CrunchGear |
- The Apple Store Is Down, You Know What That Means
- NEC Medias: Docomo To Offer The World’s Thinnest Smartphone In 3 Weeks
- Daily Crunch: Lawn Care Edition
- Video: What Happens After Touch? Microsoft Research Shows Off Natural User Interface Research
- 3DS Price Dips Below £200 In UK Price Wars
- How To Watch The Space Shuttle’s Last Flight Tomorrow
- Review: Motorola Xoom – The Android Tablet Redefined
- New Olympus Compacts Incoming On March 2nd?
- Yahtzee Versus MindJack
- Rumor: The Daily Coming To Android This Spring
- Home-Built Force Feedback Machine Rocks And Rolls You While Playing Dyad
- Japanese Arcade Documentary 100 Yen Hits This Fall
- BookArc for MacBook Air: Make Your MBA Stand Up And Take Notice
- PS3 Gets NTFS Support
- Automower 305 Is Latest Mower From Husqvarna, Will Help Win Neighborhood Contest For Best Lawn
- Proliferation Of PGP Complicates Job Of Federal Investigators
- Kickstarter: Glyde And Orbit Are Stabilizing Solutions For Your iPhone Videos
- CrunchDeals: 40% Off ScottEVest Stuff
- DOTKLOK Is A Hackable, Open-Source, Arduino Clock. Also Neat Looking
- Crysis 2′s Soundtrack Depends On What Type Of Enemy You’re Fighting
The Apple Store Is Down, You Know What That Means Posted: 24 Feb 2011 04:44 AM PST
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NEC Medias: Docomo To Offer The World’s Thinnest Smartphone In 3 Weeks Posted: 24 Feb 2011 12:01 AM PST On Monday, we've just shown you some leaked pictures, but we can now confirm the world's thinnest smartphone, NEC Casio Mobile's MEDIAS N-04C, is real. And provider NTT Docomo, Japan's biggest mobile carrier, doesn't want to lose time in bringing it to market: it will hit stores over here as early as March 15. Read the rest on MobileCrunch. |
Daily Crunch: Lawn Care Edition Posted: 24 Feb 2011 12:00 AM PST How To Watch The Space Shuttle's Last Flight Tomorrow |
Video: What Happens After Touch? Microsoft Research Shows Off Natural User Interface Research Posted: 23 Feb 2011 08:16 PM PST Microsoft has decided it’s time to show us their future vision for smart display technologies. Steven Bathiche, director of Microsoft’s applied sciences group (the guy responsible for Surface), shows us some new prototype tech in this demo video. He talkes about a few different technologies “after touch” and just how close Microsoft is to getting this stuff to the market. What’s interesting about this is that it shows that Microsoft is committed to Kinect outside of gaming. With the release of the SDK coming soon, Microsoft hopes to spark a wave of creativity for the device. [via winrumors] |
3DS Price Dips Below £200 In UK Price Wars Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:00 PM PST After the 3DS debuted, we saw that the UK pricing was a little… off. Even considering VAT, the £229 prices we were seeing seemed rather high. They’ve been dropping, though, and now many retailers are going below £200 — still quite a bit more than the $250 we’re going to get it for here in the states, but getting on towards reasonable. Will we see similar competition here in the states? Nah. I think this particular price war was borne of high early estimates of what retailers should be charging in the UK. The US price is still far lower than the rest of the world’s, and I don’t think you’re going to see below $250 until at least a few months after release. In Japan, official orders at Amazon have long been unavailable, and 3rd-party sellers seem to be selling their units for half again the original price. This isn’t unprecedented; in fact, it’s more or less just how Nintendo launches go over there. Man, I wonder what the first 3D Dragon Quest sales will be like? I added the Afro Kens. If you can swing it, I’d say your best bet is to wait until a joint like GameStop has the 3DS in stock, and bring in your DS for trade-in credit. You’ll get $30-40 retail — really, you’re not going to find it for much under $250 for a while, so you may as well just go for it and sacrifice your old gear. |
How To Watch The Space Shuttle’s Last Flight Tomorrow Posted: 23 Feb 2011 06:15 PM PST Tomorrow, will be the last time the space shuttle Discovery launches into orbit. It’s a sad day looking back, but inspiring looking forward. We got the places for you to watch it all go down live. The shuttle launch is planned for tomorrow, February 24th at 4:50PM eastern. If you have a PS3, you’ll be able to watch the launch on Playstation Home in the LOOT Sunset Yacht environment, a first for live video. Unfortunately, it costs money to get into the virtual world. There are also cheaper ways, like Spacevidcast, Spaceflight Now, and Nasa TV. Don’t miss this historic event. [via wired, electronista] |
Review: Motorola Xoom – The Android Tablet Redefined Posted: 23 Feb 2011 06:00 PM PST
Pros:
Cons:
