Media
”Star Wars Fans Vs. Sports Fans (Verdict: Both Intolerable)
I've never felt ashamed of being a geek—even before the trend was cool. OK, that's an outright lie. But truthfully, I've always known that the jocks who worshiped every piece of sports trivia were at least as dorky as me. Also of note—acne is a total wash when sized up against sweat and a nasty case of cauliflower ear. [via UberReview]
The New Yorker on Simultaneous Invention and the Intellectual Ventures Laboratories
The New Yorker about the history of simultaneous invention, the best example being Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both patenting the telephone on the same day. There are many other examples, leading to the conclusion that "scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place." The story is put into modern perspective by including scenes drawn from meetings of members of the company called Intellectual Ventures. The founding member, Nathan Myhrvold, also founded Microsoft's R&D labs. His idea for IV was to see if "the kind of insight that leads to invention could be engineered." The whole point being the creation of powerful ideas. Bill Gates, who works with them on H.I.V prevention, is quoted: More »
Family Guy Enters The Matrix
If someone had asked me right when I woke up this morning if I expected to see an superb Family Guy/Matrix trailer mashup—I'd probably have searched YouTube for it later—but I'd have done so quite incredulously. [via newlaunches]
Never Return Your Video Camera While Still Stoned
When two amateur Cheech and Chongs returned a PureDigital Flip camera to Best Buy, apparently they forgot to erase the memory. Because when one shopper purchased the open box item, it came free with three videos labeled "Smoking." Here's a shot of the two auteurs in action. For those who'd like to see the whole video, hop on over TechCrunch. Then hit up White Castle for a ten sack. Then listen to some music—you know, really listen to it. [CrunchGear]Nine Inch Nails Releases Free Album In High Definition Audio
Rock Band Bot Can Get 100% On Expert Song, But You Still Suck
Blaser Battle Fukuoka Pits Robots With Lasers Against Robots With Lasers
Archos Updates the 605 Wi-Fi With GPS, Mobile TV and Flash Video
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NEC Lui WiMax Media Streaming System Gets Release Date, Price
We alerted you to NEC's fancy media-streaming home server last year: it's an "on demand" system that'll send your media content to Lui devices around your home and beyond. NEC has just stumped up the release schedule and pricing in Japan, and "Life with Ubiquitous Integrated solutions" systems isn't cheap. The pocket sized player and laptop-like device are around $495 and $890, while the desktop PC will be $2,100. Topping it all off, the main home server costs a whopping $3,700. If you're in Japan and like the idea of accessing your audio and video remotely using dedicated devices, it's available from April 24th. We don't have timings on a US release. [AV Watch]John Brownlee and Rob Beschizza Writing at BB Gadgets
Rob Beschizza and John Brownlee, two of my favorite bloggers of all time, are joining Joel Johnson over at Boing Boing Gadgets. That's some good cross over action if I've ever seen it. [BBG]LG T80 PMP Packs in Touchscreen, DVB for Europeans
LG has just revealed the T80 PMP, which has the makings of a promising media player, at least for the Europeans. The T80 boasts a 3-inch, 260k color (420 x 240) touchscreen, supports MPEG, MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, ASF, JPEG, TXT files, has an FM tuner, integrated microphone and a DVB-T receiver, which blows for anyone outside of Europe. The T80 will endure 5.5hours of video playback or 3 hours of TV viewing on a single charge, comes with a paltry 4GB disk space and assaults your wallet at €299 ($473). If you're hot for the player, consider getting your import on. [Generationmp3 via PMP Today]
Blockbuster Announcing a Media Streamer This Month?
While we've known that Blockbuster was looking to get into digital distribution since they bought Movielink, according to a very confident Reuters, Blockbuster will be announcing a streaming set top box for customers to download movies directly to their televisions (a la Vudu, Apple TV, etc). That's an important point, as Reuters stood firm that it will specifically not be a service for TiVo or Xbox 360 but a product offering a service. Herein lies the mistake. [Reuters]
Flickr Adds Videos Long Photos
As of last night, Flickr/Yahoo has finally bit the bullet and added video support to their service. A cynical response might be that they clearly would like to compete with YouTube. But when reading through the FAQ and examining the system's limitations, it seems that they really are sincere in supporting "long photo" as opposed to real videos. The kind that come from your cameras, not camcorders.
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Egoman PMP Has 4.3-Inch Touchscreen, 16M Color Displaying
Egoman's latest PMP, the MP810RSTD-43 bears an impressive, 4.3-inch touchscreen, which supports 16.7 million colors, and that just about sets it apart from the other iPod touch clones sitting it out in PMP purgatory. The device will playback WVI and RMVB at 30 fps, is just 7.2mm thick and will happily playback MP3, WMA, ADPCM, WAV, APC and FLAC files. With a USB 2.0 port, integrated FM tuner and an onboard TV out port, Egoman haven't done too bad a job here at all. Still, with the product page stating "[all] specifications are subject to change without notice," perhaps we should take the player's planned existence with a touch of salt. [PMP Today]






