Magic Sakura creates desktop cherry blossom

Well, it’s almost cherry blossom season. In about two weeks’ time the first sakura buds will start to bloom in the south of Japan. As the season makes its way north we can witness the requisite stampede of families, office workers and underage kids, all vying for the same patches of grass beneath cherry trees in urban parks. Thus begins the annual spectacle that is the drunkard hanami picnic.

If competing for the same valued space with tens of thousands of others doesn’t sound like fun, then we recommend you get your hands on the Magic Sakura (まじっく桜), a desktop toy that recreates the hanami spirit in miniature.

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The paper tree stands at 13.5cm (5.3″) tall and looks rather bare until you add the included “magic water”. Then pink blossom starts to appear within a few hours, eventually covering the whole tree. I guess this is the equivalent of a mini Christmas tree for the Japanese! You can have your sakura experience at home or work, minus all the crowds and fuss.

The Magic Sakura is priced 680 JPY ($7.5) and is available now inside Japan.

magic-sakura-1

[Via Digital Gadgets Freak.]

IBM keeps light pulse bandwagon rolling, uses ’em for chip-to-chip communication

Lenovo loves its red mousing nipple, Apple digs its aluminum and IBM adores those light pulses. Nearly two full years after we heard this very company touting breakthroughs in science thanks to a nanophotonic switch, in flies a similar technique from Yorktown Heights that could “greatly further energy efficient computing.” As the story goes, gurus at IBM have figured out how to replace electrical signals that communicate via copper wires between computer chips with tiny silicon circuits that chat using pulses of light. The device is called a nanophotonic avalanche photodetector, and according to Dr. T.C. Chen, this kind of embedded optical interconnection makes the “prospect of building power-efficient computer systems with performance at the Exaflop level” something that could be seen in the not-so-distant future. Reportedly, the avalanche photodetector demonstrated by IBM is the world’s fastest device of its kind, able to receive optical information signals at 40Gbps and simultaneously multiply them tenfold. We know that’s over some of your (read: our) heads, but there’s a sufficiently nerdy video after the break that gets right down to the whos, whats, whys and wheres.

Continue reading IBM keeps light pulse bandwagon rolling, uses ’em for chip-to-chip communication

IBM keeps light pulse bandwagon rolling, uses ’em for chip-to-chip communication originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NewEgg sells 300 counterfeit Core i7-920 CPUs, KIRFers pump their fists

Oops. Over the weekend, it seems as if 300 or so unlucky individuals were shipped a counterfeit processor from the normally reliable warehouses at NewEgg, and Hard|OCP has the images (and video) to prove it. Vincent Waller couldn’t have possibly been more eager to receive the Core i7-920 that he had ordered, but upon unboxing it, he realized that he had received a well-disguised fake. After a fair bit of digging, it seems as if one of NewEgg’s “long time partners” (D&H Distributing) got ahold of 300 fakes in a batch of 2,000, though not everyone’s buying the “it was an honest mistake” line — especially when you consider that said company has already issued cease-and-desist letters to the sites who published the news. At any rate, NewEgg has already arranged for an authentic CPU to be rushed to Mr. Waller, and it’s purportedly working around the clock in order to make things right with any other negatively affected customers. Hop on past the break for a look at the knockoff, particularly if you just took delivery of a shiny new Core i7.

Continue reading NewEgg sells 300 counterfeit Core i7-920 CPUs, KIRFers pump their fists

NewEgg sells 300 counterfeit Core i7-920 CPUs, KIRFers pump their fists originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ABC Pulled From Cablevision Hours Before Oscar Ceremony

cablevision abc.jpg

Cablevision customers woke up to TV sets without ABC after talks broke down between the two companies over licensing fees.

Cablevision has now proposed binding arbitration to decide the matter, but ABC does not seem to be in favor of that route.

“Instead of issuing statements about arbitration, it would be more constructive for Cablevision to deal with the offer that’s on the table,” ABC said in a statement.

ABC said it sent its own proposal to Cablevision around 2:30pm Eastern time.

What’s going on? Cable companies like Cablevision must pay networks for the right to air their content. ABC claims that Cablevision charges its customers for access to ABC, but does not pass any of that money on to ABC. Cablevision says it pays Disney – which owns ABC – about $200 million per year to broadcast all of its content, but ABC now wants an additional $40 million.

Earlier this month, ABC said it would pull its shows from Cablevision if a deal was not reached by March 7, and it made good on that promise at midnight last night.

The move comes just hours before ABC is set to air the Academy Awards, potentially ruining a few Oscar parties in the tri-state area.

For more on this story, see pcmag.com.

How to Ditch Cablevision, Get ABC (And The Oscars) For Free

Watching the ABC/Cablevision slap fight on the eve of the Oscars made me want to shout: there is a better way!
About a year ago, I ditched cable TV, and yes, I’m watching the Oscars on ABC on my HDTV tonight. In fact, my picture will probably be better than those poor saps with cable.
I’m getting my ABC over the air – in tech parlance, OTA. In my column from 2008, “How I Slashed My Bills with Tech,” I explain how you can get free, high-quality HDTV without having to deal with Cablevision, Cox, Time Warner or anyone else.
You can set up a basic system in under an hour. If you have a relatively recent TV with a digital tuner, run out to your local electronics store and get a basic RCA ANT1000 antenna for $10. If you have an older TV, you’ll have to grab a $50 digital converter box, too. When you’re ready to make a commitment, get a better antenna – the outdoor kind are great, but I’m happy with a $60 Winegard SS-3000 that sits on a bookshelf.
If you want to know what channels you’ll get when you go OTA, try AntennaWeb.org. An official government Web site has a quick guide on how to set up digital converter boxes
I get ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW, minor networks like MyTV, Qubo and ION, and a whole lot of PBS over the air. I also get strange local programming and some excellent music videos on our city-funded municipal channel, and a bunch of Spanish-language channels I don’t understand. For other programming, I can rent or buy it on my TiVo HD or Apple TV (yes, I have both, but you don’t have to), order it from Netflix or call it up on demand from Web sites – though I don’t have my PC hooked directly to my TV, so that last category I have to watch on a PC screen. 
There is one caveat: going OTA doesn’t help anyone who needs live cable sports programming. My wife and I don’t watch any sports – zero – so this isn’t a concern for us, but there are lots of games that aren’t shown anywhere on the Internet or over the air. If sports is your “killer app,” it looks like the pay-TV providers have you by the neck. Have any other solutions, readers?

