Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Saturday, November 10th, 2007 |
There’s a select group of red flags that appear when a product is, or is dangerously close to becoming, vaporware, and we’ve seen just about all of ‘em when looking at McPerson’s I-TV. Apparently, this so-called do-it-all LCD TV first appeared last year, but now it sports a different look and a flashy website that will make you wish your speakers were inoperative. The set supposedly functions as a home automation controller, DVR, DVD player and Media Center PC, and just in case you doubted its prowess, this thing is somehow Viiv-certified and able to run OS X. Specs wise, you’ll find a 37-inch 1080p panel, dual 40-watt speakers (um, right), 7.1-channel audio out, built-in WiFi / Bluetooth, gigabit Ethernet and a slew of ports. Considering McPerson threw nearly everything in here save for the proverbial kitchen sink, it’s not all that shocking to find a £3,924.49 ($8,235) pricetag floating around the intarweb, and if anyone has any actual proof that this thing exists, feel free to dash our doubts in comments.
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Thursday, November 8th, 2007 |
This certainly won’t go down as the first underfloor robot we’ve heard about, but apparently, Sanyo’s aiming to use all these fantastic ideas to actually bring a product to market. The fairly attractive bot is designed to cruise underneath apartment buildings, offices and essentially any other place of residence to check for structural damage, and it boasts integrated sensors that enable it to avoid obstacles while on duty. Apparently, the creation — which can scoot about for just over two hours on a full charge — can beam back live video of what it sees, and landlords can zoom in on curious spots to find out if there are indeed any problems that need attention. Unfortunately, we’re hearing that it won’t be on sale till next year, but it shouldn’t cost much more than ¥1,000,000 ($8,736) when it finally arrives — which, by our estimation, is a small price to pay to avoid months of back problems and terrifying encounters with all sorts of rodents.
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Thursday, November 8th, 2007 |
No interest in a shiny new NAS from Buffalo? No worries, as the firm is hoping to play on your AV emotions too with a new duo of HD media streamers. Part of the tight-knit LinkTheater family, the LT-H90LAN and LT-H90WN each feature USB 2.0 connectivity, an Ethernet jack, analog / digital audio outputs and HDMI / composite connectors. Furthermore, the pair plays nice with a slew of files including AAC, MPEG2/3, WMA, JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, VOB, WMV, ASF, AVI and H.264, but unfortunately, DivX / XviD weren’t invited to the party. Nevertheless, those who still think this would fit the bill can snap up the wired-only LT-H90LAN for ¥21,000 ($184) or the 802.11a/b/g/n-enabled LT-H90WN for ¥31,700 ($277) later this month.
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Thursday, November 8th, 2007 |
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.
For nearly as long as the Internet has had value to average consumers, companies have sought ways to deliver its infotainment more conveniently. Early efforts such as WebTV, the hackable Netpliance i-Opener, and the MSN Internet Companion suffered from slow dial-up access and unsavory subscription plans. Portable wireless efforts using inexpensive distribution networks such as the paging network (Ambient Dashbard) or FM radio (MSN Direct watches) have struggled with information presentation interfaces and breadth of content.
While most of these devices have been marketplace failures, the quest clearly continues. Much of the attention yesterday around Android and the unveiling of the Open Handset Alliance revolves around getting a better Internet experience into the mobile phone, the clear payoff for Google.
Chumby, the open source, Wi-Fi-savvy, touch screen-enabled, accelerometer-equipped bit bag represented by what appears to be a mutant octopus, has been tossed onto this treacherous trail of Internet appliances. Chumby resembles a portable GPS device such as the TomTom Go or Garmin StreetPilot C330, but with a rear that hasn’t been to the gym in a couple of years. Instead of displaying directions, Chumby can display Flash Lite widgets from scores of content providers. These include, for example, movies from FimCritic.com, weather updates from The Weather Channel, “news†from MTV, and even SAT vocabulary words from fear profiteer Kaplan.
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Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 |
Not that anyone was actually keeping track, but Sanyo just announced the world’s largest capacity MP3 voice recorder.
That’s 8GB kid with a hefty ¥43,000 (about $375) price to match. For that you get up to 12 hours of PCM stereo recordings or up to 1,000 hours of lowly MP3 compression. The flash memory can also be divided into 4GB of encrypted recordings (accessed with a PIN) and 4GB of general purpose rants or music including DRM’d WMA tracks from your fave PlaysForSure music store. The ICR-PS390RM (aka, DIPLY TALK) launches in Japan later this month.
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