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Thing is, it costs $160. Personally… I’d rather buy myself a nice steak every night for a week. Or teriyaki every day for a month. Yeah, I’m going with that one. But if you can’t control your buying finger, go ahead and pick one up. [via The Awesomer]
Whenever a company releases or announced a device that doesn't have a removable battery, the question is always raised over how inconvenient will it will be to replace it. Apple, a company who fits this description with many of its products, faced the same challenge with the iPhone and iPod...
They keep saying they’re coming back, but I’ll believe it when I see it. In the mean time, your options for instant film are depressingly limited, and it’ll cost you a bundle — but it’s not like it disappeared completely. The main rival for Polaroid was Fujifilm, which also makes digital cameras and lots of other films and media. Among their many products is Instax film, which is still manufactured and comes in cartridges of 10 exposures. It ends up costing ~75¢ per shot, which is technically infinity percent more than a digital, so understandably not too many people go for it. Add in the fact that the Instax 200 camera is the size of a bear, and you could forgive the general public for thinking instant film is more or less dead. What reminded me of all this was, first, this hands-on with a new, smaller (weirder) Instax format camera, and also the relatively recent marriage of Lomo cameras with the reduced-size Instax Mini film.
The LC-A+ I wrote up is a bit expensive, however, at around $300 for the camera and Instax back. I’ll have a review soon of the Diana+ and its instant back, which is much more affordable, but still very cool. Depending on how that goes, I’ll be able to tell you with a little more conviction, but it seems to me that if instant is really what you want, you’ve got a couple ways of going about it. Just don’t count on Polaroid just yet.
You’ll also see a lot of fragmentation at the size level before one size gets established as the “standard.” Five inches? Seven inches? Nine? Ten? How about dual screens? It’ll be interesting to be sure, but I get the feeling that, like netbooks, the first year is going to be ugly, iPad included. [via Wired] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9168418/ARM_sees_over_50_new_iPad_like_devices_out_this_year
Speaking on the developer’s Facebook page, Harmonix has confirmed that Rock Band 3 will release this holiday season.
Harmonix is developing Rock Band 3 for worldwide release this holiday season! The game, which will be published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic...
Stage aesthetics all contain a common trend. Generally, the equipment should be seen as little as possible, leading to pretty much every guitar amplifier in existence being black. Orange Amplifiers said, “To hell with all that nonsense” and proceeded to create some of the most visually offensive and sonically powerful amps on the market. Their latest release, the Thunder 30, should start coming out into the wild sometime this spring.
What you get are four EL84 class A power valves pumping out a total of 30 watts. A new addition to Oranges is the twin channel setup. Your standard clean channel and a dedicated overdrive/distortion channel with shape control. They also threw in an FX loop not found on previous models. Configurations include the head alone, or in a front loaded 1×12 combo. We’ll have a full review for you guys as soon as we get our hands on one.
So what is Bubble Talk? Well, it’s sort of like the first LOLCat game in the whole universe. Each player (minimum of three players) takes a set of cards containing funny captions (“This is going to leave a mark,” “I need your W-2s and 1099s if you have them,” etc.). You draw a picture card – usually stock photos of animals and people in potentially funny situations – and one person acts as a judge. The rest of the players slap down the caption cards, trying to pick the funniest caption or bubble. The judge chooses one and the winner collects the photo. The one with five photos wins. It sounds kind of dumb but if you have enough people – and the right kind of sense of humor – it’s great. We made a drinking game of it last weekend (we mostly just drank and played) and had a blast. The game will be available in a few months from TechnoSource and is really worth picking up. It’s a great party game (provided the party is fairly small) and, as dopey as it sounds, it’s actually quite fun. Photo grabbed from BoardGameGeek
We found the original to be a great solution but a tad pricey at $40. It seems this model retains all the goods, but comes in at $24.99. That’s a win for sure. The reviveLITE II is available right now on Scosche.com and should hit major retailers this Spring.
