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The Capulet iPad 2 Case… For The Ladies

Posted: 23 Mar 2011 05:18 AM PDT


JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

ROMEO
[Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

JULIET
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a iPad case.
What’s iPad case? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
ROMEO
I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
JULIET
What man art thou that thus bescreen’d in night
So stumblest on my counsel?
ROMEO
By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee;
Had I it written, I would tear the word.
JULIET
My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words
Of that tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound:
Art thou not Romeo and a iPad case?
ROMEO
Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.

Product Page


Casio Releases Bluetooth Connecting G-Shock Watch

Posted: 23 Mar 2011 05:03 AM PDT

A bit faster than I expected Casio has now finally debuted its first Bluetooth connected watch. The Casio G-Shock Bluetooth is designed for use with upcoming Bluetooth profile 4.0 mobile phones that are said to be coming soon (a few might already be around). As Bluetooth 4.0 is designated as a “low energy profile,” this watch will retain a 2 year battery life on a single CR2032 battery. So what does it do? In a nutshell the Casio G-Shock Bluetooth with wireless sync with your phone’s time, and help you manage incoming alerts as well as work with your phone’s alarms.

Read More…

Daily Crunch: Which Way Edition

Posted: 23 Mar 2011 12:00 AM PDT

Chumby 8 On Sale Tomorrow For $199, Ships April 5

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 06:42 PM PDT


Everyone’s favorite extra screen/robot/app platform, Chumby, is back for another round. They showed off their new model at CES (where we interviewed them) but there was no sign of pricing or availability. No longer! The Chumby 8 (named for its 8-inch screen) will ship on April 5th, and you can pre-order starting tomorrow (the 23rd) for $199. Good deal? You be the judge.

The Chumby platform is a weird one, to be sure, but there are a ton of Flash Lite apps that should run just fine on the new hardware, and the 8″ 800×600 touchscreen is really quite practical for on-desk use. Plus there’s a full web browser. Although I have to say I’m sorry to see that their weird design has given way to something more anonymous (but practical).

It’s got an 800MHz Marvell CPU in there, 128MB of RAM, a mic, speakers, headphone out, and has SD and CF storage. Not nearly as powerful as today’s tablets, but if you’re looking for something stationary and quirky, it could be for you.

Here’s the full press release, which explains it better than I can, really:

Introducing the chumby8: the World's First Stand-Alone App Player Just Got
Bigger and Better

Next gen chumby arrives April 5 for $199, pre-orders begin today

San Diego, CA — March 23, 2011 — chumby industries today announced the release
of the chumby8, the much-anticipated next generation chumby device. Officially
launching on April 5, the chumby8 is priced at $199 and available today for pre-orders
at chumby.com/store. With a sleek new design, an 8-inch LCD touchscreen, enhanced
features, and over 1,500 free apps, the chumby8 delivers a personalized stream of your
favorite apps in addition to serving as a digital photo frame and music player.

"The chumby8 truly marks an evolution of the chumby device and software platform,
creating a more personalized and user-friendly Internet streaming device that
will complete any connected home or office" said Derrick Oien, CEO of chumby
industries. "We’ve taken the time over the past year to listen to chumby fans and owners
and incorporate their feedback into the new chumby8 and created a great multi-purpose
connected device capable of tailoring to all.”

New features of the chumby8 include:

New, modern industrial design available in black and red. Customized skins
available from Skinit
8-inch 800×600 touchscreen LCD
Two USB ports, CF and SD slots make it possible to upload pictures, music and
other personal media of your choosing turning your chumby8 into a personalized
digital photo frame and music player
New web browser support, allows you to access links within apps
Revamped UI and streamlined navigation allows you to manage apps and
channels directly from the device. The chumby8 comes preloaded with ready-to-
play themed channels showcasing the best chumby apps in entertainment, news,
humor, games, kids, sports and more
Updates to share features make it easier to send photos, videos and apps to
friends and family
Robust Internet radio offers over 10,000 internet radio and podcast stations,
including Napster, Pandora, SHOUTcast, iheartradio, Mediafly, New York Times
and CBS, with more to come.
Full alarm system allows you to wake up to your favorite music stations and apps
Task scheduler allows you to perform a routine task on your device like entering

night mode at a certain time or playing music.
Flash Lite 4 update to support AS3 coming soon

The chumby8 has access to over 1,500 free applications— ranging from music and
social networking sites, news and entertainment gossip, to video clips and sports scores.
Content is available from well-known media sites including: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,
MTV Networks, Groupon, People.com and many others. Users can monitor their social
networks, view and share their photos from sites like Flickr and Photobucket, watch
sports clips, play games, or choose from a multitude of clock applications to display on
the touchscreen device.

