Hasta La Gadget!

Hundreds of subscribers to Netflix’s movies-by-mail service say they are receiving fractured Blu-ray discs that won’t play — and that
it’s happening at an alarming rate. The reasons could include tough love from
the local post office, which sometimes sticks the envelopes into
automated sorting machines. Or it could be the faults in the Blu-ray disc manufacturing process. Here’s the full article.

We have created interactive ZeeMap and we’d like you to report your experience with Netflix’ service, particularly Blu-ray discs. The map will help us find out if the cracked Blu-ray discs problem is likely to occur in certain areas more than other. The results will appear on the map above.

Here’s what you need to do:

Click "Add." Enter your location and select the marker for your issue:

• Damaged Blu-ray Disc: Black 
• Undamaged
  Blu-ray Dis: Brown 
• Damaged
  Standard-Definition Disc: 
  Blue
• Undamaged
  Standard-Definition Disc: Burgundy 

Under the "Details" tab, add info on how often you received damaged discs and Netflix’s customer service response. Your email address will not be published on the map.

A while back, there was some buzz about how hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius are silent and therefore dangerous to pedestrians, who can’t hear them coming as well as regular gasoline or diesel-powered cars.

To combat this problem, Lotus Cars and Harman have joined forces to create Electronic Sound Synthesis (ESS), a technology with two purposes: one, to funnel fake engine nose outside the car using front and rear-mounted speakers, so that people on foot can hear it when it’s approaching at low speeds, and two, to generate fake engine noise inside the car through the vehicle’s in-car entertainment system, in order to make it sound more like a regular vehicle when accelerating.

The agreement will also let the two companies work together in the other direction and further develop Lotus’s Road Noise Cancellation and Engine Order Cancellation technologies to quiet down cabin noise. All of this sounds like it adds up to a net result of zero, but I’ll take their word for it.

There’s a mild chance that Sony Ericsson CEO Hideki Komiyama has been hitting the sauce just a wee bit too hard of late, but we’re guessing it’s mostly just an inability to comprehend his own company’s situation. As SE pushes out awful report after awful report, the company’s head honcho has just revealed that it’ll be some time yet before it hops on the Android bandwagon — as if it really has time on its side. In an interview with Reuters, he stated: “[Going Android] does require a lot of evaluation, as well as a lot of testing, a lot of acceptance from a consumer viewpoint, and there is still some time to go.” He did confess that “looking ahead,” he viewed it as an “important operating system,” but he definitely gave no indication that we’d see an Android-based SE handset in the near future. Which is strange, really, considering that we’d already heard it would produce one during this calender year…

Filed under: Cellphones

Sony Ericsson says no Android phone anytime soon originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Credit: Flora Graham/CNET)

It starts with that horrible sinking feeling: You’ve left your phone on the train. Then you realize that your company’s evil plans were on that phone and you’re about to be fed to the sharks with frickin’ lasers strapped to their heads.

A …

We haven’t heard much from Stone since it fulfilled its destiny and bought Rock Computers last year, but it looks like the company is now finally having a go at a netbook of its own, and blending right in with the masses with its just-announced Neo 101 model. As you can no doubt guess, this one packs a standard issue 10.1-inch 1,024 x 600 display and an unspecified Atom processor, along with built-in WiFi and optional 3G, a pair of USB ports and, somewhat notably, an ExpressCard slot for a bit of expansion. You’ll also get a slightly better than usual three-year warranty, which apparently doesn’t add much of a premium to the netbook’s £275 price tag (or about $400). Look for this one to be available in the UK starting May 1st.

Filed under: Laptops

Stone Neo 101 drops into the netbook pond, doesn’t cause a ripple originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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