CrunchGear |  |
- Fling Mini Joysticks For iPhone Seem A Little Overkill To Me, But Hey
- Video Messages Integrated Into Windows 8?
- Rumor: Apple To Bring iOS To AirPort, Time Capsule
- CrunchDeals: Canon SD1300 IS Point And Shoot For $70 At Radio Shack
- Review: HTC Flyer
- Adobe CEO: Android Will Beat iOS On Tablets
- Ico And Shadow Of The Colossus HD Remasters Get Priced And Dated In Japan
- Nikkei Re-Confirms Nintendo’s New Controller Will Have Touchscreen, Camera
- Nixon Watch Celebrates The Beastie Boys
- Watch This 767 Blow A Tire Doing Takeoff
- CrunchDeals: Worms 2 Armageddon On iOS For A Buck
- Fly Or Die: Windows 8 Tries To Out-Touch Apple
- If You Loved Your Child, You’d Buy Them This $300 High Chair. But You Don’t.
- Microsoft Has Sold 55 Million Xbox 360s Worldwide
- George Plimpton’s Video Falconry Is A Real Thing
- iCloud Could Be Free For A Time, Then Cost $25 A Year
- The MB&F HM4 Only Watch: For All Your Panda-Riding-A-Jet-Engine Needs
- UUDDLRLRBABA Start Bringing Your Room Together With These Arcade Style Light Switches
- First Impressions Of The Alienware M11x R3
- Rosetta Stone iPad App Hits App Store
| Fling Mini Joysticks For iPhone Seem A Little Overkill To Me, But Hey Posted: 03 Jun 2011 06:37 PM PDT
Apparently people were asking for it. Did they count on the sticks taking up a third of the screen? Well, if this seems reasonable to you, feel free to preorder a pair for $24.95. [via TouchArcade]
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| Video Messages Integrated Into Windows 8? Posted: 03 Jun 2011 05:12 PM PDT
A tiny icon on the Windows 8 lock screen (seen at right; in the video here), noticed by WinRumors, suggests this may be a built-in feature in the new OS. There are also references to a video app called “Chatter,” though an online communication product already exists by that name, so it may just be an internal code-name. We’ll know more when Microsoft sends out its APIs and dev kits later this year.
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| Rumor: Apple To Bring iOS To AirPort, Time Capsule Posted: 03 Jun 2011 04:23 PM PDT
Will we hear about this at WWDC? No way to be sure, but I would guess this kind of thing would accompany a hardware announcement, not a software one, so my guess is no for now. Maybe when they show the new MacBook Air we’ve been hearing about.
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| CrunchDeals: Canon SD1300 IS Point And Shoot For $70 At Radio Shack Posted: 03 Jun 2011 04:07 PM PDT
With 12 megapixels, a 4x zoom, and a 2.7-inch screen, it’s not breaking any records, but you can trust it to take decent pictures (or make a great gift). [via PetaPixel]
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| Posted: 03 Jun 2011 02:54 PM PDT
Pros:
Cons:
Full review:
When I first heard about the Flyer, I thought to myself “This thing is going to suck, but the next one is going to be awesome.” And I’m pleased to say that my pithy little judgment was more or less correct. The Flyer is a device almost no one will be happy with, but it’s clearly the precursor to something really, really awesome. The idea is simple and compelling. A medium-size tablet that supports pen input. Think of the possibilities! Actually, yes, think of the possibilities. Think of all the things you’d want to do with a pen. Jot quick notes and have it recognize your handwriting. Use gestures to forward emails, mark things read, etc. Draw notes on documents and have it convert to standard annotation. Thought of a few? Bad news: you can’t do any of them. That’s why this review is short. There’s a whole new implementation of Sense here, big versions of HTC’s famous widgets, a custom app and desktop manager. But none of these things are worth talking about because the only thing that makes the Flyer worth considering is, at this time, useless. What can you do with the pen? You can write on any screen and have it save as a screenshot to your Evernote account or gallery. You can draw in the Notes application. You can scribble on your e-books.
That’s pretty much it. An entire hardware platform built around the idea of pen input, and the software barely supports it. Anywhere, you understand! 90% of the time, when you put the pen to the screen, it’ll freeze for a second and then you’ll just be drawing on your desktop or app. Helpful if you want to take screenshots a lot, but not if you want to, you know, use this amazing active pen technology for rich media interaction, precision edits on pictures or audio, handwriting recognition, and so on. It’s also unclear when you can use your pen to touch things (buttons, for instance) and when you have to use your finger. And the pen options and button can only be touched by the pen. Why?
