If Only I Had It

You hear some crazy stuff on the grapevine but this has to be one of the craziest stories! Rumours go that Sega is going to make a come back with the Sega Dreamcast!

How did this all get started? Well it seems that Sega renewed some copyrights back in August and updated some of the features, to include such things as “floor pads” which might lead you to think that they are planning a comeback to rival the Wii, and maybe to deliver a “Wii Fit” type package!

I imagine its more that some of their back catalogue is going to be made available, maybe with updates to include new hardware than they are trying to protect. Who knows!

However its a nice story and I for one would welcome Sega back into to the melee. They say that they are “very happy being a platform agnostic company” and hey, I’d agree with that, but to survive in this market, they need to start producing some quality games and not relying on re-hashed hits.

It’s been a long time coming but finally Microsoft have released movie downloads for the Xbox 360 in the UK.

They are available for 250 marketplace points for the Standard Definition (480p Widescreen) version, which weighs in at approx 1.2Gb for the example I’m looking at (Ocean’s Eleven) or 380 points for the High Definition (720p) version which is a whopping 5.1Gb. So if you are running the 20Gb hard drive you wouldn’t want too many down at once!

You get 14 days after purchase to watch it but be careful, once you have hit the play button you only have 24 hours left to view it. Make sure that your broadband package isn’t too restrictive about download limits - if you have a 2Gb cap then you should be thinking about changing your service to something that offers much larger downloads limits or even unlimited.

The list at the moment, whilst having a good selection of films, doesn’t really set the world alight! Anyone with Sky HD in the UK would be better off choosing something from the Sky Box Office as they are much more up to date.

However if you have a nice HD screen and an Xbox 360 but no other HD content this will be a welcome addition to your viewing pleasures and for that reason alone, I give Mircosoft the thumbs up for finally giving the UK some content.

Lets just hope they keep them coming and they get some newer releases!

The following films are available right now:

300
HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
ZODIAC
MATRIX, THE
MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, THE
MATRIX RELOADED, THE
OCEAN’S ELEVEN
PERFECT STORM, THE
SWORDFISH
THREE KINGS
TRAINING DAY
FUGITIVE, THE
RISKY BUSINESS
SPACE COWBOYS
EYES WIDE SHUT
ANALYZE THIS
DEMOLITION MAN
EXECUTIVE DECISION
LETHAL WEAPON 4
LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION
MARS ATTACKS!
CLASH OF THE TITANS
SUPERMAN III

And coming before January 7th 2008

TMNT
WE ARE MARSHALL
BATMAN & ROBIN
BATMAN FOREVER
BATMAN RETURNS
WILD WILD WEST
US MARSHALS
DEEP BLUE SEA
SPHERE
UNFORGIVEN
MAVERICK
CONTACT
CONSPIRACY THEORY
OUTBREAK
LAST BOY SCOUT
MISS CONGENIALITY
ANALYZE THAT

Haven’t you often experienced how strenuous is to speak out loud over phone when the surrounding noise is just too huge? You may feel it would be better to hang up the phone and make a call later. But what if that was an urgent call and you can’t miss it. Nothing can be more annoying can this situation. For those folks who are striving for a better two way communication medium here is a piece of exciting news exclusively for your bunch.

Sanyo with NW-ELEX has unleashed in Japan world’s first earphone microphone. This new technology eliminates the surrounding noise and sends a clear voice to the speaker end. Apart from extracting your voice from the noisy murmur, the earpiece allows you to listen to the conversation without any discomfort.

This brand new earpiece microphone is expected to make a remarkable wave in the communication industry as well as entertainment sector. The earphone could be very well be used in radios or any other electronic stuff where a microphone fits in.

Of course good stuff will also cost good. The introductory prices are speculated to be around 40,000 yen for wired version. A commercial launch will shoe off in April 2007, though it may take more time for a wireless launch at 60,000 yen.
 

Lets face it, you’re one of the impatient ones, who can’t wait for the few minutes for a piece of brown bread from your toaster. You’ll always yell for much speedier toaster. Here comes the Turbo Toaster that can do it in less than a minute, which it takes just 50 seconds!

The Turbo Toaster seems to get inspired by a jet aircraft engine. It’s got a turbo fan on its side which sucks in air. And the air gets heated by the metal elements and blasted at the bread, making toast in trice. The Turbo Toaster is still in its prototype stage, which still has lots of rooms for improvement for its speed.

The designer, Oliver Newberry, who came up with this idea, was simply because of a conventional toaster always gave him some kind of frustration i.e. his Heinz beens would have always gone cold by the time the toast was ready. So, he did it on behalf of Heinz!

