Archive for the ‘Latest Gadgets’ Category
Former One Laptop Per Child President of software and content Walter Bender has launched Sugar Labs, an organization that will promote the development of the open-source user interface originally developed for the XO laptop.
Sugar Labs Foundation will refine the development of Sugar, a UI (user interface) for the Linux OS that provides educational tools for kids. The foundation aims to create distributions of Sugar for multiple hardware and open-source platforms beyond the XO laptop.
“By being independent of any specific hardware platform and by remaining dedicated to the principles of free and open-source software, Sugar Labs ensures that others can develop diverse interfaces and applications from which governments and schools can choose,” the nonprofit said.
GNU/Linux will remain the platform of choice for the development and distribution of Sugar, Bender said in an interview. However, Sugar Labs is not promoting operating systems; it intends use open source as a tool to promote a learning model, he said.
The give and take of the open-source development model embodies the culture of learning and education. “A transfer of this culture could greatly enhance the education industry and its ability to engage teachers and students,” he said.
Whether the nonprofit helps port the Sugar UI to Windows is yet to be determined, Bender said. “It is hard to imagine that a Windows port would be done without the cooperation and participation of the core Sugar developers,” he said.
The organization has its own roadmap for developing the Sugar UI and it hopes to work with OLPC.
“For the moment at least, OLPC is continuing to fund the development, so we anticipate a productive partnership, regardless of the fact that OLPC will be offering Windows XP as an option,” Bender said.
Sugar Labs, of which Bender is one of the founders, was announced the same day OLPC announced it would start selling Windows XP on the XO laptop, an ultraportable computer designed as a learning tool for kids in developing countries.
Bender resigned last month from OLPC as the group seemed to move toward loading Windows XP on XO. His resignation earned him applause from the open-source community.
After Bender quit, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte questioned the development process of Sugar, calling it a “weakness” due to unrealistic development goals and practices. He urged the developer community to stop bickering, unite and to help port the Sugar UI to Windows to make XO laptops more appealing to users.
Sugar needs to be separated from the Linux OS core and made platform agnostic, Negroponte wrote. “To do that, we need to hire more developers, work more together and spend less time arguing,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Developers in the open-source community expressed outrage at Negroponte’s comments, calling his appeal vague and demoralizing for Sugar’s future development. The comments spawned a debate on the merit of OLPC’s move to the Windows OS.
Earlier this month, Kim Quirk, director of the technical team at OLPC, tried to reassure developers that OLPC was committed to Sugar as an open-source project, as it provides a great opportunity for learners as well as contributors, she wrote in an e-mail.
Sumo wrestlers were the main inspiration behind Wii Fit, Nintendo’s latest attempt at getting you off the couch when you play video games.
Because they are so huge, sumo wrestlers need two scales to weigh themselves. Wii Fit’s balance board works kind of like two scales fused together, which, as its designers found, makes it instantly more fun than just one. The game has sold more than 2 million copies in Japan and it’s been a hit in Europe. Nintendo Co. hopes to recreate that success when Wii Fit goes on sale in the U.S. on Monday.
In the U.S., pre-launch buzz around the game — whose activities range from yoga to snowboarding — is reminiscent of the Wii’s debut. The console, initially elusive in stores and online, is still often in short supply a year and a half after its release.
Wii Fit, which costs $89.99, is currently sold out in pre-launch sales on Amazon.com and the Web sites of retailers GameStop Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., while Best Buy Co.’s Web site lists it as “coming soon.”
“Our main premise in creating Wii Fit was (to) create a game that allows you to check your weight,” Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary game designer behind Mario and Zelda, told The Associated Press through a translator during a recent visit to the U.S.
Miyamoto, 55, started checking his weight daily about five years ago, a few years after he began exercising to stay healthy. Tracking his progress, he said, was fun and his family soon caught the bug.
“We ended up buying a brand new scale, and I started thinking that if there was a way I could weigh myself in the living room and make a product out of it, that would be something everybody could relate to,” Miyamoto said.
