Some life has come to Sprint’s online store. They have now put not one but two WiMAX ready Android smartphones on its online store. One is HTC EVO 4G and the other is Samsung Epic 4G. The EVO 4G was out of job for few days because of lack of supply and is back to [...]
According to the U.S Department of Agriculture the meat which was been distributed by the Zemco Industries in New York at Buffalo was tainted, it is feared to cause virulent disease because of the presence of certain bacteria. It is estimated that the industry is said to have recalled about 380,000 pounds of deli meat. [...]
Ghana progressed into the quarter finals in Rustenburg on Saturday, when they beat the United States in a tense clash that went into extra time. The only African side left in the tournament after the group stages started the match confidently and before the U.S could get settled into their game-plan the Ghanaians struck. American [...]
In the first game in Group C on Friday the United States of America came back from 2 goals down at half time to draw 2-2 and deny Slovenia the win that would’ve ensured their passage into the Round of 16 with a game to spare. The US have a right to feel aggrieved at [...]
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There’s a certain amount of pride in seeing a country pump out something like the new F-35B Lightning II fighter jet. At $113.5 million per aircraft, it’s about as far away from the meaning of the word “inexpensive” as possible. It makes you think, well, if we can afford things like that , why can’t we afford things like this ? But, whatever. The entire purpose of this post is to watch a legitimately exciting video. So, let’s! The very first test flight of the aircraft happened yesterday , and lasted 14 minutes long. (Yes, there’s a certain irony in finding out about the latest American military technology in the British press.) That works out to $8.1 million per minute in the air. Granted, that’s a horrible way of looking at the aircraft, but it’s a fun stat nonetheless. The F-35B Lightning II has been in development since 2001, and it was originally promoted as an affordable option to keeping old birds like the F-16 and F-10A in the air. The marines will start using the jet, if all goes according to plan, in December, 2012. And now I’m off to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 , using more terribly expensive weapons to beat up Kirilenko .
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Last year, Omega released a special edition timepiece to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo astronauts voyage to the moon. In 1969, the men in the space capsule wore Omegas so the firm decided to recreate that bit of history with a contemporary product. But what if Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong hadn’t worn Omegas at all? What if they had worn copies? And Omega knew that the men weren’t checking their timepieces, but rather an off-brand in space all those years ago. Does the big historical release make sense? What if Porsche released a recreation of the famous convertible that James Dean perished in, but in reality, he had been killed driving a kit car? What if Paul Newman didn’t really wear a Rolex, but the firm released a tribute to a knockoff on the famous actor’s wrist? Guitar manufacturer Gibson is navigating similar waters with their decision to issue a recreation of a copy. The firm has released a number of celebrity signature models over the last couple of years. Some of the instruments have proven to be very successful, while others (like the Buckethead model ) have been a bit more questionable. One of the undeniably successful ventures was collaboration with former Guns n’ Roses axe slinger Slash that produced several interesting models ranging from the couple-a-hundred-buck Epiphone to an aged-replica instrument that was an exact duplicate of the guitarist’s own instrument (all the way down to the scuffs and cigarette burns) that ran about ten grand. Late last week, Gibson made a big splash by announcing the newest model, The Slash Appetite Les Paul . Branded as the “the axe that launched a thousand riffs,” the instrument is described as an exact recreation of the axe Slash wielded on 1988’s landmark Appetite for Destruction record, all the way down to the capacitors and the pots. Weird thing is, Slash didn’t play a Gibson Les Paul on that record. The comment gallery was all over the Gibson website when this news was released. As many others have pointed out, Slash in fact played a copy of a Les Paul on Appetite for Destruction . In Slash’s 2007 best-selling memoir (co-authored by Anthony Bozza), he writes, “It was made by the late Jim Foot, who owned Music Works in Redondo Beach. He made about fifty of those Les Paul replicas entirely by hand with no detail overlooked” (page 172). In other sources, a luthier named Chris Derrig is credited with creating the instrument. Regardless, it wasn’t Gibson. All of this raises interesting questions about the psychology of collectors and the purchasing influence of a iconic association. True Slash fans know that his LP wasn’t a Gibson, so they’re not going to be fooled. They’ll judge the new Appetite model on it’s own merits. Or, they know it’s kind of a weird duck in the lineage perspective, but it’s got their beloved tone and they don’t care about anything else. And what of the more general fans? It’s hard to accuse Gibson of trying to dupe consumers because surely if you’re going to plop down the $4,728 MSRP on the Appetite model, aren’t you going to do a little homework first? And if mom and dad are rich enough to spend 5k simply because Junior likes Slash’s top hat, then there’s not much hope for them. And then when you start thinking about the fact that the Les Paul is, by very definition, a celebrity signature guitar and that now you’ve got signature versions of copied signature version and so forth, then your head might just explode. It all gets very meta.
