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Posts Tagged ‘Sounds’

‘PlayStation Move’ trademarked by Sony in Europe
We’re exceptionally likely to find out the official name of Sony’s PlayStation motion controller in just a few hours during the company’s GDC press event, but till then, we’ve got one more late-breaking morsel to chew on: Move. According to trademark divers across the web, Sony has filed a European trademark for “PlayStation Move,” which certainly sounds like a plausible title for some sort of motion-sensing apparatus. To date, we’ve also heard “Arc” thrown around (which we tend to prefer, if we’re being candid), and the logo shown here — which is said to belong to a separate trademark application — definitely looks more like an “A” than an “M.” Keep it locked right here for more as we get it.

‘PlayStation Move’ trademarked by Sony in Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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2 Live Crew with kids in the room: Airdrive heaphones review

Many headphones seek to make their mark by cutting you off from the rest of the world. Canalphones block out ambient noise and allow you to focus purely on the sounds you’re hearing from your laptop, iPod, or other music device. The Airdrives go in a different direction, bringing you the sound from your device while allowing you to continue to hear what’s going on around you.

It’s an intriguing concept for runners or parents who need—or simply want—to listen to something no one else can hear while still paying attention to ambient sounds. Right now I’m watching Blade Runner on my laptop and listening to the dialog while writing this; my son just asked for popcorn to go along with the kids’ viewing of The Last Mimzy. I’m starting to see the draw here.

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Beamz laser instrument allows even the tone deaf to rock out for $199

Truth be told, we weren’t sure what to make of this laser harp-looking contraption when we saw it across the room at the International Toy Fair. Eloquently dubbed the Beamz Interactive Music System, it has six laser beam “strings” that when struck by a hand or finger produces one of 100 instrumental sounds. Here’s the catch, though: the standing instrument must be connected to your PC via USB so that it can use its speakers. We think it’s sort of a bummer that you have to be attached to your computer to rock, but the PC software (we’re told Mac is on the way) lets you easily assign an instrument to the laser strings and also includes a variety of popular songs to jam along with. Though it’s been around since 2008, Beamz seems to have wised up and lowered the original $600 pricetag to $199. We realize we could continue to describe this digital instrument in length, but we’d rather you just watch us “play it” and royally embarrass ourselves after the break.

Continue reading Beamz laser instrument allows even the tone deaf to rock out for $199

Beamz laser instrument allows even the tone deaf to rock out for $199 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Raiding the Android pantry: after Froyo comes ‘Gingerbread’

Anyone who’s been following Google’s codename saga for Android builds is probably 15 pounds heavier just from hearing the names themselves — Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, you get the idea. Delectable dessert names aren’t the only common theme here, though: they’re going in alphabetical order, so we need a “G” sweet next. Well, Google’s Brian Swetland — who works on Android’s Linux-based kernel in Mountain View — has dropped that knowledge in passing while discussing kernel versions on LWN.net. Ready for this? “Gingerbread.” Sounds good to us, but naturally, we’re more concerned about what’s in the build than what it’s named, and we don’t have those details yet other than Swetland’s believe that they’ll “likely be on [Linux kernel 2.6.].33 or .34″ by the time it hits. Time to start thinking about the “H” treat — any ideas?

Raiding the Android pantry: after Froyo comes ‘Gingerbread’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is a Core i7-based MacBook Pro strutting its specs in the wild?

For your viewing pleasure, we present the latest Apple rumor doing the rounds this Saturday afternoon — namely, GeekBench results for a “new” Core i7 MacBook Pro. According to the results, what you’re looking at above are the numbers for the MacBook Pro 6,1, sporting a nastified Intel Core i7 (dual core, not quad) 620M (Arrandale) percolating along at 2.66GHz. Other curious points here are the 4.8GHz FSB, which sounds a little screwy to us, and a final GeekBench score of 5260, which makes current MBPs clocked at the same speed look like your grandfather with a walker (those ranges hover around 3700-4000 on average). The laptop in question is also allegedly running a fresh version of Snow Leopard (build 10C3067 of 10.6.2), which certainly makes sense if someone is out there benching a new Apple product, though it’s not a number we can verify. Still, if you were using a new Apple product, would you be dumb enough to publicly share this info? Probably not, which of course raises the question that this might just be a hackintosh or some other clever spoof (even if we did see a suggestion of new MBPs on the way recently). In the meantime, you can dream of having your pants burnt off by the above monster, and we’ll let you know if this thing starts looking a little more real.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Is a Core i7-based MacBook Pro strutting its specs in the wild? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s Nexus One censors your voice-to-text input, we #### you not

It’d be kinda funny if someone was live-bleeping your profanity, right? Sure, but five minutes later you’d sober up to regret and lingering annoyance. Turns out the Nexus One does it for real, courtesy of Google’s speech-to-text engine — it replaces the notorious four-letter F and S words with a ‘####,’ which is a more dramatic take on the Zune HD’s now-obsolete Twitter censorship. As silly as this sounds, Google has come up with a good reason:

We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent.

Kudos for caring, but it wouldn’t hurt to have an on / off option either — after all, it’s not like we’re asking for pinch-to-zoom here, and we’ll promise to use a swear jar.

Google’s Nexus One censors your voice-to-text input, we #### you not originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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University of Oregon shows off engraved MacBook Pros

Filed under: Hardware, Apple, Macbook Pro

I’ve always been jealous of the folks who get free laptops from their work or school (back when I was in school, I used a paper notebook and a pen and liked it!), but I’m especially jealous of the folks from the University of Oregon’s Center for Student Athletes, who not only get some sweet MacBook Pros to use courtesy of Apple and Nike, but have each one laser engraved with the school’s symbolic O.

The engraving isn’t just aesthetic; it’s useful, too. In addition to the school branding, each laptop has a specific number engraved on the bottom of it, which helps prevent theft and helps the school track down wayward laptops. Cult of Mac has a great little interview with the engraver, with some fun insider info about how this is all done (he’s even engraved fingernails, which sounds a little gross). We’ve seen some cool engraving projects before, but I like this one; functional and good-looking.

TUAWUniversity of Oregon shows off engraved MacBook Pros originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia to have private Connecting People event alongside Mobile World Congress

CES 2010 might be just around the corner, but it sounds like Nokia’s next big move might be at Mobile World Congress in February. Well, not quite at MWC: Espoo actually pulled out of the tradeshow earlier this year, but now we’re hearing that there will be a private Connecting People event in Barcelona on the first and second days of MWC. That’s particularly interesting because one of the reasons Nokia pulled out of MWC was to increase focus on its own Nokia World conference, so we’re guessing nothing major will be coming out in Spain — but we can’t help but agree with this poignant Babelfish translation of Engadget Spanish’s post on the same subject: “Fulfilled mission, Nokia: you have been able to attract our curiosity.”

Nokia to have private Connecting People event alongside Mobile World Congress originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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