Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Sunday, March 28th, 2010
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Remember that DSi XL that’s coming out next week? Well, I hope you didn’t spend a bunch of money in the DSiWare store with your regular size DSi. Yep, turns out that you can’t transfer games to your new hand-held. That really sucks. Nintendo did confirm that this is a known issue , and they are looking into the problem. At this time though, they don’t have an ETA on when exactly you’ll be able to transfer games. The issue lies in the way the store is set up, and the fact that purchases are tied to a hand-held device, instead of an account. [via 1Up ]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
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Yeah, should be a good match, they’re on a streak right now. Okay, let’s see: row 122…123…124. Here’s me, and you’re Q, right? All right. Not bad seats, huh? Friend of mine usually goes with his wife, but they had to go down east for some reason this time around. Oh, there’s the peanut guy. HEY GUY! Yeah – whoop, nice throw – AND A BEER! There we go, okay… what’s he saying? Ten bucks? Are you kidding me? Man, give me a break! Fine. God, they really chisel you here, don’t they? Hey, aren’t you going to get one? No? What – are you going to take my picture with that knockoff Casio you’ve been swinging around? Wait a second, is that – MY GOD, IT’S FILLED WITH WHISKEY! I hope you’ll excuse that little flight of narration. It just seemed like that’s how it would play out. I mean, I’m not some big drinker, but I am very poor . I can’t afford six-dollar beers, or eight-dollar shots of my favorite middle-shelf liquor! These faux-electronics flasks are pure genius, if you ask me. Yeah, they’ve probably been around for a while at joke shops, but hey, why not order a couple online? The Bevburry is only $11. I would consider these things to be a very practical move. Economical. And also, you can get tore up. [via DVice and Geekologie ]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
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Skoofy — a site I’ve never seen before today but appears to be a dog-themed Woot clone — has a nice deal on an HP printer. It’s just a basic Deskjet model (D2660), but it’s only $28.99 and comes with brand spanking new ink. Normally the printer sells for $49.99 with additional ink cartages fetching $31.99 for a combo black and color pack. Do you see the deal here? The damn printer costs less than the ink cartages. Of course the deal is only good for a limited time and expires 11 hours from the time I wrote this, but the moral of the story is that HP ink is ridiculously overpriced. [ Skoofy via deals.Woot ]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
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If you follow e-readers, you might have seen the post I wrote not long ago detailing and judging the various secondary features e-readers are sporting in order to catch the eye of the spendy book-lover. I am ashamed to say I missed a very important one: extremely low price. I mentioned it in passing, but the truth is that once a device like this creeps below $100 or so while retaining its fundamental function, it gains access to a few different markets, a circumstance worth looking at. The Kobo e-reader is the spark that set this post off; at $150, this 6″-screen, 0.1″-thin, half-pound device is among the very cheapest e-readers out there, yet Kobo also runs its own bookstore, which has the usual classics and bestsellers — probably 90% of what gets sold for e-readers. It’s going to be sold at Borders , and with its modest price tag might make for more of a temptation to browsing customers. But as long as consumers are being bombarded with promises of Android , touchscreens , cool dual-screen form factors , the Kobo is going to look mighty shabby in comparison. And by the time Kobo gets some press and is widely available, we’ll probably be hearing about all the cool stuff that’s going to happen next year. What’s a cheap, functional e-reader to do? Sell in bulk. The e-book is a loss leader, right? If someone spends $150 on a reader, you can be sure they’re going to get their money’s worth by buying at the very least 10 or 20 books and magazines a year with the thing. I don’t know