The Demo Site

I like Sony. Who doesn’t? They’ve got a lot of great games, they’re leaders in technology and research, they have their fingers in lots of good pies, and so on. But if they keep pulling this kind of garbage, they’re going to be begging for mercy from the rest of the industry in five years. “At the end of the day, the iPhone is just a phone,” says Kaz Hirai. Sure, buddy. I’m not iPhone maniac like the rest of the CG crew, but calling it “just a phone” is like calling Godzilla “just an iguana.” What it is, Mr. Hirai, is an effective assault on almost every device your company makes, and you’d do well to consider it so. But this isn’t the only time Sony has shot itself in the foot lately.

How about the PSP Go? Pricing it at $250 misses out on a huge opportunity to put it below $200, entice upgraders, put it in the “casual buy” section of people’s minds. But Sony is “comfortable with where the prices are sitting right now.” The PS3 has been priced too high since launch, yet they’re comfortable with that as well. Sure, Nintendo hasn’t exactly lowered its price either, but that’s because they picked the right one to begin with. You didn’t, Sony! You never do! And then you just plug your ears and start singing about how it’ll all work out with your 10-year plan.

Sony, you had it so good. With the momentum of the PS2, you could have completely dominated the console gaming market, but you refused to capitalize on your success. You may have lost money with every PS3, but no amount of lost money will make up for lost market share you’ll never capture again. And you had so much money anyway. It was as simple as pricing it equal to the Xbox 360, at which point you could say “It’s newer, it’s better, it’s more powerful, and it’s a Sony.” Your sales would be great, you’d lose a ton of money, and then you’d gain it back because all your PS2 partners would still be your friends. The Wii would have taken off anyway, but at least Microsoft wouldn’t be eating your cake right now. Remember all those great exclusives you unveiled at E3? Neither do I.

Being completely disconnected from market realities and pretending everything will be all right is no way to go through life, Sony. And I’m afraid that at this point there’s no turning back. If, during the first year of the PS3 and PSP’s lifetime, you’d seen the terrible sales and said “we blew it,” you might have been able to save yourself. But I’m convinced you’re going to keep missing opportunities until you’re out of the race.

Just don’t croak until the PS3’s magnum opus comes out (probably The Last Guardian, let’s be honest). You may not even compete in the next generation, but at least people will look back at the PS3 the way they look at the Saturn or Dreamcast, and say “What a waste. There were some decent games on that thing.”

Father's Day is coming up, I guess, and Wal Mart is having a fire sale on gadgets and doodad's to fill dad's "man cave." The savings start on June 14th and run till June 20th. Here are a few notable items that will be on sale during that time: $128 Blu-ray player, $697 42-inch LCD HDTV, $199 Palm Pre sans MIR, and a ton of other goods.

The Game Room/Living Room Cave: The hi-def or game experience with new savings:

· $128 Magnavox Blu-ray Disc player (NB500MGX)*

· Two for $20 Blu-ray movie bundles of dads' favorites such as Shooter/ The Italian Job and Face Off / Next

· $59.96 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 All-Play Wii bundle with Wii Motion Plus Accessory and protective sleeve

· $399 PS3 (80GB) Bundle including Quantum of Solace on Blu-ray Disc and the MLB '09: The Show

· Five for $20 select DVDs – More than 50 favorites including FlyBoys, iRobot, and We Are Marshall

· HDTV savings – $398 Sanyo 37-inch LCD (720p – model DP37649), $697 Vizio 42-inch LCD (1080p – model VO420E), and $1,788 Sony Bravia 52-inch (1080p- model KDL-52S5100)

The Home Office Cave: New products arrive and new savings inspire.

· $398 Dell Inspiron Black Notebook Computer* or $848 Dell Studio One 19 All-in-one Touch Desktop Computer – both exclusively at Walmart

· $69 Canon Pixma Ink Jet Photo Printer with Fax

· $69 Seagate Free Agent Go 250GB Portable Hard Drive

Mobile Man Cave: Popular GPS and cellular products for dads on-the-go, enjoying the drive.

