Because Nintendo Wii users are losing control of their Wiimotes, the official Nintendo website has decided to update the safety instructions for the Wii on its website. If you own a Wii, you’ll find most of the safety precautions the same as when you start up a game on your console, for those who haven’t managed to get a Wii yet, check out some of the things you have to be careful about. My personal favorite is: In Wii Sports bowling, the proper way to let go of the ball while bowling is to release the “B” button on the Wii Remote—DO NOT LET GO OF THE Wii REMOTE ITSELF. The other safety precautions include holding on to the Wii remote firmly, always wearing the wrist strap when you play (apparently the strap has been breaking on users) and giving yourself plenty of room so you don’t accidentally hit something or someone. I can’t wait to see what Nintendo puts up on its site when Super Smash Brothers Brawl comes out. Probably something along the lines of “Do not use the Wiimote as a weapon.” I doubt anyone will listen. Nintendo Updates Wii Safety Instructions [Nintendo] → Read More
If you’re one of the millions who escapes the drudgery of your real life to the virtual worlds of Second Life, where you’re attractive and witty, and probably slutty, then you know you have to spend valuable Doritos-eating time wandering around to find your peeps. Wouldn’t a virtual cellphone be nice? YouNeverCall apparently thinks so. The resident-owned company is giving out free virtual cellphones to virtual people in the virtual world, including txt messaging capabilities. In addition, they’re “fashionable,” which we gather means they’re RAZR knock-offs. We’re also betting they come with a draconian virtual contract as a trap to sap your virtual money, making you a virtually pissed off virtual customer. To anyone who uses the service: Get a life, a real one. Second Life residents get virtual mobile phone [SlashGear] → Read More
Using just liquid to chill your CPU is so Q1 2006. If you want to be current with your cooling, you’ll need to switch to something using thermoelectrics, like the newly announced Eliminator from CoolIT. Using the Peltier-Seebeck effect the cooler’s patented MTEC technology uses multiple thermoelectric coolers to chill the liquid below your ambient temperature. The big benefit to this is that the liquid isn’t being cooled by fans, so there’s much less noise. The system comes pre-plumbed too, factory sealed and ready for more than 50,000 hours of maintenance-free operation. → Read More
For the past year, we’re sure that the OLPC team has been hard at work designing the $100 laptop for poor kids in Africa. We’re proud that they’re so committed to the job, but everyone needs a break once in a while. In comes the classic FPS Doom to keep the team entertained. Seems Christopher Blizzard (total porn name) and his buddies over at the OLPC offices threw Doom on the OLPC and had a ball. Doom looks, sounds, and plays great on the OLPC and the controls are sweet thanks to the d-pad on the side of the laptop. Peep the video above to see a bunch of dorks shooting up Imps whilst giggling like schoolgirls. Doom on the OLPC XO [OLPC News via Boing Boing] → Read More
as a node on your network, but to be practical, you should ping something that dings, namely your doorbell. Instead of an analog chime that alerts your fat ass when the pizza man is at the door (sorry, pizza person), the NetStreams DoorLinX Digital Doorbell plays the MP3 of your choice across your network. It’s a system, you see, so you can have different doorbells at different doors, so you know if it’s pizza-dude out front or that dirty hooker of a girlfriend who you told to only come to the backdoor. No word on pricing, but it should be available about now. The first one of our readers to install this covertly in their friend’s house and sets it to chime an annoying song from the Offspring, wins a Zune Tee-shirt (that’s how they say it in Texas), how’s that sound? NetStreams Digital Doorbell [Home Toys] → Read More
Here at CG, part of our job is to disseminate press materials you might not stumble across on your own. Case in point, a release from comparison-shopping search engine PriceRunner.com that just popped into my Inbox. Truthfully, I’m not familiar with the site since I pretty well stick to PriceGrabber and Shopzilla to grab pricing deals. However, the site, via the release, put together an interesting rundown of online prices of tech bargains versus some of the hyped Black Friday, brick-and-mortar deals. Wal-Mart was apparently the only one that delivered, beating online prices of an RCA 5GB MP3 player for only $88.72, or 40 percent lower than the lowest price found online, at $156.57. → Read More
