Best New Technology

Nanostray 2 is very much a return to the classic arcade shooting titles that gobbled up all of our quarters. But it’s also a rather sleek upgrade visually–even considering the Nintendo DS’ graphical shortcomings. Is this scrolling shooter good enough to take us to new worlds or is it just going to leave you high and dry? Read on to find out.

Nanostray features many of the elements that made classical shooters great. By that, I mean you could quickly and easily learn all the controls, but you would just as quickly learn how difficult the game was. And just like those old titles, it is a side-scroller. But it also has you scrolling up and down as well, as you pilot a spaceship around, destroying virtually everything in your path–before those things take you out, of course.

Graphically, Nanostray looks quite good. The spaceship itself and the rounds and laser beams fired out all look excellent. I was particularly impressed by the explosions. This game looks much better than the average DS title, although it should be said that the game still doesn’t look nearly as good as the bargain bin Xbox Live Arcade titles–if only because they are in HD.

Most of the action takes place on the top screen, and the bottom merely keeps track of your lives and some other minor things.

The game controls rather easily in the default scheme, which mainly relies on you using the d-Pad to steer, and a couple of the face buttons to fire. If you’d rather make life difficult on yourself, then you can try to use the stylus controls. Many people complained that those controls felt tacked on in the first Nanostray; and if you experiment with that control scheme, then you’ll see why.

As I suggested earlier, the game is quite difficult. Sure, you can easily mow down many of the standard baddies–for a time. But then all of a sudden, you’ll be locked in a boss battle, where you’ll die instantly a few times. And it’s curtains.

All told, Nanostray 2 is a very solid arcade title, which is great fun on the road–especially for hardcore gamers. It’s not going to live up to the Xbox Live Arcade or PSP titles in terms of visuals, but it’s very comparable to games such as XBLA’s Omega Five and the PSP’s Atari Classics Evolved. If you yearn for that classic coin-op feel, with a new look, then you should definitely consider picking this one up.

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Posted Mar 21st 2008 3:02PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Transportation

While we spent our high school days trying not to cut our thumbs off in shop class, these West Philly High School kids have been making a run on the $10 million Automotive X Prize. They’re building a plug-in diesel hybrid in an attempt to reach that magical 100 mpg mark “without sacrificing style, safety or affordability.” Pictured above is a previous project, a K1 Attack modded up hybrid and biofuel-style. Seems like they’ve got the chops, but they’re certainly up against a lot of competition.

Averatec has released the 2575 12-inch notebook which is the newest addition to Averatec’s line-up of ultra portable consumer machines. With this latest offering, Averatec has integrated design and functionality with the hopes of attracting consumers interests, which could be difficult, especially with the slew of new notebooks hitting the market lately.

So, does the Averatec 2575 have anything new to offer to the ultra-portable notebook market? Depends on what your needs are and what you are looking for in portable computing machine. In addition to the “contemporary design” the Averatec 2575 comes pre-installed with Vista Home Premium and features an AMD Turion 64 X2 dual core chip, 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, ATI RS690 integrated graphics, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a 4-1 card reader. The 12.1-inch display sports a 1280 x 800 native resolution with AveraBrite Technology. All things considered its seems to be a good alternative, especially with the $1,100 price tag.

Product [Averatec] Read [PR Newswire]

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Posted Mar 21st 2008 12:20PM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Peripherals

Our latest micro-series, Screen grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

You’d think a car with AI sophisticated enough to carry on a lengthy conversation with its driver would kind of obviate the need for a keyboard, but hey, maybe that’s why we’re not in the TV business.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Apple has done some more funny computer banner advertising, this time on CNet. You can see it here:

I love that this ad wouldn’t work on any other medium except on the web. I especially love that it doesn’t start talking at me the second I load up CNet. It just silently moves in the background and I’m not assaulted with it unless I choose to press the play button. I also like that it STOPS moving after a few seconds and doesn’t bother me after that.

Kudos to Apple for creating an ad that I WANT to see!

Sony will remove all the pre-installed garbage from its notebooks for an extra $50, but only if you spend $100 to upgrade to Vista Business first. The new configuration option comes on the slick TZ-series subnotebooks, reports PC World, and is being marketed as "Fresh Start." Most sites covering this are positively incensed at the idea of being held to ransom like this — having to pay to not have system-damaging software pre-installed seems, to them, to be a bad move.

Sony, however, is making a benevolent gesture. It merely wants you to free you from this:-

This was what came up the first time I booted up a $2,700 Vaio SZ sent in for review. See how horrible that is? And all you can do is complain about being saved from having to deal with it, for the low, low price of $50. Ingrates!

Perhaps all this trash is part of the production process, burned onto the hard drive in the factory, which is why it has to charge extra to remove it afterwards. It makes me sad, because Sony makes fantastic computers.

Here’s a funny quote from PC World’s story:

"Customers opting for Sony’s Fresh Start will miss out on software including Microsoft Works SE 9.0 bundled with a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office, Sony’s Vaio Creation Suite Photo Software bundled with a 30-day trial version of Corel Paint Shop Pro; the Click to Disc video editor; WinDVD, and a free edition of QuickBooks Simple Start that can only track 20 customers."

"MISS OUT?," my editor shrieks.

