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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Amazon.com isn't the first company to sell an electronic book reader with an easy-on-the-eyes E-Ink display, but its method for delivering those books may have opened up a whole new use for mobile data networks.
Users of the Kindle, introduced Monday for a list price of $399, can select and buy books with the device and download them in less than one minute, according to the company. They can also buy the day's newspaper on the spot or subscribe to daily newspapers, magazines, and blogs for a monthly fee. Newspapers are delivered overnight and blogs several times a day.
To deliver all this data, Amazon is using Sprint Nextel's 3G cellular network. But Kindle owners will never see a bill for that service because the cost will be included in the price of the content. It's a rare move that might be repeated as content providers and mobile operators look for successful formulas for making money off high-speed data networks.
The Kindle is always connected to Sprint's EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) network unless it's outside the coverage area, in which case it switches to Sprint's slower 1x system. Users can also turn the radio off with a switch on the back of the device, said Charlie Tritschler, director of Kindle at Amazon. That extends the battery life from about two days to one week. Books download quickly because they aren't very big: 500 to 800KB on average, depending on length and the number of pictures. A newspaper is about the same size, he said.
Users can also buy books online and "sideload" them to the Kindle. In any case, every book is backed up on Amazon along with any bookmarks or notes the user added, Tritschler said. Books cost $9.99 unless otherwise marked and newspaper subscriptions will start at $5.99 per month. There is a small music player on the device for background music while reading, but Amazon isn't selling music over EV-DO, he said. Users will have to sideload their own songs.
When it started developing the Kindle, Amazon planned to use Wi-Fi instead of 3G, Tritschler said. But that would have required users to find a hotspot and in many cases manually log in to it. EV-DO, which is available across most of Sprint's nationwide network, is more widely available and easier to use, he said.
Amazon's wireless business model for the Kindle seems to be unprecedented, according to Yankee Group analyst Phil Marshall. It's somewhat like Research in Motion, which popularized mobile e-mail using its own servers and device, the BlackBerry, except that even BlackBerry users needed a contract with a mobile operator, he said. Other companies might follow Amazon's lead, but to succeed, they would have to be established ones like Amazon with other sales channels such as online, Marshall said.
There are book-reader applications available for most smartphone platforms, though not for Apple's iPhone. However, the Kindle, like the Sony Reader, has an electrophoretic display from E-Ink that is designed to look like paper. A phone's LCD is not only smaller but causes more eyestrain, Tritschler said.
Sprint, struggling in third place among U.S. mobile operators, already sells wholesale access to its network to several mobile virtual network operators who resell voice and data services on conventional phones and mobile devices. Like other mobile operators, it makes heavy investments in network infrastructure. Sprint has recently upgraded its EV-DO network to a faster version of the technology, in addition to planning a separate, faster network using WiMax at a cost of about $5 billion.
About 19 percent of U.S. mobile users download content such as ringtones, games and applications to their mobile phones, according to the analyst firm M:Metrics.
Action toy commercial -- sorry that the sound quality sucks.
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Submitted By: KUDZU
Tags: action toys 1970 batman robin
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Welcome back for another episode of Stupid Gadget Criminals. For today's edition, we take you to France, where in the village of Mussidan in the southwestern part of the country, a malefactor stole a television along with a set of hunting rifles, according to local police. So where does the stupidity come in? Well, messieurs et mesdames, it appears that this ruffian didn't make it back to his evil lair with the remote control -- and upon so realizing, returned to the scene of the crime to retrieve the last of the loot. The neighbors caught him doing the dastardly deed, and he was turned over to the proper authorities. So remember kids, you can always pick up a replacement remote at your local Best Buy, or in his case, Fnac.
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Check out the people of the night!
Track & Video available for download on iTunes.
Ranked 3.12 / 5 | 204 views | No comments
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Submitted By: offlimitsitaly
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favretto people night music dance carlson off limits
Get a sneak peak at The Simpsons Movie Teaser Trailer in theaters July 27 2007.
Runtime: 29 sec
Woman down! Columbia's hunger strike is one less strong, after Barnard student Aretha Choi collapsed in the library Saturday on the fourth day of the student protest against something or other. It seems Choi isn't new to this particular form of protest—the one-time Phillips Andover student spoke to Asian-American women's magazine Audrey for an April story this year about her longtime struggle with anorexia. This poor girl needs to make some new friends, stat, because the ones she's got didn't seem too concerned about her participation in the five-student strike. (IvyGate, which posted an item about Choi yesterday, seems to have pulled it today.)
