Archive for the ‘Weird Gadgets’ Category:
Not everyone wants their hand held when PC gaming
One of the bigger stories this past week was OnLive heading to the UK. The service promises to make PC gaming more accessible by hosting all of the hardware—you simply supply a broadband connection and a Web browser, and you’ll be playing the likes of Mass Effect 2 in no time. If it works as described, great. There’s nothing wrong with exposing PC gaming to more people.
What concerns me, and maybe “concerns” isn’t even the right word, is that the art of PC gaming will go away. It’s an art based on choice, a choice that will go away if all we’re required to do is click the OnLive favicon on our bookmark bar. Today’s PC gamer can, if he so desires, spend $700 on a video card in order to eek out a few more frames per second in the latest first-person shooter. Or he can spend half as much and still blast zombies away to his heart’s content.
Today’s PC gamer can spend weeks at a time researching processors—Intel or AMD, Core i5 or i7 or Phenom?—for the two-second thrill of setting it on the motherboard. Then there’s overclocking—how far can you push your fancy new processor? Change the voltage here, alter the frequency there, then hope to God that Prime95 doesn’t melt a hole in the floor.
Will a hard disk drive suffice, or will I be better off moving up to a solid state drive?
All of this sense of adventure disappears when using something like OnLive, and that’s something that matters to plenty of PC gamers. Maybe even more important that any abstract sense of “fun,” there’s something to be said about being totally in control of the hardware being used to grind from level 1 to level 80.
So by all means, make PC gaming more accessible, just please recognize that there’s plenty of people who like it because it can be such a commitment.
Zelle 1337 jewelry, for the lady who pwn3d ur lyf
I’m not so sure the average non-geek girl would love necklaces and earrings made of resistors, fuses, and floppy disk parts but there’s no harm in trying. Besides, I suspect real geek girls would definitely squeeeeeee at these.
All of these handmade pieces are created out of used electronics and are actually quite striking. The best part? Each comes with an offical “Certificate of Autheticity” that looks like the EULA that came with Windows 95.
Zelle, the elegantly minimal tech jewelry brand that has elevated electronic components into wearable works of art has expanded its vision to celebrate the inherent beauty of technology in its haute couture take on the art form with their 1337 collection.
The smaller pieces cost about $30 while the larger pieces are priced and available by request. While I’m not totally down with some of these pieces, a low-cut dress and maybe that massive diode necklace could get anyone’s Elementals boiling. Obviously you could also make these yourself, but who has that kind of time what with Super Mario Galaxy 2 coming out and Steam on Mac.
Yeah, that’s IDE ribbon cable.
Celebrate National Photo Month with free stuff from CrunchGear!
The month of May, named after the Greek goddess Maia, is National Photography Month. What better way to celebrate than to buy a whole bunch of “Happy National Photography Month!” cards at Hallmark. What? Hallmark doesn’t sell any such cards? Okay, Plan B: what better way to celebrate National Photography Month than with a CrunchGear contest!
We have three lovely prizes to give away, each to a different lucky winner. Sorry gang: we only have one of each to give away, and we want to make as many people happy as we can. That’s the whole point of National Photography Month, in case you didn’t know. Oh yeah, and the contest, like National Photography Month itself, is only open to U.S. citizens. (It’s not World Photography Month, after all!)
booq: Boa flow M/XL
Full-featured laptop backpack designed to accommodate all the needs of the creative professional
- Ballistic nylon exterior with water-repellant coating
- HD Foam laptop compartment for optimum protection
- Intelligent interior layout optimized for laptop accessories
- Side pockets for phone, music player, or water bottle
- Oversized YKK high-performance zippers
- Boa flow M (13-17″ MAC, 13-15″ PC) / Boa flow XL (17″ Laptops)
- Retail price: $199
To win the booq Boa, simply take a photo of your current camera bag.
Joby: GorillaPod SLR
Revolutionary line of tripods designed to affix cameras of any size to just about anything
- Versions to fit point-and-shoots to large professional cameras supporting up to 11 pounds
- Two dozen flexible leg joints bend & rotate for maximum tripod flexibility & functionality
- Rubberized rings and foot grips ensure a steady shot on any surface or structure
- Compact and lightweight design featured in bright 7 colors! (original GorillaPod)
- Complete line of attachments & accessories to satisfy even the most serious photographer
- Retail price: $40
To win the GorillaPod, simply take a photo of your current tripod.