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Just hilarious. Apparently the U.S. intelligence community thought Wikileaks so odious that it labeled it a “potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army.” Good ol’ Wikileaks, bringing down the U.S. government . You can read the report [PDF!], and I do believe this qualifies as “irony,” on Wikileaks. You really only need to read the first paragraph to understand what’s going on. So, here you go! Wikileaks.org, a publicly accessible Internet Web site, represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army. The intentional or unintentional leaking and posting of US Army sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org could result in increased threats to DoD personnel, equipment, facilities, or installations. The leakage of sensitive and classified DoD information also calls attention to the insider threat, when a person or persons motivated by a particular cause or issue wittingly provides information to domestic or foreign personnel or organizations to be published by the news media or on the Internet. Such information could be of value to foreign intelligence and security services (FISS), foreign military forces, foreign insurgents, and foreign terrorist groups for collecting information or for planning attacks against US force, both within the United States and abroad. Never let it be said that CrunchGear is above copy-pasting a paragraph so you don’t have to download an icky PDF. Now, I don’t know how familiar y’all are with Wikileaks, but it’s probably one of the more important Web sites on the Internet—much more so than fun, silly things like FourSquare or Chatroulette. It’s a centralizied location where people can leak information that’s of value to the public. The U.S. military has been embarrassed by Wikileaks leaks in the past, including the publication of details about the battle of Fallujah and the possible violation of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty, also in Iraq. Lots of bad stuff about Iraq, it seems. The intelligence community tried—all of this went down about two years ago—to target Wikileaks but creating a calculated attack on the site’s credibility. Clearly it didn’t work~!
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Short Version: The AVerMedia MTVHDDVRR is a PCI Express video capture card with HDMI, component, S-Video, and composite inputs. The card retails for around $100 (you can find it for close to $90 online) and is capable of capturing up to 1080i video. Features: PCI Express video capture card HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite inputs Records up to 1080i resolution in MPEG-2 format, also records H.264 and iPod formats Includes low profile bracket and 10-in-1 input cable, plus on-card HDMI input Pros: Easy installation Good recording quality Relatively inexpensive Cons: Included media center software looks like it’s from 1999 No 1080p recording HDMI connection is wildly unpredictable Review: The AVerMedia AVerTV HD DVR video capture card (model number MTVHDDVRR) is for people who want to digitize footage of some type. Be it old VHS movies or camcorder tapes, video game console gameplay, or grabbing shows off of a DVR, the card handles most recording tasks pretty well. Setup is easy, provided you’ve cracked open a desktop and installed something before. The card face has two slots; one’s an HDMI port and the other is used for the included 10-in-1 AV cable that’s got component, S-video, and composite connectors. You can plug a bunch of different sources in at the same time and then switch between them using AVer MediaCenter. The included AVer MediaCenter looks and feels like very early DVR software. It’s got TV, Video, Audio, and Photo functions but you’ll just use the TV function to record stuff. The video player, audio player, and photo viewer are just fluff. Recording works well over anything but HDMI, which was a total crapshoot depending upon which device was hooked up. My Comcast DVR box caused the software to crash every time without fail (see photo below), my Xbox 360 would sometimes only record the sound but no picture, and a Gateway notebook with HDMI output worked fine every time. For reference, I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, the latest 64-bit Beta drivers for the card, and latest AVer Media Center software. I used the latest stable, non-Beta version of the card’s drivers for a while, too, and experienced similar results. Anything hooked up via component, composite, or S-video recorded just fine without any problems. So it’s likely an issue with HDMI’s digital handshake and could also have something to do with the whole copy protection thing (HDCP). After a while, I just stopped trying to hook things up via HDMI. Here’s a video of HDMI video capture that actually worked—a Gateway notebook playing a 720p video recorded at 720p by the card. Download the full-size original MPEG-2 file… Your format options for capturing HD video are MPEG-2 and… well, that’s it. You’ve also got H.264 and “iPod” settings but they max out at 720
