You know, we should have paid a little closer attention to Microsoft’s decision yesterday to extend Windows XP sales to “June 2010 or one year after the general availability of Windows 7″ — if the company was really planning on shipping Windows 7 in 2010, that first date doesn’t make a lot of sense unless the plan is to ship Windows 7 much, much earlier. And hey — what’s Bill Gates doing telling investors this afternoon that Windows 7 will come “in the next year” and that he’s “super-enthused” about it? As far as we know, the official Windows 7 timeline hasn’t changed, so Bill might just talking about beta versions, but something’s clearly up Windows-wise in Redmond — perhaps Vista’s wow is not long for this now.
Rather like the kazoo, the Stylophone is what you might term a “musical” “instrument.” The farty-bontempi sound was a feature of school playgrounds up and down the land—and even David Bowie used one on Space Oddity. And then, suddenly, rather like white dog poo, and “I choked Linda Lovelace” T-shirts, the Stylophone disappeared from view. Until now.
And now it’s back! From outer space! I’d love to say that it walked in here with that same look upon its face, but I would be a lying cow and you would all pay a midnight visit to Gawker HQ, flaming torches clutched in your paws, shouting, “Burn the witch.” Ahem.
Anyways, Stylophone. The 2008 version has two sockets, one for headphones, and one to connect your MP3 player to, which will enable you to really murder your favourite songs, as well as, for the first time, volume control and three different sound modes. Costing a smidgeon under $30, the Stylophone runs on three AA batteries and there are a schwazillion clips of people doing hot Stylophone action on YouTube. I couldn’t decide between the Star Wars Death March, the William Tell Overture, something by Michael Jackson, or the Stylophone Orchestra of Great Britain, (relax girls, they’re married) so I plumped for Bowie. [Firebox]
At least some of you are reading this article because of the word “Playboy” in the headline, but unfortunately, the product isn’t all that provocative. By Alcatel, the Playboy-branded OT-V770A features a 1.3MP camera, 10MB of on-board memory, microSD support and, here’s the kicker, a Playboy bunny logo.
We just can’t believe that a cellphone actually slept with Hef to get the job. Bonus shot after the jump.
It’s apparently saving the full, official announcement until Monday, but Nokia just dropped word on its N-Gage blog that the final version of its new N-Gage gaming service / application is now live and ready for your taking. To take advantage of that right now, however, you’ll need an N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95, or N95 8GB handset, although Nokia says that support for additional N-Gage compatible devices is “coming soon,” including the N73, N93, and N93i. If that doesn’t preclude you, you can download the application straight to your device from Nokia’s mobile site (n-gage.mobi/d), or you can hit up the link below to download it the old fashioned way.
Laptop LoJack’s number might be up, Intel’s apparently gearing up to start pushing its so-called Anti-Theft Technology for laptops. Details are still sparse, but apparently it provides boot-time lockout of unauthorized users (presumably among other things) upon occasion of theft, and is being picked up by partner companies like Lenovo, Fujitsu, Phoenix, and McAffee for release later this year. It’d be really nice if we could get some connected GPS to phone home when your laptop takes off without you, but it’s nice to know the industry’s finally starting to take this stuff on instead of leaving hapless theft victims to fend for themselves.
Although the iPhone Dev Team totally punked us on April Fool’s Day, they were still nice enough to give us an early hands-on (in person!) with a pre-release version of their new Pwnage tool. Pwnage lets you load in any firmware you want, including patched firmwares not signed by Apple — which could lead to everything from custom software distributions to totally new OSs ported over (like, say, Android or Linux). We did what most people are probably going to do, however: we took a brand new 8GB iPhone, unlocked it, and upgraded to the 2.0 firmware, while keeping it active on T-Mobile. It’s not exactly a one-click process, but it’s not all that hard either — although we kind of cheated and had Dev Team members talking us through it. Peep the vid after the break, and check the read links in few hours to get your hands on Windows and Mac versions of the tool.
