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- The Wild Tale Of A Stolen Laptop In Brooklyn
- Tune In Today At 10am Eastern/7am Pacific To See The TimeCrafters Live
- This Is The World’s Smallest Full HD 3D Display (Video)
- Fujitsu’s TH40/D Tablet Has a Slide-Out Keyboard
- Samsung’s New High-Resolution Screens: Too Good To Be True?
- Limewire Settles For A Measly $105 Million
- Unit Portables Modularizes Your Bags
- Bezos On An Amazon Tablet: “Stay Tuned”
- A New, Serious Alien Game? Yes Please
- Contest: Get You A Rex Ray Edition Dodocase!
- Review: Kodak Easyshare Mini M200
- Netflix For Android Released For Select Samsung, HTC Handsets
- N-Control Releases A Faster, Stronger Avenger Controller Rig
- Apple Patents Cool “Chameleon” Camera Mode
- The Viewsonic Viewpad 7x Does 7-inches Of Honeycomb
- Apple TV Update Fixes Bugs, Not Much Else
- Sony Joins Car Connectivity Consortium To Build Smartphone Portal In Car Dashboard
- Video: Dirt 3 Gets A New Trailer
- It Is Finished: The New Yorker iPad App Is The Beginning Of The End Of Print
- NPD: Don’t Blame The iPad For Dipping PC Sales!
| The Wild Tale Of A Stolen Laptop In Brooklyn Posted: 13 May 2011 05:01 AM PDT
Sean got some snaps of the guy and his browsing habits and asked that some of his Twitter followers visit the bar to wait for the police. When the police refused to come because Powers had not filed a report the Twooters took the matter into their own hands. Again, to be clear, Paolo probably just paid the thief for the laptop in what we can only assume is good faith. In the end, one of Sean’s Twootfriends, Nick Reese went and grabbed it, resulting in smiles all around. No charges were filed because the Internet doled out the vigilante justice – Internet style. Read the whole wild Twitter-story here and seriously, thieves, don’t steal laptops anymore. Where does this sort of stuff put us now? Sean got his laptop back and the “new owner” gave it up without a fight. We’re at a point where it’s easy to find lost electronics online and we have enough friends (read “a mob”) to go and get the stuff for us. The problem I expect to see is when the folks who stole the items aren’t right in the head and the first person gets hurt after a struggle. It’s a dangerous – but satisfying – game. Also, please install Prey on your laptop. It works, it’s great, and it’s free.
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| Tune In Today At 10am Eastern/7am Pacific To See The TimeCrafters Live Posted: 13 May 2011 04:26 AM PDT
I’ll be hitting up the booths with Hugh Dougherty, the Mart & Highlights Editor for the National Association of Watch And Clock Collector’s own watch blog, WatchDig. Expect to see a lot of bling, a lot of flummoxed European PR people, and some amazing watches.
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| This Is The World’s Smallest Full HD 3D Display (Video) Posted: 13 May 2011 03:05 AM PDT
Japan-based Ortus Technology has developed what it calls the world’s smallest 3D display with full HD resolution – after announcing the world’s smallest full HD display in 2D last October. Also sized at 4.8 inches, the new screen is basically the 3D version of that model. Unfortunately, users need to wear glasses to view pictures in 3D. Just like the 2D model, the HAST (Hyper Amorphous Silicon TFT) screen boasts 458ppi in 2D mode (and still very impressive 229ppi in 3D mode). It can display 16.8 million colors, has a viewing angle of 160 degrees and comes with LED backlight. Here’s a video that shows the 3D screen in action (subbed in English, shot by Diginfonews in Tokyo):
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| Fujitsu’s TH40/D Tablet Has a Slide-Out Keyboard Posted: 13 May 2011 02:13 AM PDT
Here are the main features:
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| Samsung’s New High-Resolution Screens: Too Good To Be True? Posted: 12 May 2011 04:59 PM PDT
After all, Samsung abandoned the Pentile display found in Galaxy S phones, a display I personally found problematic, noting the jagged edges and visible pixels in my review. But at an effective 300 pixels per inch, will those artifacts even be visible? Samsung seems confident, also touting the lower power requirements and higher brightness levels. Whether the screen is better or not can really only be determined in person, though — and they’re going to be on display next week in LA. We’ll have more on the topic then, but for now let’s just cross our fingers. If it works, it could be the makings of that Retina iPad we heard rumors of — or else Samsung could just keep it for itself. More information and a “comparison” tool (that really doesn’t do Pentile any favors) can be found here.
