The rumors are true, RIM does have a clamshell BlackBerry and it’s said to be coming soon. Most likely by the end of the year. The Kickstart as it’s being dubbed at the moment has a SureType keyboard, external LCD and has the same trackball we’ve all come to love or loathe. I don’t know about this one. I’m not that big a fan of clamshells, but it is a BlackBerry.
This isn’t as weird as the girl who got a cryptic, anti-capitalist note instead of her iPod, but it’s potentially far more damaging. This guy bought a refurbished iPod Touch through Buy.com for $99 — what a deal, right? As it turns out, not so much. It was infected/infested with a trojan that quietly installs a backdoor on your Windows system. Nasty.
He contacted Buy.com and they quickly sent him a brand new one, then Buy.com contacted the factory where it had been recertified. They concluded that it was “not a significant problem that is happening with any frequency at all.” Reassuring. Personally, I’ll be reformatting every piece of used hardware that comes my way from now on.
Are we as citizens ready for icons from our 8-bit pasts to make their way into our kitchens?
Yes, yes we are.
Take this Triforce cutting board. It’s fully usable and will remind you of your quest against Gannon every time you dice onlines. It’s sold out, but you can get your hands on a Space Invaders villian for only $125. If I was really into cutting boards, I’d get one.
I’ll admit it, I was in a laptop pop band in the 90s called ABC/DefG. We used the keyboards on our laptops to play music live shows. We were laughed at, but the guys in this video make me feel better.
That being said, the truly geek half of me thinks this is badass cool. Could you imagine doing this with an Optimus keyboard?
via Make
Why even bother rolling something out when its primary purpose is not present? It’s be like releasing a car without wheels, or a console without games (oh wait, Sony did that). But that is exactly what T-Mobile is doing: the first phase of the rollout, however long it may be, will only be using the 3G network for voice. You’re stuck with EDGE for data.
Well, if you’re lucky enough to be getting this “update,” let us know if anything at all changes. Maybe your mom will sound better now — she always sounds so raspy! I’ll call her later and let you know.
In an earnings call today Time Warner reported that it was planning to spin off its Cable holdings, “under the right circumstances.” No specifics were noted but Time Warner Cable is obviously bolted on to the weak AOL and TW media holdings and not quite the best fit for a media company in the first place, synergy be damned. TWC had a $771 million in profit last quarter, which is pretty nice. Let’s see who picks them up. Hopefully not ComCast.
Two ladies lookin’ to get their charge on.
Samsung is pleased to announce the addition of charging stations in the LaGuardia and Orlando Airports and what better way to show off their huge, penis-shaped chargers than by featuring underaged girls and their grandmother rocking out to some free power, straight outta Seoul.
“At Orlando International Airport we continue to look for ways to meet the diverse needs of our passengers. The complimentary charging stations are an expected customer service amenity for today’s travelers with personal electronics,” said Renee Spann, Director of Concessions, for the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority.
Amen, Renee. After you anally rape us at the TSA checkpoint and charge us $5 for bottled water at the gate it’s nice to know we get a little free juice.
In an interview with PC Play Magazine, when asked about the current state of PC gaming, Crytek president Cevat Terli said:
“We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy. To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.”
Plenty of other PC game developers have raised the same complaint about piracy. You’ll recall that THQ chimed in a couple months ago and Gears of War developer Epic Games announced that it’ll be going console-only from now on.
via ALBOTAS
We talked back in March about how all of you nerds spending your time on GTA IV could mean a lull in sales for the opening weekend of Iron Man. Besides spending your weekly allowance on a $60 DVD, you’ll also likely be holed up without food or water, to engrossed in virtual drunk driving to go out and see a movie.
This weekend we’ll find out. Iron Man opens on Friday nationwide, and by that time most people will be four days deep in GTA IV. The film and the game have the same basic target audience, but will they be able to split their time this weekend?
Of course, if you’re in San Francisco you can go watch it today courtesy of us at the Crunch Network, no matter what Marvel says.
Sharp is partnering with AMIMON — who I believe was the god of thin crust pizza in ancient Roman mythology — to offer wireless HD streaming to its ultra-thin TVs. The X-series TVs come in 37-, 42-, and 46-inch screen models and work with an optional transmitter unit.
We’re taking a meeting with these folks to figure out what exactly this technology will and will not do. Apparently it sends uncompressed signals wirelessly over an unlicensed channel.
WHDI™ – Wireless High Definition Interface sets a new standard for wireless high-definition video connectivity. It provides a high-quality, uncompressed wireless link which can support delivery of equivalent video data rates of up to 3Gbps (including uncompressed 1080p) in a 40MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band, conforming to FCC regulations. Equivalent video data rates of up to 1.5Gbps (including uncompressed 1080i and 720p) can be delivered on a single 20MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band, conforming to worldwide 5GHz spectrum regulations. Range is beyond 100 feet, through walls, and latency is less than one millisecond.
These technologies have been brewing for years now and for Sharp to pick just one is pretty big news.
There’s a company in the UK called SuperMario Plumbing and Heating. The owner, Mariusz “Mario” Gruzka, though likely not Italian, could perhaps pass as a real life version of the Mario that most of us know and love. He’s no Captain Lou Albano from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (remember Zelda Fridays?), but he’ll do.