It looks like North Korea won’t be getting its version of the iTunes Music Store anytime soon. Because of, ya know, that stunt it pulled awhile back, the Bush Administration has imposed sanctions on all luxury goods heading into North Korea. This means no iPods, no Johnny Walker, no Trojan Magnum XLs, no Harleys, or anything else, from companies that operate inside the greatest country ever founded, will be available to Kim Jong Il and his peeps. Says the AP: “The U.S. government’s first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run the communist government,” So basically, if you want to make a quick buck faster than selling a PS3 on launch day, buy a few dozen iPods and sell them on the black market in North Korea. Personally, I’m glad to see sanctions taken against a country that threatens us. It just goes to show that these colors don’t run. U.S. to North Korean leader: No iPods for you! [CNN] → Read More
Think you’ve got the best home-theater projector? WRONG! JVC introduced the DLA-RS1 projector today, which among other technological profundities, hits “a previously unattainable native 15,000:1 contrast ratio without the need for dynamic iris or other artificial means of contrast enhancement.” It’s part of the company’s Reference Series and uses a 0.7-inch full HD (so up to 1080p) D-ILA (Direct Drive Image Light Amplifier) chip technology in a design that eliminates the need for a mechanical spinning wheel, stamping out any possibility of a rainbow effect. → Read More
The millionth 42-inch Ambilight FlatTV has been produced at Philips’ manufacturing facility in Burges, Belgium. How’s that for a milestone? Hopefully it was made to Flemish cheers and rounds of Stella. Frankly I’m surprised they’ve produced so many of these beasties. The Ambilight system is said to contribute to the viewing experience by casting ambient light from the rear of the set. I’m sort of on the fence about the utility of these feature, but I’ve yet to actually see it in action, so I don’t really know first hand. Product Page → Read More
Yahoo! is getting in on the group text messaging biz with the launch of their new site, Mixd. TechCrunch was tipped off to the site’s existence today but we have not been able to determine how long it has been live. Mixd allows users to set up groups and text or share photos within those groups. Texts and photos can be managed online as well as on a mobile phone. Text recipients can reply to all, “whisper” by replying to just one other person, or “mute” by turning off the message chain. But judging from some initial testing, all of those functionalities are not the easiest things to figure out. It’s simple enough to sign up for the service but difficult to manage contacts, groups, and the numbers assigned to groups and commands. Yahoo! tries to simplify things by asking users to text a number instead of a word, which I’m not sure makes things simpler. It looks like Yahoo! is going for the “cool” angle on this one. The “About” page says, “Mixd is about going out. Coordinate last-minute meetups, share pictures and videos from your phone, and remember last night on a website we create for you, automatically.” We have had our eye on several group SMS services lately such as Zemble, Dodgeball, and Twitter. It is a little surprising that Yahoo! wants in on this game but then again, why not? So far this service is only available to US phone numbers. Regular text messaging fees apply. Thanks to Noah Kagan to tipping us off about this new site. → Read More
Digital Lifestyle Outfitters announced today an onslaught of Zune accessories. Foremost among the newline is the Power Pack for Zune. The Power Pack is one charging device that can charge via AC, DC or USB. It is available for $39.99. → Read More
If you’ve been wanting to attempt lucid dreaming ever since you saw “Waking Life,” but haven’t been able to afford one of the exuberantly priced devices, then feast your eyes on this DIY lucid dreaming device. This $30 homebrew lucid dreaming device will deliver you real world cues five hours into your sleep cycle. → Read More
It’s rare to find such a hateful review of a game unless it involves horrible voice acting, wonky controls, and terrible graphics… oh, wait. Yes, it appears Red Steel is a hunk of garbage with retarded AI and an interface that causes blood clots in the elderly. The concept is sound: you use the Wii-mote to wield a sword. Apparently, however, the game is absolutely horrible. Head over to Kotaku for a full review but it looks like we just found our first Wii launch suckbag. Red Steel Impressions [Kotaku] → Read More