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Another day, another electronic book reader not called the nook or Kindle gets a content deal. The Entourage eDGe has signed a deal with Newspapers Direct , giving it access to papers like The Daily Mail , Marca (!), and The Washington Post . This is a great day for people who were waiting to read Real Madrid gossip on the eDGe. The deal works via the Web site PressDisplay.com, which used to have a sponsorship deal with World Football Daily (well, World Soccer Daily at the time), a fine podcast based here in the good ol’ USA. You go to the site, and you get to pick and choose from among 1,500 titles. The way it was sold on World Football Daily was, read the sports papers from your favorite leagues around the world! It was pretty neat, actually, but a $30 monthly subscription to anything online almost seems excessive. That’s pretty much it. I do think the hard reality of electronic book readers these days is, unless you’re the nook or Kindle, you might as well not exist. Not that they’re the end-all, be-all, but because they’re backed by book-selling giants. via Shiny Shiny
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Just yesterday, we reported about Panasonic’s sales plans for their 3D devices in the US ( Samsung is ready , too). And today, Sony has announced [JP] prices and release dates for eight 3D BRAVIA TVs for the Japanese market. The company wants to sell a total of 25 million LCD TVs next fiscal year (a whopping 67% increase from its forecast for the current fiscal year that ends this month), with 3D TVs accounting for 10% of that number. The eight Sony 3D TVs are very nice too look at and appear to be less expensive than their Panasonic counterparts. Here’s all you need to know: LX900 series The flagship LX900 series consists of four models with screen sizes between 40 ($3,200), 42 ($3,900), 50 ($4,800) and 60 inches ($6,500). Buyers will get 2 pairs of active shutter glasses, wireless LAN, full HD, 4 HDMI ports, a USB port, video-on demand, and LED backlight. The 60-inch model, the KDL-60LX900, is pictured above. There’s also an “intelligent people sensor system”, which adjusts images and sound depending on where viewers are located. And through face detection, the TVs can even be “personalized”. For example, the TVs can detect if a child is sitting too close to the screen and display a warning message. And if nobody is in the room for a certain period of time, the TVs shut down automatically (“On/Off Conscious” function). The 40- and 42-inch models will go on sale in Japan on June 10, followed by the bigger LX900 models on July 16. HX900 The HX900 series consists of a 46- ($4,350) and a 52-inch ($5,250) model. For some odd reason, 3D glasses are not included in the price. These models are full HD, too. The HX900 series shares main specs with the KX900 (outlined above) but lacks the fancy sensor systems and wireless LAN. The bigger of the two models, the KDL-52HX900, is pictured above. Both HX900 models go on sale on July 16. HX800 Priced at $2,450 for the 40-inch model and $3,100 for 46-incher, the two models of the HX800 are the cheapest of all 3D TVs Sony unveiled today. The TVs feature LED backlights, full HD and all basic specs of the HX900 but come without wireless LAN or sensors. They also lack the 3D glasses, which buyers need to get separately. The picture above shows the 40-inch model, the KDL-40HX800. The two HX800 TVs are scheduled to hit Japanese stores on July 16. Sony wireless LAN adapter The HX800 and HX900 TVs do have (wired) LAN but buyers can also get the UWA-BR100, a wireless LAN adapter that’s to be inserted into the USB port of the TVs. It’s already available in the US for $79.99 . Sony Active Shutter 3D TV glasses and synchro transmitters As the HX900 and HX800 TVs don’t come with glasses, Sony also announced the extra-large TDG-BR100 in black and the smaller TDG-BR50 in blue or pink (price: $140 each) today. Then there’s TMR-BR100, a 3D “synchro transmitter”, which makes sure the glasses can actually display the 3D images your TV produces (price: an extra $60). Sony said they will roll out these TVs globally at around the same time, meaning Panasonic will have a head start of about 3 months in the USA and 2 months in Japan. Just like Panasonic, Sony is expecting the 3D business to evolve into an important revenue machine in the near future. Here’s a Sony Japan 3D promo movie released today:
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