Hey, you — busy rigging up your malfunctioning Guitar Hero III Les Paul using the we showed you earlier this week? If you’re just getting started, we’d recommend putting the rubber bands back in the package and taking a look at this. Granted, it seems a bit silly that we’re figuring out ways to repair instruments that should have been solid right out of the box, but we digress. This entirely more technical (but equally painless) fix involves a Torx driver, a bit of PCB rearranging and a triple check to make sure the wiring within wasn’t installed haphazardly to begin with. If done properly, the contacts should have a much better connection once the axe is reassembled, and if you’re still left with nonfunctional frets after all of this, you’ve certainly got our permission to go all Jimi Hendrix / Pete Townshend / etc. on it.
Egoman’s MD382iFTD PMP: more of the same
Egoman’s MD382iFTD PMP: more of the same
Posted Nov 4th 2007 9:37AM by
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Best Buy getting Asus Eee stock next week?
Best Buy getting Asus Eee stock next week?
Posted Nov 4th 2007 7:46AM by
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Sony’s VAIO UX490N now on sale: yours for $2500
Merely weeks after Sony a user’s manual for its handheld, the unit is now (apparently) official. Granted, it’s not like the specs are a surprise at this point, but the UMPC will indeed pack a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Solo U2200 ULV processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a pair of integrated cameras (0.3-megapixels in the front, 1.3-megapixels in the rear), a fingerprint scanner, 48GB SSD, 4.5-inch 1,024 x 600 resolution touchscreen and a GMA 950 graphics set to boot. Furthermore, you’ll also find built-in Bluetooth / WiFi, an Ethernet port, audio in / out jacks, an MS Duo expansion slot, WWAN support (AT&T), Vista Business and a Li-ion good for 1.5 to 3.5-hours. Enticed? Claim yours now for $2,499.99.
Tesco opens U.S. Fresh & Easy store on the Web (Reuters)
LONDON (Reuters) - Days before the long-awaited launch of its first U.S. store, Britain's Tesco has opened the doors of the "Fresh & Easy" chain on the Internet. The world's third largest retailer provides a tour of its first U.S. store in a video posted on www.freshandeasy.com/blog showing chill cabinets filled with Fresh & Easy own label chocolate ice cream, jugs of mango smoothies and packs of sushi. To visitors at Tesco Express convenience stores in Britain the store looks familiar with own label fruit and vegetables, ready meals and freshly cut flowers set out in display-ready boxes that allow Tesco to replenish shelves faster than rivals. Carrier bags slung at the checkout read "Reusable, Replaced, For Free, Forever." Prices also appear low. Tips for a "dinner made easy" offers a beef lasagna, Caesar salad, ciabatta loaf and bottle of wine for less than $12. Tesco launches the new chain of convenience stores in Los Angeles on November 8 pledging to bring fresh, local foods at low prices to the world's biggest consumers. In the next weeks it will extend a roll out of an initial 122 stores to Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego. Executives have not ruled out expanding nationwide if the stores are successful and Tesco has earmarked 250 million pounds ($521 million) per year for the U.S. business going forward. Fresh & Easy's store size — at around 10,000 square feet — and its focus on healthy, organic foods is expected to put it in direct competition with Whole Foods Market Inc and Trader Joe's, but executives from the big chains, including the world's biggest Wal-Mart Stores Inc., are watching. Investors and retail industry investment bankers familiar with the U.S. and European retail market are overwhelmingly upbeat about the new chain and said U.S. food retailers' history of being slow to react to new trends gives Tesco an advantage. Fresh & Easy's innovation is expected to be the own brand products and ready-made meals that have helped secure Tesco a 31 percent market share in British grocery because the higher margins allow it sell higher quality food but keep prices low. Citigroup retail analyst James Anstead believes the U.S. market theoretically provides Tesco with a $100 billion opportunity, some $20 billion more than the group's turnover last year from the 12 countries where it already operates. "Tesco could revolutionize the underdeveloped U.S. food retail market," Anstead recently told investors in a note.
iPhone v1.1.2 breaks jailbreak — coming to the UK on Friday
When we first got our hands on the back in September, it was already running the firmware. The same firmware which helpfully bricked a number of hacked iPhones Stateside upon later release. Now T3 is claiming that the UK iPhone — set for release on November 9th — is kicking 1.1.2 under the glass. Besides support for French and German keyboard layouts and characters, the other notable change is the shuttering of the TIFF exploit used to and then install (and unlock) third party applications on the 1.1.1 iPhone and iPod touch. With the possibility that Apple might release 1.1.2 globally with the UK launch on Friday, consider yourselves warned. It’s not like there’s a lot of incentive for you to update anyway (remember, it’s optional) what with the latest jailbreak simultaneously exploiting and then plugging the TIFF exploit to keep your browsing safe. For whatever it’s worth, the isn’t too far away — perhaps you should wait ’till then to get right with The Steve.