Maybe the world actually does need another photo sharing service. In a recent Spanish blog, one user wrote, (translated from Spanish) “If there is anything in the entire world that I refute, it is that Flickr is in English.” A new photo sharing site called Pikeo launched in beta about three weeks ago in English, Spanish, and French. But language is not the site’s only claim to fame. The company is emphasizing mapping as the most salient feature. “Maps are the center of the experience,” said Celine Lacombe, project manager for Pikeo, in a phone conversation today. “We think that pictures tell stories when they are inside of maps so that you know where they’ve been taken.” The cool thing about tagging photos on Pikeo is that users can search photos based on three separate criteria: Who, What, and Where. So if you search for “Paris,” you can find photos categorized by who took them, what they were photographing, and where they are geographically. Pikeo also has a fast uploading function that doesn’t require users to download a pesky desktop application. You can upload an entire folder directly from the site and it works in the background so that users can continue to browse photos while uploading their own. Pikeo was built on Adobe’s new Flex 2 technology. It’s about as easy to navigate as they come. Pikeo development was spearheaded by the San Francisco-based R&D unit of France Telecom. The company will host an official launch party next Tuesday in downtown San Francisco. To land yourself an invitation, click here. → Read More
Swann, maker of many many D-I-Y security products for the home and office, launched today the Digital Private Eye video camera and recorder. Running on a power cable or 9V battery (both included), the camera takes shots whenever the motion detector is tripped, recording up to 30,000 images to a 1GB SD card (not included). → Read More
CIO Magazine is apparently going through their assignment backlog and decided to put together a hefty tome on the differences between Windows, Linux, and OS X. Hmmmm… With gems like this: He prefers OS X’s security, reliability and simple user interface over that of XP. And though he still has high hopes for running a version of Linux that is reliable and full-featured, he hasn’t found an OS that’s up to the task. → Read More
The race is on for telecom companies to catch up to the cable companies. With Comcast already offering Broadband Internet, Digital Cable, and Digital Voice service for only $33 a piece all on one bill, companies like Verizon need to start raising the stakes if they want to stay afloat. Now Comcast is offering a cellphone service to their customers in limited areas. If you live in Boston, MA or Portland, OR, you’ll be able to sign up for Comcast’s new wireless phone service. For another $33 a month, Comcast will give you a paltry 200 minutes to work with and services like voicemail, caller ID, call forwarding, and navigation. It’ll be using Sprint’s network for the service, which is no Verizon network, but isn’t terrible. Comcast’s goal is to enable customers to keep all its services on one easy to track bill each month and to attract new subscribers. Other cities should start to see this offer where Comcast is available in Q1 of 2007. Comcast starts offering wireless phone service [Reuters] → Read More
BitTorrent announced today a deal inked with 20th Century Fox, G4, Kadokawa, Lionsgate, MTV Networks, Palm Pictures, Paramount and Starz Media to allow for video downloads from their catalogs of movies and TV shows. This follows last month’s news that CE manufacturers will start pre-installing the peers-to-peers software on wireless routers and media servers and a July announcement of a similar video deal with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Egami Media, Hart Sharp, Koch Entertainment and The Orchard. → Read More
Looks like iHome went all nuts on us today. They’ve announced both the iHome iHC5 Bluetooth Clock Radio and the iHome iH21 Water-Resistant Streaming iPod Dock and Speakers. Aside from the latter having an insanely long name, these products are just some decent looking ways to get your groove on wirelessly and safely. The iHome iHC5 (pictured) allows you to stream audio via Bluetooth to its speakers from your computer or cellphone. Not too bad, plus, you can use the iHC5 as a speakerphone (albeit a huge one) on the side. If rocking out in the pool is your thing, then the iHome iH21 may be just the thing for you. Equipped with the ability to stream music from your home computer or iPod, this baby gives you sound in style and also has water resistant speakers, a remote control, and the satisfaction of knowing you drunkenly spilling booze on it is OK. iHome [Official Site via Gizmodo] iHome iH21 Water-Resistant Streaming iPod Dock and Speakers → Read More
