YouView’s catch-up programming has remained mostly UK-centric so far, but TalkTalk is adding some diversity with a trio of World TV Boosts. The new Arabic TV, JSTV and kykNET TV packs give viewers a combined 16 channels of Afrikaans, Arabic and Japanese content. While the Boosts aren’t cheap at a minimum £10 ($15) per month, they could be vital for ex-pats who want to keep up with news and shows from their home countries.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Source: YouView
“Emergency taking place!” That’s quite possibly the last thing you’d want to hear from anyone smelling your breath — a female humanoid robotic head mounted atop a rectangular pink and red box being no exception. Similarly, a robotic hound passing out after smelling your feet should certainly be cause for alarm. Japanese company CrazyLabo paired up with Kitakyushu National College of Technology to create both bots, tasked with smelling your breath and your feet, respectively. The woman, named Kaori-chan, passes judgement on four levels, with feedback ranging from “It smells like citrus!” to the dire exclamation you read about above.
The pooch, for his part, doesn’t speak, but instead displays varying levels of affection — it’ll cuddle up if things are looking good, but it’ll bark or growl if it’s time to change those socks. If the situation is beyond repair, he’ll collapse, as Chopin’s funeral march plays in the background. It’s just as depressing as it sounds. Granted, it’s all in good fun, but if you’re easily offended (or often offending), you probably won’t want to venture any closer than the demo video at the source link below.
It’s one thing to have a spacious home, it’s another to have a whole indoor suburb. “House K” does the latter, and puts a weird new spin on the townhouse by having its own little town inside its walls. More »
It’s one thing to have a spacious home, it’s another to have a whole indoor suburb. “House K” does the latter, and puts a weird new spin on the townhouse by having its own little town inside its walls. More »
You know, they say everything tastes better deep-fried, and I have to agree. My wife an I always talk about how you could fry up some old shoe leather, and it would taste good. I wonder how a fried Gundam would taste. Guess I don’t have to wonder anymore…
Now I’m in the mood for tempura. Thanks a lot, Lazorz.
Twitter users looking to permanently house their missives in Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and eight other languages have now been given the go-ahead. This third language expansion focuses on the east, although it does add Italian, Turkish and Danish support too. In short, it’s another excuse to celebrate the microblogging network’s seventh compleanno.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Via: Techcrunch
Source: Twitter
A lot of Japanese watches aren’t that easy to read, but this one makes things look eve more undecipherable since it’s inspired by cryptography. The watch certainly looks distinctive, but will it be legible enough to be useful in daily life?
Based on Firdaus’ CODEX concept watch, the Tokyoflash Kisai X uses segmented triangular shapes and lines to display the time. The hours are shown on the left side of the display, while the minutes are shown on the right. You’ll have to get used to the way that the numbers are displayed, but once you understand the trick, I’m sure that it will get easier.
The watch has a lightweight solid stainless steel body and band, and its face features a pyramid design which gives it a small amount of depth and dimension. It’s USB rechargeable and one charge should last you a month.
The Tokyoflash Kisai X is available in black or polished stainless steel, with either a blue, green, or red LED display. The watch will cost you $99 until March 7th at 4PM Japan time, after which it will jump to its regular retail price.
Every time I think I’ve seen every possible LEGO contraption you could build, somebody comes along and makes something I’ve never imagined. This time, we’ve got a giant folding LEGO structure that works like a pop-up book.
It wasn’t enough for Japanese LEGO fanatic Talapz to simply create an architectural model of the Todai-ji Buddhist temple. Nope. He had to show off and make one that could actually fold up. Here, check it out:
Pretty nifty, eh? It turns out this isn’t the first folding LEGO building Talapz has made – back in 2009 he built another, though the 2012 model and folding mechanism is even more impressive.
Stick around to the end of the first video to see exactly how he built it.
[via Kotaku via Nerd Approved]
Amazon is on the cusp of launching the complete Kindle line in Japan, so it’s only right that the online retailer fine-tune its firmware for local reading habits. A new version 5.3.0 update for the Kindle Paperwhite puts much of that focus on Manga, introducing options to fit the stylized comics to the screen as well as tweak their page refresh interval separately from that of plain old text. Wider efforts to improve font rendering touch on Japanese characters in the process. Even if we’re a little rusty with our hiragana, there’s still some usability tweaks in store: settings are accessible directly from the menu, readers can purge their home screens of recommended content and sample books now sync their position relative to the full title. The bookworms among us that are too impatient to wait for an automatic update to 5.3.0 can hit the source link for the full skinny and a fast-track installation through USB.
Filed under: Amazon
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite update optimizes your Manga mania, offers quicker settings originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 04:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The new Nintendo Wii U is coming to stores in North America on November 18th, but you can see exactly what you’ll be getting in the box thanks to the fine folks at Nintendo, who have decided to shoot their own early unboxing video, with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata doing the honors.
The video is in Japanese, but has subtitles, and is easy to follow. It’s pretty crazy that the controller is almost as big as the console, and the power brick is still quite chunky as well. It sure would be nice if they could get the size down. Apple has proven it’s possible with the MacBook’s power supply, as has Asus, so why can’t everyone?
My favorite part of the video is the rubber gloves Iwata is wearing while unboxing the shiny black game system. Clearly, it’s gonna be a major fingerprint magnet – especially the controller. I wonder if they include a pair of gloves in the box.
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