why more e-readers aren’t being sold at or below cost. Sony made the same mistake with the PS3 — if they truly had a “10-year plan” for their device, why were they so chary of losing money at launch? Nobody is going to buy a PS3 and no games, and nobody is going to buy an e-reader and no books. We talked in the podcast about the Alex and things like co-branding with publishers and subscription models. I think that in the coming tablet wars, the only way e-books will be able to stay above water is with volume. And in order to have volume, they’re going to need to be able to make a real value proposition when there’s an iPad or Chrome OS tablet in their customer’s hand. As much as I like the Que , for instance, few will buy one at $650 when you can get a tablet computer for far less. Sure, they don’t do the same things exactly, but tell that to the consumer looking at full-color e-books on the iPad and desktop-class web apps in Chrome OS . There’s only one thing to do: get them prices down! E-reader sellers have been living in a land of milk and honey for the last year; although their devices are yet unfamiliar to most people and probably aren’t selling as well as anyone hoped, they were a class to themselves and people justified spending $350 because “that’s just how much these things cost.” This year should change that, and the iPad’s strong sales should strike fear into e-readers’ hearts. Amazon is already hedging its bets. What to do? Are they doomed? Hell no. But you better believe they’re going to be niche a year or so from now. Once the place of the tablet in a person’s tech lifestyle is established, I personally think people will find room for an e-reader, but it’s going to be hard to justify spending a lot. To return to the Kobo, however, a cheap device that replaces a whole class of paper books and mass-photocopied lecture notes could be a breakthrough for a University. English majors could probably get by with the 100 free books that come pre-loaded on the thing. Or a teacher-administrated set of locked Kobos in a middle school classroom — no more dog-eared copies of Where the Red Fern Grows : “Choose two heart-rending dog stories from the eight available on your Kobos, children. Your progress will be monitored — and your tears .” Seriously, though. Kobo, being first and foremost the cheap, basic option out there, should capitalize on that — as far as one can capitalize on being inexpensive. Call up school districts, libraries, universities, and hey why not, government agencies. Think of the amount of paper used in duplicating bills and memos for interns and editors to read! Of course, if any great amount of marking up is required, that’s a bust for the Kobo, which has very little in terms of input, but it still could be very useful in the right situations. They’ve also got apps for the major smartphone platforms, which is a good selling point for big, homogeneous groups like enterprise and government. The thing is that Kobo needs to bite the bullet and start selling these things for peanuts. If they want to get a leg up on the other e-readers, to say nothing of survive the onslaught of tablets, they need to get a million units out there stat . Apple’s got a 10-iPads-for-$4970 deal right now, but to outfit a class of freshmen at that price would bankrupt Croesus. But if Kobo calls up UCLA and says “Psst – special deal for you, my friend, Kobo eighty dollars, you buy at my store,” I think they can guarantee themselves quite a few sales, though it may mean a lot of work by some party in localizing lecture notes and so on to the e-book format. If the state or city won’t bite, then offer deep student discounts. Just get them out there. The gist is this: the only way e-readers are going to stay healthy a year from now is by either being one of the few leading brands (Kindle, nook, etc) who can sell at a premium, or by selling their product in thousand-packs for deep discounts. Schools are the obvious target for this kind of sales tactic, but like the Alex, Kobo could also work with publishers and stores to re-brand and customize, as they’re likely doing with Borders. Of course, at this point it’s still speculation and guesswork as to the buying patterns of the book-buying public, so we’ll see how it turns out, but for a non-premium device like the Kobo, I think the course is clear.
