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- Hitachi Develops Next-Generation RFID Tag
- Why Is Toyota America Using A Japanese Virtual Idol To Promote The Corolla? (Videos)
- HTC Flyer’s Stylus Will Run You $80
- More Hacks In Store For Sony?
- LA Noire To Ship On Three Discs For 360, One For PS3
- Creative Releases The ZEN Style PMP
- Raspberry Pi: A $25 Bare-Bones PC That Fits On Your Keychain
- Erasing And Recovering Hard Drives: An Increasingly Complicated Affair
- Sony-Ericsson’s Xperia Mini And Mini Pro Are Officially Small
- Smithsonian Announces Art Of Video Games Exhibition Winners
- Finch Robot Introduces Kiddies To The Joy Of Programming
- An Atari 810 Disk Drive For MicroSD – Built To Scale
- GoPro Announces New Funding, Best Buy Availability Of The Wearable HD Action Camera
- Videos: Brainwave-Controlled Cat Ears “Necomimi”
- Google Brings Street View Inside Businesses, Unveils Google Earth For Android Tablets
- Video Review: The Hasbro My3D
- Gameboys… Innnnnn… Spaaaace
- CrunchDeals: Alienware OptX 22-inch 1080p Monitor
- The pHOLD Bike Mount: You Know, For Bikes
- Report: Android Tablets Facing Massive Oversupply
| Hitachi Develops Next-Generation RFID Tag Posted: 06 May 2011 04:31 AM PDT
Hitachi subsidiary Hitachi Information Systems has announced [JP] the development of a next-generation RFID tag today. What’s new about it is that the tag withstands the heat of welding: in other words, companies don’t need to drill screw holes anymore to put them into place. Hitachi says that their new tags can be welded into place in just 10 seconds, whereas conventional ones take around 5 minutes to be attached to objects. The metal tags are sized at 22mm×24mm×5.3mm and are expected to be used in construction machinery, agricultural machinery and equipment, gas cylinders and similar objects. Hitachi plans to start shipping the devices to manufacturers in Japan and China in July. Each tag will cost $6.22, with Hitachi projecting sales to reach up to 1 million units within the next three years.
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| Why Is Toyota America Using A Japanese Virtual Idol To Promote The Corolla? (Videos) Posted: 06 May 2011 03:46 AM PDT
I am guessing the intersection between the target group for the car and fans of Miku in North America to amount to less than 100 people, but Toyota’s marketing department may know things I don’t. In Japan, rumor has it Hatsune Miku maker Crypton Future is planning to introduce Hatsune Miku to the American market sometime next year, maybe that’s one reason. Here are the promo videos (Kotaku’s right, these are super awkward):
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| HTC Flyer’s Stylus Will Run You $80 Posted: 05 May 2011 07:04 PM PDT
Let’s hope the tablet (expected to cost $500 for a base configuration) comes with one of these things. And try not to lose it! [via Android Central]
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| Posted: 05 May 2011 05:53 PM PDT
FUD? Fabrication? Or confidence? You be the judge. By the way, if you’re worried about your private info, Sony is generously offering complimentary enrollment in a identity theft protection program. Details here.
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| LA Noire To Ship On Three Discs For 360, One For PS3 Posted: 05 May 2011 05:35 PM PDT
Maybe I’ll wait for the PC version, which will come on no discs at all.