Of course, the idea of Steam on the Mac causes a delicate froth to appear on the lips of several kinds of fanboys — but while an excellent game-distribution client like Steam would be welcome on the Mac, it may not be the gaming renaissance people are hoping for. It’s worth taking a bit of time to look at, since gaming is increasingly a major source of revenue and a wedge to increase market share. Let’s take a look at what Steam is up against. Digital distribution on Mac is standard
Unlike the majority of games and programs for Windows, Mac apps are frequently distributed whole, with a nag screen and 30-day limit or the like — shareware, essentially. This has been the standard for as long as I can remember; one example I’m sure many readers recall fondly is Escape Velocity, the demo for which was practically the whole game, except that once you passed the 30-day trial period, a rogue fighter ship piloted by one “Cap’n Hector” would harass you and steal your credits (the scoundrel). A more modern equivalent would be the ability to download, say, the Aperture 3 trial and instantly convert it to the full version by entering a license key. Add in the faultless update system in OS X (compare with XP’s monstrous Windows Update), and it’s clear that Mac users have less to gain, and more to expect, from a digital distribution platform on their OS. They take Steam’s biggest selling point for granted to begin with. That can, of course, go both ways. One could argue that Steam is a natural fit for OS X, since digital distribution and automatic updates are so very Mac-ish, but users will also tend to reject non-Apple programs that perform Apple-like duties. “Apple does it better,” they’ll say, and they’re probably right, since Apple made the OS. On that note: Steam doesn’t really fit in well with OS X This may sound like a superficial complaint, but no one has yet successfully overestimated the superficiality of Mac users. On Windows, I’m resigned to the constant interface changes: applications with hard-coded Vista-style buttons, flash-like interfaces, or ugly (but functional) open-source programs that look like they just stepped out of Windows 95. Steam is far from ugly, but it is a custom UI, with different spacing for buttons, and an embedded browser that until recently was IE-based, and a number of other issues. Sure, it works, and it doesn’t look bad, but can you think of how out-of-place it might look on a Mac? GUI consistency is not just pretty, it’s functional. And that consistency has always been one of OS X’s strengths (notwithstanding the occasional overlap, like Marble in Aperture and whatever-it’s-called in iTunes).
It’s an objection which could be overcome by Valve, but they’ve invested in the Steam look (it’s deliberately and irreversibly associated with Valve’s branding) and haven’t made too many concessions to Windows. So while they’re capable of making it look right, I don’t know that they have any inclination to do so. And that’s something which will rankle the design-conscious masses of Mac users. If a gamer on the Mac (ahem) really wanted to do it right, anyway, there are tools in place. I wrote about the launch of GamersGate’s Mac store, which I’ve used and found perfectly convenient. Its web-based interface means no commitment, but also no sweet features. Still, it’s something to add into the discussion stew we’re brewing here. Really now: there aren’t many games for the Mac I suspect there will be some resistance to this point, but it’s kind of a throwaway since the next one is more important anyway. But let’s be honest here. There aren’t a hell of a lot of good games on OS X. At best you get big titles a year or two late, if you get them at all. 9 out of 10 games on the Mac are colorful casual games, point-and-click adventures, and the occasional inexplicably cross-platform indie game. I’m not saying there aren’t any good games coming out, but lord, they ain’t coming down like autumn leaves, that’s for damn sure. Here’s a complete list of OS X-compatible games on Steam. Not pretty.
And we’re okay with that. Apple hasn’t recovered as a gaming platform since the Great Halo Betrayal of 2000, and as some great rhetorician said, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me – you can’t get fooled again.” How true. But maybe Steam would bring a new enthusiasm to the Mac gaming community, right? Don’t be so sure. Valve has reported that it has approached Apple many times but seen no real accommodation on their side. It takes two, you know. And when your partner is busy eying that sexy tablet form factor across the room… you might find: OS X is no longer the platform Apple cares about for gaming If Apple has dropped the ball on PC-like gaming (FPSes and all that), it’s led the game in the casual/mobile sector. Although I wrote some time ago that Nintendo has little to fear from Apple in that area, I by no means meant to suggest that Apple was anything but a success in the mobile games world. My argument was, in fact, that games were far more successful than Apple could have guessed, and that was why they were only now starting to push them. But Apple is smart enough to pick its battles, and it needs to get into the desktop gaming business right now like it needs to get into the llama farming business.
