With the HD DVD ship sinking faster than the Titanic, the rats are quickly abandoning the ship: according to rumours, Microsoft may be releasing a Blu-ray-based Xbox 360 soon. We don’t know if the rumour is real, although it seems reasonable to expect it. The only real question is when. Their Microsoft insiders are saying May. We are saying maybe. AU: And I am saying total BS. I’m sure the guys at Microsoft have discussed it, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they had a working prototype with Blu-ray in their deepest, darkest laboratory. But MS was one of the biggest supporters of HD DVD, and they aren’t about to put their tail between their legs and come out in support of Blu-ray so soon. No way.
Hasbro’s FX whip, part of the flotilla of Indiana Jones merchandise that is sailing into port this year, should be hung on the wall of every office in the land. This is what makes corporal punishment in the workplace such a pleasure. The US$19.99 toy plays the theme tune —this is, sadly, the one crappy bit about it— as well as a thwack-a-lacka-boom-boom sound when you crack it. Hasbro could have come up with some more interesting sound effects, though. The FX whip will be available from May 1 from most toy shops. [Hasbro]
It may look like a stealth bomber, but Kenwood’s new AS-IP300 iPod dock just connects to your iPod and fires your music out at 2W per channel. It’s also got a 3D sound option, remote control, and can take mains power or AA batteries for portability for about eight hours of playback. Measuring 381 x 221 x 157mm, it’s available in Japan late February in black or white. Cost is around $150. [AV Watch]
Four of Intel’s mobile chipsets—including its most recent and well-known, Santa Rosa—have been Centrino as far as your mum is concerned. To help us keep things a little straighter and make it obvious they’re actually updating stuff, Intel’s upcoming Penryn-oriented mobile chipset, Montevina, which’ll be pushing Santa Rosa aside, will be branded Centrino 2. Thanks, Intel, for bringing just a little bit of logic to chip branding. Core 2 Duo is still a mouthful, though. [Digitimes]
While Fisher-Price’s Kid-Tough digital camera was already built to withstand the Guantanamo-level torture your average four-year-old dishes out to their toys, the latest model will hold up to 30 minutes of waterboarding too, despite a rounder, slimmer body. The insides have gotten an upgrade as well, with a 1.3MP sensor (up from 640×480) and 64MB of storage that’ll hold 500 closeups of your kid’s boogers.
While we weren’t quite as blown away by D-REX as we were by Elmo Live—”jazz hands” killed our objective judgment—the level of interactivity is pretty impressive for what’s supposed to be a dumb child’s toy (the kid, not the ‘bot). About the size of a small puppy, it behaves semi-autonomously, though it’ll follow patterns you pick w/ the remote like guarding your room (if it detects a light change, it goes apeshit) and (cutely) responds to petting, calling and the like. I’m not quite sure it’s worth US$150 yet, but even in this beta stage, it’s damn close, and the fall launch date leaves plenty of polish time.
At some point in our lives, we were cramming for exams that we had no chance of passing. It is unfortunate then that we did not have the Leapfrog Crammer at our disposal, which would have permitted us to create customised digital flashcards for viewing whilst listening to our tunes.
Yamaha’s CD-S2000 and A-S2000 audiophile CD combo has been announced for the discerning Australian. It’s a masterpiece of retro design and pristine, two channel sound.
I’ve listened to it, and it sounds pretty damned good. There’s a full range of sound that you don’t often get from a setup without a subwoofer. It looks fantastic, and smells pretty awesome too. If it weren’t so heavy, it could almost be considered pantsworthy.
But part of me wonders exactly how much of a market there is for this type of product in the day and age of the iPod. Considering that the A-S2000 has an RRP of $2,999 and the CD-S2000 costs $2,599, would you be happy to spend more than five grand on a CD setup?
Sure, it does play back SACDs too, and you can opt to go for one or the other and not the combo, but in today’s market of declining CD sales and digital downloads, is a high-end CD player obsolete? When a 160GB iPod sets you back $479 and lets you store a large music collection in lossless, I know where my money would be headed (if I had money to spend, that is).
[Yamaha]
How many of you actually clean the toilet? How many of you have a loving partner who does it for you? I thought so. Well, You can say goodbye to those angry sighs, muffled curses and questions of your ability to shoot straight. Australian scientists have come up with a coating containing miniature robots nanoparticles that will take over the scrubbing, washing and disinfecting of your bathroom.
The coating contains tiny particles of titanium dioxide, which gets very excited by UV light – so much so that they can break down organic compounds and kill bacteria like E. coli. I’m not sure if anyone has noted that a human’s backside is made of an organic compound though, so you’d be using this at your own risk.
In any case, the result of exciting these particles is an oxidising energy which far surpasses that of your standard bathroom cleaner, bleach. And that means that no matter how hot the curry, your toilet is always going to look and smell sparkling fresh.
