Authentic early ’60s soul and beat music is on the decks when ultra-contemporary English R& B singer Hunter is in the house. He’s so cool and smooth you might mistake him for the real deal–and he is: 21st century soul-style!
Originally posted at Crossfade
Deny it all you please, but the 3D revolution is here. LG is just the next brand in the growing line of consumer companies that are caving to the three-dee pressure, and according to Choon Lee, Vice President Director at the Digital TV Research Lab, LG will be launching at least one 3D TV next year. To quote: “3D TVs are the next big step for [LG]; we will try with one or two markets in 2009.” Regrettably, that’s about all the details he would give up, stopping short of confessing to which markets would first see the devices and when exactly during the course of next year they would launch. It’s cool, though — gives us ample time to get used to wearing those hideous glasses around the house without tripping over foreign objects.
Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment
LG to launch “one or two” 3D TVs in 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Kentucky Fried Chicken: in case you’re worried Hanoi might be too exotic for you.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CBS Interactive)
Editor’s note: This is the first in an occasional series of dispatches by CNET editor and Crave contributor Dong Ngo, who is spending the next month in his homeland of Vietnam. He’ll be looking at the country through his now nerdy and Americanized eyes, in particular exploring how people there do the sorts of things he does every day in the States: play video games, use a cell phone, and try to stay safe online.
HANOI, Vietnam–There’s a standing joke that goes like this: “What do you call an Asian who gets lost? Disoriented.” Not really funny, but if you want to meet one Asian who gets lost in his own neighborhood, that would be me.
Originally from Hanoi but now living in San Francisco, I visit friends and family in Vietnam as often as I am financially able, which is not as often as I would like.
The country has been changing so fast, every time I go back to the place I still consider home, I experience a little reverse culture shock. This time is no exception.
It took 20-plus hours of travel time to get here from San Francisco. The first morning in Hanoi, jetlag woke me at 4:30 a.m. and I decided to get up for a jog. In the States this would be super early; over here, nobody is remotely impressed.
The moment I left the house, it felt somewhat like a national holiday, noisy and bustling. Restaurants and makeshift breakfast places selling sticky rice, pho (noodle soup), and other delicious morning edibles were just being opened. Some were already serving their first patrons.
On the sidewalks were already people everywhere–running, walking, playing badminton, doing Tai chi, or just simply sitting and looking. There were scores of scooters and bicycles, and once in a while, small trucks weaving back and forth, carrying vegetables, chickens, or other food-related items in bulk, honking all the while.
(There are many things you will need to get used to when in Vietnam, and one would be the honking. Nothing personal, it’s just that people want to make sure their existence on the street is well-noticed. And considering the crazy nature of the traffic here, this totally makes sense.)
It was, indeed, just another day.
…
It’s a tough economy and you have already given up on shopping, eating out, movies and junk gadgets.
Still not saving enough money? Take a second look at your cellphone. The average cellphone user ends up spending at least $50 a month on his bill, which means there’s plenty of room in there for some scrimping. While there may be some crazy texters and manic talkers around, it is likely most of us use less than what we paid for.
Here are five ways to slash your cellphone bills and save more of that scarce moolah:
Unlimited isn’t always good
For cellphone companies average revenue per user is a key metric and getting customers to sign up for larger monthly contracts helps drive it up. While Sprint, Verizon or AT&T’s unlimited voice and texting package for $99 may seem great, it is likely you will use just about half of what you paid for. How much are you really texting? What about voice calls? Do you yap that much? Sure, if you run over your usage it can be expensive but a lot of us don’t.
As a first step analyze your cellphone usage. Try Billshrink, a new website that claims to offer suggest the most optimal plan. Instead of the $40 plan go for the $20 if that’s all you really need. Less is more.
Go prepaid
Service providers like long term contracts because it locks you in as a customer for two years. While contracts may seem to offer the best phones, it can get pretty expensive. $200 for a phone and $60 a month on contract adds up to $1640 over two years.
Check out prepaid phones that you can buy for just about $15 and use with a card. If you are not a power user this could really help cut your bills down. Some service providers even offer rollover minutes on their prepaid plans with the condition that you top up a minimum every month. Prepaid plans work well for cell phones users that talk 200 minutes or less a month, says the Telecommunications Research & Action Center, a non-profit organization. And if you have more than once cell phone in the family, try substituting one pre-paid cell phone for at least one post-paid cell phone, they suggest.