Sony Removes Bloatware–for a Fee [PC World]

Posted Mar 21st 2008 11:33AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Laptops

Nary a fortnight after Nicholas Negroponte affirmed that his role wouldn’t be changing all that much once a new CEO was strapped in, along comes word that the nonprofit’s highly regarded Director of Security Architecture, Ivan Krstić, has moved on to greener pastures as of three weeks ago. According to a soul-bearing post on his own blog, the ex-chief outrightly noted that he could no longer “subscribe to the organization’s new aims or structure in good faith, nor [could he] reconcile them with [his] personal ethic.” Additionally, he admits that he was “asked to stop working with Walter Bender,” someone he greatly respected, and forced to report to a replacement “with no technical or engineering background who was put in charge of all OLPC technology.” It should be noted that Krstić seemed to admire his colleagues overwhelmingly, but we can’t help but wonder who else in there is feeling similarly about the recent internal restructuring.

[Via Yahoo / Infoworld, image courtesy of TheAge]

The best thing about smartphones is that they’re an all-in-one solution. Not only are they great phones, but they’re also great music and video players. Of course, the best sound doesn’t come out of the phone itself and is instead experienced either through headphones or when the smartphone is connected to a speaker system. With GSM phones, connecting up to a speaker system or being near a speaker system generally produces interference, and in most cases the only way to solve the problem is to put the phone into “flight mode”–basically shutting off the mobile antenna. Enter the T612.

Altec Lansing’s T612 was designed from the ground up to allow an iPod and more specifically the iPhone user the ability to enjoy her music stored on the device. It features an integrated charging cradle, 60 Watts of power, a wireless remote, a 3.5mm stereo cable (for aux input), and most important for iPhone users, built in functionality that pauses your music so that you can take a phone call.

T612 with iPhone

For my tests I plugged in the unit and then plugged in my iPhone. At first I received a “this unit is not designed for use with the iPhone…” message on my iphone. I then disconnected and reconnected the iPhone and all was well. I’m assuming the connector half connected initially and caused the iPhone to spit out that warning message.

I then hit play on the remote and from the standard “slide to unlock” screen, I saw the title of the song display at the top and the music started streaming out of the T612 speaker system.

I then “slid” the slider and was immediately launched into the ipod part of the iPhone, complete with a picture of the album cover for the song that was playing.

The T612 really pumps out the tunes. The on-screen volume control on the iPhone is disabled but you can crank up the volume on the T612 via the built-in controls or the remote control. The T612 features an LED indicator on the front of the unit which illustrates if you’re lowering or raising the volume, and to what level. It seemed like I was able to continue to crank the T612 louder, even after the LED indicator had maxed all the way to the right. It reminded me of the “11″ that you used to find on some volume knobs on amplifiers back in the day. I was also able to do the same thing with the separate bass and treble controls, and it pumped out a decent amount of bass without a subwoofer.

View from above, showing the controls and the iPhone

As for the interference that I’m used to hearing, none could be detected. More importantly, when I called the phone, the music paused and I was able to take the call. When I finished the call, the music resumed. I also tested ignoring the call and the music resumed just in the same way as it had when I had hung up the received call.

Another nice benefit of having the phone still operating is that I was able to stream music live from FlyTunes, so I wasn’t just limited to the music stored on my iPhone.

The only drawback I found with the T612 is that you have to actually remove the iPhone from the cradle to take the call. Perhaps a future version can include an integrated microphone and a button on the remote for engaging it?

Otherwise, it’s a solid device and well worth the $200 asking price, not to mention that it’s an attractive piece of gear when matched with an LCD TV.

One more thing: below you’ll see a scan of a flyer that was included in the box showing off the T612 mounted on a wall. Not something I’d be rushing out to do only because I’d have to also put an AC outlet behind it for power, but if you’re up for it, you can get a free wall mounting kit–at least you could when this unit was shipped to me.

Read more about the T612 at AltecLansing.com.

I have to wait for Firefox 3, as much as I want to upgrade now, what with the promise of better memory management and performance increases, because I depend too much on the over 2 dozen extensions that I have. But Mozilla got smart with the upcoming next release of Firefox - they’ve launched a competition (Extend Firefox 3) to recruit developers to create brand new extensions that take advantage of new features in FF 3, as well as to simply upgrade existing extensions so that they continue to work.

Prizes include travel to a Mozilla Developer Day, development gear (including a macbook air), and Firefox swag. Come on Firefox community - keep me loving my browser!

Filed in archive Accessories by jim on March 21, 2008

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I've been trying to find the perfect camera bag, or "gadget bag", as we used to call them, for years.

So far I've accumulated a collection of bags that rivals the number of cameras I have, and none are perfect, yet each in its own way, is.

That's because I'm a pack rat, and I tend to bring more stuff along than is needed. So I end up with half a car trunk full of bags with all the cameras and associated photo equipment I think I might need.

The, when I get to where I'm going I usually end up picking a few items from each bag and one bag suitable to carry my selections.

I hope you're not like me and can't make your mind up about what camera bag to use and spend more time taking pictures rather than preparing to take them.

Regardless of your needs pick a well made bag that is sturdy and adequately padded.

Here's a good article about digital camera bag quality and choices by Digital Photography members.

Take a camera with you whenever possible, and look around, you'll find a picture somewhere.

Source:www.farm1.static.flickr.com