Wednesday, May 16, 2007
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How Not to Destroy An Old PS2
11:56PM Seamus Byrne | Here’s a cautionary tale featuring an about-to-be destroyed Sony PlayStation 2. A proud owner of a new PS3 decided to allow partygoers to destroy his outgoing PS2, and the guy who won the honors in a drawing decided to pee all over the obsolete gaming console. Bad idea. The PS2 was still plugged in, and because urine is an excellent conductor of electricity, the guy was instantly knocked unconscious and nearly electrocuted. He was lucky enough to be treated and released at a local hospital. That’s got to hurt. Okay, so now we have this straight: it’s not a PEE S2. – Charlie White AU: We’re calling a big, fat BS on this one. Between Mythbusters busting the railroad pissing shock myth, and how on earth someone would supposedly still have it plugged in — are they pissing on your entertainment centre? -SB PRO TIP: Don’t Pee On Playstation 2 [Arrogantics] More »
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11:42PM Seamus Byrne | Microsoft announced the winners of its 2007 Next-Gen PC Design Competition, and this year’s champs gave new meaning to that old cliché, “outside the box.” These PCs won’t be available anytime soon, but their industrial designers pick up some serious recognition along with a substantial wad of cash for their efforts. This year’s competition had entries from 35 countries, and the 349 submissions were judged on their innovation, user experience, aesthetics, technology integration and ecology.
Taking home a cool $25,000 for the Chairman’s Award is John Leung from Melbourne, Australia with his design you see here, called “MADE in China.” The acronym MADE stands for Massively Administered Digital Entities, incorporating a design that has all of its applications and data stored on remote servers. It looks like an Asian dining platter, and its chopstick-like input device, called a CHOPstylus, allows for input on the PC’s touchscreen. Take a look at the gallery for the other winners. – Charlie White
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Brave New World of Computing [Microsoft]
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Next-Gen PC Competition Results in Some Wild, Beautiful Designs
11:42PM Seamus Byrne | Microsoft announced the winners of its 2007 Next-Gen PC Design Competition, and this year’s champs gave new meaning to that old cliché, “outside the box.” These PCs won’t be available anytime soon, but their industrial designers pick up some serious recognition along with a substantial wad of cash for their efforts. This year’s competition had entries from 35 countries, and the 349 submissions were judged on their innovation, user experience, aesthetics, technology integration and ecology.
Taking home a cool $25,000 for the Chairman’s Award is John Leung from Melbourne, Australia with his design you see here, called “MADE in China.” The acronym MADE stands for Massively Administered Digital Entities, incorporating a design that has all of its applications and data stored on remote servers. It looks like an Asian dining platter, and its chopstick-like input device, called a CHOPstylus, allows for input on the PC’s touchscreen. Take a look at the gallery for the other winners. – Charlie White
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Brave New World of Computing [Microsoft]
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Fujitsu’s UMPC Gets Official Specs
11:33PM Seamus Byrne | Fujitsu’s twist-happy UMPC got an official spec makeover today. The FMV-U8240 (which will be the company’s first and smallest Tablet/UMPC) will come with a 1,024 x 600 5.6-inch display and weigh a mere 1.2 pounds. Wi-Fi will be built-in and you’ll get from 512MB to 1GB of memory (along with a 20GB HDD). For power there will be an 800MHz Intel A110 CPU. Price-wise, you’re looking at around $1,200 for the WinXP version and $1,300 for the Vista Business version. Lower the price and give it an SSD option and we’d be happy. – Louis Ramirez galleryPost('FujitsuTabletUMPC', 4, 'FujitsuTabletUMPC'); Press Release More »
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Bionic Baby Seals Keep Old People From Feeling Lonely
