One of the most famous of all old-school Mustangs is up for sale - "Eleanor," the star of the 2000 movie remake "Gone in Sixty Seconds."
Actually a replica of its '67 Shelby GT500 namesake, the movie car is up for sale at The Auto Collections at the Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The car is one of 12 built for the movie, two of which were destroyed during filming.
Eleanor is powered by a Ford Racing 351 crate engine, and looks to be very well equipped. More details and pics at the Auto Collections site.
The new CROWS (Common Remotely Operated Weapons System) guns that are making their way into Iraq not only provide protection for soldiers by allowing remote operation, but are turning out to be especially suited to FPS junkies. The guns cost $260,000 each and can mount a variety of lethal weapons. Currently around 15 CROWS units are commisioned in Iraq every month, but the Army is hoping to get 9000 of them operational, partly due to their success with all the gamers currently serving in the infantry. The joystick operated gun, while much safer, is obviously limited in field of vision in comparison to a man mounted turret gun, but former FPS players have found plenty of success with the weapons. Boom Headshot!
Looks like the Sony Bravia LCD HDTV S series will be released sometime this month (in Europe), though the 46-incher will wait until May, as will the rest of the Sony Bravia LCD HDTV V series. You'll have to pony up between £1,000 and £3,000 (about $1,750 - $5,250) to pick a 32, 42, or 46-inch S up, however, and if you're bent on grabbing a V with Sony Live Colour Creation Technology it'll cost you even more: £1700 to £3,500 (about $3,000 to $6,100). We'd kind of wish for that price we'd at least be snagging a 1080p set, but that's Sony!
At first glance Lenovo's Easy Cube M500 MP3/WMA player looks similar to MobiBlu's infamous DAH-1500, but check out the scale. While MobiBlu's offering still battles for the title of world's smallest digital audio player, the Easy Cube is a bit bulkier, at about 2.75-inches per side. That added bulk gives it room for an SD slot and speaker. There's no display or internal storage, and we can only imagine what kind of glorious sound emanates from that 2-inch speaker, but it's only $50, which is less than some other display-free SD-based players that don't have the Easy Cube's good looks or built-in speaker.
Scientists synthesize plastic for printing electronics on
A team composed of academic and corporate scientists from the US and UK have succeeded in creating a conductive plastic that could soon lead to the cheap printable electronics. Researchers from Merck, PARC, and Stanfords University and Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory were able to tweak the structure of a regular organic polymer to create a so-called "semi-conducting polythiopene," which improves upon standard silicon in that it can be laid down using simple inkjet printing techniques while at the same time producing less waste. Although the new material will never replace silicon as the choice for hardcore computing applications, the fact that this team has already created transistors with the new technology may mean that the promised land of ubiquitous, disposable e-paper is closer than we think.
How about an extra set of wheels, the guys from H6 Players can stretch your Hummer and add alls sorts of nonsense to your interior from fiber optic lighting to a chrome ceiling, ice chest, 15" flatscreen tailgate monitor and the all-important rear speakers.
Feedo Style: Scrolling RSS headlines for your web site
Feedo Style is a service that lets you create a custom scrolling news box from any RSS feed that you can embed in any web site. Setting it up is really easy. You just enter a feed URL and then tweak the box's appearance to your heart's content (well, almost—the style options are a bit limited). Once you've got it looking the way you want, Feedo Style gives you the code to put anywhere on your web site.
Here's some really nifty shareware goods. First, the tuner, called Chromatic Tuner 1.3, is a very simple but elegant guitar tuner for OS X. Next, a piece of software for training the musician's ear--basically, it's a piece of training software for identifying chords, notes, and rhythmic patterns. This package, called Dolce ear training, might be a useful addition to your arsenal if you're a music student.
Finally, be sure to check out Scrambled Hackz, a program that can transform human beat box into actual music sequences based on a database of pre-recorded samples. Scrambled Hackz isn't available for download yet, but check the author's demonstration video it's interesting. He's planning on releasing the thing under the GPL license, which means it will be free and open source.
