A new design wants to give your bike the abilities of a hybrid car, a frequent-flyer program, a gym and a networked navigation device, all by simply swapping out the back wheel. The Copenhagen Wheel bolts on to any bike and adds a slew of new functions
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The Copenhagen Wheel, A Self-Powering, Internet Connected Bike Hub
Some AT&T customers are taking Fake Steve (who is, in reality, Newsweek’s Dan Lyons pretending to be Steve Jobs) seriously. The satirical blogger on Monday encouraged his readers to take part of Operation Chokehold — a plan to overload the AT&T network with ruthless, bandwidth-sucking activities. On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees.
AT&T iPhone customers are more familiar than anyone with network problems ranging from spotty 3G coverage to dropped calls. To pin down the areas of network weaknesses, AT&T has released an iPhone app inviting customers to report issues directly from the problematic area. Called “Mark the Spot,” the free app allows you to choose from five issues: dropped calls, failed calls, no coverage, data failure or poor voice quality
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iPhone App Reports Dropped Calls, Poor Voice Quality to AT&T
It’s so, so easy to hate on Wal-Mart, what with destroying this country’s mom and pop culture, importing cheap junk from China, and freaking out whenever employees mention the word “union.” But if you’re a gamer, you really ought to cast aside your prejudices, brave the crowds , and find the games you’ve always wanted for a good $10 less than what you’ll find elsewhere. That’s right: we’re having ourselves a good old fashioned price war . Wal-Mart has taken it upon itself to sell video games this holiday season (not sure if it’s a permanent thing or not) for $10 less than you’ll find at GameStop, Best Buy, Amazon, etc
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Wal-Mart starts video game price war, cuts prices of games by $10
Geez make us wait FOREVER, Pantone! You have no idea how excited I was to see amongst the near-endless list of press releases this morning that PANTONE HAS FINALLY ANNOUNCED THE COLOR OF THE YEAR FOR 2010!!! Without further ado, it’s #15-5519 Turquoise! According to the press release: “Combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, Turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing.” On behalf of everyone: I can’t wait! When I’ve got trouble on my mind, when my old lady’s done left me and my dog’s done left me too, I’m gonna pull out my Pantone color swatch and let it all… melt… away. And good riddance to 2009’s color of the year, am I right?! I mean, #14-0848 Mimosa?! Who are we kidding here
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Breathe easy, friends – Pantone has finally announced the 2010 color of the year
Touch Bionics, a U.K-based company, has created the world’s first powered bionic fingers that can be used by patients with missing fingers. ProDigits , as it is called, can help its users bend, touch, pick-up and point–reflecting almost all the key functions of a natural hand. The prosthetic fingers are for those who have a partial-hand, where the absence of fingers is either due to congenital anomalies or amputation, says Touch Bionics.
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World’s First Bionic Fingers Make it Easy to Poke and Prod
Shapeways are at it again, with an assortment of custom fabricated gifts available for Christmas. They ran a little contest recently, and the top three entrants are available for purchase now, including the cute “ Punk Angel ” pictured above, a snowflake ornament with custom message, and a snowflake candle holder . Each of these is under $30, so they’re sure to please without breaking the bank!
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New customized Christmas gifts available from Shapeways
Min-Kyu Choi’s redesign of the frankly over-protective, nannying design of the UK power-plug first popped up back in April, and we posted the video of the concept renderings and test models. More than half a year later and Choi’s design, the Folding Plug System , has become a svelte plastic product with a few new twists, both literal and figurative. The problem with the UK’s three-pronged monster is its unwieldiness.
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Folding Plug System: An Antidote to Britain’s Power Paranoia
The Nook saga continues as demo units are reportable showing up in brick and mortar locations. Too bad there will not be any available for purchase until next month , but at least you can actually spend sometime with the dual-screen ebook reader before you pre-order now. Speaking of pre-orders, the website still lists January 15 as the expected ship date.
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Nook demo units showing up in stores, use this locator to find one near you
I literally just said “Wow!” out loud looking at these screenshots of Perfect Dark for Xbox Live Arcade. There’s a few more screenshots on Rare’s Web site, but only the ones here have before and after comparison shots: While I’m all of a sudden looking forward to playing the game again, it’s sorta depressing to think that this will never happen to GoldenEye
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You will be impressed by the latest Perfect Dark for Xbox Live Arcade screenshots
Ooh, shiny. This is the Haier “Theatre” – a portable media player with a 3-inch touchscreen, available in 4GB and 8GB capacities for $90 and $100, respectively. Full features include: 4GB or 8GB of memory 3-inch capacitive touchscreen Built-in FM tuner Built-in accelerometer Supported codecs/file types: MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, MPEG 4 (AVI), JPEG, TXT 12-hour battery life (audio) Voice recorder I can’t help but think that this thing would probably sell a lot better if it’d been released a year ago but the current-day price tag isn’t too steep, I suppose.