· $199 Palm Pre smart phone (with qualifying contract, no mail-in rebate) – select stores

· $128 Garmin nuvi 250, 3.5 inch touch screen GPS - voice guidance and loaded with more than 5 million points of interest*

· $10 Glove Box Tool Kit (52-piece) for the car

· $46 iPod-Compatible FM Transmitter and Car Charger, available online only at Walmart.com

The "Deck" Cave: For grilling with the guys, playing chef for the family, or hanging out:

· $17 Grill Care Co. four-piece stainless steel barbecue tool set

· $20 Weber's Way to Grill guide

· $149 Royal Oak 30-inch Deluxe Charcoal Grill or $198 Brinkman 4-Burner Gas Grill

· $50 Classic Cotton Rope Hammock, available online at Walmart.com

The Garage Cave: For escapes in the garage or making minor improvements

· $15 Black & Decker 75-piece drill accessory kit or $15 Black & Decker cordless screwdriver

· $15 Carrand Power Jet Wash Wand, $25 Torin Blackjack floor jack, $30 5-gallon ShopVac

· $100 Karcher 1,550 PSI Pressure Washer

I'll keep this review short and sweet, folks.

If you're looking for a second, third or even fourth Wiimote for your Wii then allow me to suggest picking up Nyko's Wand. It's priced $5 less than Nintendo's Wii Remote and you'll never know the difference when playing with your Wii Wii. It even comes with a blue condom!

With larger buttons and a rubberized grip, the Wand is far superior to the Wii Remote offering better control and a colorful button layout so you don't have to hunt and peck. Maybe it's just me, but the tiny white buttons with even tinier font on the Wii Remote confuse the heck out of me. That or I just don't play my Wii enough.

I was a bit apprehensive about the D-pad on the Wand, but I found my Klonoa gaming skills were much improved thanks to the larger button configuration. The rubberized backside and B-trigger made it much easier to hang onto the Wand without using the blue condom that Nyko provides.

Overall, I'm more than happy with the Nyko Wand and recommend it to anyone looking for additional Wii Remotes for the Wii. You won't notice a difference, I can guarantee it.

Nyko Wand

We’ve got good news and bad news. Soon you’ll be able copy your Blu-ray discs. Only once though and that’s not the bad news.

Oh no, the bad news is that under the recently-approved AACS license that includes Managed Copy, the studio can charge you to do this. And it will require new hardware when it hits the market in 2010.

The process will work something like this: Somewhere within the menu of a Blu-ray disc, there will be an option to make a copy. The system will then hook-up with the main server to ensure that the disc hadn’t already been used for this purpose. If it’s given the go ahead, either a DRM-locked down WMV or a Blu-ray disc image will be made. The disc’s serial number will then be recorded in some master database to ensure that the evil consumer will never be able to backup that Blu-ray disc ever again.

Don’t even think your current Blu-ray player supports this. Nope, you will need new hardware. Also since Managed Copy isn’t a specific requirement for Blu-ray, it will be up to manufacturers to include it within their players.

The only thing this ludicrous plan will do is spur more piracy. That’s it.

Picking apart the bankrupt Psystar corpse has revealed a debt of $75,000 to Apple for “Unsecured Nonpriority Claims,” whatever thoseare. Nobody knows what exactly that might be for, although some savvy mathemagicians have decided it might be for 581 (and a half) copies of Leopard. Not knowing Psystar’s actual sales volume, that number means practically nothing. Did they maybe order all those copies and never pay? Or was that just the unsold ones left over after Apple caught them up in the ongoing legal tiff?

Psystar isn’t saying, probably because it’s got more important things to deal with (and quite a bit more debt to settle). Apple is quiet, too. Maybe it’s something shady? I’m going to say no. Probably just regular debt.

Looking and the smoking wreckage of Psystar certainly drives the point home, though: if you want a Hackintosh, do it yourself. Two of my friends have just put OS X onto sub-$400 netbooks and they love it. Contact your local geek if you’re interested.

At the London International Music Show, Shure introduced a set of headphones that are perfect for "general listening." The SRH240s feature 40mm neodymium dynamic drivers that promise to reproduce "deep bass with clear mids and highs." Weighing in at 181 grams, the SRH240 headphones will be available next month for roughly $115.

Shure also rolled out two other high-end headphones, the Professional Studio SRH440 and the Professional Monitoring SRH840. No details on either of these other than specs listed on the Shure site.

via Pocket-Lint

Shure SRH240
SRH440
SRH840

Ooh la la, here’s video of the Archos 9, straight from a recent Archos event in Paris. The quick and dirty: about three hours battery life, Windows 7, 8.9-inch 1024×600 touchscreen, 80GB hard drive, 1.2 GHz Atom CPU, Bluetooth/Wi-Fi, kickstand, onscreen keyboard, and SIM card slot for HSDPA.

