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When I first heard about VDIGI’s VD-W3 Wii upscaler, like many others, my first reaction was, “how does this differ from any other upscaller currently on the market?”. The unit arrived a few days ago and I tested the product with two games, Wii Sports and Mario Kart...
Look out, MiFi - Sprint just pushed out your new baby brother, and he looks like a mean one.
The Sprint Overdrive is a mobile hotspot, not unlike the aforementioned MiFi. The idea is simple: turn it on, and you've got a WiFi access point pulling down data via Sprint's third and fourth generation networks.
We just got our hands on the device for the first time, and while it'll still be a few days before we've given it a rough enough run-through for a full review, we've got some first impressions to share.
Pretty sure none of us here ever said that Avatar would tank at the box office, but did we think it’d make a billion dollars in just a few days? I sure didn’t! (To be fair, I never really gave the topic much thought.) But yes, wipe the look of shock off your face as it’s now revealed that the James Cameron film made $1.02 billion in three weeks. That includes international receipts, too. That’s a nice chunk of change. As it stands, the movie is well on track to become the second highest grossing film of all time. (Presumably this list doesn’t take inflation into account.) Given the positive word-of-mouth reaction, and with the Twitter echo-chamber having given the film its blessing, it’s probably going to hover around the top of the weekly money charts for a little while yet. That’s unlike the typical popcorn movie that has a big opening weekend then falls off the face of the Earth. None of us (at least the east coast morning crew) have seen the movie, so we can’t give our Highly Important thoughts on it. At least the 3D version looks neat, I think.
The 2010 CES event in Las Vegas doesn't start for a few days, but Intel has joined other vendors in jumping the gun and making announcements of new technology ahead of the event.
>Now all of this info should still be classified as a rumor until HP makes it official next week. But each system seems like the next evolutionary step for HP. There is nothing out of the ordinary here like, say, a tablet with a revolutionary content delivery system. LogicBuy, the deal site that originally posted the leaks, states the ship date for the systems is January 7, 2010, so expect word before then. [via Engadget]
Remember the last time Samsung went more than a few days without launching a new phone? Yeah, neither do we. When we got word that Samsung Mobile was holding their CES press conference at the ungodly hour of 7:30 A.M on the Day 2 of CES (otherwise known as Day 1 of being hungover), my curiosity was piqued. I mean, who the hell launches a new phone at 7:30 in the morning, halfway through a show? Not Samsung, it seems.
The original Mountain Dew throwback was a love it or hate it sort-of thing. I adored it and teared a bit when I couldn’t find it anymore mid-July 2009. But the Mountain Dew Throwback recipe is slightly different this time around. It still uses real sugar instead of HFCS, but now contains more caffeine and orange juice, among other items. So how does it taste? I don’t know. I gave up soda four days ago and I’ll be damned if I give in now.
Pre-toting people around the Internets have been hoping and praying that Palm would add video recording support to the Pre ever since the device launched. When Palm's CEO Jon Rubinstein mentioned that webOS 1.3.5 would be hitting the Pre in just a few days, people started getting antsy; surely this would be the one that brought video, right?
No such luck. While it does fix a handful of issues (most importantly, they've upped the number of apps you can have installed at once), the lack of video isn't one of them.
You can download the software here and I’ve mirrored it here so we don’t destroy their server (although I doubt there are enough hardcore Nookers right now). You should check back with the NookDevs often and always.
Thanks, JohnnyTToxic
Just recently we reviewed the A-DATA SH93 portable hard drive which featured a rugged design said to be both shock resistant and water proof -- within reason anyway. After abusing it for a few days the SH93 lived up to all our expectations with flying colors, surviving multiple drops onto a hard surface from up to 4 feet high, and being submerged into the kitchen sink for half an hour with no damage to the drive's contents whatsoever. Today we have another rugged portable hard drive that looks to improve on some of those issues we had with the A-DATA SH93.
