Exploding batteries have become a punchline of late in the tech industry—I should know, having written a joke or two hundred in said sphere. Like an investigation of political corruption, the search for janky batteries is just getting wider. Two new players have entered the field today, neither of them unexpected.
First off, Lenovo has decided to issue a recall from Sony-made batteries from its ThinkPad notebook computers. Given that there have already been a couple incidents of ThinkPad batteries catching on fire, this is pretty much Lenovo backed into a corner. The recall will affect roughly 500,000 batteries—only about 168,500 of which are reportedly in the US, according to the Consumer product Safety Commission.
Meanwhile, the maker of all of these recalled batteries, Sony, has initiated its own global recall. Can you say "about time?" I knew you could. At the moment, the totals for batteries recalled is topping 7 million, and that's before Sony enters the fray. So even if you've already checked with your computer vendor about your battery, it may soon be time to check again with Sony. Think maybe they'd send us all free PS3s?
A blind camera isn't a gadget you can buy right now, and I doubt it's something that anybody would ever really spend money on, but it's far too fascinating to not inform our faithful Gadgetbox readers about it.
The device is called "Buttons" and it was designed as an art project by Sascha Pohflepp, a student at the Berlin University of the Arts. Though about the size of a digital camera, the box features no optics at all: just an LCD display and a big red shutter button. Pressing the button doesn't take a picture, instead starting a chain reaction that will eventually result in the displaying of a picture taken in the exact same instinct as your own picture.
The guts of the device are a Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone. When the button (cribbed from an Agfamtic 901) is pressed, the phone transmits the time to a special website that then searches Flickr for a picture taken at that time. When a picture is found, it will be downloaded to the phone and displayed. Of course, this might take a few hours or more, so it's not for the instant gratification set. Sometimes you have to be patient for art.
[via SCI FI Tech]
Sling Media's been busy. The company that brought "placeshifting" (it does for space what TiVo does for time) to the masses is releasing three new models of its Slingbox hardware: the Tuner, AV, and Pro. What's the difference? I'm glad you asked, as it will give me something to talk about for the next hundred words or so.
The Tuner model, which goes for $180, has support for analog cable or over-the-air broadcasts (which I still use for one of the TVs in my house). Meanwhile, the AV model (also $180) adds in the ability to control a set-top box like a DVR or a cable/satellite receiver. Finally, the slingerific Pro box goes for $249.99 and adds in support for multiple sources. You'll also be able to pick up a $50 HD adapter for the Pro that will allow you to sling downscaled HD media.
Best of all, support is imminent for both Symbian phones and the Mac. Sweet sweet webslinging, coming your way. Oh, and now could be a good time to pick up the original Slingbox, which is going for as low as $140.
[via Gizmodo]
I love only the very smallest, very shiniest of phones. Truth is that while I'd been coveting a RAZR for some time, I knew I ought to wait. Because something better is always just down the line...in this case, the KRZR. Now, I still don't understand what KRZR stands for (Krazer?), so I'm just going to call it the RAZRII, or if you must pronounce it, the "raz-ree."
The KRZR, which we've discussed before under its Canary codename is Motorola's sequel to the ever-so-popular RAZR. It's even narrower than the original RAZR, at 1.73" wide, and only slightly thicker than its big brother at a svelte 0.6". It kind of resembles the offspring of a RAZR and my beloved Motorola V60. And of course, it's got a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and a microSD slot.
Verizon's got first dibs on the KRZR; you can pick it up from them now for $199.99 with a 2 year contract, or $249.99 if you fancy only being hitched to VZW for a year.
[via Engagdet]
Remember that HD DVD add-on that Microsoft announced for the Xbox 360 in Japan last week? As predicted, it's coming to America too in mid-November. The price, however, is slightly more than the Japanese will be paying for it: $199. In addition, the drive will come bundled with an HD DVD copy of Peter Jackson's King Kong and a universal remote. Hurrah. Granted, it's still a $200 add-on to a $300-$400 console, but still. Together they're roughly the cost of a PS3, so go wild.
Microsoft revealed this news at its X06 conference in Barcelona today, along with a number of other announcements about both the Xbox 360 platform and Windows gaming. Among the big news was that Microsoft was releasing a Halo Real-Time Strategy game (explaining why they'd shut down a fan-made game in the last couple weeks), they're bringing a re-tooled Doom to Xbox Live Arcade, they've snagged a number of upcoming titles as Xbox 360 exclusives and, perhaps most impressively, they've gotten Peter Jackson's fledgling game studio to come onboard and develop an original title set in the Halo world—it's not Halo 3, in case you're wondering.
Suppose that explains the King Kong bundle though, eh?
Oh you clever technologists, you. What's better than KVM switch alternating between three different systems on one display? Why, one display that can handle three different displays simultaneously, depending only on your angle of viewing. In this case, those images are a map, a mountain, and a puppy. I'm crossing my fingers that it's got wider applications than that.
It's a pretty crazy technology; Sharp showed off a dual-angle display last year, using the same method, which involves a "parallax barrier," a device I was fairly certain only existed in Star Trek. I'm curious to know just how good these are; i.e., at what angle does the next image kick in and, like those lenticular pictures, is there a point at which you can see parts of multiple images? Not to mention that many displays have problems being viewed at an angle already, so will the images on the "sides" of the display always be off-color? I need answers!
[via Slashdot]
For those who think they might want to do some web-surfing on their new Nintendo Wii, come November, we're here to let you know that you'll be able to do so with the help of web browser Opera. Even better, Opera will be a free download for Wii users through next summer.
You'll be able to download the browser from the Wii's shopping channel until July 2007, at which point it will go on sale for a big old question-mark number of Wii points. Lest you think you're paying for a craptastic browser, there will be Flash and AJAX support built-in, and you'll be able to use the Wiimote to navigate.
I'll also take this point to correct a story that we ran a while ago, in which we claimed that first-party Wii games were region-free. Turns out that that is very much not the case: all Wii games are region-locked. Very sad, but hardly surprising.
We've complained in the past about the paltry movie-download services. Of course, that was pre-iTunes, but one thing all of the services lack is robust DVD-burning. Movielink and CinemaNow are the only sites that allow DVD burning, but in order to prevent piracy (or to, at least, make it more difficult), they do so in such a way that the resulting discs are widely incompatible with set-top players.
These two services are also at a disadvantage that the titles they release for burning are often weeks behind the DVD release of a title, making it a hard sell to go and spend your hard-earned cash on downloading something which you can't tote around on a convenient disc.
That's about to change, as CinemaNow and Universal Pictures have announced that they plan on letting you download "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" on the same day that the DVD is released, which was just this week. Not only that, but you'll be able to burn it to DVD, along with menus and special features.
Those last two are really the killers if CinemaNow does this right. One of the major complaints of the legitimate movie download services is that they offer comparatively little "bang for your buck." Why spend $15 on a movie download that is lower resolution than a DVD but also lacks all of the special features? "The Fast and the Furious" will go for $9.99, which is a pretty sweet price point, given that the DVD currently goes for $15 on Amazon. We'll be curious to see how it does, though we hope CinemaNow's cleaned up its DVD-burning act.