With the scale as a launching pad, Miyamoto and Wii Fit’s other developers added balance-based fitness activities and games. In one, you play a penguin trying to catch fish in the air while balancing on a block of ice. Like the Wii’s motion-sensitive wireless controller, Wii Fit’s balance board is intuitive and takes no video game skills to master.
During play the balance board becomes a snowboard, skis or a tightrope. The game’s fitness regimen includes yoga, aerobics and strength training, as well as tracking of your weight and body mass index. You can even jog without the board, holding the Wii’s wireless controller in your hand. The exercises start in one- or two-minute spurts, so you don’t overextend yourself, and you progress to new levels as you get more proficient.
The goal of Wii Fit, Miyamoto said, is simply to get people to think more consciously about their health.
Instead of going after core-gamers — the “Grand Theft Auto” audience of boys and young men — Nintendo has been roping in the whole family, including moms and grandmothers, and getting them playing (and buying) the Wii.
Wii Fit seems to be expanding the Wii’s audience even more. In Japan, between 30 percent and 40 percent of people who bought Wii Fit also bought a video game system for the first time, according to Miyamoto.
Mike Hickey, an analyst with Janco Partners, said Wii Fit exemplifies how the appeal of video gaming has expanded.
“It’s becoming less threatening, easier to digest,” Hickey said.
The game’s launch outside the holiday season may also show the industry is maturing into a form of mainstream entertainment. While game companies still make most of their money around the holidays, Hickey and other analysts expects this to change.
“There is no reason you have to be tied to the holiday months any more,” he said. “Like the movie business (games are) a legitimate form of entertainment in the non-Christmas tree months.”
While some in the industry have questioned how long Nintendo can keep its momentum — after all, more causal gamers may not want to spend every spare dollar on a new video game — analysts are upbeat.
“I don’t think we even had the imagination a year ago that Wii Fit could be compared to ‘Grand Theft Auto,” Hickey said, referring to the popular crime game franchise, whose latest installment shattered sales records when it hit store shelves last month.
If U.S. sales compare to Japan’s, Hickey said Wii Fit will likely sell about 3 million copies in its first couple of months, depending on supply constraints.
Cammie Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nintendo of America, said people have responded in “unprecedented numbers to retailers’ pre-sales.” While the game sold out online, Dunaway said Nintendo wants to ensure there is a “healthy balance” between brick and mortar stores and online pre-orders.
With its exercise components, weight and body mass index tracking (as well as gentle nudging when you don’t exercise for a few days) Wii Fit can certainly sound more like a health gadget than a game. In Miyamoto’s eyes, however, it’s a video game.
“In my mind anything that lets you interact on a TV screen, technically speaking, is a video game,” he said. “But it’s true that with Wii Fit you are doing things that you typically don’t do, like checking your weight.”
After hurting the environment by drinking coffee from plastic cups for many years, buying an eco-friendly laptop bag seems like a path to redemption. While searching, I came across bags made from coconuts, recycled movie posters, recycled Coke bottles and wine corks. There are even stylish bags made of recycled newsprint, where people may get to read this article again.
Bag made of coke bottles
Plastic bottles to laptops bags, that’s the story of Act2 GreenSmart bags. Act2 includes recycled plastic-bottle material in its laptop bags and lists the number of bottles used in each bag on its Web site. For example, a bag for laptops with 12.1-inch screens uses 11 16-ounce bottles, and 17 recycled bottles are used in bags for 17-inch widescreen laptops. The US$39.99 bags are made of 100 percent recycled material, according to the company. The interior of the bag is built to protect the laptop and the exterior has a pocket to store supplies and cables.
“In the United States alone, 230 bottles per person go to landfill per year. That’s enough crushed bottles to fill the Rose Bowl Stadium in California every two weeks,” the company says on the Web site. The company also makes laptop sleeves for $24.99.
Superhero bag
Save Superman from a landfill– check out Modulab’s Movie Billboard Laptop Messenger Bag, which is made of recycled vinyl movie posters. They may look colorful on the outside, but these bags are waterproof and include a padded compartment to protect the laptop. At $118, these pop-culture bags are available on Re-modern’s Web site.