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Should Santa leave a Sony Reader Daily Edition e-reader under your Christmas tree (or maybe you just like to buy fancy things on your own), you’ll be pleased to know that you’ll have a few more sources of content to choose from. Sony has agreed to deals bringing The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, and The Baltimore Sun (among others) to the device. And there was much rejoicing. Presumably. A deal with The Wall Street Journal was announced a few days ago, too. That will run you $14.99 per month. Basically, Sony realizes that vanilla e-book readers can only do so well. One, who reads anymore? Two, readers are weird and probably love the paper book as an end to itself (see: Devin). Three, newspaper are dying (get it?) for more sources of revenue, and hitching their wagons to the future in electronic readers may seem like a pretty swell idea.
Out of the $232.2 million, only $73 came from the US and Canada. The rest were primarily from the UK, France, and Russia. While the opening numbers weren’t record-breaking impressive, the movie will probably continue to sell great as word-of-mouth reviews rave about the 3D effects. This is definitely one that deserves your money, folks. At least that’s what I hear.
Remember that crazy lookin' Motorola-made Android handset that leaked out a few days ago? The one that appeared to have a flip-out keyboard on a big ol' hinge? It's real - and it's heading for AT&T.
GreenCarReports did the dirty work here and found that GM’s resident bulldog and VP of Global Product Development, Bob Lutz, originally wanted to license Electric Car by They Might Be Giants. But surprise, surprise, someone dropped the ball at GM and instead of that fun and appropriate song, the Chevy Volt now has its own internet meme.
An easy to use digital camera that automatically uploads pictures to various websites without using a USB cable, a memory card reader or Eye-Fi? If that's something you've always wanted, the Cerevo Cam, made by Tokyo-based startup Cerevo [JP], might be the right device for you.
After months of development work (the camera was completely designed from scratch and in-house), the shoot-and-upload camera is finally available in Japan. To recap, the big idea here is to simplify the process of uploading and sharing pictures online. Cerevo Cam users can send pictures directly from the device to the corresponding photo management site (dubbed Cerevo Life), mail addresses or to a number of web services - even when the camera is turned off (a feature that Eye-Fi doesn't offer).
The so-called "Networked Camera" detects Wi-Fi spots and transfers pictures automatically without you needing to take it out of your bag. You can choose at which time(s) the upload should take place or initiate this yourself from the menu. The auto upload function, probably the most important feature, worked flawlessly during my test (Cerevo gave me a sample for a few days). Alternatively, you can use a 3G modem with it (to be connected through USB).
Hey, something’s happening in China vis-à-vis piracy! The country’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has been fiddling with downloads there for the past few days, and people are complaining that they’re not about to access the content they were once able to. The new action affects BitTorrent download and has all but taken down VeryCD, which is supposedly the country’s biggest download site. (As if I know anything about China download habits.) Someone told China Daily, and English language newspaper there, that he’ll “never be able to download Hollywood movies or classical records again.” SARFT has shut down some 530 BitTorrent sites in the past few days. And if you’re looking to kill a few minutes, you may want to read this list of films that are for whatever reason banned in China. I see that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was banned. Lucky China.
You waggle the camera in front of a baby and the baby becomes happy and smiles. There’s some scientific reasons in there about why it should work but I’m here to tell you that it definitely works better than simply snapping your fingers and making clicking noises with your tongue. The question is this: is your baby scared of cameras? Are you having trouble getting good pictures? Pay the $19.99 for this and give it a try. While I can’t promise you an amazing shot, at least it will break up the monotony of trying to get the wee one to smile right. Bottom Line
There have been a lot of references to “canonical plugins” over the past year, especially at WordCamps by Matt, but we haven’t really posted anything official about the idea, nor have we really made much progress beyond discussions about how awesome it would be to have canonical plugins and how good it would be for the community. But what are canonical plugins, you ask? Well, that’s one of the many things the core commit team has been talking about over the past few days, and everyone agrees that we need to prioritize this aspect of the project sooner rather than later. So, here’s a super high-level description of how we’re currently thinking about canonical plugins, which we’d like to use to initiate some focused community discussion on the topic. Canonical plugins would be plugins that are community developed (multiple developers, not just one person) and address the most popular functionality requests with superlative execution. These plugins would be GPL and live in the WordPress.org repo, and would be developed in close connection with WordPress core. There would be a very strong relationship between core and these plugins that ensured that a) the plugin code would be secure and the best possible example of coding standards, and b) that new versions of WordPress would be tested against these plugins prior to release to ensure compatibility. There would be a screen within the Plugins section of the WordPress admin to feature these canonical plugins as a kind of Editor’s Choice or Verified guarantee. These plugins would be a true extension of core WordPress in terms of compatibility, security and support. In order to have a system like this, each canonical plugin’s development community would probably need similar infrastructure to WordPress itself, including things like Trac, mailing lists, support forums, etc. These things will be worked out within the development community over the coming months, but in the meantime, we really need a better name for this. Many people have no idea what canon/canonical means (clearly, they are not Dr. Who fans!), and having to define the word distracts from discussing the core ideas behind the concept. So, we thought we’d do a community poll to see what people think we should call canonical plugins. We brainstormed a few dozen ideas yesterday and whittled it down to our top handful. Based on the definition of canonical plugins given above, which of these terms do you think best describes them? I’m including a short description of our thoughts on each. Standard - Implies that these are the standard by which all other plugins should be judged, as well as the idea of them being the default plugins. Cast your vote in the poll below to have your opinion considered during the decision-making process. And if you can think of a word that we haven’t listed here that you think is better, please submit it in the poll! The poll will remain open until 11:59pm UTC Thursday, December 10, 2009.
