Ladies and germs: the Chumby One. Hot on the heels of its soft, leathery older brother, the Chumby One goes for a more non-nonsense aesthetic with hard edges and a more clock-radio feel. As you recall, the device costs $99.95 and allows you to play back little widgets on a tiny touchscreen. It is at once banal in its simplicity and amazingly unfettered in the amount of content you can stream to… → Read More
This guy was asking the quality question way before the PSP Go The PSP Go just launched and the blogworld is in a tizzy about the price – $249 – and the apparent chintziness of this new PSP replacement. You see, the device doesn’t support Sony’s exciting UMD optical standard and is generally reported as “feeling” cheaper than the bulky but solid PSP. The PSP Go… → Read More
As you settle back into the dorms and sift through syllabi while searching for drink specials from the local pub, you also should put in some time improving your social life. The fall is a great time to lay a solid foundation of dating success on campus. To provide some tips on turbocharging your dating life, we turned to Neil Strauss, author of the international bestseller The Game: Penetrating… → Read More
Yesterday we posted about Alice and Kev, homeless Sims that exist entirely in the world of Sims 3. They are a family. Alice is a girl with the traditional adolescent pre-teen worries but she’s saddled with a father who is high-strung, hates kids, and is generally a misfit in the orderly world of the Sims. They are homeless in that they live in a house with no walls and sleep on park benches. → Read More
I’ve been going through the items I’ve seen and bought this year and thought I’d share a few things that would make me particularly happy this Father’s Day. To that end, I’ve collected a mish-mash of items that might make dad smile a bit more readily than a tie and cologne set from Donald Trump’s fashion collection. Canon G10 I had to send this camera back but… → Read More
Jack Conte is an Internet musician who makes his living from selling MP3s online and generally running around like a madman making great music. I was introduced to him through Electro-Harmonix but I was amazed when I found the rest of his great music online. I met with him at a cafe in San Francisco where we drank huge bowls of coffee and talked music, technology, and hardware. He makes videosongs… → Read More
I apologize in advance for this video but I’m trying my hardest to make great mixes on my Pacemaker. Sadly, the fact that I’m old and live in my attic is causing a severe reaction to cool.
The system is actually pretty cool. You start playing a song, beat match and cue up another one, rinse, repeat. It has a 120GB hard drive built in and the touchpad works quite smoothly. Once you get the hang of… → Read More
As William Gibson said, “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.” A few years ago I thought streaming video was an impossible dream. Networks were too slow, we said, and no one cared about streaming. A few us held the torch high and shouted in a stentorian voice “We shall stream!” but it was still not to be. We had TiVo, but that was securely ensconced on a hard drive in a… → Read More
We just downloaded and installed the Kindle for iPhone app and you can color me impressed. Not only do you get – almost – the same reading experience you get on the Kindle this essentially opens to ebook market up in ways that could change the whole “reading a book” industry.
The download is free and opens a small window asking you for your Amazon account.
It then brings up a screen showing the… → Read More
Welcome to KrunchGear’s Kindle 2 Dekontainment, a video in which we unbox the Kindle 2 and show off some of its various and sundry features. Here are our initial photos including the Kindle Kover (k) which is konsiderably better than the original cover. This one actually snaps into the Kindle and can’t fall off. Click through for our unboxing video. → Read More
This ain’t your daddy’s Casio. The Cachalot, the latest solar radio watch from Casio’s high-end brand, Oceanus, is inching into high end territory and I’m pleased to report that you get quite a bit of watch for the $1,200 ($900 retail, from what I’ve seen) or so you’ll spend on this beast.
First off, the Cachalot looks great. I’ve seen a few Casios in my day and they’ve finally nailed it on this… → Read More
I am the kind of guy who can appreciate damage. It is the way of things. Entropy is part of the natural order of events—an unstoppable phenomenon. For some, it is hard to accept this after forking over $400 for a fancy Smartphone. I mean, you don’t want the thing getting all scratched up right? You don’t want it subjected to the elements, right? You want it to look good! For me, this… → Read More
The GSMA, a worldwide consortium of mobile industries, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (owned by the guy who used to run Microsoft and his lady wife) have teamed up to found the the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) initiative, allowing folks in developing countries to carry out mobile banking from their non-smartphones and keep and grow their money in a safe and affordable… → Read More
<aLike many of you, I used a Palm device back in the day. This was back in 1998 when mobile phones were only good for making phone calls, when unlimited Internet service was unheard of, and a personal organizer was normally made of paper. I remember the days of the green backlit device, with the graffiti handwriting recognition system, and that shark game to teach you how to use it. I loved… → Read More
Pros: Small size. Sturdy. Zoom. Records to 30 GB hard drive. Affordable.
Cons: Light balance in low light a bit yellow in automatic. Not HD.