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Haier Theatre portable media player
Two researchers from Japan’s Keio University (which yours truly attended just until recently by the way) have developed a kitchen appliance aimed at the total web geek in you, a YouTube-powered microwave. The so-called Castoven [JP] is based on a conventional, unbranded model of “good quality” but sports a 10.4-inch LCD screen in the door panel. Needless to say the researchers didn’t forget to build a set of speakers into the microwave, too
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Castoven: Microwave with built-in YouTube player (video)
If HTC’s trying to keep their device releases top-secret, they’re not doin’ a very good job. While individual leaks seem to be rare, they seem to be making a habit out of bundling up all their upcoming releases into one big presentation, which in turn leaks all over the internet. It happened right at the beginning of 2009 and, sure enough, it looks like the first half of 2010 has already been locked down and leaked out.
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Leaked: HTC’s handset releases for the first half of 2010
Heavy Gmail users know that keyboard shortcuts are the key to mail productivity: I can power through an inbox full of spam and PR come-ons with nothing more than the J, K, X, Shift-3 and Y keys. For $20, you can put those shortcut keys onto their own, external keypad, with color-coded buttons to make it easy to press whatever you want. The Gboard would be handy for those who have trouble remembering Google’s many shortcut keys (for instance, I had no idea that there were enough to fill out the Gboard’s 19 separate keys).
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Keypad Gives Gmail Addicts Colorful Shortcut Keys
Fans of the Legend of Zelda games who happen to leave the house once in awhile don’t need to be told that today marks the newest installment of portable Zelda games, as The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks hits store shelves for the Nintendo DS and DSi for $34.99. Our favorite protagonist, Link, will have a traveling companion this time around. Princess Zelda, herself, will accompany Link “on an original quest to save Hyrule from ruin.” What’s not really talked about is that this is also a test of their relationship
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The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks available today on Nintendo DS/DSi
Whenever companies do something inexplicable, the nerd in me always comes back to that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfus keeps building models of a mountain, culminating in a huge, muddy mess in his kitchen. Throughout it all he keeps saying “This means something.” Well, the latest molehill into a mountain is the move by Time Inc. and Conde Nast , among others, to build a tablet-based interface for their flagship titles
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“This means something:” Why the magazine industry is suddenly crowing about tablets
This particular issue is far from settled, since it is a fact that certain levels of radiation lead to transcription errors and such, but at the very least, studies like this one reinforce the idea that we’re not all of us going to drop dead in a couple years. The study, performed by the Danish Cancer Society and documented in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, studied brain cancer rates in Scandinavian countries over a period of 30 years.
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Huge Scandinavian study suggests no link between mobiles and brain cancer (so relax)
The folks over at Astro Gaming wanted to share some holiday cheer and are giving us one of their new Astro A40 BxR SE Audio Systems to hand out to one lucky CrunchGear enthusiast. The new BxR system comes with a headset, in either red, blue or military green (we’re giving the green one away), and a MixAmp. This headset comes with 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound, allowing you to hear everything around you in any game that supports it, and a noise-canceling microphone.
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Weekend Giveaway: Astro A40 BxR Special Edition Audio System
What you’re looking at is an installation by Gebhard Sengmüller called “A Parallel Image.” Technically, it’s art, but it’s more of an interesting deconstruction of technology than anything else. Instead of transmitting a video signal digitally via HDMI or VGA, this contraption does it in analog: 2500 photoconductors in an array, individually wired to 2500 bulbs on the other side
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“A Parallel Image”: a novel way of transmitting a video signal
Short Version: Gunnar’s “MLG Legend” glasses are a good choice for gamers and workers alike who suffer from eye problems created from staring at a screen for long periods of time. While the thought of wearing specialty glasses with amber lenses in front of a computer or TV screen may seem pretentious to some, the benefits of these glasses outweigh the possibility of any social backlash. The price point of $99.00 is reasonable, and the durability of these glasses is remarkable given their lightweight design.
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Review: Gunnar ‘MLG Legend’ Glasses
While Verizon might not be shoving the HTC Droid Eris down our throats the same way they are with its Motorola-made sibling, the Droid, the Eris is still one slick little piece of mobile kit. What it lacks in form factor (that is, a physical keyboard), it makes up with its drop-dead-gorgeous Sense UI. The only real shortcoming, as I see it, is that it’s still stuck on Android v1.5 while the Droid is touting around 2.0
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Verizon announces software update for Droid Eris coming in 2010
Here’s the right thing for all audio freaks out there who happen to be ready to shell out a lot of cash for a very unique product: Japan-based tech company BifrösTec (what a name) is selling egg-shaped speakers [JP] that are priced at $3,580 for a pair. The so-called D’Egg TGA-2R1 is sized at 140×140×235mm and weighs 2.6kg (including the stand that’s included in the price). The 30W speakers feature 70Hz〜20kHz frequency response, 4Ω impedance and 80 dB/W/M sensitivity.
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D’Egg: Egg-shaped speakers for $3,580