Remember that leaked Android 2.1 ROM for the GSM HTC Hero from a few days ago? Looks like there was more to it than meets the eye. Tucked deep inside the ROM was a list of around 20 Android-based handset codenames, nearly all of which have never been seen. Remember that leaked Android 2.1 ROM for the GSM HTC Hero from a few days ago? Looks like there was more to it than meets the eye. Tucked deep inside the ROM was a list of around 20 Android-based handset codenames, nearly all of which have never been seen.
Does getting every achievement in World of Warcraft mean you’ve “beaten” the game? I wouldn’t say so, but that seems to be the meme going around, with word that a man in Taiwan has ticked off all but one achievements in the game. The character, Small Gray (according to Google Translate), has 986 of the game’s achievements. There are 986 achievements in the game, but sharper eyes than mine have noticed that he only got to magic number 986 via a glitch. He’s actually missing one achievement called “BB King,” but he glitched the game to give him one, unearned achievement. The bottom line is, the guy has 986 out of 986. Good for him. The beauty of this is that a new patch, Patch 3.3, comes out in the next few days, so he’ll have a whole bunch of new achievements to attain. More importantly than any of this: achievements are dumb. I don’t care for them, no sir.
You’re going to have to wait a bit longer to pick up the $260 Nook in some Barnes & Noble retail stores. The lot that was earmarked for the brick and mortar retail market has been redirected to fullfill Internet pre-orders. Those damn early adopters always get all the fun. Some high-volume stores will receive limited quantities of the device around December 7th. The company had hoped to get them in stores by November 3oth, but that apparently didn’t happen due to the demand. B&N announced a few days ago that the reader was already sold out and new Internet orders would be fulfilled by January 4, 2010, but apparently that was only for the Internet. If you must have a Nook ASAP, your best bet is to probably head down to your local Barnes & Noble and inquire if it’s on the short Nook retail list. If it is, pack a bag and a lawn chair and proceed to camp-out in front of the store the day before the shipment is expected. Bring along your favorite book too for a bit of irony.
Strange things may be afoot with mobile game development house Gameloft. Just a few days ago the company's finance director Alexandre de Rochefort announced that...
Figures. Just yesterday we write about all the different e-books you can get your hands on this holiday shopping season, and then we get a bombshell:Barnes & Noble is 100 percent sold out of nook . The company says that it has exhausted its current supply, and will only have enough nooks to fulfill current pre-orders. In other words, if you were thinking about getting a nook for Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) but didn’t pre-order one yet, well, too late now. To throw some cold water on this volcanic story, Barnes & Noble says people won’t have to wait too long to get their nook if they order now. The expected ship date here on out is January 4, 2010, only a few days after Christmas day. So while the nook won’t be sitting under your tree, it’s not like you’ll have to wait months and months to get yours. The big winner in all of this, of course, is Amazon, whose Kindle 2 is widely available. Considering there’s really not too much of a difference between the two readers, I think it’s safe to say that a few people who were prepared to buy a nook may now spring for the Kindle.
