Best Gadgets World

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 7:42AM
Far from being the first time Time Warner Cable has upset its subscriber base, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office is pulling a Dee Snider and refusing to take the carrier’s lackluster service anymore. In a 25-page lawsuit, the city is alleging that the operator “caused major havoc and distress” two years ago when it “failed to live up to its part of the franchise cable agreement requiring that a company answer subscribers’ calls within 30 seconds and begin repairs of service interruptions within 24 hours of notification in 90% of its calls for service.” The suit claims that no more than 60% of customer calls were answered in time, and cable / internet service was said to be “so intermittent and inferior in quality that it was not much better than no service at all.” Not surprisingly, TWC representatives chose not to comment on the whole ordeal, but the outfit could face civil penalties of tens of millions of crisp US dollars in the case. Should’ve picked up the phone, TWC — it would’ve been easier than picking up this tab. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family]

[Image courtesy of Web 2 Concepts, thanks Scott]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

by Thomas Ricker, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 8:19AMAt long last and a full year and a half after Samsung first touted a 64GB Compact Flash card, Microdia steps onto the scene with the world’s first product. Almost. By the end of June, Microdia will begin shipping its 64GB XTRA ELITE CF card to the photog masses. The UDMA card brings a sustained read / write speed of 300x or 45MBps making it perfectly suited to high-burst rate DSLRs. Now if only we had a price to calculate the cost of our new 192GB SSD. Full press release after the break.

[Via PC Authority]

PMA, Brisbane, Australia, June 6, 2008, - MICRODIA Ltd. (MICRODIA), a world leader in flash memory technologies, has announced that mass production of the world’s first 64GB CF card will commence in June and has been accepting orders from around the world. The first shipment is expected by the end of June.

At 64GB, with a sustained read/write speed and data transfer rate of 300X or 45MB/sec, the XTRA ELITE CF card is making it the highest capacity and fastest data transfer compact flash technology available.

MICRODIA’s XTRA ELITE CF cards are designed to provide the world’s best solution for professional photographers and photo enthusiasts and with capacities from 4GB through to the industry leading 64GB, which can store over 19,000 high resolution images* .

As the elite flash memory cards available in the world, the MICRODIA XTRA ELITE UDMA CF cards offer the ultimate in performance, said Louis Leung, Founder and CEO of MICRODIA.

The MICRODIA XTRA ELITE 64GB CF card provides an excellent storage solution for high-profile professional photographers through its reliability, durability and speed.

Capturing, viewing, uploading and transferring large image files is now faster, simpler and more convenient for users.

Being first to market with the 64GB CF is yet another example of MICRODIA’s strength in flash memory technology.

MICRODIA continues to place heavy emphasis on R&D to develop the industry’s highest capacities and fastest speeds, exemplifying our core philosophy of helping users get the best optimised data flash storage performance for all their digital devices, Mr Leung said.

Mr Leung said MICRODIA chose Australia in which to launch the 64GB CF card as an overall demonstration of its commitment to its emerging markets.

We have only been in Australia for a matter of weeks, and decided the best way to demonstrate our capabilities and intent to offer the world’s best flash memory products here was to launch this product at Australia’s leading professional photography trade show, PMA.

As a new brand to Australia, but as the world’s second largest flash memory company in terms of production capacity with a 17 year history, globally launching the 64GB CF card in Australia at PMA will give us tremendous early momentum in this market.

“It will help position the MICRODIA brand in the minds of Australian consumers and retailers and provide them with a broader choice of flash memory cards,” he said.MICRODIA launched its full product range in Australia at last week’s CeBIT trade show in Sydney, and National Sales Manager Lee Jefferies said the initial response from the trade, the public and professional photographers had been strong.

The most common response from people we spoke to was “is a 64GB CF card even possible?’” we took great pleasure in telling them that not only was it possible it was actually available, but only from MICRODIA, Mr Jefferies said.

MICRODIA’s ultra high speed XTRA ELITE cards are built with the company’s proprietary EPM (Enhanced Processing Management) Technology for improved efficiency and performance, thereby delivering some of the fastest sustained read/write speeds in the industry.

XTRA ELITE cards are also based on Single Level Cell (SLC) NAND Flash technology, which stores one bit per cell and uses an optimized controller combined with large block NAND technology to achieve high data transfer rates. Compared to Multi Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash technology, which allows each memory cell to store two bits of information, SLC NAND Flash technology provides excellent performance well suited for professional use especially those with demanding speed requirements.

With a solid commitment to R&D and continued technical advancements, MICRODIA will continue to play a major role in the flash memory industry.

About MICRODIA

MICRODIA is a global leader in flash memory technologies and the world’s 2nd largest manufacturer of flash memory cards. With its heavy emphasis on R&D, MICRODIA leads the way in bringing the latest and most advanced flash memory technology to market ahead of the competition. Since its inception in 1991 as a magnetic data storage media manufacturer, MICRODIA has earned a reputation for quality, reliability and technical excellence. Today, the company provides a full range of Flash Memory Data Storage Solutions, Portable Multimedia Devices and Wireless Connectivity Solutions. MICRODIA’s global coverage extends to many corners of the world and continues to penetrate existing markets and expand into new territories. For additional product information, please visit MICRODIA’s website at www.microdia.com.

