Archive for the ‘Weekly WTF’ Category
Someone definitely lost their job in a hurry at Sony Ericsson. Apparently, someone in Poland was able to get hold of a prototype device and the good folks over at SE-Center promptly reviewed the unit. Unfortunately, the review is in Polish so we have no clue what the reviewers thought of the device, but there are some fine pictures to ogle at in this
Flickr gallery.
While we admit that this is a terrific-looking device, we can’t help but scratch our heads on how the prototype got into the wild. There’s a lot of illegal stuff involved here especially since the device was sold to someone. But to match the leak is the fugly connector for headphones. The W series is SE’s Walkman series and we are extremely surprised that it doesn’t come with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Maybe this will be fixed in the production version. Other than the looks, 3.2MP main camera, and 3G with video call, there doesn’t seem to be much going for this phone. But then again, we can’t read Polish.
Oh, and don’t worry about the missing daily news update over the weekend. Since weekends are usually dead as far as technology news goes, we’ll be doing a weekend update instead. It should show up on Sunday evening (EST)/early Monday morning IST.
SE-Center [Via IntoMobile]
Popularity: 32% [?]
- By Vivek on Oct 28, 2007
THIS. IS. 300. FRAMES PER SECOND.
So, the bulky camera featured in the picture above is Casio’s new high-end, 6.0 megapixel shooter. It comes with a 12x zoom and a 2.8-inch LCD. But the big deal about this 650g camera is that it can takes 60 shots per second at full resolution and record a 300 frames per second video at VGA resolution. Videos are stored in the Motion JPEG format while the pictures are stored as JPEG files.
While all that is impressive, we are scratching our heads as to why one would want a 300fps video. It’s not like the eye can tell the difference above 30fps other than maybe see a smoother video. But really, 60fps and above shows no perceptible difference. All it does it create a high-speed video and it might be cool to record objects moving at a fast rate. But really, if that’s the case, then we’d rather have a camera that can do 1000fps and up.
No word on pricing or availability yet.
Casio Press Release
Popularity: 15% [?]
- By Vivek on Sep 2, 2007
O RLY? And I’m Bill Gates. Har har.
A study published by the Institute for Policy Innovation suggests that piracy has the US economy, not just record labels, a whopping $12.5 billion in lost output and some 70k-odd jobs. As if that wasn’t enough, the study claims that $422 million were lost in tax revenues.
As ArsTechnica rightly points out, the study makes a lot of assumptions and doesn’t take into account surveys that show a lot of P2P users actually going out and buying CDs of music they liked. Maybe the music industry needs to come out with better music at lower rates, rather than put all the blame on the pirates. Oh, and stop screwing artists, please?
ArsTechnica
Popularity: 11% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 24, 2007
A store in a Mexican mall is selling what look like 8-bit ripoffs of the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 2/3. If you take a look at the picture above, you’ll see that the packaging for the “X-Game 360″ is very similar to that for the Xbox 360. While not immediately clear from this picture, you can see the Powerstation 2 besides the X-Game 360 in packaging looking like that of the PS2 or 3 (we can’t quite make up our minds).
The kicker? The price on the display boxes is in pesos and is equivalent to about US $28. Not a bad deal, eh?
MaxConsole
Popularity: 7% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 19, 2007
Now, some time back we promised that we would go easy on all the hypePhone iPhone news. But, we just had to post this story!
North Denver News is reporting that – hold your breath- a man had plastic surgery on his fat thumb in order to use the iPhone better. Thomas Martel, 28, had a surgical technique, called whitting, performed on his thumb so that he could use his old Treo and Blacberry, and of course his new iPhone, better than before!
“From my old Treo, to my Blackberry, to this new iPhone, I had a hard time hitting the right buttons, and I always lost those little styluses,” explains Martel. “Sure, the procedure was expensive, but when I think of all the time I save by being able to use modern handhelds so much faster, I really think the surgery will pay for itself in ten to fifteen years. And what it’s saving me in frustration – that’s priceless.”