As reported a few days ago, rumors had circulated that Google was planning to release part of their forthcoming Google Chrome OS sometime this week. Google has now sent out notifications that there is an OS event scheduled for this Thursday morning at their Mountain View, California headquarters. While a partial launch of the Chrome OS could still be planned, all indications from Google are that this Thursday's event will show off demos and offer a "complete overview" of the new operating system, which is scheduled to launch sometime in 2010. Google's Vice President of Product Management, Sundar Pichai and Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS, Matthew Papakipos will be speaking at the event.
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Today’s another big day in gaming, friends. (You’ll notice that we’re practically a game blog now. I blame the publishers for releasing the biggest games of the year within a few days of each other.) Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II, Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2, and Activision’s Tony Hawk Ride come out today (I assume the Tony Hawk franchise is still around because it’s still popular. I haven’t played one since Tony Hawk 4.) There’s no Assassin’s Creed II reviews yet, which I’m interpreting as Ubisoft either being control freaks, or that that game isn’t exactly a 10 out of 10. Hopefully the game is halfway as good as that Justice trailer: I read one Left 4 Dead 2 review (I’ll do my usual round-up later in the day), from Eurogamer, and it ends with this:
Considering the PC version is the “real” version, and my iMac can only just run Call of Duty 1 and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (which I’ve been playing for the past week), and that I never played the first game, and that I’m really not the biggest fan of online multi-player games, well, what more do I have to say?
Tokyo-based Thanko has brought us many USB-powered crap gadgets in the past. But in the last few days, the company has rolled out not one but four of those gadgets in rapid succession: A USB shoe dryer, USB eyelash curler, USB toothbrush sanitizer case, and a USB blanket (all links in Japanese). And you can get all of this stuff even if you live outside Japan.
The USB shoe dryer is shaped like a sleeping dog for some reason and looks like this (it’s pictured on top of this post again). It costs approximately $23 in Thanko’s online store.
Thanko is now also selling an eyelash curler you can connect to your computers USB port. Don’t ask me why. Price: About $23.
Thanko’s USB-powered toothbrush sanitizer case (based on infrared) is available for $40.10 over at Geek Stuff 4 U.
This USB blanket is kind of Japan’s answer to the Snuggie, even though you won’t look as cool wearing it. Price: About $23. If you’re interested in any of these devices for some reason and don’t live in Japan, please don’t hesitate to contact Geek Stuff 4 U who now seem to closely collaborate with Thanko for international distribution.
Palm and Sprint have taken a very different approach to the launch of the Pixi than they did with its slightly older and slightly brawnier brother, the Palm Pre. In the days leading up to the Pre, both parties were on full attack mode; keynotes were held, massive tradeshow booths were built, full page newspaper ads were run, and countdowns ticked away. With the Pixi? They’ve got a commercial. Compared to Palm’s last run, the marketing campaign surrounding the Pixi is decidedly more average – and after spending a few days with the phone, I’d say they made the right decision there. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >>
Remember a few days ago when I hinted at some exciting Tekken news? No? Well, today I can reveal what I was talking about: thanks to the fine folks at Namco Bandai (its publicists, to be exact) we now have three Tekken art books to give away. You can win one! This will be a very easy contest, believe me.
What do you have to do to win the art book? Just leave a comment right here in this post. I’m running this contest, so I’m not going to make you do anything ridiculous. The contest will run through the weekend, and I’ll announce the winners on Monday. So to recap: • You can win one of three Tekken art books. That means three people will win. Each book contains drawings, sketches, etc. of the game’s characters. You know, an art book. • Leave a comment IN THIS POST to be considered. I’ll run the comments through a random number generator on Monday (comment number one is 1, comment number two is 2, etc.) to select the winners. Presumably we’ll have more than three entrants. • The contest runs till Monday, November 16 at noon EST. • You need to be a U.S. resident. I’m not paying $8 million dollars to ship this stuff to Manila or Curitiba. Sorry.
I hope I’ve made this clear. Good luck~!
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Those wacky 
So we got a Shutter Buddy a few days ago and we gave it a try. What’s a Shutter Buddy, you ask? Well, it’s kind of a satellite dish looking thing that you attach to a point and shoot. It fits over a DSLR, but not quite as well as you’d expect.