About chumby industries

chumby industries, based in San Diego, California, is a software company that works
with consumer electronics OEMs to bring a rich and personalized Internet experience
to a multitude of connected products, ranging from devices as simple as clock radios
to high-definition televisions. The open chumby platform enables developers to easily
create Flash content for chumby-powered devices resulting in a constantly growing
catalog of more than 1,500 applications. For more information visit chumby.com or follow
us on twitter @chumby.

DIY WristWatch Turntable

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 06:30 PM PDT

Skrikitty skrikitty scratch! This odd little turntable lets you rock the wheels of steel from the comfort of your own wrist, in turn becoming the most popular of your peer group excepting the kids with real talent and/or good looks.

You can read the full Instuctable here or just watch the video a few times. Your call.

DIY Electronic Business Cards: You Know, For Nerds

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 05:40 PM PDT

Although a post that begins with “over the past six months I have set up fairly complete printed circuit board fabrication lab in my apartment, cheaply and safely” can be somewhat disconcerting, I believe that a man with the chops to make a PCB fab in is apartment is a man worthy of knowing. Luckily, that man, one Jared Foster, has made these fancy persistence-of-vision business cards to share his info with you.

The process includes full instructions for creating an etching tank, oven, and any number of electronical doodads. Sadly, this is so far beyond my ken that it might as well be Swahili.

Project Page


Actually A Good Idea: Toothbrush With Built-In Toothpaste

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 05:30 PM PDT


Tired of keeping around a tiny toothbrush for travel, or leaving nice ones at the hotel by accident? Don’t like to have to keep little 3-oz toothpaste tubes in a drawer in the bathroom? This thing might be fore you. Now, I do like this concept, though there are a few issues that come to mind:

  • Toothpaste comes out at the bottom of the bristles instead of the top. You’ll need to push out a lot or it’ll stay down there.
  • When rinsing or brushing, won’t water and saliva get in the little toothpaste delivery tubes and A: wash away toothpaste B: be gross?
  • How do you refill this thing? I bet it’s messy.
  • Do we really need to complicate one of the few simple devices left in our lives? It’s a brush for your teeth. Does it have to have moving parts?

In conclusion, I’ll take my chances with regular toothbrushes.

[via FastCo Design and Gizmodo]

How To Make A Pseudo-Antique Light Bulb Organ Controlled By A Midi Keyboard

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 05:00 PM PDT

Musical acts can always do better if they have some sort of gimmick. The band Future Dancing is using a nostalgic-looking light organ as theirs. There is an Instructable on the neat light organ showing off the organ’s 12 bulbs that correspond to 12 notes in the octave (minus the octave note). The lights are positioned where the pipes on a pipe organ would be and the bulbs light up whenever a key is pressed on the MIDI keyboard. Also, the sustain pedal is recognized and can hold the light accordingly.

Other than a midi controller, a computer is also needed to send the data to the bulbs. Check it out in the video below.

[via notcot]

Google Joins The Patent Madness With “Methods For Enticing Users To Access A Web Site”

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 04:30 PM PDT


I guess the USPTO felt they were leaving Google out of the game, what with Apple suing over the phrase “App Store,” Microsoft suing for showing the status of a download, and Paul Allen suing for everything else. So they went ahead and granted Google’s request to patent the Google Doodle.

Yes, that’s right: among other things, they are claiming the method of creating a special logo and then providing special results if you click that logo. In their defense, the patent was filed for in 2001. Of course, that’s not much of a defense.