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| Creative Releases The ZEN Style PMP Posted: 05 May 2011 04:58 PM PDT
Creative is offering their new PMPs, the ZEN M300. Price at $40 to $90 these tiny MP3/Video players have Bluetooth support and a micro-SD slot and FM radio. They come in 4, 8, and 16GB sizes and they come in black, white, red or yellow. The M100 is exactly the same but without Bluetooth. Creative has been doing great stuff in the speaker world recently, especially with their unique Bluetooth docks. While not quite as mainstream as they once were, these deserve a second look. Creative Introduces Pure Wireless Portability with the ZEN Style M300 — Featuring Bluetooth Wireless Music Playback and an Ultra-Compact Design Stylish Music, Photo and Video Player Features microSD Card Slot and 1.45″ Screen with Touch Buttons Milpitas, CA (PRWEB) May 05, 2011 Creative Technology Ltd today announced the launch of the Creative ZEN Style M300 music, photo and video player with Bluetooth wireless audio playback. Just 55 x 44 x 12 mm in size, the Creative ZEN Style M300 is packed with features including a microSD card slot and 1.45″ TFT screen with Touch Buttons, and it is priced from only $39.99. Key Features of the Creative ZEN Style M300 This allows users to enjoy music from the player wirelessly from all compatible stereo Bluetooth headphones such as the Creative WP-Series, which includes the ultra affordable Creative WP-250, and Bluetooth speakers such as the all new ZiiSound Dx Series and Creative D80, as well as Creative’s existing line-up of wireless speakers Additional Space for Music with microSD Card Slot Touch Buttons FM Radio The Creative ZEN Style M100 was also launched today, offering the great design and features of the ZEN Style M series of players without Bluetooth connectivity and FM Radio. Both the Creative ZEN Style M300 and Creative ZEN Style M100 feature Audible support, giving users the option of enjoying a wide range of audio content that includes books of all genres. Both players also come pre-installed with a complete edition of Alyson Noël’s Evermore, the first book in her thrilling Immortals series. Creative ZEN Style M300 and Creative ZEN Style M100 are available in a choice of four colors: black, white, red or yellow. Technical Specifications of the Creative ZEN Style M Series of Players Creative ZEN Style M300 Portable Media Player Audible Format 4, Audible AAX Creative ZEN Style M100 Portable Media Player Audible Format 4, Audible AAX * 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Available capacity will be less. Reported capacity will vary. Pricing and Availability Creative ZEN Style M300 4GB $49.99 For in-store availability, please refer to local authorized dealers. For more information about the Creative ZEN Style M300 and Creative ZEN Style M100 portable media players, please visit http://www.creative.com/purewireless. About Creative This announcement relates to products launched in Europe. Availability is subject to change without notice and may differ elsewhere in the world according to local factors and requirements. ZEN and Sound Blaster are trademarks or registered trademarks of Creative Technology Ltd in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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| Raspberry Pi: A $25 Bare-Bones PC That Fits On Your Keychain Posted: 05 May 2011 04:47 PM PDT
David Braben, perhaps best known for developing the revolutionary Elite, is now leading a foundation called Raspberry Pi to mass produce this ultra-minimal PC and distribute it where even an OLPC is too much. Their device is as bare-bones as it gets, and they’re hoping to sell it for $25.
With a 16GB SD card, a USB hub connecting a mouse and keyboard, and any monitor that connects to composite or HDMI, you’ve got a fully functional PC that probably outperforms desktops from a few years back. It’ll run what you put on it, as long as it’s ARM-compatible — right now it’s shown running Ubuntu 9, but there are a number of options, all offering complete modern web browsing, office tools, printing, maps, and all the other usual suspects. I suspect this thing is much less junkware than many other low-cost devices, many of which are simply turning around cheap components for a low-margin product. This thing could be bought in bulk and easily distributed, powering internet cafes and schools in impoverished areas, and introducing them to the joys of Linux. Every kid could carry their entire computer around with them on an SD card. Doesn’t that sound right? Personally, I like it better than the OLPC approach, admirable as it is.
The Raspberry Pi team still has to prove it can produce the device for the price they’ve quoted — a task that has choked bigger operations than theirs. But despite being a custom device and PCB, it doesn’t seem unlikely that these off-the-shelf components (plus perhaps a shell) could be gotten for under that. If you’d like to know more, head over to Raspberry Pi’s similarly bare-bones website, or check out this article at the BBC, where there is a video of Braben showing off the device and explaining his motivation for it.
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| Erasing And Recovering Hard Drives: An Increasingly Complicated Affair Posted: 05 May 2011 03:50 PM PDT
I’ve always found both necessities, and the methods for achieving them, interesting topics. And with densities increasing and SSDs on the rise, the recovery and security scene is getting more complex by the day. I spoke with Chris Bross, a data recovery expert at DriveSavers, in order to get a feel for what the recovery practices are out there today. Drives by the billion The hard disk drive market today, says Bross, is vastly different from what it was like 20 years ago. Manufacturers have consumed one another until there are essentially only two majors today: Western Digital and Seagate. All told over 650 million hard drives are sold every year, and as the price per gig is still far better for HDDs, that number isn’t likely to go down any time soon. Enterprise and cloud storage are still exploding.