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Filed under: Digital Cameras, Storage

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 11:52AM
It takes some serious game to rise above the legions of mediocre DIYers out there and stand tall as a true legend. Judging by the video posted up after the cut, James Houston can now consider himself one of the elite. Somehow, this cat managed to tackle the nearly impossible task of remixing Radiohead’s Nude without defacing it entirely (read: merging bits and pieces of the tune into a 4/4 arrangement and calling it a day). Instead, he utilized a host of aging hardware (Sinclar ZX Spectrum, Epson LX-81 dot matrix printer, HP Scanjet 3c, etc.) to create a rendition that even Yorke could admire. For fans of In Rainbows and mesmerizing music videos alike, there’s a must-see waiting just below.

[Via Hack-A-Day, thanks Eliot]

Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

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Filed under: Misc. gadgets

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 5:55PM
We already knew that Philips had plans to release the low-end touchscreen X800, but now we know just how low it was willing to go with this thing. Confirmed are the lack of 3G, EDGE (which still shocks us), and WiFi. Meanwhile, the 2.9-inch, 240×400 screen, only supports 256K colors, and the phone’s browser is your basic WAP 2.0/xHTML. It does support Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, though, so that’s a plus. Other bits: it will allow for expansion via microSD, support MP3 ringtones, and packs a USB port. In short, not a whole lot to see here. Follow the read link for a full spec list.

[Via BoyGeniusReport]

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Filed under: cellphones

Ok, this is pretty amazing and somewhat scary in how much Sci-Fi today’s scientists and engineers are turning into reality. RiSE is a robot that can literally climb walls. RiSe adjusts its shape to deal with the curvature of the surface it’s on, and has multiple sensors on each of its six feet as well body to sense and compensate for inertia and surface material.

Boston Dynamics is developing RiSe with funding from DARPA in conjunction with a number of universities. Take a look at the amazing video over at the Boston Dynamics website.

Posted in Miscellaneous

AU Optronics (AUO) has just announced the world’s first Convex Curved Display that features a curved radius of 100mm with TFT LCD process on glass substrate. This will require a special thinning technology, resulting in a unique designed curved backlight unit that can maintain uniformity in brightness and contrast on the convex curved surface. AUO’s new convex curved display technology is touted to bring TFT LCD technology up to the greater level in terms of color performance and image quality. Some of the practical future applications include watches and dashboards, but it will take a while before those become mainstream.

Press Release

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The internet pornography industry is massive, of that there is no doubt, and the USA hosts 89% (244,661,900) of them. This is a staggering figure, and one that first points towards a degrading society, and then to what impact this is having on the children of today. Statistics show that the average age that a child first sees pornography on the internet is 11, and that within the 8-16 age bracket 90% of children have viewed porn online. So is it really surprising that children are putting naked photos of them selves online? Not really.

In La Crosse, Wisconsin, a 17-year-old boy recently was charged with child pornography, sexual exploitation of a child and defamation after he posted pictures of his ex-16 year old girlfriend on his MySpace page, but is now being prosecuted for the above offenses. But this is not a singular event, news stories of young girls (and boys) sending graphic pictures to girl/boyfriends are growing exponentially, and the main problem is that if the relationship breaks up the pictures quickly get spread around and within minutes the whole world can see them.

Obviously this is a big problem, and various governing bodies are trying to tackle this, but who is to blame? The parents for letting young people view this stuff, the people who run these websites or the internet in general? Or just the sometimes, it could be the idiot teenagers themselves?

Read [Porn Statistics]

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by Thomas Ricker, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 3:53AM
You’re looking at a very Futurama looking man-robot from the latest mashup to hit the industry. This one has a brain. It’s the result of research from Riken and BSI-Toyota whose goal is to develop robots and automotive systems driven by neurotechnology akin to that of our carbon-based brains. The research is expected to result in more sophisticated auto-safety technology, mind-controlled machinery, and a new breed of baby-shoe wearing robots for domestic friendship and health care. Fortunately, this wobbly tyke has a long way to go before he begins bending the steel girders required to produce the forced-suicide booths of our doom. First steps after break.

[Via Impress]

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Filed under: Robots, Transportation

However caring and compassionate you are in real life, according to new research, things tend to turn nasty when you log onto the internet. The BBC says that an annual report into web habits by internet guru Dr Jakob Nielsen shows that most people want to use the internet for finding information, and so get frustrated and angry at the amount of pop-up ads and interactive content on offer - it’s too distracting.

Video content which was designed to make websites more user-friendly and interesting often make sites slower to load instead and people get really steamed up about it - pretty much the opposite of what was intended. (I wonder if that’s what drives some of the abusive comments bloggers get?)

Nielsen concludes that the reason search engines are so popular is that we are all impatient: we want our info, and we want it NOW. No messing. “Basically search engines rule the web,” he says.

[Image: Apple]

by Thomas Ricker, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 4:47AM Reuters Italia is reporting that the 3G iphone will be announced by the Italian carrier TIM (and presumably the rest of Europe) on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Better yet, Reuters’ source within TIM says that the 3G iPhone will be available immediately, Tuesday at the latest. Availability is still rumored for sometime in June for Italy. It’s been awhile since Apple did an announce-and-launch on the same day. And quietly distributing 3 million or so iPhones around the world even with Apple’s stealth is no easy task. And we still haven’t seen it, or anything from Apple hit the FCC. At this point, the biggest surprise of WWDC would be for Jobs not to announce a 3G iPhone.

Update: After some initial confusion over the translation, Reuters says that it will be announced on Monday or Tuesday.

[Via ToTouch, thanks Giovanni]

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Filed under: cellphones