Archive for September, 2008
We’ve heard the rumors before. Nintendo has been planning on making a new Nintendo DS for quite some time. Now we’ve got yet another report that this will happen within the year. This information comes directly from Nikkei and the details sound pretty excellent. Apparently, the newer model will have a built in camera that will be used quite a bit in upcoming DS titles. The WiFi card will be revisited in an attempt to increase the range that the new Nintendo DS can offer. Apparently the estimated price for this system is $189, but then again nothing is confirmed.
It would be interesting to see how true this information is when we get closer to the end of the year.
What’s that you say? Pre-Order sold out? If you were looking to pre-order the G1 for launch day through T-Mobile, you apparently weren’t looking hard enough. The window to guarantee one of these bad boys on launch day is officially closed, but don’t fret! Rumor has it that only 60,000 units were made available for pre-order. That’s expected to be only 10 percent of the total number that HTC is looking to put out by the end of the year. Many are making the bold assumption that you’ll be able to walk right into a T-Mobile store on October 22nd and simply pick one up.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
If you think way back, or just view our old post, you may remember us talking about the Clarion MiND. The whole debacle focused mostly around a company giving yet another name to something we already know as a MID. But it’s been quite some time since we’ve heard from them, so here’s the big news: The ClarionMiND is scheduled for a release in both the US and Canada this upcoming November. If you’re over in Europe, you’ll have to wait until January 2009.
The ClarionMiND is equipped with an Intel Atom CPU, a 4.8 in screen running at 800 x 480 resolution, 512mb of internal RAM, a 4GB SSD, 802.11b/g Wifi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, and it even has a built in SiRFstarIII GPS module. The entire unit should last you fully charged about 2 hours on the normal battery and 4 on the extended. The price? $649.99
Really? Other companies are still out there making PMP’s? We’d have figured that besides Creative, all but Apple had hung up their hat for the day. Apparently nobody told SmartQ. Their latest device, the TAO, is actually not too shabby looking. It’s got a nice 3.3 inch 480 x 320 HVGA screen offering 262,000 colors and is a code beast (it’s capable of handling MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, APE, AAC, WAV, PCM, and ADPCM for audio. Xvid, Divx, FLV, WMV, ASF, 3GP, MPEG, DAT, and MP4 for video). All of this running on a handy dandy 500mhz Blackfin processor.
This device seems to be China only as of now, but considering it’s only around $100 for the 4GB model, we may see it making it’s way over sooner rather than later.
We’ve seen a lot of crappy games and accessories come out for the Wii since it’s launch not that long ago, so it’s hard to get excited about anything not monumental for our little white system. However, it looks like the guys over at Thrustmaster have come out with two of the hands down coolest Wiimote accessories to date. The first accessory is the epicly amazing dueling lightsaber pack. Considering The Force Unleashed has a multiplayer mode for the Wii, this pack makes sense. There are over 17 LEDs in each device. The second is what they call their Dual Trigger Gun. This puts every gun accessory to shame and even has a holster for the nunchuck.
The lightsabers will run you $34.99 for the set while the gun is only $17.99.
For those of you wondering why your Xbox Live and Zune service are currently down, we’ve got some bad news for you. There are no updates at all coming for the Xbox Live or Zune service with the schedule maintenance time. That means that all those lovely places you like to visit like Zune Social, Zune.net forums, the Zune Marketplace, and all Xbox Live services will be offline for up to 48 hours (just 24 for the Xbox Live time).
It’s always amusing how upset people get when it comes to simply maintenance time. For once, there isn’t anything hidden behind this. Microsoft just decided to make sure things start working a little better.
After three long years, Rockbox 3.0 is available for iPod, iRiver, Sansa, iAudio, Gigabeat, and Archos media players. This open source firmware offers up a lot of different options for those of you looking to spice up your media player. Features include a codec support for over 15 different formats, 5-ban parametric EQ, MPEG video support, a multilingual interface, a butt-load of video games (including the shareware version of Doom), plus the firmware can talk to you through it’s spoken interface which is pretty handy. If you’re using this firmware on an iPod, you also no longer have to use iTunes to sync everything together.
Listen up gadget fans! The Guinness record holding EVOLTA batteries are making their way to the United States. These batteries were only available in Japan, but will find their way to our shelves starting this October. You can purchase these wonderful AA or AAA batteries in four ($5) or eight ($9) packs.
Netflix has been working their magic to greatly increase the service that they provide to their users. Their goal has been to increase the amount of streaming content to their service, so their sights have been set rather high.
So far, it’s clear that Netflix is looking to work with CBS and Disney, but they’ve already started working with NBC. After the brand new season premiere of Heroes aired on Monday, Netflix was getting ready to unveil something pretty amazing. You can now directly stream every Heroes episode through the Netflix service one day after it airs.
Hopefully this is the type of thing that will catch on, allowing us to watch all of our shows in this format. With CBS and Disney on the way, there will be plenty of streaming content coming to Netflix in the next few months.
Oh and don’t forget that you’ll be able to stream Netflix onto your Xbox 360 relatively soon!
Interested in getting the first Google Android cell phone but don’t have T-Mobile service (or the desire to switch to them)? It looks like the G1 falls under the same ruleset the all other T-Mobile devices do, allowing you to request an unlock code from them once you’ve had an active account for 90 days. That means that unfortunately, even if you buy the phone outright and unsubsidized, you can’t have it unlocked for you by T-Mobile.
Considering the openness of the google Android platform, many assume that this will be a moot point shortly after launch that there will be an app that is capable of unlocking the G1. We’ll have to wait and see how everything unfolds as we get closer to the launch date.