The Guitar Hero/Rock Band phenomenon is showing no signs of waning, with countless sequels still on the way (including one focused solely on music by The Beatles) and money continuing to pour into the coffers of their respective game publishers. But gamers are still being forced to live with a problem that’s troubled the genre since its formation: you can only play along to songs that publishers have approved, licensed, and then ‘mapped out’ with note charts to play along to. Today, they’re getting a solution: JamLegend, the Guitar Hero-like website that uses your keyboard instead of a plastic guitar, has launched a new feature that lets you play along to any song in your music collection, whenever you’d like.
For those that haven’t been exposed to JamLegend before, the site shares a lot of common ground with Guitar Hero. Gamers load up a song and a flurry of colored dots begin to flow down the screen, with each one corresponding to a differet key on your keyboard. The experience is less atmospheric than the games you’ll find on the consoles, largely because it lacks flashy graphics and plastic guitars, but if you’re a Guitar Hero addict looking to get your fix at the office, it’s certainly good enough. → Read More
Now there is no excuse for you not having an LCD monitor. CompUSA is selling thie I-Inc 19-inch widescreen LCD for only $100 + $2 for shipping. That’s cheap. Granted, it’s not a Dell Ultrasharp, but it’s better than nothing. → Read More
Getting sound out of an iPhone and online quickly has been pretty easy for a while, and there are a number of startups playing in the space. Trottr works from any phone and is a simple call-in or upload system. The Tweetmic iPhone app has been gathering lots of speed in the U.S. due to its ability to publish on Twitter – but it has no attached social network. But it’s AudioBoo.fm, launched in December last year, which has been making waves with an iPhone-only app which works very well. However, a new entrant, ipadio, is potentially about to steal AudioBoo’s thunder with a new iPhone app which covers all the bases: live streaming audio into a web page; high quality uploads from the iPhone; live phone-in service; upcoming Android app – plus, crucially, a business model. Released to the public at the end of April the existing iPadio iPhone app is simple enough. However, not unlike BlogTalkRadio, it was based around making a phone call to get your audio online. But the new version of the existing ipadio iPhone app [iTunes link], poised for approval in the App store, brings a ton more functionality to the platform. → Read More
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” Elevation Partners (which owns a huge portion of Palm) co-founder Roger McNamee told Bloomberg in March. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”
Yes, that would be today.
So how did McNamee’s claim turn out? Well, let’s put it this way: If there was a foot-in-the-mouth award given every year, no one else would need to apply this year. Hell, it might take the prize for the whole decade. It’s a quote of Ballmer-level proportions. → Read More
Buckle up. HP is apparently prepping its own 11.6-inch netbook (not pictured above) for release later this year. There’s literally no information about it other than ODM giant Quanta will be producing the thing, so I’ll not fluff this piece too much with superfluous text. → Read More
Inductive charging is slowly making its way into the consumer market space and should hit its stride next year. We’ve already seen devices that utilize inductive charging with the Palm Pre and its Touchstone charger as well as Energizer’s Wii Induction Charging System. There are other devices out on the market, but those come to mind right off the bat.
Correction: Qualcomm’s eZone system isn’t the inductive charging technology we’ve already seen in the market place with the aforementioned products. Turns out the technology behind it is actually near field magnetic resonance, which is a form of inductive charging that allows for more efficient wireless energy transfer. That explains why you’re able to hover your device above the charging pad and still have it charge without any sort of physical contact.
