Wristbands have taken the next step upwards thanks to the SportsLive USB wristbands that feature baseball-related audio and video content, enabling wearers to own a piece of history by recording live baseball broadcasts for posterity. There will be a couple of SportsLive wristbands up for purchase during the All-Star week on MLB.com, where one of them features the broadcast of the Farm Home Run Derby while the other will store a broadcast of the All-Star Game and pre-game ceremony. Included in both is a two-hour MLB Productions documentary entitled “Yankees Stadium: Baseball’s Cathedral,” some desktop wallpapers and ringtones for your phone. Each of these bands can hold a maximum of 2GB of data and is fully reusable. (Read the full post about ‘SportsLive USB Wristbands’…)
by Paul Miller, posted Jul 14th 2008 at 12:19PM While we saw it hinted at in patents, Nintendo is springing quite the doozy on us at E3 in the form of its new Wii MotionPlus add-on. Perhaps in a preemptive strike against supposed Wiimote competition from the likes of Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo is beefing up its motion support with this add-on, which is supposed to proved “an unmatched level of precision and immersion,” with sensors to supplement the accelerometer and sensor bar to provide 1:1 motion — as in, I move my arm this much, my character moves his arm that much. (Read the full post about ‘Nintendo’s Wii MotionPlus add-on makes the Wii Remote a true 1:1 motion controller’…)
The renovated BMW Museum in Munich, Germany, offers one of the largest spaces for focused car-design ogling, and is as large (5000 square meters) an expression of the company’s outsized engineering expectations as it is an interesting new space for art. The latter label comes mostly from the mechatronic piece by ART+COM called the Kinetic structure, an awesome installation project made out of moving, sliver spheres. ART+COM is a media development company that creates high tech installations, and they take an abstract approach with their concept —- depicting the design of a car and its eventual relationship with the elements through real-style ‘animations.’From the looks of the videos, they’ve succeeded- the illustration of each silver sphere according to a point in space is so precise that if the clip is fast forwarded, it will resemble the real movements of a half-car moving. (Read the full post about ‘Kinetic Structure at BMW Museum Interprets Car Design Process’…)
by Donald Melanson, posted Jul 14th 2008 at 5:04PM While some DIY bots understandably creep us out, there’s just as many that bring a smile to our face, and this so-called BiPed robot V-3 from Alex V of Instructables definitely falls into the latter camp. Further adding to our appreciation is the fact that this one is built almost entirely from scratch, right down to the custom made framework cut by a CNC machine. You’d be hard pressed to pick it out from line-up of kit robots, however, with it boasting a full range of movement designed to mimic the human lower body which, as you can see above, even extends to it being able to stand on one leg with ease. (Read the full post about ‘DIY biped robot makes your desk a happier place’…)
FROM APPLETELL - Genre: Action Developer: SEGA File Size: 35.2MB Version Reviewed: 1.0 Requirements: iPhone 2.0 software Compatibility: iphone and ipod touch Rating: 4+ Price $9.99 There’s no doubt that one of the most anticipated games for the iPhone at the launch of the App Store was Sega’s Super Monkey Ball. With outstanding… MORE » Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! (Read the full post about ‘Appletell Review - Super Monkey Ball for iPhone’…)
Instead of happily tapping their touch screens, many iPhone users are using their fingers to point accusingly at Apple — and the developers of iPhone applications. That’s because of widespread reliability and operating issues associated with the multimedia device’s hardware and software upgrades last week. Since Apple’s combined iPhone 3G/2.0 launch July 11, some users have reported frequent application crashes, inadvertent reboots or overall lag. It’s not clear what’s causing the problems: A poorly-debugged operating system, or poorly-written apps. That’s to be expected with a major new upgrade, said Raven Zachary, founder of iPhoneDevCamp, who said the fault should be shared between Apple and the independent developers who create iPhone apps. (Read the full post about ‘Bugs Abound in iPhone 2.0 Operating System, Apps’…)
Check out this switchblade concept phone that features a numerical keypad on the front, accompanied by a rounded earpiece and a screen that folds outwards just like a regular switchblade. While you won’t be able to slice apples with this thing, it makes me wonder whether the display has to be swung outwards whenever I’m making a call? After all, it does look pretty fragile to start with, so talking with a piece of easily breakable glass so near by face isn’t a good idea if you’re trying to beat the rush hour crowd to the nearest train while holding a conversation. Guess this would do better with Bluetooth connectivity in order to prevent any untoward accidents. (Read the full post about ‘Switchblade Concept Phone’…)
On Saturday morning, Apple’s servers recovered enough to start serving the iPod Touch 2.0 software update, and — because I was left iPhone-less on Friday by Spain’s favorite telco, I spent the weekend killing both my iPod Touch’s batteries and my own bank account, alternating between playing Monkeyball on the beach and surfing the App Store. Here are some first impressions of the new iPhone applications. NetNewsWire NetNewsWire Mobile is the read-only mobile version of the Mac RSS reader NetNewsWire, the grandaddy of news aggregators. Up until this release, the only way to read and keep your NNW on the iPhone was to use the online Newsgator site, which syncs feeds with NNW. (Read the full post about ‘App Store is Like a Sweet, Sweet Drug: Five IPhone Applications Reviewed’…)
Sony will be releasing yet another firmware update for their PSP handheld console, and this time round it will be version 4.05 that will hit the streets. One confirmed feature will be new visualizers for music player, catering to the ever growing crowd who use their PSP as a portable media player. More to come as new developments arise - hopefully this firmware update won’t cause crashes like the recently released PS3 2.40 firmware update. Tags: technology, gadgets, CD, Ogg (Read the full post about ‘PSP Firmware 4.05 Coming Soon’…)
Here’s an image of the blackberry Thunder in real life - it has so far not failed when it comes to similarities to user guide drawings as well as other leaked image in the past. What’s most interesting is the touch screen display, featuring four buttons right below that offers access to additional software functions in menus instead of leaving them exposed to always-on visible buttons. This design aims to bridge the gap with current BlackBerry users who are more used to a QWERTY keypad than a touch screen. The keyboard itself works differently compared to the iphone, and while it is able to adjust to landscape mode automatically, the keys will always remain large so that you won’t mistype a text message.
