What’s the best way to ensure that you win the Buffalo mayoral primary? Why, by promising an entire voting bloc brand new flat screen TVs! Byron W. Brown just won the Democratic primary (he’s unopposed in November, so this victory means he just won the mayorship), and you can see him here (around the 50 second mark) promising to help seniors out by installing a new TV.

Why is this on CrunchGear? Because 1) it’s a fun, light-hearted story and 2) who doesn’t want a new TV every now and then?

No word on what brand or size Mayor Brown promised, nor if he actually plans to deliver said TV to the senior center. Here’s hoping.

via Wonkette

Shock! Outrage! Whatever! All words that are totally appropriate for this here story. Get this: a six-year-old boy gets a brand new Sony PSP from Wal-Mart. He turns it on for the first time, and bam! A naked lady is set as the PSP’s screensaver. Now, in our book that sounds like a win, but the boy’s mother wants a pound of flesh.

Or at least an apology. Watching the embedded video—if you can stand the local reporter’s Nasal Reporter Voice (why do all on-air or on-screen reporters use that dumb voice? is that how they talk in real life?)—to better understand what’s going on, and to see a few blurry photos of naked ladies.

Long story short: kid gets a PSP that comes with a memory card filled with pornographic photos, kid freaks out and tell his mom, mom gets upset and wants a new, porn-free PSP and an apology from Wal-Mart. Why, exactly, the local news has to get involved, I have no idea.

I suppose the kid’s a little on the young side, but this whole thing just smacks of the age old American tradition of, “AHH SEX, GET THEE BACK, WRETCHED DEMON!”

What this story doesn’t mention is that those naked ladies represented the most fun that kid would have had on his PSP. (The baseless implication there is that the PSP is no fun, thank you.)

So Nokia has finally launched that Point & Find service into beta. Point & Find, you’ll recall, was first introduced at Mobile World Conference a few weeks ago, and it lets users—wait for it—point at things to get information. Right now, the service works with movies.

For example, you whip out your phone and point it at a Watchmen poster. The phone then pulls up all sorts of data, like the trailer, reviews, etc. It seems like a neat, shiny new way to market movies. Hollywood must be thrilled.

This beta is only available in the UK and U.S. And if I had a Nokia phone, and any interest at all in movies, I’d be all over this. Such is life!

Mattel has been accused, again, of supporting Islam in their games and toys. The company stuck some baby gibberish into a doll and a Nintendo DS game that ends with something that sounds like “Islam is the light.”

Here is the original file from Mattel and we kind of think it sounds like “Go into the light,” which is even creepier. What do you hear?

One of the most exciting things I’ve seen at Nokia World 2008 is the Point and Find service: aim a phone camera at an object and the camera detects what it is. Currently set to debut in London and San Francisco, the initial version of the application will be tied to movie posters. Point your camera at a movie poster and the software will identify the movie, fetch reviews, provide links to trailers, and use the GPS in the phone to display the closet cinema and its showtimes for that film.

The movie poster example is perhaps not the best use for this technology, but hey, you have to start somewhere. As I observe in the video above, an obvious use for this technology would be at museums — art and otherwise. No need to check out bulky headphones or carry around info packets. Simply point your phone at the display and get hyperlinked information about the work, its history, and more. As a user, I’m really excited about the opportunities this opens.

As a content producer, I think this is also a terrific new technology. Regional advertising campaigns can use this technology to provide location-specific information about products and services. Education institutions can use this for campus tours. Sport teams can use this to provide historical information about venues, players, and memorabilia.

It remains to be seen how reliable the image recognition process is. I didn’t get a chance to talk nitty-gritty details, but the images are identified by something like a fingerprint: key points are codified into a data file that describes the image, allowing for a small amount of data to describe a more complex image. In this way, a picture of a building could be matched against images from several different angles. Paired with location awareness via GPS, the Point and Find software can instantly filter the list of possible image matches based on where you are. Image matches can be further refined by the scope of the “world” in which you’re using the application. In the “movie poster” world, the application won’t bother trying to look for images of important buildings in your current city, for example.