I think we can all find plenty of examples going back more than 10 years of this exact sort of thing. And really, isn’t it just an online analog to, say, putting up a sign on the store that says “Spring Sale, 50% Off” – and then having the spring collection just inside the door? A little digging would surely turn up similar ideas to the storytelling thing. I’ve seen countless promotions like that. If Google has invented something new, this patent doesn’t seem to drill down quite far enough to include only that.

There really isn’t too much more to say, other than the usual deploring of the state of the patent system, which proves itself over and over to be completely inadequate and inappropriate for handling today’s intellectual property. Yet the necessity of such a system (in one form or another) and the enormous backlog of data associated with it are poisonous to attempts at modification. It’ll likely take billions of dollars and a visionary “Cyber Czar” to make it happen, though of course I’m sure we all have simple and effective solutions that fit on bar napkins.

Modernizing our patent system isn’t something we can take lightly, and the transition will be weird and difficult. But it’s got to be better than this. I mean really, Google. A method for enticing users?

[via H Open and TechDirt]

TechCrunch And Millions Of WordPress.com Blogs On Pause Due To Back-End Outage [Update: We're Back!]

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 04:18 PM PDT


Notice anything different about this post? How about that the links are orange? Yes, that’s right, I’m blogging off of CrunchGear because it’s been impossible to access our WordPress.com back-end for a little over two hours. CrunchGear is hosted on RackSpace so it isn’t affected.

WordPress.com has told our developer that the issue is an internal, programmatic error. The error seems to be affecting the entire site network, so it’s not just us but millions of others sites like Gigaom.com and people’s personal blogs (WordPress.com serves 18 million publishers). They’ve also revised the ETA for restoring service multiple times, with no fix in site.

Trying to access the TechCrunch back-end currently results in an “We’re experiencing some problems on WordPress.com and we are in read-only mode at the moment. We’re working hard on restoring full service as soon as possible, but you won’t be able to create or make changes to your site currently” error message. We’ve seen the gamut of error messages over the past three hours.

Last time we experienced WordPress issues it was due to DDoS attacks, but that is apparently not the case here. I’ve contacted WordPress.com for more details and will update this post (hopefully on TechCrunch.com) when I hear back.

Update from WordPress, not good news:

“Operations have not been successful bringing the last data center online, and stabilitizing the load in the other two data centers. Not affecting web site visitors continues to shape each action we take. Operations is carefully shifting some front end servers to act as admin servers. We’ll know if this has the desired effect in the next 20 minutes.”

Update 2: And we’re back! Looks like our CMS is working again.

WordPress

Groupon Wants To Hire Over 100 People In Palo Alto Office, Buys Billboard Campaign

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 03:39 PM PDT

Daily deals site Groupon has joined the tech billboard wars in an effort to bulk up staff at its West Coast office. Groupon PR representative Julie Mossler tells me it’s looking to hire over 100 developers and technologists at its 409 Sherman Avenue location in Palo Alto by the end of this year — Specifically in data, analytics, networking, mathematics and Ruby on Rails.

“We’re investing in Palo Alto as a tech hub,” said Mossler. “We’re still hiring here [in homebase Chicago] for devs, but Andrew’s always said publicly that the talent pool here is shallow, so it makes sense to invest out there.”

Billboard campaigns on the 101 are said to run in the 30K range and have been most famously utilized by Zynga. In this specific campaign a Groupon billboard with a discreet G went up on Paul Avenue near the Cesar Chavez exit  on March 9th (below). The big push happened on March 21st, with the “Do Something Massive : TECH JOBS IN PALO ALTO — Groupon.com/techjobs” tagline unveiled just yesterday. The campaign will run until July and the company plans to set up more billboards shortly.

Groupon has 2,000 employees in its Chicago offices, another 3,000 in its affiliate offices around the world. Groupon also has the cash in its coffers to hire, having gone through a $950 million venture round back in January, with rumors of an IPO by the end of this year. Its most recent valuation was reported by Bloomberg to be $25 billion.

Groupon, whose core product can be thought of in and of itself as a form of marketing, has had a mixed history with ad campaigns — Notably pulling its consumer-facing Super Bowl campaign after a wave of backlash. Mossler tells me that the billboard campaign has been successful so far, “The office has been getting a lot off attention.”