BodyAt first glance, the Xoom is a featureless slab. It comes in black or silver; the 4G version for Verizon is the most US-relevant, but the silver Wi-Fi only version will surely have a presence here as well. The 4G version we reviewed is clad on the back in a sort of rubberized metal and the only ports are a mini-HDMI, micro USB, and a small dual-pin dock connector. The device cannot be powered via USB, instead depending on a Xoom-specific charger. Dual speakers flank the 5-megapixel camera and LED flash combo and there is an almost impossible-to-find power button next to the camera, an odd design choice. The only other physical features are a dual rocker for volume and a small slot for a microSD card that is apparently currently unsupported. The size and shape are strikingly similar to the iPad’s. It is a bit wider and very slightly thinner, although it was oftentimes mistaken by others for Cupertino’s juggernaut. There are two LEDs, one that signals emails and the like on the right side and a small red light that switches on when using the front camera. There is no removable battery. The back panel looks like it could be removed but it holds the screen in place, thus preventing further exploration without voiding the warranty. In all, the Xoom is an impressive piece of kit. It doesn’t feel as “hollow” as the iPad, perhaps because of the Xoom’s 1.6 lb weight versus the iPad’s 1.4. ProcessorI was amazed by the Xoom’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor. It is lightning fast and most activities took seconds. It beat the iPad in side-by-side website scrolling tests in many cases. Now for the bad news: if you open too many apps, it slows down to a crawl. The horrors that Apple seems to have avoided in iOS are readily apparent here. I had quite a few app crashes and many apps designed for 2.x devices crashed. Google Body, remade for Honeycomb, crashed every other try. So the good part is that the Xoom is truly a fast machine. The bad part is that this speed is quite fragile. If you are vigilant, you can maintain this speed by selectively closing apps, but the results are often frustrating. We saw this effect in early Android builds as well, and chances are it will be sped up significantly by 3.1 and 3.5. Until then, however, memory management and crashes will be part of your Honeycomb experience. ScreenThe screen is the real draw on this device. The glossy 10-incher is wonderfully responsive and 1280×800 resolution allows for a great deal of living detail in the interface, icons, and during media playback. Strangely, the resolution didn’t play well with some photos, including photos taken with the Xoom’s own camera; they appeared fuzzy when you’d expect sharpness. I was slightly disappointed at the sample images included with the device but the resolution in the music player and on the UI in general adds considerable crispness to the text and icons on screen. Again, there’s bad news: this thing is amazingly susceptible to fingerprints. The front and the back of the device were a mess after the first few minutes. You will definitely notice an entire jungle of finger tracings and taps if you use the Xoom for any period of time. To be fair, the iPad has this problem too, at least on the front, but it’s worth noting that the Xoom doesn’t improve on it here. It is almost impossible to take photos of the screen, so please excuse some of my more onerously bad shots. For clearer UI shots, direct captures of the Honeycomb UI have been making the rounds for months. SpeakersThe speakers are acceptable but are situated on the back of the device so you don’t get much forward throw. You can mute the speakers with your hand if you’re not careful. The optional media dock adds a bit more volume and quality to the audio, if you’re inclined to use this as your out-loud media device. Headphone playback was on par with any other PMP. CameraThe camera is on par with any other 5-megapixel concoction and the flash adds a sufficient amount of coloration to dark scenes. The front camera is also fine. You can’t really expect too much from tiny cameras like this, and unlike an iPhone 4 it’s not designed to be a point-and-shoot replacement. Google Video Chat worked quite well, although the “shake reduction” feature was more a gimmick that ensured that the central image was in focus and still while the background was severely truncated. If you set it on high, you get an image like the one above. It’s kind of goofy but in terms of video chat on a mobile device it’s usually handy. Here are some sample images: Front Camera Rear 5-megapixel Camera (Click to Embiggen) BatteryBattery life is about 18-20 hours on one charge although your mileage may vary. I was able to listen to a few hours of music, read a book, and browse the web for most of the day and it dropped to about 67% after 10 hours. I couldn’t test video playback due to some problems in format availability, but it’s safe to say your battery life will shrink with more processor-intensive tasks. But using web, music, email, and a little light gaming, the device lasted quite a while. Again, software optimizations in future Android versions may improve this, as they have in the past, but battery life is quite solid as it is. AccessoriesThe Xoom has two docks, a standard, smaller one and a larger one with a built-in speaker. It supports Motorola’s Bluetooth keyboard and standard Bluetooth headsets. The keyboard includes keys for home and the pull-down menus, which improves usability considerably. One problem everyone who used this device faced was trying to seat it in the entertainment dock. The two bottom