I’m happy to say that the pen works pretty well, though it’s by no means amazing or different from what’s out there. The pen is a decent size and weight, grips easy, and registers on the screen quickly. Lag is barely noticeable and the resolution of the input is good. You can write small if you’re careful, and dot your “i”s with some precision. There’s a bit of lag when “touching down” for the first time in an app or on the desktop, but generally it’s not bad. I’m more concerned about the feeling of writing with a plastic tip on a glossy surface. It feels unnatural and the clacky noise it makes when you’re writing isn’t heartening. The pen itself has two working ends and two buttons. One end can be a pen, the other an eraser, or a “plain” touch, or a special drag. The buttons act as modifiers.
The device is a bit heavy, but good-looking, with a front-facing camera for video chats and another one on the back for, you know, pictures. It’s reasonably thin but nothing to write home about. The tapered back and sides actually make it feel larger than it is. Conclusion There are dozens of tablets for you to choose from; why would you choose one running a custom build of Android 2, with what amounts to a prototype pen interface? There’s no reason to. But even as I disparage this device, I feel real excitement for its successor (perhaps the “Scribe” we heard about before “Flyer” was made official). A slightly larger version of this, with a higher-resolution screen, better pen integration, and so on? Hell yes. But until then, this larval device should be avoided by everyone but the most ardent of early adopters.       
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| Adobe CEO: Android Will Beat iOS On Tablets Posted: 03 Jun 2011 01:25 PM PDT
"It's a business model issue," Narayen said. "It's all about control of the applications that you can run on that platform that bring that platform to life." The Adobe boss also tried to squashed the myth that there is no such thing as Flash on iDevices. "What Apple doesn’t allow us to do is to build Flash content within the browser,” Narayen added. “If you can build the application using our tools and compile it down to the iDevice platform, that works." [via Pocket-Lint]
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| Ico And Shadow Of The Colossus HD Remasters Get Priced And Dated In Japan Posted: 03 Jun 2011 01:17 PM PDT
[via 1up]
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| Nikkei Re-Confirms Nintendo’s New Controller Will Have Touchscreen, Camera Posted: 03 Jun 2011 12:48 PM PDT
The controller will have a six-inch touchscreen and camera, as rumored, and will have tablet-like functionality. At this rate the new controller is going to be twice as expensive as an actual DS Lite! We’ll find out next week just what Nintendo has in store for us at E3.
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| Nixon Watch Celebrates The Beastie Boys Posted: 03 Jun 2011 11:41 AM PDT
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| Watch This 767 Blow A Tire Doing Takeoff Posted: 03 Jun 2011 11:33 AM PDT Scary video. Just think if the person had uploaded that and emailed it to a passenger on the plane before it landed. Yeah, that would be scary — and a bit creepy. By the way, where’s our high-speed rail system at already? I’d gladly let Big Sis pat me down prior to boarding a train just so I didn’t have to fly. [via Gadling]
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| CrunchDeals: Worms 2 Armageddon On iOS For A Buck Posted: 03 Jun 2011 11:30 AM PDT
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| Fly Or Die: Windows 8 Tries To Out-Touch Apple Posted: 03 Jun 2011 11:18 AM PDT
The debate about Windows 8 rages on in this episode of Fly or Die. CrunchGear editor John Biggs, who joins me from Las Vegas where he is attending a watch conference (don’t ask) thinks nothing has really changed because users can always switch back from the touch interface to the old Windows. I appreciate the shell argument, but counter that desktop operating systems are also moving towards more of a touch computing UI anyway. So is this a shell, or is Microsoft trying to get ahead of the curve? Watch the video, and tell us what you think.
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| If You Loved Your Child, You’d Buy Them This $300 High Chair. But You Don’t. Posted: 03 Jun 2011 11:03 AM PDT If you truly loved your child… nay, merely even considered them worth holding on to… I’d recommend this $300 Baby Bjorn high chair designed from the ground up to revolutionize the market for food into infant-mouth insertion activities. However, this thing is $300, which most parents would find too pricey. But isn’t baby worth that much? What has baby ever done to you that you can’t spend three bills on a small table with legs? Nothing, that’s what. As a parent, I’m fascinated by baby product marketing. It’s such a complete, closed culture based around fun, fear, and feeding and the suggestion that if you, as new parents, don’t buy X, Y, and Z-brand baby wipes warmers your child will come out wrong. The best part is that BabyBjorn followed this product from design to final unveiling with the intensity of a The Tree of Life. Greg at DaddyTypes points out that this video is part of a trilogy flogging this high-concept chair including an origin story: As well as a kid jep thriller:
In the end, however, the story is basically “If you don’t buy this high chair, your child will never eat anything and you are a bad parent.” So get cracking, purveyors of love. Your kids need you.