Those interested can visit http://www.groupon.com/techjobs

CrunchBase Information
Groupon
Information provided by CrunchBase

Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement: Make It Opt-In

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 03:35 PM PDT


Federal Judge Denny Chin ruled against the proposed settlement between Google and written content creators, saying that the proposed $125 million agreement (in discussion since 2009) is over-broad, and takes too many liberties on the part of orphan works and other potentially disputable items. The agreement would have put millions of books, in and out of print, online, but Chin suggested that the nature of the agreement (opt-out rather than opt-in) was too permissive of Google’s “scan first, get permission later” approach, and that it essentially rewarded them for illegal behavior. Seems to me that rewarding illegal behavior is pretty common these days, but we’ll assume that Chin meant well here.

In the summary of his decision, Chin says:

While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the ASA would simply go too far… Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.

I think it’s fair to say that while the agreement is headed in the right direction, it also has an air of frontier justice to it. Google has set itself up to be the only reasonable partner, and the only real provider of this information, making them the de facto default for online distribution (Bezos considered this an issue right away). Legitimizing the legal grey area Google’s work exists in seems like a dubious precedent.

Chin also cited copyright concerns, though the policy suggested in the ASA seems reasonable enough:

Google may not display in-print Books at all unless and until it receives prior express authorization from the Books’ Rightsholders. The ASA does give Google the right to make Non-Display Uses of in-print Books. (ASA § 3.4).Google may display out-of-print Books without the prior express authorization of the Books’ Rightsholders, but its right to do so ceases when and if the Rightsholder directs Google to stop.

Amazon and Microsoft pointed out (as noted in the Judge’s objections) that by approving the agreement, he may effecting a mass-transfer of copyrights without the consent of the rightsholders, and against the laws restricting such far-reaching copyright actions to Congress. It’s certainly arguable that an agreement such as this one, regardless of how sober it appears to be today, is as likely as not to appear incredibly shortsighted when any serious reworking of copyright law (in light of services like Google Books) takes effect. In some cases judicial activism” might be welcome, but I think I understand his unwillingness to take this chance when the affected parties worldwide number in the millions.

Switching from an opt-out to an opt-in model seems to be the magic bullet here. Unfortunately, that complicates things for Google. Well, the other way around complicates things for concerned rights-holders. As the primary force behind this action, it behooves Google to assume whatever level of responsibility is necessary to make it work. Will they do so? The clock is ticking, and their advantage in having preemptively scanned all those books (in good faith, but still outside the law) is dwindling.

Here’s the full ruling, for your perusal:

Google Settlement Rejection Filing

I’m glad that Chin is careful to state that he is cognizant of the potential benefits of such a system, but objects on ethical and technical grounds. Different from some judges we’ve seen. We’ll continue coverage as soon as Google or the other parties involved have an official response other than disappointment.

Toshiba Releases A Mobile 14-inch LCD Monitor Powered By USB

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 03:30 PM PDT

Today, Toshiba put out a new portable USB-powered monitor. It’s a pretty cool to be able to carry around a second monitor that runs purely on USB power; that’s like a blogger’s dream. The carrying case even unfolds into a stand.

The specs are:

  • 14-inch LCD
  • 1366 X 768 pixels
  • 2.8 pounds
  • 220 nits brightness (with optional AC adapter)
  • 400:1 contrast ratio
  • 16 millisecond response
  • Support for Windows XP and up
  • Video through USB, no VGA/DVI/HDMI video cable required
  • Price is $199.99
Toshiba-monitor Toshiba-14-inch-USB-Mobile-LCD-Monitor-1 Toshiba-14-inch-USB-Mobile-LCD-Monitor-2

[via Engadget]

Viewfinder App For Contour Lets iPhone View Video Live

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 03:00 PM PDT

We tested the ContourHD a few months back and liked it for the most part. The only problem was that we couldn’t see what we were recording, often leading to accidental filming of the sky and over-exposed video. That issue is no more — well for the ContourHD it is, but not the newer ContourGPS — because the ContourGPS has Bluetooth to connect to an iPhone. Not only can the app view live video right on the iPhone’s screen, but also can change setting and replay recorded video.

