What? A month not long enough to scrounge up 29,500 pennies? That's really too bad, as the limited edition Keyport Slide is now available to anyone willing to fork over the aforementioned quantity of cash. Granted, we still think that's a touch entirely too pricey for what you're getting, but hey, at least you can pick between four colors, right?
[Thanks, William]
Not even six months after the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive fell to an oh-so-tempting $179, the unit has now reached an even lower low. That's right kids, the attachment has just plummeted to a juicy $129, which would honestly sound a whole lot sweeter if not for that sub-$100 HD DVD fiasco still lingering in our heads. Nevertheless, we've already noticed the player's new price tag over at Amazon and Toys R Us, but feel free to point out any other price slashings in comments below.
Read - $129.99 at Amazon
Read - $129.98 at Toys R Us
It's not clear whether or not a settlement agreement was reached, but photographer Louis Psihoyos, who sued Apple over what he claimed was an infringing use of his "wall of video" image (pictured) in marketing materials for the Apple TV, has dropped his suit. The suit was dropped with prejudice, which means a settlement is likely, but neither party is commenting on the matter. Either way, let's hope Apple is a little more judicious in appropriating art for advertising in the future.
It's no secret that Michael "Transformers" Bay prefers his high definition optical discs in the Blu variety, but what we didn't know was how convinced the man is that the whole format war is nothing but a stalling tactic, with Microsoft pulling all the strings. Responding to a commenter angry over Paramount's decision to burn Optimus and friends onto HD DVD only, Bay claims to have the inside track on the "corporate politics" at play here, suggesting that "Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads." He goes on to claim that Redmond has only been financially backing HD DVD over "superior Blu-ray" to create "confusion in the market" until such time as high def digital downloading goes prime time. In other words, if you believe Bay, Microsoft is backing a known loser in order to prolong a war it doesn't want anyone to win. Pretty wild theory, if you ask us -- hey, this guy should make movies.
Now that the Cowon Q5W is finally on sale in the US, reviews are starting to spring up, and sadly, it looks like we'll have to put off our newfound love affair for a while -- while the device is sexy and the feature list is there, it seems like the interface just isn't up to snuff. The folks at Gadgetaholics are first off the line with a review, and while they praise the extensive feature list and codec support, it seems that the three-year-old Windows CE 5.0 OS just isn't quite as touch-compatible as that five-inch screen would have you believe, with the use of a stylus required for several features, including the onscreen keyboard. Worse, the Cowon shell runs as an app on top of the OS, requiring some unfortunate mode and context switching to change settings and run other apps. Video playback was also marred by glitches, including an inability to play certain supposedly compatible files and a hard lockup when attempting to load an unsupported .mov file. In the end, regardless of Q5W's impressive screen size and feature list, it looks like the Archos 605 might be a better bet -- we hope it can forgive us for straying.
It's a small, small consolation, but Apple has donated free iPod nanos to over 100 kids in a California school district who lost their homes in the recent wildfires. Affected high school students in Poway, California, received the devices after Steve Boyack, husband of a Poway city councilwoman, noticed that fundraising and gift drives organized by the city targeted mainly young children and older folks and decided to write Steve Jobs an email at his famously public email address. Steve didn't write back, but Michael Foulkes, Apple's senior manager for state and local government affairs, soon had the iPods on their way. Apple being Apple, it's declined to comment on the story, and Boyack says the company didn't want any publicity to begin with, saying, "It was strictly from the heart and just wanting to help." Love or hate Apple, you've got to respect them for trying to provide at least a little holiday cheer.
We're not quite sure what to make of Best Wisdom Industrial's BW-M2404, which could easily be a diminutive digital photo frame or a fat-bordered PMP depending on how you see it. Nevertheless, the manufacturer claims it's the latter, so we'll stick with that until told otherwise. As for specs, this oddly-shaped device sports a 2.4-inch 320 x 240 resolution LCD, between 512MB and 4GB of internal storage, an SD expansion slot, image / text viewer, a few built-in games, USB 2.0 connectivity, a rechargeable Li-ion and support for MJPEG, FLV, WMV, QVGA, MP3, WMA, DRM, WMA, OGG, WAV, APE and FLAC file formats. You'll also find an FM tuner and an interesting control layout, but unfortunately, we've no idea what this awkward little bugger will actually run you. If intuition isn't leading us astray, we'd say you're better off in the dark.