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| Microsoft Has Sold 55 Million Xbox 360s Worldwide Posted: 03 Jun 2011 11:03 AM PDT
Well, I think we can call the 360 a hit now. The console is six years old and, according to a chart by the NPD, has never seen a down year in the states. What’s more, it’s actually increasing in sales thanks in part to the Kinect. That, if you’re to believe these stats, makes the Xbox 360 the only console in history to see such growth this far into its lifecycle. Other systems tend to peak in year two or three and then quickly fall into the bargin bin. Not the 360. It’s currently riding high on its best sales number. It’s not just the hardware that’s popular. Xbox LIVE, the online gaming and social service, reportedly has 35 million active users who average 60 hours a month on the service. In all LIVE members log 2.1 billion entertainment hours — gaming, media streaming, and more — every month. This hits just days before Microsoft’s E3 press conference and it’s hard to imagine that they’ll be able to top last year’s Kinect announcements — or touple the news coming out of WWDC which happens at the same time on Monday. [Major Nelson]
Update: Changed the headline to indicated the 55 million units sold was across 38 markets, not just the US.
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| George Plimpton’s Video Falconry Is A Real Thing Posted: 03 Jun 2011 10:06 AM PDT
George Plimpton, once upon a time, inexplicably flogged Intellivision and was the subject of a hilarious fake video game called George Plimpton’s Video Falconry. While the video, below, is wildly funny (if you know George Plimpton) I think the video game made by newgrounds is even funnier, featuring most of the tropes found in classic gaming including the poorly rendered scans and the bleep bloop music. Eagle-eyed gamers will note that the sprites are a little too perfect on this game but it’s still an impressive feat of retro-engineering. Tally-ho!
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| iCloud Could Be Free For A Time, Then Cost $25 A Year Posted: 03 Jun 2011 09:54 AM PDT
If I were Rdio and Spotify I’d get ready to drop prices and grab market share. With iTunes becoming a dominant player in the “play music anywhere” market, they could soon be in dire straits and could really use a little help from their friends in order to continue being sharp dressed men (and women). They’d have to be riding a crazy train to not think Apple is about to eat their rich CEOs.
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| The MB&F HM4 Only Watch: For All Your Panda-Riding-A-Jet-Engine Needs Posted: 03 Jun 2011 09:34 AM PDT
The MB&F MH4 looks like a pair of jet engines roaring off your wrist and costs about as much as the fuel needed to power one of those jet engines for a cross-country flight. However, the HM4 Only Watch limited edition costs even more (provided you can take part in the auction) and features a tiny removable panda cast in gold. Yeah, you read that right.
All proceeds go to support muscular dystrophy research and the auction happens yearly, giving watchmakers a chance to create a unique timepiece only available to high bidders. A good cause, a panda, and a watch that looks like a pair of painful suppositories? Sign me up!
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| UUDDLRLRBABA Start Bringing Your Room Together With These Arcade Style Light Switches Posted: 03 Jun 2011 08:56 AM PDT
Nothing brings a room together like a pair of bright, candy-colored buttons in place of a boring old light switch. These buttons say “I do my own electrical work and I enjoy Defender” and they work just like standard light switches, making them the perfect conversation piece for people who, like me, rarely converse with others. Created by Alephdesigns, the light switches are apparently sold out right now but when they come back you can get them in multiple colors and styles and the entire system is actually a standard rocker switch housing with a modified faceplate. I bet if we all bothered this poor guy we could all get a few of these switches made with a quickness to grace the walls of our beautiful gaming dens/bathrooms.
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| First Impressions Of The Alienware M11x R3 Posted: 03 Jun 2011 08:52 AM PDT
Proper reviews take time. They require living with a product and shouldn’t be based on just first impressions. However, first impressions are still worthwhile and that’s what follows regarding the M11x R3. I’m just happy the notebook arrived before my trip to E3. Portal 2 on the plane FTW!       Review Unit Specs:
Likes
Dislikes
Still to test
A full review is in the works, but like I stated at the beginning, a review is not made from a couple hours of use. Thankfully I have several long plane rides to and from E3 so the M11x and I have plenty of time to get to know each other over the next week. Stay tuned!
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| Rosetta Stone iPad App Hits App Store Posted: 03 Jun 2011 07:49 AM PDT
Short version: Rosetta Stone launched its iPad app today, which is basically just a lighter version of its core “course” software. The app itself is nothing extraordinary, but the way it teaches languages is pretty awesome. Foreign language has never been my best subject, but I had a blast playing with this app because it feels way more like a puzzle than a language lesson. The worst part is the price: you have to be a Rosetta Stone customer to access the app. Features:
Pros:
Cons:
If you take learning languages seriously, I would gladly argue that there is no better language-learning app out there. But if you’re looking for something light and fun, the price tag on this app will certainly outweigh your desire for it.
