One of the most compelling features of the Dash – Wi-Fi updates – is finally here. Dash users have to simply connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi and the Dash GPS unit will download and install the update automatically. Try doing that with your TomTom.
After the update the devices will have MyRoute, a system that maintains a list of your popular routes and adds your personal preferences to its routing suggestions.
Here’s a rundown of the latest goodies:
MyRoute™ – With the new MyRoute feature, as you travel from one point to another, Dash Express will automatically learn your preferred route in the background. The next time that you drive between the same origin and destination, the first route choice will be MyRoute, complete with traffic-based arrival time data. MyRoute can be compared to the computed Dash routes, including traffic detours, to decide which is optimal.
Search Along Route™ – Finding whatever you need on the road using Yahoo! Local search just got even easier. With the new Search Along Route feature, you can now search for anything you need along your selected route, shortening diversions on the way to your destination. Want to grab a latte on the way to a meeting? Simply do a Yahoo! Local search for “Starbucks” and select “along route” to be presented with the stores that are most conveniently located. Results are displayed with the distance from your current location, the distance off the route and the direction of the destination relative to the selected route.
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The Bhutanese assembly has banned laptops in the house in order to prevent lawmakers from becoming distracted while, well, making laws. With democracy, it seems, comes the terrible lure of FreeCell which, as we all know, is what got us into our whole economic mess in the first place. If the SEC paid as much attention to due diligence as they did to to Bejeweled we wouldn’t be in a recession.
The just-announced iPhone 3G pricing plan for Rogers in Canada isn’t going down too well. One intrepid Canadian started a Web site, RuinediPhone.com, that has a petition targeting the rather unfair prices. So far, more than 17,000 people have signed the petition, which is intended to make Rogers drop the price of the iPhone data plan.
The site’s creator has even written an open letter to Steve Jobs, asking him to do “something” about the unfair prices.
We applaud your struggle, Canada. There’s no reason for Rogers to charge what it wants to charge compared to what AT&T charges. Unless here’s some Canadian tax thing we’re not familiar with.
via iLounge
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is holding a press conference tomorrow with Tesla Motors, makers of some of the coolest electric cars on the planet, to announce their 4 door, 5 passenger sedan slated for release in 2010.
Not much information right now but rumor has it that it will be called the Whitestar and should be as efficient as the Roadster model now making the rounds.
The Roadster costs $109,000 but the sedan should be slightly less given its “green family” appeal. We’ll be there tomorrow for some on the scene reporting. Here’s hoping Gov. Schwarzenegger screams “Come with me if you want to live” to the assembled press and then says “Do it, do it now” to the plan to increase the number of electric cars on California roads.
Update: The new sedan will not be called Whitestar. Also, this is some sort of partnership with the state of California, it isn’t just an endorsement or random appearance by Schwarzenegger.
Update 2: The announcement is that Tesla will manufacture the sedan in California, instead of going to New Mexico, thanks to a $9 million incentive package.
In anticipation of a massive influx of folks on July 11 AT&T stores are hiring greeters, runners, and back office managers. AppleInsider is also reporting that activation will be on-site and immediate, ensuring that it’ll take them hours to clear people out of the stores.
The instructions support expectations that, at least in the case of sales at AT&T stores, each iPhone 3G will need to be unboxed and fully activated at the point of sale. In a second memo, the wireless carrier put out a call for additional part time staffers for launch weekend, which listed among the available positions a back office manager / inventory runner whose job would include bringing iPhone 3Gs from the inventory room to retail sales consultants and then helping to unbox them in order “to facilitate unbricking.”
Again, there here is the darn “brick” term again. I guess that’s what they’re calling it internally, sadly.
Since the most I ever do with my mouse is scroll up and down looking at dolphin porn, I don’t consider myself the best judge of a high-end gaming mouse from Steelseries. The Ikari has a bunch of insane settings including CPI modification, high sample rate, and built-in macros. It’s basically designed for the people who shoot me in the head whenever I try to play Counter-Strike online.
That said, one lucky commenter who can convince me that they’re worthy of this mouse will receive it to review and keep. All we ask is that you write a review in BFF when you’ve played with it for a while. Comment away, gamers, and become a CrunchGear Citizen Reviewer (TM) (R) (:P).
