What does Fox have in mind for improving the experience of Blu-rays? Actually…some really great ideas, according to SlashFilm.
The most immediate (and maybe most promising) is Live Lookup. It’ll be on the Wolverine disc (you know, the same one that has the PSPgo digital copy).
Live Lookup allows you to hit a button and be linked to IMDB. Actors can be sorted by scene, allowing you to search for bikini shots of cute, female b-listers later. Check it out in the lead photo.
Load times should be diminished or even eliminated, but at a cost. Fox plans to load BD menus while you watch previews. So things may not actually get faster, but you may have more incentive to sit through all that extra promotional material that shouldn’t be on a BD in the first place.
Finally, we may even control a BD player through a remote device, like an iPhone. Not only could you search for content without popping a guide up onscreen, but the BD player could stream additional content to this second, personal screen.
These are all great ideas, but hopefully more studios than just Fox will adopt them. Read more of what Fox had to say on the matter over at: [SlashFilm]
We’ve got one of HP’s sexiest laptops ever staring us down here, the brand new Envy 13. It hits the streets on October 18, running Windows 7 and brazenly demanding a $1,700 base price tag. Worth every penny? Perhaps. We’ll be going more in depth with the laptop over the next few days, but here are a few first impressions.
This is one sexy laptop. It’s incredibly quality in its construction, and intensely attractive. The screen in particular is a knockout, showing up very bright and vibrant behind its glossy, mirror-tastic sheen
The single button trackpad is severely miscalibrated, and perhaps an altogether bad idea. We’re having trouble scrolling consistently, but clicking is also a hit or miss affair — having multiple fingers on the trackpad at the same time seems problematic, with our cursor glitching this way and that. It’s also actually possible (likely even, if you’re as bad at mousing as we are) to “click” the pad and yet have nothing happen, which seems very counterintuitive.
The keyboard is comfortable, but has a bit of a loose, pushover feel to the key action — not cheap, but not really best-in-class either.
Boot time is pretty snappy, even with the quick boot Envy “Instant-On Solution” Linux acting as a pit stop along the way.
With a full Core 2 Duo processor inside and a real feeling of heft and thickness compared to other laptops in “thin and light” land, it’s surprising that the Envy 13 goes with the same external Ethernet dongle of its predecessor, the Envy 133.
That full-powered processor? Snappy. It takes on YouTube HD, the real computer killer of our times, without breaking a sweat.
The great thing about a “luxury” laptop like this (as HP dubs it) is that there’s so much more to explore, including an external Blu-ray drive in the box, the endless wire-free adventures promised by the optional slice battery, and of course the real prowess of the GPU when faced with 3D gaming and some HDMI output. Good times shall be had, we promise you that.
You could load movies onto your phone. Or you can go to m.mSpot.com on all four major carriers using most smartphones to access $5 movie rentals.
You can expect movies a few weeks after they arrive to DVD from current participating studios Paramount, Universal Pictures and the Weinstein Company. The rentals are good for anywhere from 24 hours to 5 days.
Streaming a trailer, the quality wasn’t super high (framerates, especially, took a hit). Plus, with iTunes rentals running only $4, it’s tough to imagine mSpot taking over (iPhones, at least) entirely.
But a little competition never hurt anyone. [NYTimes via Engadget]
Fido conked out for the evening? Your youngster not really into “playing catch” at age 14? Enter TOTO — a brilliant robotic contraption conceived at Reinhold-Würth University — that can absolutely act as a suitable replacement. Short for Tracking of Thrown Objects, the camera-equipped system views and tracks incoming objects, and once said object is within catching range, it clamps down in order to grab hold. Eventually, the inventors would love to see the machine have an impact within a manufacturing facility, but considering just how effective conveyor belts have been over the past few scores, we’d say it has its work cut out for it. Video’s after the break, and it’s worth checking out.
Fido conked out for the evening? Your youngster not really into “playing catch” at age 14? Enter TOTO — a brilliant robotic contraption conceived at Reinhold-Würth University — that can absolutely act as a suitable replacement. Short for Tracking of Thrown Objects, the camera-equipped system views and tracks incoming objects, and once said object is within catching range, it clamps down in order to grab hold. Eventually, the inventors would love to see the machine have an impact within a manufacturing facility, but considering just how effective conveyor belts have been over the past few scores, we’d say it has its work cut out for it. Video’s after the break, and it’s worth checking out.