This looks to be an exciting and surprisingly useful mobile application!

Are they selling something? Making a comment on male-female relations? Hiring for an a cappella group? All we do know is that this is a non-US cartoon made for the Samsung F480, a phone we all want but will never, ever own because it’s Asia-only.

SlashGear has a great hands-on with the super-cool F480 Tocco from Samsung. Will we ever get it? No, but at least we can stare at it while idly touching ourselves.

Once through the unusual outer packaging (which I don’t believe will be standard!), the Tocco’s box is discrete and elegant. It’s a theme that’s carried over to the handset itself; it feels sturdy and well-built, and Samsung have obviously put some thought into how the F480 sits in the hand. I’m particularly impressed by the two back-covers, one plain brushed metal and the other with an attached flip screen protector, complete with cut-outs for the earpiece and microphone. It’s a neat solution to both guarding from scratches and face-smears when in use, but I do wonder whether it could be a little thinner. At 98.4 x 55 x 11.6mm and 106g, the Tocco is a seriously compact cellphone. With the standard back-plate it’ll even fit inside my wallet/business card holder.

Took us a while to get this footage up but here’s a look at the home screen on the F480, which looks quite cool. As usual, this phone will probably never hit our shores in its present configuration.

Seriously. This is one OS — found on the F480 — I saw at MWC that could even be considered a competitor to the iPhone. Compared to this, the X1 looks like it was designed by a committee of narcoleptics.

Samsung TouchWiz & F480 [PhoneScoop]

What’s all this about wireless HDTVs? Well, Westinghouse is set to showcase an ultrawideband HDTV with Pulse-LINK at CES using PL’s CWave wireless HDMI technology. What this essentially means is that your HDTV can link up with a source of content like a Blu-ray or HD DVD player or even your DVR and cable feed, which will stream to your set – wait for it – wirelessly. The video feed is encoded using JPEG2000 video codec, which is what theaters tout as “Digital Cinema”.

The CWave UWB chipset was tested and showed that the 1.35 Gbps OTA signaling rate delivered 890 Mbps application layer throughput. You’ll have to keep your content sources close to get a high throughput rate, though. At eight feet the throughput surpassed 500 Mbps and more than 115 Mbps up to 40 feet. That’s not bad at all.

While the set will debut at CES, consumers won’t be getting one anytime soon. The Westinghouse Digital Wireless HDMI HDTV will be released for B2B digital signage sometime in Q2. Bummer.

Are you looking to try out the Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate but you’re not quite sure where to start? It’s not as straightforward as you might have thought, huh?

Just follow this simple ten step guide and you’ll be good to go before you know it.

1. Go to this page or type the address into your browser over your lunch break.

2. Click the "Download" button and go do something interesting for fifteen minutes. If and when the dialog box hasn’t popped up by the time you get back, click this direct link instead or type it — actually, don’t attempt to type this one yourself.

3. Double click the downloaded executable file and watch in amazement as the files get uncompressed into a temp folder on your computer that you’ll never be able to find.

4. Use a program like Winrar or Winzip to uncompress the files onto your desktop after looking for them in vain for a half hour.

5. Open the folder containing the files and wonder what to do for a few minutes since there’s nothing in there except three files, two of which have extensions you’ve never seen before.

6. Find the file with the ".doc" extension and hope to hell you have Microsoft Word installed, otherwise you won’t be able to view it. If you don’t have Word, drive to your nearest CompUSA and then turn around and drive home empty-handed since all the stores are closing.

7. Right click the SP1cppRK.cmd file and choose "Run as administrator" — doi. Obviously.

8. Go to Windows Update in Control Panel and check for updates. Install whatever’s there and restart your computer when you’re told to do so. You’ll have to do this two or three times in order for the service pack to completely install.