For this, Mr. Martel, you make our elusive Weekly WTF club!
Popularity: 6% [?]
- By Anand on Aug 12, 2007
In Pearl White and Crimson Red that is. The latest post on the Direct2Dell blog explains why some people have been getting their M1330s while others are still twiddling their thumbs. The Tuxedo Black color is giving Dell no problems so those who ordered their M1330 in black are getting their laptops. Those who wanted white or red will have to wait because Dell can’t achieve satisfactory paint jobs on those models. In fact, it has discontinued the Pearl White color entirely. Only those who’ve already ordered theirs will be getting it. So depending on how you look at it, those guys will either have collectors’ items or they’ll have laptops with lousy paint jobs.
The entire incident proves one thing: black is THE color to have when you’re buying gadgets. Getting fancy-schmancy with white and red is only going to lead to despair. But in any case, Dell cannot be excused for not catching this problem during testing and before they decided to start selling these systems.
Direct2Dell
Popularity: 17% [?]
- By Vivek on Aug 5, 2007
Welcome to your weekly dose of WTF. This week, we’re focusing on an ArsTechnica story that reveals just how ridiculously expensive Internet access is in Kazakhstan. State-owned Kazakhtelecom offers unlimited dialup access for the cheap rate of $111 a month. An unlimited 1.5Mbps DSL connection will cost you $3355 a month (not including the modem charges) while a sweet 6Mbps cable connection will set you back by $22032 a month.
These numbers come from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe. As if the high prices were not enough, the government has filters and restrictions in place to block anything it doesn’t like. For example, it shut down borat.kz so that Sacha Baron Cohen would not bad-mouth Kazakhstan from a .kz domain. More details from the report can be found by hitting the Read link below.
Read
OSCE Report [PDF File]
Popularity: 6% [?]
- By Vivek on Jul 29, 2007
Now we’re hearing some really great news from our friends at Redmond. ZDNet is reporting that, in a video interview, Microsoft blogger and group manager of the technical community, Frank Arrigo, has admitted that Micosoft did not quite follow web standards with Internet Explorer 6. However, Arrigo goes on to say that Internet Explorer 7 is an example of the importance that Microsoft attaches to web standards.
Well, well! This screenshot shows just how much Microsoft respects what they call web standards:
Sometimes, pictures do speak more than words.
Popularity: 6% [?]
- By Anand on Jul 22, 2007
Yeahhh right. When OLPC first started out, they wanted to make a cheap computer for developing countries. Their claim was that they’d make a $100 computer a reality. As many of you might already know, the current price for OLPCs is somewhere around $170. Wayyy higher than the $100 claim. They start shipping in September and the guys are so confident that the OLPC will be successful that they’ve made another audacious claim: they will ship $50 OLPCs in 2009.
While we can have faith in these guys, since they come from MIT, their claims in the past have been exaggerations and a $50 PC seems highly unlikely. Yes, we know that the Indian government took a leaf out of the OLPC marketing book and said they could make a $10 PC but we’re fairly certain they’re not getting there either.
DigiTimes
Popularity: 6% [?]
- By Vivek on Jul 8, 2007
Now, there is very interesting news coming in from the States. ArsTechnica is reporting that there was a recent disruption in the e-mail services at Pentagon, which was due to an incursion by hackers!
According to Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defence, “Elements of the OSD unclassified e-mail system were taken offline yesterday afternoon, due to a detected penetration. We obviously have redundant systems in place, and there is no anticipated adverse impact on ongoing operations. There will be some administrative disruptions and personal inconveniences.”
Now, IF the Pentagon can’t keep its network secure, then we are sincerely concerned about the capability of other US government institutions to hold sensitive data!
Enough to make it to our Weekly WTF, anyway!
Popularity: 6% [?]
- By Anand on Jun 24, 2007
