Electronic Toy World

Posted Jan 26th 2008 8:06AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Gaming
Finally, you can relive your really good youthful memories via the Wii and its latest Virtual Console addition: the Sega Master System. That’s right, if you happen to be nostalgic for a certain Z80A kind of action — and you live in Japan — you need only look to Nintendo’s cash-cow for help. Starting this February, you can play Fist of the North Star and the hallucination-inducing Fantasy Zone to your heart’s content, though just like other VC offerings we expect to see more games and more territories included later on. What’s important for Nintendo to know is this: the sooner we’re deep in a game of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, the happier everyone will be… so step on it.

[Via Digg]

Posted Jan 26th 2008 4:05AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Laptops
There’s nothing quite like hearing a group of network talk-show hosts heaping praise on a piece of technology they barely understand to jumpstart your day. We think you’ll agree that listening to Matt Lauer loudly declare “It’s awesome!” and watching Meredith “You’re blowing the whole schtick” Viera vigorously mime licking the new MacBook Air is pretty wretch-inducing stuff — though Al Roker informing us that if you want the SSD, you’ll only have to pay “a little bit more,” was definitely one toke over the line. Thanks for ruining our breakfast guys. Every breakfast.

Watch the video after the break. We’ve included the crew’s earlier encounter with the iPhone just in case you needed your memory jogged.

MTV TV Shows for PSP

The Portable PlayStation from Sony will receive new content in the near future, that will come in the form of UMD, also known as Universal Media Disc, which is a format made specifically for the PSP that didn’t become very popular.

So in order to give more fame to the potential format, Sony decided to start offering TV shows in UMD, most part coming from MTV programming. With that being said, here are some of the upcoming shows: Beavis and Butt-Head, Viva La Bam, Jackass, and Wildboyz. As you can see, this is true MTV material made available to target some PSP users.

New Mobile YouTube

The first mobile version of YouTube was put live on November 2006, but the Google-owned company has released a new and improved version, yesterday.

The main difference is the quantity of content available, on the past version, there wasn’t much, but in the recently launched model, there are “tens of millions of videos”. Another new feature is the community functions that didn’t exist before, like adding friends, posting messages in special boards, and more.

Believe it or not, another important change is the exclusion of advertisement, in other words, this mobile YouTube won’t have ads. According to Mr. Walk, from YouTube, this move was made in order to gain more audience, and to turn YouTube users, into mobile YouTubers.

But not everything is good in this announcement, the small notes mention additional charges made by your mobile service provider, that is, unless you have an plan with unlimited data transfer, otherwise it might be too expensive to watch YouTube on the go.

PS - http://www.m.youtube.com

Sources - Reuters and NYTimeso

Guest post by Tiago of Gadgetizer

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Posted Jan 26th 2008 6:01AM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Misc. GadgetsIt’s no secret that Apple Legal is, ah, aggressive when it comes to protecting its various fruit-flavored intellectual property, but a company called BlueAir just filed a lawsuit accusing Apple’s lawyers of outright harassment over BlueAir’s AirPOD air purifier, pictured at right. Seems BlueAir has been trying to register a trademark on the product, and instead of filing an opposition with the USPTO based on consumer confusion with the iPod, Apple’s attorneys have just been sending BlueAir angry letters and threatening massive legal fees. Of course, that’s pretty much what lawyers do, but BlueAir’s asked the court to step in and rule definitively on the subject before pursuing their trademark application any further. Seeing how protective Apple’s been of the “-pod” suffix in the past, that could lead to some interesting rulings — we’ll be keeping an eye on this one for sure.

Disclaimer: Although Nilay is an attorney, super guy, and snappy dresser, he’s not your attorney, and this post is not legal advice or analysis and should not be taken as such.

Posted Jan 25th 2008 10:23PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
We thought the SmartQ T5 was a solid little player with decent codec support when we first spotted it back in August, but SmartQ’s gone and updated it to the T5-II Deluxe Edition, featuring a new video chip that supports TV-out, AV-in, and the RMVB codec, which supports 1024×576 video. Unfortunately, the screen resolution remains at QVGA, but the actual panel’s also been bumped up to display 16.7 million colors. Too bad we probably won’t ever see this bad boy in the States — why is it we only get the crap?

[Via thegadgetsite]

Posted Jan 25th 2008 11:58PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Cellphones
What would you do if the US patent office gave you the go-ahead on a far-reaching, non-specific application filed for a “mobile entertainment and communication device”? If your answer was that you would immediately draw up lawsuits against almost every major electronics manufacturer that even looked at a smartphone funny, you get a cookie. Yes folks, as impossible as it is to believe, the holders of the aforementioned patent have just sued Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, AT&T, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, and Samsung… amongst others. So eager was this company to sue, in fact, that legal papers were filed a day before the patent was granted, and subsequently had to re-submitted. The real sucker-punch here is that the patent simply combines a list of prior technologies jumbled into one product, a practice which has recently been ruled against by the Supreme Court. Still, we doubt it will stop the holders from trying to nab a few dollars in settlements, staying the work of real innovators, and generally making a mockery of our patent system. Bravo!

