Archive for July 4th, 2009

Colorware‘s well known for offering up all sorts of consumer electronics in all sorts of hues, but the outfit has definitely stepped up its game with the Stealth MacBook Pro. This limited edition piece is an all-black 15-inch MacBook Pro with a matte display, 3.06GHz CPU, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 256GB SSD, an 8x SuperDrive, zero gloss finish and a SofTouch coating that’ll make it downright impossible for your fingers to stop stroking it. Reportedly, these will be limited to just ten units, and each one will cost a not-at-all affordable $5,999. See Apple, this is what you get when you voluntarily axe the BlackBook. Opportunity, lost.

[Via Engadget Polska]

Filed under: Laptops

Colorware offers up $6,000 Stealth MacBook Pro: it’s really dark originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Before everyone gets in a huff, let’s consider Amazon’s intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book’s content? Personally, I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon, but more because it’s a no-lose situation. Amazon wouldn’t risk alienating its loyal Kindle base with dirty tricks like this, so it’s safe to assume it’ll be at least somewhat opt-in.

An abundance of free or reduced-price content would widen the appeal of the reader — I imagine many people are put off e-books by the idea that they are not getting their money’s worth. As offensive as the idea of inserting ads into a book is to me (and surely to the average reader), it’s almost certainly part of a value proposition which increases the utility of these expensive little buggers.

Dearest CrunchGear readers: I recently had the honor and privilege of speaking to Karen Dyer, who is not only the voice of Sheva Alomar, from Resident Evil 5, but who also did said character’s motion capture. I hope you enjoy it on this day, our day of freedom.

Obviously, “K” is for Karen, and “N” is for Nicholas. With that…

N: Well, first off congratulations. Resident Evil 5 was a big hit. It sold something like 4 million copies.

K: That’s what I hear!

N: Excellent. But before we get into the game, I just wanted to bring up something I saw on your bio. It says here you’re known for your circus skills, and I just wanted to say how that awesome that is. And I wanted to ask, where do you study that? Because I don’t know if your average community college offers that type of training.

That supposedly upcoming Android XPERIA that Mobil dug up might have our minds, but it’s this leaked handset (which, to be fair, looks fairly sketchily rendered), the Sony Ericsson Kiki, that has won our hearts. The screen is made of glass, with an image seemingly rear-projected onto it (teleprompter style), while the keys are, um, scarce. Mobil was able to offer few hints as to how this works or what all it does, and it seems like it falls far short of the functionality of a feature phone, but we’re sure we want one whatever it is.

Filed under: Cellphones

Rumored Sony Ericsson “Kiki” handset isn’t a boring one originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s no secret that bloggers love their polls — they’re a great way to increase user engagement, and sometimes you can even get some useful data from them. But most people probably don’t realize just how popular these polls really can be. PollDaddy has just released some of its latest stats, and they don’t fail to impress: the company is now serving 430 million poll impressions per month, with a reach of over 74 million people worldwide, giving it a Quantcast rank equivialent as the 22nd most visited online service in the world.

That success is due in no small part to PollDaddy’s acquisition by WordPress’s parent company Automattic last fall. Bloggers could embed PollDaddy into the WordPress blogs (as well as other popular blogging platforms) long before the acquisition, but now PollDaddy is also being included as a feature on WordPress.com, Automattic’s premium hosted blogging platform — and home to over 8 million blogs — that appeals to users who don’t want to deal with having to set up their own blog install. In other words, PollDaddy is now accessible to a much broader audience.

Hello, beautiful. Danish phone site Mobil has uncovered “internal documents” on what appears to be Sony Ericsson’s upcoming Android-based handset, an XPERIA number codenamed Rachael. Under the hood is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, HSPA and an 8 megapixel camera. It’s unclear how big the touchscreen is, and other details are scarce — there is a 3.5mm headphone jack, so that’s nice, but unless we’re severely misguided, there doesn’t seem to be a slide-out keyboard tucked away inside this thin chassis.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Sony Ericsson “Rachael” Android XPERIA handset unveiled? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Activision’s CEO has already gone public with his complaints about the price of the PS3, and it looks he’s not alone among industry bigwigs with a bone to pick with Sony, with the CEO of the newly formed Tecmo Koei now coming out and echoing his concerns. Speaking with CVG, Tecmo Koei’s Kenji Matsubara says that whenever he speaks about the issue with Sony reps, he asks them to “please cut the price” of the PS3, adding that “from a publisher’s point of view we would welcome a price cut for PS3 and we are waiting, definitely.” He doesn’t quite go so far as pull an Activision and threaten to ditch support for the console if Sony doesn’t drop the price, however, although it seems safe to assume that these complains will only grow louder — at least until Sony actually does cut the price of the PS3, that is.

[Via gamesindustry.biz]

Filed under: Gaming

Tecmo Koei CEO to Sony: “please cut the price” of the PS3 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you in the market for a “Summer Fun” Wii bundle to get your Independence Day started right? Oh, yeah? Fantastic, ’cause GameStop has just the packages for you. For the low, low price of $249.99, the aforementioned bundle consists of a Nintendo Wii console, a water gun and… wait, what? Amazingly enough, GameStop has seen fit to bundle a $0.25 water gun with a Wii and call it a bundle; heck, it’s even limiting them to two per household. If that’s not strange enough for you, there’s also the Pirate Tattoo bundle and Take a Bath with a Buddy (a rubber ducky, just so we’re clear) bundle. Talk about really taking advantage of that whole “freedom” thing.

Read – Summer Fun bundle
Read – Pirate Tattoo bundle
Read – Take a Bath with a Buddy bundle

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming

GameStop hits the sauce for the 4th, offers up bizarre Wii bundles originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If the world required that you complete an expert DDR jam each morning only moments after you awoke, there’s a solid chance the global death toll would far outpace the birth rate. Thankfully, all that’s typically necessary is that you actually listen to whatever device you’ve got ringing. If you’ve noticed lately that said noises just aren’t cutting it, here’s a little puzzler that’s pretty much guaranteed to either get you up or entangle you in infinite frustration. The £9.99 ($16) Finger Dance Alarm Clock sounds at a user-determined time, and once your weary eyes begin to focus, you then have to use your digits to follow a lighted dance pattern in order to shut the cacophony off. It’s half torture, half genius — precisely the way we like it.

[Via OhGizmo]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Finger Dance Alarm Clock: it’s like DDR, in an alarm clock originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Recently, I’ve noticed something. If you send me an email, the likelihood that I’m going to respond is pretty small. But if you send me a message on Twitter, the likelihood that I’ll respond is much higher. Certainly, part of it is that I get fewer messages on Twitter. But you might be surprised at how close it’s getting in volume when you add @replies to direct messages. The bigger factor for me, is the length of the messages.

If I open up an email and see it filled with paragraphs of information, guaranteed my eyes are going to glaze over. Certainly sometimes it’s an important message that I do need to read, but most of the time it’s just a core message filled with paragraphs of bloat. I don’t want or need the bloat, I need the core message. And that’s why I love Twitter. You simply cannot go over 140 characters. And more often than you may imagine, that’s enough.

Now, on the face of it, plenty of people will disagree with me on that point. But think about it. In an age where we’re bombarded by tons of information, from multiple angles, all day long, there is something beautiful about brevity.