In fact, DriveSavers has been offering its recovery services for free to people affected by the tsunami in Japan. Water damage is a common and well-understood failure — unlike, say, irradiation or a corrupted driver. Chris mentioned that they have a sort of symbiotic relationship with drive manufacturers: Drivesavers gets access to special tools for recovering data, and the manufacturers get access to a ton of failure data (some interesting examples here). That relationship is important, since the huge volume means manufacturers can’t address every issue, and the increasing density and precision of hard drives makes recovery more difficult every year. But as long as the platters are reasonably intact, it’s just a matter of careful dissection and re-mounting the drives. Solid state difficulty SSDs are a different story. Bross pointed out that the situation out there is more like a couple decades ago in HDDs, when there were a dozen or more drive manufacturers. By DriveSavers’ count, there are over 100 manufacturers of flash and SSD storage, and quite a few companies putting together drivers, interfaces, and other management software. It’s a jungle out there. Interestingly, the first generation of SSDs, which relied on single-layer cell technology, was far more reliable than the current multi-layer cell devices; reliability per cell was much higher — but the drive controllers were primitive. Major advances in write patterns, wear control, and so on are rolling out constantly, and it’s difficult to stay abreast of all the different kinds of failures possible out there. Failure rates on SSDs are still relatively high (though data is hard to come by and harder to interpret), so consider yourself warned. A failure on an SSD can happen in a number of ways, and unlike HDDs, it seems that they are more likely to fail irrecoverably than in a way you can reverse. This is partially due to the way data is written on the drives — the new MLC flash necessitates an almost random pattern of writes in order to control cell wear, and if this pattern can’t be derived from the driver or encryption, the drive is essentially filled with garbage data. Sanitation services This same “problem” is in fact a powerful security feature. One of the services DriveSavers offers, though you can of course do it yourself, is “drive sanitation.” It’s when you want to be absolutely sure that data isn’t recoverable, and SSDs make that an easy job.
On normal HDDs, zeroing out the drive can take quite a long time, and with the right tools there’s no guarantee formatting or zeroing is enough. There are more industrial-strength techniques for killing a drive (DriveSavers degausses the drive and then puts it in a “crush box” for total destruction), but as it turns out, the most practical thing is to use a self-encrypting drive. If you’re concerned about security, this is a must. They cost a bit more and you’ll have to manage the encryption via software, but by “losing” the encryption key, the data is instantaneously rendered unrecoverable. SSDs are naturally encrypted, since it’s built into the drive controller. Again, by losing the key or destroying the encryption device, the data is instantly rendered garbage, even to professionals. Technically the data is still there, though, so the ultra-paranoid data sanitation expert will actually grind down the SSD to dust. Short of nuking from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure. My final question was regarding that situation we all fear may come one day: you look out the window some day and lo, there are black helicopters descending. They’re here for you — and your precious data. You have 30 seconds before they break down the door. How do you make sure they can’t get a single byte off those drives? It turns out that no amount of sledgehammering or thermite can do as thorough a job as a 256-bit encryption process can do by throwing away the key. Plus, sledgehammering your drives looks kind of suspicious. Just sit calmly down, go to your disk encryption manager, and hit the appropriate button. Then turn off your computer, sit down on the couch and look innocent. The world of drive recovery is always growing more sophisticated, but the take-home message is that there’s no excuse not to back up. If your data is worth sending to someone to be recovered, it’s worth paying for an extra drive and some backup software, or even better, an off-site service. It’s also nice to know that these days, your data is exactly as secure as you make it — that is, if it’s within reach. [header image credit: Seagate]
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| Sony-Ericsson’s Xperia Mini And Mini Pro Are Officially Small Posted: 05 May 2011 02:18 PM PDT
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| Smithsonian Announces Art Of Video Games Exhibition Winners Posted: 05 May 2011 01:37 PM PDT
But it’s true. I imagine this is partly because the results are based on voting by the gaming public. You can read the whole list here (pdf). It starts with Atari and ends with PS3, leaving out only true outsiders like 3DO and handhelds (a notable but understandable exclusion).