9. Go back to Windows Update after you’ve installed the initial round of updates and check for new updates. See this error message…

10. Give up. You may optionally wonder if you’ve actually installed everything correctly or not, notice that your computer doesn’t seem any faster or more stable, and then give up.

Fuji announced five new cameras today, all slated for a September release and ranging in price from $179.95 to $399.95.

Fuji FinePix F480: $179.95

No bigger than a deck of playing cards, the F480 is aimed at entry level photographers looking for function and form. It carries an 8.2 MegaPixel CCD sensor along with a digital signal processor for noise reduction. This CCD and processor combination ensures that pictures taken with the FinePix F480 are colorful, clear and crisp. A 4.0x wide angle optical zoom lens from world-renowned lens manufacturer, Fujinon, captures large groups or distant subjects with ease thanks to a 28 mm-112mm equivalent on a 35 mm camera.

You’ll also find a 2.7-inch LCD, picture stabilization, a rechargeable Li-ion battery, movie mode, and 12MB of internal memory (expandable via xD/SD/SDHC).

Fuji FinePix A920: $199.95

Designed specifically for the first-time digital camera buyer and consumers seeking an affordable, easy-to-operate upgrade to their current digital camera, Fujifilm’s FinePix A920 is loaded with features usually reserved for more advanced models. The camera incorporates Fujifilm’s signature Super CCD sensor technology, a 4.0x optical zoom lens and features a 2.7” LCD.

There’s also a 4.0x optical zoom, picture stabilization, ISO 800 light sensitivity, movie mode, and built in IrSimple wireless image transfer support for connecting to other IrSimple-compatible devices.

Fuji FinePix Z10fd: $199.95

The 7.2 MegaPixel FinePix Z10fd features an ultra-portable design, making it easy to take this sexy micro-mini camera anywhere you go and it comes in five brilliant colors to match the latest styles of today’s fashionistas – Wave Blue, Wasabi Green, Hot Pink, Sunset Orange, and Midnight Black. It also sports a Fujinon 3x optical Zoom lens, 2.5″ LCD screen and packs 54MB of internal memory to give you some extra room when your memory card has had its fill. With its stunning high-resolution LCD, the FinePix Z10fd also has a cool new slideshow mode from Fujifilm that let’s you view and share your photos spontaneously with friends with music provided to help set the mood.

You’ll also get face detection with automatic red eye removal, IrSimple wireless image transfer, Blog Mode which automatically resizes images to 640×480 or 320×240, and rechargeable Li-ion battery.

Fuji FinePix F50fd: $299.95

Combining a 12-MegaPixel, 7th Generation Super CCD with a 3.0x optical zoom and a 2.7” high-resolution 230,000 pixel wide angle view LCD, the FinePix F50fd is a compact powerhouse that incorporates all the features users have come to expect from Fujifilm’s more advanced digital cameras. With the addition of Dual Image Stabilization, Face Detection 2.0 Technology with Automatic Red Eye Removal function, and ISO settings of up to ISO 6400, the F50fd takes compact digital cameras to the next level, arming users with a host of new features and enabling them to take pictures never before possible.

Also comes with fully automatic controls, IrSimple support, Blog Mode, xD/SD/SDHC compatibility, and Li-ion battery.

Fuji FinePix S8000fd: $399.95

The 8-MegaPixel, SLR-styled camera features one of the largest optical zooms on a fixed-lens camera in the industry, and introduces Fujifilm’s latest ‘Dual Image Stabilization,’ plus ISO settings of up to ISO6400 (at 50% resolution) – all features you would expect in a high-end digital camera, but at a price point consumers can afford.

Also includes face-detection, fully manual control, high-speed continuous shooting, automatic red eye removal, 2.5-inch LCD, electronic viewfinder, and uses 4 AA batteries.

All 5 of these new cameras will be available in September.