Archetype of a bag
The aesthetically pleasing Archetype bag from Tom Bihn is made of molded cork– yes, the same cork used on wine bottles. Cork is sustainable and biodegradable, and provides great protection for the laptop, the company claims. While not completely waterproof, the material can resist a fair amount of water and bear the elements, giving laptops a high level of protection. The $95 laptop bags are designed for MacBooks with different screen sizes and are available on Tom Bihn’s Web site.
Sleeve me alone
Coconut and jute are the ingredients of Simple Shoes’ Sleeve Me Alone laptop sleeve, which comes in two sizes for large and small laptops. Jute, a biodegradable fiber, forms the external part of the sleeve and is mixed with felt to protect laptops from the cold and heat. The material won’t save laptops from massive falls– that’s why it’s a sleeve– so don’t think of it as a bag. The button is made from a coconut. The sleeve is $30 and is available in four colors on Simple Shoes’ Web site.
Really going green
To “distinguish green from granola” and to make functional eco-friendly products is the goal of Helen Riegle, the principal of Her Designs. Her boutique’s Leaf laptop bags are made of recyclables such as plastic and come in two colors– green and brown– that make the bags resemble leaves. The bags accommodates 15-inch and 17-inch laptops, with pockets for files and cables.
The attractive bag is priced at $270. It is available on the company’s Web site.
The good ole reliable bag
If chic is not your thing, try Targus’ $60 Grove Sling laptop bag. The bag is made of recycled plastics and constructed of nylon to protect 15.4-inch laptops from falls. It is also made of nickel-free metal to “reduce the amount of toxins released into the environment,” according to the company. Sporting a messenger design, the bag’s sling has a pocket to store an MP3 player. The $60 olive-green bag is available on Targus’ Web site.
Apple has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Atico International USA from selling unauthorized iPod accessories.
In court documents filed on Wednesday in Delaware — where Atico is incorporated — Apple accuses the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company of patent infringement, trademark infringement, and unfair competition.
“Atico manufactures and distributes various iPod accessories branded under the name ‘Living Solutions,’ which are sold online and nationwide in stores in Delaware and elsewhere, such as Walgreen’s and Happy Harry’s drug stores,” the complaint says. These accessories include an AM/FM portable boom box with iPod dock, an AM/FM alarm clock radio with iPod dock, and portable speakers with an iPod dock.
Apple claims that Atico’s iPod products are not licensed or authorized.
Atico did not return a call seeking comment.
Apple offers a program to manufacture and distribute iPod accessories called Made for iPod. An Apple spokesperson said that the company does not disclose the terms of its Made for iPod program publicly.
After the program was introduced in early 2005, CNET reported that Apple was asking for a royalty of 10%, based on the licensed items’ wholesale price. Subsequent reports indicate that Apple shifted to a $4 per unit flat fee in 2006.
Apple sold more than 10 million iPods during the quarter than ended on March 29, 2008, which represents 1% unit growth from the same quarter in 2007. The company has sold about 150 million iPods worldwide, based on numbers reported by Apple (110 million through September 2007, 22.1 million in the last quarter of that year, 10.6 million in the first quarter of 2008) and the several million presumed sold in April and May.
Looking at the history of Nintendo product launches, you can see that it’s not the first time they have had shortages and as the latest “Must Have” product, the Nintendo Wii Fit has hit a massive shortage. Having looked around at local stores, wherever you go they all tell the same story when asked if they have stock of the Wii Fit Balance Board, the answer is no and when asked if they know when stock is coming in, they say “No Idea, everyone wants Wii Fit”. This makes me wonder if the Wii Fit shortage is a planned strategy or just because it’s very popular.
The moment the product was launched in the UK it was met with out of stock signs within hours; I bought Wii Fit the moment the stores opened on the day of release. If you did not do the same, you will find them near impossible to find currently. Did Nintendo expect this demand, if so, why did they not create more Balance Boards before launching, unless this makes everyone want them more, we all like what’s in fashion or popular and word of mouth is the best source of promotion. Its not just offline shops that are reporting shortages, no less than five major video game retailers online were also reporting Wii Fit sell-outs from the moment of pre-order. Nintendo did release a statement that explained “All retailers in the UK and Ireland have been aware of their Wii Fit allocations for launch since early March”, they then went on to explain that stopping pre-orders would be a sensible precaution, so stores can meet current orders.