It doesn’t take a lot of faith to see that the iPad and next iPhone are going to have gaming as one of their primary foci (focuses?). What better use for the perfectly capable 3D graphics chip they’ve got in there? Recent investigation shows more similarity between the iPad and iPhone 3GS than previously supposed, so it’s likely that there will be a significant overlap in releases. Hardware and code base homogeneity is a huge advantage for games developers, and I’m guessing you’ll see a nice blossoming of seriously cool games once the iPad hits and a value proposition is settled on. Where does that leave OS X? Out in the cold, obviously. Sure, Apple wants people to buy games for it, that’s money in their pocket. But there’s a lot more money to be made in iPhone and iPad gaming because they can leverage the App Store, against which Steam is powerless. Now, if Steam were to run on the iPhone too, that’d be insane, but I guarantee Apple would rather eat glass than have a powerful alternative to the App Store catering to a market they’re just starting to exploit.
Even with all that I’ve said here, I’m still excited. The announcement, expected to be next Thursday (Valve’s Gabe Newell is scheduled to speak), could be a lot more or a lot less than what we expect. The Orange Box for Mac? Don’t get your hopes up. But when Valve does something like this (especially with such a crazy run-up as they’re doing), you can bet they don’t do things by halves. There’s more care taken in this teaser image (via RPS; the rest are at MacRumors) We’ll report the goings-on as soon as they occur, so point your browsers this way next week for that and all the rest of our GDC coverage.
Greetings! Nicholas and Jimin here live from the big TiVo Premiere launch in New York. There was a man guarding the device, which was hidden under a cloak, but when the cloak was lifted, oh dear! The gist: this is a TiVo you’re probably going to want. HD menus (build using Adobe Flash), searching that actually makes sense, a fancy remote control, and other goodness that you wouldn’t mind. So the UI almost goes without saying: it’s been a long time since you could look at a TiVo and say “Well, that looks good.” It’s built using Adobe Flash, so all of the fancy swoops and swishes you’ve associated with Flash over the years totally applies. I’d almost say Zune HD like, which is a prety big compliment considering what I had to do to get my Zune HD to work. The remote ain’t too shabby, either. It’s exactly like any slider phone you’ve used in the past few years. The “standard” shape has the normal buttons you’d assoiciate with a remote control: volume up down, channel numbers, etc. Flip it open and it becomes a QWERTY keyboard. So, if you’re hankering to watch Lost, just type “L“ and all the shows you have on the TiVO beginning with “L” pop up: Lost, Leopards Are Fun (on Animal Planet), etc. I have literally sat here for one minute trying to think of shows that begin with “L” and I couldn’t.
Needless to say, this is not exactly something that you’re going to find for sale anywhere anytime soon. Not that you’d want to buy one. Or couldn’t just build one yourself, if you were so inclined. Make sure you add a fan that sounds like a vacuum cleaner if you do build one though. Oh, and “in Mother Russia, USB stick builds you!”