My impressions? There are a few omissions and suspect choices, but for the most part this is a damned good list. They’ve got everything from Combat to Portal on here. And their categories (action, adventure, target, and combat/strategy) are remarkably well-chosen. I would have gone with action, adventure, sim, and shooter, personally, but these are decent. Let’s see, though, this wouldn’t be a blog post without a little carping. What’s the deal with:
And one pervasive issue is the inclusion as a “definitive” game on a system a game that was on multiple platforms. Why does N64 get Worms: Armageddon and Saturn get Simcity 2000 when both were really PC games? But other than these minor issues, this is a fantastic list and I’m sure they’ll put together a hell of an exhibit. If you’re in the area, you should definitely stop by the museum next year between March and September. Don’t worry, we’ll remind you. [via 1up, which just got bought by IGN]
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| Finch Robot Introduces Kiddies To The Joy Of Programming Posted: 05 May 2011 01:06 PM PDT
It’s called the Finch, and it costs a hundred bucks — for that price you get this little foot-long guy, equipped with wheels, a variety of sensors (temperature, light, etc), accelerometers, a pen mount on its tail, and a few other things. It’s a plug-and-play USB device, and is programmable with Java and Python (other languages will be made available soon). They’ve also put up a bunch of resources at the site for setting up lesson plans, working at home, and such. My main issue is that it’s both USB-powered (no battery) and offloads its computation to the computer. How will people learn to code for a limited microcontroller with miniscule amounts of RAM and only a couple megs of internal storage? True, remote processing is totally legit (this great quadrocopter does it) but it seems like starting that way is a little backwards. But what do I know? Seems like a cool idea to get coding off the screen and into the real world — and it also serves as an early recruiting tool for CMU’s excellent robotics programs. [image credit: SaltPepperFinch on YouTube]
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| An Atari 810 Disk Drive For MicroSD – Built To Scale Posted: 05 May 2011 11:53 AM PDT
Yes, it’s not a novelty card reader, it’s a working Atari disk drive. The enclosure was made using fabrication service Shapeways, though unfortunately it was necessary to emulate the hardware, as shrinking it wasn’t an option. So there’s a microcontroller that mounts the file system and checks for disk files, and then “mounts” them, sending the appropriate information to the Atari.
Add a little paint and the look is complete. Rossum will be putting the source, 3D model, and everything up on Github soon, so if you want to replicate it, it’s just a little elbow grease standing between you and a tiny drive. [via Hacker News]
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| GoPro Announces New Funding, Best Buy Availability Of The Wearable HD Action Camera Posted: 05 May 2011 11:50 AM PDT
The founding comes from Riverwood Capital, Steamboat Ventures, Sageview Capital, Walden International and U.S. Venture Partners. The amount wasn’t disclosed, but GoPro’s Rick Loughery indicated to me in an email that “it’s a lot” and the company is growing rapidly and now employes over 80 people rather than the 14 this time last year. The funding will also be used to take the wearable camcorder to international markets. The HD Hero is already without question one of US’ favorite action camera and GoPro’s other announcement regarding Best Buy will further expand its popularity here in the states. Best Buy Stores now stocks both the $299 GoPro HD Helmet Hero (1080p@60, 3D-compatible in pairs) and the $179 HD Hero (960p@30) along with a full range of accessories including mounts, adapters, batteries, the LCD BackPac and the 3D Hero System, which also for two 1080p HD Heros to record 3D video. Alongside the financial investment comes new personal for the GoPro board with Michael Marks, former chairman and CEO Flextronics and founding partner of Riverwood Capital; Ned Gihuly, a Sageview Capital founding partner; and managing director of Steamboat Ventures, Beau Laskey. We looked at the GoPro HD Hero back when it was announced and use two HD Heros cameras in our AutoTech car videos — well, until recently when one meet the underside of an Infiniti tire. The picture quality is above average, but the wide-angle lens and versatile mounts make them incredible handy.
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| Videos: Brainwave-Controlled Cat Ears “Necomimi” Posted: 05 May 2011 11:23 AM PDT
We covered brainwave-controlled wheelchairs from Japan before, so why not brainwave-controlled cat ears, dubbed Necomimi? The wearer concentrates or sees something interesting and the ears stand up. And when you relax, your decreasing brain activity makes the ears fall down. No, I am not making this up.
In the words of the maker of the ears, Tokyo-based neurowear:
Just watch the following promo video: neurowear says their ears are just the first in an upcoming line of similar fashion items and gadgets. This video shows regular people trying on the cat ears: Via Japan Trends
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| Google Brings Street View Inside Businesses, Unveils Google Earth For Android Tablets Posted: 05 May 2011 10:17 AM PDT
Back in March at SXSW, Mayer announced that 40% of Maps usage was coming from mobile phones. Today, she announced that the number is now up to over 50% (she qualified this by saying the stat is for weekends, but it sounds like the weekday trend isn’t far behind). Next, Mayer announced that Google has now racked up some 5 million ratings and reviews in its database of Places, thanks in part to its successful (and oddly named) Hotpot project. The keynote then turned to some product launches. The first is Google Business Photos, which will allow users to explore the interiors of select businesses.
