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Samsung, Sony Blu-ray Players Get Firmware Update to Fix Compatibility Issues

Samsung and Sony both have firmware updates for their Blu-ray players today, with Samsung patching the BD-P1000 and BD-P1200 to fix compatibility problems found in several movies, and Sony applying updates for the BDP-S300 to address BD-Java compatibility in movie extras (a similar problem to the one identified here). Unfortunately for owners, only the Samsung…

You Need A Space Image Management Consultant

Now that it’s common for people to look at their environment from space via Google satellite imagery, certain companies are suffering from an image crisis. Their buildings just don’t look good from space. That’s why the Navy, whose unfortunately-shaped building in San Diego caused a lot of angst recently, is hiring a space image consultant.…

Cop Block Comes To OnStar

SF writer Greg Bear, author of classics like Darwin’s Radio and Blood Music, wrote a novel that predicted yesterday’s announcement from OnStar that they would be installing systems that allow police to shut your car down. The OnStar system is called “Stolen Vehicle Slowdown,” and when activated would slow down and stop a moving car…

Toshiba HD DVD Laptop To Be Sub-$1000 Blu-ray Killer?

UPDATEDToshiba announced that one of its laptops would come standard with an HD DVD drive for under $1,000 in time for Christmas. Citing easily available DVD-ROM/CD-RW drives as the cause for mainstream adoption of DVD, Toshiba believes that affordable HD DVD/DVD-RW drives will dictate the winner of the war. Battery drain is still a high-def…

Rumor: XBox 360 “Jasper” Motherboard Set For 8/08 Release

According to Dean Takahashi of the Mercury News, Microsoft is developing a new motherboard codenamed “Jasper.” The upgrade promises to shrink the ATI graphics chip to 65nm and reduce the size of the memory chips as well. If true, this could reduce build costs and the heat problems that have plagued the 360. Although Takahashi…

RIM’s BlackBerry Curve has been added to our Palm Centro Sizemodo, because readers wanted to know how the two stack up, literally. https://gizmodo.com/palm-centro-vs-treo-700-vs-iphone-vs-blackberry-curve-309207

Motorola Shows Future 2008 Scarven, Pixl, Texel and Genghis Phones

Motorola has presented four new phones for 2008 in Amsterdam: the Motorola Skarven, the Motorola Z12 X Pixl, the Motorola E10 Texel and the Motorola QX Genghis. The first two belong to their new ZOOM classification, which means they are camera phones: the Skarven packs a 8MP camera for photos and a standard VGA for…

Non Dev Team iPhone Firmware 1.1.1 Jailbreak Released (Verdict: Wait!)

Hackers not part of the official iPhone Dev Team have released an iPhone and iPod Touch jailbreak that’s based upon the Safari TIFF image exploit we first saw a few days ago. There are a few major things wrong with it, which means this isn’t exactly ready for normal people to use yet. We’ve been…

Ubiquiti Announces First 700Mhz Mini-PCI Wireless Card

Ubiquiti Networks has come out with the “world’s first” wireless card specifically designed for the hotly desired and discussed 700Mhz band everyone’s scrambling to get a piece of. The XtremeRange7 uses the 32-bit mini-PCI Type IIIA standard and sports a ridiculous output power of 600 mW (your dinky home router’s probably putting out 28mW), which…

Tomas Kauneckas Laptop Skins Tell an Illustrated Comic Story

Laptop skins like the ones from GelaSkins are pretty neat, but these skins from photographer Tomas Kauneckas actually tell a story of a fugitive lady on the run, being captured, and eventually incarcerated in a series of 14 photographs. It’s up to you which one of the 14 you’d want as your skin—they’re all pretty…

Java Phone: Sun Microsystems and Samsung May Be Developing Cheaper iPhone Alternative

Rumor has it that Sun Microsystems and Samsung are jointly developing a “Java Phone” that is cheaper and more feature rich than Apple’s iPhone. Details are scarce, but a Samsung spokesperson confirmed that a meeting has taken place between the two companies regarding the phone, but the details of that conversation have not been made…

Soviet Futurist Architectural Marvel About To Be A Museum

The strangely beautiful Melnikov House was built in Moscow in 1929, and is an early-twentieth-century futurist blend of peasant construction and ultra-modern weirdness. Maverick architect Konstantin Melnikov built his home using rough bricks typically found in Russian peasant villages, but he also gave it a novel shape – two interlocking cylinders riddled with hexagonal windows…

Tomorrow’s TV-Phone (1956)

The November 23, 1956 Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, CA) ran this picture of the “TV-Phone” of the future. If I’m not mistaken, that looks like Dick Clark on the screen. The phone of the future will fit in the palm of the hand and enable a caller to hear and see the other party in color…

Oasis and Jamiroquai Mulling Radiohead’s Pay-What-You-Want Example

Oasis and Jamiroquai are heavily considering jumping aboard the direct-to-audience express, planning to distribute their albums in a pay-what-you-will manner from their website, a la Radiohead. With the bands continuing to line up, do you guys think this is really the beginning of the end for the old way of doing business? Or just a…

Mozilla Plans to “Rock” Mobile Web with Mobile Firefox

Move over, Opera. Mozilla’s VP of Engineerring, Mike Schroepfer, has declared that Mozilla plans to finally jump into mobile web and “rock it,” as specs on mobile devices are finally hitting where they need to be for a “no compromise” browsing experience. Specifically, they’re announcing that •Mozilla will add mobile devices to the first class/tier-1…

Turn Your iPhone/iTouch Into a 3G Web Device

We haven’t tested this ourselves, but Pyrofersprojects came up with an interesting, but ultimately impractical, way to turn your iPhone or iPod touch into a 3G internet-using device. All you need is a 3G smartphone with Windows Mobile 5 or 6, a 3G data account, and the know-how to follow a guide teaching you how…

iPhone headphone adapter free with any order [iPhoniacs]

Apple Dashboard Widgets on Nokia S60 Phones

With Nokia’s Web Run Time, due to be released in the next S60 operating system update, Nokia users can actually run slightly modified Apple Dashboard widgets right on their phone. The basis of this is that Nokia’s widgets and Dashboard widgets both use the WebKit browser engine (the same fact that also allowed Nokias to…

’80s Stereo Turned Into a HTPC

With everyone trying to slap more chrome and neon on to their custom PC creations it’s nice to see someone going old school for a change. This enormous stereo form the ’80s has been modded and prodded into a decently capable HTPC complete with built-in 15-in LCD, Hauppauge TV tuner, 1.83GHz Athlon XP 2500+ processor…

How to Comment: OK, ANOTHER Change of Halo Plans

Apparently Kotaku “doesn’t have time” this Thursday to participate in the Halo match. They have “more important stuff to do” and “will have to move it to next Thursday”. If you ask us? Our ever-increasing rank on Halo makes them nervous—and they need more time to practice. Either that, or they’re actually busy. Which one…