Don’t take this the wrong way — we’re glad to be in Las Vegas with all our friends at CTIA, playing with new handsets from Samsung and Motorola. But as you know, we also love us some new music gear, especially when it sounds good — so we wouldn’t exactly mind being in Frankfurt for Musikmesse right now, either. Currently on display at Korg’s booth, Monotron is a two AAA-powered, pocket-sized analog synth featuring a ribbon keyboard, VCO, VCF, and LFO controls, and the same analog filter found in the Korg MS-10 and MS-20 — and it sounds great. Check it out in the gallery below and in the video after the break to see / hear the thing in action. Look for it in May for about $67.
Days after Google moved from China, Sergey Brin is pushing the US to fight censorship there. But the West has a history of forcing moral and economic standards onto foreigners. This sort of thinking isn’t good—it’s how wars start. More »
If you couldn’t tell by the hockey picture and the well-placed Sandlot quotation in the title, today’s episode of The 404 Podcast celebrates Jeff’s 28th birthday! Wilson and I are fully prepared to light up a string of firecrackers for Bakalar, but our third host is less than enthused about his age, so leave a comment and wish him a very happy birthday, will you?
Most of the stories we talk about on The 404 highlight the absurdity of the Internet, but today is different. We’re taking a different approach, starting with a feel-good story about a Mom-made iPhone Pillow.
Lynda Harrison began the project when her son, Drew Olanoff of #blamedrewscancer, began chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s Disease. Drew says his iPhone kept him alive and connected during treatment, but we’ll take a handmade version of the real thing any day, especially since the fluffy model has a LOLCATS button and a side pocket that fits an iPhone. Don’t forget to hug your moms, everyone.
OK, let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming. A new service called GameCrush offers romantically inept gamers a chance to pay for a play date with an “attractive” girl over a Webcam via Xbox Live and games like MW2, GOW2, GTAIV, and Halo 3.
Sony fans, Nintendo addicts, and desperate nongamers alike can still indulge their inner creep with a second option that lets you set up play dates with simple Flash games like checkers and chess. This NSFW gallery on Kotaku shows a few of the options you can choose for your opponent and gives new meaning to “first-person shooter.” Also, I’m pretty sure No. 7 is a straight-up dude.
Derrick brought 404 stickers to a LA Kings game, thanks for the shot!
Twitterers will love the next stories because they show exactly how stupid or useful the service can be, depending on the application. SleepingTime.org adds another dimension to Internet stalking–it lets you track the sleep patterns of any Twitter user based on the time when he or she is least active on Twitter. Watch the segment in the video version of the podcast below to see exactly how well this doesn’t work.
On the other hand, Huffington Post founder Jonah Peretti found a way to use Twitter creatively by resurrecting one of our favorite books of yore, Choose Your Own Adventure! Jonah’s truncated version of the game takes the words off the page and packages the scenarios into 140 characters that you can play online. If you’re too impatient to run through all two of the possibilities, just head over to Jonah’s Twitter homepage and see the results for yourself.
Thanks for listening, everyone, and keep sending your e-mails to the404(at)cnet[dot]com; we’re going to start reading selected messages on the air in addition to playing voice mails. See? We really DO care! Now where’s our 404 pillow?
Isabella Products is taking a new approach to photo sharing with the just-launched Vizit frame. The idea is that you should be able to share photos easily from your cell phone the moment you take them. It also believes that digital frames shouldn’t be a dead end, but should allow the recipients to comment on photos and tell you how much they like them. All this, the makers claim, is wrapped up in an interface that’s easy enough for grandparents.
The Vizit frame offers a 10.4-inch display, which is nice and large, but it means the price tag is $279.99. You’ll also need a cellular plan, since the frame doesn’t include Wi-Fi. The people at Isabella say that cellular is easier since it requires no set up. They’re right, but you’ll have to deal with the service fee: $5.99 per month for 100 photos or $79.99 per year for 1450 photos. While the frame is currently limited to showing photos, the company claims that it will soon announce content partnerships for local weather, traffic, and news information.
At CTIA 2010 CNET takes an in-depth look at the Samsung Galaxy S. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-20001076-10356022.html” class=”origPostedBlog”CTIA 2010/a/p
Want some DivX-encoded 720p goodness on your fancy new superphone? Samsung will be the way to go, at least in the short term. The Korean company has announced that its Bada-infused Wave handset will be the first phone with certified support for DivX HD playback, with the freshly announced, Android-driven, Galaxy S following up at an unspecified point in time. Guess we’re finally going to get the content to do justice to those spectacular Super AMOLED displays. Hit up Engadget Spanish for the full PR while we get to work on transcoding our entire DVD collection.
A consortium has worked through many issues developing an easy-to-understand mobile-phone camera rating. Microsoft and Google could help the system catch on. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20001061-264.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Deep Tech/a/p
On March 12th, Apple began taking pre-orders for the iPad. The WI-Fi versions will ship April 3rd, with the 3G models to follow in the coming weeks. Prices range from $499 to $829, depending on which of the six configurations you buy.
Current estimates are that almost 200,000 people already pre-ordered one, so some people clearly think it’s worth buying. Others, meanwhile, are letting all the arguments fly back and forth, without ever having touched one in person–and you know how reliable that kind of advice often is.
So here’s the question: Are you counting the seconds until your iPad arrives? Or do you think it’s a ridiculous concept fit only for slavish Apple zombies? Tell us why in the comments below.
You know, we see a lot of ultraportable laptops these days, it’s not like it’s virgin territory for us, but we’d say the last time we were this blown away by a form factor was the VAIO X, or maybe the Adamo XPS in all its weird-hinge glory. LG’s X300 is simply thin. Cramming 11.6-inches of screen and premium netbook parts (2GHz Atom Z550, HDMI out, up to 2GB of RAM and 128GB SSD, even some 3G and Bluetooth for good measure) into a 0.68-inch thick form factor is impressive, but we’re even more struck by how insanely light this thing is — it feels more like holding an e-book reader in hand than a laptop. The plastic build feels very solid, and the textured pattern on the back falls into the realm of “premium,” not “gaudy.” The keyboard isn’t the best action-wise, but there’s zero flex because there’s nowhere to go. Our biggest concern is the trackpad: it’s nice and big, but there’s a “virtual” click mechanism where you tap to click the button portion and get a haptic response — it might be the evolution of the “click pad” concept, or it might be a pain in the ass. Even the screen was bright and quality, though too glossy for our taste. We’re told the laptop is headed to the US, but we’re not sure when — hopefully soon, since it’s starting to ship internationally this month. Check out a video walkthrough after the break.
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