Charbax from ArchosFans.com speculates that it’ll cost under $500 here in the US when it launches in the fall. The European launch price is apparently 450 Euro ($632), but US consumers generally pay less since there’s no VAT here.

[ArchosFans.com via SlashGear]

Well this ought to be of some use to our Chinese readers. And by that I mean people who are actually in China who visit, for whatever reason, crunch gear dot com. There’s some sort of software called Green Dam that will be required on all Chinese PCs soon that blocks all sorts of fun content from being downloaded and/or viewed. Salty political talk? Banned. Pornography? Banned. (Well that’s 90 percent of the Internet right there, silly political arguments (NOBAMA, REVERSE RACISM, etc.) and porn.) Tips on how to grow marijuana? Banned. Violent video games? Banned. Fun all around!

Now, what’s the issue today? Well, it seems that the software that will filter all that unwanted content, Green Dam, is a terribly coded piece of garbage. In fact, it’s so bad that someone could, if he were so inclined, code it so that any PC running Green Dam can be remotely taken over, thrown into a giant botnet. And even if only a fraction of China’s population uses a PC, that’s still an awful lot of potential zombie PCs gunking up the Internet.

What to do about this? Well, ideally you wouldn’t install Green Damn, thus eliminating the potential for future problems. Other than that? Just be really careful when you use the Internet.

Or, better yet, don’t even bother going online. It’s mostly rubbish. I know: I produce a lot of it on a daily basis.

With the K-7 on the way, Pentax looks to be clearing out the K20D DSLR. Pentax has just announced a $100 instant rebate that goes into effect today and runs through till June 20. Two lenses will also see a $100 rebate. After the instant rebate, the K20D will drop down to $700 and the 18-55mm lens and 16-45mm lens will drop down to $780 and $1100, respectively.

Pentax

If you were told you could win a beta key for Starcraft 2 by baking an awesome cake, how far would you go? Would you have rock candy minerals and marzipan egg sacs? I think not. I would have just cut holes in the side of a square cake and called it a bunker.

The rest of the cakes are viewable at the contest page, but here are a few highlights:

In other news, I’m so proud of that headline that I can barely sit still right now.

[via Reddit]

Another month, another version of the Kindle. I’ve been using a Kindle since it was shaped like a very thin doorstop and I’m delighted each time I see a new version. The latest version is the DX, a monstrous 9-inch version of the smaller Kindle 2 that supports direct PDF reading without conversion.

Why am I interested in the Kindle? Well, I already have a first-gen Kindle so I’m not too keen on upgrading immediately. But I’ve been waiting for Amazon to solve something with the Kindle DX that has been nagging me for quite a while. You see, I have a problem. I don’t want to read the New York Times on paper anymore but paper seems like the only logical way to read it. Reading the newspaper on a gadget is rude and dangerous - especially with toddlers around the house. It’s a tough sell to have a gadget at the breakfast table. But then I know that I’ll never read it on the desktop whether through the Times Reader or any other source. So the DX sounded great. I has all of the features of the current Kindle plus rotational sensing and a beautiful, huge screen that might just fit the entire NYT front page and not just one article. So that’s why I wanted to see the DX.

For context, here is what we said about the K2. We didn’t formally review it.

The DX is basically a 9.7-inch reading device. It has a small keyboard, navigation buttons only on the right side, and uses an improved version of the e-ink screen that displays gray scale with surprising fidelity. It has native PDF support and can store up to 3,500 books. It costs $489.00 and will be available next week.

Like the original Kindle the device has a wireless feature that lets you download books over the air but you can also drag books - basically Amazon’s proprietary format - and PDFs right onto the device via USB. It can last for up to 4 days with wireless on. It also reads your books aloud to you, where applicable. Some publishers are selectively shutting this feature down.

The Bad
First the cons. The Kindle DX is heavy. It’s heavier than the original Kindle by over nine ounces. It’s not much, but clearly Mosso and I share a strange affliction called “Ouch, our wrists hurt holding this thing.” It’s a big device. It works best on a table.

The second problem is the auto-rotation. If you move the Kindle a little too much in any direction, the screen rotates. It’s a good feature if you’re reading a newspaper or magazine, for example, but it’s not so good if you’re nodding off in bed.