Cellphone vigilantes try signal disobedience
SAN FRANCISCO: One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.
“She was using the word 'like' all the time,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.
Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer's cellphone transmission - and any others in a 30-foot, or 9-meter, radius.
“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moley! Deliverance.”
As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.
The technology is not new, but overseas exporters of jammers say demand is rising and they are sending hundreds of them a month into the United States - prompting scrutiny from federal regulators and new concern this week from the cellphone industry. The buyers include owners of cafés and hair salons, hoteliers, public speakers, theater operators, bus drivers and, increasingly, commuters on public transportation.
The development is creating a battle for control of the airspace within earshot. And the damage is collateral. Insensitive talkers impose their racket on the defenseless, while jammers punish not just the offender, but also more discreet chatterers.
“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it's our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. “The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights.”
The jamming technology works by sending out a radio signal so powerful that phones are overwhelmed and cannot communicate with cell towers. The range varies from several feet to several yards, and the devices cost from $50 to several hundred dollars. Larger models can be left on to create a no-call zone.
Using the jammers is illegal in the United States. The radio frequencies used by cellphone carriers are protected, just like those used by television and radio broadcasters.
The Federal Communication Commission says people who use cellphone jammers could be fined up to $11,000 for a first offense. Its enforcement bureau has prosecuted a handful of American companies for distributing the gadgets - and it also pursues their users.
Investigators from the FCC and Verizon Wireless visited an upscale restaurant in Maryland over the last year, the restaurant owner said. The owner, who declined to be named, said he bought a powerful jammer for $1,000 because he was tired of his employees focusing on their phones rather than customers.
“I told them: put away your phones, put away your phones, put away your phones,” he explained. They ignored him.
The owner said the FCC investigator hung around for a week, using special equipment designed to detect jammers. But the owner had turned his off.
U.S. cellphone carriers pay tens of billions of dollars to lease frequencies from the government with an understanding that others will not interfere with their signals.
And there are other costs on top of that. Verizon Wireless, for example, spends $6.5 billion a year to build and maintain its network.
“It's counterintuitive that when the demand is clear and strong from wireless consumers for improved cell coverage, that these kinds of devices are finding a market,” said Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon spokesman. The carriers also raise a public safety issue: jammers could stop people from communicating in an emergency.
In evidence of the intensifying debate over the devices, CTIA, the main cellular phone industry association, asked the FCC on Friday to maintain the illegality of jamming and to continue to pursue violators.
It said the move was a response to requests by two companies for permission to use jammers in specific situations, like in jails.
Individuals using jammers express some guilt about their sabotage, but some clearly have a prankster side, along with some mean-spirited cellphone schadenfreude.
“Just watching those dumb teens at the mall get their calls dropped is worth it,” the purchaser of a jammer wrote last month in a review on a Web site called DealExtreme. “Can you hear me now? NO! Good.”
DARPA eying adaptable, scalable networks to help soldiers communicate
DARPA’s latest initiative is far from revolutionary — we’ve seen a of installations at improving in times of war — but the Wireless Adaptive Network Development (WAND) project looks to “exploit commercial radio components, rather than custom ones,” to “keep soldiers linked with each other on the battlefield.” Essentially, soldiers would be equipped with $500 handheld radios that would form far-reaching ad hoc networks that could “shift frequencies and sidestep interference” to make communications more pervasive and more reliable. Interestingly, WAND is reportedly set to be demonstrated as early as January of next year, but there’s no telling how long it’ll take for the project to become fully operational.
