Don’t forget to enter the Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicle zombie tee contest brought to you by Capcom. If your beer belly and man boobs are hindering you from entering the contest then just send in a photo of yourself making a zombie face to contest at crunchgear dot com with the subject line “Me Want Brain.” → Read More
Standalone GPS devices are a dying breed. Anyone with a half-way decent smartphone can get from point A to point B with a few taps of an onscreen keyboard and it’s abundantly clear that standalone devices will end up being the the province of old folks. That said, TomTom and Garmin are seeing roses and puppy dogs. → Read More
Bambuser, the European mobile video streaming startup attempting to de-throne Silicon Valley’s Qik, has today launched its Android application on the Android market. That brings their mobile live video service to Symbian s60, Windows Mobile and the iPhone (jailbroken only), as well as through regular webcams. Bambuser’s main claim is that it has the lowest latency out of all the mobile video streaming services. In order to keep the video stream as close to real-time as possible, the Bambuser app drops a few frames here and there, while at the same time storing locally on the handset any dropped frames or audio that can’t get through during the live broadcast. What data doesn’t make it through during the live stream is then sent immediately afterwards when the handset doesn’t have the pressure of having to live stream and display video at the same time. → Read More
Researchers in Japan have developed an attack against WiFi Protected Access when using the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) that can successfully break the encryption in less than a minute. If you’re using WPA with TKIP, switch to AES, or step up to WPA2. → Read More
Asustek president Jerry Shen said that he’s thinking about making an ereader. MSI is also thinking about it. In related news, I’m also thinking about making an ereader as is my Uncle Jerzy from Rypin, Poland, although he is thinking of it in terms of creating a “magic book” because his experience with technology is fairly limited and he never finished high school. → Read More
“The West is the best,” exclaimed The Doors front man, Jim Morrison, many moons ago. Now, according to J.D. Power and Associates (can’t forget the associates!), “the best in the West,” regarding wireless call quality, include Verizon, T-Mobile, and Alltel. Ok, so Jim Morrison and cell phones have about as much to do with one another as peanut butter and Jupiter. But, although our friends out East may not agree with Morrison’s sentiments (or relevancy), we can all agree that call quality matters. To determine its “best of,” J.D. bases its semi-annual regional call-quality ratings on seven problem areas: dropped calls, static/interference, failed call connection on the first try, voice distortion, echoes, no immediate voicemail notification, and no immediate text message notification. → Read More
The ACLU doesn’t like that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection can search through all your electronic personal effects—laptops, including all the data therein—so it has filed a lawsuit to back up an earlier Freedom of Information request asking, essentially, “what gives?” Is it reasonable for Customs to search you at the border? Sure. But is it reasonable for Customs to search you, then take away your laptop, hold onto it for an indeterminate length of time, all the while rifling through your browser history, photo directory, etc? Are they afraid of my exploding plain text files or something? → Read More
Just like last.fm, Xbox 360 owners looking to socialize with friends on Twitter and Facebook via Xbox Live must have a Gold Membership. Just a little nugget that popped up in the price cut announcement from earlier that we thought you might want to know about. Xbox LIVE Gold Membership will be required for Twitter and Facebook when they are available, and is required for Netflix. Games, media content and Netflix membership are sold separately; a hard drive is required for storage. → Read More
OK, now this whole USB gadget thing is really getting silly. They’re now producing Japanese bamboo fans that double as USB memory sticks. And this time, “they” aren’t even offered by CrunchGear favorite Thanko, but exclusively for a non-Japanese audience (if I understood correctly) by Geek Stuff 4 U. → Read More
Did you know the first .com domain name that was ever registered was Symbolics.com, on the 15th of March 1985 by the now defunct Massachusetts-based computer manufacturer Symbolics?
While the first that was created in January of that same year was Nordu.net (used to serve as the identifier of the first root server, nic.nordu.net), symbolics.com was the first domain name to actually be registered through the appropriate process a few months later. This was of course long before there was a WWW, but you already had the Internet. In fact, the first TCP/IP-based wide-area network had already been operational for two years when nordu.net was created, right around the time the United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of the legendary NSFNET, a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone. Only six companies thought it’d be a good idea to reserve the domain name on the root servers in 1985 (the others were bbn.com, think.com, mcc.com, dec.com and northrop.com). But Symbolics was first to make the move. → Read More
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=6827163268088648679&hl=en&fs=true Ah, patent trolling: the last refuge of a dying company. Don’t get me wrong. I love my TiVo. It’s like a friend and a lover. We still have the old DVD-burning Humax model – I didn’t even upgrade to the wonky cable-card HD model – and the fact that I, a fairly plugged in tech nerd didn’t bother to upgrade is a testament to the company’s slow descent. I know there are better things out there and better things coming down the pike and so the current my TiVo is just fine by me. → Read More
If you’re doing a web search on your iPhone, chances are that you’re using the built-in search bar in the Safari browser. And if you’re using that, chances are that you’re searching with Google, as it’s the pre-installed option. And in fact, if you want to change it in the settings, the only other option is Yahoo Search. If you want to use something like Ask or Bing, you’re going to have to go to those respective web pages (well, at least until Bing starts powering Yahoo Search). But today Microsoft has unveiled a way to get to Bing from within apps on your iPhone, and even your Mac, with a new SDK.
