Author: Daniel Sung
Go Terminate yourself!
Lucy Hedges is leaving Shiny Media today. She’s been writing on our sister site, Shiny Shiny, for over a year now and you’ll know her through her reviews on Shiny Tech TV over here on Tech Digest. It’s only recently that we’ve actually discovered that she’s a Terminator. It took us around 12 months of her constantly asking if we’d seen John Connor but it was really only after seeing this image that the penny dropped.
If you’d like to Terminate yourself, your pets or any buddies of yours, then head over to the promotional site for Terminator Salvation and cyborg yourself up. Enjoy and have a Happy Easter.
(via Botropolis)
Tokyo Flash Kisai Denshoku – still purely ornamental
Let’s be honest about Tokyo Flash watches. They’re a conspiracy by Japanese people to undermine Western culture by making sure that nobody knows what the time is – ever. The Kisai Denshoku, here, and its buddies are designed to look irresistibly appealing but completely useless as chronographs.
There’s some nonsense about the number of bars representing hours – most likely hours until the West’s self-destruction through enforced disorganisation – but I don’t buy it for a minute, or second or whatever units they want to represent. The clever part is we get to pay them for the privilege. £163.70 and you too can speed the revolution. Fool.
Nokia Nautilus and two other touchscreen mobiles to come
The word on The Street is that Nokia is getting serious about touchscreen mobiles since RIM took a bite out of their market share last year and, apparently, we’re to see three new models in the next 12 months.
One is 4.2″ tablet type handheld with a “hidden slide-out QWERTY” due to hit the shelves before Christmas. A second is known for now as “Nautilus” and has the kind of talk around it that makes it sound like something from the year 2116. It’s supposed to be a much finer form and with an ultra-thin QWERTY that slides out by means of a sensor with keys that raise for easier typing.
Sounds slightly farcical but I’m happy to run with it until I hear otherwise. Funnily enough, Nautilus isn’t expected for a year. The third touchscreen handset is thought to be with us within four months, though.
No word on the on the OS of the handsets but I wouldn’t presume S60 to be the natural choice. I have it on good authority that the next big handset from Nokia after the N97 will run Linux.
LG Viewty II out in June on Orange
Word has just landed that the LG Viewty II will hit the UK in June. The news trickled through Orange that the 8-megapixel snapping, 3-inch WVGA touchscreen device was to get a Q2 release and it’s since been refined as just two months’ time.
The original Viewty, which is still available, is one the most successful handsets to come out of the company quickly pushing their way up the mobile phone ladder and this handset with its 32GB storage and 3D LG Arena-like interface could be their next big push in the mould of the Chocolate, the Cookie and the first Viewty itself.
No word on price or network exclusivity as yet but expect news soon as the companies involved look to settle the talk.
LG Viewty
(via Electric Pig)
LG LF7700 – first truly HD ready 1080p TV released with Freesat tuner
LG and Freesat have put there heads together for the last few months and finally come up with a product for the consumer to get his and hers hands on. The LF7700 LCD range will come in 32″, 37″, 42″ and 47″ panel sizes and is slightly confusingly both 1080p and described as HD Ready.
LG say it’s HD Ready because of the built-in Freesat tuner such that all you need is a satellite dish to receive HD content unlike other TVs that would require a set top box of some sort.
The LF7700 comes with a generous 4 HDMI 1.3 ports, an Ethernet connection and a USB slot as well as speakers tuned by the legendary Mark Levinson. It offers a dynamic contrast ratio of 50,000:1, TruMotion 100Hz frame rates for a smoother picture in the two largest panel sizes and the LG intelligent sensor which allows the backlighting of the LCD to adjust accroding to ambient light and so save the user power consumption and planet its carbon.
They’re available from the end of this month and start from around £570.
Conficker Watch: The worm awakens
The worm has turned. Conficker has awoken. It’s updating peer-to-peer and dropping in a mysterious load thought to be a keystroke logger. For the 3 to 12 million users thought to be infected, it would seem like a good time to stop using your bank accounts and start re-installing Windows.
The worm will contact sites like MySpace.com, MSN.com, eBay.com, CNN.com and AOL.com in order to check internet connectivity, drop the key logger.sys file behind a rootkit such that your anti-virus won’t be able to pick it up and then disappear with no further replication by 3rd May.
The .sys file will, of course, still be there and will still report back from the host computer to the rest of the botnet. All very pleasant stuff.
You can visit one of these two sites to see if your machine is infected.
(via CNET)
UPDATED: Nintendo Wii Sports Resort to launch in June
Nintendo will release the next edition of their popular Sports package in June this year to catch up with other console sales.
Wii Sports Resort will feature up to 10 games and include jet skiing, throwing a frisbee to a dog (probably better than it sounds) and a sword fighting game based on kendo, as pictured.
The package will be used to increase sales of the Wii which was over taken in March in Japan by the PS3 for the first time in 16 months. The family console still rules the roost worldwide but it’s hoped that the addition of this truly Wii-unique offering will win back Nintendo’s crown in the mother country.
Wii Sports Resort will work with the Wii MotionPlus new and improved controller and will allow gamers to control on-screen action with a virtual remote control as well as a host of other nuances.
Buy a Wii for just over £130
Wii Fit review:
Sony W Series Walkman launches at £59.00 today
One in 10 people have accidents at the gym involving the wires of their music players. So says Sony as the launch their W Series Walkman, sans cables of course.
The head wearable set holds 2GB-worth of MP3s, AACs and WMAs and will play them back for a 90-minute stretch through the 13.5mm EX headphones – and all after just a three minute quick charge. A full charge buys you 12 whole hours of playback and if you chose to spend the £59 at the Sony store you can take your pick from either black,
white, pink, green or violet. Gallacher not included.
Top five male exercise tracks
1. Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now (17%)
2. Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run (11%)
3. Snap! – The Power (8%)
4. The Killers – Mr Brightside (8%)
5. Bodyrockers – I Like The Way (7%)
Top five female exercise tracks
1. Girls Aloud – Jump (16%)
2. Lady Gaga – Just Dance (11%)
3. Duffy – Mercy (8%)
4. Salt ‘n’ Pepa – Push It (8%)
5. James Brown – I Feel Good (8%)
CES 2009 Sony Walkman Preview:
Atom hits 2GHz with the Intel Z550
Intel has broken the 2GHz barrier with their Atom Z550 CPU announced earlier today. The chip-type, made famous by the netbook and other UMPCs, will support Intel’s Hyperthreading technology and run up to 2GB of 533MHz DDR2 RAM.
The new hardware was shown off today in a conference in Beijing. It coincides with the first birthday of the Atom and this latest incarnation continues in the same mould by supplying the processing power at just 3W. Obviously a busy day for Intel.
(via Bit-Tech)
GALLERY: Acer Aspire Revo – the nettop with NVIDIA graphics power
Well, it seems wherever Asus goes, Acer can follow and, with the likes of the 11.6″ Aspire One and the AspireRevo nettop, it looks like they’re doing it better too.
The Revo runs on an Intel Atom 230 processor with the NVIDIA ION graphics processor, the idea being to give it quiet, economic performance but with 10x the graphics power of most small computers. It’ll even run Vista, so I’d recommend Windows 7.
The plan is that you can use it as a media centre for 1080p HD content, for a good degree of gaming, for VoIP use and all backed up by up to 4GB of DDR2 and the choice of a SATA HDD or an SSD.
Click the picture below for a closer look