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| Limewire Settles For A Measly $105 Million Posted: 12 May 2011 04:45 PM PDT
There’s nothing rational about the debate on either side, of course, and Limewire knew what it was getting into. Hopefully as these high-profile cases regarding last-generation p2p tech are put behind us, we can start thinking more clearly about how liability, damages, and so on should be assigned and calculated… …Yeah right! I almost had me for a minute there! Ah, hilarious.
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| Unit Portables Modularizes Your Bags Posted: 12 May 2011 04:25 PM PDT
It’s not for everyone, of course, but it’s a fun little design that you could probably make something interesting out of. The main unit will hold a 13-15″ laptop with a little space for books and documents — the other units will hold… well, whatever fits in them. The smaller one, they claim, “works with all major brands.” Well yeah, it’s a bag. It also works with apples, and scissors, and cameras, I’m guessing.
Oh, and it comes in many colors:
Where can you buy them? Apparently only at one store in the entire world, which is in Stockholm. Hopefully they get to a few more outlets soon. [via Hypebeast]
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| Bezos On An Amazon Tablet: “Stay Tuned” Posted: 12 May 2011 02:49 PM PDT
I myself asked the same question of the head of Kindle not a month ago and got a “no comment,” so I’m thinking that this is all Bezos’ game. And he knows how to stoke the fire (notice how I resist using the obvious pun). This minor non-comment is more than we’ve gotten in the last few years, so let the speculation begin. The full context of the quote (in an interview with Consumer Reports) also has Bezos downplaying the role of such a tablet, though: “We will always be very mindful that we will want a dedicated reading device. In terms of any other product introductions, I shouldn't answer.” He also pointed out the limitations of current color e-ink screens, noting their desaturated colors but acknowledging the draw of such a technology. E Ink has said they are not planning on rolling out improved screens this year, and the Triton color screens aren’t ready for a million-unit roll-out. Bridgestone’s Aerobee technology looks promising, but it’s aiming at enterprise first, and Amazon may not want to endanger their friendly partnership with E Ink by switching horses. My interpretation of Bezos’ remarks would be (as we’ve suggested before) that he’s waiting on the technology, and unwilling to put out an LCD version with the weaknesses they have so frequently mocked. Besides, with the Kindle app available on so many platforms, it doesn’t make much sense to put out an also-ran. Whatever Amazon puts out, Bezos wants it to be the first and best of its kind. But then, how to explain the hundreds of thousands of LCD screens supposedly ordered by Amazon? All a mystery, friends. My guess would be that E Ink and Amazon are holding out on us, and we’re going to get a pleasant surprise towards the end of the year.
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| A New, Serious Alien Game? Yes Please Posted: 12 May 2011 02:06 PM PDT
UK-based Sega studio Creative Assembly announced they were working on an Alien game (to be precise, a UK government official did it for them) today, and they say they’re doing it right, hiring a bunch of people and taking out additional office space. Note that it’s based on Alien, not Aliens, Alien: Resurrection, or Alien Pony Adventures or whatever that last one was called. No details are available just yet except that they’re taking it seriously, and it’ll be quite a while before it’s ready. 2013, I’d guess.
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| Contest: Get You A Rex Ray Edition Dodocase! Posted: 12 May 2011 02:00 PM PDT
1. Leave a comment below telling us another artist or piece of artwork you’d like to see on a case. After all, Rex already has one, right? 2. Tweet @dodosays with hashtag #ilovecrunchgear telling them the same thing. Banksy, Michelangelo, Bosch, whatever. We’ll pick a winner randomly after 24 hours. Got it? Good! You must be at least 13 years old and live in the continental US for this contest. Sorry, international and remote readers!