UPDATE – The winner is DrStrangelove:
Let me start by saying that I’m not a FPS person. Having me play Counter-Strike is like having Michael Vick watch your dogs for the weekend while you’re away; it’s a poor life decision. I’m an RTS guy – mostly gems like StarCraft in it’s pixilated glory.
Two months ago my mouse bit the dust. Since then I haven’t had much in the way of disposable income, so I’ve had to resort to using the track pad and little red dot in the middle of my ThinkPad’s keyboard… I could have stopped purchasing food to buy a new mouse, but eating is easily my second favorite pastime. This is no way to live, I tell you! Not only is it damn near impossible to effectively play any sort of game on my computer, but now I can no longer partake in my favorite pastime of getting hammered with my roommates and playing Portal separately, seeing who can go the longest without throwing up…
We at CG support drunk gaming wholeheartedly.
High res available here.
This purported ad sent in by a Radio Shack employee to Joystiq backs up the last week’s ad from K-Mart that Microsoft will give the Xbox 360 a price cut during E3. Hold off a few weeks if you’re in the market, kiddies.
If you are never satisfied with your partner’s libido, these pills from Japan might do the trick. The so-called H na koto o shitaku naru kamo shirenai-kyandii [JP, pictured left] (I probably am going to get horny-candy) can be found in Amazon Japan’s “Toys and Hobby” category [JP].
In case you really want to get wild, you can try the Midarana kimochi ni naru kamo shirenai-kyandii [JP] (I probably am going to get lecherous-candy).
The candy is delivered in small bags ($3 for 5 pills) and manufactured by Tokyo-based toy maker Marusou [JP].
And before you ask: Amazon doesn’t ship the pills overseas and I have never tried them. However, I am tempted to order the candy along with this DVD to improve my sex life and save on shipping costs at the same time.
Can you hear me now?
No, I’m listening to music thanks to Rhapsody.
That horrendous opening can mean only one thing: Verizon Wireless has joined up with Rhapsody to launch a mobile music subscription service, the first of its kind. The name, V CAST Music with Rhapsody, could use some work, but that’s to be expected. (That’s actually a good idea for an article: on terrible product names.) Anyway, the service, which will run you $15 a month, gives you access to a library of five million all-you-can eat songs. (Or, you can keep paying $1.99 per individual download if you’re so inclined, one for your phone and one for the PC, all DRM-free.)
Subscribers will get to use the service on both their cellphone and PC.
Now, you’ll need a Rhapsody-compatible phone to use the service. These include the unreleased LG Chocolate 3, which will be the service’s launch vehicle, and current “it” phone for VZW, the LG Dare.
You can try it out today by visiting VZW’s Web site.
An “anoymous user” sent in a document purporting to be an internal document from Rogers Canada detailing iPhone activation. There’s not much we don’t already know except that they’re using a secret version of iTunes for activation, which requires a special module.
There’s one niggling problem, though. The terminology is fairly rudimentary take this, for example:
Bricked: Default state of the iPhone, only emergency calls allowed.
Unbrick: Enabling the phone for services.
If I were a carrier and/or Apple, I wouldn’t want my CSRs running around taking about “bricked” phones. It makes the phones sound like they’re broken initially. While the language is pure carrier-speak, that usage bothers me for some reason.
Click through to read the whole thing.
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Is this purported TF2 poster real or fake? What is that thing?
via Film School Rejects
We eagerly await to hear what “perfection” sounds like. That is to say, we eagerly await to try out the Creative Zen X-Fi, a series of portable media players with built-in Wi-Fi. Aside from the usual set of features from every PMP ever, the Wi-Fi is used to instant message your dumb friends, presumably about what music you’re listening to or what video you’re watching right now. So far, it’s only compatible with Yahoo! and MSN Chat; they should probably add AIM for the American version. That, and you’ll be able to wirelessly stream media to and from the device.
No release date or price or anything particularly useful right now. That would be expecting far too much.
Rock Band 2 will come out this year for the Xbox 360 in September, with other platforms—the PS3 and Wii—getting in on the fun later in the year. What that means, exactly? Your guess is as good as mine.
But let’s focus: Rock Band 2 is coming. You’ll be able to use all of your Rock Band 1 accessories in the sequel, but new versions will be released alongside the game. You’ll also be able to use all your downloaded songs (DLC) in the sequel, which is awfully magnanimous of publisher MTV Games.
