by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
By Andrew Liszewski
While fans of Arthur C. Clarke are still mourning his passing (myself included) his last book appropriately titled The Last Theorem will be published on August 1. Co-written by Frederik Pohl, at least part of the novel deals with the logistics and challenges behind staging the first lunar Olympics. (An idea that’s come up in previous Clarke books like ‘The Hammer Of God.’) Since Arthur C. Clarke often wrote about the practicalities of living and traveling in space (rather than just “wild fantasy”) tackling something as unique as a lunar Olympics seems like a fitting last work for the author.
And if you don’t think you can wait a couple of more days for the book to be released (Amazon has it listed as being available on August 5 for $17.82) the Telegraph has published an excerpt from the novel which you can read here.
[ The Last Theorem ] VIA [ Slashdot ]
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
I like The Simpsons, I’ve been watching it pretty regularly for years. Despite my love for the Springfield family, there is no way you would every find these Homer Simpson USB Monitor Lights anywhere near my desk.
Yes, Homer is funny and he does a lot of crazy stuff. But just the thought of trying to do anything on a computer monitor covered in these things makes my eye twitch. If you don’t mind not being able to see things like your tool bars and address bars, then by all means grab this USB lights for around $32.
[ DrinkStuff ] VIA [ GeekAlerts ]
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
By Andrew Liszewski
With titles like Nintendogs, Elektroplankton or the upcoming Wii Music, Nintendo has shown that they’re a big advocate of casual or ‘non-game’ games. (Or whatever you want to call them.) And while you might think this is a recent trend, from what I can recall, their first venture away from traditional games was a title called Mario Paint for the Super Nintendo. While it did include a couple of simple games that were basically there to teach you how to use the included mouse, Mario Paint was more focused on creative activities like drawing, painting or even animation. I definitely enjoyed Mario Paint as a kid, particularly when I needed a break from Super Mario World, and in my later years (high school-ish) it even came in handy for creating animated titles for a handful of video projects.
But what really made Mario Paint fun (for me at least), and what seems to have given the game a new life on YouTube, was the built-in song composer where you could lay out various classic Nintendo sound effects on a virtual piece of sheet music and then play back your musical creations. When I first got the game I actually wasn’t that interested in the song composer (the songs I made were usually pretty crappy) until I found a book that showed you how to use it to recreate actual songs like the Star Wars theme. After that I spent countless hours painstakingly laying out the sound effects while I tried to figure out what notes came next in a particular song. By the time the N64 came along, Mario Paint was all but forgotten, but last month I was surprised to find there was still a thriving community of people creating (and re-creating) music using the Mario Paint composer. To give you an idea of what it was capable of, and how awesome it really was, here’s a video of Michael Jackson’s Thriller as re-created in the MP composer.
And if you’re looking to kill some more time, here’s a few other impressive Mario Paint creations I found on YouTube:
Mario Paint – Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody
Mario Paint – Portal – Still Alive
Mario Paint – The Office Theme
Mario Paint – Gary Jules – Mad World
Mario Paint – The Beatles – Blackbird
Mario Paint – Haddaway – What Is Love?
And if this post has inspired you to make your own Mario Paint musical masterpiece, but you don’t have an SNES or a copy of the game, there’s actually a PC version (Windows or OSX) of the song composer called Mario Paint Composer which features all of the samples from the original game.
[ Wikipedia - Mario Paint ]
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
I am a DVR nut and record everything — even if I plan to watch it right then. I like to let the show get about 15 minutes ahead of live TV so I can skip all of the commercials. I also have kids so we tend to collect gobs of Dora episodes as well. When we start running out of space on the DVR, everyone gets nervous that their programs will be deleted.
Hitachi has announced some new hard drives that are aimed at the DVR user in its CinemaStar line. The more interesting of the two new drives is the CinemaStar 7K1000.B. This drive has a massive 1TB storage capacity and can hold 247 hours of MPEG-4 encoded HD video and support ten simultaneous data streams. My pathetic DVR drive can only hold 30 hours of HD programs.
In addition to the 1TB behemoth Hitachi also announced a CinemaStar 5K320 that uses CoolSpin technology. CoolSpin allows for a quieter and more efficient drive that Hitachi claims is one of the most power efficient and quiet hard drives available. Both of the new drives have mechanics designed to run 24/7 without failure and can operate in expanded temperature ranges to allow operation in fanless DVR designs. The CinemaStar 7K1000.B will be available in August and the 5K320 will ship in September. I would like to see Seagate bring its newly announced and sufficiently massive 1.5TB drive to the DVR market as well.
Via Gadgetoholic
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
According to Rogers Canada president, Nadir Mohammed, Rogers Wireless?s network virtually came to a grinding halt the day of the Apple iPhone announcement back in April reports Electronista.