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| Review: Kodak Easyshare Mini M200 Posted: 12 May 2011 01:10 PM PDT
Pros:
Cons:
Full review:
I’ll keep this quick. There isn’t a lot new about the Easyshare Mini except that it’s smaller than most of the other options on the market. It’s bigger than a mobile phone, of course, but it has a big-boy lens with real 3x zoom and real buttons for shutter release and so on. In fact, buttons seem to be the main feature of this thing. For its size, it sure has a lot. I suppose that’s because they’re proportional. That is to say they’re very small. Do you have big fingers? You will have trouble with this camera.
But of course it isn’t designed with big fingers in mind. Are you thinking of giving your kid or tween a camera? This could be it. It’s cheap, it’s cute, it’s got a flash and a mirror for self-shots (essential). Your daughter will like it, and will probably be better at setting it up than you. Navigating this keyboard using the Mini’s microscopic, square d-pad is slow work. It’s much easier to set up your accounts in the app, which is simple enough. It’s handy to be able to tag things and forget about them, then just plug in and have your best shots upload themselves. It’s a common feature to all Easyshare cameras, but it’s a real draw for a socially-orientated purse-cam like this one.
The LCD screen is necessarily small and low-resolution, but it’s bright enough and responsive. The on-screen interface is ugly but functional. The camera’s so simple that there’s very little to navigate to. Photo quality is what you’d expect from a cheap point-and shoot. Here are a couple sample shots. Fine details are muddy, but focus was accurate and could get surprisingly close, as you can see on that knob. I know, not the most exciting pics, but it’s not really an exciting camera! I mean, you know what you’re getting here. It’s not bad in day-to-day medium and bright lighting, though low light performance is, of course, terrible. Better and more responsive than a phone camera, and it has a decently wide lens, but don’t expect much in the way of clarity or color. Flash photography pops just fine. Video is 640×480 and again, just what you expect. Conclusion
At a hundred bucks, this thing is a no-brainer for your kids if you were considering something else. They’re they only ones who can operate these little buttons anyway. An alternative would be a rugged camera (kids don’t take good care of things), but most of those are significantly more expensive. The Easyshare Mini is a decent little device for someone who can’t stand using their phone as a camera, but doesn’t want the cost or quality of “real” point and shoots. Product page: Kodak Easyshare Mini M200     
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| Netflix For Android Released For Select Samsung, HTC Handsets Posted: 12 May 2011 01:03 PM PDT
Whoa! Talk about a welcome surprise. After many long months in the works, Netflix has just pushed the first release of their Android application to the Android Market. Alas, there’s a catch: it’s only working on a handful of Android devices right now. With this first release, the only supported devices are the HTC Incredible, HTC Nexus One, HTC Evo 4G, HTC G2, and Samsung Nexus S. We’re checking to see if it can be finagled onto other devices as we type this — but given how carefully Netflix is treading with Android with regards to DRM, we’re not expecting much.
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| N-Control Releases A Faster, Stronger Avenger Controller Rig Posted: 12 May 2011 11:35 AM PDT
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| Apple Patents Cool “Chameleon” Camera Mode Posted: 12 May 2011 11:03 AM PDT
The iPod Nano may have something cool up its sleeve. This patent, discovered by PatentlyApple, describes a dynamic screensaver that will take cues from the outside environment, changing according to motion, light, and the colors around the device. The patent itself is pretty boring, but the potential use cases are quite cool. I could imagine a screen turning purple when you wear a purple shirt or the screensaver lighting up when it hears music. Will it ever appear in a product? Probably not, but it’s nice to know it could.