Nintendo Wii calls on the Cockroaches

I’ve heard some far fetched stories but this one takes it to another level!

The Reg reports that the Nintendo Wii supposedly gives off a high pitched frequency that attracts Cockroaches!

According to the report the little creatures respond to air movements and ground vibrations by “feeling” them on their body and the Wii gives off the right impulses!

As I said, I don’t believe a word of it and having had a Wii here for a year I can safely say that I’ve not seen one cockroach!

You can read up here…

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/12/14/wii_attracts_cockroaches/

The Dragonaut is a student project from the Parsons Making Wireless Toys class, created by Kan Yang Li — it’s a cardboard robot that uses an Arduino kit to give him life: “after you use a key to start him up, his arms raise and lower to proclaim ‘awesome!’”

Link

There’s no dirth of adventurous people in this world, and I’m sure all of them would be truly happy if there was a small device that captured all of their wonderful moments so they could revel in the glory later when they share those memories with family and friends! Well, it seems like with O’Neil’s new product, this might not be a dream anymore, nor would you have to pay extra for getting a video while you are diving from a plane or engaged in paragliding or para-sailing. An external camera for video taping extreme sports is nothing new. But this new product takes it one level further by integrating it with a backack, yes, the one thing you usually would carry on such adventures, and also adding a whole lot of new features to their earlier version!

O’Neill, the sports manufacturer famous for wetsuits and clothing lines, have now upgraded it’s Campack (backpack) with a portable media player/recorder and external camera lens. Snowboarders, skier’s, and anyone who is addicted to getting the rush of extreme sports can use the H4 Campack to record their relentless pursuit of cheating death. What makes the H4 system so cool isn’t the external camera lens that attaches to a head or goggles, but the fact that recording is completely controllable through the backpack itself. Control buttons, large enough for ski gloves to press them, are located on the shoulder strap. Stop, start and record are easily accessible in this fashion. The drawback ? you lose the iPod and Bluetooth connectivity as well as a solar charging option which were a part of the H2 system.

The player sports a media 2.4-inch 240k color LCD, and stores video on either it’s 512MB of internal memory or up to 2GB in SD card storage. The camera allows for about 2 hours of 320 x 240 pixel @ 25fps recordings. A button panel on the shoulder strap controls the recordings which can be dumped back to the PC via the player’s USB jack or SD card reader. However, you’ll ahve to live with the fact that you will have to stop and change SD cards after only about 2 hours of YouTube quality PAL video. A bit uncomfortable, but not a show-stopper!

And now for the vital question. What’s the cost of capturing your moments of thrill on a lens?? Well, it is estimated to be around $400 USD and would be available during the hoilday season, starting December. That seems to be comparable to a regular Handy cam or portable video recording device. but only time will tell whether this baby makes a mark or not…I do like the idea of providing easier control ad not being dependent on other to shoot you live in action, so maybe this just might find a place with some people. What do you think??

My old car is going busted, and it’s time for us to seriously start thinking about buying a new car. So as we were browsing through some models online, we saw that the sleek-looking blacks or graphites and the metallic blues added a dent of another 1000 dollars to our pockets which are already falling apart!! And unfortunately, those are the only colors that catch your eyes, not the stark whites, right?? So I sat there wondering how much fun it would be if we could make cars that changed colors on our whim?? Pop-press a button, and my car turns grey; come sweltering summer and I’d press the button again to turn it into a soothing white…or much better, I can have a modern double-colored car with streaks - such that I’ve seen and dreamt about in 2 fast 2 Furious!!!

Looks like God wanted me to revel my dream, and at least be happy with the thought that something like my crazy idea could actually exist. Yup, Nissan, the renowned car-maker who’s trying hard to revamp it’s image and restore it’s lost glory is coming out with new ideas that would appeal to the nerdy and young crowd (like me and my readers!!) They were the ones who dreamed up the concept of “self-healing paint” some two years back, which was supposedly scratch-resistant, and they are now talking about “a paramagnetic concoction”, which enables motorists to change the color of their ride at the press of a button.