ports were very hard to connect to the corresponding jacks and even with a handy little dot on the bottom of the device and another dot on the dock for lining things up it was quite difficult. A single, wide dock port would have been preferable. There is also a slick Bluetooth keyboard that functions as you would expect. Wi-Fi/WirelessI had some trouble connecting to even strong Wi-Fi connections with this device. For some reason my home network crapped out at two bars almost constantly, and I had much better luck getting a Verizon data connection than depending on Wi-Fi. This could potentially eat into your $20/month 1GB plan. With limited data it’s hard to say whether this is a problem just with my circumstances or if it’s a Xoom-wide issue. SoulI shot a very brief video walkthrough of the interface, below. If you’re familiar with Android, Honeycomb isn’t radically different. It is, however, definitely suited for large screens. Rather than the cramped feel of previous Android versions, the vistas are wide and expansive. InterfaceThe Xoom is an Android tablet, not an overgrown phone. The UI is striking and the use of screen real estate is excellent. Even the unlock process, activated by sliding a little padlock out of a circle, seems to invite you to revel in the screen size. The onscreen keyboard is quite usable with one hand or two. The default screen displays a few frequently used apps including mail, music, and books. There is also a unique video editor with a real jog wheel for scrolling through video. In short, Google has really pushed Honeycomb to the next level in terms of tablet interaction. Apps take up the full widescreen real estate, making programs like Google Body or the Pulse Newsreader far superior to their previous versions. Are there some bumps on the road? Sure. Some of the features are a bit gimmicky, including an odd 3D effect that occurs when you move the device in the Gallery app. Viewed head-on the images look flat but turning the device sideways shows that they sit on a stack of nearly indiscernible cards. It’s a cute trick, but unnecessary. The other problem occurs when you run earlier Android apps. Twitter seems to look and work fine but games like truly execrable Super Android Brothers, a SMB clone, looked over-aliased and grainy. Like iPhone apps run on the iPad, the results are not excellent. The home screen is the most unique aspect of Honeycomb and the one you’ll notice first. The widgets and apps, thanks to the large, high-res screen, can be placed anywhere on the screen. When the screens are empty, in fact, the entire interface seems quite empty, a blank canvas. UI sensitivity is quite snappy and you’re apple to switch back to home thanks to a set of buttons in the lower left corner. The back button and home button is always visible and an app switch appears in some cases. You access your entire app library from the home screen by pressing a button on the top right corner and the notifications, as is Android’s wont, are excellent and unobtrusive. Thanks to the Tegra 2 processor, long lists of emails, Tweets, and the like scroll with a surprising speed, especially if you’ve used previous Android tablets. The kit also includes Google Maps, Latitude, and Navigation and includes A-GPS support for these apps. The device is a bit big for navigation, although Google Maps is a great way to plan a route through a strange city while sitting in a Seine-side cafe. This version of Honeycomb does not support Flash. The Xoom will support Flash in a few months, which is kind of hilarious seeing as that was one of Motorola’s original selling points. Regardless, you probably won’t miss it. Media PlaybackThe Xoom offered a very frustrating media playback experience. While the music I placed on the device played back without a hitch, the video refused to play. I uploaded a few AVIs of various sizes, including some that worked on previous versions of Android. I was unable to solve the problem with Motorola but I’ll keep trying. Formats and codecs are difficult, and while Apple’s restrictive re-encoding and resolution limitations are inconvenient, at least it’s easy for the end user to simply say “okay, make this play on my device.” It’s more difficult on Honeycomb, but that will probably smooth out with time. BusinessIn terms of business usability, the Xoom is great for basic functions like email, PIM, and some text editing. There are very few apps on board, though you can access QuickOffice in the Marketplace. The email client is very robust and usable, however, and the contact and calendar apps are too, if a bit flashy. They sync with Google Apps. The Good If you and I were sitting at a bar and talking about tablets, I’d say this and the iPad were the two to look into right now. That will change once other manufacturers start shipping, but this device is a complete, dedicated device for media intake and web surfing. The Bad There are going to be plenty of Honeycomb fish in the sea pretty soon, friends, and the Xoom is but a bit player in Android’s steady march towards world domination. What does that mean for dedicated Androidites? Well, you have to decide: do you like Motorola and Verizon or would you prefer to wait for