Hasta La Gadget!

The kids at the Mercury-News have just had a sit-down with our old pal Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s legendary head of game development, for a chat about the recession, game controllers, and trust. The company’s plan for dealing with the ebbs and flows of the international economy is simple: “We’re really just concentrating on creating something that people want… something the whole family will use.” Does that include the admittedly silly Vitality Sensor? Of course: “[A]ny sort of changes to interface that allows people to get into games and enjoy games is a great trend.” Any clues as to the exciting new forms of gameplay this Vitality Sensor will provide? “I don’t have any indication for you (of what we have in the works) other than to say that we have lots of very creative ideas.” It looks like we’ll just have to trust the man with the sword for the time being.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming

Nintendo promises ‘very creative ideas’ for Vitality Sensor, declines to name any originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The new SDXC specification for faster, higher-capacity flash cards emerged in January, and Toshiba now promises the cards themselves will begin arriving about a year afterward.

Toshiba plans to sell its first SDXC cards in the spring of 2010, with a starting capacity of 64GB.

(Credit: Toshiba)

Toshiba said Monday …

Originally posted at Underexposed

Some George Costanza-types at Carnegie Mellon have repurposed their own hard earned knowledge of Frogger maneuvers at the university arcade into useful object avoidance techniques for robots. They’ve outfitted both ASIMO and HRP-2 with versions of the technology, which allows the robots to detect their surroundings, create 3D maps of obstacles and plan routes accordingly (and actually has nothing to do with Frogger). If you check out the two videos after the break, you can see that these guys really put the bots through the ringer, including some death defying spinning obstacles that ASIMO avoided with ease, and the “real life” environment the HRP-2 is faced with… but seriously, couldn’t they just let ASIMO have the blue dot already?

[Thanks, Poly Bug]

Continue reading Researchers teach ASIMO and HRP-2 a bit of real life Frogger

Filed under: Robots

Researchers teach ASIMO and HRP-2 a bit of real life Frogger originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are the current batch of SD cards not doing it for you? Have no fear, Toshiba announced today that it’s a got a new batch of faster cards set for release in the first half of next year. Based on the SD Memory Standard 3.0, the first sample batch of cards will ship to OEMs this November.

According to PC World, the standard itself was announced in January of last year, offering transfer speeds of up to 104MB per second. The Toshiba cards will be available in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB sizes. The new XC spec can be used on cards up to 2TB. That’s a lot of photos.

Advertising Age has taken a deep dive into Palm’s latest string of unsettling, polarizing ads — you know, the ones with the girl — in an attempt to explain the company’s intention with the creepy spots. The industry paper spoke with Gary Koepke, the co-founder and executive creative director at Modernista, the company which developed and produced the short clips. According to Gary, he’s happy that viewers find the commercials upsetting, stating that “The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that’s a good thing. Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works? Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.” Apparently the agency is taking its own stab at Microsoft’s Seinfeld / Bill Gates strategy, which means viewers don’t necessarily have to like (or even understand) the ads… as long as they keep talking about them. Of course, that game plan may work for a company like Microsoft, which arguably has nothing to lose if they run a few ill-received spots. Palm, on the other hand, won’t get a second chance to make a first impression with a lot of people, and since its fortune is currently riding on the device these ads attempt to sell to consumers, it’s a pretty risky proposition. C’mon, how could the folks that brought you the Foleo be wrong?

Continue reading Palm’s ad agency ‘loves that you’re creeped out’ by new TV spots

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm’s ad agency ‘loves that you’re creeped out’ by new TV spots originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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