Thursday, July 17, 2008
Online
Amazon’s Streaming Video on Demand Service Rolls Out Today in Beta, Works With Bravia Video Link
11:53PM John Mahoney | Today Amazon is launching a beta of Amazon Video On Demand, which will stream TV and movies from all the major studios (save for Disney/ABC, which is still in bed with Apple) and take the place of Unbox. The service will instantly stream rentals or download purchases to your PC. But Amazon also has plans to bring it directly to TVs via Sony’s Bravia Video Link. Could couch-based Amazon shopping on your TV be far behind? More »
Software
Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1 Available Now
11:41PM Matt Buchanan | Two days late, the first beta of Opera Mobile 9.5 is available right now. While it’s a developer-focused release, 9.5’s snappier response, overhauled UI and better standards support make it worth making the jump now, if you’re just a little adventurous. [Opera] More »
Phones
HTC Diamond To Lose its Crinkles, Get Smooth Back-Side, Codename Victor
11:30PM Kit Eaton | The HTC Diamond isn’t even out yet in the US, but a leaked photo shown over at BoyGeniusReports seems to show that HTC is planning a new version that doesn’t have the Diamond’s trademark crinkly, angular shape. The smooth-sided, round-reared phone is dubbed “Victor” apparently, and seems to be in every function identical to the Diamond. Except being perhaps a little less pointy to hold. [BGR] More »
Entertainment
PlayStation 3 Movies Are Region-Locked
11:22PM Mark Wilson | If you’re a US PS3 owner who wants to play some game that’s only been released to Japan’s PlayStation Network, you can simply sign up for a Japanese account and download the game. However, it appears that Sony will not allow the same exploit for movie downloads. Some of Kotaku’s non-US contingent tried downloading a movie from the US store and found that, nope. Sony isn’t having it. It’s not a huge surprise, but at least a few of us were hoping that Sony would leave their easy regional purchasing exploit there for films. [Kotaku] More »
Toys
Clone Wars Merch Floodgates Open With Clone Trooper Kiddie Laptop
11:17PM John Mahoney | Being a Star Wars die-hard from back in the day, everything I’ve seen or heard about the new Clone Wars series and film has made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I guess this Clone Trooper “laptop” is no exception–sweet case, QWERTY keyboard, but all junior will be doing is playing educational games on its monochrome calculator-LCD screen, which looks like it could have been around for the release of A New Hope. Decent framework for an Eee PC casemod, though. [Product Page via Shiny Shiny] More »
Computers
Cheese Wheel PC, Because…We Actually Don’t Know
10:52PM Mark Wilson | We’re not sure what drives one to put a PC in a cheese wheel, but we’re glad that such outlets exist for those who are so inclined. For what would man have done, say, 100 years ago if he wanted to run TurboTax from a pile of aging dairy product? He would have lived a sad life and died alone, his hands reeking of yogurt. [forum.modding via technabob] More »
Weapons
Fairground Shooting Gallery Gets Flamethrower Makeover for Burning Man
10:41PM Kit Eaton | Created for this year’s Burning Man festival, the Flamethrower Shooting Gallery looks like one hell of a stress-relieving sideshow amusement. It was created by Matisse and Roxie and recently debuted at the Oakland The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival… presumably to a warm reception. Check out the short video to see it in action—though you might want to turn the volume down, the happy screams are a little loud. More »
Peripherals
Brando’s USB Fidget Sports Toy is Designed to Waste Your Time
9:27PM Kit Eaton | In the world of USB gizmos there’s the useful, the strange and now the totally and utterly useless. Brando’s “Fidget” toys are designed to replace doodling as a time-wasting activity in the office, or something like that anyway. They’re mini USB devices in the shape of different sports balls, that come with a desktop mini-game that you control simply by tapping on the ball. The game’s bleeping and repetitiveness may either de-stress you, or distress you: but you’ll have to find that out for yourself. There’s soccer, golf and basketball to choose from, they play with Windows, and will cost just US$14 when on sale at the end of July. [Brando] More »
Phones
Samsung D980 Dual-SIM Touchscreen Phone Hits Intertubes
8:56PM Kit Eaton | Samsung has kept developing its LG Prada knock-off F480 full-touchscreen phone and turned it into the D980. This is a dual-SIM version of the phone, hitting China first in a D988 version and then apparently the rest of the world as the D980 DuoS. It’s a tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE device, with 2.6-inch QVGA screen and 5-megapixel auto-focus cam with a flash. There’s no pricing or timing info yet, but since Blam had some bad things to say about the F480 mobile phone back in February, let’s hope they’ve improved the touchscreen too. [Unwiredview] More »
Vehicles
