Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Original post by Blogging Molly

Filed under: Cellphones

What a refreshing change of pace! AT&T actually beat its estimate of “early September” for its variant of the Motorola RAZR 2, the V9 — albeit in a rather bizarre shade, “mahogany” (where we come from, that’s called purple, but whatevs). Though it’s not showing up on AT&T’s online store just yet, it’s showing up for their business “premier” customers (note the screen shot above) and seems to be filtering into brick-and-mortar locations as we write this. The premier site shows a rather shocking off-contract price of $749.99, though with a combination of discounts, rebates, and contracts, it should fall into a far more reasonable price range for pretty much everyone involved. Seriously, $750? Sheesh.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Chris Ziegler

Original post by Blogging Molly

Tiger4 writes “Let’s say I have a photograph, or a television script, or have finally perfected the water-to-gasoline conversion process, or some other piece of non-software but copywritable or patentable IP. I know I want it secured in my name, on this date, in a provable and verifiable way. But being an Open Source, free-to-the world sort of person, I’m willing to share my knowledge to the world, as long as all credit points unambiguously to me. Any attempts at theft could, would, and must be immediately rebuffed by my offer of proof from when I first secured the IP. What, if any, tool or method is available to me in the digital world? MD5 and the like are available to show that copied files are the same as the original source, but they don’t show time of authorship unambiguously. The same with Public Key crypto. I could lock it up with a time stamp, but what prevents me from faking the stamp that locks the file? Is there a way to homestead a little chunk of time with my IP’s name on it?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Portable Audio

Ok inspectors Engadget, here’s Sony’s Rolly back for an encore. We went frame-by-frame through our higher quality copy of the video to try and understand our little friend just a wee bit better. From what we can tell, this thing really moves. At first we thought maybe, just maybe we were looking at some slick animation of a static device. Not anymore, those two protruding rings provide the locomotion while each end of the egg spins freely of both the rings and that Sony branded trunk. They’ve also stuffed a pair of speakers into each end and covered them by those independently juddering end-caps. The device itself is very clean. A Sony logo is printed front-center; a Rolly logo 180-degrees opposite next to a small, possibly 3-button control panel; a (sometimes) illuminated blue ellipse bottom-center, and some unidentified jacks (or just a lanyard anchor, perhaps) up top. There’s no display anywhere to be found. Take a look at the gallery and let us know what you think: Bluetooth speaker-bot, full blown DAP, a Sony / ZMP hookup, or something else entirely more menacing than even ATRAC?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: GPS

Panasonic expanded its Strada line of GPS navigation/entertainment units at IFA this week, rolling out its new CN-GP50N aimed squarely at the European market. Filling out the face of this unit is a 5-inch QVGA touchscreen, which should give you a decent view of the 37 pre-loaded maps of European countries, as well as the 1.3 million POIs and 3D maps of selected locations and landmarks. The unit also comes equipped with desirable features like text-to-speech, voice commands, speed camera information, and Bluetooth handsfree calling, as well as real-time traffic information with the addition of an optional receiver. No word on a release date just yet, it seems, but it’ll apparently set you back an even €400, or roughly $545.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Donald Melanson

Rob Isn’t Weird writes “In the wake of the exposure of Microsoft’s attempt to buy Sweden’s vote on OOXML and Sweden’s annulment of that vote due to irregularities, IBM’s Rob Weir points out that the fiasco could cause anti-trust worries for Microsoft. He quotes ALLIED TUBE & CONDUIT CORP. v. INDIAN HEAD, INC., 486 U.S. 492 (1988), which says ‘What petitioner may not do (without exposing itself to possible antitrust liability for direct injuries) is bias the process by, as in this case, stacking the private standard-setting body with decision makers sharing their economic interest in restraining competition.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Gaming

El rei de la casa, meaning “the precious child” in Spanish, is a video game exhibition being shown in Barcelona, Spain. The aim of the exhibition is to highlight the mainstream media’s misrepresentation of the internet and all its evils(C), and what better way to dispel these daily falsehoods than by putting together a pinball machine with a couple of LCDs mounted flat? There’s even a “Prey of the Net!” level, where kids avoid losing control by aiming the virtual ball at a browser bar. Just make sure to hit the power-up surely contained in that blue E!