Another secret: I never played Rock Band.
Wanna see a picture of the new guitar and a few screen shots? Of course you do.
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Today Olympus Japan announced [JP] the development of a 360° lens and camera prototype. The technology is a world first.
The company started working on the prototype last year. The camera covers a vertical angle of 180° now, while the old version only covered 45°. A special kind of glass is used for the lens, which has a diameter of 3cm.
The picture on the right shows a conference room shot with the 360° camera (left).
As to be expected, Olympus says the camera will be most likely used for surveillance purposes. The company’s own R&D lab, Future Creation Laboratory, is mainly responsible for the development of the technology. Olympus didn’t say when the camera will be commercialized.
Today marks a new day for Lenovo with the announcement of its first desktop, the IdeaCentre K210. For all intents and purposes, it’s just a desktop but it pulls a couple things from the laptop line that are unique and cool, like Veriface facial recognition technology. It also includes an anti-microbial keyboard and “Bright Vision”, which detects how far you are from the monitor and adjusts screen brightness. I’m kind of skeptical about the latter of those two.
You can get the IdeaCentre K210 with the following specs if you want.
* Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Processors
* Intel® GMA 3100 integrated graphics
* Blu-ray HD-DVD Combo accommodates home theater
* High definition audio 5.1 for reverberating sound
* Gamers will love the optional upgrade to ATI Radeon 2600 XT (512MB)
Full specs after the jump.
Pricing starts at $379 after MIR and you can choose from a 19- or 22-inch monitor for $229 or $299.
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Previewed last week for the press was Mitsubishi’s latest line of 120Hz flat panels with Integrated Sound Projector, which entails 16 speakers placed along the bottom edge of the set. The array is meant to reproduce 5.1 surround sound by varying the times in which the speakers fire off sounds. Mitsubishi is claiming the technology to be easy to use and fairly straightforward which I tend to agree with based on the demo.
Setup is fairly basic, but can also be modified for the home theater buffs to adjust for couch placement and other minute details to optimize where sound should be going. For example, let’s say your couch isn’t in the middle of the room directly in front of the TV, but it’s actually to the left by 10-feet or something. The iSP setup allows you to shift your virtual couch to the left so you still get the center channel effect and so forth. Further details after the jump.
There will be a 46- and 52-inch model that will be available next month for $3,299 and $3,699, respectively.
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We’re led to believe this scan of a German photography magazine article about the D700 is real. Having “been had” last week, I reserve the right to remain suspicious.
These are the specs that appear in the article. Maybe.
D700: D3-Sensor, AF-Module but no phone/speaker, only 95% viewer, 200-6400ISO, 5FPS (8 with MB-D10), pop-up-flash (power 11), dust-removal on sensor, EN-EL3e, 1076g, fsync 1/250, 1/8000-30s, one CF-Slot, grid in viewer optional, virtual horizon, little less fast to D3. Compatible to WT-4.
So, no 100 percent viewer? Did we lose a war?
Oh, and the all-important price: €2,599, or $4,094.
Today Tokyo-based camera accessory maker Uniden presented a new magnifying glass for LCD screens of digital cameras on their website [JP].
The UNX-8507 can be used by owners of SLRs and compact digital cameras (LCD screen size: 3 inches). Images are magnified three-fold. Uniden says they used special rubber for the UNX-8507 to ensure it will not scratch the surface of LCD screens. The magnifying glass is both aimed at amateurs and professional photographers.
The UNX-8507 will be available only in Japan for $47 from tomorrow.
You may remember Matrox. They were a significant competitor back in the days when the graphics card scene was TNT2 vs. Voodoo3. The dark horse was always Matrox, whose dual-display-oriented cards always perplexed and intrigued me. I still don’t use more than one monitor but it’s far more common these days, with people like our own Doug, who is rocking I believe four monitors at this point. In any case, Matrox kind of disappeared for a while, possibly because they couldn’t really compete in the 3D market once the NVIDIA/ATI arms race started. Well, they’re back.
Their new cards are not intended for multi-screen gaming but for basic support for two, three, or four monitors in a desktop or custom environment — say, for web developers or built-in displays in a security office. Prices for custom enterprise quad-monitor display cards are pretty high, so I think that’s the market Matrox is going after, not you, which explains the pricing compared to GeForces and Radeons. It’s good to know they’re still out there.