Although the mobile business helped drive Rogers year-over-year quarterly revenue increase of 11 percent to $2.8 billion without the iPhone on sale, the company executive states that demand for other devices “slammed on the brakes” the same day as Rogers announced it would launch the Apple iPhone.
Apparently, demand for mobile devices remained calm up until the launch of the Apple iPhone, resulting in Nokia and Rogers both halving the price of the N95 8GB handset to $200.00 only a week before the iPhone launch in an attempt to stimulate sales.
The Rogers exec also says Rogers was taken by complete surprise with the opportunity to launch the iPhone, and said: “We didn’t anticipate that we would launch that device under any model this year.”
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
The science bod?s are always quick to pick up on new tech; they love finding novel ways of sharing, accessing, history changing, and organising how science tech comes about. Most ordinary people leave this kind of thing to those in the know scientifically wise.
However, science is getting a boost in the public arena due to the hungry appetite for exploration and insight on one particular mobile platform, and yes you?ve guessed it, the Apple iPhone.
The elegant optical grade glass and bevelled plastic that is the iPhone is making science on the go a cool and useful pleasing experience, what with the release of in excess of 500 3rd party iPhone apps.
And keeping this science fascination in mind, Seed Magazine has come up with the top ten iPhone apps for the scientist minded, which are?
1. Molecules
2. Starmap
3. Genetic Decoder
4. Jott
5. MIM
6. A Brief History of Genetics
7. Atom in a Box
8. MathU RPN Calculator
9. WeatherBug
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
By Andrew Liszewski
Tiny, ultra-portable projectors might be grabbing most of the attention these days, but what you gain in portability, you lose in image quality and brightness. So if you’re instead looking for a top-of-the-line model for your dream home theater, you can go ahead and add the Meridian 810 to your wish list. It’s the type of projector you need to plan and make room for, but with a resolution of 4096 x 2400 (or 10 megapixels) I think it’s definitely worth converting that spare bedroom into a dedicated projector room. The 810 uses specially calibrated light engine panels from JVC along with a 4000 lumen lamp to project an image on a screen up to 25 feet wide without any visible pixelation. And since most home theater enthusiasts only have access to 1920 x 1080 HD source material, the Meridian 810 uses four 1080p scalers working together to up-res anything from 480i to 1080p up to its full 10MP resolution. In fact I can’t really see a downside to Meridian’s latest offering, unless you have a problem dropping $185,000 on a projector. (Hmm… new house or new projector… new house or new projector…)
[ Meridian ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
LG Electronics and Dolby Laboratories Inc have issued a press release stating LG will be the first mobile phone maker to incorporate Dolby Mobile across the globe.
As we all know Dolby is a renowned technology dedicated to precision audio, Dolby Mobile is an audio processing tech, which delivers rich, vibrate audio to the mobile arena.
The president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communication Company, Dr. Skott Ahn had this to say: ?We believe this technology will raise the bar for audio quality on multimedia phones and expect Dolby Mobile to help us create a new trend in the mobile phone industry. LG is committed to providing our customers with the best features available and our new collaboration with Dolby helps us deliver on this pledge.?
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
I assure all you mobile gamers out there in iPhone gamer land are all aware you can play NES games on a jailbroken iPhone handset. Well apparently the famous NES.app has been updated with an accelerometer.
According to a Gizmodo report, the addition of the accelerometer will allow the gamer to go beyond that of the virtual on-screen buttons.
Ok, so all well and good, but will it actually help you score more points in Mario? However there are some obvious benefits from operating an accelerometer in racing games.
The accelerometer allows tilt facility, thus when you tilt your iPhone handset it controls the game in that direction, which should be great for driving games.
Gizmodo has a demo video for you to view below, and as you can see it?s fairly natural to use the accelerometer while playing Mario.
by Techno Witch on July 30, 2008
By Andrew Liszewski
While technically you can turn anything into a ‘fireplace’ with just a pile of fuel soaked rags and a book of matches, this Travelmate portable fireplace is probably a much safer alternative. While it looks like a briefcase, it’s actually made from black powder-coated steel with glass panels on the sides and weighs about 55 lbs, so it’s not exactly the lightest thing to carry around. But it’s completely self-contained and is smokeless since it burns bio-ethanol liquid fuel instead of firewood. And as an added bonus, if you do choose to use it as a briefcase, it seems like the perfect place to permanently “file” any incriminating documents you don’t want falling into the wrong hands.
It’s available from Unica Home for $3,300, and at that price you’d think they’d at least throw in a bottle of liquid fuel, but I’m afraid it’s not included.
[ Travelmate Portable Fireplace ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]