The trouble with cars is that you are forever having to park them — and once parked, a car is surprisingly easy to lose. That’s why PosiMotion’s G-Park application for the iphone is so brilliant. Park your car, press the Park Me! button, and go about your business. When you’re ready to relocate your ride, press G-Park’s "Where Did I Park?" button and you’ll get turn-by-turn walking directions back to your wheels. Nifty! And it only costs $1. Testing the app out today, I "parked" myself where I am now, at Wired.com’s offices, and then, without moving, asked it to give me the return directions. To my amusement, G-Park recommended that I leave the office, take a walk around the block, and then return to my starting point (see screenshot). (Read the full post about ‘IPhone App Helps You Find Your Parked Car — Or Your Lunch Hour Walk’…)
How would you like the option to add a fireplace to every room of your home without the expensive renovation? How about taking that fireplace with you even when you travel, making any room you go to more romantic. Now you can with the portable fireplace called the Travelmate. The Travelmate is a smokeless portable fireplace that comes in a sturdy steel frame that is black powder coated and comes complete with handle. It also features two glass windows so you can see the flame from either side of the frame. To light the flame in the ravelmate, all you need to do is remove the glass that is held on by magnets and ignite. Allthough what the Travelmate burns is a complete mystery since the product doesn’t mention. (Read the full post about ‘The Travelmate Fireplace lets you take ambience wherever you go’…)
I’ve written before about the HTC Touch Diamond a number of times. In my initial review I pointed out a number of issues I was having with the device, including connectivity and general UI issues. HTC released an official ROM that fixed a number of my biggest gripes, but a bunch still remained. Earlier this week HTC provided me an updated ROM (1.93) for the HTC Touch Diamond. Does this latest ROM finally deliver the perfect mobile device? Read on. Device sluggishness While the previous ROM made the majority of the sluggishness disappear, this latest version allows the device to perform like it does in the commercials. There’s absolutely no delay between transitions in TouchFLO 3D, and touching the screen works the first time, every time. (Read the full post about ‘First look: HTC Touch Diamond gets a new ROM’…)
by Donald Melanson, posted Aug 1st 2008 at 12:18PM We’ve already seen the Eee Box out and about getting demoed and ripped apart, but if you’ve been waiting for a taste of the full box to Box experience that may be in your future, you can now hit up PC Authority for a suitably thorough gallery of pics. That helpfully not only includes the usual pictures of the always-fascinating unboxing process, but some comparison shots with an Eee PC 901, which is about the same size, and a playstation 3, which could crush the Eee Box without so much as breaking a sweat. (Read the full post about ‘ASUS Eee Box gets… unboxed!’…)
by Darren Murph, posted Aug 1st 2008 at 10:12AMWait, who’s this Mint character anyway? Ah, yes — that Australian firm that hires Aiptek to do at least some of its dirty work. The V10 mini projector that we spotted earlier this year has been blessed with an official price and release date, promising a VGA beam in the palm of your hand for around $600 this September. As a refresher, you’ll get 1GB of internal storage, a microSD expansion slot and a woefully inadequate 60 minutes of battery life. (Read the full post about ‘Mint’s V10 mini projector gets price and release date’…)
This makes me so sad. Robots in general have always made me sad, and it only got worse after I saw AI. In movies, relationships with robots are often doomed, and remind us of that sorry state of being where you love something that can’t love you back, whether the unrequited one is the human or the robot. In Japan, they’re developing robots to care for the elderly, in anticipation of the aging of the population, which will be 40% elderly by 2055. This inevitably means that many, many senior citizens in Japan will be living alone, which is hard to imagine, considering that in Asia today, adult children typically take care of elderly parents. (Read the full post about ‘Caregiver robots to take care of Japan’s elderly?’…)
Earlier this week we reported that AOL was shutting down three of its online services including Xdrive. One of the primary reasons behind the shutdown of Xdrive is the fact that in order for the service to succeed AOL would need to shift its focus back to subscription services, which is clearly not something the company wants to do. That being said, it’s not surprising to learn the Wall Street Journal is reporting AOL’s dial-up business is a target of Earthlink Inc.
Earthlink CEO Rolla Huff indicated during an interview that there would be interest in the company acquiring that section of AOL’s business.
(Read the full post about ‘Earthlink CEO has eye on AOL dial-up business’…)
At CES in January LG and Netflix announced a collaboration that would produce a new set-top device offering Blu-ray (and back then HD-DVD) playback as well as access to streaming movies. It looks like the new BD300 Blu-ray player from LG may be that device.
The BD300 is being sold as a Blu-ray standalone player, but also comes with the added benefit of access to 12,000 movies through the Netflix service. No wireless conenction is included in the unit unfortunately, but an ethernet cable to your router will ensure the player can access Netflix’s service with streaming playback apparently only taking around 30 seconds to start.
The player will also have BD-Live support, LG SimpLink, DVD upscaling to 1080p, Netflix navigation direct from the player remote and the ability to fast forward or rewind streamed videos.
(Read the full post about ‘LG includes Netflix access to BD300 Blu-ray player’…)
Don’t you just love how games evolve? From the times when they were just pure single player titles that had the rest of the kids waiting patiently for their turn at the controller to the modern equivalent of teamplay, where you and your gang go up against another team, keeping the lines of communication open through a headset and celebrating the true spirit of teamwork. Not all multiplayer games feature voice support at this point in time (most crucial games to offer this feature would be tactical titles), but the Station Voice service aims to change this. Powered by Vivox, this new service enables players to talk to each other in online titles, and it is currently a feature available in MMORPGs such as EverQuest II and Star Wars Galaxies. (Read the full post about ‘Station Voice by Vivox’…)
by Darren Murph, posted Aug 1st 2008 at 7:24AM Nintendo may not have been totally forthcoming with third-party devs about its MotionPlus add-on, but no secrets (okay, maybe a few) were withheld from AiLive. As it turns out, said outfit actually collaborated with Nintendo in order to create the MotionPlus hardware, and it’s extra kindly offering up LiveMove 2 “to help game developers take full advantage of its capabilities.” According to the company, LiveMove 2 can slash up to half a year off of the time required to tie basic functionality of the device into a game, though we’re obviously in no position to confirm / deny. For the small minority that cares more about how MotionPlus works rather than just accepting the fa (Read the full post about ‘MotionPlus co-developer shows off with LiveMove 2 video’…)