If this $40 remote actually does what it says it does, then it might be one of the most useful HTPC remotes out there. It looks like a Motorola Q, but communicates over RF to its USB receiver.
Once your signals hit the receiver, you can support Windows, Linux, Mac or Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii (supposedly). Hard to tell whether or not it can actually do all of these things, since the website looks like one a kid would make for his dad’s business over the summer between Jr. High and High School, so we’ll have to see for ourselves to be sure. [EFO via The Gadgeteer via Oh Gizmo]
We seldom post about books at Gizmodo, but if this story of a self-taught Malawian boy using junkyard parts to build windmills and bring life-changing electricity to his village doesn’t make you misty-eyed, then you must be one cold-hearted bastard.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence, and William Kamkwamba has it in spades. At age fourteen, while many of us were sneaking out of classrooms, William was struggling to sneak into them—his family was unable to afford the $80 annual tuition. As is bound to happen to most students, he was caught. But instead of being sent to detention, he was barred from the school. In a show of the driven man he would become, he didn’t allow that to hinder him and instead started spending his days in the local library. While there, he encountered a book called Using Energy:
Using Energy described how windmills could be used to generate electricity. Only two percent of Malawians have electricity, and the service is notoriously unreliable. William decided an electric windmill was something he wanted to make. Illuminating his house and the other houses in his village would mean that people could read at night after work. A windmill to pump water would mean that they could grow two crops a year rather than one, grow vegetable gardens, and not have to spend two hours a day hauling water. “A windmill meant more than just power,” he wrote, “it was freedom.”
This book is what changed his life. And I don’t mean that as an exaggeration. It was truly what made a difference in his life. Because of that book, and the potential he saw in its ideas, William began to build:
William scoured trash bins and junkyards for materials he could use to build his windmill. With only a couple of wrenches at his disposal, and unable to afford even nuts and bolts, he collected things that most people would consider garbage-slime-clogged plastic pipes, a broken bicycle, a discarded tractor fan-and assembled them into a wind-powered dynamo. For a soldering iron, he used a stiff piece of wire heated in a fire. A bent bicycle spoke served as a size adapter for his wrenches.
Imagine that. A young boy being so motivated by ideas and the sheer need to build something life-changing that he discovered materials and uses for them which most of us wouldn’t even dream of. As Mark Frauenfelder put it:
For an educated adult living in a developed nation, designing and building a wind turbine that generates electricity is something to be proud of. For a half-starved, uneducated boy living in a country plagued with drought, famine, poverty, disease, a cruelly corrupt government, crippling superstitions, and low expectations, it’s another thing altogether. It’s nothing short of monumental.
After completing his first windmill, William “went on to wire his house with four light bulbs and two radios, installing switches made from rubber sandals, and scratch-building a circuit breaker to keep the thatch roof of his house from catching fire.” His project had the attention of village locals early on, but at this point he gained the attention of TED, Technology Entertainment Design, through whom he was introduced to individuals willing to contribute to his plans to “electrify, irrigate, and educate his village, as well as pay his tuition at the prestigious African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg.”
In short: A young man struggled to educate himself, to build something his village needed, and in the end made a difference to the entire locale and gained the education he’d always wanted. Yes, it’s a fluffy, feel-good story with a happy ending. What should you take from the it? Maybe that there’s hope in the bleakest of situations, maybe that your teachers and parents were right about the power of education, maybe just that I’m a sappy bookworm with a soft spot for happy endings. No matter, if you wish to learn more, you can read the recently released The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, check out William’s blog, or peek at this video from before he ever wrote his autobiography. [GOOD via Boing Boing]
We seldom post about books at Gizmodo, but if this story of a self-taught Malawian boy using junkyard parts to build windmills and bring life-changing electricity to his village doesn’t make you misty-eyed, then you must be one cold-hearted bastard.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence, and William Kamkwamba has it in spades. At age fourteen, while many of us were sneaking out of classrooms, William was struggling to sneak into them—his family was unable to afford the $80 annual tuition. As is bound to happen to most students, he was caught. But instead of being sent to detention, he was barred from the school. In a show of the driven man he would become, he didn’t allow that to hinder him and instead started spending his days in the local library. While there, he encountered a book called Using Energy:
Using Energy described how windmills could be used to generate electricity. Only two percent of Malawians have electricity, and the service is notoriously unreliable. William decided an electric windmill was something he wanted to make. Illuminating his house and the other houses in his village would mean that people could read at night after work. A windmill to pump water would mean that they could grow two crops a year rather than one, grow vegetable gardens, and not have to spend two hours a day hauling water. “A windmill meant more than just power,” he wrote, “it was freedom.”
