Hasta La Gadget!

Given the one-size-fits-few nature of most audio products, it’s good to have choices, and Sony happens to have two new pairs of headphones designed for very particular segments of your life. If, say, you’re a traveling music lover who doesn’t happen to have the disposable income to obtain Sony’s premium $300 MDR-NC300D noise canceling buds (which the company claims filter out 99 percent of noise), you’ll find a cheaper alternative in the new $70 MDR-NC13, which only make a estimated 87.4 percent of background distractions go bye-bye. C’est la vie. If, on the other hand, you need to throw sound from one end of your mansion to the other for hours on end, the MDR-RF865RK wireless headphones might be the wide receiver you’ve been dreaming of — Sony claims they’ll play audio up to 100 meters away from their dock, which provides up to 25 hours of playtime after a 3.5 hour charge. No price or availability for the wireless cans, which were just announced in the UK, but you’ll find the NC-13 on sale at Sony’s online store right now. PR after the break.

Continue reading Sony’s NC-13 buds cancel noise, RF865 cans transmit across a football field

Sony’s NC-13 buds cancel noise, RF865 cans transmit across a football field originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the midst of a nuclear crisis in Fukushima, somehow TEPCO has managed to make the situation even more surreal. As nuclear engineers rotate on and off of their shifts trying to prevent meltdown, they are faced with the reality that there isn’t anywhere warm and comfortable in the area to get themselves together. Below is the ship, the Kaiwo Maru II, docked in Onahama Port in Fukushima, where the engineers go to get cleaned up and relax. We had the opportunity to board the ship a few days ago and interact (briefly) with the workers coming back from their shifts at the severely damaged reactor.

Driving up, it was shocking at the complete lack of people around. Simply a massive 4-mast ship sitting in the harbor. We were the only people outside of those on board.

It was hard to get a nice shot of the ship since the size of it far exceeded what my camera lens could take in. I took some film shots on my Horizon panoramic, but haven’t developed the negs yet. As you see, the road around the ship is quite damaged, as it most of the little town after being pummeled by the tsunami. However, the damage here would be quite shocking were it not for the infinitely larger devastation further up North.

Before boarding the ship, everyone is check for radiation by the crew. The two engineers below had their bodies, as well as their plastic bags full of belongings, scanned up and down. I also got the scan treatment along with my plastic Holga. As we questioned them, they gave the standard reply of “We’re doing our best” as an unidentified TEPCO staffer stood watch. When I asked him what his job was, he declined to comment and drove off.

While on board, the beauty of the day and the sheer complexity of the ropes and pulleys on the ship put me in a good mood. We were unable to see inside the living quarters where the workers spend their relaxation time, but I can assume that it’s not exactly a fun place to be. Peace and quiet is probably in high demand though.

The Kaiwo Maru II sits in a relatively serene (but windy!) spot on the far end of the port, but not far from it you find the chaos that came two weeks ago.

All around town are smashed shops, flipped cars, downed power lines, and enormous ships and barges sitting on dry land. Were it not so terrible in reality, there would be a kind of beauty in it, much like how ancient ruins feel to walk through.

Below, a family works to clean up their damaged seaside home. It was pretty incredible how people still sort their garbage into “burnable” and “recyclable” even in this situation.

One of innumerable sunken boats is pulled out of the water by a massive crane, with locals somewhat hesitant to look inside each one as it’s brought up.

A fire truck that probably would have been useful, had it not been sitting in the direct path of a tsunami.

A residential street on the coast at the beginning of a long cleaning process.

As for the engineers on the boat, we can only wish them luck.

By now you’ve probably watched iFixit’s recent iPad 2 teardown video several times while drooling profusely, but we just know you’re itching to find out what’s different with the innards of the WiFi-only, GSM, and CDMA versions. Well once again, iFixit’s got you covered — via an “exceptionally cool” user-contributed post, this time. A grand total of three iPad 2s were sacrificed in this round, revealing variations in case design, antenna count, WWAN board layout, radio chipset choices, and headphone jack assemblies. Besides clearly visible changes like the black antenna window on the 3G models and the microSIM slot on the GSM version, it’s interesting to note that Apple made the same design choices with the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4. The CDMA model features an additional antenna over its GSM sibling, and uses a Qualcomm Gobi dual-mode radio which supports both CDMA and GSM — the latter being unused — along with an integrated GPS receiver, just like the iPhone 4 for Verizon. The GSM version, meanwhile, uses an Infineon chipset for GSM and a separate Broadcom module for GPS, just like the global iPhone 4. Follow the source link below for more sordid details plus high-resolution pictures.

iPad 2 sliced up again, this time in the name of radio science originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 03:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on August 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

I’m sure you’ve been in the situation before where you’ve wanted to purchase something on eBay, but there were multiple people selling the same thing. You probably placed a bid on one of the items in hopes that you’d win it, but you had to leave for work and wouldn’t know the results until you got home. The first thing you did when you got home was see if you won the auction…and you didn’t. Not only that but those similar auctions had also ended without you ever getting a chance to bid on them.

This is a pretty common problem, and eBay is taking it into their own hands to solve it. They have created a free Bid Assistant that anyone can use to do the bidding for them. It lets you "bid" on a group of items, and if you win one it won’t bid on the others. It will immediately bid on the item that ends the soonest in your group, and when one ends it will continue to bid on the others until you win or hit your maximum bid price.

To use it you’ll need to add all the items that you want to monitor to your Watch List. Then select the checkbox next to each one, and click the "Bid with Bid Assistant" button:

In this case I had two of the same computers being offered from the same person. It is common for eBay sellers to have multiple listings of the same items, and the Bid Assistant makes it easy to bid on each until you win one.

Now you can enter in the maximum price you want to pay for each individual item in the group, or you can set one price to be the global maximum bid:

Click to Enlarge

It’s nice that they let you choose a price for each individual item because often times you may not be bidding on the exact same thing. For example, you may want an iPod, and so you’ll setup bids on various models. Or maybe you’re buying a present for someone and are bidding on several different ideas that you came up with.

To use the Bid Assistant you must have at least 5 feedback, but most of you are probably eBay veterans that have dozens if not hundreds of positive feedback. Also, the Bid Assistant will not snipe your bids (place them at the last second). To do that you would need to use a software application such as the free JBidWatcher, which also incorporates most of the features from the Bid Assistant as well.

Hopefully these tools will help you get the things you want at a price you can afford!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Nintendo’s been denying rumors of a new home console for nearly as long as we can remember, but every so often those crafty execs slip — accidentally or intentionally letting us know that exciting things are in the works. Well, last we heard from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, a stereoscopic 3D console was on the table, but Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime just swept that notion under the rug. “We’ve not said publicly what the next thing for us will be in the home console space, but based on what we’ve learned on 3-D, likely, that won’t be it,” he told CNN, prompting a legion of 3DTV owners to imagine that their favorite Nintendo characters cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Why would Nintendo dismiss 3D for home gaming on the very same day that its 3D handheld set a sales record? Simply put, the company doesn’t think the glasses-free 3DTV market is ready for such applications. Ah well — guess we’ll just have to settle for a Wii HD, then.

Nintendo teases next gaming console, says it probably won’t be 3D originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 01:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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