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| Posted: 05 May 2011 09:36 AM PDT Can a $35 piece of plastic offer a compelling and immersive 3D experience? Well, yes and no. The Hasbro My3D is a fun idea – it’s basically a stereoscopic viewer that splits images on the iPhone or iPod Touch into two discrete sides. It really works and is quite cool when you initially try it. When you look through the lenses you see a half-resolution 3D image that reacts to the motion of the iPhone in three dimensions, allowing you to move around and rotate in the 3D world. Little cut-outs on the bottom let you tap onscreen buttons and there are multiple games including 360 Sharks, a swimming simulator, and Bubble Bolt, a Monkey Ball clone. Games are free but will eventually cost $5. I was initially unenthused about this device and after using it a bit and having the kids play it I’m still kind of “meh.” It’s a cute idea and it offloads all of the moving parts to the iPhone but after a few days the kids ignored it and I’d worry that it would be another $35 piece of plastic at the bottom of the toy chest. If anything cracks the 3D code it will be the Nintendo 3DS and even that is lagging in general uptake. If you want to try it maybe grab it when it goes on sale and play a few titles. As it stands today, however, it’s not quite as much fun as I’d like it to be nor is it as cool as it seems.
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| Posted: 05 May 2011 08:25 AM PDT
This may look like a regular old Gameboy but there’s something “stellar” about it: it flew into space and returned with Russian kosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov. Serebrov brought the game with him to the International Space Station and it played it as they orbited the Earth over 3,000 times in 192 days. You could say, if you were of the sort that made puns, that this Gameboy is out of this world! Quoth Serebrov:
The Gameboy is expected to sell for about $2000 at auction tonight. If it came with Super Mario Land I might have picked it up, but just Tetris? Come on, space people!
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| CrunchDeals: Alienware OptX 22-inch 1080p Monitor Posted: 05 May 2011 08:20 AM PDT
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| The pHOLD Bike Mount: You Know, For Bikes Posted: 05 May 2011 07:55 AM PDT True story: last week I was riding my bike and I reached down to my pocket to grab my phone to check the map. I saw a car coming around the corner and slammed on the brakes. A second later I was up, over the handlebars, and my phone bore the brunt of my fall. Luckily I had it in a case but, aside from my pride, nothing was damaged. That’s why I like this pHOLD thing. It’s basically an iPhone holder that attaches to your bike. I use RideTheCity in Brooklyn, for example, and this would be a godsend. I can’t rate its impact resistance, but having the iPhone close at hand on a ride would be helpful.
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| Report: Android Tablets Facing Massive Oversupply Posted: 05 May 2011 07:37 AM PDT The Xoom isn’t selling well and no one has heard of any of the other Android tablets. You know what that means, right? Massive inventory excess might be coming! SALE! SALE! SALE! Digitimes points out that non-Apple tablet makers will likely face an oversupply of tablets later this year. We agree. These tablets are currently meant just first adopters, the general public need not waste their money. Even Motorola, which arguably has the best brand power on the Android team, can’t move enough Xoom’s to impress. Asus might be the only one exempt from this thought, but only because supply chain issues are limiting Transformer tablet production to just 10k units per month rather than the scheduled 200k. No single tablet in the foreseeable future will be able to chip away the iPad’s marketshare. Hopefully OEMs keep the sales and manufacturing numbers realistic — or not so we can all snag tablets on the cheap a few months after they’re released.
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It’s about the size of a USB drive, and comprises a 700MHz ARM11 processor, 128MB of RAM, and ports for video, removable media, and USB 2.0. That’s all! There’s a “general-purpose” I/O slot that can be used to attach peripherals like a camera or wireless module, but that’s really all there is to it. And of course, that’s pretty much all you need to run a modern computer OS.
Naturally, as these numbers go up, the failure numbers go up as well. Just the failure rates resulting from natural manufacturing tolerances and such produce millions of failed drives per year (remember that many drives stay in service for years, making the total number of active HDDs in the world somewhat difficult to estimate), and in addition to that, there are huge amounts of catastrophic-type failures like dropped drives, water damage, and crush damage.
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