Hasta La Gadget!

There’s a new iPhone application which will help the Brits fight back at their Evil Overlords, the police who spy on their every move with the nation’s network of CCTV cameras, tracking the journey of every car as it innocently crosses the cold gray island.

Or at least beleaguered Britons can feel like they’re fighting back. SurveillanceShaker is a viewer for CCTV cameras worldwide. The Axis camera network is a system of net-connected cams which can be accessed by the public. We’ve already seen a screensaver for Mac OS X from the same company, but somehow the iPhone version, while just as voyeuristic, is somehow less perverted, giving a quick glimpse into the other side of the world with a flick of the wrist.

The app is simple. As you may have guessed from the name, you shake the iPhone and it selects a random cam to show you. The blurb from the App Store makes it sound curiously compelling:

You’ll see live images of streets and buildings, but also surprising images of Russian internet cafes, hotel lobbies, server rooms, barns with little pigs and many more.

Barns with little pigs? The Orwellian allusions have come full circle, from 1984’s telescreens to Napoleon from Animal Farm. $0.99.

Product page [iTunes]

See Also:

Britain’s CCTV Network to Track, Log All Car Journeys

Everybody’s getting into the mobile movie sideload business — just ask Samsung — and following an MWC unveiling earlier this year, Sony Ericsson is gearing up to launch movie content starting next month as part of its existing PlayNow Arena service. Direct on-phone downloads over WiFi or 3G would be awesome, but as most of these services tend to operate, PlayNow Arena will require that users select and download movies on their PCs, cable up their phones, and transfer the media the old-fashioned way, at which point they’ll be playable on the device for 90 days. You’ll be able to select from about 15 movies at any given time with content being cycled monthly — ridiculously meager, yes, but when you consider that the service is bundled with certain phones (up to 60 movies a year), it’s hard to pitch a fit. Look for it to launch on the W995 slider in Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK in June; support for Sony Ericsson’s newly-announced Satio and Aino (among others) is expected later in the year.

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Video

Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow Arena movie download service ready for June launch originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 May 2009 03:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

For most people, there is only one name that matters in the world of Microsoft Surface / “rave” integration. And that name? Al Roker. But that hasn’t stopped the company from continuing to develop new and innovative ways to show off its super-sized touchscreen device in the milieu of clubland. VPlay, for instance, is a live video mixing tool that allows one to display video clips and live images, manipulate effects, and concoct some pretty complex signal paths with your bare hands. Interested in giving this one a spin? No word yet on a commercial release, but do make sure you peep the video after the break.

Continue reading VPlay brings video mixing to Surface, seriously improves Microsoft’s office parties

Filed under: Displays

VPlay brings video mixing to Surface, seriously improves Microsoft’s office parties originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 May 2009 01:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Its adorable robot love story makes Disney’s Wall-E movie is as much a geek favorite as Star Wars and Terminator. Some Wall-E fans have banded together to take their passion to a new level, fashioning life-size, fully functional replicas of robots from the movie.

And there are more than just a few of them. A Wall-E builders’ group boasts nearly 3,000 members worldwide.

“It’s a lot of reverse engineering,” says Bruce Shields, who is better known among DIY roboticists by his screen name Jawa Lunk. “It’s a release, a relaxing hobby that is enjoyable. When you are done you can look at it and say ‘this is it, this is the end.’”

Wall-E, the bug-eyed robot star of the movie, is clearly the hot favorite in this DIY community. But other robots from the film, such as Eve, M-O and Autopilot, have also been brought to life. Some of the group’s homemade bots will be on display this weekend at the Maker Faire, a festival of DIY arts, crafts and technology in San Mateo, California.

When the first trailer of Wall-E was released in October 2007, Shields says he found a robot that the world could love. A Michigan-based pastor with a strong interest in robotics, he created the Wall-E builders’ group.  In its first few weeks, the group collected about 400 members.  And they tried to find every little nugget, image or slice of video that could offer a hint to how the robot functioned.

Without blueprints or schematics, creating a life-size or even a scaled-down version of the Wall-E robot isn’t easy. The head was the most difficult part, says Shields. He hand-formed the sheet aluminum around two LED flashlights, and connected PVC elbows to the back. He formed faux solar panels on the head and put it all together in his workshop. For the arms, Shields took a PVC pipe from a sink drain and sized a smaller pipe to fit inside it, which allowed the arms to move in and out. He documented the process in this blog. The faux rust and weathering came from a paint job.

Every part of the process has been documented in the online forums where members of the community make suggestions and improvements. For instance, another member suggested that yellow #120 from Walmart’s ColorPlace brand made for an excellent external paint on the robot.

“We don’t have anything that is off the shelf,” says Shields. “We don’t really have anything where we say, ‘Let’s go down to the store, let’s buy an arm and hook it up.’”

It’s not just the Wall-E robot that gets attention. Matt Ebisu, a member of the group, first built M-O, a cleaner robot. “My focus is on the secondary robots, M-O, Eve and Auto,” he says. “And M-O is just very comedic, funny, cute and interesting in the way he has been designed.”

A tiny robot with a box-like frame, a red light at top of his head and a brush permanently stuck between its hands, M-O plays a charming yet small part in the movie.

To recreate M-O, Ebisu started with an existing Clean N Go M-O figure toy. He gutted the insides and devised a way to fit existing electronics inside it. Ebisu took a trackball from a mouse and refashioned it to create a way for the robot to move around. He used toothbrush bristles to recreate the cleaner brush and put an LED inside a clear Lego brick for the light.

Building the robot took about three months. Ebisu says he’s obsessed with Wall-E: He’s seen the movie at least 96 times.

“We are doing robots that are really detailed and take quite some time to build,” says Shields. “It’s not a light weekend project.”

Maker Faire features more than 600 exhibitors and is expected to draw 80,000 attendees, organizers say.

Check out more pictures of the robots below.

M-O robot comes to life.

A fully functional Wall-E from Uruguay-based Elso Lopez.

Bruce Shields aka Jawa Lunk’s Gamecube Wall-E being built.

A close-up of the Wall-E robots’s tracks.

For more see, the Flickr photostream of the Wall-E Builders group.

Top Photo: Wall-E/Bruce Shields. Other photos: Wall-E Builders group.

Pixel Qi, a company that promises inexpensive, low-power displays that could potentially rival E Ink screens, has been talking about its product for months.

But Thursday Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen posted the first pics of the display on her blog. The pictures are a little fuzzy but they show the display in two modes and also running on a netbook.

We wrote about Pixel Qi earlier this month and talked to Jepsen. Pixel Qi’s displays called 3Qi will operate in three settings: a full-color, bright, conventional LCD mode; a very low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a low-power, basic color transflective mode. The screens are initially expected to be available in 10.5-inch and 7.5-inch screen sizes.

If successful, the 3Qi displays could effectively bridge the high-speed, full-color benefits of traditional LCDs and the low-power, reader-friendly qualities of electronic ink displays.

In one photograph on her blog, Jepsen shows two 3Qi screens side-by-side, one in full color mode with its backlight on and the other in a black-and-white electronic paper mode with its backlight off.

The screens will be available this fall in netbooks and e-book readers, says Jepsen. Netbooks might be an easier market for Pixel Qi to enter. The Cambridge, Massachusets-based E Ink has a near monopoly on the e-books reader market. Earlier this week, E Ink announced that more than 1 million e-book readers use its display.

Photo: Pixel Qi’s Screen/Mary Lou Jepsen