“Biomimetic miniature flying platforms” appears to be the theme this week. Just a few days ago we saw a hummingbird robot meant to hover in and out of buildings, and now there’s this ro-bat being put together at North Carolina State University.
Here is my question: were there not enough bats in the world already? → Read More
Wow. So you know all those whispers about a Google desktop operating system that never seem to go away? You thought they might with the launch of Android, Google’s mobile OS. But they persisted. And for good reason, because it’s real.
In the second half of 2010, Google plans to launch the Google Chrome OS, an operating system designed from the ground up to run the Chrome web browser on netbooks. “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” Google writes tonight on its blog.
But let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, “However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Yeah, who do you think they mean by that? → Read More
Sharp is rolling out some new Aquos HDTVs, with the coveted LED backlighting, but for some reason aren’t going the whole hog with local-dimming LED arrays and all that internet connectivity Samsung and Vizio seem to like. That’s weird, because Sharp Japan is doing it. Why no love for the US? → Read More
Engadget has some red hot info on the latest Sonos remote, a $350 controller with capacitive touchscreen that replaces Sonos’ standard CR100 monster. Since Sonos added iPod Touch/iPhone controls we thought they’d be reticent to expand their remote offerings. We were wrong. Look for this to pop up in the morning. → Read More
Do you know the one thing that I absolutely love about my BlackBerry? The little LED indicator light. That single light informs me when I have a new message, if a call is coming in, if Bluetooth is turned on, and a whole lot more. So why isn’t there such a light on computers? One modder answered that question by installed a three-color LED light on his Eee PC with a very similar functionality. → Read More
When Peter and I were liveblogging E3 events (among others), we’d get a sort of improvised workflow going on depending on what gear we had, where we were located, who had signal on their dongle, and so on. One of the steps in that workflow was getting pictures off a camera, resizing and renaming them, and getting them up on the web fast. Unfortunately, while I got things going right for my own Canon, the introduction of four other cameras to the mix (two camcorders, another DSLR, and a point-and-shoot for emergencies) made my scripts and automated behaviors difficult to manage and could have resulted in a lot of lost data.
I wish I’d had this Cameras app, a simple thing that lets you choose an action to be done whenever a certain camera (or other device) is connected. And it’s free! → Read More
Over the weekend a certain special bundle was revealed to be incoming at Best Buy. We heard it was to be made available next Sunday, but it looks like they’ve jumped the gun a little bit and you can order it online right now. You’ll have to ship it, though — no in-store pickup.
Incredibly, shipping that megalith of a console is only $9, though, so your savings remain intact. There’s also a Wall-E/LittleBigPlanet bundle for the same price if you’re buying this thing for your kid. → Read More
What can be said about the latest Eye-Fi SD card that hasn’t been said about every other iteration? The Pro is just that, a Pro. With support for RAW files, Ad Hoc network support and Selective Transfer, the Eye-Fi Pro is perfection. → Read More
As we reported earlier today, media search engine Technorati has succumbed to the Twitter infatuation and is launching Twittorati, a site that shows what Technorati’s top 100 bloggers are tweeting about. Our earlier story indicates that the site is launching tomorrow but perhaps our post sped things up. We had a chance to demo the site with Technorati’s CEO Richard Jalichandra. The site pulls in the Tweets published by bloggers from Technorati’s list of Top 100 Blogs, which is determined by Technorati’s Authority Ranking (its equivalent to Google Page Rank). Authority Ranking is calculated via algorithm of inbound links from other blog posts, and weights those based on timing, relevancy and the inbound link’s site source Authority Ranking.
The blogs that are ranked vary by subject, with The Huffington Post taking the top spot, TechCrunch as no. 2 and Engadget in the no. 3. Twittorati pulls Tweets into a real-time stream (though not fully real-time; like Twitter, you still need to refresh the page to get real-time results) where you can organize Tweets by Authority Ranking or by latest Tweet. Because the Tweets are aggregated from blogs that cover a variety of subject relating to politics, technology, entertainment and more, the subjects of the Tweets are varied and somewhat random. But you can narrow your stream by filtering Tweets by Technorati Tags (life, news, music, politics, etc.) and the top trending Twitter hashtags. For example, some of the top Twitter hashtags that bloggers were Tweeting included #michaelphelps and #MJ. The origins of the Tweets include a blog’s Tweets and bloggers’ personal Tweets from their own accounts. Technorati says it has collected Twitter handles for most of the authors of the top 100 sites. → Read More
Maybe you heard that a new Facebook iPhone application is almost complete. Maybe you’ve also heard that probably the best feature is that it will allow you to upload video right from your iPhone 3GS to the social network. Well you don’t actually have to wait for the new app to do that — there’s one that does it already. And it’s really, really fast.
