Category: Gadgetry

The Pipeline, Marc Perton’s mainstream media watch column on Engdaget does a tiddy little wrap up of the inkies’ coverage of E3. He also talks about the Walt Mossberg comment in his WSJ column that’s creating predictable blog buzz. The highly-respected, influencial Mossberg “let slip,” in his Thursday column that Apple was working on “a media-playing cellphone and a home-media hub.” When Walt sez it, it must be true, as he’s likely to be in the know. Could this be a portent of the upcoming media event at the New York Apple store? I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Remember the New Products Announcement a couple of month’s back?

All you game freaks and gadget geeks out there likely know that this week is E3, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo being held at the LA Convention Center. The NYTimes has dispatched their resident game journo Seth Schiesel to blog from the event. Big media blogging. Remember the bad ol’ days when it just used to be called reporting?

Here’s how Seth distilled last night’s pre-game show at the Sony film lot:

1. There will be more playable PS3 games at the show than were expected by many people, myself included.
2. Nintendo clearly spooked Sony when it showed off the “gyroscopic” Wii controller at the Tokyo Game Show last year.
3. The PlayStation 3 is an incredibly powerful and capable machine, enabling fantastic graphics and rich gameplay.
4. Unless you have a fabulous connection with a major retailer, you will almost surely not be able to find a PS3 this coming holiday season.
5. If you somehow do find one for sale, you probably won’t be able to afford it, or won’t want to.

He unpacks these further at the New York Times… er… blog, ya know, right next to the ABC News podcast and the Universal Studios MySpace page.

To keep track of the E3 goings on directly, check out the E3 Insider site. Gamers may also find this is a good week to subscribe to the GameTrailers.com podcasts to get trailers, game designer interviews, and platform-specific “spotlights.”

[BTW: The image above is from Gran Turismo for the PS 3]

Unless I missed it before, manufacturers are just now getting around to something I thought we’d have seen a lot sooner: a Bluetooth (2.0) module in a “thumb drive/memory stick” USB form-factor. Just plug the EZURiO Bluetooth Adapter into a USB port and you have instant Bluetooth 2.0 wireless access. Works with XP, Windows CE, and Linux. The Bluetooth 2.0+EDR spec utilizes the Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) standard for high-speed wireless transers of up to 3 Mbit/s, so this stick can (theoretically) stream high-quality media. The maker, EZURiO, is the company that rose from the ashes of TDK Systems.

[Via The Inquirer]

Lifehacker has a decent list of printer tips and tricks. Like the laptop battery list, it’s a lot of common sense stuff, but at the very least, it should be a reminder of what you can do. Like, I almost always print out entire Web pages, wasting ink on all those color ads, graphics, and photos. You can just select the text you want to print and choose “Print Range” or “Print Selection,” or whatever it’s called in the program you’re in. And you can always cut down on ink usage by printing in Draft mode and/or ganging more than one page on a single sheet of paper (if you don’t mind reading tiny print).

Laptop Magazine has a short list of tips for increasing the life of your laptop battery. You may know some of them, but maybe not all of them. Like, did you know that you can increase battery runtime by some 10 minutes per level of brightness you dim the screen? Or that you should disable the Wi-Fi radio, Ethernet adapter, Infrared transceiver, Bluetooth module, and other devices you’re not using, in the Device Manager (Windows)?

All Chris Szarek wanted was to have the latest game box in the form of a Microsoft Xbox 360. What he got was a lemon, and then another one, and then another. Along the way, he had to endure a lot of the customer service frustrations we can all relate to when our tech goes bad and we’re forced to deal with clueless and/or surly “customer care representatives,” dropped hold calls, inadequate replacement gear, and all the rest of it. The difference here is that Szarek went online with his beefs and found an all-ears audience on Xbox forums and blogs. Things snowballed right on up to the top of MS’s Xbox division, with an eventual call from Xbox chief executive, Peter Moore. Szarek is now on his fourth 360 and hoping for the best.

A great story for anyone who’s had to deal with problems like this and wanted to shout out (or has): “I’m going to go online, go to the press, and tell so many people about this, I’m gonna smoke yo ass!”

Read the gory details here.

CNet’s David Carnoy details ten good reasons to be dissappointed with HD-DVD. To be fair, most of the dissing is really directed at the Toshiba HD-A1, but some of its shortcomings are likely indicative of other “reasonably” priced units to follow (and the tech in general).

The whole HD-DVD/Blu-Ray boondoggle just fills us with piss and vinegar: too much money to be thrown at unnecessarily complicated technology (which may end up on the losing side of a standards war), all of which will do nothing more than obsolesce our existing media libraries while offering us few improvements we really care that much about in the first place. Wake us up when CyberHome, or some other low-rent Asian glass merchant, is selling [whichever tech wins out] at our local Computer Hut, for a couple of Jacksons. Till then, color us crabby.

Our Federalist compadres over at TechCrunch posted this news of a company called Eye-Fi that is coming to market with a 1GB SD Flash memory card with WiFi (802.11g) built into it. This way, if you have an existing camera with an SD slot, you’ll have the ability to send images wirelessly from your camera (or one would imagine, any other SD-equipped device) to your computer. No more futzing with cables. Allegedly, the company plans to sell the cards for not much more than a regular 1GB SD storage card would cost. No word yet on a release date.

GelaSkins are a new line of vinyl protector skins for all styles of iPods. Designs range from fine art to street tags. The company claims the skins apply easily and firmly and do not leave residue when removed. They also say that, because the skins are very thin, they still allow the iPods to fit into existing cases and integrate with other accessories. Each skin comes with a GelaScreen display protector. The skins are US$14.95 each.

Mimoco, makers of limited edition USB flash drive “toys,” has announced two more offerings. HERO, the first in the “Flying Cat” series, is designed by UK artist TADO, and is available now. The second in the series, Jon Burgerman’s Corrupted_Data, is available for pre-order. Each will be limited to editions of 500. We imagine they’ll have hipster art and music preloaded on them like other Mimobots and come in chic packaging.