Archive for: March 14, 2008

Face it, Japan is just cooler than you are. You have a job and a car, Japan? Japan has finger pianos bundled as freebies with manga-centric magazines for 1st graders. You lose. And by “finger piano” we really mean finger piano. Check out the video after the break for a better view, but basically…

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Gadgets, Wearables

Could it be that liquid lenses for cellphone cameras are finally about to go from promising-but-undelivered tech to the real thing? We’re not holding out hope — they didn’t rock the world when they popped up in a couple nondescript Samsung phones before — but Varioptic and Seiko have just anno…

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Digital Cameras, Gadgets

TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook may be launching an instant-messaging service as early as next week. Arrington says that, as far as he knows, there isn't a desktop client to go along with it, meaning you'll have to be online and logged into your Facebook account to use it.

Now, what will happen to Facebook's third-party IM app, Social IM? Is this an example of Facebook muscling in and pushing out a developer (which is always a worry with a platform like this)? I just got off the phone with Social IM founder Yanda Erlich, and he seemed very zen about the whole thing, saying Facebook's move is not unexpected and could actually be a good thing for his company.

"It was a strategic assumption that they would eventually compete," he said. "From our perspective, depending on the solution, it could end up benefitting us instead of hurting us."

Social IM does have a desktop client to go with its web-based IM service, and while Yanda thinks the new Facebook IM could replace Social IM's web service, it could work in tandem with Social IM's desktop client (and really boost the adoption of it).

"Nothing really changes for our users," he said. "Facebook becomes the mechanism on which the message is sent, but the user experience won't change except now users will have their entire friends list added." That would actually be a big plus for Social IM, as the user base is still too small to replace AIM or Gtalk.

Yanda and I talked a few days ago about the drawbacks of a browser-based IM service. His hope is that Facebook users who are similarly irked ...

Captain Awesome and the League of Awesomeness were unavailable for comment. Now whether you’ll excuse us, we need to go die a few hundred more times in pointlessly difficult platforming levels. Bowser version is after the break.

Continue reading Wii gets the Super Smash Bros crystal ice treat…

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Gadgets, Gaming

As with Pleo, many may argue that Chumby is simply too cute to tweak. But whether you can manage to shuffle your emotional attachments to the side for a tick, we’re confident there’s fairly a few things you’d like to see changed. certain, that totally strange hodgepodge of glanceable data and be…

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Features, Gadgets

Given Comcast’s notoriously shady service, we’re not precisely in favor of the company being allowed to ruthlessly torture service any more markets than essential, but we can see why it might be a little frustrated with the FCC, which has allowed all sorts of giant phone companies to merge in th…

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Gadgets, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Not feeling decent LCD love from Dell lately? How about that new UltraSharp 2009W? The new 20-inch 16:10 widescreen monitor does up a 1680 x 1050 resolution, with 36% more pixel subject matter than Dell’s 19-incher. The display additionally outperforms its budget friendly E207WFP predecessor wit…

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Displays, Gadgets

We’re not certain how the AirLive AirMedia 3000 “wireless multimedia server” accesses YouTube composition without a browser — unlike devices like the Apple TV and iPhone, it apparently plays the straight .flv files, which only show up on the website, we believe — but whether it does, chalk it …

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Gadgets, Home Entertainment

“When I was but a wee computer science student at New Mexico Tech, a graduate student in OS handed me an inch-thick print-out and told me that whether I was really interested in operating systems, I had to read that. It was something about a totally lock-free operating system optimized using run-tim…

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OS

Geek.com reviews the ThinkPad X300. “The ThinkPad X300 is an exercise in balance. It’s designers were tasked with balancing performance and usability with size and weight and they did an excellent job.”Original post by donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda)

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OS

If at first you don't succeed, goes the saying, try and try again. Rockstar Games has now successfully used the do-over approach to protest the rating for its violent videogame Manhunt 2. The game, which was banned last year in the U.K., has now been granted an 18-rated age certificate, as the Telegraph reports. While anti-censorship supporters may call this a victory, the real loser could be the idea of even having a rating system.

Ironically, the 18-rated age certificate in the U.K. is similar to the American ESRB's "Adults Only" rating, the very rating Manhunt 2 first earned here. Of course, Rockstar Games protested that rating, took out the most controversial content, and subsequently earned an M-rating. The fact remains that it is hard to rate or judge content, and ratings should be only a guide and not the final word on whether folks buy games. But do the ratings have any meaning at all if companies can just protest until they get their way or the rating they want?

Post by Peter Suciu

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio
It’s been a little while since we’ve seen a new X-Fi device from Creative, but it looks like the company’s now set to expand it’s audio-enhancing empire a bit further, with its new X30 iPod dock apparently nearly ready for a release. While there’s unfo…

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Gadgets