Gadget Access

Microsoft has announced the release to manufacturing for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) with a general availability to begin in March. Once available the update will begin with Microsoft Volume Licensing customers first. Current home Vista users should expect the update to be available during mid-March through Windows Update and have it become an automatic update in April 2008. According to Microsoft, Windows Vista SP1 will address key issues that customers have identified, as well as improve performance, reliability and compatibility.

Read [Windows Vista Team Blog]

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Posted Feb 4th 2008 3:12PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Displays Eizo first let out word about this one last fall, but it looks like the company’s just now gotten around to formally introducing its latest 30-inch display, with the CG301W making its debut at the big PMA show in Las Vegas. Among other things, this one boasts hardware calibration for those not willing to take any chances, and an impressive 97% reproduction of the Adobe RGB color space. Other specs are similarly high-end, including a 2560 x 1600 resolution, dual DVI-D inputs for hooking up two computers (with a picture-in-picture function to boot), and Eizo’s Application Specific Integrated Circuit (or ASIC), which promises to work all sorts of magic to deliver the best image possible. No word on a price, but given that Eizo’s non-hardware calibrated 30-incher demands a hefty $2,555, it may be best not to ask.

[Via TG Daily]

Posted Feb 4th 2008 11:24AM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Wireless There’s already plenty of folks working to make WiFi as ubiquitous as possible, but a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge seem to think they’ve devised one of the most efficient solutions yet, although it’s not without its share of hurdles. The basic idea is to turn a sometimes frowned upon activity into an acceptable one, by making it safe for individuals to share their home WiFi with neighbors and passers-by. To do that all-important latter bit, the researchers propose that the guests would only be given access to a “tunnel” to a single, trusted point on the internet (as illustrated above), with a firewall offering further protection. That, obviously, wouldn’t work unless everyone (including the ISPs) played along, and the researchers some ideas about that as well, even including the possibility that municipalities pass laws requiring ISPs to support co-ops. In other words, don’t bet on it showing up overnight. [Warning: PDF link]

[Via New Scientist]

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I am not usually a fan of sports games, but so I was surprised when I loaded up Tiger Woods 2008 and actually enjoyed it. TW 2008 is one of the most intuitive games I have ever played, if you know a little about the principals of golf it should take a few minutes before you start to see some respectable results. That is not to say that the game is without its challenges, far from it.

Playing a course without much wind is a relatively simple affair. If the wind is blowing at under 5 mph, you do not really have to adjust for it; you just point and shoot. When the wind starts howling is when it starts to get interesting. Different clubs will send the ball to different heights and the ball will react differently. A drive might not get blown around too much, but get a shot up there with the sand wedge and it will move. It is all part of the fun and of the learning experience.

Your swing is determined by the smoothness of your mousing action and any deviation that occurs. I use a Razer Lachesis which is fully programmable and I am guessing it is possible to effectively cheat by turning the sensitivity of the horizontal axis down. The timing is perhaps the toughest part to master, I am constantly fast, slightly fast or very fast on the down swing.

I was initially disappointed with the graphics. I thought I had turned them up to make use of my 8800GTX. The simple high setting still had a grainy picture, which was unimpressive to say the least. The menu layout in this regard is quite poor.  In the advanced settings tab you will find all of the tweaks that you need.  If you crank up the resolution you will be able to set things to very high and enjoy some fine looking graphics.

Game play is smooth, if a little slow, but then golf is a slow sport. There is enough variation in the commentary to avoid sending you mad and the commentators do offer helpful tips that might improve your on-green play.  I love the fact that you can save this between holes, so it is possible to have a five or ten minute gaming session that is satisfying.  It is not as much of a time waster as an FPS or RPG which you need to spend at least twenty minutes immersing yourself in just to get started.

All in all this was an impressive game and one to which I will return many times. It loads quickly and shuts down quickly which is always an enormous plus. I have yet to try it online and don’t really have much interest in doing so. I like my FPS games online, this is more of a one player affair for me.  I give this one 4.5 out of 5.0, it is simply the best sports game that I have played in a long time (excluding Wii tennis of course).