Have you got your hands on Wii Fit yet and what makes you want to buy it?
There has never been a time when Intel capitalized so much on a winning architecture, other than now with their very successful Core 2 family of processors. Intel have released so many variations of the same architecture and now this is the budget 45nm Penryn CPU, its called the Intel Core 2 Duo E7200. The CPU has it all for a budget user who doesn’t want to sacrifice performance. Penryn gives us power savings and extra features found across the latest E8000 series. Tweak town have gave the E7200 a 12 page hands-on review and in their final thoughts they said “Intel has managed to once again augment its Core 2 Duo line of processors with another winner. While we normally focus on quad core and high-end power from the Chipzilla, Core 2 Duo has some really good budget parts, and none are better than the E7200.
While it comes clocked at a slower 2.53GHz compared to the higher clock of the E4700s 2.66GHz, the higher bus speed of 1066MHz, an extra 1MB of L2 cache and its 45nm construction of the Penryn architecture gives the E7200 a greater feature set while managing to keep its power consumption down and continue to offer some extremely good performance.
If you’re looking for something for a HTPC or digital home setup, you’re not going to be disappointed with an E7200. It has more than enough power to do fast media encoding; its memory bandwidth is excellent thanks to its 1066MHz FSB and its 45nm die makes it more power efficient than the older E4000 series.”
Read the 12 page review.
This is the Chaintech GeForce 9600GT OC 512MB Graphics Card and although the 9600GT has been reviewed in many forms, its always interesting to see what another company can do with the card to make it stand out from the rest. Tweak Town have covered a hands-on review of the Chaintech 512MB GeForce 9600GT OC and posted the results over seventeen pages, they simply summed the graphics card up as “Very Fast”, in their final thoughts they said “The Chaintech 9600GT is a bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Pulling it out of the box, it doesn’t look like much more than a standard 9600GT. Even with the mention of OC on the box, you don’t expect too much; 650/675MHz on the core, maybe.
Upon firing the card up and running 3DMark06, we had to make sure we weren’t dealing with an 8800GT here. The card absolutely flies along with the 735MHz core, which is the highest out of the box core clock we’ve seen to date.
Chaintech could quickly become a strong competitor in the graphics card market for people looking at out of the box performance. At the moment, if you want a big OC you’re best to look at the TOP series of cards from ASUS, the AMP! Edition series from Zotac and OC2 or OCX cards from BFG Tech.
The bundle is a bit on the light side in the games department, but the inclusion of the HDMI adapter is always a nice touch. The only thing Chaintech need now is a cool naming scheme for their OC line-up.
If you’re looking for an ultra fast 9600GT out of the box, the Chaintech offering could be the one to get. The only problem we have with the Chaintech card is that it’s not available in Australia; fortunately if you’re over in the U.S. you’re going to have a bit more luck in getting one.”
Read the 17 page review.
The Xbox 360 has had a great time at the top of next-gen games choice, having started many months before the Sony Playstation 3, the 360 had time to build up a massive collection of video games and also release budget titles as well. When the Sony PS3 was first released it had a very small collection of games all at full price, while the 360 had much cheaper games in its collection, so its not surprising that the Xbox 360 looked so much better. Other than Blu-ray and RROD problems, the PS3 did not have much going for it in the short-term. Now that we are in 2008, the games lineup for the PS3 looks really good for the rest of this year and 2009, it has now been proven that being first out the door with their next generation games console, has not helped Microsoft in the long-term and only benefited it in the short-term.
The Sony PS3 looks to be the better positioned console now and not only the more stable hardware, but also a machine that games developers will be able to produce video games with a lot more thanks to the Blu-ray discs and the Cell processor. Sony have just announced the line up of its highly-anticipated exclusive software, the games line-up will include more than 15 games across all PlayStation platforms. The PS3 will be getting big games like SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Confrontation on September 16, 2008, LittleBigPlanet in October 2008, and Fall 2008 will see NBA 09, About BUZZ! Quiz TV, MotorStorm Pacific Rift, Resistance 2 and finally Killzone 2 in February 2009.