any of the future Honeycomb devices slated to drop in the next few months? The Galaxy Tab 10.1 in particular shares almost all of the Xoom’s specs. The Xoom also isn’t yet for business users. I’d be concerned about Flash support as well as potential app incompatibility or instability. Bottom Line Again, this is the first of many 3.x tablets to visit their reigns of glory upon us. Is it – or will it be – the best Honeycomb tablet out there? I doubt it, but Motorola has offered a strong showing out of the gate and I was very impressed at the build quality and attention to detail, at least when it came to UI and physical design. The odd ports on the bottom are a bit of a concern, but otherwise the device is quite capable. If you literally can’t wait, this is a great tablet for you. But a few months may bring changes to the Honeycomb market that will make it less of a coup and more of an also-ran. Video music by FluidVolt. |
New Olympus Compacts Incoming On March 2nd? Posted: 23 Feb 2011 05:45 PM PST
We’ll keep our eyes open come March and give you the news as soon as we hear it. |
Posted: 23 Feb 2011 05:18 PM PST I’ve only seen bad reviews of this MindJack game, and Zero Punctuation’s take on it is even more savage than usual. It blows my mind that two or three guys can get together and put out something amazing like Braid or World of Goo, yet a couple dozen people manage to take far more money and time and barf out something like this. You don’t even have to make it great, people. Just make an okay game! I remember playing a game called Chaser, which wasn’t good, wasn’t bad, but it had some cool parts, a bargain price, and didn’t try to be anything but a solid shooter. But it seems like the MindJack team decided all they needed was a gimmick, and the rest would take care of itself. |
Rumor: The Daily Coming To Android This Spring Posted: 23 Feb 2011 04:05 PM PST Did anyone else see this coming so soon? We were under the impression that Apple and The Daily were in some sort of partnership, especially since The Daily was excluded from Apple’s new subscription service. Apparently, someone at All Things D has been tipped off that The Daily will be coming to Android this spring. If true, this would be a much more brief exclusivity than the Apple-AT&T partnership — that lasted almost four years. There are two scenarios here why the date is so soon: either The Daily is doing very well and wants to keep growing (with or without Apple’s help) or they are doing poor and need to expand. |
Home-Built Force Feedback Machine Rocks And Rolls You While Playing Dyad Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:35 PM PST
Yes, the creator of Dyad, a cool-looking game that will be shown at PAX East, has also constructed an enormous projector-chair-arcade cabinet that you sit in to play. It moves around and jolts you like those expensive racing game we’ve seen at CES and E3, but it’s totally home-made and uses sheets, cables, and plywood. Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. [via Hack A Day] |
Japanese Arcade Documentary 100 Yen Hits This Fall Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:30 PM PST
100 YEN: The Japanese Arcade Experience from Strata Studios on Vimeo. Here’s a success story of the crowdsourced variety. 100 Yen, a documentary project looking at arcade culture in Japan, has garnered all the cash it needs (via IndieGogo) to finish shooting, edit, and distribute their film, and it should get a release this fall. I don’t think you’ll be seeing it at your local multiplex, but I bet your local indie flick joint would host a showing if you can sell a few tickets. I’m looking forward to seeing it — the in-person social and competitive aspect of gaming is really different over there, and although we in the US play a ton of multiplayer, it’s still a very solitary experience. I think the differences reflect differences between American and Japanese cultures as well, and probably simple facts like Tokyo’s insane population density come into it as well. |
BookArc for MacBook Air: Make Your MBA Stand Up And Take Notice Posted: 23 Feb 2011 01:45 PM PST Twelve South makes cool, if simple, laptop gear. We’ve covered their BookArc before and this is an improved permutation of the version for the latest MacBook Air. It costs $39.99 and allows you to stand your laptop up next to a monitor and control the cabling so everything is in its right place. From the product description:
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Posted: 23 Feb 2011 01:10 PM PST
[via PS3Crunch - wait, PS3Crunch?!] |
Automower 305 Is Latest Mower From Husqvarna, Will Help Win Neighborhood Contest For Best Lawn Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:38 PM PST It’s still winter, but once spring comes, it’ll be time to cut the grass again. If you’re too lazy, then let a robot do it — oh yeah the future is here. Husqvarna has been around for a while, but today are better known garden items instead of dirt bikes. Their latest offering is called the Automower 305 and it promises to lift the labor of grass cutting off of your shoulders. The battery-powered mower weighs only 7kg and can trim some bush for about 40 minutes on a full charge, which takes 150 minutes to achieve. The Automower even comes with a built-in anti-theft system capable of scaring of thieves with an alarm. The mower moves at 35 cm/s or 0.782927702 mph. It’s good for cutting up to 500 square meters of grass, but it’ll cost you: $2000. |
