[photopress:guitarslash.jpg,full,center] You love Guitar Hero 3, admit it. It’s so much fun, especially after a few Sparks with your friends. But if you’re like me, you don’t have the game. You get to play when you go to your friend’s houses. But man, I really want my own axe, so I was glad when it was recently announced that Activision would be releasing controllers by themselves, that you could buy ala carte, and they’re coming in March. The Wii version, in Wii White, will be $59, while the PS3 and 360 versions will be $69. And yes, that’s Slash on the box, worth the price right there. Guitar Hero 3 Standalone Guitars Priced, Dated, Pictured [Primotech] → Read More
Looks like Crackberry addicts on the AT&T network are experiencing some major outages and not receiving their precious e-mails. It appears that the majority of problems are in the Midwest around Chicago. I asked my roommate if her Curve was working and she said it was all good. Anyone care to share? → Read More
[photopress:tvCompass.jpg,full,center] I’m a fan of Logitech’s Harmony line of universal remote controls. I’ve got a pretty awesome home-theater set-up in my apartment, and thus I need a capable control center, and it does the job nicely. When I first discovered the remotes, I was excited: a learning remote with USB? What will they think of next? Enter the tvCompass SR 1500 Digital Media Remote. As the long title suggests, this thing is big business. Taking the controls and tasks of a universal a step further, the SR 1500 includes WiFi, it connects wirelessly to your home network to download device updates and auto-configures for your system. But that’s not all it does. It has a WAP browser for the mobile Web (no, really), built-in TV Guide app, PayPal (no, really), and runs Windows. I’m not sure who this amazing thing is aimed at, as I can’t imagine a home theater with many more components than what I have. That being said, I’m so curious about this device, it’s driving me a little silly. We’ll try to get our hands on one and let you know how it goes. tvCompass [Product Page] → Read More
Don’t get me wrong here. Having more capacity is always a plus, but 16GB of space?! I can barely fill up my 8GB SDHC and Kingston comes out with a 16GB Class 4 SDHC memory card. What does Class 4 mean? Well, the minimum data transfer rate on this is 4MB/s. Not too shabby. That’s about all you really need to know, too. It retails for $231. → Read More
The LowKey Stand is a USB hub/keyboard cozy for those of you who feel that keyboards should be hidden away like your dirty, dirty pee-parts. The $59.99 stand complements the iMac’s staid design and is completely self-powered via USB 2.0. It’s shipping February 15, just after I refuse to let anyone touch me on Valentine’s Day. Not even my mom. Product Page → Read More
Update: According to an ARIN lookup, Twitter appears to be hosted by Verio now. Update 2: Twitter has come out on their blog to say that they are now hosted by NTT America. According to Joyent’s corporate blog, the company stopped hosting Twitter late last night: Twitter has been officially off Joyent since 10PM last night. This may come as a surprise to some after yesterday’s posts here and here regarding the two companies working together. Those of us at Joyent appreciate the opportunity we had to work with the talented folks at Twitter. It is a great service. We wish Twitter every continued success. As I mentioned yesterday, Joyent is standing ready with excess free infrastructure to support Twitter through this transition in the event that they need it. The news comes amidst frequent outage problems that have plagued Twitter. Just last night, Twitter went down again, this time for a “planned maintenance project” that went “far beyond [their] planned time window”. The service has also recently suffered downtime during the State of the Union and Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld. Despite all of these problems, just yesterday both companies were showing strong support for each other on their respective blogs. Both wrote posts (here and here) describing how they were working together to prepare for the Super Bowl this coming Sunday. When reached over the phone, Joyent’s CEO David Young preferred not to comment on Twitter’s stability issues in particular. He did emphasize that Joyent has free infrastructure on standby should Twitter want to use it again. He also wished Twitter the best of luck, saying the team is amazed at their “great service”. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, responded to an email inquiry about the situation as such: We’re still very much engaged in our efforts to bring solid reliability to Twitter. Achieving our goals is a sustained effort, not an overnight fix. Performance is our most important measure of success and we appreciate both the patience and frustration folks are sharing with us. With regard to discussing technical specifics about last night’s efforts, we’ll be more keen to do that once we have a chance to come up for air and cover it with some perspective. Given that both companies are reluctant to go into details about the break-up, we’ll just have to see whether more information comes out in time. CrunchBase Information Twitter Joyent Information → Read More
