Hasta La Gadget!

Don’t you hate it when you are lying on the couch lazily watching a TV show, and then BOOM it turns to a commercial and kicks the volume up to an ear blasting level, which leaves you fumbling for the remote to turn it down. Then, you have to readjust the sound when your show comes back on and again for all the commercial breaks that follow. What a pain!

Well, it looks like Congress agrees that it’s a pain in the butt, as well is very painful and harmful to viewers hearing, because they passed a bill this week to control the volume level of TV advertisements. The bill entitled the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or very appropriately the CALM Act is currently waiting to approved by President Obama. But, really, why wouldn’t he approve it? Nobody wants to get their ears blown off every time a commercial comes on.

Once the bill is passed, the Federal Communications Commission would be required to adopt industry standards that coordinate ad decibel levels to those of the regular program within one year and the regulation would go into full effect a year after that. This bill would affect all broadcast providers, including cable and satellite. So here’s to hoping that one day soon our lazy TV Sundays will be full “CALM” commercials.  

Via msnbc

Have you ever heard that Aaliyah song where Timbaland’s all “it’s been a long time (time), we shouldn’ta left you (left you) without a dope beat to step to (step to)?” That’s how we feel now, or it’s how we felt yesterday, and now this is a new beat to step to, but it’s a whole entire Engadget Podcast to step to.

P.S. Oh, and in addition to the Engadget Podcast Bingo site, there’s now an Engadget Podcast Bingo iOS app made by insanely awesome listener Pierre-Marc Airoldi. Go check it out!

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Paul Miller, Nilay Patel
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Billionaire

00:07:05 – Verizon’s LTE details go live: December 5th, 38 markets, 60 airports, and 2 USB modems
00:08:34 – Verizon LTE plans start at $50/month for 5GB of data (update)
00:09:00 – Verizon LTE / 4G preview with the LG VL600 modem
00:11:00 – Verizon confirms contract-free 4G LTE options: same rates, pricier modems
00:33:25 – 55 people think the iPad is more valuable than the Galaxy Tab (updated)
00:42:15 – RIM buys TAT, BlackBerry UI in danger of becoming awesome
00:55:14 – Chrome OS consumer launch pushed to 2011, Google-branded Chromebook could still arrive this year
01:06:30 – Dell Inspiron Duo review
01:25:00 – Dell Venue Pro finally available to order: $99 on contract, shipping December 9th
01:25:37 – Acer reveals Iconia dual-screen laptop / tablet, Clear.fi cloud-based media sharing system
01:26:30 – Acer Iconia first hands-on! (update: video!)
01:30:55 – Sony Ericsson LiveView review

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Filed under: Podcasts

Engadget Podcast 220 – 12.03.2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wondering just how well a tablet would do if picked up and marketed by all four major carriers in America? We’re still waiting for the breakdown within our borders, but there’s hardly a doubt that the unprecedented carrier arrangement has helped Samsung shatter its estimates on Galaxy Tab sales. Purportedly, the outfit has just passed the one million mark in global sales of the 7-inch Android tablet, but Information Week is quick to point out that Sammy’s not clear on whether that’s units in the sales channel or units in the hands of consumers. Either way, one million’s nothing to scoff at, particularly when you consider that only 600,000 had been sold as of November 22nd. The firm’s now hoping to move 1.5 million of ’em by the year’s end, and while that’s still well short of the estimated seven million iPads that have been sold to date, it’s a sales rate that we’re sure no one at Samsung is kvetching about.

Samsung sells one million Galaxy Tab units, throws an Android party to celebrate originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do you find today’s films too exciting? Need to slow things down a bit? Perhaps get some shuteye in the process? Boy has Sondra Lowell got some flicks for you. The filmmaker has pioneered the new “film sleepy” genre–movies made for the sole purpose of putting their viewers to sleep.

Lowell used to make boring films by accident. Now she’s parlayed that skill into works of art.

“I’ve always wanted to make a movie but found I was good at putting people to sleep,” Lowell told AOL. “I took classes at UCLA and the teachers would fall apart when I made a script. People would tell me that I didn’t understand how to make a story and told me the scenes should build on each other. I thought I was doing that, but people fell asleep. It took me awhile to realize I was on to something.”

The first film in the genre is WebcamMurder.com. A reasonably exciting title sure, but the LA Times called the film “the most boring talkie ever made.” The film is largely comprised of people sitting around, wondering how to get people to watch them on their Webcams. “It sounds a lot more exciting than it is,” Lowell said of the film. You can watch an exceedingly dull excerpt after the jump.

Lowell describes its follow up Sublime Crime: A Subliminal Mystery thusly,

It is a big step forward in movies worth sleeping through. It is mostly a blank screen with flashes of plot and personal growth affirmations, accompanied by an unintelligible binaural soundtrack.

Andy Warhol’s infamous eight-hour boredom epic Sleep was a big influence on the director. “I actually did a stage musical version of it,” Lowell told the press. “The show started at midnight and I would sing and tap-dance before the audience went to sleep. Then I would wake up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom and then perform in the morning.”

Perhaps a Forever Lazy cross promotion is in order.http://www.gearlog.com/2010/12/forever_lazy_the_new_snuggie.php

In London, it’s hard to find a restaurant without a gimmick. And Inamo has probably the biggest gimmick of all. If you’re a hungry, tech-loving nerd, that is.

The restaurant, which just launched a new venue on London’s, tries to do away with almost all waiterly duties, apart from actually carrying plates around. A projector sits above each table and turns the table into a computer-screen (the projector is hooked up to a Windows XP machine). Using a touchpad, you can browse the menu and place your orders, and when you select a dish, a picture of it is projected onto an empty plate already on the table.

Whilst dining, you can choose various “wallpapers” (table-cloths?) to be displayed on the table, and there are even some games, although not any you’d actually play – the folks from UK tech blog Pocket Lint headed over to a pre-launch party and report that one of the games is Battleship. Really?

When you’re done, you can order up the check and call a cab, all from the comfort of your table.

I just hope the bosses at Inamo have some fallback plans. Tech has a way of failing in the catering industry (I was in the game for 15 years), and that’s robust, purpose-built gear. Imagine the poor customer trying to place an order and getting the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. On the other hand, at least a PC can’t come to work drunk.

Inamo hi-tech restaurant hands on [Pocket Lint]
Photos: Paul Lamkin / Pocket Lint

See Also:

• 'Table Connect' Turns iPhone into (Fake) Big-Ass Table
• Microsoft Surface
• Video: Command and Control Robots with Microsoft Surface
• D&D + Microsoft Surface = Unheard-of Levels of Radness