News
March 8, 2010
Blockbuster - Making Its Customers Pay For Its Failure
Instead of going more towards the Internet to beef up the ailing company, Blockbuster, in addition to closing hundreds of locations, has reinstated late fees. They cut rental time from 7 to 5 days and will charge a $1.00 fee for up to 10 late days. Yeah, that makes us want to get rid of our no late fee unlimited Netflix and sign right up.
Via Home Media Magazine
February 23, 2010
Toy Fair Concentrates on Electronics
The 2010 Toy Fair was held last week in New York with lots of shiny new electronic things to play with. Mattel's entry, Puppy Tweets, is a sound and motion sensor that can attach to a dog's collar and post on Twitter in the pet's name. Hasbro unveiled a new Scrabble game that uses electronic cubes with "Smart Tile Technology." The game recognizes words and keeps score so you really cannot cheat.
Rubik's has an electronic Cube and Hasbro is celebrating Monopoly's 75th anniversary with an electronic console with sound effects and song clips. WowWee's Paper Jamz is a line of six toy guitars, six drum sets and an amplifier that can make music from touch-sensitive electronic sensors. Obviously, this year the manufacturers are going all out with bells and whistles.
Via TIA
February 22, 2010
Electronic Companies Venture Into Wireless TV
Hitachi, Panasonic, and Toshiba are working on 60GHz RF transceiver chips that will work with integrated antennas on digital home electronics. In basic English, this translates into wireless TVs. We may get to see the next wave of networking sometime this year. Panasonic is also working on a version for kiosks that will transfer a standard definition film in 9 seconds or a CD in five.
Via Nikkei
February 17, 2010
Google Makes Changes to Buzz After Complaints
Talk about having a bad hair day week month. Google is finally making some changes after Buzz not only automatically signed up users, it preselected frequent e-mail contacts as "followers" and made the list public. The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a formal complaint with the FCC, citing one case that created a woman's list with personal information that included her mother, boyfriend and abusive ex-husband. Apparently Google is making nice-nice to make up for their errors, including dispensing with auto-opt and auto-follow.
Did anyone else find it odd that Google partially blamed users for some of the mistakes with this remark in their official blog that referred to the contact list?
"On Thursday, after hearing that people thought the checkbox for choosing not to display this information publicly was too hard to find, we made this option more prominent. But that was clearly not enough."
Via Gmail Blog
February 11, 2010
Hulu May Charge For Older Shows
Hulu has been free up to this point, but the online viewing site may start charging for some of its programs. While trying to find a figure that most would pay for, the company may set a $4.99 per month subscription rate for older shows like "30 Rock," "House" and "Modern Family." Look for the change to take effect in the next six months.
Via LA Times
February 2, 2010
Donate Your Outdated Cellies to Help Haiti
Look around for those discarded and outdated cell phones, batteries and chargers that you may have laying around and donate them to Recellular. One hundred percent of the value will be donated to the American Red Cross in their Haiti relief efforts. If they are fixable, they will be sent to orgs in the area at no charge. To get free shipping supplies and find out more, hit the link below.
Via Phones for Haiti
January 29, 2010
SE HD Vivaz Comes With Major Pre-Packs
Not content to merely utilize HD in their TVs, monitors and laptops, Sony Ericsson's Vivaz has 720 HD video recording with 16 million colors, 3.2" intuitive touchscreen, 8.1 megapixel sensor, 4x digital zoom cam with autofocus, 75MB expandable memory and comes equipped with apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Google maps, games and YouTube. The 107.0 x 52.0 x 12.5 mm size Symbian OS device has WiFi, TV out and FM radio. Available in 4 different colors, no price or date is out yet.
Via Akihabara News
January 21, 2010
Next Up, UHD
As soon as we get comfortable with one technology, another trots in. This time it is a higher def known as UHD (Ultra High Definition.) This means that the 1920 x 1080 resolution will be four times higher at 3840 x 2160. Don't panic as the new technology, displayed in an 84" LG screen, will probably not be commercially available until 2020.
Via CrunchGear
January 18, 2010
Lady Gaga Concert to Assist Haiti
Lady Gaga is doing her part to help Haiti earthquake victims. All proceeds from her January 24 Monster Ball performance in New York City will be donated to the cause. Sales from her merchandise that day will also be used for relief, so go to her online shop, order a T-shirt or other item and you can do your part as well.
Via Lady Gaga Official Site
December 31, 2009
OLPC 3rd Generation Prototype
We haven't heard much lately from the folks at One Laptop Per Child, although a peek at their site shows that they are still being distributed. Yves Behar, of the fuseproject, has designed its third generation with an 8.5 x 11" flexible plastic touchscreen and wireless charging. Best of all, the tablet will supposedly have a $75.00 price tag. The newest OLPC is due out in 2012.
Via fuseproject
December 14, 2009
Fusion Garage Debuts Joo Joo
Now that the CrunchPad has ceased to exist, Fusion Garage has reinvented it as the Joo Joo. Featuring a 12" touchscreen, it can boot in about 9 seconds and has menu links to websites such as Hulu and Twitter. It has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 4GB of internal memory and WiFi connectivity. You can pre-order one now for $499.00.
Note: It looks as though the fight is not over as TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has filed a lawsuit against the company.
Via The Joo Joo
December 7, 2009
AT&T and Verizon Make Nice
AT&T and Verizon have settled their lawsuit out of court. AT&T claimed that Verizon's "There's a Map for That" ads were false while Verizon complained about the same thing in their opponents' ads. We are for anything that gets rid of those irritating spots with Luke Wilson, including their offering Blackberrys at 50% off after rebate and 2 year contract.
Via Ad Age
December 3, 2009
ecoATM - Saving The Planet One Cellie at a Time
We often show you the latest gadgets, but not what to do with the outdated ones. The ecoATM will take old cell phones, MP3 players and other portable devices, decide on a value and give you an in-store redemption, charitable donation or gift card. The recycling station was first tested in Nebraska and is being placed in San Diego at no charge to the stores. This sounds like a win-win deal to us.
Via ecoATM
November 24, 2009
Tengu Gets His Own Shop
Tengu is a clever companion created by our bud, Mr. Jones. It seems that it must be selling well as he is now opening his own shop in at the Oxo Tower, London. If you live across the pond and can make it to his opening by December 6, you will receive a 20% discount with the coupon shown below. You can download a PDF version here.
By the way, Crispin also makes a killer line of watches and the discount applies to them as well.
Via Tengu
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