The JVC Everio GZ-MG330 is all about simple and easy. It’s not much bigger than my fist and packs in a 30 gigabytye hard drive for up to 37 hours of recording in the most compressed mode. This camcorder is so small, that on my way out the door, I’d see it on… → Read More
You have a great idea for a product. You have a great designer. You have a manufacturer willing to pump something out for not much money. You’re on your way to gadget riches, right? Wrong.
Dan Costa wrote a cautionary tale for all those looking to produce a consumer electronics product. His focus is magicJack, a company that we wrote about in August 2007, a post that currently has 167 comments… → Read More
I’m not a big fan of point and shoot cameras so when I saw the Canon G9 favorably compared to a Leica (AS IF!) I just had to get my hands on the G10.
The 14-megapixel, $485 G10 is a beefy point and shoot clad in mostly black, military grade plastic and metal. It is truly a beast. But how does it handle? Not bad at all. → Read More
I recently did a horrible thing. Hoping to offer my son a little music to enjoy I downloaded 100 kid’s songs from iTunes for something like $7.99. I figured “Hey, kids like songs. 100 songs is a lot of songs. It’s a good deal.” I was wrong. I entered, for about two months, a circle of hell of which even Dante did not write: The Circle Dedicated to Listeners of Toddler Music.
So why am I doubling… → Read More
John “Sassy” Brownlee used one of the best metaphors I’ve seen to describe the pain of Apple watchers as they anguish over the illness of their potentate. He writes:
It’s certainly true that Rob, Joel and I all find much of the Internet’s agony aunting over Steve Jobs’ illness a tad unsavory… but even so, the self-righteous indignation from the Mac community that anyone might comment on it at… → Read More
Our favorite commenter, dwalk51, won an Agent 18 iPhone case in August. He filmed himself opening it in two separate videos and I think this kid is honestly the next Doug Aamoth. He’s got all the video chops – the ability to use scissors on camera, a bowl haircut, and a fascinating decorating style especially considering he’s about 18. Love the piano, dwalk! → Read More
I took a little tour of San Fran and the surrounding islands and hamlets including the beautiful little seaside town of Oakland and the paradise that is the Alameda Naval Base. Amazingly, among the brownfields of that very same island we find St. George Spirits, a tiny distillery that makes a really mean brew. → Read More
Remember when they said we’d all have flying cars by now? Food would be in pill form, and we’d all have wristwatches that we could watch TV on? Well “they” also predicted that kitchens would be all fancy and technological too. Check it out. → Read More
Your brother just got a new digital camera. Your mom got a GPS device. Your grandfather got a Falcon Northwest gaming rig with six cores and a graphics card that requires its own physical plant. You’re stuffed, sleepy, and just want to watch TV. How do you distract these hordes long enough to get in another turkey sandwich and viewing of A Christmas Story. Follow these easy steps: → Read More
Running Vista on your Mac? Having problems with the touchpad? Well good news, Apple released an updated driver for the Multi-touch trackpad today. It’s intended to fix the scrolling and tracking problems that the original drivers had. You can download it directly from Apple by clicking here. → Read More
It’s easy to forget that we at CrunchGear are taking part in a mild, nebbish, and highly organized form of hedonism. We become inured to the lures of technology, and like rheumy-eyed Caligulas we survey the mass of writhing, oiled bodies and yearn for something new, something to break the hard bolus of cynicism and distrust we have growing inside us like a dark, terrible pearl. → Read More
Another day, another kind of sweet product from Brando. This time is a wireless, backlit, keyboard. And it’s tiny. Actually, this might be the ideal item for a HTPC solution. Find out at the end of December when it ships out for the low low price of $47.00. Get it for someone else. Then, if they don’t like it, you’ll know it would have been a poor investment for yourself. → Read More
Turns out the iPod is being used by soliders for psychological operations in Iraq. A very creative solider used his iPod and a loudspeaker to broadcast Iraqi pop music while on an operation to distribute food. Another soldier is using a transmitter to do the same thing. The transmitter and iPod use a very low powered system (normally used for rescue beacons) to transmit a pro-coalition message… → Read More
Apple’s shares took a little bit of a hit today, after a Wall Street analyst lowered his rating in the short term on their stock. The analyst said that while Apple is still strong, in the short term they may find it difficult to reach sales targets on the MacBook Pro, and the ever popular iPods. He also said that it’s appearing unlikely that Apple will release a new product at MacWorld… → Read More
Good news for older gamers: that secret desire to rush your enemies’ base can be healthy! A study published in the medical journal Psychology & Aging shows that playing games like Rise of Nations and other real-time strategy titles can actually help elderly gamers maintain or improve their ability to reason, and help them with short term memory. To me, this seems like a great thing. Now… → Read More
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