newVideoPlayer("sporejarjar_gizmodo.flv", 494, 384,""); If getting Spore in the iPhone wasn’t enough reason to get excited about its potential as a gaming platform (despite the naysayers), someone has created a Spore version of Jar Jar Binks. You know, so you can download it and kill the bastard with your own hands. Again, and again, and again. Now somebody create a George Lucas creature, pronto. [Kezins via The Official Star Wars Blog]
I’ve never encountered a travelling salesperson, so I’ve not had someone trying to push a “revolutionary” product on me from the comfort of my home. But if the Prezenter PSR is anything to go by, travelling sales is about to get high-tech. It’s a custom notebook PC, designed to fold so that a 14-inch screen faces the victims audience, while a 7-inch touchscreen faces the seller. The small screen controls the presentation, and the audience can draw stuff on their screen. Apart from that it’s a standard laptop, with 3.5 hours of battery if you’re using Wi-Fi, and it’s on trial in the US market. When it’s for sale, it’ll cost you US$1,800: presumably you won’t have to watch a two-hour sales pitch to buy one. [Cnet]
Joshua Heineman is obsessed with old stereo cards, those old photographs from the 19th century that contained two different views of the same subject to give the illusion of depth. He converts them into pseudo-3D GIF images that can be seen without glasses, on your monitor. The method is extremely simple, and while the jerking result may seem silly, surprisingly, it works:
Japanese game manufacturer Mega House has come up with a winner. Biri Biri Kaze Hiki Wanko (which, translated, means Shocking Sick Puppy) is a cross between seminal kids’ game Operation, where you had to remove various parts of a patient’s anatomy with a pair of wired-up tweezers, without letting on to your parents that you’d swallowed the best part of a bottle of bourbon the night before touching the sides, and that equally seminal ’70s plaything, Slime. A fearsome mess of green snot and drool emerges from the dog’s mouth and nose, and you have to pick out plastic “germs” embedded in the ectoplasm. Trouble is, if the metal tweezers touch the slime, you get an electric shock. Out in Japan this August, Shocking Sick Puppy needs a worldwide release if it is to realise its full genius potential. [Trends in Japan]
Samsung’s new P400 Pocket Imager projector is designed mainly for businesspeople on the go, so it’s pretty tiny. Inside, its DLP unit is a native 800 x 600 resolution and its LED lighting pushes out 150 lumens, resulting in a 30- to 40-inch display capability with 1000:1 contrast ratio. It takes the standard RGB, composite, S-video and audio inputs, and has two 1-watt speakers. Plus, though it’s no pico-projector, it’s just 12.7 x 9.4 x 5 cms in size and weighs 860 grams, so it’ll carry nicely in your laptop bag. And you know what? Just coz it’s businessy doesn’t mean it has to look ugly or utilitarian: so Samsung has actually made this thing look pretty good. Available now for US$749, full press release below.
Sony has upgraded its HDR-CX7 flash-based camcorder to include face-recognition technology and Smile Shutter, which automatically takes a still picture as soon as the subject switches to full beam. The camera records in full HD at a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and has a 10-megapixel camera for still shots. There’s image stabilisation, and you control the camcorder merely by tapping the 2.7-inch LCD screen. Full press release for the US$900 camera, available in August, plus a bonus shot, is after the jump.
About 40 minutes ago, the Sydney Apple Store opened its doors to the hoardes of rabid fans that had been lining up outside.
The corner of George Street and King Street was packed, shoulder-to-shoulder with curious workers, interested tourists and indifferent passers-by. But no matter who it was, there was one company on everybody’s lips – Apple. Whether it was the iPhone, The Macbook Air, or even just the iPod, everybody we walked passed was talking about the shiny white Apple and their new store.
We broke the news on the X200′s specs but here’s the first photo. Looks like a Thinkpad. (Minus the trackpad, as Engadget notes.) [51nb.com via Engadget]
As a Netflix lover, I’m sad to see account profiles and queues go away after August. That’s because I’ve always used them to keep Lisa’s movie choices (morbid documentaries, foreign tragedies, stoner flicks) separate from mine (scifi, fantasy, action, romantic comedies). What’s going to happen to Netflix’s amazing recommendation engine once it has to deal with shared family queues?
Sound & Vision gave a gushing review to the Kaleidescape 1080p player, a DVD upscaler that streams movies from a home server for the price of a nice used car. They especially liked the Gennum VXP video processor chip, which upscales DVD content to vividly sharp 1080p detail, with very accurate colours and high contrast. The Kaleidescape’s updated ability to play content without importing it to the server first was also a big draw. But seriously, US$4300? Come on.