So you could just tuck the charging pad in a desk drawer, for example, and set your device on top without anyone ever seeing the charging pad. And eZone allows you to charge multiple devices at once since it’ll be a universal charging pad. → Read More
Samsung announced their new SNE-50K today, an ebook reader with a few interesting features hiding inside. Like the ability to display not just PDF files, but Microsoft Office Documents. → Read More
There are no new ideas left in the world, ladies and gentlemen. Today, Joby announced the Gorillamobile, a variant of their iconic bendable tripod thingies for mobile phones and other handheld gadgets. At first I was all “Oh yeah, that’s great!” And then I remembered Gorillapod Go-Go! suction cups and a small part of me died inside. → Read More
THQ, fresh off winning a whole bunch of dollars at the expense of toy maker Jakks Pacific re: WWE video games, said yesterday that Microsoft’s Project Natal will launch “late next year.” And if you believe that… → Read More
Here are some of the topics from today’s podcast… Pirate Bay sale falling through CrunchGear Gadget Club contest New semi-automatic taser WiMax iPhone cable features inline rechargeable battery Devin fed up with iMovie, sees man on Segway enter coffee shop LISTEN: Show Link | RSS Feed | iTunes Link → Read More
This was considered some heady stuff back in the day. That’s Incredible! was a show that featured “incredible things:” kids who could paint pretty pictures, interesting science junk, etc. But this takes the cake. I totally remember this episode and this is probably the best example of proto-games journalism you’ll ever see. PLUS this thing lasted 9 minutes. Can you imagine nine minutes of hairy kids playing video games on TV today? Absolutely not. → Read More
Anyone wondering who got the better deal today (my detailed thoughts later) need only look at the stock movements of Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo dipped 12.08% to $15.14, knocking $2.91 billion off their market cap. Microsoft gained 1.41% to $23.80, adding…$2.94 billion to their market cap.
So net/net about $30 million in new value was created today by the market, All of that plus everything Yahoo lost went to Microsoft. Yahoo got Binged, to the tune of $2.9 Billion. Oops.
Our complete coverage of the deal is here. → Read More
The outcry over the Google Voice ban on the App Store is still going strong, with hundreds of news stories, developer posts, and complaints putting the story in and out of Twitter’s top trends for nearly three days running. Much of the blame has been directed at AT&T, over beliefs that the carrier forced Apple’s hand in its decision to ban the applications. Now it looks like AT&T believes it’s been wrongly accused, and it’s beginning to take a stand for itself.
Last time we reached out to AT&T to comment on the story, the company gave TechCrunch writer MG Siegler a very blunt and brief statement:
“Nope – Apple is the one who can talk about their App Store.”
But today, the company has begun sending out more detailed messages to some of the frustrated customers who have been voicing their complaints. The message below was written by Glenn Lurie, AT&T’s President of Emerging Devices and Resale. → Read More
Behold! A portable TurboGrafx-16 system. A modder named Bacteria (eewww) cobbled together a very nice-looking system called “IntoGrafx” featuring three-hour battery life and a 5.4-inch screen. The IntoGrafx plays original TurboGrafx game cards (the system uses an actual TurboGrafx board, after all) and there’s a region switch that allows you to play either Japanese or US games. All in all, it looks really well done. Now to track down an old Bonk’s Adventure cart. TurboGrafx/PCE console – *IntoGrafx* [Bacteria via hack a day] → Read More
Apparently, it’s been leaked by some loose-lipped presenter at a Microsoft event that “Windows Mobile” is out, and “Windows Phone” is in. Well, Microsoft, I try to get your back now and then when you’re misunderstood or wrongly accused, but this is beyond the pale. I can’t think of a worse name to call your operating system. Let me count the reasons why: → Read More
It looks like the cool thing to do now is bash HP over its environmental record. Yesterday’s Greepeace action was a huge story for several minutes, drawing attention, apparently, to the company’s rubbish record with respect to various chemicals in its products. And today The Register has photos of shipping containers, used to ship things. → Read More
OK. Let’s try this again. I’ve passed out the first set of prizes to unnamed persons and this is Round 2. TO VOTE COMMENT ON THIS POST WITH THE EXACT NAME OF THE DEVICE YOU’RE VOTING FOR. THAT IS THE ONLY TEXT THAT SHOULD APPEAR. I WILL DO AN SQL QUERY ON THE COMMENTS DB TO FIND THE WINNER. LITERALLY COPY AND PASTE THE NAME OF THE DEVICE INTO THE COMMENT FIELD AND POST IT. VOTE ONCE. VOTE ONLY ONCE. DON’T USE AMAZON’S MECHANICAL TURK. DON’T ASK THE WEIRD GUY FROM IT WHO YOU NEVER INVITE TO PARTIES BUT TALK TO AT WORK TO MAKE YOU A VOTING SCRIPT! IF YOU ARE THE WEIRD GUY IN IT, I’M SORRY. THEY JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU. IF I HELD A PARTY YOU COULD COME. IF YOU CHEAT I WILL BE SAD. I WILL CLOSE VOTING ON MONDAY AT NOON EASTERN! Keep the entries coming. There’s still one more round. With that, let’s give this another try. → Read More
