Computer Information - myOddPc
How would you change the Apple TV (take 2)?
Filed under: Features, HDTV, Home Entertainment
Yeah, the Apple TV (take 2) update took
a bit longer than promised to actually
arrive on the scene, but now that it's available for existing ATV owners to chew on, we're interested in hearing from its toughest critics. Rumors of Apple finally enabling some sort of HD movie / television show download service had been making
the rounds for what seemed like ages, and after months of waiting for a move to be made, take 2 made its
debut under the shadow of the MacBook Air.
Aside from finally offering up
1080p support and giving users the ability to rent HD flicks (though only some with Dolby Digital 5.1), the v2.0 upgrade changed up the look and added in Flickr integration. Granted, the
innards here have remained the same, but we're not just interested in finding out what you adore / detest about the newest update. Oh no -- we're also curious to know how you think the existing hardware is handling its new duties. Has anything slowed down? Are you still (or were you ever) satisfied with the port assortment? Have you found yourself itching to downgrade? We know, software updates as substantial as this one
hardly ever never leave everyone happy, and while
we've done some
sizing up of our own in regard to HD quality, how would
you like to see things tweaked for take 3?
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Movie Gadget Friday: Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets
Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.
Last time on Movie Gadget Friday, we entered the 8th dimension with
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, but this week, we're setting the dial back to the 1978 version of the Seventh Millenia in the original Battlestar Galactica. Filled with feathered 70's haircuts, insect Ovion aliens, and, of course, Cylons, the movie is an underrated, campy classic.
Muffit II Robo-DaggitCreated as a robotic replacement to a daggit, Muffit II is a life-size, artificial intelligence prototype developed by Dr. Wilker on the Battlestar Galactica. Muffit II has an integrated visual response system, designed to help train the robotic daggit. By scanning a picture of a person into its circuits, Muffit II actively responds and interacts with them. The out-of-the-box system is able to handle basic moves such as sitting and wiggling its ears. However, with time, the robo-daggit can learn to be smart, performing such tasks as disarming Cylons by biting them in the leg while humans try to escape rapid fire. We're patiently awaiting a Muffit II vs.
Roboquad throw down challenge. More after the break.
Continue reading Movie Gadget Friday: Battlestar Galactica (1978)
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Insignia photo frame virus much nastier than originally thought
Filed under: Displays
Ugh, we were already sick of digital photo frames -- and now it looks those now-discontinued
virus-ridden Insignia units from Best Buy and several other models produced in China were carrying a much nastier trojan that we'd
originally heard. According to an analyst form Computer Associates, the trojan, called Mocmex, is able to block more than 100 types of security and anti-virus software from killing it, and bypasses the Windows firewall to download files from remote locations, spreading them randomly over your hard drive and any portable storage device you plug into your PC -- like, for example, a digital photo frame. The trojan is apparently set to only steal gaming passwords at present, but CA says it's capable of stealing nearly any information on your machine, and thinks it might be a test for a much worse virus yet to come. Infected frames have come from Sam's Club, Target and Costco, in addition to Best Buy, so we'd say to avoid picking one up until this mess gets sorted out -- or, you know, forever.
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Digital TV upgrade vouchers to go out soon
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
The digital TV transition might be
confusing sales clerks nationwide, but if there's anything that most people understand, it's cold, hard cash -- and if you
applied for one of the FCC's
switchover coupons, you might want to start checking that mailbox: the $40 vouchers are being mailed out soon. 9,700 stores are already set to accept the coupon for
approved digital TV tuners next week, with another 7,000 to come online in the next few months. Of course, only over-the-air television viewers are affected -- cable and satellite customers will continue to
be swindled mercilessly by Comcast get TV with no disruption at all when analog broadcasts are switched off.
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Chumby gets big firmware update, general public now invited to buy
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Following a so-called "insider's release" last year that targeted early adopters with
beta software running on final-spec hardware,
Chumby has finally completed and rolled out a somewhat massive firmware update for the plush lil' buggers that adds significant functionality -- significant enough, in fact, that they're now being sold disclaimer-free to all comers. Besides a long, what's-what list of bug fixes, the real draw in the new firmware is fairly comprehensive support for a variety of internet radio services, a feature that previous builds technically supported but had no user interface for (they are Linux-based, after all, and totally hackable). So yeah, if a cute touchscreen with an open-source platform, Flash player, and integrated speakers is just what the doctor ordered, you can pick one up now without the worry of pre-release software getting in your way for $179.95 in black, white, or "latte."