11:10PM Seamus Byrne | Want to know what the Japanese government has been doing with 12 million dollars for the past two years? Developing Silver Technology, that is, robots for lonely old people. The intuitive baby harp seal, which I encountered at the RoboBusiness 2007 conference in Boston, is equipped with internal motion sensors and responds to petting, scratching, and holding. It also emits exceedingly cute seal-like chirps and sheds its “fur”—you know, like seals do. Come on, what’s $3500 for a bundle of robotic animal joy? Unfortunately, the seal is only available in Japan, so if you were thinking about buying one for Grandma just so you wouldn’t have to visit her anymore, the jig’s up. – Jack Ventura More »
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Halo 3 Zune Up For Pre-Order, Released June 15
11:00PM Seamus Byrne | Fans of the special edition Halo 3 Zune can head over to EBGames or Gamestop (they’re the same thing) and pre-order one for the release on June 15. If pre-ordering this is anything like pre-ordering anything else at EB, you’ll hand them five bucks and they’ll try and get you to pre-order the Halo 3 Zune Strategy Guide as well. – Jason Chen Product Page [Gamestop - Thanks Marco!] More »
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Thanko’s MP3 Alarm Clock Provides Japanese Style Retro Wakeage
10:00PM Seamus Byrne | Crazy uncle Thanko’s back from looney town again, this time bringing you a gadget that’s halfway sane and quite useful to boot. On the surface, this alarm clock may seem like a standard retro-styled alarm clock, but if you look deeper you’ll realize it’s actually an MP3 alarm clock. The bells on top do absolutely nothing, but when the alarm sounds at the pre-set time, the clock will play back whatever MP3s you’ve shoved in it. You’ll no doubt find great ironic morning sounds to wake up to. – Jason Chen Product Page [Thanko via Plastic Bamboo] More »
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Life-sized Gundam Wakes Up, Destroys Enemies, Takes a Nap?
9:46PM Seamus Byrne | If you are planning to go on vacation this July and you like huge robots (of the anime variety), get a ticket to Japan, visit the Fuji entertainment park and get drunk with sake! OK, so that last part is my plan anyway, but you can’t miss this 59-feet full 1:1 scale Gundam at the Gundam Crisis attraction at Fujikyu Highland. If I am right at deciphering the power-ring-translated japanese, you will be part of the “Gundam power rise team” in charge of collecting the “Gundam data” and power it up. Whatever that means, it sounds like fun. – Jesus Diaz Gundam Crisis Attraction (in Japanese) [Fujikyu via Impress Robot Watch] More »
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Evergreen Flash-to-USB Stick Will Take Cards
9:18PM Seamus Byrne | This Evergreen USB adaptor is for people who like to play with slots – of the flash memory kind. It’s a USB memory stick with a slot for memory cards, so it’s more like an adaptor, really. They have all sorts of models, ones which accept anything from Compact Flash, Secure Digital, micro SD, MMC and Memory Stick. The Compact Flash model goes up to 8 GB, measures 78 x 10 x 23mm. The SD/MMC model can do 2GB, measures 46 x 10 x 20mm. The Memory Stick PRO/duo model also goes up to 2GB and measures 55 x 10 x 18mm. All of them weigh 15 grams, apart from the micro SD, (also available in green) which comes in at a titchy 7 grams, and measures 46 x 10 x 20. Cost is around 499 yen, which is $4.15. – Ad Dugdale P.S. I so wanted to headline this “Cartman’s USB Stick is a Dirty Slot, but Mummy said no. Card leader 4 kind of evergreen and 499 yen [PC Watch through Google Translate] More »
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Mobile ESPN Rises From The Crypt, Chooses Verizon Wireless
2:04PM Seamus Byrne | Mobile ESPN was killed off, some might say before its time. The new and improved ESPN Mobile is officially alive with the Verizon Wireless V Cast service for $15 per month. Off the bat (ha, get it?) the service will work on the LG Chocolate, the LG VX8300, LG VX8600, the Motorola RAZR V3c, V3m or MOTOKRZR K1m (with other handsets supported in the future). It still has the same goods as before (news, stats, editorial content, fantasy, etc), but this time supported by a real carrier. Real carrier or not, ESPN Mobile has never really been the bee’s knees. –Wilson Rothman More »
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