Image Source: Trusted Reviews

Sony Ericsson has recently applied for a patent for what they have termed “Detachable Housings for a Wireless Communication Device”. This new idea which aims at loading a lot more features into a phone and still keeping it portable has two housings which can be detached from each other. One of the housings for the phone has the user interface devices such as the keypad, keyboard, joystick, touchpad etc. and others like the camera and GPS device while the other housing will have a display and a few user buttons and will house the battery and memory card. The screen is also meant to be detachable so you can switch it to whichever housing you’re using.

When you separate them, the housings communicate with each other through Bluetooth. The design has been conceived keeping clamshell phones in mind at the moment. However it is not limited to clamshells and can also be used on sliders. The housings have also been designed such that they can be put together in different ways such as the screen being on the inside or on the outside of the phone. Though this concept has potential and it could mean that you could keep the bulky part hidden away and whip out the other housing whenever you need it, I am quite doubtful about how practical it is. Whether it can withstand repeated removal and assembling and whether it is convenient is something we’ll know only after the brains behind this concept turn it into a phone. 

Read [TechDigest] Via [unwired view]

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This is without a doubt the brightest flashlight I have ever seen. It is dangerously bright, using a pack of 54 batteries and a mercury arc bulb to shoot a beam of light up to four miles high. Seriously folks, this is something that you would have to use responsibly. If you can light up a cloud four miles high, it is certainly enough to cause problems for air traffic, not to mention the fact that it can actually burn skin.

This flashlight on steroids was created by a dutch optics engineer by the name of Ralf Ottow.  He has been making his own lights since he was eight, he is forty-five now and my guess is that he has come a long way.  I will be looking forward to seeing more of his work in the future.  This thing is a work of art and I love the fact that it needs a key to work.

New Launches, Pop Sci

Posted Feb 4th 2008 9:50AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Peripherals
If you’ve never tracked down just the right desktop widget to display your PC vitals, perhaps analog gauges are your last hope at harmony with processor utilization. DIY Life has a nice how-to on how to hack your very own old-school gauges to work off of USB and, you know, gauge stuff. Unfortunately, the hack is pretty involved — we set ten of our finest interns to the task, and only three of them made it back with all their appendages intact — but don’t let that frighten you too much, our interns are a rowdy lot.

Posted Feb 4th 2008 7:58AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: cellphones, GPS, Portable VideoAfter teasing us with a lustful peep from their V900’s marketing collateral, E-TEN had the good grace to make their newest Glofiish official. Their first handset to offer mobile TV does so without hesitation — DVB-H, DVB-T, T-DMB, and DAB broadcast media are all supported on that generous VGA display. These consumer oriented Windows Mobile phones pack an unspecified GSM radio, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS underneath a new, E-TEN developed touch-based user interface. Presumably, E-TEN has a TouchFLO-like layer to hide the consumer-unfriendly ugliness of Microsoft’s increasingly dated and finger-meat hating mobile OS. Also announced is E-TEN’s new Glofiish M810 with HSDPA, WiFI (b/g), and GPS with full QWERTY in tow. More on these with their unveiling at GSMA.

[Via Pocket PC Thoughts]

Reports are coming in that the 8G Eee PC from Asus will be delayed, possibly into Q2 2008. Originally the 8G model began showing up online with an estimated ship date around mid-December and more recently we had reports of memory and battery supply shortages. Now the Chinese language paper Economic Daily News is reporting that the 8G Eee will be delayed until at least April, although they make no mention of just what is causing the delay. Overall it does not seem like good news for those holding out for the larger storage Eee PC model.

Via [The Register]

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Posted Feb 4th 2008 1:57AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: cellphonesWe already knew that the Android SDK was causing developers some frustration. So we’re not really surprised to hear Quang Nguyen, Android Developer Advocate, say that based on feedback, “we’ve made significant updates to the SDK that we’ll be releasing in several weeks.” As a result of the UI and API enhancements, the deadline for application submissions to the $10 million Android Developer Challenge has been extended to April 14th. First round winners will now be announced on May 5th with the grand prize announcement coming on July 21st. No handset delays have been announced (yet) — those are still expected to hit in the second half of 2008.

[Via MocoNews]