Rosetta Stone has always been kind of like a yoga mat. I love yoga, and I wish I went everyday, but I hesitate to spend the money on a mat for fear it could go to waste. The same has been true of Rosetta Stone. It always sounded pretty cool, and I've always wanted to learn different languages, but shelling out the cash is a step I've never been willing to take. But after sitting down with the Rosetta Stone team and checking out the brand new iPad app, I've been converted. And that's partially due to the app, itself. As far as learning languages goes, Rosetta Stone seems to have the process nailed. Instead of learning through simple flash-card style memorization or by-the-book translation, the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Companion app forces you to problem-solve while you learn. For instance, instead of reading a sentence in Spanish, hearing it, and then repeating (parroting), Rosetta Stone gives you a couple of different pictures of whatever phrase or word the lesson focuses on, and turns language learning into a puzzle. The core idea seems to come from the way children learn languages for the first time. Children hear words they don't know and use the context around unknown words to fill in the blanks. An example given by Rosetta Stone CTO Mike Fulkerson resonated well with me. "If I am with my five-year-old and say 'we're in a hotel suite,' my son knows all the words in that sentence except ‘suite,’" he said. "If I ask him what the word 'suite' means, he can figure out from the rest of the sentence, and his surroundings, that a 'suite' is a big hotel room." The Rosetta Stone app works the same way. Some pages ask you to choose the picture that best represents the word or phrase being spoken, gradually integrating new words that you haven't learned yet. Other pages display a pattern of different ideas or sentences, and require the user to complete the pattern. For example, one page showed four different pictures with corresponding sentences: 1. I have red apples. 2. We have green apples. and 3. I have a red bike. Based on the first three sentences and their corresponding photos, the user must then figure out what the fourth sentence will be (We have green bikes.). The iPad app still integrates the majority of the features found in the desktop app’s “course” offering, which is the main curriculum of the Rosetta Stone software. Studio sessions, where the user talks with a coach fluent in their chosen language in a video chat, aren’t supported within the iPad app. This was pretty shocking to me, since the iPad has a front-facing camera which would be perfect for studio sessions on-the-go. When I asked about it, Fulkerson explained that the company wanted to bring a lighter experience to the tablet, something that falls between its basic “parroting” iPhone app, and the much heavier desktop app.
On a PC, you can really immerse yourself in a lesson, but on the iPad, most people switch back and forth from applications pretty regularly – what Mr. Fulkerson referred to as iPad ADD. For that reason, the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Companion app remains on the page you last visited once you close the application, whereas the desktop app always sends you back to the home page. A few other tweaks were made to the desktop app, as well, to get as much out of the iPad’s functionality as possible. For example, you swipe side to side to access new tracks (mini lessons) and instead of hovering over an image to zoom (like on the desktop app), iPad app users can touch to enlarge, and drag to zoom with smaller images. Of the 31 Rosetta Stone-supported languages, 20 are available in iPad app format. Right-to-left languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Farci, will be rolled out in an app update, along with Irish, since its font isn’t yet supported by the iPad. Now for the bad news: Non-Rosetta Stone customers simply don’t have access to the app. In other words, you must buy Rosetta Stone desktop software in order to log in to the iPad application, which is a free download from the Apple App Store. Most Rosetta Stone languages come with five levels, and a few smaller languages come in a three-level set. For a single level, the software costs $179. Two levels cost $279, three levels costs $379, and if you opt for the full five-level set, the software costs $479. For now, the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Companion app is only available in the Apple App Store, but Mike Fulkerson promised an Android version at some point, he just couldn’t say when. In my opinion, the content of the app is its biggest selling point. In the few minutes I played with the app, I truly enjoyed learning a little bit of French. And this is coming from an eight-year Spanish student, who hated just about every minute of it. The app itself is nothing extra special. The interface has a clean look and is pretty self-explanatory, lacking any complex multi-touch actions. Moving through lessons was pretty snappy, and I found the app’s voice detection to be incredibly accurate. The most minor pronunciation errors are detected immediately, basically forcing the user to say the word or phrase correctly, which is the whole point of the Rosetta Stone iPad app in the first place.
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This is a great deal for a solid point-and-shoot — the 
Back at Basel 2010 Nixon showed me a few cool watches I was excited to see. They later asked me to not write about them as they were not going to be released. OK, fine. More than a year later and the watches finally show up, Nixon and the partner seemed to work things out. What happened is that these limited edition watches were meant to be released along with the Beastie Boy’s new album. The album was delayed, and so was the watch.
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