The Good
Now the pros. This thing is quite easy to read books on. Each page holds a multitude more words than the original devices and you rarely have to press the page buttons - there’s just more real estate. Images are crisp and clear and books can be viewed horizontally.

Them there sure is a lot of words.

The page size also makes for an easier read although all that grey does get tiring. This thing is good for heavy duty reading. The annotations and notes system is good for research as it drags the notes off of the book and onto an Amazon website - a huge plus for students and scholars. My original complaint with the Kindle 2 was that it wasn’t good for research. This model has remedied all of those concerns.

Newspaper reading is a bit of sticking point. It is easier to browse stories on this larger screen and the nature of news stories allows many of them to fit on one or two pages as opposed to the endless parade of pages on the smaller Kindles. I’m going to be trying to read the paper on this for the next month and I’ll report back when I put the DX through those demanding paces. However, I understand that there are certain formatting considerations here that only updates to the software and hardware can fix.

In short, this is a bigger Kindle. But is it the Kindle for you?

Bottom Line

I’m convinced that the Kindle - as a brand - is the book reader to buy. Unless you’re into piracy, getting first run books onto any other reader is too convoluted and the UI and Kindle system is the best, hands down. I’ve used the Sony Reader and a few other e-readers and the Kindle is made for real readers i.e. people who read and want a seamless reading experience. If you like to read, get one. If you like to download PDFs and TXT files - say you’re a slash fiction fan - get something else.

That said, the DX isn’t the Kindle for the average reader. The Kindle proper, a 6-inch model that is quite light and nice, is the best they offer. Anecdotally, here is the best metaphor I can come up with to the difference between the Kindle and the Kindle DX. When my buddy worked at Dairy Queen we used to go through the drive thru and order a Blizzard, a concoction of ice cream and candy and other stuff that would have put a horse into diabetic shock. But instead of making the Blizzard in the normal manner, our friend would drop in little treats like a whole brownie or five scoops of M&Ms. The Kindle is a regular Blizzard while the Kindle DX is my friend’s extra-packed Blizzard. It’s more of a good thing, and sometimes that can be bad.

If you have a specific need for a bigger screen i.e. you’re doing doctoral research and intend to upload a lot of PDFs, get the DX. Otherwise, even if you’re a student reading textbooks and novels you’ll probably be better off with the smaller, cheaper model. It’s more portable and it has all of the same functions.

As for price, I can’t help you. $500 is a lot for a Kindle. But this is the best e-reader out there. It’s a complex and unique tool. You pay for that complexity.

And what about newspaper reading? The jury is still out. But we’re coming closer and closer to a paperless publishing industry and these are just baby steps along a long road.

A rumor coming out of the Pentax Forums indicates that Samsung could be ready to launch the successor to the GX-20 DSLR, the GX-30. Last month similar rumors emerged with a June launch for the GX-30, but we have yet to hear anything official from Samsung. Others are speculating that it could be the vaunted NX series camera that Samsung announced at PMA. One commenter on the forum, Xian, states that Samsung will announce the GX-30, NX3 and two compact cameras.

Pentax Forums via PB

Well done to Sophos, an anti-virus company (to simplify things a bit). Apparently there’s a new round of malware floating around out there that can infect your Mac. Observe!

The nasty in question, OSX/Tored-Fam, is a worm. It will burn your house down if given the chance.

So now you have a few choices, Mac users: you can steer clear of Flash-based porn sites, avoiding this whole nonsense altogether; you can buy whatver Sophos is selling; or you can smarten up and not click on OK every time something says, "Oh, hey you need to download this or we’re steal your puppy."

No one will steal your puppy.

Panasonic Japan has announced [JP] a new line of colorful and “jewel”-studded earphones specifically made for women. The so-called Moon Jewel earphones will be offered in 12 different colors, based on astrological signs.

This is the first time Panasonic designed an audiovisual product with women only in mind as a target group. Each earpiece of the Moon Jewels is extra-small to fit the smaller ears of female customers and decorated with three zirconia. Panasonic also says the Moon Jewels are designed so as not to disturb women wearing earrings.

Available in Japan from July 7, people living outside this country can order the Moon Jewel for $39.78 plus shipping over at Geek Stuff 4 U.