[Via PMPToday]
It's not nearly as hotly-debated as the change to the webcasting rates, but our nation's esteemed Copyright Royalty Board has just issued a new set of license fees for satellite broadcasters -- also known as Sirius and XM. The new rates come after a year of legal wrangling -- the main point of contention was hashing out what revenue to measure to determine the license fees, and it looks like the broadcasters won on this one -- advertising and subscriptions count, but not hardware sales and data services. That said, the rates still look like they're pretty fair, all around: the six-year plan has the companies paying six percent of applicable revenues through 2008, 6.5 percent in 2009, seven percent in 2010, 7.5 percent in 2011, and eight percent in 2012. Of course, hopefully by then that pesky merger will finally be completed, so the rates will have to be adjusted further, but it's nice to know that the tunes are going to keep coming for a while longer.
[Via OrbitCast]
Sure, it's not the real thing, but those of you aching for a taste of Steve's "research project" touch Macs can now order up the latest and greatest iMacs retrofitted with touchscreens from Troll Touch. The company's been putting its PSRT touchscreens on all sorts of displays for years, and much like the ModBook, the tech pretty much just works. Pricing for the new iMacs starts at $2499 for the base 2.0GHz 20-inch model and runs up to $3899 for the 2.8GHz 24-inch Core 2 Extreme, while those of you who want to upgrade your existing machines can get in on the action for $1099 (20 inch) or $1599 (24 inch). Shipping now, apparently.
While it admits it's not possible to pin down an exact number, Microsoft has let out word today that it estimates the counterfeit rate of Vista to be about half that of XP, a figure that it seems to be more than pleased with. Of course, one could interpret those numbers in slightly less positive ways, but Microsoft claims the sharp dip in piracy is due to Vista's amped up authentication system, which it says is a "proven and effective way to combat piracy." To come up with the numbers, Microsoft apparently relied statistics based on Windows Genuine Advantage validation failures, as well as other unspecified internal data. As TG Daily notes, all this follows Microsoft's announcement of revised anti-piracy measures in Vista SP1 and, specifically, some big changes to the aforementioned WGA feature.
Everyone wants to be packing some of that sweet flash memory in their notebooks these days, but not everyone wants to shell out such high prices for such relatively measly capacities. Well along comes Santa Ana-based STEC Inc. with what it claims to be a breakthrough NAND technology that will allegedly slash the price of solid state drives down to just $2/GB within two years; specifically, the company says it has successfully leveraged so-called multi-level cell-based (MLC) NAND into SSDs with 90MB/s read / 60MB/s write speeds -- good enough to exceed platter-based hard drive performance at prices supposedly half of what they are today. STEC is currently shipping manufacturing samples between 32GB and an impressive 512GB (in a 2.5-inch form factor; the largest 1.8-inch drive is 128GB), although it remains to be seen how much of those savings will be passed along to the consumer when these eventually come to market.
While it's still not clear if it's actually going to go so far as to join the Open Handset Alliance (as previously rumored), it looks like Verizon Wireless is at least getting behind the Android platform, marking a fairly significant shift from its previous position on the matter. According to Business Week, Verizon Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam now says that the company is "planning on using Android," adding that, "Android is an enabler of what we do." It seems that Verizon's embrace of open access won't include the same level of support that it offers to its current handset lineup, however, with the company only promising to "to ensure the wireless connection is working for customers who buy those devices" (although it will test all phones developed to run on its network). According to McAdam, customers will have to "talk to their handset provider or their application provider if they have particular issues." That, Verizon says, will allow it to offer far more devices than it's previously been able to, which should, in turn, attract customers it's previously been unable to lure in -- or so it hopes.
[Via Phone Scoop]
The just-announced 3110 Evolve candybar from Nokia is big on features. Not features of the gizmo sort, though -- quite the contrary, actually -- rather, features of the "Mother Nature will thank you" sort. As its name suggests, the phone appears to be an evolved version of the rather plain 3110 classic, a phone that features a 1.3 megapixel cam, FM radio, and a tri-band GSM radio. Certainly nothing to write home about there, but the Evolve's claim to fame is that it's rocking "bio-covers" made with over 50 percent renewable materials and comes in a box made of 60 percent recycled stuff. On the technical side, the Evolve's charger is Nokia's most efficient ever, delivering juice at a full 94 percent below Energy Star specifications. Looks like the Greenpeace love is destined to continue, eh? No word on pricing or availability for the 3110 Evolve just yet.