Cut out the bells and whistles
Do you really need that data plan? Take another look at your phone too. Its nice to have the latest phones but you can get cheaper phones if you are willing to give up on having the current talk of the town. Cut out downloads of ringtones, games and other online services that your service provider may be doing a hard sell on. Cut! Cut! Cut! Tough times call for tough measures.
Don’t cut the cord just yet
Just about 16 percent of Americans have only cellphones and no landlines. That means for the rest 84 percent, it is time to take another look at the black box sitting at your house or work.
When at home use your landline phone instead of burning up minutes on your cellphone. Instead of calling friends and family during your commute, head home and use your land line. Long distance calling? Don’t touch that cellphone!
Buy online
Websites of most service providers offer an extensive range of phones that many times come free with a one-year contract. Some of those phones could cost about $50 in-store with a contract or even more. If you really want your latest phones try sites such as Wirefly or Amazon.com for some good deals. In-store isn’t always the best.
Photo: (Milica Sekulick/Flickr)
Amazon has slated the next version of its popular Kindle reader for the first quarter of 2009.
The second Kindle, which will be longer, thinner and more ergonomically friendly than its predecessor, is tentatively scheduled to go on sale "early next quarter," sources told TechCrunch.
Shortly after releasing Kindle 2.0, Amazon will push out a student version of the reader with a larger screen — more suitable for displaying textbooks. The student version will hit stores sometime in the first half of 2009.
Previously, speculators predicted an October 2008 release of Kindle 2.0, but Amazon quickly dispelled such rumors. It’s understandable why Amazon is taking its time and being careful with the new Kindle: The reader is the company’s first attempt at a hardware device. However, many other companies have similar products in the works that could steal the Kindle’s thunder. For example, Plastic Logic is working on a touchscreen reader that already looks more promising — and it’s due first half of 2009. Also, some are already arguing that consumers are preferring the iPhone as a book reader over the Kindle.
Amazon Kindle 2 Slated For "Early Q1" [TechCrunch]
Photo credit: troyh/Flickr
The new 2.2 update for the iPhone brings a lot of great new features. Google Street View, direct viewing, listening and download of podcasts and a few small but neat tweaks. The iPod Touch also got a 2.2 upgrade, but it lacks one headline feature: Street View. Why? To answer that, we should take a look at the different goals Apple seems to have in mind for the two products, and also at arbitrary, software-based product differentiation in general.
On launch, the iPod Touch was immediately labeled the “phoneless iPhone”. There were some other hardware differences (camera, volume buttons) but the description was essentially correct. If didn’t want a contract, or if you lived outside the US, you bought the Touch.
As the two lines matured, they grew apart. The 2.0 iPod Touch gained built-in support for the Nike+ system, a dongle which sits in your sneaker and tells the iPod how far you have run. The iPhone 3G got GPS. These were hardware differences and made sense: The way Apple uses GPS pretty much mandates an always-on Internet connection to be useful, and the iPod Touch, lacking 3G, needed another way to track a runner’s distance.
But the lack of Street View is a software diference. Why wouldn’t Apple include it in the Touch? You might say that, without an Internet connection in the street, it would be useless, but my computer can access Street View and I never take it outside. In fact, out in the street is arguably the least useful place for Street View — you can just open your eyes and see the real street in front of you.
This seemingly `arbitrary crippling of devices isn’t unique to Apple. Camera makers do the same thing. Take Canon as an example. All Canon cameras use a version of the company’s DIGIC chip to process images. But while the high-end (more expensive) cameras have RAW support, auto-bracketing and higher shutter speeds, the cheaper cameras don’t. Because it’s a lot cheaper to make a lot of the same chip, Canon simply switches the extra features off in firmware. Otherwise, all the products in the range would start to look very similar.
In fact, most camera manufacturers do this, and Canon is one of the more open ones. Because it makes public the inner working of parts of its software, hackers can re-enable many of the disabled features. Take a look at the Wired How-To Wiki to find out how easy it is.
So why is Apple playing this game? After all, the iPhone and the iPod Touch are clearly quite different already — one is a phone with a contract, the other isn’t. Our guess is that it’s not a devious scheme to make iPod Touch owners upgrade to the iPhone, although Apple conspiracy nuts will probably think otherwise.