This makes quite a big difference over the old shoot-and-pray method. The only drawback is that it requires the purchase of a $29.99 card to connect to iPhone. Apparently the Android version — due soon — will not require it. The app is free and and available now; Android coming in the Spring.



Press Release

Contour Launches Connect View Card and Viewfinder App for ContourGPS Video Camera

Contour Viewfinder App now available on the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch

March 21st, 2011 (Seattle, Wash.) – Contour, market leader in hands-free video cameras, today announced the availability of its ConnectView card and Viewfinder App for iPhone and iPod touch. The ContourGPS camera is a hands-free video camera designed to capture location and HD video.

The ConnectView card is inserted into the ContourGPS camera and connects it with iPhone or iPod touch over Bluetooth. Once the connection is established, the Viewfinder App enables iPhone or iPod touch to act as a live viewfinder.

The ConnectView card is compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G and iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation).

“This changes the game in hands-free video,” states Contour CEO Marc Barros. “With this solution, we’ve overcome the limitation of a video camera lacking a wireless screen. Now when your camera is mounted you can actually look at a screen to line up your shot and change your settings in real time. Hands-free video just got a lot more hands-free.”

To use the new feature, ContourGPS video camera users must:
Update the firmware on their ContourGPS camera.
Purchase the Contour ConnectView card ($29.99 MSRP) from http://www.contour.com.
Download the free Viewfinder App from the App Store.

The Contour Viewfinder App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com.

For complete instructions and additional information, visit http://contour.com/mobile.

The ContourGPS camera brings together three of the hottest trends: mobile, location and video. It goes beyond being just a camera-it’s an all-in-one platform that offers innovative software in conjunction with a vibrant online community. Customers can record, post, and share their video adventures while tracking their path, speed, and elevation on a map-all at the same time. A rugged video camera made specifically for the estimated 100 million outdoor enthusiasts around the world, ContourGPS makes it easy to capture video from within the action and share it online in seconds.

As Giganews Approaches 1,000 Days Of Retention, A Contest Brews

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 02:30 PM PDT

Oh dear, another Usenet post. Quickly now, as we don't want to draw too much to the last interesting place left on the Internet. Giganews recently hit 900 days of retention, and they've announced that they expect to his 1,000 days of rentention—just think about that for a second—on May 2. To celebrate, they're having a bit of a contest.

What can the good people of Usenet-land expect? Well, the grand prize is a 5TB Drobo unit. Clever prize, that. Smaller prizes include an iPad 2, PS3, Xbox 360, and the always-present-in-these-types-of-things branded t-shirt.

They've gone all social media this time around. You can enter by being a Diamond member of the service, but you can also tweet about the fact that we're approaching 1,000 days of retention, "like" the company on Facebook, and so forth.

You can also the good old fashioned way by signing up with your e-mail address.

And now we return to Usenet radio-silence.


NZXT’s H2 Case Is The Strong, Silent Type

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PDT


I’m in the middle of putting together a PC right now, and I just can’t believe the amount of stress people seem to put on flashy, brightly-lit components. Seems to me that every dollar you spend on colored LEDs is one less dollar you’re spending on performance. I prefer understated components that don’t make much noise, surrounded by a case that keeps them cool and quiet. NZXT’s H2 looks like a good bet.

It’s a fullmid tower, which I know some people aren’t into, and it’s also not transparent and mostly featureless on the outside — again, not everyone’s cup of tea. But it’s definitely mine.

The H2 has the usual spacious NZXT internals: room for an ATX board, eight hard drives plus an external SATA hot-swap port, a 170mm heatsink, plenty of front-panel ports, and so on. It’s even got a fan control stepper built into the front panel for quick control over system temperature. There’s got sound-dampening material inside and you can cover up most of the fan ports (there’s a special magnetic cover for the top one) for times when you need an extra-quiet system.

Looks like a truly solid case. I might have to pick this up for my build.

Displaymate Analyzes iPad 2′s Screen, Finds It Satisfactory

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 01:30 PM PDT


A serious breakdown of the iPad 2′s screen has been done by Displaymate, and the conclusions are… not too surprising. It’s an excellent IPS-LCD screen, not a cut-rate one picked to save money, and its performance is, resolution aside, about the same as an iPhone 4′s.