Let us not forget that it was exactly one year ago today that a couple of innocent marketing pranksters in Boston were confused with dangerous terrorists due to the DIY LED sign you see above. They placed a few all over the city, a nod to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a type of harmless techno-graffiti, but a type that was considered a bomb threat by the clueless Man. We’d like to take a moment here to salute the brave men behind the prank, Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky. 1/31. Never forget. → Read More
[photopress:peaceeee.jpg,full,center] Despite what U2′s manager original story titlesaid the other day, the RIAA doesn’t want ISPs to have to sniff your Internet connection for pirated content. It doesn’t want the government telling ISPs what to do, in other words. That said, the RIAA has no problem with what AT&T wants to do, to voluntarily filter your Internet connection in the name of piracy prevention. The RIAA would rather use the DMCA to bankrupt you all. RIAA chief: We don’t see a need for mandatory ISP filtering [Ars Technica] → Read More
[photopress:garminphoneee.jpg,full,center] Before you ask, yes, I was a little tipsy when I came up with this theory yesterday. I get tipsy from time to time (to time). The Garmin phone that was announced last night—shouldn’t the “answer” and “ignore” buttons be reversed? You can test out my theory right now. If you’re right-handed, and at least 85 percent of us are, hold your phone in your hand. Now look at the placement of your thumb. It’s on the outer edge, right, where the “ignore” button is. That makes no sense. If you’re getting a call and whip out your phone, you’d have to bring your thumb in to answer it. Wouldn’t it be easier to have the button locations switched? That way, when you answer the phone your thumb is by default in the spot in needs to be to answer the call. Just my two cents. → Read More
Was anyone really surprised that Slacker delayed shipment of their player multiple times? Come on! With a name like Slacker it was inevitable. Anyway, pre-orders began shipping today. In case you wanted to know. → Read More
[Update 2/12/08: The deal has been confirmed. The price was $160 million.] We’ve gotten word that Yahoo will make an acquisition announcement of a video startup today or tomorrow. At first we thought the target might be Metacafe, which was almost acquired by Yahoo just following the Google/YouTube deal in 2006. Shortly after, it made a small acquisition in Jumpcut, a Web-based video editor. But It’s not a video aggregator, we’ve heard, but a platform company. And the price is north of $100 million. The price point limits the number of candidates. Brightcove is our top guess. If it is Brightcove, the price would have to be well north of $100 million, given that investors have poured $86 million into the company so far. More as this develops. For an excellent overview of the online video space and its participants, see this post written by Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire and SVP Marketing Adam Berrey. Update: It is not Brightcove. It is Maven Networks, another Boston-based video startup, three independent sources confirm. And the price is believed to be $150 million. Maven is a video-hosting platform for media sites, including Fox News, CBS Sports, CNet, and Scripps Networks. But Yahoo would probably want it more for its video-ad network, targeting, and insertion technologies. Maven has raised $30 million to date from investors include Accel, General Catalyst, and Prism Ventures. → Read More
Today at PMA, Kodak announced the Easyshare Z1012IS, which is a 10-megapixel, 12x optical zoom wonder with OIS. It also has a lightning fast click-to-capture speed that’s best in class at 0.14 seconds with aufo-focus accuracy. ISO can be cranked up to 3200 for those fast action, low light situations. Kodak’s latest slew of cameras have smart capture technology that automatically identify the scene and adjusts the settings accordingly. The Z1012IS will be available sometime in the first half of this year for $300. Press Release → Read More
About a year ago, I learned that just because you don’t store copyrighted materials on your server, “facilitating the transfer or consumption” of said material is still a no-no. I was considering building a sweet video player web app (using SopCast) that streamed the Sunday NFL games simultaneously next to each other in a clickable grid that would allow someone to watch all the games at once and then click on each one to maximize that game. Alas, I never did anything with it because I found out that even though I wasn’t hosting the games, I would have been making it very easy for people to watch them without the express written consent of the National Football League. → Read More
Sure there are a ton of new digital SLRs with built-in dust reduction systems, but how can you be sure that you’ve got all the dust off? Because most of those systems use variations on the same technology – the imaging sensor or glass covering the sensor is vibrated at high speeds – there’s always a chance that static electricity might cause some dust to stay stuck. The PMA 2008 show floor opened in Las Vegas this morning and one of the cooler pro products we’ve seen so far is perfect for sensor neat freaks. Called the Firefly, this digital sensor cleaner uses ionization technology to remove the static charge of the dust so it just falls off. The device employs a Gitto "Rocket" air blower bulb to shoot a burst of anti-static air onto the sensor for a one-two punch against dust. The FireFly ($199) was actually developed by a company that specializes in ionization sources – not photography – so they’re experts on attacking static. Say goodbye to all those hours spent retouching for dust on your digital photos. For more info, check out their website at www.nrdfirefly.com. Dan Havlik is Technology Editor at PDN Magazine and Editor of DemystifyingDigital.com. For more professional photography news, visit PDNonline.com. → Read More
