Some of you may be suffering from Steampunk fatigue, but I still get giddy when I see it done up right. Master toy modder Sillof, whose work we’ve covered a couple times before, has tickled my fancy with an update to his original Steam Wars action figure line. This time you’ve got even more detailed Steamtroopers, a mob boss-like Jabba the Hutt, vicious Ewoks and (for the boys) Steampunk Slave Leia. Check out the gallery, and his website. [Sillof]
Intelematics, those traffic-lovin’ Victorians who created the SUNA traffic channel for your satnav, are bringing their traffic updates to digital radio when it launches in May next year.
While the service won’t be anywhere near as comprehensive or practical as the navigation built-in to your satnav (which lets you reroute to avoid congestion), this service will instead act more like the traffic updates you get from the radio already, except in text form on new DAB+ radios.
It won’t cost anything to the user, so long as they have one of these new radio receivers in their car. And while most people aren’t going to head to the local auto shop and buy a new radio for their car, within a few years pretty much all the new cars will come standard with these new radios, meaning traffic information will be readily available for people who own shiny new cars.
Actually, even though this is a pretty cool service for digital radio (which is almost certainly going to struggle to gain traction here), it’d still be cheaper to just buy a traffic-enabled satnav…
Harrods of London is now selling a $US12,000 anti-ballistic polo shirt designed by Miguel Caballero. Caballero, sometimes called the “Armani of armour” caters to clients such as Prince Felipe of Spain and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The polo, made from ultra-lightweight bulletproof fabric can allegedly protect you from weaponry ranging from a 9mm pistol to an Uzi. Sure it can save you from an assassination attempt, but judging from this picture, it doesn’t save you from looking like a giant douche. [Born Rich]
Despite Microsoft denying any plans to develop a Blu-Ray drive for the Xbox 360 at least a million times now, rumours are surfacing that the company’s already made one and just needs to decide on a release date. If X-bit Labs is to be believed, a joint-venture between Toshiba and Samsung has been contracted to manufacture external Blu-ray disc drives for Microsoft’s game console. According to their market sources, the company is aiming at a $US100 to $US150 price point in order to compete with the PlayStation 3.
It’s really surprising that this hasn’t been done by an Australian company sooner, but Telstra has launched the country’s first online 24/7 news channel, both on their BigPond portal online and on NextG mobile phones.
The channel streams live video of the latest news, finance, politics, sports and weather directly to your browser or mobile phone. It’s powered by Sky News content, but BigPond has control over how it is delivered to the audience, so it can cut to breaking news or stick with the latest sports updates, depending on how they feel.
The online portal at BigPond is available to anyone, although unless you’re a BigPond customer, you’ll pay for the bandwidth (which is the same as watching any other video site). BigPond customers watching the channel have unmetered access. NextG customers can pay $4.95 a month or $1.95 for a day pass.
The only problem with the offering is that the online version uses Windows Media for streaming the video channel, meaning Mac users are left out in the cold.
Full release is below:
Ars Technica did an in-depth investigation into the numbers behind the war against piracy and found that Congress might as well be telling people counterfeit goods cost the economy eleventy billion zillion, for all the truth behind its figures. The oft invoked $US250 billion and 750,000 jobs lost because of intellectual property theft have been repeated for over a decade, with virtually no research to back it up.
Apparently the laser alarm clock idea, where you stop your clock’s incessant ringing by shooting a bullseye with a laser gun, was popular enough to warrant a second coming. Bandai will be releasing its new version, titled Gun O’ Clock, on November 15th in Japan. Gun O’Clock lacks the little man from the original, but features two wake-up modes: Normal and Hard. Normal mode means you only have to hit the target once to put the clock on snooze. With Hard mode, you’ll have to hit it five times. Is that frustrating or secret agent awesome? I can’t really tell. [Bandai via Geek Alerts]
One of the strangest things about the Australian TiVo launch was that they decided to exclusively distribute the PVR through Harvey Norman and Domayne. While I’m sure they had a good reason (read – $$$), restricting your distribution channel just before the Olympics just didn’t seem to make a lot of sense for a device with mainstream appeal.
Well, now that three-month exclusivity deal is finished, JB HiFi and Clive Anthony stores around the country are getting in on the TiVo action. The box will be available in 100 stores nationwide from October 20, and although there’s no change to the $699 price tag, I’d expect to see them try and undercut Harvey Norman in the pricing department.
UPDATE: This may have been around for a while, but you can also order your very own TiVo box from TiVo’s website and have it delivered.
Scientists have connected up the world’s first computer network protected by “quantum cryptography,” a supposedly unbreakable system that functions off a scheme based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. For us non-science folk, that means that you can’t grab information transmitted through the network without disturbing it somehow, making it easy to detect when somebody’s trying to listen in on exchanges.
Next2Friends has released the first live video streaming client for newer Blackberry phones, like the Curve and the Pearl. Similar to Qik or Justin TV, you download the Next2Friends client to your phone, and it streams to the internet whatever your camera records. Qik has been around on the N95 for so long now that I kinda figured similar services had made their way onto to the Blackberry. I was wrong. In any case the Next2Friends (also available for Symbian and WinMo phones) service is free and available for download now.