There’s some loose talk going around the ‘net as to the legalities of a company called SuperMario Plumbing and Heating, but here’s to hoping that everyone can just have a nice, healthy chuckle and move forward without too much trouble.
via Geekologie
STYLE AND SOPHISTICATION. That’s one way to describe Sony’s new Bravia home theater setup, the DAV-F200. Another, less boisterous way to describe it is by calling it what it is: a virtual surround sound, um, home theater setup. While “virtual” surround setups have gotten better over the years (so says one of the guys who calls into Leo Laporte’s radio show occasionally), I personally would break the bank, spend the dollars while they’re still worth something and get an all-out surround sound system. But maybe you don’t have the space, I don’t know. If so, hear me out for a second.
In addition to supplying virtual surround sound, the DAV-F200 receiver upconverts content to 1080p, delivered via an HDMI connection. There’s a USB port on the little guy, too, so you can connect your PMPs and have Men Without Hats blast out of the speakers.
Yes, I’d have to actually “hear” the unit in action to say whether or not it’s worth plopping down cash for, but it certainly looks aesthetically attractive. Look for it in June.
I’m all in favor of far-reaching, ambitious projects like the colonization of Mars and stuff, but covering the Moon with mirrors to increase the chances of aliens seeing us? I’m more than a little skeptical. Aside from the very idea being totally insane, it’s a ridiculous notion that it would help aliens find us. Any alien race that has the power to contact or visit us almost certainly has the power to find us without us flashing prime numbers at them via the Moon.
The secondary benefit of collecting solar energy and beaming it back to Earth is kind of weak too. First, the amount of energy created would be relatively small. Second, have you seen how much dust there is on the moon? And how many meteoroids hit the sucker? The solar array would be down before you could charge up your cell 
phone.
On the Moon, readers, scientists like this have their pants pulled down and they are spanked with moon rocks.
Is it possible to write a full post on deadly military robots without making a snarky joke about SkyNet?
Nope. The foot soldiers in the future super-computer overlord’s army aren’t the Terminator series robots, but mechanized drones, like the Israeli killer robot its army has just developed, called the Guardium.
This isn’t just a remote controlled killbot, though; the Guardium is autonomous, meaning it makes its own decisions on who to shoot. What could possibly go wrong?
We’re guessing a lot. The machines run on software, and software can be faulty. We’re hoping we never encounter one of these mechanized killers.
AOL and XM are no longer friends, right, (the contract expired) so you can no longer listen to XM Satellite Radio via AOL Radio. For us in the promised land of North America, big deal. We can either pony up and get a dedicated satrad, or we can listen online with XM Radio Online. Others outside of the majesty of North America, however, are, shall we say, le screwed. And they’re complaining about it.
As an European listener of XM Radio via AOL … it’s a disaster for me, since I love XM Radios 6 and 7.
The outraged radio fan, Jacques, has no recourse, since XM isn’t broadcast outside North America and you can’t get XM Radio Online anywhere but here.
Quel dommage.
Because police don’t have enough ways to ruin my weekend, a company called AcuNetx (I spelled that right) has developed a device called the HawkEye, a non-invasive device that scans the eyes of drivers to tell their intoxication levels.
It’s not meant for field stops so much as checkpoints, which are illegal in many states, and requires a laptop and hand-held device to operate. It detects movements of the pupils as they react to certain stimuli to determine sobriety levels.
The HawkEye itself can’t exactly determine the BOC, something needed as evidence, but will give probable cause for a full field test.
You teetotalers have nothing to fear, but those of us with lives are keeping a wary on the fun-killing Big Brother. Personally, I find it offensive that they would attempt to interfere with my goal of endorsing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happy hour.
Tomorrow we welcome those with emailed invites to Red Sky at 47 E. 29th Street between Park and Madison.
We’d like to thank our sponsors again. If you got an email for the wait list spots, congratulations. If you didn’t, there’s always next time. See you tomorrow! Hopefully Marvel doesn’t shut us down. After all, Matt Hickey is coming dressed as No-Pants Spiderman.
Gold Sponsors
Adamantium Sponsors
Nivea for Men
Palladium Sponsors
Giveaway Sponsors
GTA IV fever is far from over, and the controversies are still pouring in. But for one organization, it’s not the sexual content or graphic violence of the game that they find objectionable, it’s the in-game drunk driving.
MADD, or Mothers Against an Average Weekend, released this statement today:
Each year nearly 13,500 people die in drunk driving crashes and another half a million are injured in alcohol-related traffic crashes. This is why MADD is extremely disappointed by the decision of the manufacturers of the game Grand Theft Auto IV to include a game module where players have to drive drunk. Drunk driving is not a game and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable. MADD is calling on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to reclassify Grand Theft Auto IV as an Adults Only game, a step up from the current rating of Mature and for the manufacturer to consider a stop in distribution – if not out of responsibility to society then out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.
True enough, but does it really qualify — over the other, more obvious questionable material in the game — as something that should have a dreaded AO rating?
When Devin skewered the MacBook Air some time ago, he was summarily insulted and burned in virtual effigy; we all laughed at him in the chat room. Far from being useless, however, one valid criticism against the MacBook Air was that it wasn’t portable enough. How could Apple leave out built-in EVDO, no one said? Rather than complain about, one Jordan Bunnell took the Apple by its core or some other stupid metaphor and installed his own damn EVDO module. Hello, world indeed!
The man, armed only with a Veriozn USB727 Aircard, a soldering iron, the heart of a lion and the free time of a loaf-about, managed to get the card working as clear as day.
I have zero engineering ability, so I won’t even pretend to re-tell exactly what he did, but all the pictures are dynamic.
Pretty neat, deep and otherworldly cynicism aside.
via MacNN
Fingering a robot prostitute for all of us.
