AM PST |
| New HP CEO: We Need To Ship Good Products Posted: 18 Feb 2011 09:56 AM PST
Considering Mark Hurd essentially drove HP into the innovation weeds, shipping more and more boring product year-in-year-out, Leo has a big job ahead of him. He notes that HP is full of innovation but that no one is telling the HP story:
Here’s hoping someone other than the WebOS faithful is listening.
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| Google Lunar X-Prize Confirms 29 Teams (But Winner Not Expected From This Crop) Posted: 18 Feb 2011 09:30 AM PST
The teams have been finalized for the Google Lunar X-Prize! A total of 17 teams will take place in the competition, the goal of which is to land a robot on the moon, have it travel at least 500 meters up there, all while sending data (pictures and video and whatnot) back to Earth. The catch, of course, is that these teams have to be at least 90 percent privately funded. Up for grabs is $30 million in prize money. That, and quite the story to tell people. "Did you hear about that moon robot the other day? Yeah, that was me." The 29 teams come from 17 different countries. Good ol' USA has nine of the 17 teams by my count. And while this is reasonably exciting, the competition's organizers aren't expecting a winner until 2015.
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| Video Interview: Boku’s Ron Hirson Describes Their Mobile Payments Service Posted: 18 Feb 2011 09:00 AM PST
They are only enabled for virtual goods right now, but you can see where this could be headed with real goods. They’ve been doing this in Korea and Japan for a while. It could work other places too. However, being in bed with the carriers could be risky. Their historical cut has been prohibitively high. It sounds like their required percentage is dropping though, possibly signaling they may realize they have to nurture this space if they want to see it grow. Another big question though deals with whether or not carriers want to underwrite big purchases on post-paid accounts. That could be a very complicated undertaking and I see as a potential barrier. But, if they can all get the numbers right, this could be big time. We’ll see. Ghetto-style, shakey-cam video below.
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| Board Up The House, The Walking Dead Video Game Is Coming Posted: 18 Feb 2011 08:45 AM PST
Telltale Games heard the call and entered into a “multi-year, multi-platform, multi-title” partnership. Specifics weren’t given, but chances are various games are in development for gaming consoles and portables as well as perhaps a PC title. Kirkland indicated in an IGN interview that the game will follow the comic books rather than the TV show. Either way, there’s bound to be a good amount of zombie slaying and that’s all a gamer could ask for.
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| Posted: 18 Feb 2011 08:13 AM PST
As IndustryGamers points out in a long interview with the crew who produced DS 2, the character of Isaac Clarke (a ham-handed as his name may be) isn’t just your average dope in a spacesuit.
Read the whole interview here or just play the game. Either way, we’re one step closer to having “classics” in the genre.
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| Netflix Could Be Forced To Pay Additional Fees In Canada (But Maybe They Should?) Posted: 18 Feb 2011 08:04 AM PST Netflix may be forced to pay additional fees in order stay in business in Canada. The country’s Radio-Television Commission, the same entity responsible for that usage-based billing scare, is being pressured by traditional media companies (the likes of Rogers and Bell, of course) to levy the same local content production fee on Netflix that they have to pay. Needless to say, this really isn’t a black-and-white issue. Traditional media companies in Canada pay a fee that, in effect, subsidizes the production of local, Canadian content. Since it’s often cheaper for these companies to merely import American programming, thereby sidelining Canadian studios (read: Canadian culture), Canada figured, "OK, let’s charge the Bells of the country a fee in order to ensure the development of Canadian programming." Netflix, despite being a "broadcaster," albeit a new type of broadcaster, doesn’t have to pay this fee. And because it doesn’t have to pay this fee it can charge less for its services—CDN$8 per month for streaming, as it were. Now the question becomes, should Netflix be forced to pay the fee? Let’s put aside the question "should the fee exist in the first place?" since, well, it does exist, and its existence isn’t up for debate right now. Maybe tomorrow if you have the time. Look at it from Bell’s perspective. It provides a service—television and movies and whatnot, right to your TV—that, in its estimation, really isn’t too different from that of Netflix. They just so happen to travel over different wires, and theirs isn’t necessarily on-demand. It’s not too hard to understand why Bell (et al.) would be upset that Netflix, which just so happens to be gaining in popularity, doesn’t have to pay the fee—the fee, which, coincidentally, was implemented to help Canadians and Canadian companies. Now look at Netflix. Is it a broadcaster? Not in the traditional sense of the word, no. Netflix is the new kid on the block, and it’s showing the old guard how you can deliver the same content that people want to see but cheaper. (Then again, Netflix didn’t have to pay to lay down the broadband infrastructure in the first place. You could say it’s merely piggy-backing off the work of others.) Representatives from the media companies will meet with the CRTC tomorrow to discuss whether or not Netflix should pay the fee. Hopefully we can have a civil discussion about this, because, again, both sides would appear to have valid arguments.
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It’s as if Radiohead got the lion’s share of Internet awareness, leaving the rest of the music industry completely clueless. Pretty much all anyone can talk about right now is Radiohead’s 
Bang. Just after I got off the phone with you guys talking about 
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