VideoUp is a application created by Raizlabs. While they are in no way affiliated with Facebook, the social network was nice enough to help them fix a couple bugs to get it ready for the App Store, founder Greg Raiz tells us. That’s good news because it means Facebook apparently isn’t being tyrannical and demanding that its official app is the only one that will be able to do video uploads to the network. → Read More
More bad news for large newspapers. According to the latest stats from the Inland Press Association, larger newspapers with higher circulations are suffering more than their smaller siblings. Newspaper veteran Alan Mutter reports that the bigger the newspapers are, the more their profits decreased over the past five years. Since 2004, operating profits on average fell just over 100% at newspapers with circulation higher than 80,000. That’s right. Taken all together, their losses wiped out their profits. → Read More
Just bought a new home? No, probably not. But the one you’ve got could probably use some improvement in the ol’ wiring situation. An ethernet port in every room is probably a bit much, but you might want a hard connection for any computers or media devices that aren’t going to be moving around a lot. So gather round a couple handy friends, buy a hundred feet of Cat 5 cable, and get wiring! → Read More
At $90, Brite-View’s CinemaCube appears to be a viable BitTorrent downloader for the home theater, but my first few minutes with it were an exercise in futility. Testing the other features of the CinemaCube seems pointless if I can’t get the BitTorrent client to work, IMO. That’s not to say I didn’t get it to work, but it shouldn’t be as difficult as it is. Consider this a rant, but I’ll do my best to keep a level head about it. Once I’ve worked all the kinks out I’ll have a full review, but until then…you get the point. → Read More
Last summer Facebook announced two new programs designed to help surface some of the best applications on Facebook Platform. The first, called Verified Apps, was to help users find applications they could trust — in other words, apps that always stayed true to Facebook’s guidelines, and wouldn’t spam users. Verified Apps finally launched in May after lengthy delays, with around 120 apps in the inaugural class. But the program was only meant to serve as the first stepping stone on the path towards Platform greatness, serving as something of a minor league before the very best apps made it to the Majors.
The second step was a program dubbed “Great Apps”, which was meant to reward the very best applications on Facebook Platform, enticing developers with promises of “greater visibility on Facebook, earlier access to new features, and more feedback from Facebook”. It was going to highlight the true cream of the crop, launching with iLike and Causes as inaugural members with plans to add a dozen or so more applications within the next year. Now, we’ve learned, that isn’t going to happen, as Facebook has killed off the program. Or, rather, it’s combined Great Apps with Verified Apps — the two are now one and the same. The few applications that were members have been notified of their demotion to plain Verified Apps, and nearly all literature relating to the program has been removed from Facebook. → Read More
Although I’m an outspoken supporter of ASCII games, I think this one may be more than even I can handle — and I can handle Dwarf Fortress.
Portal has to be the last game I would expect to be reduced to ASCII, mainly because of its reliance on, you know, the third dimension. But this guy appears to have adequately captured it in all its mind-bending glory. → Read More
It isn’t the sexiest startup in Silicon Valley, but San Francisco based OpenDNS just closed one of the most competitive venture capital deals in recent history. Top tier firms Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners came out the winners. The company will announce a second round of financing from both firms shortly.
The deal size and valuation isn’t being disclosed. David Strohm from Greylock and Michael Goguen from Sequoia join previous investor Halsey Minor and CEO Nand Mulchandani on the board of directors. Founding CEO David Ulevitch stepped down in late 2008 to take the CTO role. → Read More
It seems gamers are playing the likes of Guitar Hero and Wii Whatever more hours per week than ever before. Is that the recession’s fault? Maybe! Back in January, gamers were playing video games for an average of nearly 19 hours per week. In 2006, that number was just shy of 15 hours per week. → Read More
The Game: The Bigs 2 from 2K Sports
The Platform: Xbox 360 (also available for the PS3, PS2, Wii and PSP)
The Review:
Overall
2K’s The Bigs 2 is a relatively easy game to pick up and play compared to more serious titles, like MLB 2K9 or MLB 09: The Show, but experienced Bigs “vets” will find a handful of new features to keep the experience of the Big Show challenging making the game worth picking up. If that’s not enough to sway you then check out the rest of the review. I triple dog dare you. → Read More
Ever wandered through a Target or Wal-Mart and wondered just where all those plastic goblets and colanders and keychains and doodads actually came from? Yeah, me too. There must be a factory somewhere churning this stuff out. Turns out there is such a factory, in Odenwald, Germany, where Koziol fabricates plastic into all kinds of useful things. → Read More
A hot little rumor coming out of Spain, where “Ronaldomania” is running wild, suggests that Sony is indeed working on the PSP2. Such a system would have graphical capabilities more or less on par with the original Xbox. → Read More
