I can’t imagine what Jack Kerouac’s classic would have been like if he had a 3G connection and a netbook. Would “On The Road” have been a hit blog, or would he have been too busy watching Youtube videos of some dope jazz beats? Anyways… A buddy of mine wanted to go on a road trip not long ago and called me to see if I wanted to tag along. I figured, what the hell. It would give me a chance to put my new Acer Aspire One to the…
Read MoreEver watch a movie on your 16:9 LCD or Plasma TV only to be disappointed to see the black bars above and below the picture? That’s because the movie you’re watching was shot in glorious 2.35:1 aspect ratio, so the picture has to fit in the vertical centre of the screen. “But rye”, you say. “That’s why I bought a widescreen TV in the first place; to avoid those annoying bars!” Well, apparently Philips feels your pain, and now proudly presents the Philips Cinema, a 56″ superwide screen that does…
Read MoreIt’s no secret that communicating via text chat during online play is an integral part of gaming, and that the hunt & peck method of text inputting is a massive pain in the ass. You COULD use a USB keyboard, but playing online with a full-sized QWERTY on your lap the whole time is impractical, at best. Microsoft recognized the need for a text input device back in May ’07 and gave us the 360 Chatpad, effectively solving all our online chatting needs. Never one to admit its been outdone,…
Read MoreFrom my home Toronto suburb of Brampton, ubergeek Trung Le, in “[his] basement using [his] credit card and [his] entire saving account as funding”, has made international news by building a robotic companion who answers simple queries, responds to pain, and who looks like a classic anime ingenue but talks like Data. (“I do not like it when you touch my breasts!”) It’s all quite simultaneously interesting and funny and disconcerting and slightly sad. In other words, awesome. But according to quite a large portion of the commenters on Feministing.com,…
Read MoreThere’s been times I thought about getting a notebook, but decided against it for a couple of reasons. Lugging around a notebook everywhere I went never appealed to me because they’re big and bulky, and the need to do some serious computing on the go never seemed to come up. I couldn’t justify the cost/benefit ratio. Then Asus came out with their EEE PC netbook, and started a trend that shows no sign of slowing down. Nowadays, Asus alone seems to have about 100 different models of netbooks, even if…
Read MoreRED has posted more information about their Scarlet Digital Cinema Camera; of particular interest are the specs and prices for the fixed zoom lense camera. For the Brain & Lense, you’ll be looking at $3000 (USD) while the complete kit (details to be revealed later) has been given the price of $3750 (USD). This is good news as it keeps the Fixed-lense Scarlet at an affordable price, considering most prosumer HD cameras go for around $5000-$7000 (USD). In addition, RED has revealed a limited edition “thank you” price for the…
Read MoreWhen I first laid eyes on Jeff Han’s next generation touchscreen interface, it gave me that tingle that told me, “Welcome to the future.” The same tingle I got when I saw my first command line interface in the late ’70s, or when I spotted my first GUI in the mid-’80s. Oblong Industries’ newly available (after more than a decade in development) “spatial operating system“, G-speak, has turned that tingle into a burning itch. Nothing I have seen in tech innovation has made me as eager to live long enough…
Read MoreArs Technica (and other outlets) are reporting that via the ‘DisplayPort’ external video adaptor, Apple has placed an HDCP-like DRM chokehold on iTunes-purchased video playback from its new MacBook and MacBook Pro models to a big-screen monitor. This is a consumer rights issue in more ways than one, including some pretty serious and unprecedented ways (at least in the Apple world).
Read MoreRED has finally released new details of their highly anticipated new Scarlett and Epic digital cinema cameras. Earlier this year, RED had pulled details of Scarlett and Epic in order to do a redesign of the cameras, citing that the camera market had totally changed and that they had to change as well to stay ahead. Dubbed the DSMC (Digital Still and Motion Camera), the Scarlett and Epic cameras are now the centre of a totally modular and customizable digital camera system. Built around the updated Mysterium sensor inside a…
Read MoreThe Wall Street Journal has raised the spectre of smartphones replacing laptops, not even realising, it seems, that it is a spectre. Apple’s “cutting-edge” iPhone is held up throughout the article, without a hint of irony, as the prime example of the sort of device that the author sees one day bumping your main mobile computer into a Sarlacc Pit. No mention at all is made of the completely closed and capriciously-controlled nature of application development through the iPhone’s App Store (practical unofficial alternatives to which, in a 180-degree turn…
Read MoreDoth Microsoft protest too much? Last week we reported on a rumour stating that the Xbox 360 would be getting its own Blu Ray player by as early as the end of this year. And there was much rejoicing. But Microsoft has again banished that rumour to way outside the Garden of Things I Actually Want, and reminded all of us, the consumers, that you bought your 360 to play GAMES on, not watch movies. As we’ve said before, Microsoft has no plans to introduce an Xbox 360 Blu-ray add-on….
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