What Are The Most Stylish Laptops And Ultrabooks?
Laptop Buying Guide 2012: How To Find The Right Laptop For You
Spotify Finally Makes Its Australian Debut
Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time
HTC One XL Review: The Best Is Getting Better
The Lies Everyone Tells On Dating Sites
In a demo that was a cross between a waiting room at a dentist's office and a frat party aboard a gigantic limousine, Samsung proved to us that its latest Advanced-VSB (A-VSB) system to bring mobile TV to North America kicks serious ass. As the luxo-bus rambled all over Las Vegas for more than an hour, we watched TV. That's right.
Placed side-by size in the back of this party bus was one screen showing the old-style 8-VSB system now popular in Korea, next to another screen with Samsung's A-VSB video playing on it in half-stream and quarter-stream varieties. They were receiving their signal over channel 22, broadcast by a Vegas TV station using existing facilities. Of course, the A-VSB was actually watchable, looking sharp and reasonably clear while the old-timey 8-VSB was nothing but a series of frame drops and pixelization. Good demo.
The Samsungians also passed around a few porto-TVs, too, to show us the quarter-rate Mobile Stream, which also looked crispy-clean albeit with a frame drop or two. Look for this tech soon on an iPod near you. When? Samsung hopes we'll see it here in the States by the time that analog TV cutoff happens in February, 2009. – Charlie White
galleryPost('samsungavsb', 3, 'Samsung A-VSB Bus');
This morning, we wrote about a stat that Europe's HD-DVD title sales had spiked and surpassed Blu-ray sales. That's wrong. That writer actually used US data. But what about that US spike? It didn't have anything to do, actually, with the fact that HD-DVD has over 100k non-Xbox players in the field. That would have revealed itself with a more gradual climb in the charts.
Apparently, the spike occurs the same day that HD-DVD fanboys at AVSForum, the AV enthusiast site, had organized an mass buy of HD-DVD titles. For an immature format, even a few individuals can make a difference, if only on a day.
This post lays down their gameplan for the buy on April 15th, the one year anniversary of HD-DVD's launch:
It may sound like a game show for accountants, but Claim Your Content is actually the name of YouTube's new content monitoring tool. As near as we can figure, it's an automated feature that accompanies every user-uploaded video. Content owners, including such publicly announced Claim Your Content charter members as the NHL and the NBA, will have the right to log in and yank any content that they feel is an infringement of copyright.
Now, we will be eager to see exactly how this yanking process works, and if there is any room in it for protest, deliberation or out-and-out legal confrontation. Frankly, an automated censoring product seems a little bit scary. What is clear at this point is that this is Google's way of appeasing some of the angrier content owners who have already taken action. According to a wire report, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said today that the tool may at least help play down the allegation that YouTube encourages copyright infringement. "As that product rolls out, the issue becomes moot," said Schmidt.
Sure, but then what's to become of TIME's Person of the Year??? – Wilson Rothman
Google's copyright-protection tool unveiled [CNNMoney.com]
KeySpan gave its TuneView remote a sexy upgrade today. The remote, which uses 2.4GHz frequency to control your docked iPod from afar, now comes in piano black. The remote is also a little faster, thanks to an upgrade that allows for smoother navigation on its 1.4-inch screen. It's a little pricey at $179, but the set up is as hassle-free as it gets. – Louis Ramirez
Press Release [via Gadgetell]
Courtesy of Lee Brimelow.
–Noah Robischon
Controversial Microsoft Silverlight Ad Campaign [theWPFblog] Microsoft Silverlight [Product Page]
A handful of college have come together and will be working with Simbex and their Head Impact Telemetry system. The HIT is a helmet-system that can be commercially purchased and will monitor head acceleration (impact), rotational acceleration, duration, location, time and more for monitoring the noggin of a football player. It will then shoot the information wirelessly to a computer that can analyze the data and monitor the players. It will even warn when an impact could be injurious. The overall goal of the HIT system is to discover the causes of mild brain injuries that are often suffered in contact sports such a football, but keeping check on the student-athletes in college football programs is definitely another perk. –Travis Hudson
Wireless Helmets Monitor Head Injuries [Medgadget]
Locked up in your cube filling out TPS reports when you would much rather be in a lab looking at crazy shit under a microscope? Yeah, me too. New this week at ThinkGeek is the USB Digital Microscope that will at least get us started on my path to becoming a jacket-clad scientist. This USB-powered microscope can zoom in on your office supplies up to 200x and even record the images and video on your computer. Too bad it is $180. Being a faux scientist is expensive. –Travis Hudson
Product Page [ThinkGeek]
We asked Pandora's co-founder, Tim Westergren, if he would like to discuss the decision of the Library of Congress's Copyright Royalty Board to uphold its decision to charge new crippling rates to Web-based broadcasters like Pandora. Tim responded: "I think there are two main points that would be great to make, both regarding dangerous perceptions floating around right now."
Two misperceptions about Internet radio, according to Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren:
First:
…higher rates mean more money for artists. The reality is that the few Internet radio companies that opt to continue (and it will be VERY FEW) will be forced to license directly from labels. In this scenario, the artist share of the revenue will shrink to almost nothing as the monies will go directly to the label and be subject to the usual artist royalty rate (post-recoupment) of single digit percentages. So not only will this eliminate the vast majority of online stations that are the ONLY source of indie music exposure, it will take what little revenue is left from the artists.
Secondly:
If you didn't believe me the first time, well here it is. See those icicles? Yeah, hell is freezing over. Here is an actual picture of the Sony Compact Flash (yes, you read that right) memory card. They actually gave in! It is now available in sizes up to 4GB. *head explodes* –Travis Hudson
Sony unveils CompactFlash range [Pocket-Lint]