[Thanks, Kurt]
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GeForce 8 GPUs to acquire PhysX support via software download
Filed under: Gaming
Good news for folks with a GeForce 8 GPU and lots of questions about how the recent
Ageia acquisition would affect them: your current card will be receiving
PhysX support. When NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang was questioned in a recent conference call, he noted that the firm was currently "working towards the physics-engine-to-CUDA port," and it could be delivered as "a software update" to every card that's CUDA-enabled (read: all of the GeForce 8 GPUs). Sadly, the bigwig still wouldn't say when to expect the release of the first PhysX port, but we really can't imagine it taking too awfully long now.
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Lenovo's X300 gets splayed in detail
Filed under: Laptops
Sure, you probably caught a
brief glimpse of the X300's innards earlier this morning, but the photos waiting for you in the read link below are what we nerds
really crave. Some lucky cat in Los Angeles managed to wrap his paws around Lenovo's forthcoming machine, and rather than booting it up and keeping it a secret, he whipped out the pliers and went to work. You know the drill -- tap that link below for all the guts 'n bolts you can handle.
[Thanks, Loran M.]
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Videogames Doomed for a 'Comics-like Ghetto'?
At the Newsweek blog LevelUp, journalist N'Gai Croal wrote this week about the sometimes-precarious position of videogames in popular culture. The frustrations of legislators, lawyers, and 'pro-family' groups aside, the popularity and record sales of the gaming industry would seem to indicate rising stock for gaming as an art form in the US. And yet, there are some folks who see gaming as just another fad, which in some time will be equal in popularity to comic books or tabletop roleplaying. N'Gai starts to form his response by noting that learning to play videogames is considerably easier than developing an appreciation for literature of any kind. He then goes on to note that the (oft-cited) lack of weighty subjects in gaming is more due to the 'pop culture' nature of the hobby than the medium itself. "Popular fiction generally outsells literary fiction. Summer blockbusters generally out-gross arthouse films. Is this any different from, say, Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat out-NPD-ing BioShock last year, or Madden doing the same to Shadow of the Colossus in 2005?" He discusses some ways to address that, but do you have any solutions? Or are games doomed to be the playthings of adolescent boys for the rest of the century? (And yeah, I resent the 'comics ghetto' label too.)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Active Data Exchange Receives $100,000 State Grant for the Launch of the Lehigh Valley Emergency Web Network as a Community Model for Local Emergency Information
Senator Lisa Boscola announced today that she has allocated state funding to launch the Lehigh Valley Emergency Web Network (LVEWN) Project, http://emergency.lehighvalleynow.com/, which provides residents and organizations in the area with comprehensive information during crisis situations in a timely and accurate manner. The Lehigh Valley Emergency Web Broadcast Network is driven by Active Data Syndicator, software developed by Active Data Exchange that enables broadcasting of digital information to multiple web sites. "In this age of mobile browsers, search engines, and intense electronic communication, it is critical that there is a web-based broadcasting system in place that allows individuals to access complete and accurate information in the event of an emergency using the web," explains Susan Yee, CEO of Active Data Exchange. (PRWeb Feb 15, 2008)
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/02/prweb701513.htm
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The Knol Hypothesis
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton sends in his latest, which begins like this and continues behind the link. "When Google's VP of Engineering announced their proposed Knol project, where users can submit articles on different subjects and share in the AdSense revenue from the article pages, he didn't mention "Wikipedia," but practically everyone else did who blogged about it. Here's what I think will happen, if Knol is implemented according to the plan: Even though it won't technically be a "Wikipedia fork," it will quickly become equivalent to one, with a "gold rush" of users copying content from Wikipedia to Knol articles hoping for a piece of the AdSense dollars. But I submit this will be a good thing, especially if bona fide experts in different fields join the gold rush as well and start signing their names to articles that they've vetted."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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