Lensbaby: Composer
Ball and socket lens that delivers smooth selective focus photography
- 50mm ball and socket manual lens allows the user to tilt it to a desired angle and then focus using the manual focusing ring
- Locking Ring on the lens allows you to lock in the desired angle for extended shooting sessions
- Comes with the Lensbaby Optic Swap system, which allows the user to have an endless variety of looks and styles (optics sold separately)
- Magnetic aperture rings can be removed and swapped by using the Aperture Removal Tool
- Compatible with Canon EF (EOS), Nikon F, Sony Alpha A / Minolta Maxxum, Pentax K / Samsung GX, and Olympus E1 / Panasonic Lumix DMC cameras
- Retail price: $270
To win the lensbaby, simply take a photo of your current camera lens.
Sounds easy, right? Just take a photo of the thing you’re going to replace when you win this contest. In order to put a little spice into things, we require that your photo have something orange in it. Be creative. But remember, your photo won’t be considered if it doesn’t have some orange in it somewhere.
As stated above, we’re going to have three different winners, but you’re welcome to submit a photo for each of these items in order to increase your chances of winning something.
What do you do with the photos you’ve taken? You can send them to contest@crunchgear.com with a subject line of “National Photo Month”. Or you can tweet them with the hashtag #cgphoto. Or you can post them to the photo site of your choice and link to them in the comments.
We’ll pick a random winner for each item on Monday afternoon, to give everyone plenty of time this weekend to celebrate National Photography Month!
Sony burns Air Force by killing Linux on the PS3
Remember that 2,300 unit PS3 order that the Air Force put together to build a supercomputing cluster? Well, file this one under “unintended consequences” because when Sony killed the “other OS” option on the PS3 they definitely made things difficult.
They didn’t make the 2300 units worthless, since the Air Force has decided not to upgrade to the latest firmware, but what happens when the hardware fails? Any units sent back for repair would no doubt be brought up the latest firmware version before they are shipped back, and any new units would be locked down as well. A statement released by the Air Force expressed their disappointment, and mentioned that they are aware of several class-action lawsuits against Sony as a result of this change.
[via Tom's Hardware]
Review: Cadence Wrist Rocket digital sports watch
The Cadence Wrist Rocket is a digital sports watch, with a bit of a twist on the standard square design. It’s everything you expect in a sports watch; it’s water resistant, has a stopwatch, countdown timer, an alarm, and a resin body and strap. It’s quite a large watch, but that’s not really a bad thing because that makes the display easy to read.
It’s the display that’s worth noting on the Wrist Rocket, it’s very easy to read, despite the fact that it’s curved slightly at the top and bottom. I’m particularly impressed with the dot-matrix style LCD, it really makes the Wrist Rocket stand out from the other watches in this market segment. Over all the Cadence Wrist Rocket digital watch is just your standard LCD sports watch, but the large case, unique styling, and the $49.99 price make it a good value. I’m wearing one right now and I’ve really grown to like it.
In fact, I like it so much that I want to share one with you! Cadence was kind enough to agree to give one away to our readers, so if you want to win one, just leave a comment at the bottom and you’ll get your chance. Make sure you leave your email address so I can get in touch with you if you do win. The contest will run until Monday, May 17th at noon eastern time so make sure you enter before then.
DIY: Put your P&S digital camera into something a bit more classy
This is an interesting DIY project, and it makes sense aesthetically. Take the insides of your point and shoot camera, and put them inside of a classic film camera. A worthwhile project for sure, but rather difficult. Be aware, it’s kind of difficult to call this a DIY, as the video is not in english. Luckily we have Google Translate, and the author also made a web page.
[via Hack A Day]
CrunchDeals: $499.99 Gateway laptop
Seriously? $499 for a Win7 laptop? It’s basically the NV5387u, a pretty rough old girl with a Turion II processor and 4GB RAM but the bugger runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Ultra Supper Club Bill’s Choice++ so you’re good in that respect.
While I wouldn’t have recommended buying this fairly powerful but fairly underwhelming laptop back when it came out in February – heck, I didn’t even know Gateway was still in business – I suppose you can enjoy it for $100 off its current online price.
Get the discount right here, friend.
Sony NEX-5 and NEX-3 hands-on reports hit the web
The Sony NEX-3 and NEX-5 leaked-out late last night and surprised the Internet with their down-right sweet styling. Well, Sony has gone and made the pair official, announcing the NEX-5 will retail for $650 with the NEX-3 fetching $550. The cameras have been in the works for some time and just as the press release was crossing the wires, the big camera sites published their hands-on reports. These aren’t full reviews, but they definitely have some insight that cannot be gathered from a press release.