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
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You know all those drones you kids use to rain grim death upon your unfortunate friends in Modern Warfare 2 ? Well, according to an American University law professor’s Congressional testimony, they may be illegal under international law. Of course, they could be totally fine, too, it’s just that nobody really knows for sure. That’s probably not what the U.S. military wants to hear, given how much it has spent, and will spend, on drones. The deal is that the U.S. government has never actually justified, on a legal basis, its use of drones. It has never written a memo, went in front of a Congressional committee, tweeted a quick thought—nothing. The question becomes, OK, at some point you’re going to have to explain the legality of these things, so what’s the hold up? Or, in the words of the professor, one Kenneth Anderson: [Lawyers] have not settled on what the rationales are, and I believe that at some point that ill serves an administration which is embracing this. Now, maybe the answer is: This is really terrible and illegal and anybody that does it should go off to the Hague. But if that’s the case, then we should not be having the president saying that this is the greatest thing since whatever. That seems like a bad idea. Hmm, you’d think the government would have cleared that up before deploying all of those drones… It gets better! It’s cool and all when the U.S. military has a monopoly on drone technology, but what happens when a proper rival gets a hold of them? Do we, as Americans, want to straddle this line of legality ad infinitum, then find out that Rival Country now has ‘em, too? We occasionally write about drones because they’re quite neat: the amount of engineering and research and development that goes into drones is well worth any tech fan’s attention, if only for a moment. Maybe by the time Modern Warfare 13: Still Fighting comes out, the legal status of drones would have been cleared up.
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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The beauty of the Internet is that it demands instant analysis of every single development to come out of Peoria. The Nintendo 3DS —out of Kyoto, which is not Peoria, I’m afraid—was announced overnight, time zone permitting. It will debut at E3 in June, and it will forever change the way you and I… do something . Something video game-related, methinks. If one thing’s certain, it does mean that 3D is here to stay. I’m sorry. Say what you will about Avatar , but it made quite a bit of scratch. Then CES came around, in January, and every single TV manufacturer held presentation after presentation, laser light show after laser light show, trumpeting their fancy 3D TVs. None of the TVs are compatible with each other, so if you buy Company A’s TV and your neighbor buys Company B’s, y’all can’t get together to watch the World Cup in 3D—the glasses won’t allow it. The GameCube barely displaced any water—what did it have, those Metroid games, Resident Evil 4 , a couple of Mario games? It did well enough, but compared to the PS2 (and Xbox , I guess) the GameCube was sorta a disappointment. Granted, comparing any other video game system to the PS2 is like comparing a light bulb to the sun, but you can only beat what’s put in front of you. Wii ! Yup, Nintendo got tired of the hardware race, so it slapped a Bluetooth sensor bar to white shelled GameCube, called it Wii, then sat back and let the money a-roll in. It completely changed gaming. Now, rather than relying upon the “hardcores” to buy the latest Earthbound , Nintendo could convince Grandma and Grandpa, and your girlfriend, to play Wii Sports till their arms fall off. You’ll note that it took Sony and Microsoft a few years before they realized, “Hey, this motion control business is quite nifty. Maybe we should get in on it?” And they have! I have no time for motion control—you can pry my mouse and keyboard from my cold, dead hands~!—but clearly there’s money to be made here. If Sony and Microsoft can’t make money selling Fling Paint , then there’s no money to publish things like God of War and Fable . So this 3DS thing (here’s the full English press release )… Nintendo describes it as letting you play games “with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.” As someone who wears glasses—I’m blind as a bat, and nowhere near as cuddly—, let me be the nine millionth to say “Obrigado!” The 3D TVs at CES were largely pants, but I did get to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in 3D (thanks to some sort of Nvidia trickery ) a few weeks ago. It didn’t blow my mind or anything, but if given the option, provided it’s affordable—I’m not buying a $1,000 monitor and glasses and a new video card!—then why not? Nothing wrong, per se, with a little added depth as I try to left-click over a Bad Guy’s face. The 3DS, which should come out around this time next year, will be backwards compatible with your current DS library. My DS library is quite small ( Chrono Trigger and those Final Fantasy remakes), so I could give a toss about backwards compatibility, but I’m sure there’s those of you who have more than a few games, games that you wouldn’t want to “lose” when upgrading to the 3DS. Upgrading may not even be the right word, since the 3DS is totally new hardware. It’s not like going from the DS Lite to the DSi , or from the DSi to the DSi XL . The point is, this is Nintendo saying, “Hi guys! Remember how we made motion control cool, bringing it to the masses? We’re going to do the same thing with 3D now. Kthxbye!” And now we wait for Sony to announce a 3D PSP of some sort…