Proliferation Of PGP Complicates Job Of Federal Investigators Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:30 PM PST Given that enabling PGP encryption is as easy as ticking a few boxes in both Mac OS X and Windows, it’s no surprise that the authorities are now increasing their efforts to combat the scourge of people wanting to keep their private data private. For starters, new Secret Service recruits are given a one-week crash course in computer forensics, presumably so agents will be able to say with confidence, "Oh, dear, this drive is encrypted, better call my supervisor." As you can imagine, trying to get the data off a drive that’s been encrypted—PGP is the preferred method—isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Beyond begging the owner for the decryption password, which the FBI did back in 2009 when it wanted to inspect the contents of a hard drive suspected of having child pornography, you can try to bruteforce it, but who has the time? You can expect border patrol to have the computing power to bruteforce a PGP’d drive right there on the spot. An average length password (seven or eight characters) would take as long as an entire year to crack. That’s not exactly practical. There are other options. Whereas the traditional way of saving data on a malfunctioning hard drive would be to turn the system off, thinking that you could "freeze" in place whatever data is on there, the best course of action when dealing with an encrypted drive is to keep the system on. At least there’s a chance the decryption password is still loaded in memory, and then you can try to retrieve said password. |
Kickstarter: Glyde And Orbit Are Stabilizing Solutions For Your iPhone Videos Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:00 PM PST
Minimizing the little changes in attitude you naturally make when moving the camera around will help a lot with making handheld video watchable. Of course, if you want to drastically change the angle during a shot (say by lifting the camera over your head and tilting it down), you’re more or less prevented by the gimbal, which keeps the phone at the orientation you set, be it parallel, inverted, or what have you. You can also unscrew the mount and put it on any other tripod, in case you don’t trust that beanpole to stay upright without you there to hold it. There are two options: the Glyde is the cradle, counterweight, and gimbal-mounted handle, and the Orbit is the same plus a bearing in the handle for horizontal panning. They’re planned to be $69 and $99 respectively — not a bad price, if you ask me. Head on over to the Kickstarter page for more info, and donate a few bucks if you’re into it. |
CrunchDeals: 40% Off ScottEVest Stuff Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:30 AM PST Type in coupon code 10SALE40 to rock 40% off of SeV this month in honor of ScottEVest’s 10th anniversary. Don’t feel like it? No big whoop. What, we want to fight about it? No. |
DOTKLOK Is A Hackable, Open-Source, Arduino Clock. Also Neat Looking Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:24 AM PST Sick of telling time the old way? Spice up your time-telling time with the open-source, hackable and Arduino-based DOTKLOK. Basically, you can get a bunch of different ways to tell time. Different customizable animations will make you proud to show off your hard work the next time someone asks for the time. Speaking of time, it passes in a unique way with numbers and abstract/geometric patterns. It also has classic video games like Pong, Tetris and Pacman, that pretty much makes it sweet in our book. DOTKLOK only uses 2 watts of power and if the electricity goes out, there’s a backup battery that will keep the time. It comes as a kit with hardware plans, schematics, source code and instructions so you can make whatever adjustments you want. LED colors come in red or green. The only down side is the price (starts at $150). But if you gotta have one, you can buy them here. Hands off videos |
Crysis 2′s Soundtrack Depends On What Type Of Enemy You’re Fighting Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:00 AM PST We’re one week ago from the PC multi-player demo of Crysis 2. Exciting! (It actually is, I’m not sure that came across well.) As the game’s release approaches, its developers have started opening up. First up: the game’s soundtrack. The MyCrysis site, which we’d do well to keep an eye on for the next few weeks, has an interview with a few of the score’s composers, and they explain the genesis of some of the songs. For example, Borislav Slavov says that one of the battle tracks, while keeping the same basic theme, differentiates itself depending on what type of enemy you’re fighting. Fighting humans? Say hello to "regular" instruments? Fighting those weird alien things? The theme morphs to a more electronic sound. From OK Computer to Kid A, if that makes any sense. |
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