Another remarkable feature of the Sony NEX-5 as well as the NEX-3 is the lack of a built-in flash. Although both cameras come with a standard compact mountable flash that can also be mounted on the so-called Smart Accessory Shoe, this is an extra action that I would rather not have to do. On the other hand, practice will show how often flash will truly be necessary. The ISO values go up to 12.800 and when the high ISOs are of high quality, this may largely make up for the lack of extra flash.
As a result of its whittled-away design, there’s an odd quirk to the NEX-5’s design – a lump to ensure the camera can be mounted on a tripod without fouling the lens. However the attachment area is distinctly minimalist – barely 3/4″ (19mm) square – and therefore unlikely to provide a positive connection with the tripod. This certainly looks like one area where the paring-down process has gone too far.
The only significant variances between the two cameras are HD video capture—the NEX-3 will be limited to 720p video capture using the MP4 codec. That’s fine for sharing in HD on YouTube, but the NEX-5 can create larger 1080i60 videos using the higher quality AVCHD codec. It can also be throttled down to use the lower quality MP4 codec. Many consumer grade video camcorders can capture video in these resolutions and codecs, but none offer an image sensor even close to the size of the NEX cameras – therefore, image quality from the NEX cameras should blow the others out of the water.
More than any other interchangeable-lens camera I’ve seen, the Sony NEX-5 seems optimized for the point-and-shoot upgrader; not necessarily because it’s easier to use than any other or that it’s priced particularly low, but because it’s full of constraints that will probably bother enthusiasts a lot more than snapshooters. That’s a pity, because the video quality, noise profile and performance are really appealing.
Smallest among the new line’s competition, the Sony NEX-5 is also light. Its magnesium-alloy body weighs just 10.2 ounces (0.63 pound, 288g) with battery and card, and adding the lens raises the weight to 17.7 ounces (1.1 pounds, 502g). By comparison, the Panasonic G2 weighs 21.8 ounces (1.36 pounds, 618g); the Olympus E-P2 weighs 19 ounces (1.2 pounds, 539g); and the Samsung NX10 weighs 21.5 ounces (1.3 pounds, 610g) each with kit lens, battery, and card.
Good idea? Internet voting coming to U.S. elections for military, overseas citizens
This is probably a case of where the idea is sound but humans will no doubt muck everything up. Thirty-three states here in the good ol’ U.S. will allow military and overseas citizens to vote via the Internet beginning with the mid-term election in November. This is being done in part to ensure that overseas voters’ votes, you know, count. I don’t know how many of y’all have ever lived overseas, but it’s probably easier to find Jay Leno funny than it is to obtain a ballot, then have it count. It’s 2010 and we still don’t have simple things like voting figured out. Amazing.
In steps the Internet to the rescue, right? The idea is to have these voters (including military personnel) vote via the Internet in some capacity. Now, whether or not that means you’ll be able to e-mail some overseas county clerk, as it were, with the subject MY VOTE and the body I VOTE FOR CANDIDATE A, HE’S COOL AND STUFF is completely unknown. There’s been a bunch of trial programs to figure our exactly how the votes would be cast. Do you set up a VPN for votes to pass through? Maybe a special Web site with super fancy authentication? No idea.
The problem with this, of course, is that the Internet is wildly insecure. Any teen with a copy of ettercap could, if he wanted, snoop an entire cafe’s Internet traffic while sipping a latte. Don’t think SSL will protect you, because it won’t! I’ve seen it effortlessly defeated so many times that I’m hesitant to even check my throwaway Gmail account on a public connection (airport Wi-Fi, at the café, heck, even at the TechCrunch office in New York). Unless I can see the pipe coming from the street into my modem, then to my router, I have zero control over who or what could possibly “hack” my connection.
When you’re dealing with something as important as voting, you can guarantee that there will be people looking to cause trouble—it’s just human nature (which is partially why I want “I, Robot” to actually happen).
Internet voting: a solution to a very real problem that unfortunately will never work as well as you’d like. Maybe it would work if people weren’t jerks…
Gadzooks! Why, this miniature cannon is most delightful!
Ah, parlour cannon. Who among us has not built one in the idle hours between chase and whist? I myself have fashioned one out of the mouthpiece of an Oriental “Hou-kah” and the base of a common telegraph console. It absolutely devastated the jellied quail I had brought for supper. But this is the tiniest parlour cannon of them all — yet still packs a ruddy knuckle, what? That ale receptacle was quite disintegrated. Yes; capital.
[via Reddit]