Update: It looks like some of us jumped the gun on calling this, including the New York Times. It turns out that there are still enough bidding units left in the C-Block for one or two deep-pocketed companies to still make a bid. So it is not necessarily over yet. Because of the secrecy surrounding the auctions—companies are not allowed to talk about it until it is over—we can only guess what is happening. The post below is entirely speculative. The most closely-watched part of the wireless auction for the 700 MHz spectrum that started earlier this week appears to be over. The auction for the coveted C-block of spectrum, which is a nationwide license and is subject to special open-device/application rules, might have been won by a $4.7 billion bid—just a smidgen above the $4.6 billion minimum required by the FCC. Until the entire auction is over for the other blocks of spectrum, the FCC won’t disclose who the winner is. But the consensus is that the winner is either Google or Verizon. Update: We’ll see in the following days whether any other bids emerge. This could just be a pause in the bidding. Bits blogger Saul Hansell at the NYT has been watching the spectrum auction like a hawk. His theory, after looking at the pattern of bidding for the C-block, is that either there were two bidders playing a drawn-out game of chicken or only one bidder slowly raising its price, almost reluctantly. That one bidder could have been Google, which showed its hand earlier by publicly stating it would bid the $4.6 billion minimum to support its suggested open access rules (and stuck by that pledge even though only two of its four suggested rules were adopted ). Verizon could have sat the auction out, deciding not to bid and instead watch Google squirm as it realized it was the only one in the game. There is a lot of skepticism about how serious Google really is in its desire to actually win the auctions as opposed to influence their outcome and the rules of the game. When it became apparent that there was only one other bidder in the early rounds of the auction, Verizon could have calculated that Google would bid just shy of the $4.6 billion if it realized it was on its own. If that had happened, the FCC would have almost → Read More
Big surprise here. The wonderful “multitouch” interface used by the iPhone, iPod touch, and new MacBook Air is; A) not Apple’s invention, B) famous because of Apple, and C) will begin appearing in more and more devices. → Read More
It’s the beginning of the end, kiddies. RIM is jumping into the consumer accessories market with the BB Remote Stereo Gateway. In case you haven’t had any coffee and you’re unable to glean what RIM’s first accessory does then you should go and get a cup of coffee. Heh. The Remote Stereo Gateway wil connect your multimedia capable BlackBerry via Bluetooth to your stereo so you can listen to your tunes. This will be the first of many new products that RIM is set to announce during or shortly after 3GSM. “This represents . . . a little peek into what’s cooking in the lab that RIM’s got going for an engaging consumer strategy,” said Mr. Abramsky, who maintains an “outperform” rating with a US$140 price target. “This includes music, messaging . . . and browsing on a wireless basis without the phone. I wouldn’t be surprised to see BlackBerry Unite, which is coming soon, support some of these capabilities.” FCC filing [via Financial Post] → Read More
Amazon.com will reportedly purchase digital audiobook provider Audible.com in the second quarter of this year for $300 million. Smart, smart, smart. The purchase will allow Amazon to offer up Audbile’s 80,000+ audio programs (mostly books, newspapers, and certain radio programs) for download to its digital content customers. Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader has an audio jack that would likely be put to good use with such an acquisition. Audible files are already compatible with Kindle and, if you remember way back when, Audible.com used to subsidize the purchase of certain MP3 players when you signed up for a year-long audiobook subscription for around $15 per month. It’d be nice if that same strategy was implemented again to drive down the price of the $400 Kindle. Amazon.com buys Audible; March into digital content distribution continues [ZDNet] → Read More
So I’ve been trying to get Skype to work on my Darth Vader PSP all morning and for some reason the headset that was included doesn’t want to transmit my audio. During my test, I pinged Biggs and I could hear him loud and clear. There are no visible switches on the headset and nothing in the tools section to allow me to adjust the volume. I’ll keep fiddling with it and update later when it’s completely up and running. it works! Just tested with Doug and he was impressed by the voice quality. Hell, I’m impressed by the whole thing, too. i even ordered lunch and the fella on the other end didn’t have any problems hearing me. Sweet. Now, can someone tell me why Sony decided to let loose the Mylo 2? [photopress:IMGP4993.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMGP4997.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMGP4995.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMGP4986.JPG,thumb,pp_image] → Read More