We think it might simply be about usability. Why add features that will simply not work a lot of the time? As it is, the Maps application will cache some data so it is still available without a connection. It’s limited, but if you scroll around the map a little before you leave the house, you at least get something you can use later. But if the Touch did have Street View (and transit times, and walking directions) then these options would have to be deactivated when offline.
If they were left on, this would clearly be confusing for the user. And adding the ability for the iPod to change its UI depending on a network connection would be both inconsistent and also require a branching of the code base to achieve it. This may sound trivial, but if the iPhone development team is too busy to offer copy and paste, then forking the code to add extra features to the iPod Touch is clearly going to be a low priority.
Yes, I’d like to have Street View, but I don’t expect to get it soon. As a long time Apple customer, I’ve learned that I have to do things the Apple way, whether I like it or not.
See Also:
The iPod is often associated with fitness — the iconic white headphones dangle from the the ears of joggers around the globe. As a smoker, I have often felt left out. Sure, I have an iPod, but what good is a portable entertainment device if you never leave the house except to walk, wheezing, to the nearest bar for the first carajillo of the morning?
Thankfully, I can now take my old iPod and fashion it into a case for my cancer-sticks, just like the one above made by Tara of the Tulip Society blog. Tara doesn’t smoke, but made this case from a dead, dropped iPod with a cracked screen to “to impress people at bars and such.”
She actually painted the screen black, presumably to symbolize the tar-coated lungs of a committed puffer. I’d keep it clear to see the fags inside. I’d also hinge it for quicker access — the picture seems to show that Tara’s mod simply snaps together like a vanilla iPod. Still, who knew that an old classic iPod was just the right size for holding cigarettes? There even seems to be space at the top for a small lighter.
This is a lot cooler if you smoke [Tulip society via BBG]
It’s not available for the United States…yet. But over at Game l Life, the crafty Chris Kohler has gained access to Nintendo’s newest, Japan-only portable. Here’s a nugget of what he had to say about it:
How many Nintendo DSes are cluttering up your house? Need another? Yes,
you do: If you’re a fan of the company’s products, get ready to part
with another two Benjamins and upgrade to the Nintendo DSi. While it
might look roughly like the current DS Lite model — a little trimmer,
slightly longer — it’s a whole different story under the matte-white
exterior. Here, let’s take a look inside.$190, nintendo.com
You can read the rest of Kohler’s review of the Nintendo DSi right here. Oh yeah. there’s video of it too, starring yours truly and one Mr. Kohler.
(Photo by Jim Merithew for Wired.com)
Want to lose friends and annoy people? The $80 e-Volve gadget shoulder holster is just for you. Like the model in the photo, you’ll probably develop an icy demeanor and lose all your hair after years of being socially ostracized and beaten to a pulp because you carry your iPhone around like it’s a gun. No one can call it a "man purse" if it’s inside-out, though, right?
Product Page [eHolster]
Photo: eHolster
Powerline adapters generally don’t work with power strips or surge protectors, needing to be plugged directly into the wall socket. This would be a problem if you have only one power outlet at the remote corner of the house where you want to put that home server.
The HDXB111…
Motorola has come out with a phone, the Cliq, targeted at a specific market and utilizing the power of Google’s Android platform. It is the first of a family of new Motorola phones, where the Cliq stands at the patronymic fore. As far as features go, Cliq is doing all right. The phone is complete [...]
For Microsoft Outlook users unfamiliar with Xobni, pay attention. The venture-backed company’s first piece of software, not even two years old, is a powerful advancement for e-mail organization, Outlook style. Wednesday, the new version of the tool is available, Xobni1.8 which provides additional power. In addition, the previously free plugin is offering an advanced version, [...]
Ever since June of last year there has been talks of Verizon and Alltel merging, but now it is official. Verizon wireless has now become the largest mobile carrier with over 83 million subscribers. Alltel will continue to run under the Alltel name until a complete merger of the two brands later this year. Now [...]
Pioneer has released a statement saying they have developed a Super Multi-Layered Disc that will play using current Blu-ray players. The disc consists of 16 layers that can hold 25GB of data each, which totals a 400GB Disc. They plan on having a read-only disc available by 2010, a rewritable by 2012, and a 1TB [...]
One of the biggest reasons most Windows users are sticking with Firefox over Google Chrome is its extensibility—and the most popular Firefox extension by far among Lifehacker readers is Adblock Plus.
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