This book is what changed his life. And I don’t mean that as an exaggeration. It was truly what made a difference in his life. Because of that book, and the potential he saw in its ideas, William began to build:
William scoured trash bins and junkyards for materials he could use to build his windmill. With only a couple of wrenches at his disposal, and unable to afford even nuts and bolts, he collected things that most people would consider garbage-slime-clogged plastic pipes, a broken bicycle, a discarded tractor fan-and assembled them into a wind-powered dynamo. For a soldering iron, he used a stiff piece of wire heated in a fire. A bent bicycle spoke served as a size adapter for his wrenches.
Imagine that. A young boy being so motivated by ideas and the sheer need to build something life-changing that he discovered materials and uses for them which most of us wouldn’t even dream of. As Mark Frauenfelder put it:
For an educated adult living in a developed nation, designing and building a wind turbine that generates electricity is something to be proud of. For a half-starved, uneducated boy living in a country plagued with drought, famine, poverty, disease, a cruelly corrupt government, crippling superstitions, and low expectations, it’s another thing altogether. It’s nothing short of monumental.
After completing his first windmill, William “went on to wire his house with four light bulbs and two radios, installing switches made from rubber sandals, and scratch-building a circuit breaker to keep the thatch roof of his house from catching fire.” His project had the attention of village locals early on, but at this point he gained the attention of TED, Technology Entertainment Design, through whom he was introduced to individuals willing to contribute to his plans to “electrify, irrigate, and educate his village, as well as pay his tuition at the prestigious African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg.”
In short: A young man struggled to educate himself, to build something his village needed, and in the end made a difference to the entire locale and gained the education he’d always wanted. Yes, it’s a fluffy, feel-good story with a happy ending. What should you take from the it? Maybe that there’s hope in the bleakest of situations, maybe that your teachers and parents were right about the power of education, maybe just that I’m a sappy bookworm with a soft spot for happy endings. No matter, if you wish to learn more, you can read the recently released The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, check out William’s blog, or peek at this video from before he ever wrote his autobiography. [GOOD via Boing Boing]
In addition to making electric roadsters, Tesla is also planning on making electric minivans, cross-over utility vehicles and vans, at least according to VP Diarmuid O’Connell. He doesn’t give any specifics, but it sounds good to me. [AutoBlog via Engadget]
We know you love nothing more than a Toshiba Satellite laptop announcement, so listen up: the company has just announced two new CULV ultraportables of the UK and stateside market: The Satellite T135 (or the T130 as it’s known overseas) is a 13.3-inch beauty with options including either an Intel Pentium, Celeron single core or Celeron dual-core CPU, up to 3GB of DDR3 RAM, and 250GB harddrive. The Satellite T115 (or T110 in the UK) sports an 11.6-inch display, either an Intel Pentium or Celeron single core CPU, and up to 4GB of RAM and 500GB harddrive. What’s more, the kids over at Laptop Mag have given the T135 the old once-over and found it to be a pretty good deal: “for slightly less than the competition,” they said of the $709 review unit, you’re getting “good performance and a stylish design.” Perhaps the single touchpad button and the quiet speakers will be a turn-off to some, but it takes all kinds, right? Look for the T135 and T115 on October 22nd, for $599 and $449 respectively — their UK counterparts should hit the streets on the same date, priced from £429. Read - Toshiba Satellite T130/T135 and T110/T115 CULV ultraportables debut Read - Toshiba Satellite T135 review
What does Fox have in mind for improving the experience of Blu-rays? Actually…some really great ideas, according to SlashFilm.
You could load movies onto your phone. Or you can go to m.mSpot.com on all four major carriers using most smartphones to access $5 
In addition to making electric roadsters, Tesla is also planning on making electric minivans, cross-over utility vehicles and vans, at least according to VP Diarmuid O’Connell. He doesn’t give any specifics, but it sounds good to me. [
Entries (RSS)