Palm Elan to be the next webOS smartphone, heading to AT&T?

Here’s a little spicy rumor for you Palm fans on this tranquil Sunday: according to TopTongueBarry who claims to work for AT&T, his company has just finished certification tests with GSM flavors of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus ahead of a possible April 26th launch — a date not far from what we’ve heard earlier. However, the bigger news from Barry is that the big A will soon be testing a third mysterious webOS device by the name of Palm Elan, which may greet us mere mortals on May 10th (but possibly in Europe first). Another forum member Shadow-360 also dug up some cached pages that claimed to have accessories for the non-existent device, as pictured above. Of course, this could be just a crude joke for a keyboard-less Palm device that many of us seem to desire — as reminded by the good folks at PreCentral, Elan is also the name of the company that sued Apple over multitouch patents last April. So, any thoughts on this leak? Are we all ready for a new webOS phone?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: Turns out the Elan may just be the Pixi. Or it could be your wildest dreams about to come true.

Palm Elan to be the next webOS smartphone, heading to AT&T? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple, Siemens and Sisvel patent infringement leads to CeBIT booth raid

Mama always said that some folks just never learn, and we reckon there’s plenty of wisdom to be had from that very statement. Year after year, German police are called in to raid select booths at CeBIT (and IFA, to be fair), and yet again we’ve seen a booth cleared out at the request of powerful lawyers from a few companies you may have heard of. Word on the street has it that Apple, Siemens and Sisvel were all kvetching over patent infringements made by an unnamed company exhibiting at last week’s show, and within an hour or so of the fuzz showing up, the whole thing was stripped and a hefty fine (€10,000) was levied. Unfortunately, the exact details of who was violating what remains clouded in mystery, but for whatever reason, we get the feeling that something extremely similar will be going down in Hannover next year. We blame KIRFers determination.

Updated: Turns out one of our editors at CeBIT saw this whole situation go down at the FirstView booth. Within minutes the entire booth was surrounded by the Polizei, and though we tried to dig further on the situation our inability to speak German caused some communication issues so we decided it best to move on to the next craptablet on the floor. We will, however, always have the shot above to remember the confusing experience.

[Thanks, TheLostSwede]

Apple, Siemens and Sisvel patent infringement leads to CeBIT booth raid originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Backflip now on sale at AT&T

Heads-up, kids — AT&T’s first-ever slice of Android is now available. Just let that sink in a minute. Feels good, doesn’t it? Motorola’s Backflip has gone on sale just as promised, and that debatably awesome Blur action can be yours for $99.99 after mail-in rebate and a 2-year agreement. So, you pulling the trigger, or you are you waiting for whatever Dell and / or HTC are bringing to the party?

[Thanks, mittens]

Motorola Backflip now on sale at AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panasonic gets official with Lumix DMC-G2 and DMC-G10 Micro Four Thirds cameras

Panasonic has the news day all to itself with its newfangled pair of Micro Four Thirds shooters, and in case you were wondering — yeah, this is the exact same duo that we saw slip out on Friday. Up first is the Lumix DMC-G2, which looks an awful lot like the G1 it replaces and is touted as the first interchangable lens system camera with touch-control shooting. Granted, we haven’t exactly warmed to the idea of using a touchpanel to fire off a shot, but hey, it is what it is. Other specs include a 12.1 megapixel Live MOS sensor, Venus Engine HD II technology, a 3-inch rear LCD and a 720p (AVCHD Lite) movie mode, though curiously enough a price and release date eludes us. Moving on, there’s the DMC-G10, which is supposedly the “world’s lightest” interchangeable lens camera with a viewfinder; this one packs the same 12.1 megapixel sensor and Venus Engine HD II as on the G2, but the 3-inch LCD lacks tilt / swivel / touch options. We’re still waiting on pricing for this one as well, but now is as good a time as any to mention that both fully support those obnoxiously expensive SDXC cards. Huzzah!

Panasonic gets official with Lumix DMC-G2 and DMC-G10 Micro Four Thirds cameras originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PhotographyBLOG 1, 2, 3, 4  |  sourcePR Newswire [G2], [G10]  | Email this | Comments

Pixel Qi DIY kits will be out in Q2, ‘slightly more difficult than changing a lightbulb’

We’re going to assume that Mary Lou’s bravado-filled “It’s only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbulb” is in reference to working with OLPC. In fact, in Mary Lou Jepsen’s most recent Pixel Qi blog post she makes quick reference of the fact that there will be DIY kits for replacing your own laptop screen (most likely a 10-inch module) with the sunlight-friendly, switchable magic of Pixel Qi, but she spends the rest of the post talking about how in Nigeria some schoolgirls started up a laptop hospital where they’d repair their XOs by swapping out parts or reseating cables. We doubt most of our laptops will be so resilient when it comes to ripping off the bezel and swapping in the Pixel Qi part, but we’re dying to void our warranty and find out.

Pixel Qi DIY kits will be out in Q2, ‘slightly more difficult than changing a lightbulb’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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