Monday, January 21, 2008
Entertainment
Smart Party Wireless DJ System Will Get Playlist Votes From Your Trousered MP3 Player
11:42PM Gizmodo US Edition | A new system devised by a pair of UCLA students could well bring democracy to music selection at parties. The two scientists have created a software-and-antennae combo that currently works on laptops, scanning people’s music collections, grabbing the most popular tunes from guests’ MP3 players and adding them to the night’s playlist. The next step will be to see if Smart Party can be made to work on MP3 players (currently it only works on laptops), polling partygoers’ music devices as they arrive at the party. More info below. More »
Gadgets
LEGO Contest Picks Up Steam, Pod Racer, London Imperial Shuttle and Jeff Vader
11:25PM Jesus Diaz | Some of you asked for it when we showed you the LEGO Steampunk Tie Fighter and here it is: a LEGO Steampunk Pod Racer, the Darling Apollo IV driven by Trenton Telgaard. Whoever that is. It’s also part of the LEGO Steam Wars contest, like the brilliant London Imperial Shuttle after the jump (right next to a hilarious LEGO animation set to Eddie Izzard’s monologue on Darth Vader’s at the Death Star’s cafeteria. A must for a Monday morning.) More »
Hardware
PC Stands For Portal Case
10:51PM Gizmodo US Edition | Much more tech-y than some case mods we could mention is this Weighted Companion deal from Magnus Persson, based on those handy crate-like things all you Portal players are fond of throwing around. Magnus designed and completed the 7.9-inch-wide case in the space of a week. Still, he managed to successfully squeeze a VIA Epia EX1500G motherboard in there along with a PicoPSU, 2GB of memory, a 250GB HDD and WLAN, which makes it pretty capable for its tiny dimensions. Shame about the cutsey hearts, but we’ve got to blame the game designers for that. [Bit-tech] More »
Gadgets
Lightsaber Laser Pointers Turn Presentations Into Deadly Duels
7:49PM Gizmodo US Edition | Miniature laser pointers in the shape of the classic Jedi weapon: got to be a great idea. Styled to look like Vader’s and Darth Maul’s lightsabers, use these keychain lasers to point out any old PowerPoint slide you’re presenting, and we bet they’ll have you wearing a secret grin as you imagine that sound effect. [Technabob] More »
Gadgets
Tokyoflash Tibida Brings Sexy and Geeky Together in Spectacular Fashion
7:30PM Haroon Malik | Our pals over at Tokyoflash have given us the scoop on their newest, ultra-chic watch model. The new design, which will go by the Tibida moniker, boasts 42 white LEDs in its display. Sure, it looks completely outrageous, but we have come to expect nothing less. Hit the gallery below to check out what KITT would look like if he was involved in a serious road traffic incident, written off by the insurance company and then reincarnated into a timekeeping device with supernatural quantities of cool. More »
Entertainment
HD DVD Losing Its Arsenal in Japan
3:59PM Haroon Malik | The HD DVD troopers are surely fighting the losing battle, as new research from Japan details a surge in Blu-Ray recorder ownership. The study surveyed buying trends from 2,300 electronic stores across Japan, and the statistics showed that next-generation DVD unit sales rocketed from 6.1% in October to 20% in November and December. As the next-generation recorders have a higher price point, they managed to account for some 35% of the total DVD player market value. However, Blu-ray walked home with the largest market share of the two. More »
Entertainment
1:48PM Nick Broughall | And no, we’re not talking about some weird fusion of Silverchair and Bon Jovi. Instead, we’re talking about SLS, or Scalable To Lossless (we assume that there’s something lost in translation here), a music format that lets you buy a track at a certain bitrate, and then “add-on” all the missing sound at a later date.
The technology is from a joint venture from Singapore including Soundbuzz, Exploit Technologies and the marketing and commercialisation arm of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). Soundbuzz has launched an online store in Singapore to sell the tracks for S$2.50 (about $1.98) for the standard compression, or S$3.00 (about $2.39) for a lossless file.
More »
The best music you’ll ever hear on your mobile
1:48PM Nick Broughall | And no, we’re not talking about some weird fusion of Silverchair and Bon Jovi. Instead, we’re talking about SLS, or Scalable To Lossless (we assume that there’s something lost in translation here), a music format that lets you buy a track at a certain bitrate, and then “add-on” all the missing sound at a later date.
The technology is from a joint venture from Singapore including Soundbuzz, Exploit Technologies and the marketing and commercialisation arm of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). Soundbuzz has launched an online store in Singapore to sell the tracks for S$2.50 (about $1.98) for the standard compression, or S$3.00 (about $2.39) for a lossless file.
More »
Phones
12:54PM Nick Broughall | This isn’t exactly new news, but it’s actually pretty important for the Australian market. Soundbuzz, the company that manages the online and mobile music stores for Telstra BigPond and Optus Zoo, has been taken over 100 per cent by Motorola. Considering they’re the biggest online and mobile music company, offering over 750,000 songs and 500,000 mobile derivitatives (like truetones), this suddenly makes Motorola a big player in the mobile music space. According to Motorola, the move is a part of their strategy to create
the complete music experience on the mobile, along with their new range
of music handsets, including the ROKR E8. More »
MOTOSDBZ: Motorola takes over Soundbuzz
12:54PM Nick Broughall | This isn’t exactly new news, but it’s actually pretty important for the Australian market. Soundbuzz, the company that manages the online and mobile music stores for Telstra BigPond and Optus Zoo, has been taken over 100 per cent by Motorola. Considering they’re the biggest online and mobile music company, offering over 750,000 songs and 500,000 mobile derivitatives (like truetones), this suddenly makes Motorola a big player in the mobile music space. According to Motorola, the move is a part of their strategy to create
the complete music experience on the mobile, along with their new range
of music handsets, including the ROKR E8. More »
Phones
Macbook Would Commit Adultery With LED Mobile Phone
12:05PM Haroon Malik | Tao Ma is at it again, cranking out another great phone concept. The new design, the LED Cellphone, incorporates hundreds of LEDs, all of which are used to create the mobile’s striking UI. Check out the gallery below to see a cellphone your plastic white MacBook would fall head over heels for. More »
Entertainment
10:52AM Nick Broughall | “Finally!” you shouted. “About time” we echoed. But the joy of hearing Fox’s announcement on the iTunes digital copy on Fox DVDs is to be short lived for Australian movie lovers.
Turns out that the big MacWorld announcement last week was only for US DVDs. All of us suckers in region 4 will have to resort to illegally ripping our DVDs watching our copy of Family Guy presents: Blue Harvest on our TVs, not our iPods.
The good news is that 20th Century Fox are looking to introduce the technology to Australian (and the rest of the world’s) DVDs later this year. More »
No Fox Digital Copy for Australian DVDs
10:52AM Nick Broughall | “Finally!” you shouted. “About time” we echoed. But the joy of hearing Fox’s announcement on the iTunes digital copy on Fox DVDs is to be short lived for Australian movie lovers.
Turns out that the big MacWorld announcement last week was only for US DVDs. All of us suckers in region 4 will have to resort to illegally ripping our DVDs watching our copy of Family Guy presents: Blue Harvest on our TVs, not our iPods.
The good news is that 20th Century Fox are looking to introduce the technology to Australian (and the rest of the world’s) DVDs later this year. More » 