Xbox 360 owners-

On June 16th, the Xbox team is shutting down Live and Xbox.com for maintenance. This will cause your Netflix streaming on your Xbox 360 to cease while Microsoft fiddles with your console.

On Tuesday, June 16 beginning at 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. PDT (2009-06-16 0701 to 2009-06-17 0659 UTC) Xbox LIVE and Xbox.com will be offline for scheduled maintenance. As a result, the "My Xbox" section of Xbox.com will not be available, and the Xbox forums will be in read-only mode, and you will be unable to post. The rest of Xbox.com will be functional and available. When services are restored, up to 24 hours later, there will be no new functionality or features.

via Netflix

In response to fair competition laws and accusations of monopoly abuse (as usual), Microsoft has relented on shipping Windows 7 with Internet Explorer, at least in Europe. Does anyone else find this a little strange? The main problem with IE was that it was built so closely into Windows that it was essentially a component, which led to the abuse accusations. But merely including another (free) product with the purchase of the OS doesn’t seem like a problem at all. And how are the poor Europeans supposed to download a new browser if they don’t have one to begin with?!

I’m sure they’ll figure that out. Perhaps a new install step with a browser selection? That’d work fine, but it still seems unnecessary as long as you can uninstall IE for real. But while the commission investigating Microsoft’s potential crimes has recommended offering a choice of browser (if they were to recommend anything, pending Microsoft’s appeal and the commission’s blah blah blah), Microsoft took the petulant route, saying simply “well if they can’t have IE, they won’t have anything at all! So there!”

Well, that’s putting it a bit too much in playpen terms. But I think we can all agree it’s an awkward solution to an awkward problem.

In bed.

Here's a quick update on this year's Wiimbledon, folks. If you're unable to make the event in Brooklyn on June 27th and you still want to help CrunchGear raise money for Child's Play then donate your used gadgets to Gazelle. We've set up a "Gazelle for Goods" page and we're hoping to raise $2500 for Penny Arcade's charity, Child's Play. Go dig into your desk drawers and find some old gadgets to donate! Don’t forget to sign up at Eventbrite if you want to play in the tournament and remember, it doesn’t cost anything to attend.

Wiimbledon Gazelle

You can get your hands on a refurbished TiVo HD DVR for $199 with free shipping, directly from TiVo. The box can hold up to 180 hours of standard-definition footage or up to 20 hours of HD content.

The refurb boxes carry a 90-day warranty and service fees start at $12.95 monthly, $129 annually, or $399 for a lifetime subscription. You also get access to Amazon’s video service and streaming Netflix movies, too. If you’re not quite on the HD bandwagon yet, you can get a dual-tuner standard definition TiVo box for $79.99 instead. But everything’s better in HD. Except Larry King. And just about anyone over the age of 60, really.

Special Deals on Factory-Renewed TiVo DVRs [TiVo.com via dealnews]

Sorry for the clipping but this sucker was loud. This is Electro-Harmonix’s local tester running the brand new POG2 pedal through its paces. The pedal makes a standard guitar sound like a harpsichord and an organ or even an 18-string guitar.

The POG2 will take you even higher. Use the new attack control to fade in lush, smooth swells. Tune in the new second sub-octave to reach deeper than ever before. The 2-pole resonant low-pass filter now includes two additional Q modes. Slide in the newly enhanced detune to further refine your sound.

The POG2 delivers unrivaled tonal variations — and now you can save your favorite settings, and recall them with a click. The POG2 just plain sounds better, thanks to an enhanced algorithm that delivers a more focused and in-the-pocket harmonic performance. And all this is now packed into our rugged and pedalboard-friendly diecast chassis.

You can up the octave automatically and add extra octaves to each sound that comes out of the guitar. It is very lovely.

Remember the contest that worth1000 held last year for rejected Transformers robots? Well, it looks like one of those rejected bots will actually be making an appearance in the upcoming Transformers sequel. Sources close to the film have confirmed with CrunchGear that a Dyson vacuum will make an appearance during the film. The Dyson Autobot/Decepticon (it's unclear which side the "never loses suction" vacuum will take) will make a brief appearance during a scene in which a house - maybe Sam's house – gets zapped and all the home appliances transform. Our source was unable to provide an image or model, but we think it'll look something like StupidFolk's rendition from the worth1000 contest.

What I want to know is who has better suction: Megan Fox or a Dyson vacuum?

