Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Xbox 360 Spring Update Has Gone Live
11:37PM Seamus Byrne | The Xbox Spring update is going live tonight. If you’ve forgotten what this is all about, watch the video, or scan our full post on the fresh firmware refresh. And Ryan has neat DIYWK (Do it yourself with kitties) advice for updating without staying up past your bedtime. For your info, I’m not refreshing for a little while. I always like to make sure people aren’t downloading their consoles into bricks with new Microsoft ware. You know, old Windows superstitions and all. Release after the jump. More »
Boomerang-Shaped Microsoft oPhone Takes Cellphone World by Storm
11:15PM Seamus Byrne | Behold the Microsoft oPhone. “This phone breaks every paradigm we’ve ever had,” earnestly intones the Microsoft employee on this video spoof shown at Mix ‘07, a conference held by Microsoft for Web designers, developers and decision-makers in Las Vegas last week. Judging from this video, it looks like the company might just have a sense of humor. Breaking paradigms? That’s about the only truth about the oPhone, a goofy phantasyFone that’s sure to blow all those other boomerang-shaped cellphones out of the water. If they’d just equip the thing with 3G connectivity rather than the iPhone designers’ choice of the woefully slow EDGE network, many people would like it better than the iPhone, no matter how crazy and unusable it is. – Charlie White The Windows Mobile oPhone Video [InsideMicrosoft] More »
Samsung VRT Washing Machine Destroys Bacteria Very Quietly
11:15PM Seamus Byrne | The new Samsung VRT front-loading washing machine is powered by the Intel Santa Rosa chipset, sporting a new Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, NVIDIA GeForce graphics, Turbo Memory, Turbo Boost, 802.11n wireless, two HDMI ports, Blu-ray recorder, multitouch-sensitive panoramic screen and runs Mac OS X. OK, so it’s just a washing machine. But a very quiet one because it uses Vibration Reduction Technology to, amazingly enough, reduce vibration from unbalanced loads. You know, like when you put 43 boxer shorts and only one T-shirt in it. Or something like that. According to Samsung, their tests show that it has “the lowest vibration and noise level of the front-loading washers tested” even while running at 1300RPM. More revolutions per minute and prices after the jump. galleryPost('samsungsilvercare', 4, 'samsungsilvercare'); More »
Giz’s Favorite Santa Rosa Notebooks
11:02PM Seamus Byrne | Now that you know what Santa Rosa is all about, here are some of the laptops that caught our attention. We got an 13.3-inch ultraportable from Asus (along with a DirectX 10 capable gaming notebook), a Tablet PC from Fujitsu and Sony’s Blu-ray packin’ VAIO FZ. First at bat are the boys from Asus. galleryPost('SantaRosaLaptops', 4, 'SantaRosaLaptops'); More »
What You Need to Know About Intel’s Santa Rosa
11:01PM Seamus Byrne | So today marks the debut of Intel’s new Santa Rosa platform. Aside from the fact that your notebook is officially outdated, what else does this mean? What does Santa Rosa offer that you’re missing out on, and more importantly, is it enough to warrant buying a new lappie? First things first, what’s the deal with Santa Rosa. In an nutshell, Santa Rosa is a new platform (the consumer version is dubbed next-gen Centrino Duo while the business version is Centrino Pro) for your notebook that ushers in new Core 2 Duo CPUs, a new Mobile 965 Express chipset, Draft-N wireless and Intel Turbo memory. Collectively, these features equal 1) better performance 2) better battery life. Here’s how they pull it off. More »
Exclusive: Pricing and Details of Pioneer’s New Plasmas
11:00PM Seamus Byrne | To recap the news that leaked out of Europe yesterday, Pioneer is rolling out its 8th-generation plasmas, TVs whose black levels are 80% deeper than Pioneer’s previous TVs. The end result is a 20,000:1 contrast ratio, and three times as many gradient steps. That means, in dark movie scenes, you’ll see be able to see the action but also appreciate the depth of the shadows. Best of all, Pioneer says that because of the way the technology works, there’s no sacrifice in panel brightness. Under the corporate codename Project Kuro, the XGA and WXGA (768-line) panels will ship in June and July, while a full lineup of 1080p models will ship in September. Check out the gallery below, or follow the jump for screen size, price, press release and a Gizmodo interview with Pioneer home-entertainment honcho Russ Johnston. galleryPost('Pioneer8GPlasmaTVs', 8, 'Pioneer 8G Plasma TV'); More »
Yinke M002: A House Brick called Mercedes
10:45PM Seamus Byrne | I have a thing for Chinese mobiles. All those cult cells that look like packets of fags cigarettes and Porsches. And now they’re moving into retro phones. This one comes from a company called Yinke and it’s an old-skool mobey but with all the newfangled stuff we consumer geeks love so much. Rather confusingly it’s got a Mercedes badge on the back, but who am I to question Chinese craziness? There’s a 2 megapixel camera, MMS support, color display, pre-loaded games, and it even comes with a stand so that you can display it proudly wherever you might be. In homage to Chris Penn, it should come with a free shellsuit, gold neck chain and a DVD of Reservoir Dogs. – Ad Dugdale Yinke to present its stand-type mobile phone M002 [Aving via "Ubergizmo] More »
Omelette 1.0 is First Free Apple TV Game, But There’s a Catch
10:36PM Seamus Byrne | Since the Apple TV set-top box does have an operating system on board, it is possible to run games on it, and Omelette 1.0 is the first one created specifically for it. It’s a simple puzzle game by some dawg named Canis Lupus where you line up eggs, and as soon as you have three or more of the same color, you have yourself an omelette. Tasty. There’s a catch, though. Find out what that is, and see a screen shot of Omelette 1.0, after the jump. More »
