Gizmodo: singing

Bush Airport Sets Up Karaoke Booths, Makes Traveling a Bigger Nightmare

Sean Fallon — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:40:00 EST

Have a flight heading into George Bush airport in Houston? You might want to make some adjustments now that management has set up karaoke booths to entertain (?) weary travelers.

According to Caroline Schneider, assistant airport manager for customer service:

"During the holidays, we have a lot of our novice travelers," she said. "We thought while they are waiting, they can just sing a song."

Oh no no no...not cool. Karaoke can only make things worse. In fact, a man was recently killed in Malaysia because he was hogging the mic. And, naturally, poor singing and frustrated travelers can only lead to more violence. Do you want that on your conscience Bush International Airport? Do ya'? I thought not. [Metro]

Sega's Disco Karaoke Machine Twirls Its Disco Ball, Connects to Cellphones

Kit Eaton — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:45:09 EST

Two things set this Sega Hitokara karaoke machine apart from the rest: it's connected to a cloud-based database of 43,000 songs via cellphone and it's got a whirling, light-up mirrored disco ball. Ohboyyes. Granted you'd have to be a fan of both karaoke (you strange person) and cheezy disco lighting, but what the heck—it's a neat gizmo, with built-in mic and speakers. But it only connects to special karaoke-enabled mobiles in Japan, so you'll probably not see one. Japanese disco karaoke fans can get them from December for the equivalent of around $75 though. [Technabob via DVice]

Little Girl Substituted By Cuter Little Girl In Olympic Opening Ceremony Karaoke

Jason Chen — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:39:34 EDT

We can understand why the footprint fireworks were digitally faked into the live broadcast of the Olympic opening ceremony—because it would have been too dangerous to actually fly a helicopter through those projectiles—but allowing a cuter little girl to karaoke while the originally chosen little girl stood behind the scenes and sang? That's gotta make you feel sad for the slightly less good looking little girl.

On the other hand, we do have to commend whoever was in charge of that karaoke setup. It was pretty damn flawless, and we doubt anybody would have known about it if the show's musical designer hadn't said anything. There's also the question of why the little girl that was actually on stage was allowed to give interviews as if she actually sang it?

Mr Chen said she might not have known that the words she was singing could not be heard. She had, in fact, only known she was going to perform at all 15 minutes beforehand.

[Telegraph via Yahoo Sports]

Sony Rolly on Sale in Japan Sept 29th, comes with Annoying Video

AddyDugdale — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 04:57:51 EDT

So, Sony's dancing Rolly is finally out today, after all that crazy hype. And I looked at it from all angles, sat through an arse-numbingly too-cool-for-school video &mdash feel free to indulge yourselves below &mdash and thought, do you know what? The egg-shaped dancing MP3 and ATRAC player looks like a small clone of the Miuro robot speaker.

The Rolly is motion-controlled, having sensors that know which way is up. You can fiddle with the volume by turning the player clockwise or anti-clockwise, and you can skip or repeat tracks by either rolling the player forwards or backwards, or shaking it. You can download dance moves to the Rolly, but there will also be software available to allow you to make up your own Rolly moves on your computer.

At $351, the Rolly is around three times cheaper than the Miuro, and it gives you the lumi re to go with the son, but there's something a bit pedestrian about Sony's design, IMHO. Other "Mmmmmm... No!" features include a titchy 1GB memory, although you can hook it up via Bluetooth to play tunes from your computer. Incidentally, you get five hours of battery time using the internal memory, and four and a half if you use Bluetooth.

To add insult to injury, Sony is selling the carrying case and charging cradle separately, for $17.50 and $35 respectively. I can't decide whether I think that Sony will roll this product out worldwide or not, but I would have thought it would sell well everywhere. [Impress through Google Translate]

Jingle Jugs: The Billy Bigmouth Bass for the Perv Generation

Jason Chen — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:20:52 EDT

It's a good thing the Jingle Jugs wasn't out when David Brent was still working for Wernham Hogg, otherwise the women in that workplace would really have had something to complain about. There's not much to this gadget once you boil it down to its essentials: a pair of singing, vibrating tits for $49. Which is enough for us. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Jingle Jugs via Slashgear]