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Eco Media Revolution: Part PMP, Part Mobile Phone Defibrillator
Posted by Mark Wilson at 7:00 AM on September 25, 2008
The original Eco Player was a wind-up PMP that offered 40 minutes of music per one minute of cranking. It was chunkier than a nano, but it also wasn't gonna run out of juice in the Himalayas, either. The new Eco Media Revolution is the sequel, a 4GB A/V player that also packs and SD card reader, FM radio and can charge your mobile phone. Apparently a minute of cranking is equivalent to one emergency call. And if only we had some cool wilderness adventure to go on, we'd shell out the $US240 in a heartbeat for one of our own. [Ethical Superstore via Smart Planet]
Many of the big guns in Hollywood, technology and retailing have joined forces to create the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) LLC—a consortium focused on building "a new digital media framework using industry standards" that will "enable consumers to acquire and play content across a wide range of services and devices." In a nutshell, the DECE hopes to create a system where users can download content, playback that content on compliant branded products and possibly store that media in a "virtual library" to be accessed at home or on the road. Unfortunately, I see a few problems with all of this.
Forget namby-pamby flickering 
Most of us will be happy with consumer-priced stock DVRs or TiVos. But for those who are looking for something better for the ego, Niveus has just revealed their updated media centres, the Rainier, Pro Series and Denali Limited Edition. All three lines support 8 CableCards and 10 Media Centre Extenders. The Rainier is modest, storing 1TB of data with no fans. The rack-mountable Pro Series continues the fanless trend and packs 4TB of storage, 32GB SSD, Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia Series 9 graphics card (for when 1080P video just isn't enough). The Denali Series (pictured) is similar to the Pro Series, but maxes at 2TB of storage to make room for a Blu-ray drive. These monster media centres will be available in Q4 2008.
One day, robots will whiz by us one one wheel at 1000kph while solving absurd equations that would take us lifetimes to calculate. But that day has not yet come. So when a robot with coordination no better than a toddler starts trash-talking its humanoid accomplice, you know we're in for a painful and degrading future. Here's the clip:
The woman above is not real. I mean, she was real once, when real actress Emily O'Brien provided Image Metrics (you know their work from GTAIV) with 35 facial poses in front of a pair of digital cameras. From there, O'Brien was dismissed so the animators could go to work. Apparently "ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real." And the results--while not always perfect--are pretty extraordinary. Here's Emily's "interview":
With a large enough expansion cards BlackBerries have always been decent media players, but transferring tunes is sort of a pain in the arse. 
I love stupid gimmicks, don't get me wrong. But this cover is one of the worst ideas I've heard from a publication in awhile. Said the editor to the NYTimes: "Magazines have basically looked the same for 150 years," Mr. Granger said. "I have been frustrated with the lack of forward movement in the magazine industry." Maybe you should like, invest in putting premium content on your website, or in E-books sold on Amazon instead of spending six figures to design a battery small enough to fit into an magazine cover that will only last 90 days, without any major refreshing of content. They might as well have used one of those hologram stickers found in 25-cent vending machines in the 80's. 
We love our jobs here at Gizmodo. But every once in a while even we find something more interesting than the latest breakthroughs in USB-powered humping animals. Impossible, you say? Not when it comes to a gigantic homemade Slip 'N Slide. It's tough to scale the slides' exact size, but it looks to drop a solid two stories before depositing its riders in the lake. And boy oh boy does this video make us jealous.