Music Brothers is a Korean flash game that can be compared to Dance Dance Revolution. You guide a group of dancing blobs along a path of arrows. You progress by pressing the arrow key that matches the next arrow on the path. Each key you press plays a musical note and each level is a little song that you have to complete before your time runs out. If you press a wrong key you'll lose one of the blobs from your group, but you can gain more blobs or get other bonuses by pressing space bar when you encounter round faces on the path. The graphics are adorable, you have several choices of sound schemes when you begin the game, and overall the game is surprisingly challenging and addicting.
This video trailer from the May 2006 issue of PC Gamer confirms the existence of Battlefield 2142 and its pending release this fall.
Feel free to watch those warring mechs, but we'll hold off judgment until we hear the official word from EA/DICE. Do you believe a future ice age will precipitate a global war over arable land? You've been warned.
Random encounters with Final Fantasy parody videos
Western Square fans have been waiting a long time for the next canonical(Roman-numeral-bearing, non-MMO, non-X-2) Final Fantasy release--five years if we're not mistaken--and they've apparently taken to creating live-action videos of the game to make the wait easier.
The makers of Ultimate Utopia XXIII dedicated nearly twelve minutes of runtime (and likely many hours more of their lives) to produce a rather extended look at what a live-action Final Fantasy battle should look like, so kindly check it out if you've got some time to kill before XII arrives. That Chrono Cross music in the beginning really takes you back, though.
Another great buy from Hobo International is their Madeline Clutch. Made of incredibly soft leather, it is accented with nickel buckle flap and has a magnetic and top zipper closure. It holds a cell phone, small wallet and a lipstick. The interior features wall pockets and ID window slots. Shown here in sky, it is also available in cuoio, pearl, black, cemento. Bag Dimensions: 12'' L x 5 3/4'' H x 1'' W. Price:$114.
With its geometric zig zag pattern, Tory Burch's handwoven bracelet has a unique appearance to it. Made out of canaflecha, a natural art form from Columbia, it measures one inch in width. Only available in brown. Price: $60.00
"Lexus performance" was measured in terms of panel gaps and service intervals, but as part of Toyota's plan to add driving emotion to the brand, plans have additions. The upscale marque is reportedly considering opening a series of high-performance driving schools... not unlike that of Ferrari or Land Rover.
According to Inside Line, the academy could possibly focus on more driving-dynamics oriented models, like the 2006 IS 350.
Google Finance is a new financial portal, with a similar feel to Google Maps. Stock charts are powered by Flash rather than AJAX and have a very flexible interface. Along with all the usual info like market cap, volume, and so on, Google Finance also annotates its charts with recent news articles and even blog and newsgroup chatter. One feature is the "Management"(the company's higher ups) are on the pages —if you hover your mouse over one of their names, a little headshot of them will pop up. Ironically, when I hit the page for Apple (AAPL), it showed no photo for Steve Jobs.
Here we have a video of a guy passing his DS through an external circuit board and adjusting the system's internal clock speed. Assuming that this isn't an elaborate fake, it's interesting to see how Mario Kart DS behaves at different clock speeds. At the overclocked rate, it practically transforms into F-Zero. Anyone that's tried to run old DOS games on a newer PC may have encountered similar speedy results.
Thanko's Speaker in a Box is a speaker...in a box!
Thanko has released one of the strangest products ever seen, a box-shaped speaker that pumps out a hearty 1.2-watts of mono goodness- and is designed to dress up in the cardboard box that your iPod video or nano came in. As you can plainly see, the picture here is definitely worth a thousand words, not only providing an excellent representation of the product's functionality, but also portraying the whistling, hand-clapping satisfaction you'll receive in repurchasing some old packaging. The Speaker in a Box is available for around $38, although the few of you who could possibly be interested in such a product will have to import from Japan, for now.
Wikipedia's List of portable applications article, is a user contributed and nicely comprehensive list of portable apps. The whole collection is broken down by category, from operating systems to office apps to FTP clients, and apps for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X are listed. The page also has a nice collection of links to other web sites and blogs that track portable apps.
This video tutorial from UNEASYsilence, which donated $500 to the cause, is about 12 minutes long, formatted for your iPod (a higher-resolution version is coming soon), and pretty easy to follow.
