A wail of grief from the great heavens was heard when it was announced the Star Wars hologram effect did not make it to iChat. Mourn no longer, for a giant among men at Macrumors, who goes by the name of elbows, has made the impossible possible.
We don’t know an awful lot about this. The post up on Techeblog says two dorks somewhere stole a couple of iPhone displays and made Halloween costumes out of them. Though the screens look cool, the costumes don’t really look all that scary. Who knows what they are going to say to get candy? “Trick or touch?” Now, that’s bound to get them arrested, even if they did get away with the alleged thefts of the iPhone display screens. One thing is for sure; they won’t be getting any love for hitting the town with their lame arse dance moves—man, we thought we were bad.[Techeblog]
With iPhones selling like hot cakes that have web browsing, call making and photo taking capabilities, it is hard to make your device really sit out from the crowd. Well, Mark over at Geek Technique has given his iPhone a rather striking retro black paint job, topped off with the old technicolor Apple logo. We think the Newton/iPhone love child looks rather dashing; don’t believe us? Check out the gallery below:
Gary Merson backs up our review of Samsung’s new LED driven LCD displays, agreeing with my impression that its the best LCD I’ve ever seen. Gary’s tests went deeper, revealing that the TV resolves 800 lines of motion which means that these sets have better blur resistance than even most 120Hz sets, and even some plasmas.
He also disliked the set’s handling of 480 content, reporting massive jaggies. But scaler aside for a moment, anyone can tell this set looks good, technical tests or not, by looking at it plain and simple. If you’re considering this TV, he also drops in comparisons to plasmas and some other sets so reading his review is worth it. [HD Guru and Samsung's 81 Series on Giz]
The bad news is, we have discovered a Leopard-related issue that may very well throw a monkey wrench into your Time Machine. Anyone trying to use Time Machine with a previously PC-formatted drive could be at risk. The good news is, there is an easy—albeit none-too-obvious—fix. Here’s the dilly-o:
With its vertical 82 LED digital display, the Guru Watch gives you a “hypnotic” light show before it displays the time, date, or alarm settings. And the look is an attractive blend of both retro and modern styles. It is a good thing you spent years crafting that flabby physique because the watch face is over 2-inches long. Finally, your fat wrists will come in handy. Available for £99.99 or $204. [iwoot via Shiny Shiny]
I’m not sure who this guy was, but one thing is for sure —he was a massive nerd. Got to love that kind of commitment though. Plus, if he ever came back as a zombie you could probably stay alive by sitting him in front of a new computer with a sweet LCD monitor. [News From Gadgets World]
If you recall, a jury full of dumbasses recently stuck it to Jammie Thomas to the tune of $222,000 for downloading 24 pirated songs from Kazaa. Now, I don’t know about you, but most people can’t make this go away by whipping out their checkbook. So what does an average 30 year old single mother of two do to pull together that kind of money? She sells thongs. A whole lot of thongs to be exact. According to Jammie’s website, only $16,000 has been collected through private donations to help her fight the charges against her, so it appears that she has resorted to selling “Free Jammie, Free Everyone” branded paraphernalia to help make up the difference. If you would like to help, and pick up a thong, shirt, or mug while you are at it, hit her product website in the link. [Cafepress via Crave]
Nearly two months after the fizzle out between NBC Universal and Apple during contract negotiations, NBC U CEO Jeff Zucker spills what some of the contested terms were. Most surprising is that NBC asked for a cut of hardware sales. Not the fact that they wanted a cut, but that they actually asked for it—they’d have more luck asking the devil himself to reverse whatever deal Steve inked with him. (Though handing content providers a slice isn’t unprecedented.) Also, that pricing “flexibility” NBC pissed and moaned so loudly about was what we all expected: “”We wanted to take one show, it didn’t matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99.” So in short, it was all about money.
“We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analogue world with pennies on the digital side.” Given that NBC apparently only netted $15 million in the last year of its deal with Apple despite accounting for 30-40 percent of video content sold (depending on whether you ask NBC or Apple), all the other contract sniggles aside, it’s no wonder they bolted for Amazon—who probably ponied up a sweeter revenue sharing deal—and Hulu, where they’ll have a sizable chunk of ad revenue. [Variety, Thanks John]
With all of the news about football players and concussions these days, it is about time that the helmet was redesigned to offer more protection. The folks at Xenith are hoping to offer a solution with the X1, a helmet that features 18 shock absorbing discs that release air slowly to reduce the force of an impact. These Aware-Flow Shock Absorbers, along with an innovative comfort fit system called Fit Seeker make for a helmet that promises to greatly reduce sudden movements of the head that cause concussions.
The Xenith X1 has just received approval from the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE), so we could be seeing these helmets on the sensitive melons of unfortunate athletes like Miami’s Trent Green sometime in the near future. [NY Times via Core77]