Itching to get in on the Zune 2.0 action? Woot's got both black and white 30GB Zunes for just $84.99. Yez, these Zunes are refurbished, but if you're not too picky about using something some stranger's handled, you can save a few bucks. And if you're a fan of the brown Zune, like we are, Amazon has those for $89. [Woot via Amazon]
Filed under: Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360, Adventure, Fighting, Puzzle, RPGs
At great risk to personal health, this author dares criticize The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo Wii.
All the leaves are brown. (And the sky is grey.) Imagine being a freshwater fish after a heavy rain. All around you: brown. Zelda's like this. The game's muddy color palette doesn't sparkle in the way that previous iterations of the venerable Zelda series sparkled. As our protagonist wanders through villages, we find ourselves wishing that those villages could be razed and in their places built more beautiful towns, filled with magic, character, and more than just the colors to the left and right of "rust" on the color wheel.
The engine that couldn't. Whenever someone dares voice his misgivings about the Wii's disappointing graphics rendering capability, defenders instantly parry, "It's the game play, stupid!" These folks are right that the controls of games are of primary importance, but do gaming a disservice to when they artificially partition game play and graphics. Graphics can (and should) enhance game play.
In the latest Zelda, the game's designers have been forced to sabotage game play to atone for the console's graphical shortcomings. Example: roadside signs are illegible. In Zelda, merely reading signs becomes laborious and annoying. You must first walk up to the sign. You must then press the controller's "a" button. When you do this, the game zooms in on the sign (taking a moment to do this). The game then shows you the text of the sign. Finally, having read the sign, you must hit another button to zoom away from the sign and regain control of your character. If your character we blind and had to read via Braille, this sort of clunky interface would be appropriate. But such game play merely rankles here, because most modern games have legible signposts.
This simple example demonstrates the importance of graphics to game play. There are plenty of other game play elements affected by the Wii's weaker graphical engine. One more example: at one point the player must catch fish in order to solve a puzzle. Thanks to the indistinct graphics, it's actually impossible to tell how much of your bobber is underwater, making it more difficult to know when to set the hook in order to reel in a fish.
In sum: it's clear that we're playing a GameCube game that's had motion-sensitive controls bolted on in order to move Wii boxes off of retailer shelves. Zelda will do that job admirably -- it will still sell in the millions. It will earn praise. But to compare this title to PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 games isn't fair to the game. To give any Wii titles a fair shake, we're going to have to compare them to Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube games.
This isn't our official review of the title -- there's plenty positive to be said about Zelda, despite its unappealing visuals. Stay tuned for that post in the very near future. In fact, another Joystiq blogger is working on a rebuttal to this post right now.
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
It's the end of the week. We'll have a poll up later in the day; until then continue sending your Great Moments in Journalism nominess here.
Let's finish up on a cheerful note: Lede?
Seven years ago, Barbara Krech named her puppy "Socks" because she had white paws. Those paws were red with blood Saturday night after Krech's beloved dog was shot outside her home at the Wellington Woods apartment complex in Fredericksburg by a security officer who was patrolling the complex.
Family pet shot at apartments [Free Lance-Star]
While we were swarmed by Bob Dylans at the Bowery, the hardest working man in the shutter business, Nikola Tamindzic, was party hopping. He hit up the dance party Shindig, Michael T's Motherfucker and the"culturally revolutionary" Flavorpill party. According to Nikola, "There were a whole lot of nurses and sexy pirates, Amy Winehouses and Karl Lagerfelds. Strangely I didn't see any iPhones." And with that, let's all say goodbye to another great Gay Christmas!
This unique special edition knife contains all 85 tools currently produced by Wenger (Maker of the Genuine Swiss Army Knife). These 85 tools can be used in over 100 functions and it's the World's Largest Swiss Army Knife. Price: $999.00
Dr Bob Arnot learns about how to jump across several camels(!!) from men in Yemen. From the MOJO’s hi-def show Dr Danger. Premieres Sunday 10/14 at 9:30 PM EST. Ranked 3.75 / 5 | 116 views | 1 comment
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Submitted By: ccorces1
Tags:
Stunts animals wtf Mideast middle east adventure travel camel jumping yemen dr danger bob arnot mojo
The lifestyle of one dazzling toddler living it up in Orlando, Florida.Mozilla has patched 10 security vulnerabilities, three critical, in its Firefox browser and has released updated versions for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
For all you paranoid gun owners out there.
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Submitted By: Opperator
Tags: paranoia safety shotgun the-backup
Zach Braff's touching coming of age film about growing up Mayan.
Runtime: 1 min 3 sec
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