In related news, I'm pleased to report than OnMac.net (the home of the $13,000 bounty) has gotten a nice redesign, its forums are back up, and its wiki is coming along nicely, with a constantly improving HOWTO and a very handy FAQ for would-be installers.
Packed with safety features like side curtain airbags and anti-lock brakes, the new Honda Fit will come out of the box at $13,850. Tacking on an automatic transmission brings the price up to $14,650, but with only 109 hp on tap we recommend you stick with the stick. A sporty version with cruise control, spoilers and a 160-watt sound system starts at $15,970. Look for the Fit in showrooms on April 20th.
Mozilla Lightning calendar for Thunderbird released
Lightning is a new Mozilla Thunderbird component that is a complete redesign of the Calendar extension, and the first version has just been released. Lightning promises better integration with Thunderbird including e-mail-to-task integration, address book integration, meeting invitations, and synchronization with portable devices. Lightning 0.1 is currently available as an XPI extension for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it will eventually be fully integrated into Thunderbird.
Namco has now launched their official online store, clubNAMCO. While you may find the occasional Dig Dug doll or Galaga T-shirt, opening day products are predominantly Pac-centric, and the current best-selling toy is a $100 set of six plush figures: Pac-Man, Pooka from Dig Dug and the four ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Pokey).
Expect more items to pop up very soon (especially in the currently-lacking "Office Fun" department). The T-shirts ship anywhere, while the Toys and Pac-Man cushion are imported from Japan and not available for residents of Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, or Pennsylvania.
Technology advances in lighting promise more realism
Geometric algebra, an up-and-coming field of mathematics, has found its way into video games thanks to Geomerics, a British startup. Although the company has yet to release details of their products, they've recently published some information on technology advances made possible by geometric algebra which help add further realism into gaming.
Currently, lighting in games is a toss-up between three elements: in real life, light often changes position (e.g. as the sun moves across the sky); objects cast shadows, which are often quite subtle; and depending on your viewpoint, you can sometimes see light sources reflected in other objects. The usual method is to pre-calculate the shadows in a scene and paint them on the ground, but this means the light source must stay fixed. Thanks to next-gen computing power, spherical harmonic lighting can be used to generate soft, lifelike shadows from moving light sources, but without any of the shiny surface effects that complete the picture and add realism.
Geomerics' development, using geometric algebra and wavelet technologies, allows all three elements to be computed in realtime: moving light sources, soft shadows and glossy surfaces.
The GN-BT06T device from Gigabyte basically is a Bluetooth media receiver, but it works both ways. Not only does it take music from your audio player and pump it to your Bluetooth headphones, but it can also use music from your computer and jack into your stereo. No word as to when this will be available or what it'll go for.
Previously Applied Nanotech's carbon nanotube TV company, only had an intriguing low-res video (right) and very little else to show for their research. Now Applied has taken the first step to actually making some usable prototypes, by signing an agreement with Taiwanese manufacturer Da Ling to do manufacturing trials later this year. Carbon nanotube sets use tiny flexible tubes to display images, and Applied claims that their technology can produce HD-quality sets that could sell for less than comparable LCD or plasma models. Of course, it'll be at least two years until Applied and Da Ling actually produce anything that you might be able to buy, and by then we assume that you'll be able to get a 50-inch LCD for about $400.
South Korea's Air Force is in the process of recruiting five professional gamers to help develop the next-generation of flight simulators and war-game programs. There are roughly 300 South Korean citizens that are professional gamers, and the Air Force is hoping to utilize the best of their talents to fine-tune the military's training regiment.
In addition, the selected gamers will be able to count their program testing efforts toward the country's 2-year mandatory military service, but they will have to sweat out four weeks at boot camp first. The recruits will also be allowed to continue competing in domestic e-sports contests, but are barred from accepting prize money.
Panasonic's plasmas also have a 10,000:1 contrast ratio
Sony is not the only company rocking a plasma display with a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, and Panasonic would like to point out they have them as well, in the form of the 42-inch TH-42PX60U and 50-inch TH-50PX60U. Both have resolutions similar to the Sony's; the 42PX60U is 1024x768, and will sell for about $2,499 when it hits stores later this year. The 50-inch TH-50PX60U (pictured) is 1366x768 and will go for about $3,500.
-Lytir1
