Hasta La Gadget!

This week the soon to be released book “The New Digital Age” authored by Google’s Eric Schmidt has been reviewed and spilled early by the Wall Street Journal, this note including words from the author regarding the future digital dominance of China across out planet. This is not the first time Schmidt has predicted political waves coming crashing in before they’ve gone ahead and happened – an essay by Schmidt and colleague Jared Cohen in 2010 called “The Digital Disruption” which correctly predicted Arab Spring. Could this be the next great digital high tide coming towards us?

Speaking back in the essay from 2010, Schmidt and Cohen let it be known that soon “governments will be caught off-guard when large numbers of their citizens, armed with virtually nothing but cell phones, take part in mini-rebellions that challenge their authority.” This prediction essentially became a hard and fast real-world situation when events such as the Free Iran movement spread and was maintained with Twitter as a large proponent. Everyone knew what the green flags meant because Twitter let them know it.

In the new book authored by Schmidt, “The New Digital Age” is a section in which the next generation will see the information age take hold fully of political uprisings and movements between countries. Schmidt also make clear that he believes China will be a “dangerous and menacing superpower”, as the WSJ says. This book is also go-authored by Cohen as the essay from 2010 was, they here saying that “the disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics” will be putting the USA at a real disadvantage when it comes to future business and politics.

Cohen and Schmidt ass that the United States will be at a disadvantage against China because the country is not willing to “take the same page of digital corporate espionage”, for two reasons: moral values and laws. The “American sense of fair play” will be the reason China gains an upper hand because in the USA “the laws are much stricter (and better enforced)”. Schmidt’s book will be released in full with details far more in-depth than what we’ve got available today – in April is when the public will be able to see it.

In addition to being able to dominate the USA in several digitally-influenced ways in the future, Schmidt and Cohen note that China will be seeing “some kind of revolution in the coming decades”. What that revolution will be is anyone’s guess.

Eric Schmidt predicts China’s hacker war is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Following the lead of other studios like Fox with its Digital HD push, Disney has announced its first movie that customers will be able to buy on download and streaming services weeks before the disc is released. Wreck-It Ralph is a worldwide hit, bringing in $277 million and counting at the box office, but the first time you’ll be able to snag it (legally) for home viewing in the US is February 12th in HD and 3D on supported services. The four disc Blu-ray 3D combo set is priced at $39.99 and will ship nearly a month later on March 5th, along with the 2-disc Blu-ray ($31.99), DVD and standard def video on-demand versions. Disney hasn’t tipped its hat about any digital efforts itself to replace the Online streaming site it shut down in November, but clearly it’s preparing for a multi-format future — we’ll see if we hear any more interesting details during CES in the coming week.

Continue reading Disney announces Wreck-It Ralph will arrive for download before DVD, Blu-ray

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I’ve gotten so used to Tokyoflash having a corner on the cool digital watch market, that I’m always pleasantly surprised when another company comes along with a nifty LCD watch. Up until now, the guys over at Ziiiro have focused on analog designs (and putting too many ‘i’s in the name of their company.) Now, they’ve released a slick digital watch that can keep up with the best of what Japan has to offer.

The new Ziiiro Saturn tells time using a set of concentric circles. The 12 longer segments on the outer ring indicate hours, while the 60 smaller slivers on the inner ring tell minutes. The watch uses LCD tech for its display and offers a cool electroluminescent backlight for nighttime viewing as well.

The Saturn is available in black, gunmetal or chrome finishes, all made from stainless steel. You can pre-order the Saturn now over at Watchismo for $229.99(USD), and they expect to ship the watches this December.

About a year ago, I spotted this cool mechanical LEGO clock called the Time Twister. It was a pretty amazing build, recreating the segmented display of an LCD clock, entirely with LEGO parts. Well its builder, Hans Andersson is back with a new version – the Time Twister 2.

The updated version of the clock has a more finished look than the original, more closely mimicking the style of an LED timepiece with a light-on-dark display.

Mechanically, it looks different too, though the basic principles are the same. It’s built from LEGO blocks, Mindstorms NXT Controllers and servo mechanisms interconnected to gradually rotate and reveal segments of the digits which comprise the current time. Here, check it out in action:

Cool, no? I think so. Hans needs to figure out a way to mass-produce these – or at least sell an instruction kit along with a parts list. I would certainly love to have a clock this cool somewhere in my home or office – though the sound of the motors constantly whirring away might get on my nerves after a while. Nah, I’ll just buy some earplugs if I must.

The Electronic Software Ratings Board, as many of you already know, is the organization that assigns age-based ratings for video games here in the United States. At the moment, only a fraction of games get rated since the sheer number of digital games makes rating each and every one of them a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Today, the ESRB announced that it has made the process of rating digital games a whole lot easier for the itself and developers alike.

Normally when developers want a game rated, they have to pay the ESRB to review a DVD of in-game footage, but the ESRB has done a lot to streamline the process for digital titles. Instead of sending in a DVD of game footage, developers simply fill out a questionnaire that determines a rating for their game. They can fill out the questionnaire and submit it to the ESRB free of charge too, which should do a lot to get more developers using the ESRB’s rating system. As an added bonus for consumers, the ESRB’s digital rating system will not only assign age-based ratings, but also tell consumers if the game will share their data and location, among other things.

Naturally, there’s cause for concern when it comes to this self-rating system, as developers could potentially lie about their game to get a “better” rating (if such a thing even exists when it comes to game ratings). However, the ESRB tells Ars Technica that its tests show that the self-rating method works nearly as well as ESRB representatives assigning the ratings themselves, so the organization is confident that bogus self-ratings won’t be much of an issue. If they do become an problem, the ESRB can always rescind a developer’s access to its ratings program as punishment, though developers can appeal if they think the rating of their game wasn’t handled properly.

At first, this streamlined ratings systems will only be available for digital games on big platforms, such as Xbox Live, PSN, the Nintendo eShop, and the Windows 8 Store. Don’t expect ESRB-rated games to begin popping up on the iOS App Store or Google Play Store anytime soon though, as both Apple and Google use their own ratings systems for apps and actually shot down proposals from the ESRB last year. What do you think of the ESRB’s digital rating system – is it a good idea, or is the organization just opening itself up for abuse?

ESRB simplifies digital rating system is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.