Archive for July 27th, 2009

Thought you had it all set with a 14-inch TV and an NES in your room as a kid? Then you might want to look away for a minute, lest your childhood memories be diminished. Everyone else can take a good look at this 98-inch screen that Patti Deni had installed flush in the ceiling of her son’s bedroom. At the center of the setup is an NEC projector paired with some Draper projection mirrors, which fills that 98-inch StarGlas60 display with some full HD images than can be viewed from just about any angle. As you might expect, however, this wasn’t exactly the easiest of installs, and apparently even involved reframing and reinforcing the ceiling. No word on any mom of the year awards just yet, but the setup itself has at least attracted the attention of Electronic House’s Home of the Year awards.

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Mom installs 98-inch screen in son’s bedroom ceiling, deservedly garners award nomination originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few weeks ago a good source gave me a legal document written by a former federal prosecutor and senior Department of Justice official. It was arguing that social gaming company Zynga could be breaking multiple state and federal anti-gambling laws via its popular Texas HoldEm game.

A few things are striking about this. First off, Zynga is one a handful of companies building Facebook and iPhone apps that has found a way to make money. Lots of money. Close to $200 hundred millions dollars in revenues to be precise. The fact that it could be the next target for an overzealous state attorney is a big story in and of itself. Second, the fact that competitors are this threatened by Zynga’s cash machine shows an ugly battle royale brewing in the application space. (More on that in a bit.)

Online gambling is illegal, according to the U.S. State Department and a handful of states, but there are still some gray areas. In June, the Feds started cracking down on gamblers in an attempt to clear things up. Meanwhile, others like Massachusetts representative Barney Frank are seeking to legalize and tax the $1 billion or more in annual revenues U.S. poker players are mostly sending to sites based overseas. Frank clearly faces a huge uphill battle from religious groups who see poker as a moral issue.

But a site like Zynga should be able to side-step all of this, because although you can buy chips for Zynga’s Texas HoldEm game you can’t redeem them for money, right? Maybe not.

Google Voice is a pretty amazing service, but it comes with a number of minor annoyances, including the way in handles outgoing calls and SMS messages. Fortunately, Google has recently come out with a number of smartphone apps for BlackBerry and Android that obviate the need for any extra steps, making Google Voice a natural replacement for your phone’s native dialer. The iPhone still lacks an official client, but that hasn’t stopped a handful of third party developers from releasing their own apps, which have been available on the App Store for the last few months. Today, however, it sounds like Apple has made the decision to crack down on these: Sean Kovacs, the developer behind the popular app GV Mobile, has written on his blog that Apple is going to be removing his application, citing the fact that it “duplicates features that come with the iPhone”.

It seems that Brando can’t go a month without bringing out yet another slightly-improved domicile for your orphaned SATA HDDs. Following in the footsteps of the very recent Multimedia Dock, the latest unit adds H.264 decoding to the already present DivX, Xvid and MPEG-4, while output graduates to full 1080p. Featuring HDMI and a plethora of supported media formats, the humble docking station has certainly grown up, but is it enough to compete with standalone media players? Input flexibility would suggest so — the new device accepts 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard drives, alongside USB flash memory, SD, MMC, and MS cards — but alas, Brando loses the plot at the final hurdle, asking for an astronomical $199. With prettier alternatives available at half the price, this is unlikely to sell like hotcakes, but Brando’s breakneck refresh cycle give us the feeling it won’t be long before we see that perfect do-it-all dock.

Filed under: Peripherals, Storage

Brando HD Media Player Docking Station does multi-format 1080p originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember all the brouhaha about Twitter trademarking the word ‘tweet’ and subsequently having to explain that they were not exactly doing this to attack third-party app developers over the use of the word?

Well so far Twitter hasn’t been that terribly prolific in using the words ‘tweet’ or ‘retweet’ apart from some odd blog posts and individual employees’ messages on the micro-sharing service. That has changed today.

TechCrunch reader @JoeHagofsky informs us that Twitter has apparently changed the word ‘updates’ on the right sidebar of the page you see when logged onto its website to ‘tweets’ (see screenshots below). It’s also changed on individual profile pages. We see them too and as far as we know this is in fact new.

Not a ton of details to be found here, but the first shots of what certainly appears to be Philips‘ first Android handset have emerged from China. The V808, as it’s called, certainly looks Androidy enough, with a 3.2-inch, HVGA display, and it will supposedly boast a 3.2 megapixel camera and video recording. In Philips fashion, we can probably expect to see it Xenium branded, but as yet, we have no other details on specs, pricing, or availability, and sadly the phone isn’t powered on in any of the photos. There are two more images after the break — hit the read link for the whole set.

[Via Cloned in China]

Continue reading Philips’ first Android endeavor, the V808, caught on camera?

Filed under: Cellphones

Philips’ first Android endeavor, the V808, caught on camera? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After waiting what’s seemed like an eternity, we’ve finally got our very own US-spec Sony Walkman NWZ-X1051. Just like the Japanese unit we toyed with a few months ago, there’s no denying the sexiness of the hardware here — the OLED screen is gorgeous, and the faux-granite shell is quite nice in person, lending the whole experience a nice solid feel. We just wish the gigantic FCC sticker on the back wasn’t so nasty — it’s strangely cheap compared to everything else about the device. We’re putting this thing through its paces and we’ll have some more impressions in a bit, but for now check the unboxing and a quick head-to-head with the iPod touch in the gallery!

Filed under: Portable Audio

US Sony Walkman X-series unboxing and hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One search engine dies, another takes a step forward. This is a hard space to find a niche in, but the money at stake if you succeed is staggering.

Blekko, the stealth search engine we’ve been covering since early 2008, has raised a third round of financing – $11.5 million from USVP and CMEA. That brings the total amount of capital raised to $17.5 million, including a $1 million credit line. Their last round was in March 2008.

We took a look at Blekko in late May. The company wants absolutely no press at all while they continue to bake the product, but we think there is something interesting under the hood. And apparently a few investors agree.

VTech’s already teamed up with T-Mobile for the carrier’s landline-friendly @Home service, and it looks like it now also has a slightly different solution of its own for folks using both a landline and a cellphone. At the heart of it is VTech’s LS6245 base unit, which functions just fine as a standard DECT 6.0 cordless phone all by itself, and can also be paired with a Bluetooth-enabled cellphone to form a “virtual” two-line phone system — letting you, for instance, take a landline call using the base unit’s speaker phone and a cellphone call using the remote-like handset. Those really wanting to go crazy can also add up to twelve handsets to the setup (for $40 apiece), and the base unit itself ($80) will accommodate up to eight different Bluetooth devices paired to the system.

[Via TestFreaks, thanks Vincent D]

Filed under: Cellphones, Household

VTech’s Bluetooth-packing LS6245 offers “virtual” two-line phone system originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While there’s a lot of talk about Apple’s rumored tablet device as it relates to new initiatives from the music industry, the device is undoubtedly a lot larger in scope. The music-angle talk is mostly thanks to the Financial Times all-over-the-place first report yesterday. But a second story also released yesterday with much of the same information, clears things up a bit, and adds a few interesting new nuggets of information.

Here’s the best excerpt:

“It would be a colour, flat-panel TV to the old-fashioned, black and white TV of the Kindle,” one publishing executive said.

Uh oh, Amazon.