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| The Viewsonic Viewpad 7x Does 7-inches Of Honeycomb Posted: 12 May 2011 10:44 AM PDT
Right now there’s no such thing as a 7-inch Honeycomb tablet. There isn’t one on the market. (okay, I looked, but I just know someone is going to link to one in the comments) The Viewsonic Viewpad 7x might be the first one. Pocket-Lint heard through “reliable sources” that said tablet is in the batter’s box, ready to step up to the plate at a Taipei trade conference. The rumored tech specs aren’t that much of a surprise: dual cams, HDMI, DLNA, and of course a Tegra 2 chip running Honeycomb. All of this isn’t official just yet, but if you’re like me and don’t really dig larger tablets, you might wanna wait until this Viewsonic drops. Price? Not announced yet but Android 2.2 Viewpad 7 only runs $299. Here’s hoping the 7x is priced similarly.
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| Apple TV Update Fixes Bugs, Not Much Else Posted: 12 May 2011 08:55 AM PDT
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| Sony Joins Car Connectivity Consortium To Build Smartphone Portal In Car Dashboard Posted: 12 May 2011 08:25 AM PDT
Sony has become the most recent in a rather long list of companies to join the Car Connectivity Consortium, a group of phone and car companies working together to connect phones to cars. Formed back in March, the CCC already boasts some pretty big-name companies, including Nokia, Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Alpine, Daimler, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, and Volkswagen.
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| Video: Dirt 3 Gets A New Trailer Posted: 12 May 2011 08:05 AM PDT Do you think Ford had something to do with this trailer? I don’t know. It’s just something about the clip featuring nothing but Fiestas — which, in its pedestrian livery, is a great car — and the massive Ford oval in the bottom right. As long as DiRT 3 is as white-knuckle awesome, the game could be sponsored by Campbell’s tomato soup for all I care.
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| It Is Finished: The New Yorker iPad App Is The Beginning Of The End Of Print Posted: 12 May 2011 07:19 AM PDT I’m a die-hard paper fan. I have a few shelves of books in almost every room of the house and I love taking a stack of magazines or newspapers on a plane – this is so ingrained in my psyche that I actually save magazines a few weeks before a long trip so I have something to read. But slowly, ever so slowly, this love of paper is leaving me. First, I abandoned print journalism for the bare-knuckle punch-fest that is blogging, and then I stopped reading print books and instead took up the Kindle, then the iPad. I literally have not cracked a paperback or hardback for a full, long read in more than a year. I’m not writing this to prove my early adopter cred but because the thought amazes me. I still read the NY Times in dead-tree form and, although for a little while I thought The Daily would be the future of daily news, I think I’ll stick with the paper version for a few more months, at least until I wrap my head around the psychological process of reading general daily news online. But the one thing I thought I’d never do was abandon my magazine habit. But slowly and surely magazines fell off my radar. First it was Wired because all the news in there I had read months before on the Internets. Then it was the Economist because I’d end up with a stack of magazines full of great stuff that I’d never read. I let my subscription to Fortune lapse and haven’t missed it. But if there’s one magazine I can’t get enough of in print form it’s the New Yorker. I love the magazine. It has great, long pieces and funny marginalia. It has comics that I actually go through and consume before I read the actual articles. It has John Seabrook, whose Deeper turned me on to tech writing, and Anthony Lane. It’s like an effete liberal adult’s Mad Magazine without the harping of Harpers and the boredom of the Atlantic Monthly. The cover was always great, it was slim, and thus a copy of the New Yorker has accompanied me on almost every trip I’ve taken in the past decade. But I’m about to cancel my print subscription. Why? Because the iPad version is far superior. The iPad version includes everything that currently exists in the print title – including the full-page ads for Rolex and probably that damn Pokeboat – except in a much cleaner form. Each issue costs $4.99 and e-only subscriptions cost $59 a year. iPad and print subscriptions cost $69. That’s right: Conde Nast puts so little value on the paper that the magazine is printed on that it will give it to you for use as kindling for a mere $10 more. Other titles like GQ and Wired will cost $1.99 an issue or $19.99 a year. I doubt they will sell as well as the New Yorker. Why? Well, the New Yorker is text heavy. It’s not quite gray in the way some magazines are – the iPad app uses the New Yorker’s classic ACaslon Regular font to reduce the general density of the text – and the stories are long and engaging. There are no graphical tricks, not too many multimedia events, and when there are, they’re great (one poetry reading by Sherman Alexie in the latest issue was amazing). And even the ads are unobtrusive and, dare I say it, beautiful in full living color. Everything about the iPad version is the same, yet strikingly different. This isn’t some rush-job given to a bunch of magazine designers who slap a little video in the corner of a horribly laid-out page. This is a full rethinking of the title and changes entirely how we consume long-form writing. I know the app has been around for a while but in-app purchases really clinched it for me. I was able to tap the latest issue in the app and it was available immediately. Then I could tap an issue I seem to have missed a few weeks before and there it was, ready to go. It was a smooth and seamless experience. There is something in our core that loves a book. We love the paper, the smell, the visual cues and dog-eared bookmarking techniques. But I wonder if this is a learned response, handed down to us in a long line that began with Gutenberg and ended with Mom, Pop, and our favorite English teacher. I wonder if my kids will care about books as much as I did – the physical objects, not the stuff inside – and whether their kids will even know books exist. There are generational overlaps that happen all the time. My father’s old records, once wildly important to him in the 1960s and 70s ended up in my hands in the 90s and taught me to love Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Stones. But will I ever fire them up again? No. Those records were the last gasp of a discovery engine that stopped when the last mass-market LP was sold in the last Tower Records store. That engine can’t start again, but I suspect my own son will find my old CDs, become curious, and then go off on a journey of his own. I wonder how his son, years from now, will find my son’s discarded bits and reconstitute them into music, but that’s a sad and metaphysical thing – the passing of bits from parent to child – that I don’t even want to ponder. Talk all you want about how paper isn’t going anywhere and how there are still billions of people who depend on books in distant countries where educational- and news-reading is still stuck in the Paper Age. I think the first wave will break when colleges go iPad-only and those same educated students will teach their children from the iPad. The next wave comes when the children’s book binders start shuttering their plants and the final wave will come when the print newspapers and magazines fall en masse along with publishers. They will exist, but they will have changed. What does this mean for the magazines that are currently print-only? Well, they have to become more interesting. They have to embrace the flow of news and information and they have to differentiate themselves from us blogger hacks by spending real money on stories. This is hard. They’ve been used to a steady stream of revenue from print subscriptions. They’ve been used to long lead times, plenty of time to prepare, and they’ve been held hostage by the old methods of top down editorial. They claim that advertisers can’t wrap their heads around the Internet. But they can – it’s been proven again and again. A few tech titles, PC Magazine and Laptop come to mind immediately, have already made this leap. Others will follow. The New Yorker iPad app proves that great writing is great writing, no matter how it’s displayed. It is new wine poured into new wineskins: everything works, nothing is strange, and the product tastes as sweet as it did in the old skins.
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| NPD: Don’t Blame The iPad For Dipping PC Sales! Posted: 12 May 2011 07:17 AM PDT
"The explosion of computer sales when Windows 7 launched, as well as the huge increase in netbook sales at that time, are much more to blame for weak consumer PC sales growth than the iPad," said Stephen Baker, VP of industry analysis at NPD Group. "Overall it appears that the vast majority of iPad purchases to-date have been incremental to the consumer technology industry." It would seem as though tablets aren't quite ready to run the show all alone, as most consumers are viewing their tablets as companion devices, rather than their primary computer. Maybe someday soon, when a tablet hits the market that allows for content creation as much as it does consumption, we'll start seeing PCs take a real dive. Until then, looks like you'll need one of each. [via MobileBurn]
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TimeCrafters is New York’s first high-end watchmaking show featuring many of the brands that we talk about on CrunchGear and 
Limewire has 
Amazon has always been frustratingly close-lipped about its hardware business, opting not to divulge sales numbers or upcoming hardware changes for more or less the entire life of the 
I still have memories of playing Alien Vs Predator 2 back in college. That game was just plain great. Being a Predator was awesome, being a Xenomorph felt insane, and being a human was scary as hell. But in the many years since then, we haven’t seen much in the way of quality Alien game fare. But it looks like that’s about to change.
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