[Via MAKE]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Conrad Quilty-Harper

Filed under: Storage

Inventing the dual layer DVD-RW standard may seem like an extreme example of too little too late in the days of 15GB+ HD DVD and 25GB+ Blu-ray, but JVC has gone ahead and done it anyway. Hitting up the same 8.5GB capacity as regular double layer DVD-RWs and dual layer DVD-RWs, the JVC discs come with a specially hardened coating which is apparently “150 times” more effective than the coating on plain old DVDs. Unfortunately, the new format requires entirely new burners, is only available at 2x write speeds, and no shipping dates or details are available. Sounds like JVC’s got a winner on its hands … yeah.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Conrad Quilty-Harper

Ted Samson writes “In their latest round of energy-efficiency tests between AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon, independent testing firm Neal Nelson and Associates find AMD still holds an edge, but it’s certainly not cut-and-dried. Nelson put similarly equipped servers through another gauntlet of tests, swapping in different amounts of memory and varying transaction loads. In the end, he found that the more memory he installed on the servers, the better the Opteron performed compared to the Xeon. Additionally, at maximum throughput, the Intel system fared better, power-efficiency-wise, by 5.0 to 5.5 percent for calculation intensive workloads. For disk I/O intensive workloads, AMD delivered better power efficiency by 18.4 to 18.6 percent. And in idle states — that is, when servers were waiting for their next work load — AMD consistently creamed Intel.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

We first caught sight of these new Halo 3-themed Xbox 360 accessories a few months back, but Microsoft is just now getting official with them, confirming all the details that made themselves known earlier. As we mentioned last time, the controllers are both of the wireless variety, and sport your choice of Covenant Brute or Master Chief themes designed by Spawn-creator Todd McFarlane. What’s more, each controller also comes with a “Limited Edition” Halo 3 Master Chief figurine also designed by McFarlane. Look for them to set you back $60 apiece when they’re released on September 4th. Also coming for the same price that day is a Halo 3-themed wireless headset, which doesn’t boast the McFarlane touch but looks like it should fit in better with your Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360. Finally, while it’s not Halo-themed, Microsoft has also taken the opportunity to reconfirm that its Xbox 360 Messenger Kit is indeed going to be released September 4th for $30, which includes the the Chatpad and an Xbox 360 headset. Click on through for a closer look at each accessory.

Continue reading Microsoft gets official with new Halo 3-themed Xbox 360 accessories

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: GPS

Magellan’s let loose a slew of new additions to its Maestro line of GPS units, including three models in the widescreen 4200 series, and four in the lower-end 3200 series. Coming in at the top-end of the lot, the $500 Maestro 4250 unit boasts a 4.3-inch widescreen display, along with support for live traffic information, text-to-speech functionality, voice control, and built-in Bluetooth for some handsfree calling. The Maestro 4220 and 4200 each sport the same size screen and slim 0.7-inch design but scale back on some of the features like live traffic info and voice control. Leading the pack in the 3200 series, the $400 Maestro 3250 will give you the same live traffic info, text-to-speech and voice control of the 4250, but in a slightly smaller form factor with a non-widescreen 3.5-inch display. Rounding out the line-up the 3200, 3210, and 3220 each pack 3.5-inch displays as well, but with varying amounts of maps and features depending on the model. Look for these to trickle out over the course of September and October.

[Via GPS Review]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Cellphones

The New York Post is reporting that Apple’s September 5th dog and pony show is set to usher in the age of iTunes as ringtone-management software for iPhone. Apparently the rumored service will see iTunes able to convert any song into a ringtone — for a fee, of course — and you’ll even have the ability to dictate which portion of the song becomes the tone. The offering will also include the ability to use previously purchased tunes as ringtones, and we’re hoping your own music in iTunes, too. We’re feeling this is long overdue, but can assume that Apple could have been in conversation with the labels to sort out the financials of all this magic. Watch this space next week for more news on pricing and availability — if indeed, it actually pans out.

[Via AppleInsider]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Sean Cooper

TheGreatGraySkwid writes “With an ironic lack of forward thinking, the Science Fiction Writers of America (or, more specifically, their Vice President Andrew Burt) have issued scattershot DMCA takedown notices against numerous items on the document-sharing site Scribd, many of which were not infringing on SFWA copyrights in any way. It appears that a simple keyword search for prominent science fiction names (like ‘Asimov’ and ‘Silverburg’) was used to determine which documents were to be singled out. Included in the documents was Cory Doctorow’s ‘Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,’ which was released under the Creative Commons license and is freely available at any number of places. Doctorow is up in arms over at BoingBoing, with several other Science Fiction notables speaking up in the comments.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Features, Portable Audio

Are you interested in a really, really small DAP? As in: so small you will most definitely lose it some place, like, say… between your car seat cushions, or in a pile smooth skipping stones? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might want to look into Sansa’s Clip — just about the teeny-tiniest media player we’ve ever had the pleasure of handling. Actually, the thing feels pretty good when you get your mitts on it, sort of like a shrunken iPod, with a really nice, clear OLED display. At the low prices they’re asking for these ($40 for the 1GB, $60 for the 2GB), you can probably afford to lose a few. Check the gallery — we promise you won’t have to squint… much.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Joshua Topolsky