[via Reddit]
Here’s some troubling news for my fellow World of Warcraft players. It seems that hackers, account thieves, and other miscreants have now embraced man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks to further their evil ways. Blizzard says it’s not a widespread issue, and it’s rather difficult to pull off, but it’s something y’all should be aware of. The deal is that WoW hackers are able to infect your PC—this is a PC-only problem, mind you, so Mac players can more or less ignore all of this—with a bit of malware that’s then able to initiate the MITM attack. The purpose of this is to intercept your login name, password, and authenticator number so that they can log into your account. Once online, they can do whatever it is you’d be able to do inside the game world: sell items, mail gold to other players, etc. They cannot, it should be noted, delete your actual account or anything like that. Still, it’s potentially devastating, selling all your epics for fast gold, then turning around and selling that gold for real money to someone else. MITM attacks aren’t new or anything. There’s plenty of programs out there can initiate them rather easily, letting people intercept passwords, instant messages, you name it. They work in that they sit in between your PC and the server you’re trying to connect to. So, if you’re playing WoW, instead of your username and password and authenticator number going directly to Blizzard’s servers, they first go to the hacker’s rogue server, which then passes the info onto your intended server, capturing the information in the process. It’s essentially invisible to you, the end-user, which is why the attacks are so dangerous. Blizzard has already identified the piece of malware that initiates the MITM attack, so be on the lookout for emcor.dll. Be sure to keep your anti-virus software up to date. One final bit: the odds of you being a victim of such an attack are quite low, if only because it requires so much work for the hacker to pull off; you’d have to be hacked a the very moment he wants to break into your account, and that’s something that simply doesn’t happen. Rather, your account will be compromised on, say, Monday, but it won’t be until the following Saturday that the hacker actually access your account. And again, the worst thing that could happen with this kind of attack would be for someone to sell off your character’s items and gold, then, for good measure, delete your character—your actual account cannot be tampered with. That may be a distinction without meaning, yes. So yeah, just be sure to keep your anti-virus software up to date, and keep your wits about you. Stay away from the shady parts of the Internet! via wow.com
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Full review: The Aurora ALX is unabashedly a gamer’s PC. It’s main focus in life is to run the latest software, and run it as fast as possible. The case makes no apologies about this, it doesn’t try to disguise itself as a business product, you can tell by looking at the case that it’s designed to go fast. The front of the case is smooth, with the alienhead logo prominently displayed at the top. When you push on the head, the front panel drops exposing the Blu-ray drive, gently lit by white LEDs. The bottom of the front gapes open, allowing air to flow through as quickly as possible. The top of the case is covered by a row of thermostatically controlled louvers, which open to allow more air flow as needed. It’s actually hard to get the louvers to open, since the factory installed liquid cooling system is so efficient. The side of the case are actually restrained. There’s a small window, lit from behind via multicolor LEDs (which you can control from in Windows). The whole design of the case is remarkably restrained, considering Alienware’s reputation for, shall we say, extreme design. One interesting feature is the addition of a small, pressure sensitive button on the back of the computer near the card slots. If you push this button (regardless of if the computer is on or not), several small LEDs light up and show you the area where you plug in the video, sound, and network connections. This is frankly brilliant, I don’t know how many times I’ve been crawling under a desk wishing for a flashlight while plugging everything in to get the thing up and running. These little LEDs are in other places as well. Taking the side of the case off reveals not just the extremely well routed wires and hoses, but also another one of these small buttons. Pushing on that button lights up the entire inside of the case, making it incredibly easy to see what you are doing while hooking up and routing said wires, connectors, and hoses. Again, a brilliant inclusion in design, that I wish more PC makers would use. After mentioning how much I liked these lights to my contact at Alienware, I was told that both sets of lights run off of a rechargeable battery.
Hardware configuration: You can see why this system is so fast after looking at the specs. To give you some hard numbers, running at 1680×1050 @ 120Hz, AAx8, and Ultra High on all options, the average FPS in the Far Cry 2 “Ranch Long” benchmark was 63 FPS. It peaked out at 139 FPS, and dipped down to 25 FPS at the slowest point. Crysis averaged 35 FPS during the “Island Time-demo”. Very respectable. From a purely organic viewpoint, I’m happy to report that any game I threw at the ALX ran perfectly, and incredibly smoothly. The Bad: The price. Let’s be honest, not a whole lot of people have $4500 to drop on something like a PC, particularly these days. If you do though, this is the machine to get. It’s also really really heavy. Liquid cooling and an 875 watt power supply do not make for a light weight computer. I also noticed that because it is liquid cooled, it seems to pull in more dust and fibers then an air cooled system.
Bottom line: if you can afford it, buy it. The Aurora ALX is a great machine. I’ve really enjoyed my time “reviewing” it (meaing playing Far Cry 2, Crysis, and Borderlands) and will be sad to see it go back to Alienware. Particularly because my wife will expect me to help out around the house again since I’m not busy doing work.
If you live in Spain that is. University of Zaragoza researchers have been looking into using various forms of solid waste to generate electricity for the nation, up to as much as 7%. What is it lately with all this decaying matter being useful?
