Hasta La Gadget!

Using mobile tagging to fight tagging. The bottom image appears on a smartphone when the real-world QR code is scanned.

(Credit:

Wooster Collective)

It seems a mural sponsored by the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, as a deterrent to graffiti, wound up attracting a little instead. But someone came up with an interesting temporary fix for the defacement.

A tipster named Jason informed street-art site Wooster Collective that a giant QR code had been placed over the offending, spray-painted tag.

And when passersby scan the code with their smartphones, they’re served up an image of the original, undamaged mural, along with information about its origins.

That’s a nice idea. But in describing the fix as “temporary” a few paragraphs back, I was expressing my hope that this approach (or something like it) won’t somehow catch on and replace the actual restoration of murals.

Writing on future-trends blog i09, Cyriaque Lamar says he can “see urban beautification taking shape” as augmented reality. My “Blade Runner”/”Brazil” side can see it too, especially with gov… [Read more]

Related Links:
iOS shopping apps: bar code scanners
How to add QR codes to your photos
Look out! Here comes Apple’s killer location-services patent
New concept turns pizza boxes, bananas into computers
Still love BlackBerrys? Two more are on the way

Clever: The Sound Cover is an iPad case with a speaker inside

What if your iPad 2’s Smart Cover could also be a super-thin, super-loud speaker? If Petur Olafsson’s Sound Cover project takes off on Kickstarter, then maybe it will.

From the outside, the Sound Cover doesn’t look much different from a padded folio case, with a leather cover and an aluminum kickstand. It’ll even wake and sleep your iPad as it opens and closes, using the magic of magnets.

Open it up, though, and you get a pair of NXT stereo speakers, flat units which use Distributed Mode Loudspeakers (DML) to pump out sound. Petur and his company Onanoff say that the volume is 300% louder than the iPad’s own speaker.

Connection to the iPad is via 3.5mm jack, which makes sense for something always joined to the iPad. If you really hate wires then a Bluetooth version will also be available. The speaker’s battery will last for 12 hours on a charge.

If it sounds good, then the Sound Cover looks to be a fantastic idea. And even the $129 ($110 for Kickstarter pledgers) price seems reasonable when you consider that it takes the place of not just a speaker but also the $70 leather Smart Cover.

Sound Cover: iPad2 Cover with Powerful Built-in Speakers [Kickstarter. Thanks, Petur!]

This article was written on April 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

Do you remember back in the late 80′s and early 90′s when Circuit City was the place to go for consumer electronics? Do you also remember the days when a parking spot was hard to come by in the Blockbuster Video parking lot on a Friday night? At one point both companies, Circuit City and Blockbuster Video were at the top of their game and were doing very well for themselves. Over the last several years we have seen them slowly drop in popularity and in profitability, and both are seen as companies in a bit of trouble. That’s why when we read that Blockbuster has made an offer to acquire Circuit City, we were surprised to say the least.

In a letter dated February 17th, but just made public today, Jim Keyes, Chairman and CEO of Blockbuster writes to Philip Schoonover, CEO of Circuit City to make an offer for the company. In the letter, Keyes asked that a response be made by February 21st, however no response was made. Now they’re taking a Microsoft-ish approach to this saying that they are taking an unsolicited $1 billion dollar plus bid for Circuit City directly to the shareholders.

Blockbuster’s CEO  gives us a small glimpse at what they intend to do should they acquire Circuit City by saying that a deal would create a chain that could sell portable devices and entertainment for them, much like Apple Inc’s stores. In a letter to the company, Keyes writes, “Our vision for the new Blockbuster is to be the most convenient source for media entertainment.”

So now comes the issue of price. Blockbuster is offering $6 to $8 per share in cash to Circuit City which is valued at $1.01 to $1.35 billion. Friday’s closing price for Circuit City was $3.90 and this morning they were as low as $2.33, so $6-8 per share doesn’t sound all too bad. Of course once word came out that Blockbuster was after Circuit City, their shares jumped to $6.25 and Blockbuster shares dropped. Keyes said the offer is a “significant premium” to Circuit City’s share price and said the combination of the chains would create “a game-changing retail concept with a sustainable competitive advantage.”

Do you think we’ll ever see a day in the future when Circuit City is able to regain the title as #1 American Consumer Electronics Chain, a title they lost to Best Buy in the 1990′s?

Source: Engadget

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Circuit City Downsizes and opens "The City" stores…Best Black Friday Deals 2007Blockbuster Acquires Movie Download ServiceBlockbuster to Add Another Set-Top Box to Your CollectionBlack Friday Ads for Best Buy, Circuit City, Kmart, and Target

This Keypad watch represents the lopped-off numpad your laptop still feels every time it rains

It’s fairly clear these days that watches are meant for decoration, and not for traditional horological purposes. The biggest piece of evidence in favor of my hastily-invented theory is the watches themselves: They make it almost impossible to tell the time.

The Keypad watch amply demonstrates the other side of this trend: awesome-looking novelty wrist-jewelry. The Keypad watch looks like the number pad on any computer keyboard, and you press (almost) any one of those keys to ask the time. The watch then blinks lights embedded in the keys, one by one, to tell you the hour. Thus a zero, then a nine, a one and a five means 09:15. Easy enough, if a little time consuming.

The hash key has a different function: to display the date. And while you can pick between 12 and 24-hour time, it appears that you cannot set the date to display the date day-first (13/12 for December 13th) as God intended when he invented the Gregorian calendar 1776 years before the U.S became independent.

The Keypad watch comes in a variety of computer-drab colors, from cheap PC beige thru gamer black to a horrible 1980s gray (my favorite). Better still, they come at a price you could reasonably badger your spouse into paying to buy you the perfect Christmas gift: $90. Available now.

Keypad Watch product page [Watchismo. Thanks, Mitch!]

Canon's PowerShot S100

(Credit:
Sarah Tew )

Adobe Systems last night updated Lightroom, its software for editing and cataloging photos, with support for the latest batch of small, high-end cameras.

Supported in Lightroom 3.6–along with its close cousin, Photoshop’s Camera Raw 6.6 plug-in, are the Nikon 1 V1 and J1; the Panasonic GX-1; the Samsung NX5 and NX200, and Sony’s NEX-7. All those models are of a newer category, compact cameras with interchangeable lenses.

More conventional compact cameras also are supported, including Canon’s new S100, Fujifilm’s FinePix X10, Ricoh GR Digital IV, and the superzoom Leica V-LUX 3.

Lightroom can accommodate JPEG images from any old camera, but its true purpose in life is to handle the proprietary raw image formats from these and other higher-end cameras. Raw photos, taken directly from the image sensor without any in-camera processing, offer more flexibility and image quality but also add more processing hassles for photographers.

Lightroom also can automatically correct some lens problems such as distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. The new version of Lightroom has lens correction profiles for a number of SLR lenses from Sigma, the three small lenses for the Nikon 1 series, and a slew of Mamiya, Schneider-Kreuznach, and Phase One lenses for … [Read more]

Related Links: