Who cares if Mother Nature’s just buried your ride to work under four feet of ice and snow? You’ll be as excited as a kid on a snow day to get outside and clean it off with this lovely folding ice scraper from Eva Solo. More »
Confession: I can tolerate some pretty mediocre coffee. I’m sipping a K-Cup right now. I grew up in the south drinking Waffle House coffee that had scorched on a hot plate since the last shift. And Waffle House was considered “the good stuff.” More »
We are officially in the fall premiere season. From freshly-minted Emmy winners like Homeland to newbies like Last Resort, 666 Park Avenue and Elementary, the prime time schedule is suddenly full of shows jostling for our attention. Add in a full slate of movie releases, football games and even WNBA playoffs, well, and our DVRs have their work cut out for them. Look below for the highlights this week, followed after the break by our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames.
The Avengers
One of the summer’s biggest hits is here on disc, in two discs Blu-ray / DVD combo pack (no digital copy) and four disc Blu-ray 3D edition (with digital copy). We got a chance to check it out early and there’s certainly enough extras here to keep the fans happy, along with a slick and fast-loading menu system. We did not get an opportunity to try out the Second Screen app yet, but with the price of the four disc pack down to $25, we figure most fans will getting thier money’s worth — unless of course they’re waiting for the delayed Marvel Cinematic Universe edition.
(September 25th, $24.99 on Amazon)
Last Resort
We’re sure there’s more to this military drama than just trying to be the next Lost, but when you start off stranded on a fictional island then throw in conspiracy theories and a submarine, our magnets start to tingle. From the trailer (embedded after the break)it certainly has an interesting plot, as the crew of a US military vessel is fired upon by its own country, and subsequently goes rogue in an attempt to find out why and get back home, but we’ve seen many of these mysterious shows come and go very quickly — it will need to find its own hook, and fast.
(September 27th, ABC, 8PM)
Louie
As we welcome in a slew of new shows, we say goodbye to one for now. Comedian Louis CK’s show was also an award winner last night, and it was well deserved. After a Rocky-style take on the late night wars the show wraps up its season this week with what appears to be a New Year’s themed episode. If you haven’t checked it out yet and are a fan of CK’s comedy style, this is probably the time.
(September 28th, FX, 10:30PM)
Continue reading Must See HDTV (September 24th – 30th)
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Must See HDTV (September 24th – 30th) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Schematic of creating a space-time crystal.
In a googol of years or so, scientists expect the universe to enter a state known as “heat-death,” where there’s no thermodynamic free energy remaining and everything’s stopped moving. A clock that could keep time even after the heat-death would require a crystal that has periodic structure in time as well as space, which would mean it is a four-dimensional crystal. There’s actually a practical use for such a 4D crystal during this epoch, as scientists would use the device to study complex physical properties and phenomena in the quantum world.
A team of researchers led by scientists from the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory have proposed the experimental design of such a 4D crystal. The paper, published on Arxiv, describes a device that uses an electric-field ion trap and Coulomb’s law to form a spatial ring crystal, which, once a weak static magnetic field is applied, will begin a rotation that will never stop. Theoretically, the rotation won’t stop even when the universe reaches entropy. According to the paper:
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Scientists turn a single atom into a bit, Kinect used to create impressive physics demo,
Aside from being powered by memes, likes and tweets, today’s internet is strongly fueled by viral videos. King of the latter, YouTube has added yet another trendsetting feature to its repertoire. The Google owned video sharing service now gives its content producers the ability to add subtitles to their videos in over 300 languages. Leaning on Google Translate’s software, this new feature gives YouTubers the option to add or request translated captions for their videos anytime during the content’s lifespan. So, whether you’re a casual vlogger, or an aspiring director hoping to have your recent short reach a broader audience, you now have to opportunity to snag some views on a global scale. Just be sure to remember us little people when those awards for best foreign film start rolling in.
YouTube gains translated caption support, tears down another language barrier originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Borderlands 2 arrived last week, and most are saying that its better than the original. Early adopters are adventuring through Pandora, collecting guns and killing Bullywongs as you read this, but for some of those Vault Hunters, the adventure is not without headaches. No, we’re not talking about Borderlands 2‘s increased difficulty, but rather about a bad rank reset bug that is affecting users on all platforms.
For the uninitiated, Borderlands 2 features a ranking system that is separate from the game’s leveling system. Players have the ability to increase their “badass rank” by completing a series of challenges, and increasing your badass rank gives you coins to spend on improvements that apply to all of your characters. Users can improve a variety of stats, including reload speed, maximum health, and elemental effect chance (there are many, many more aside from those three), and the best part is that challenge completion doesn’t carry over between characters, meaning that players could potentially get their badass rank ridiculously high by completing challenges with all four characters.
