Test Drive is a new series that we’re starting at CrunchGear wherein we get a hands-on look at new or interesting modes of transportation. It’s not limited to just cars, either. We’ll take a look at just about anything from scooters to rockets and everything in between.
Last night in Manhattan at Terminal 5 we were privy to an intimate gathering to check out Chevy’s extended-range electric vehicle, the Volt. We’ve mentioned it here and there on the site, but this was the first opportunity for anyone on staff to get up close and personal. I came away impressed and I’m rarely wowed by anything domestic. It certainly helps that the Volt will be in the upcoming Transformers movie, too. Read More
Tesla Motors has been hit hard with credit crunch of late, but the billionaire founder of Telsa and PayPal has personally guaranteed that all of the 1,200 battery-powered Tesla Roadster pre-orders will be filled. So far, only 60 of the 1,200 cars have been delivered and the company seems to be consolidating after shutting down and laying off 90% of the Detroit, MI office. However, with this latest round of financing of $20 million and $200 million from a U.S. Department of Energy loan, the company hopes to be continue operations. Hopefully, operations will continue enough to not only build all the Roadster pre-orders but also the sexy BMW 5 series, sports-sedan Model S. recently announced. (Pictured above)
It’s Halloween and, as such, here’s a handful of gadgets to get you started in the exciting world of ghost hunting, plus a couple of tips and tricks. Enjoy…
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Why is it that the BlackBerry Storm doesn’t have Wi-Fi? If you believe BoyGenius—and how could you not!—it’s because Verizon Wireless doesn’t want it to have Wi-Fi. That’s a fine conspiracy theory, yes, but consider the following:
• Name one CDMA BlackBerry with built-in Wi-Fi. You can’t.
• Doesn’t VZW require you to have a BlackBerry data plan? So it’s not like having built-in Wi-Fi prevents VZW from making money
Now, whether or not VZW was concerned with battery life and/or performance is another matter, but to imply that VZW is some James Bond villain hoarding all the Wi-Fi is silly, I think.
The PSP-3000 screen has earned both criticism and praise. It’s brighter, crisper but has interlacing issues that display horizontal lines when viewed closely. When the PSP screen is viewed extremely closely though, say under a 40x microscope, the issue’s source is apparent.
The new screen has lays out the pixels horizontally, verses the old screens vertical design. Additionally, the new screens blue cells are brighter and more vibrant which accounts for the both the better colors and interlace lines. The chaps who conducted the test, Logic-Sunrise, suggest you purchase an older PSP, but unless you hold the PSP 6-inches from your eyes, you probably will not see the interlacing issues so try out one of the new models before you buy an old one.
Australia looks set to join China as a state-mandated Internet censor. The measure is primarily aimed at combating online child pornography, but an open-ended statement from the government’s communications minister sounds ominous:
…we are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material.
“Where possible”? That seems pretty capricious.
The government must have recognized the nature of the proposal, as early drafts included ISP-level opt-out clauses. Say you wanted unrestricted access to the Internet. You’d contact your ISP and they’d put you on a “don’t censor this connection” list.
That scenario is no longer possible; the whole country will be subject to the “virtual curtain.”
The thing about this, which is similar to the war on Usenet here in the U.S., is that it’s damn near impossible to come out against measures that, to the letter, have anything to do with eliminating child pornography. Nothing like appearing to be soft on child porn to completely ruin your reputation, right?
In case you didn’t know, today is Halloween and Amazon is celebrating the holiday with the complete Addams Family series for $26.99 shipped. You get 9 discs, a total of 1638 minutes of Addams family bliss for that price. To bad the collection isn’t available on Blu-ray though.
Enter now for your chance to win a Penguin United Quad charger for the Wii. Contest details and a review of the PU charging station can be found here. E-mail your entries to contest at crunchgear dot com or you will not be qualified to win.
Asus plans to release a $200 Eee PC sometime in 2009, according to Jerry Shen, the company’s president.
That’s on top of the company’s plans to release a touchscreen Eee PC in 2009. Might we be looking at, finally, the year of the netbook? One can only dream.
While I’m quick to discount netbooks as hallow attempts to bilk you good people out of your money, thereby shoring up these companies’ bottom lines in otherwise dismal economic times, the thought of a $200 almost-laptop is pretty impressive. Who knows, maybe in two years’ time we’ll be looking at a $50-$100 netbook? Doug “netbook” Aamoth will be excited.
Just a heads up that there are a handful of potentially dangerous laptop batteries floating around out there. These ones are made by Sony but are found in certain models of HP, Toshiba, and Dell notebooks. The HP notebooks are the most at risk with about 32,000 affected batteries.
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, “There have been 19 reports of the batteries overheating, including 17 reports of flames/fire (10 resulting in minor property damage). Two consumers experienced minor burns.”
PC Notebook Computer Batteries Recalled Due to Fire and Burn Hazard [CPSC]
On the game console superhighway, if there is such a thing, the Nintendo Wii just blasted past the Nintendo 64, stuck its left arm out the driver’s side window, and rigidly shot its index finger into the air to let the N64 know that the Wii, in fact, is now number one. Well, not number one, but it passed the Nintendo 64 in lifetime sales.
To date, Nintendo has sold almost 35 million Wii consoles. The N64 sold almost 33 million. Here are the Nintendo consoles that are still in front of the Wii.
- SNES: 49 million
- NES: 61 million
- Game Boy Advance: 81 million
- Nintendo DS: 84 million
- Game Boy: 118 million
Keep in mind that the Nintendo DS number can still grow.
[GoNintendo via BGR]
A high-def picture is nothing without high-quality audio and a French TV station is the world’s first to broadcast a Dolby Digital Plus track over a terrestrial signal. The Dolby system is ideal for limited bandwidth applications like terrestrial broadcasts, as the original Dolby Digital bitstreams are maintained and can still be decoded. The French TV station, TNT, is broadcasting three digital TV stations, including one with the 5.1 audio track, within the 24Mbps limitations and without the efficient Dolby codec, this would not be possible. We just hope that we here in the States will hear the 5.1 audio Dolby tracks sometime soon. Think about it; how sweet would Lost and Monday Night Football be in true Dolby 5.1 surround sound?
I can’t figure this out. This video, from MTV’s video site, has been bleeped by MTV in an effort to hide file sharing system names in Weird Al Yankovic “Don’t Download This Song.” The original lyrics:
Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge
To break international copyright law
By downloading MP3s from file-sharing sites
Like Morpheus or Grokster or Limewire or KaZaA
UPDATE –
Mike Weiss (Former CEO, Morpheus) says:
When the video first was released by Weird Al, Morpheus sought permission from Sony Music to distribute the video as a promotion for Weird Al. Unfortunately Sony denied the request. There were no bleeps of the names of Morpheus or the others when the video was first released so it seems a bit odd that Weird Al would censor his own song over a year after release. Also Wilson Sonsini was the first law firm (along with the EEF) representing Morpheus, but Arrington was not on the case. MTV is not owned by the record labels so it also seems odd that MTV would censor the video. But what is interesting, after 7 years and the tens of millions of dollars spent on litigating Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster to death (not to mention a very odd ruling by the US Supreme Ct), and Limewire’s legal process trailing by a few years–that someone someplace believes that by bleeping out these names will have any effect on the future of the music industry when all the litigation did not. Just weird…but lots of weird stuff goes on behind the scenes.
Say it ain’t so, MTV!
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The Bits blog is running a small profile of Opera right now. For the most part it’s fairly boring: Opera is a bit player (we know) that is making inroads in the mobile space with Opera Mini (again, we know).
Here’s something you may not know: Apple is blocking Opera from releasing the iPhone version of Opera Mini. So claims Opera’s CEO, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner.
While that in and of itself may be news to some of you—it’s news to me, that’s for sure—we already know where Apple’s coming from. Apple has a policy that says, briefly, it won’t allow any application on the App Store that competes with one of its products. Since there’s already Safari on the iPhone we won’t be seeing any other Web browser there, Opera or otherwise.
Should we be mad at Apple? How much harm would it do to Apple’s bottom line to give people the choice of staying with Safari or giving Opera a shot?
As my brother said, “this is an tendinitis nightmare” or something like that. It’s quite addicting but it takes a bit of effort to actually get the fake bubbles to pop. I don’t see little kids over the age of 8 having the finger strength to play with this for very long. The texture of the bubbles is surprisingly similar to that of bubble wrap, though. And who doesn’t love a fake fart? It’s a perfect stocking stuffer for the little ones or even the big kids.
The ever-sassy Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is pointing out that Apple is essentially lying like Satan lied to man about the cancer-causing potency of high-fructose corn syrup. In “Bean Counter,” for example, Apple suggests that Microsoft spends more on advertising than on “fixing Vista.” Adrian tells the honest truth:
For each $1 of sales Apple spends:
– 1.9 cents on Advertising
– 3.3 cents on R&D
For each $1 of sales Microsoft spends:
– 2.6 cents on Advertising
– 13.9 cents on R&D
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Holy crap, you could drive a truck under that thing. That’s a nine cell battery for the MSI Wind netbook, which is available on Ebay’s UK site according to a post in the MsiWind.net forums. The item ships from China for a grand total of around £70 – roughly $115 in US dollars.
Owners of this gigantic lump are reporting over 6.5 hours of battery life. When I tested the six-cell MSI Wind, I was able to get a little over five hours before having to recharge so I’d almost think you could squeeze 8+ hours out of a nine-cell battery with everything tweaked to maximize power consumption.
[via Wired]
There is something sexy about the Marantz M-CR502 mini audio system. It could be the sleek, executive feel. Or that the amp outputs 25Wx4 channels or 50Wx2 channels with a THD of .10% and a frequency response of 5Hz-20kH. Or it could be that it supports CD playback even though I don’t know the last time I even held a music CD but also sports a USB port for MP3 playback. I’m thinking the sexiness comes from the 450€ ($570 USD) price as I would never spend that much coin on a mini-system but love the thought of doing so.
The upcoming downloadable content (DLC) for Mercenaries 2 has two special characters that you’ll no doubt recognize. Yes, that’s Barack Obama and Sarah Palin running around the game’s battlefields with grenades, machine guns and rocket launchers. In some of the more violent moments, Obama throws a grenade into a tank, killing a man inside and Sarah Palin smashes a man’s face against a console. It’s borderline tasteless.
The game currently has a 72 on Metacritic, so you’re not missing much if you skip out on the game.
The update containing the characters is scheduled for an early November release.
Nintendo is looking to cash-in with early holiday sales by launching the DSi in Japan tomorrow, November 1, 2008. The tech giant still hasn’t announced a US release date but at least narrowed the launch down to the summer season. Japanese gamers can pick up their DSi tomorrow though for ¥18,900 ($192 USD). Supposable, Nintendo has shipped 200,000 gaming handhelds to Japanese markets and has plans to ship 100,000 more by November 4.
Remember anxious US gamers, if you cure your itch and import one of these gaming systems before the US launch, the new DSi software is region locked so you will have to import the new games too; your standard DS games will work fine however.