[Via Slashdot]

No, these striking images weren’t made using Photoshop trickery. They were actually taken using a unique process which involves placing photographic paper onto an object, placing them both on a high-voltage plate, then cranking up the juice.

Referred to as Kirlian photography, the technique dates back to a 1939 discovery (by a man named Kirlian, of course) that when an object is placed on an electrified plate, tiny coronas around the item can cause photo paper to expose in unusual and beautiful ways. Over the years, the effect has been co-opted by various new-age charlatans and snake oil salesmen with claims that the images were indications of some sort of paranormal “aura”. What a bunch of hokum.

Up until now, there wasn’t a good way to produce your own Kirlian images without building your own homebrew high-voltage rig, risking life and limb in the process. The $250 Kirlian Photography Device lets you to make your own electrified images without having to hack together your own. The metal imaging plate can be used with any 4X5 color or black & white sheet film and paper or even Polaroid film. Different film types and frequency adjustments create a virtually limitless array of image effects. You’ll need a 4×5 camera to use this out-of-the-box, or you can spend an additional $99 on a transparent plate which lets you capture the images with a standard 35mm or digital camera.

Now keep in mind that this thing isn’t a kid’s toy. It’s a serious electrical device, and you actually have to sign off on a disclaimer form before you can buy one. For some reason, I doubt these things are UL-approved.

read more about:

arc, electricity, image, kirlian, photo, voltage

Apparently the CEA are estimating that the Super Bowl will push purchases of roughly 2.4 million HDTV sets, and other surveys expect as much as 3.9 million. CEA’s “Sports & Technology” survey was conducted in conjunction with the Sports Video Group.

Everyone wants to watch the Super Bowl in the very best way that they can, and that means on a HDTV! Many people are expected to rush out and buy a HDTV for this viewing experience.

Before you go and spend your money on a new HDTV, we would like to offer you some information which might help you decide.

There are two main HD formats, 720p (1080i) and 1080p, where higher is better, but it can be typically understood that 1080p only makes and positive difference in sets over 32-inches. Also worth noting, Super Bowl XLII is only going to be broadcast in 720p. So the extra pixels from the a 1080p set won’t help all that much.

For watching sport, look for a HDTV with a fast response time, the fast the better, which will mean less motion blur, anything under 8ms-10ms should be okay. Many new HDTVs have image processing enhancements, such as Sony’s Bravia Engine, or Samsungs’s Pixel Plus (and many others) these help to enhance the image quality, colors and contrast for the best viewing.

Finally, some new HDTVs, now feature a 120Hz high frame rate technology, which adds in extra frames, between the normal frames to reduce motion blur even further, and eliminate any judder effect on image pans and fast moving action.

Over all:

• For HDTVs over 32-37 inch, a “Full HD” 1080p set can help image quality.
• Look for a fast response time.
• Image enhancing engines.
• 120Hz, can help quality.

The above are not necessary, as any HDTV will be way better than a standard TV, but if you want the best, these can help.
Press post

The Philips 47PFL9732D is well priced for it’s large 46-inch LCD screen. It is in fact Philip’s best priced model which features 120Hz high frame rate processing engine and the impressive Perfect Pixel HD image processing and enhancement engine. These two feature alone can vastly enhance the picture quality of both standard and high definition feeds.

The large 46-inch LCD screen in the Philips 47PFL9732D is of a full HD 1080p resolution type, supporting the highest quality format avaliable, along with 720p, and 1080i support. Three HDMI 1.3 inputs fully support the 24p / 1080p/24p for true 24 frames per second for the very best film experience, as all films are shot at this frame rate.

The 47PFL9732D is also of the Philips “Ambilight” kind, which means it has two large LED light strips on the left and right rear side of the HDTV to create the special light effects. This effect can be disabled if preferred, but many people enjoy the “light show” provided as it create an effect which draws you further into the film viewing experience, and it can also help to prevent eye strain. With standard-def sources, 480i resolution via component, the Philips 46PFL9732D turned in a solid performance. Cnet say, The 47PFL9732D cleaned up the edges of moving diagonal lines extremely well, and rendered the stripes on a waving American flag as cleanly as any HDTV we’ve tested. Details on the stone bridge and grass were a bit softer than some sets we’ve seen, but not terrible. Each of the four noise reduction settings did a progressively more aggressive job of trading fine detail for less noise, and maximum did an extremely good job.

If you’re gonna have a robot, why not have one that can play sports? This low-cost robot is designed specifically for playing robotic football tournaments.

The RFL (Robotic Football League) Robot was created for playing football in tournaments with other robot enhusiasts. These robots feature a set of four independent high-torque motors which let them really play aggressively, and include special gripping arms which are designed to throw the ball with plenty of momentum.

click to view this video clip

They can block, tackle, throw and receive a little Velcro football, and even can talk trash to each other when they detect a nearby aggressor. Each one runs on an included wireless RF controller, and sports a powerful 9.6V rechargeable battery pack.

The RFL Robot is available now from Spark Fun Electronics for $139.95.

read more about:

football, game, joystick, robot, sport, wireless