PCs being pushed aside in Japan (AP)
TOKYO - Masaya Igarashi wants $200 headphones for his new iPod Touch, and he’s torn between Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3 game consoles. When he has saved up again, he plans to splurge on a digital camera or flat-screen TV. There’s one conspicuous omission from the college student’s shopping list: a new computer. ADVERTISEMENT
The PC’s role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, digital video recorders with terabytes of memory. “A new PC just isn’t high on my priority list right now,” said Igarashi, shopping at a Bic Camera electronics shop in central Tokyo, who said his three-year-old desktop was “good for now.” “For the cost, I’d rather buy something else,” he said. Japan’s PC market is already shrinking, leading analysts to wonder whether Japan will become the first major market to see a decline in personal computer use some 25 years after it revolutionized household electronics — and whether this could be the picture of things to come in other countries. “The household PC market is losing momentum to other electronics like flat-panel TVs and mobile phones,” said Masahiro Katayama, research group head at market survey firm IDC. Overall PC shipments in Japan have fallen for five consecutive quarters, the first ever drawn-out decline in PC sales in a key market, according to IDC. The trend shows no signs of letting up: In the second quarter of 2007, desktops fell 4.8 percent and laptops 3.1 percent. NEC’s and Sony’s sales have been falling since 2006 in Japan. Hitachi Ltd. said Oct. 22 it will pull out of the household computer business entirely in an effort to refocus its sprawling operations. “Consumers aren’t impressed anymore with bigger hard drives or faster processors. That’s not as exciting as a bigger TV,” Katayama said. “And in Japan, kids now grow up using mobile phones, not PCs. The future of PCs isn’t bright.” PC makers beg to differ, and they’re aggressively marketing their products in the countries where they’re seeing the most sales growth — places where residents have never had a PC. The industry is responding in two other ways: reminding detractors that computers are still essential in linking the digital universe and releasing several laptops priced below $300 this holiday shopping season. And, though sales in the U.S. are slowing too, booming demand in the developing world is expected to buoy worldwide PC shipments 11 percent to an all-time high of 286 million in 2007. And, outside Japan, Asia is a key growth area, with second-quarter sales jumping 21.9 percent this year. Hitachi had already stopped making PCs for individual consumers since releasing this year’s summer models, although the Tokyo-based manufacturer will keep making some computers for corporate clients. Personal computers already accounted for less than 1 percent of Hitachi’s annual sales. It’s clear why consumers are shunning PCs. Millions download music directly to their mobile devices, and many more use their handsets for online shopping and to play games. Digital cameras connect directly to printers and high-definition TVs for viewing photos, bypassing PCs altogether. Movies now download straight to TVs. More than 50 percent of Japanese send e-mail and browse the Internet from their mobile phones, according to a 2006 survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The same survey found that 30 percent of people with e-mail on their phones used PC-based e-mail less, including 4 percent who said they had stopped sending e-mails from PCs completely. The fastest growing social networking site here, Mobagay Town, is designed exclusively for cell phones. Other networking sites like mixi, Facebook and MySpace can all be accessed and updated from handsets, as can the video-sharing site YouTube. And while a lot of the decline is in household PCs, businesses are also waiting longer to replace their computers partly because recent advances in PC technology are only incremental, analysts say. At a consumer electronics event in Tokyo in October, the mostly unpopular stalls showcasing new PCs contrasted sharply with the crowded displays of flat-panel TVs. “There’s no denying PCs are losing their spunk in Japanese consumers’ eyes,” said Hiroyuki Ishii, a sales official at Japan’s top PC maker, NEC Corp. “There seems to be less and less things only a PC can do,” Ishii said. “The PC’s value will fade unless the PC can offer some breakthrough functions.” The slide has made PC manufacturers desperate to maintain their presence in Japanese homes. Recent desktop PCs look more like audiovisual equipment — or even colorful art objects — than computers. Sony Corp.’s desktop computers have folded up to become clocks, and its latest version even hangs on the wall. Laptops in a new Sony line are adorned with illustrations from hip designers like ZAnPon. NEC is trying to make its PCs’ cooling fans quieter — to address a common complaint from customers, it says. Still, sluggish sales weigh on manufacturers. NEC’s annual PC shipments in Japan shrank 6.2 percent to 2.72 million units in 2006, though overall earnings have been buoyed by mobile phone and networking solutions operations. The trend continued in the first quarter of fiscal 2007 when there was a 14 percent decline from a year earlier. Sony’s PC shipments for Japan shrank 10 percent in 2006 from a year earlier. But it isn’t about to throw in the towel — yet. “We feel we’ve reached a new stage in PC development, where consumers are looking for user-friendly machines to complement other electronics,” said Hiroko Nakamura, a Sony official in Tokyo. Sony’s latest PCs, for example, come with a powerful program that can take photos and video clips and automatically edit them into a slideshow set to music. Even Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Inc., whose computer sales and market share are surging in the U.S., has seen Macintosh unit sales in Japan slip 5 percent year-on-year in the first nine months of 2007. There are other reasons Japan is the first market to see PCs shrink, some analysts say. “We think of Japanese as workaholics, but many don’t take work home,” said Damian Thong, a technology analyst at Macquarie Bank in Japan. “Once they leave the office, they’re often content with tapping e-mails or downloading music on their phones,” he said. As Hitachi’s shuttering of its household PC business demonstrates, making PCs has become less attractive. IBM Corp. also left the PC business in 2005, selling its computer unit to China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. But NEC’s Ishii is persisting. “We have to get the message out there that PCs are on top in terms of computing power,” he said. “They always will be.”
Onda’s VX888 PMP gets its shine on
Onda’s not exactly known for its , and even though the VX888 doesn’t do much to buck the trend, it’s not a half bad media player on paper. Aside from featuring an oh-so-trendy chrome backside, a glossy face and a strange connection with Absolut, this unit boasts a two-inch LCD, 1GB of storage, an FM tuner, photo viewer, built-in equalizer and support for XviD / AVI / FLV / APE / FLAC / WMA / MP3 files. Additionally, this player reportedly utilizes Microsoft’s for 3D headphone effects and volume normalizing, but we’re not entirely sure we believe the claim. Nevertheless, those in China can press their luck for just 299 CNY ($40).
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