Many Xbox 360 gamers are coming over to the PS3 for different reasons and one that I have heard from several people was about paying for Xbox Live when the PS3 gives PSN for free. It’s not a large sum of money for Xbox Live and you do get a lot for your money, but some gamers still like the idea of getting it for free on the PS3. The PLAYSTATION Network community has seen massive growth and has 8 million accounts registered world wide, its members have made more than 140 million downloads to date. PLAYSTATION®Home will only increase the popularity of the Playstation 3 as it will be integrated into many other services and games.
How many times have you picked your remote up to find that you have the wrong one in your hand, well the answer is an All-In-One Remote but boy some of them look ugly and do not offer the full controls needed for your many devices. Well that is until now as Logitech has the cool and slick looking Harmony One Universal Remote which can control many devices from DVD’s, TV’s, Blu-Ray Players as well as PC’s and games consoles, such as an Xbox 360 and a Sony PS3.
Tweaktown decide to test the Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote just to put the device through its paces, just to see how well it performs, here is their final thought on the product “We tested the defaulted macro settings next, and we found that they worked extremely well. They did exactly as expected; turning on the TV, changing channels, selecting different AV modes and working the Xbox 360. We even found we were able to control the Air Conditioning unit as well, so that if you wanted a single button to press in the morning to turn the TV on to CNN and the Air Conditioner to cool the room, you could (if we had some remote control blinds I’m sure it would have done them too).
After playing around with all the defaults and making sure the remote worked as it should with each piece of equipment, we started to mess around and create our own macros and start to use Windows MCE and the Xbox 360 interface.
Custom macros were no problem at all; it was fairly easy to set up the macros to do almost anything we could think of. The only problem we encountered was with our Air Conditioner unit which we are sure was due to the fact that the remote attempts to send all the signals, one after the other, and the air-con unit did not seem to recognise when it was receiving its command stringed with a bunch of others. You can offset this by adding delay to the commands to allow for a pause of up to a few seconds before the remote sends the command to the device. This still seemed not to work however, and we could not tell if it was our doing or a fault of the software in the remote control.
Working through Windows MCE on the other hand was an easy task as a lot of the hard buttons on the remote are setup for navigation, making it a complete doddle. Similarly for the Xbox 360 navigation; easy as pie! (Though I cannot see anyone playing any games with it any time soon.)
My last serious gripe about the remote is that there is a slight delay between pressing a button and the command registering on the piece of home theater equipment. Case in point: the volume control. Sometimes I wondered for a second if I had pressed the button, but then if I pressed it again the volume shot up louder than I was expecting. I’m not sure why it takes so long for a command to be sent/recognized, but it would be nice if Logitech could find a way to speed this up in their software (hint hint).”
When I bought my Sony PS3 in the UK a while ago, it cost £425 and today you will get one for around £300, so if 2008 does not bring us another price cut, it should not matter too much. For the current price, you not only get a fantastic games system and media center, but you also get a Sony Blu-ray player. If analysts are right, and Sony do not cut the price of the Playstation 3 in 2008, we could then end up with much better online services thanks to Sony aiming at being more profitable and spending less time on price battles.
If you are a gamer waiting for a price cut, then you may be unlucky, although this still may happen; most people agree it’s unlikely. Sony has made a prediction that it will sell eight million PS3 consoles around the world in 2008, this would be an increase of 8% on the figures in 2007. It’s a good idea for Sony to focus on the quality of their service rather than competing for market share with the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. I can think of many improvements we need on the PS3 and one would be the way we chat with other gamers, it would be nice to chat in the game and out of the game without disconnecting.
This year will be a great year for the gamer and as someone that’s been gaming for over 25 years, I know we have so much more going for us gamers these days than ever, thanks to three great next-gen games systems and the way we can connect to other gamers over the internet.