We just got your Viliv X70 straight from South Korea and it’s a beauty. We’re going to play around with it for a few days and report back once we have a solid feel for the device. Until then, feel free to browse through the picture gallery and leave any questions you might have about the device in the comments. Our first impression? OMG it rocks.

Every day a hipster goes shirtless. We at CrunchGear want to remedy that situation. Artist Howard Steenwyk make’s irony-laced t-shirts for the in crowd and would like to share some of his shirts with you all. How do you win?

Pop over his site then come back to leave a comment with your favorite shirt style and we’ll send five random winners a coupon code for a free shirt. Although many of you may not be hipsters, it’s important for all of us to stand and be counted in the support and care of the hipster population. After all, it’s summer and their wispy, ineffectual facial hair must be getting itchy.

We’ll close things up on Monday so feel free to keep commenting until noon ET on the 15th. Special thanks to Howard for sponsoring the contest.

Got a few minutes on this lazy Friday? Want some more info about the Husqvarna Panthea Leo concept mower? Follow the link for the official Husqvarna concept video that shows off more than we knew about the mower. I want it even more after watching the video.

Every year it’s the same thing. WORST.KEYNOTE.EVAR! WHERE IS ITABLET! STEVE SHOULD BUY ME A PONY! PC World wrote a laundry list of things that they wanted to see but didn’t get to see at WWDC and, like a 16-year-old whose boyfriend is supposed to hug her and kiss her and stay with her at the mall all weekend and respond to all of her texts immediately if not sooner, they get pissy when they don’t get what they want. A pox on them, I say.

What were they looking for? An iPhone Nano. An iTablet. An FM transmitter. First, it takes a while to make good hardware. We know there will be a tablet. No confirmation on a Nano. But an FM transmitter? You bought an iPhone. You think Apple wants to knock out all the car adapter manufacturers in one fell swoop? Hell, the iPhone is one of the few phones that has a whole constellation of accessories. Almost every WinMo phone needs FM out, not Cupertino’s darling.

But the biggest gripe is flash support. TUAW puts it best:

Adobe needs to get Flash working properly on the Mac first. If my MacBook Pro’s 2.6 GHz processor pegs at 80% while watching lo-res YouTube videos, what chance does the iPhone’s far slower processor have? And if the Flash plugin crashes the full Safari browser so often that Apple has gone out of their way to sandbox browser plugins in Snow Leopard, how much of a rush should Apple be in to do the same thing on a platform whose small size and relatively low processing power necessitates more streamlined software? Yes, let’s have Apple dive into Flash support for the iPhone right away, and see what it gets you: one hour of battery life, flashing banner ads all over the place for you to accidentally click when you’re just trying to scroll the page, and Mobile Safari crashing every five minutes.

Eg-freaking-zactly. Come on, people. What does Flash add to the user experience? Flash games, perhaps, but show me one time it’s been more valuable than a stand-alone, Internet-enabled application. You really need in-line YouTube watching? No.

Even after 30 years, Gundam is as big as ever - literally in Japan. These limited edition Zippos are probably the best way to show your robot love outside of getting some ink. Plus, if a chick compliments it, you know you have keeper.

It probably doesn’t get much simpler than this when it comes to getting video files onto your TV. Here’s a USB hard drive dock that’s got an HDMI output on the back of it and includes a remote control.

Of course you’d have to plug it into your computer, dump files onto the drive, then unplug it and set it back up next to your TV, which makes for a cumbersome process. Or you could just move your TV right next to your computer, in which case you could just run cables straight from your computer to your TV.

Whatever the case, the dock costs $79, which seems pricey. If you’re still interested, it’ll play back up to 1080i resolution files in the following formats: MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, and VOB. The back of the dock features HDMI, component, and composite outputs and the unit accepts 3.5- and 2.5-inch SATA hard drives, along with SD cards.

SATA HDD Multimedia Dock II (HDMI) [Brando]

There has been quiet mumbling online for a couple of weeks now about a new Nikon D300. This time around though, it would be the D300s with the extra letter hinting that it probably supports SD memory cards. Well, a new image popped up on Nikon.com that seems to lend some crediability to the rumor.

Not only does the image show the D300s name, but also has an icon for the SD card in the lower left. Now, the rest of the rumor from states that the camera will receive updates throughout, but also come with a 720p24 movie mode. Of course we don’t have any idea when the camera will be release, but chances are that it’s coming.