Is this just an idea, because we all have a lot of ideas…or is it for real?? Well, looks like it is real and the secret behind this is a special polymer containing paramagnetic iron oxide particles, which is applied to the car’s exterior. Then, by applying an electric current, the spacing of small crystals within the iron oxide particles can be adjusted, therefore affecting their ability to reflect light and change color. The catch (yeah, there’s always a catch!) once your engine is turned off, and there’s no current running, the charge is lost and the car turns to a default color (maybe white, maybe something else, it’s for them to decide)

If all goes well, Nissan expects to roll out these vehicles by early 2010. Though the concept is fascinating, and truly an innovation, I wonder what would happen when all parked/turned off Nissan cars would turn to the same default color…how do you identify your car? especially for people like my husband who never bother to memorize the number plate?? well, it sure will be more work for cops chasing people, as the latter could keep flipping their car colors at the whim of a button and confuse the cops!!! sounds funny, huh?!! The case of the color-changing Chameleon Car - wow, I sure am a born writer:)

So what say you? Does this sound interesting, disturbing, rubbish, stylish or hoax??

Many a times you’ve seen women carrying fashionable handbags and purses that catches your eye and you crave to have something similar. A typical example of “Neighbor’s Envy, Owner’s Pride”. But then again, how many times have you looked at a handbag and tried to imagine what’s inside it? Would be a fun game to guess the stuff that lies inside an opaque bag, and I know many of us would have played such games as kids! But suddenly, something that I am about to tell you might not make this idea a fun game anymore! In fact, I felt it was downright spooky to imagine what would happen if we could really see inside a handbag!!

Think Geek, the creators of stuff for geeks is out with something intriguing yet cool for some and spooky for the others, an X-Ray Bag that shows the contents inside your bag! Right in time for Halloween, huh?! These X-Ray tote and shoulder bags made of a space-age woven plastic fiber appear to have been bombarded by X-rays and magically make your eyes sensitive to their reflection. So now, what you carry inside is no longer a secret! Whether its something interesting like a wad of cash, credit cards, i-phone or diamonds, or something as fickle as sunglasses or a pair of clothes, you choose what to show, and even when it is only a hoax, it is one cool trick that will leave people agape! Just buy a bag with neutral stuff on it and a thief will never even think of trying to steal something from that tote-bag…After all, what use is a pair of clothes to him:)

For those who wish to carry real precious stuff, but sadly don’t actually get to buy it, you can live your whims by buying a bag with fancy article images…Be bold and daring, and pick one that suits you! If you are interested in buying one, click here.

I don’t think I’d like to carry one myself personally, but I have seen someone else carrying it, and I was intrigued enough to stop and give her bag a hard look! The x-ray effect is tantalizing, and this would be a cool gift for a teen!

Gadgets and innovations have always fascinated me, as you might have guessed by the Tech Blog that I write. But as a chef who loves to cook, and yet likes to live a healthy life with a balanced diet so I don’t put on all that extra weight, I keep looking for ways in which I could keep a tab on what I eat so that I never go overboard. One such cool and neat kitchen gadget that I came across on the web was this ultra-sleek, retro Nutrition Food-Scale. Yes, just like a regular weighing scale, except that it looks like a laptop, this one is for the foods you eat, and it tells you clearly what’s the nutrition content of your meal so you don’t need to go by the rough estimates that you get from calorie and nutrition counters on the web!!

A look at this super-functional Nutriscale and you’ll know I’m not kidding. It analyses the nutritional content of your food by portion size, calculates the calories, protein, carbohydrates, total sugars, total fat, fiber, sodium, cholesterol, net carbohydrates and GI value of your food and then displays all this invaluable information in an easy-to-read format on a large LCD screen. This product that is sold by Salter Nutrition, has the advantage of a large data base that stores the nutritional values for over 1,440 foods and liquids, plus memorizes an additional 100 foods/recipes of your choice. And, it’s constantly growing, so you can be sure most of your foods are going to be on their list!!

It also comes with automatic predictive-text feature for quick and easy on-screen food search. You can even place all your raw food in a bowl and it’ll give you the combined results, minus the weight of the bowl. Find it too good to be true??!! I sure did, especially when I saw that it comes with a 10-year warranty, and is bundled at an affordable price of just $99.00 - that’s less than the consultation fee for most nutritionists!!

It even allows you to record daily food intake and set dietary goals, then review progress so you never lose focus on your goal. It’s like your own personal trainer, right in the convenience of your home!! And it is battery-operated making it a portable device. It is easy to clean and maintain, and looks really sleek. The only drawback I found in it is that it would only work for raw ingredients, not if you used it for a prepared dish, but then it’s easier to just weigh all your ingredients first so you know ahead of time how many calories you are eating and can adjust the amount that goes into making your dish accordingly, right? This device sure would work for me to keep a tab on my food intake. So if you are looking for gift ideas, this is one thing you should strongly consider. I am really inclined to buy one of these myself! If you’d like to order one too, here’s one place I found on the web - MetroKitchen