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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Technology can be difficult to use, particularly things like home servers. Dane-Elec plans to make setting up your own home NAS easy, using their myDitto home network server. Installation is intended to be quick and painless, utilizing USB keys to set up the drive rather then the standard CD. Honestly, I don’t see NAS devices as being that difficult to set up, but my experiences may be different from most users. The myDitto is a pretty standard NAS, with two drive bays, one of which is populated with a 1TB drive when the unit is purchased. The intention behind the myDitto is that you don’t have to install software to use it, just plug in one of the two included USB keys, and the software will start up and allow you to back up and restore files as needed. Admittedly, that could be considered easier then setting up a backup process on your home computer, but most the time you can just install the software, set up the schedule, and then forget about it. Full featured devices like the IoMega ix4-200d are just as easy to set up, it’s just a matter of perception. Dane-Elec’s myDitto isn’t available yet, but it’s expected to retail for $279 in a 1TB configuration. [via Gadgetwise ]
Posted by 010081
Tech
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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Like many FPS gamers of a certain age, I started with the WASD keyboard/mouse control system. As such, I have issues with using a controller to play games on a console, and really wish that someone would come out with a keyboard and mouse control system. There’s been a few that come close , and the XScorch 360 looks like another also-ran. Bannco, the company that makes the XScorch 360 also makes a similar controller for the PS3, so this isn’t their first time trying to make this kind of product. My concern lies in the video, and is twofold. First, the video says Halo Reach . Anyone who follows the Halo universe will recognize that the demo is running through on Halo 3 . Halo Reach isn’t even available as a playable demo yet. Second, the video shows some serious lag between the mouse movements and the on screen action. If this is the case, then it’s pretty much unplayable. It’s also possible that this demo is from the future, which is why it’s showing Halo Reach, and the lag is from the time-shift dilation effect. Suggested retail is $79.99, and is currently available from Bannco’s website , or at selected retailers. [via TG Daily ]
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
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The giant Gundam statue that protected Tokyo last summer was so cool that we covered it multiple times . In September 2009 , Bandai (the company responsible for the marketing coup) decided to retire Gundam once and for all. But five months later, in December 2009 , the city of Shizuoka (some 125 miles west of Tokyo) announced it plans to re-erect the statue in July this year. And now it has come to light that it will really happen [JP] (on the 24th of July, Gundam’s 30th birthday, to be more exact). Shizuoka is the city where most of the Gundam plastic models come from. But his time, Gundam will be armed with a gigantic “beam saber” (in 1:1 scale, as the 18m statue itself). Just like in the eponymous anime series, he will hold the saber, which will glow during the night, in his right hand. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see him wielding the saber inone way or the other when the statue is ready, too. Shizuoka is expecting Gundam to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city from July 24 until January 11, 2010, when the statue will be deconstructed again. Bandai claims the statue that was standing in Tokyo was visited by some four million people.
Posted by Kevin Huffman
Tech
Sunday, March 21st, 2010
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Watch out, Nicholas writing about cars, there’s bound to be errors! (No different from anything else, really.) It’s the McLaren MP4-12C , a £150,000 ($225,000) supercar that McLaren is actually positioning as “affordable.” I mean, an Xbox 360 Arcade SKU is “affordable,” maybe even a fancy gaming mouse when you consider what they do… Oh, I know who would consider this supercar affordable: people who play for Manchester City . The British supercar made its fancy debut yesterday, surrounded by Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button. Supposedly it’s the UK’s answer to the Ferrari 458—Italian, of course. It can go 0 to 60mph in 3.4 seconds. I believe that’s an impressive number. The exterior is one single piece of carbon fiber. That’s the new “cool” material, right, carbon fiber? You hear about it all the time on Top Gear. There’s no video of it in action, unfortunately. Someone call The Stig, or Matt. Whoever’s available.