We covered them all: Teaching robots, kissing robots, space robots, modeling robots and even sensitive robots. But Ninomiya-kun, a book-reading robot, is a new one. He might get along well with Booktime, a page-turning robot (just saying). And needless to say, all of these robots are Japanese.

Ninomiya-kun doesn’t read e-books, but those physical, paper-printed books. Standing 1m tall (weight: 25kg), he was showcased yesterday for the first time at a robot show in Southern Japan. The robot was jointly developed by two Japanese and one Chinese university.

Ninomiya-kun is able to read through a character recognition software installed on a PC that he carries in his backpack. His two camera eyes look at a book page and a voice synthesizer turns the text he “reads” into spoken language.

The robot is able to distinguish about 2,300 Japanese characters, which is the minimum amount the national school system expects Japanese people to learn at school.

Via Yomiuri Online [JP]

If you’re severely limited on space and you can’t stand the thought of NOT having a snooker table, here’s a couch with a snooker table built in to the bottom of the cushions. It’s only available in the UK, where they love them some snooker.

It’s available on eBay with a starting bid of 95 pounds (around $150). Here’s a snippet from the product description:

You have never seen the like - a truly unique sofa that converts into a 6ft pool table!

Produced as a collaboration between Pierce upholsterers of Accrington and Riley, the famous pool and snooker table manufacturers, this is an exceedingly rare piece, and if not a prototype, then it was produced in a very limited quantity.

It looks like a very ordinary neutral brown dralon upholstered sofa, then the back flips round and turns into a pool table. There are two leveling adjustable feet underneath.

The sofa is perfectly comfortable, and in good condition with little wear to the dralon. however there is one castor missing at the back, a light iron mark on the right side of the back rest, two small tears on the top edge round the back, and two small white paint spots on the top edge - all pictured, and minor faults, The table itself is in excellent condition, but one of the wooden guide rails of the simple converting mechanism has a break and needs replacing - an easy job - its just a wooden strip that screws on and is generally not visible either when open or closed. Meanwhile, the table conversion still works with care.

The upholstery is neutral, clean and perfectly useable, and whilst the buyer may consider reupholstery, the current plainness adds to the surprise when the table is revealed.

Does not come with balls, cues, etc

A fun, practical and unique gem, with little chance of finding another in a hurry!

So basically, it’s a busted up couch with a pool table built into it. Local delivery only, so those of you that live near North London N8 or Southend on Sea take note! I don’t know where either of those places are.

Amazing 1970’s SOFA converts to POOL / SNOOKER TABLE! [eBay via Random Good Stuff]

If you were wondering the age ol’ question of “Will it run Doom?” about the Palm Pre, the answer is yes. We’re kind of thinking though that more would be surprised if the Pre wouldn’t run Doom. But anyway, one dude took it upon himself to reprogram an open-source version of the game to use WebOS’s DirectFB graphics library. So what we have here is a hardware-accelerated version of the classic FPS. Well done.

We’ve been screaming from a soapbox for months about today. We’ve gave you a series of tips and tricks, along with answering all the frequently asked questions about DTV. Still, there are millions of homes not ready for the switch to digital according to a recent survey. But what are you gonna do?

There will always be procrastinators. Perhaps some thought that Obama was going to save their antiquated analog signals for a second time. Who knows. But today is June 12, 2009 and the switch to digital should be done within a few hours. Remember to rescan your DTV tuner as some stations are switching throughout the day for the first time.

Fujifilm yesterday announced [JP] the FinePix Z300 for the Japanese market, a digital camera that lets users snap pictures by touching the target object on the LCD screen on its backside. The Z300 can focus the shot by itself so that even beginners can make decent photos.

For users who don’t like the concept of touching a screen (3 inches) to make a picture, the Z300 still offers the good old shutter button. The camera also features 10MP, 5x optical zoom, 100 to 1600 ISO speed, the usual crappy internal memory (31MB), SD/SDHC card support, video recording at 30fps and a USB port.

The Z300 will hit Japanese stores on June 20 for $400 (in pink, white, purple and black). Fujifilm hasn’t announced their plans for overseas markets yet.

Super-umbrella contracts to avoid inadvertent umbrella-related homicide
Interview: Jack Conte, Internet musician
Refreshment, thy name is Sippin' Seat
DIY spy van/mobile office
Samsung goes official on the WB1000/TL320 digicam