P.S. -Apologies for the blurry video for the first couple minutes, we didn’t notice that our camera had gotten knocked out of macro mode. You’re not missing much, trust us. Oh, and the only cuts are during loading bars and when we accidentally flashed a phone number and the iPhone’s serial number — we figured you didn’t really want 20 minutes of listening to people sniffle during progress bars.
Read - iphone-dev.org (Pwnage tool creators) Read - The iPhone Project (hosting the Pwnage tool)
MIT is really taking its robotics program to a whole new level with its “MDS” platform, which stands for Mobile, Dexterous and Social. The flagship bot so far is Nexi, who certainly fits the bill, albeit with an extra dab of creepy. The bot stands on a Segway-esque wheel base, has articulated arms and hands, and can convey a wide range of emotion with that pasty white face. Nexi has a computer on board to manage sensors and instinctual responses, while it offloads the heavy duty AI work to a stationary computer over the network. MIT’s eventual goal is to have Nexi and others participate in Socially Situated Robot Learning — observing and interacting with humans to figure out how best to integrate with them. Don’t worry Nexi, we like you for you. Video is after the break.
Sony’s decision to only place one analog stick on the PSP as opposed to the two on just about all their other PlayStation controllers has led to some control scheme oddities. For one, FPS shooters are all but impossible because you can’t use the D-Pad to aim, and two, Katamari Damacy was a bitch to play with the buttons. Modder L0rdNic0 had enough and decided to shove his own analog stick on the right-hand side. The result is a supposedly 100% “fully functioning” mod without any issues, which means snack cakes and sumo wrestlers alike need to watch out once more. [Acid Mods]
Rather like the kazoo, the Stylophone is what you might term a “musical” “instrument.” The farty-bontempi sound was a feature of school playgrounds up and down the land—and even David Bowie used one on Space Oddity. And then, suddenly, rather like white dog poo, and “I choked Linda Lovelace” T-shirts, the Stylophone disappeared from view. Until now.
And now it’s back! From outer space! I’d love to say that it walked in here with that same look upon its face, but I would be a lying cow and you would all pay a midnight visit to Gawker HQ, flaming torches clutched in your paws, shouting, “Burn the witch.” Ahem.
Anyways, Stylophone. The 2008 version has two sockets, one for headphones, and one to connect your MP3 player to, which will enable you to really murder your favourite songs, as well as, for the first time, volume control and three different sound modes. Costing a smidgeon under $30, the Stylophone runs on three AA batteries and there are a schwazillion clips of people doing hot Stylophone action on YouTube. I couldn’t decide between the Star Wars Death March, the William Tell Overture, something by Michael Jackson, or the Stylophone Orchestra of Great Britain, (relax girls, they’re married) so I plumped for Bowie. [Firebox]
Rather like the kazoo, the Stylophone is what you might term a “musical” “instrument.” The farty-bontempi sound was a feature of school playgrounds up and down the land—and even David Bowie used one on Space Oddity. And then, suddenly, rather like white dog poo, and “I choked Linda Lovelace” T-shirts, the Stylophone disappeared from view. Until now.
At least some of you are reading this article because of the word “Playboy” in the headline, but unfortunately, the product isn’t all that provocative. By Alcatel, the Playboy-branded OT-V770A features a 1.3MP camera, 10MB of on-board memory, microSD support and, here’s the kicker, a Playboy bunny logo.
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Sony’s decision to only place one analog stick on the PSP as opposed to the two on just about all their other PlayStation controllers has led to some control scheme oddities. For one, FPS shooters are all but impossible because you can’t use the D-Pad to aim, and two, Katamari Damacy was a bitch to play with the buttons. Modder L0rdNic0 had enough and decided to shove his own analog stick on the right-hand side. The result is a supposedly 100% “fully functioning” mod without any issues, which means snack cakes and sumo wrestlers alike need to watch out once more. [
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