The Bing iPhone and Mac SDK is available for anyone to download here, and it’s even open source (under the Microsoft Public License). Here’s what it includes: → Read More
The Zeemote JS1 controller has always intrigued us. Mobile handsets are getting more and more powerful, and the games are bordering on beautiful – but the controls are still terrible. Attempting to control a game with a virtual, onscreen D-pad is like threading a needle with your feet. That’s where the JS1 comes in. As a standalone Bluetooth game controller, it theoretically brings mobile gaming a bit closer to the gaming we’re used to on other platforms. Alas, it’s always had one major fault: you couldn’t buy the damn thing. → Read More
Scratch one Web site off that “alternative to The Pirate Bay” list. Mininova has been ordered by a Dutch court to remove all links to copyrighted items from its servers, or face fines to the tune of €5 million. You get the feeling that the era of BitTorrent as we know it is about to end, don’t you? → Read More
It seems a little unnecessary but (there’s a sucker born every second, right?) the 24.6-megapixel full-frame Exmor CMOS sensor equipped α850 is being geared towards “a broader group of consumers,” says Kristen Elder, the Director of Digital Imaging at Sony. Before you raise an eyebrow and ask why Sony has another full-frame DSLR when the α900 is top dog, ask me how much the α850 is going to be. It’s coming in under $2000, which is $700 cheaper than the α900. → Read More
Out of nowhere Sony just dropped three new α DSLRs, the α550, α500 and α850, which we’ll get to a little later. Key new features in the α500 series include the latest gen Exmor CMOS sensors and BIONZ image processors. Sony claims that the new sensors will capture high quality images in low light scenarios with the BIONZ image proc reducing color-noise as high up as ISO 12800. A couple other notables you might want to know about are in-camera HDR and improved Live View functions. → Read More
Having just recently been spotted riding the FCC approval express, it comes as no surprise that Sprint’s version of HTC’s Hero will soon be on its way to Android-fiending girls and boys across these United States. Now, according to Engadget, it sounds like “soon” may be as little as a couple weeks as Best Buy is expected to begin accepting $50 deposits for the CDMA-flavored Hero beginning on September 13. On the one hand it seems kinda silly to pre-order something that should have no problems with availability when it hits the market (while we’ll gladly shout our love for this thing from the mountain tops, the Hero’s Leno-like chin isn’t everyone’s favorite). But, on the other hand, this is Sprint’s FIRST (rumored) Android-powered handset, so I guess it does warrant some irrational excitement on the part of Sprint suckers customers (disclaimer: I am a Sprint sucker customer who can’t wait for Android). As for pricing and availability…your guess is as good as ours. → Read More
It’s a big ol’ day of scoop confirmation for us. First the Nokia N900 turns out to be an exact spec-for-spec match with what we said it would be back in May. Just a few hours later, we’re seeing confirmation that Virgin Mobile is getting the LG Rumor2 – just as we said they would back in July. Yeah, the second one isn’t quite as huge as the first one – but a scoop is a scoop, right? We didn’t have a shred of doubt in our source, but now some eagle-eye has caught it in writing. Virgin Mobile just kickstarted a Twitter contest which they’re calling “Twitter Rumors” – and as if the name weren’t enough, the prize list clearly states “Three (3) winners (one for each daily Promotional Period) will receive 1 Virgin Mobile Rumor2 handset and $50 Top-Up Card”. Thats about as concrete as things get shy of a press release, folks. [Via EngadgetMobile] → Read More
Thank the Lord! Microsoft just confirmed that Xbox 360 price drop we’ve been bleating about for entirely too many days now. Yes, the Xbox 360 Elite goes down by $100 to $299; the Pro goes from $299 to $249 while supplies last (which means it’s being phased out entirely); and the Arcade stays at $199. → Read More
Google docs is a useful application for sharing documents, but previously didn’t allow for sharing across different languages. Today, Google is launching a feature in Google Docs that will automatically translate documents into 42 different languages.
In the tools menu of Google Docs, you can now click “Translate document” and choose the language to translate too. This functionality uses Google Translate’s technology. You can replace the original document with the translation or save the new translated version as a different document. → Read More