It’s a really cool aspect of the game, but there’s one problem: some users are reporting that their badass rank is being randomly reset, taking all of the unlocked stat bonuses with it. This wouldn’t be much of a problem for someone who is planning to play a lot of Borderlands 2, but the completed challenges aren’t being reset with the badass rank, meaning that players will have a really difficult time getting their badass rank up to where it was. To make matters worse, skins and items that have been unlocked with tokens have disappeared as well.
This problem is present on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC versions of the game, and users have speculated on the Gearbox forums that it has something to do with save file corruption. Gearbox’s Chris Faylor chimed in on the thread, saying that the studio is working on a fix and reassuring players that this seems to be a rare issue. Even if it is, it’s still a major annoyance for those who are affected, so here’s hoping that Gearbox gets a fix out the quickly. Have your badass ranks and unlocks in Borderlands 2 been reset, or are your save files still solid in that respect?
[via Kotaku]
Borderlands 2 rank reset bug making the rounds is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Gamers looking for a way to bring tactile controls to their mobile devices are starting to have a multitude of choices. The latest mobile controller is a cool idea in that it’s small enough to tote around on your keychain.
The iMpulse controller works over Bluetooth and can connect to iOS or Android devices. The pocket-sized gamepad includes a small sliding directional thumbpad and four buttons for gameplay (I’m not sure what that fifth button at the center does.) As an added bonus, the controller is ambidextrous, so it can be flipped over to work for either righties or lefties. It also works as a media remote for your mobile gadgets, and as a keyfinder which will beep when you activate an app on your smartphone.
Out of the box, the iMpulse will support hundreds of games, and its creators are offering up their own SDK for game developers to take advantage of the controller as well. With all the controllers making their way onto the market, I’m still shocked that Apple has issued no official controller API from for iOS. At least Android has standards for input devices. Here, check out the iMpulse in action with an iPad:
Cool, no? About the only thing I’m not convinced of is the idea of having to put my phone or tablet in some kind of stand to really play with this thing. I don’t know how practical that is for everyday use. But if you’re excited about the iMpulse, drop on over to Kickstarter and pledge at least $30(USD) to get your controller – thought you’ll need to add another $10 to get a USB-microUSB charging cable, and a T-shirt to go with. There’s also a spiffy metal finish version available starting at $55.
The folks from Toshiba look to continue the trend of packing tons and tons of storage into an extremely small space. Today they’ve outed their latest Canvio Slim portable hard drive and are stating it’s the “world’s thinnest” portable hard drive. Coming in at just 9mm thick offering 500GB of storage for only $115 — lets take a look.
Essentially they are using an Ultrabook class leading 7mm portable HD, packed it into an ultra-sleek enclosure like most portable hard drives, added a few ports and are offering it for an excellent price. This new Canvio drive is extremely small and will fit in nearly all pants or shirt pockets — basically being the size of most smartphones these days.
As a comparison the new iPhone 5 is just 7.6mm thick, and the Galaxy S III is 8.6mm in size. Making this new 500GB portable storage option pretty sleek. Not only is Toshiba’s latest drive sleek and cheap, but it’s also quite fast being operated and powered by USB 3.0, with full compatibility with both PC and Mac. Here’s what Maciek Brzeski, VP of Product Marketing had to say:
As consumer electronics continue to get thinner, lighter and more portable, we recognized a huge demand to create a storage device that is in line with those trends,” and With the Canvio Slim, consumers can now easily stash their storage device right along with their Ultrabook, knowing that their data is always safe, even when they’re on the go.”
Other specs include 5400 RPM and an 8MB cache buffer, along with a 12 ms average seek time. It’s not the fastest around, but it sure is portable. You can get it from Toshiba direct today for $115 in Graphite Black or brushed Aluminum Grey, and it should hit retail stores starting in October.
[via MaximumPC]
Toshiba outs Canvio Slim as world’s thinnest 500GB hard drive is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Bleeding edge consumers may not appreciate the Aakash 2′s meagre specs, but India is betting the concept of the uber-cheap tablet is one that could legitimately change the world. Currently, the government-subsidized Android Gingerbread slate is being supplied to students for free, but it now has a launch date . It goes on sale on October 5th in India for only $35, which is a price point that makes modern computing accessible to a whole group of people who can’t afford an iPad. The Aakash 2 is the second version of the tablet, and it includes a ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 512MB of RAM, a front-facing camera, and 4GB of internal storage. Most importantly, it features a capacitive screen, which makes multitouch gestures possible, which is a huge deal at this price point. Perhaps the biggest issue will be keeping up with demand: at this price, they’ll fly off the shelves and the first generation Aakash tablet had trouble keeping up with demand. Datawind–the manufactuer of the tablet–claims they’ve already produced 5.5 million of the device, but that’s a mere fraction of the 220 million units they’re shooting for. There’s no word on availability outside of India–although some American school systems are eying the device–but at a fraction of the price of the Nexus 7, many Western buyers wouldn’t mind a buy-one-give-one-free deal like the XO Laptop.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Aakash tablet delayed, Datawind ditches supplier, Datawind to deliver Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for Aakash 2 tablet?,
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