The process involves all sorts of big, scientific sounding words like incineration, degasification, and anaerobic digestion. But the general idea is that it involves burning solid waste before it gets thrown in the landfill. This not only reduces the size and inherent risks of landfills, it can generate anywhere between 8.13 and 20.95 TWh (terawatt hours). You can find a more detailed and better explained depiction at the link below. Continue reading Recycling may save, but trash can power your home
Honestly, it would hardly ever refer to anything except on the most astronomical of scales. One hellameter would be something like a billion light-years, and the limit of the universe as we know it seems to be, well, a fraction of that. A hellasecond would be about a two and a half million times the age of our galaxy. So really, there’s no danger of people who don’t like hella having to say it all the time. Come on people, let’s do this. [via Reddit]
As Neowin reported earlier this month, AT&T plans to invest up to $19 billion in network upgrades. The first major step appears to be opening three test labs, according to an AT&T press release. Two of the development centers will be located in the United States and the third will...
Stating in a press release, Blizzard Entertainment announced today that the closed beta test for its highly anticipated real-time strategy game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, has begun.
“Gathering concentrated feedback from our players is an important step for us as we head into the final stretch of development...
Who doesn’t like Bigfoot. Nobody, that’s who. I got a chance to look at Mattel’s singing, dancing, and rolling Bigfoot robot. He can even throw balls at you and sleeps when he gets tired. Very, very cute.
So once you become a reviewer of Tenga Jars it seems you become the go-to guy for folks trying to sell Tenga Jars. I feel like Malcom’s dad in Breaking Bad. You get into something for noble reasons and you end up killing a dude in the desert after blowing up his headquarters with fulminated mercury. Anyway, please bear with me. Someone out there may need this information. Drumroll please: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I present my review of the A10 Cyclone. So what is the A10 Cyclone? Think of it as a shoe cleaner for your weenus. This onahole has a series of brushes that rotate back and forth over the item in question. The brushes are made of washable silicone. Then there’s a USB cable. Here’s my honest opinion: I personally didn’t like the sensation. It’s kind of all-encompassing and you get quickly overwhelmed. I mean seriously, people. This is a motorized tenga jar. We’re not talking butterfly kisses. You either like it or you don’t. If you can’t handle lots of stimulation at once, maybe stay away. The thing that I’m most confused about, however, is the Japanese fascination with these things. I mean if you’re down with putting it into a robot, do it. By all means. But seriously: these things do nothing for the self-esteem. If you can’t shave, meet a nice lady, maybe go to dinner and a movie, and maybe go back to her place and do the horizontal bop, fine. But seriously: do you need this level of simulation in your onanism? Do you? You really have to make a production out of things when you use this. It’s like cooking yourself a gourmet meal – it’s fun, but wouldn’t you rather order some wings and drink a beer? You’ll at least get more done around the house instead of chopping shallots and braising pheasant. Anyway, this machine is $80 and the R-1 (which actually comes with a little vibrating egg and looks like an iPod Mini) is $60. For my money I’d stick with a Tenga jar (a little less overwhelming) but you do what you feel, dude.
So once you become a reviewer of Tenga Jars it seems you become the go-to guy for folks trying to sell Tenga Jars. I feel like Malcom’s dad in Breaking Bad. You get into something for noble reasons and you end up killing a dude in the desert after blowing up his headquarters with fulminated mercury. Anyway, please bear with me. Someone out there may need this information. Drumroll please: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I present my review of the A10 Cyclone. So what is the A10 Cyclone? Think of it as a shoe cleaner for your weenus. This onahole has a series of brushes that rotate back and forth over the item in question. The brushes are made of washable silicone. Then there’s a USB cable. Here’s my honest opinion: I personally didn’t like the sensation. It’s kind of all-encompassing and you get quickly overwhelmed. I mean seriously, people. This is a motorized tenga jar. We’re not talking butterfly kisses. You either like it or you don’t. If you can’t handle lots of stimulation at once, maybe stay away. The thing that I’m most confused about, however, is the Japanese fascination with these things. I mean if you’re down with putting it into a robot, do it. By all means. But seriously: these things do nothing for the self-esteem. If you can’t shave, meet a nice lady, maybe go to dinner and a movie, and maybe go back to her place and do the horizontal bop, fine. But seriously: do you need this level of simulation in your onanism? Do you? You really have to make a production out of things when you use this. It’s like cooking yourself a gourmet meal – it’s fun, but wouldn’t you rather order some wings and drink a beer? You’ll at least get more done around the house instead of chopping shallots and braising pheasant. Anyway, this machine is $80 and the R-1 (which actually comes with a little vibrating egg and looks like an iPod Mini) is $60. For my money I’d stick with a Tenga jar (a little less overwhelming) but you do what you feel, dude.
The specs are nothing crazy: 3G, 2GB of RAM to start, 64GB or more of SSD storage, probably a 10.1″ screen, and a nice long battery life. The chipset and processor weren’t disclosed, but the source is suggesting a 1.5GHz Snapdragon. I wonder about that — I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some curveballs in there. Dual Snapdragons, for instance, or a dedicated GPU like the iPad. It’s actually very similar to this speculative post here, except without a price, which makes it much easier to swallow. Guess we’ll find out… not soon. It’s not clear when they’ll be making the real announcement, and at any rate we’ll probably hear from Google first. [via Tom's Hardware]
Google is set to unveil a brand new social networking application, that is all set to integrate with at least two Google products. The new social network will go head-to-head to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, bringing in a whole new competitor to the market.
According to details...
Well, Belgian photographer Fotoopa (nickname, I’m supposing) has put together a seriously cool rig that does this. It’s not easy to make, but if you’re dedicated, it looks like this might be the best way on earth to capture bugs in flight. As far as I can tell, it has a second lens that is constantly checking the in-focus spot of the actual lens, using infrared LEDs and an IR rangefinder. Just get a bug in the general area of the sweet spot and as soon as it flies into the zone, the camera will snap a picture. Because it uses IR LEDs, it even works in total darkness. He’s put together the instructions here, including the board layout and other components.
I’m not going to lie: using this rig, you can get a better shot in 10 seconds than I did after an hour and a couple hundred exposures. Still a nice shot, but if I were a robot camera whose only purpose in life was to get bees exactly in focus mere inches from my lens, I probably would have had a higher success rate. [via Lifehacker and Make]
Get ready home shoppers, Alienware is going to be paying you a visit at 1am Eastern time on the 6th. Apparently, showing up on geeky TV shows and at Blizzcon isn’t enough, so Alienware is going to be selling it old school: on QVC late nights. Of course, you can still buy them online, they are still going to be expensive, but this might expand the brand awareness for them. If nothing else, a whole bunch of rednecks will end up with some serious computing power.
Here’s what should have happened: any trouble with the cards, even if they are supposed with good reason to be counterfeit, should be referred to a manager. This isn’t a floor staff issue. The manager can spend 15 minutes figuring it out, and if that doesn’t bear fruit, he could apologize to the customer for the inconvenience and ask them to come again tomorrow when they’ve got it all figured out. A ten-dollar gift certificate would probably make the customer forget anything bad had happened. To do anything otherwise, and assume the problem is with the customer, should not even be considered. Best Buy, in this case, is liable, and although I would not say that litigation was wise in Nicholas’ case, in this person’s case it seems necessary. This was a serious breach of civil rights and needs to be addressed. Best Buy needs to get this problem under control. [via Reddit]
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal via CNET.com, Google is preparing an online store in which it will sell third-party business software to Google Apps customers.
Google's store could arrive as early as March with the works of third-party developers available as enhancements to Google's office productivity software...
PC World is reporting Intel and Micron plan to announce 25 nanometer flash memory chips on Monday. The news comes from a research note by Objective Analysis sent out ahead of the official unveiling. According to PC World, an Intel rep confirmed the new chips, which are set to...
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The Q&A format surrounding mobile, location based social networking continues here at 
Short version: The Aurora ALX is quite possibly the fastest computer I’ve ever used. It is in a word, amazing. The water cooling, thermally reactive venting system, and lighting combine to make a system that runs great, looks amazing, and has some innovative features that make you go “duh. why didn’t I think of that?” Of course performance has its price, and you will have to pay a premium price for this system.