The screen is mostly identical to the iPad, it looks like. Some of the main points:

  • Oversaturation and limited gamut: The iPad 2 and iPhone 4 both have a restricted color gamut, meaning that they have to exaggerate color with artificial oversaturation and overcontrast.
  • Good white balance: Standard WB is 6500K, iPad 2 is about 6990K, which is a little warm but close enough.
  • Reflections: Because the glass and the display are not directly bonded, as they are on the iPhone 4 and other mobiles, there is an air gap, allowing extra light to be reflected out. It\’s not a really big deal, though.
  • Viewing angle: Very good, as I\’ve noted myself with the old iPad. Color barely changes within normal viewing angles, although the iPad 2 does show extreme brightness dropoff.

All in all, it’s fair to call it a very nice little screen. Personally I like the sound of the Galaxy Tab 8.9′s 1280×800 screen, but whether it’s of the same quality, nobody can say right now.

Check out the rest of the analysis here.

Rustock Botnet: Down & Out, Or Merely Down?

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 01:00 PM PDT

It was like a movie. Microsoft, working with domestic and international police, and with corporations like Phizer, had managedto effectively shut down the Rustock botnet last week. Almost overnight the total volume of spam—that was Rustock’s specialty—collapsed. But is the botnet completely shut down, or does its very nature prevent it from every truly being shut down?

The deal, by way of mighty Ars Technica, is that Microsoft (and a whole host of other entities) had managed to behead, in a sense, the Rustock botnet. Rustock had been around since late 2005, but didn’t peak until mid-2010. Its main activity was to collect computers and have them sent out junk email on-demand. The malware behind its propagation was, and still is, difficult to detect, meaning that there could be thousands of people—maybe even you!—who are infected but have no idea.

Just another reason to maintain your anti-malware software, and practice safe browsing habits.

And while the amount of spam passed around the Internet in the days following the shutdown went way down (technical term, yes), since there’s no easy way to determine if you’ve been infected, who’s to say if the botnet gets restarted, with its central servers in a country that wasn’t affected by the cutoff, it couldn’t set it off all over again?

The Internet: just more and more annoying to use.


3DS Could Help With Early Diagnosis Of Vision Problems

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 12:30 PM PDT

One of the objections often raised against 3D, and with justice, is that people with certain common vision problems can’t see the 3D effect. It just has to do with 3D technology assuming a certain level of intact functionality in the visual system, and the fact is that a significant portion of the population, for one reason or the other, doesn’t meet that level. Our own Matt Burns can’t really see 3D. But he doesn’t let it get him down.

Then there are objections that it could affect the vision of children under 6. Fair enough — but then someone put 2 and 2 together, and thought “wait, couldn’t we use 3D to detect vision problems in the very young, and correct them before it’s too late?” Yes, it appears, we can.

Michael Duenas, from the American Optometric Association (the glasses guys, not the eye surgery guys), calls the 3DS in particular a “godsend” because it may help to diagnose problems like amblyopia (lazy eye) before the issue has solidified into a permanent one. Before kids reach adolescence, much of their visual system (as well as other systems) is still being established, so catching these problems early is essential.

At the same time, let’s not get carried away. Jim Sheedy of Pacific University summed it up well:

“Is there a limit on how much a child should be viewing 3-D? Yeah. How much is it? I don’t know. Let’s use some sound judgment,” he said.

He noted that the No. 1 health issue associated with console and computer gaming is obesity, rather than eye problems.

“Kids should be out running around,” he said.

Well said.

These Hermes iPad 2 Cases Costs More Than An iPad 2

Posted: 22 Mar 2011 12:00 PM PDT

First off, this is silly. $1,400 for an orange leather flap seems a bit dumb to me. Sure, the leather might be from some special barbwire-free cattle that only consumes organic alfalfa hand-picked by the finest Irish leprechauns. Who the hell cares? $1,400 can buy you a couple of houses here in Flint, MI — slumlord or 2 square feet of cow ass? But moreover, how the hell does the case work? Does the leather feature some sort of ratcheting internal structure that supports a tablet? It really doesn’t matter. It’s still dumb just like the cheaper $800 leather sleeve shown after the jump.
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