Devices Site

Posted Mar 26th 2008 3:29PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video You may still not be able to get an iphone in Canada (at least officially), but you can now at least grab a spiffy new 16GB Samsung YP-P2, which is a whole 8GB bigger than the model currently available in the US. From the looks of it, Best Buy Canada is the among the first to offer the beefed-up, Bluetooth-packin’ PMP, with it currently demanding $330 Canadian (a $40 discount off the $370 list price) on the retailer’s website. Apart from the bump in storage, however, there doesn’t look to be any other changes to the player, with it boasting the same 3-inch touchscreen, Bluetooth 2.0 support, and H.264, OGG, and WMV playback as before. Of course, it’s not very likely this’ll be a Canadian exclusive for long, though we’ve still yet to hear anything official on that from Samsung.

There’s more good news today for Wii owners and fans of Sega Master System games. Not only are you going to get Sega’s back catalog from the system, but the games will cost as little as 400 Wii points (US$4) each. That will make them the cheapest games available for download with NES and Commodor 64 games costing 500 points each.

The first 2 games to be released are Wonder Boy and Fantasy Zone. Although Master System games are coming to Japan, U.S. and Europe, those two games are currently only confirmed for Japan with dates still up in the air.

400 points sounds like a nice price point to me, and I think the Commodore 64 and NES titles should be lowered to match it. I doubt all Master System games will cost 400 points, with a premium being stuck on some popular games, but hopefully the majority will be.

Although only two games have been confirmed the Japanese Virtual Console web site seems to have quite a long list of titles. Could that be the games we can expect to see over the coming months?

Read more at Gamespot.com

Posted Mar 26th 2008 11:03AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Laptops
Word on the street is that ASUS has joined the fray and released an SDK for its Eee line. According to the folks over at Eee Site, the Xandros-based software package is available for download as a 1.2GB disk image. Of course, since the mini-laptop’s Linux-based OS is… well, Linux, it doesn’t really seem like an SDK would be necessary. Could it be that the company is just jumping on the development bandwagon, which has gone from obscure hacker-geek territory to front page Apple news? Perhaps, but it’s still nice to see developers getting some attention for once. Hit the read link to get your downloads — and apps — started.

[Via Eee Site]

Posted Mar 26th 2008 2:54PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Misc. gadgets
That Skullphone billboard hack we saw yesterday had everyone at Engadget HQ pretty impressed with the corporate-pranking hijinks. Too bad it turns out that Skullphone is actually a phony (and total buster, we might add) who had to pay The Man (aka Clear Channel) cold hard cash to “glitch up” the digital billboards. According to Curbed LA (and our reliable tipsters / commenters), Skullphone paid the massive media conglomerate for one-day Los Angeles-wide ads — there was no hacking involved at all. From now on, he should just leave the signage-goofing to the pros, or at least make it clear there’s some money changing hands. Fool us once, shame on you… and… we won’t get fooled again.

[Thanks, Dakota]

“Tank” may be a strong word, but Om Malik points out that SiRF Technology, which is a maker of GPS chips, is letting go some of its workforce and he feels that SiRF is a bellwether of the GPS industry. As he puts it, SiRF is the “canary in the GPS coal mine” and the GPS end-device makers may follow. For years now, GPS has been the single best-selling electronics category.

I agree with Malik who makes the point that GPS-only devices will go by the wayside as GPS functionality is integrated into other devices, particularly cell phones. I hope that Dash is looking to the future as they have an interesting and potentially very useful product.

Merium Home Theater PC creator Christoffer Nøkleby has boldly and proudly proclaimed that his creation comes with a “sky high wife approval factor.” I won’t take him at his word, since looking good isn’t the only criteria for the de facto home minister - one will still need to tiptoe around potential landmines like its cost and usefulness at time of purchase. This Windows Home Premium-powered PC is bundled with the following for every $1,561 purchase.

• White front and top cover
• Remote controller
• Remote receiver
• Wireless keyboard
• USB dongle for keyboard
• USB extension cable for keyboard
• DVI extension cable
• DVI to HDMI converter
• DVI to VGA converter
• Audio cable
• WLAN antenna
• S/PDIF converter
• Power supply

The Luminous Stylus Handy Strap makes it easier for you to find it even if you’re in the most disorganized of bedrooms - all you need to do is leave the light on for a while, turn it off and hope that it glows bright enough for you to locate it. Otherwise, it makes for a suitable companion in the cinema (make sure it absorbs some light before you go in), enabling you to go about your stylus-enabled tasks without any hassle. The Luminous Stylus Handy Strap will set you back by $5.

Streaming music from Last.fm, the popular social music platform, can now be done using Vista Media Center. This one is just an upgrade to the previous Windows Media Center 2005 plugin that allows music streaming from the website.

Developed by Damian Meher, the new plugin lets the user stream audio tracks from Last.fm by simply typing the song title or artist’s name, and even display songs similar to your request from the Web and the PC itself.

The plugin is called the MceFM. Not much creativity on the name but I hope this one will be a better upgrade to the previous version. Damian disclosed in his blog that he “dynamically added tags to the stream, which means that Media Center will shown all that information correctly”.

The MceFM is currently in beta so people like you and me can still give our suggestions. As Damien Meher puts it, “let’s see if anyone cares”.

Read [Channel 10]

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Asus has announced the successor to that geek-favorite, the Eee PC. The 8.9 inch mini notebooks will have touch screens and possibly also include GPS. Asus VP Kevin Lin also said that the base model will ship with a gig of RAM as standard, double that of today’s model, and the SSD will also be beefed up, with 8GB and 12GB available.

Asus is storming ahead in this sector, and the addition of a touch screen makes the diminutive notebook even more attractive. With the poor battery life already exhibited by the current model, though, we’d happily do without the power-hungry GPS unit.

Asustek to roll out second-generation Eee PC with touchscreen panels [DigiTimes]

We hate the idea of Miami spying on its citizens with flying autonomous drones, but as you can see in the photograph, these things have a totally cool Judge Dredd look to them. The16lb drone, called the Honeywell MAV (Micro Air Vehicle), is a pilotless flying vehicle loaded with infra red and optical sensors.

Juan Villalba of the Miami Dade Police Department told Reuters that “Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes” – a kind of snake-o-scope to help SWAT teams see around corners.

We doubt it. The drone is set to go live in the Everglades, which makes us think that these things will be buzzing around searching for drug smugglers and other ne’er-do-wells.

Spy-in-the-sky drone sets sights on Miami [Reuters]

Photo: Reuters/Honeywell