Custom-made God of War PSP up for auction

While it may not be to everyone's taste, this one-of-a-kind God of War PSP is certainly an impressive bit of console modding, boasting not just a spiffy paint job, but a few additions that dig into the PSP itself. Those include a red acrylic window on the rear of the unit that'll let you see the UMD spinning, as well as some red LEDs that light up the PSP's two shoulder buttons (head on over after the break for some more pics). Only the most die hard God of War fans need apply here though, as last we checked the bidding was around the $1,200 mark. On the upside, 15% of the final sale price will go to the Child's Play charity, and you'll also get that classy velvet-lined case to display your new prized possession in.

Source

eBay offers custom made Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3

Konami and Sony’s limited edition Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 may have been enough to satisfy a few fans of the game willing to pay a premium for their console of choice but, for sheer excess, it has nothing on this custom-made system built by the folks at Morpheon Mods, which is now up for auction on eBay. Among the many details adorning this shiny creation is a laser-cut, stainless steel MGS4 marquee, a laser-etched image of Solid Snake, a carbon fiber Fox Hound logo on the rear, and 14 white micro LEDs to light everything up just right.

They even got Hideo Kojima himself to autograph the console and, perhaps best of all, they wrapped everything around a fully backwards compatible 60GB PS3. Just don’t expect any of that to come cheap, as bidding is already topping the $1,500 mark with six days left, though you do also get pretty impressive collection of Metal Gear swag with it, and 15% of the proceeds will go to help the Child’s Play charity.

Source: Engadget

New Nintendo DSi: camera, music playback

Nintendo’s hit DS portable machine will come with a digital camera that will allow players to mix images, scribble on photos and create new faces, the Japanese game maker said Thursday. The Nintendo DSi will go on sale in Japan on Nov. 1 for 18,900 yen ($180), and will be available overseas next year. Dates and other details for overseas plans will be announced later by the company’s regional units later, President Satoru Iwata said. Iwata said the revamped DS is meant to be the first toy camera for children and a tool for network-building and party fun for older people in the company’s ongoing quest to make gaming popular with everyone — not just a niche crowd. One in six Japanese already owns a DS, according to Kyoto-based Nintendo, which also makes Pokemon and Super Mario games. But the goal is to make the DS a must-have for every Japanese, Iwata said.
The improved DSi is thinner than the current DS model, and will have a bigger screen, he said. The machine also comes with an audio player, to play sound stored in a memory card. Users will be able to change the speed of the sound. In a demonstration, Iwata showed that players will be able to listen to a foreign language lesson at a slower speed, or distort music or voices to a shrill pitch for fun. Nintendo also demonstrated new game software for its hit Wii home console, including “Wii Music.” Players just need to jiggle their remote controller to feel as though they are playing any of 60 musical instruments, including a drum set, sitar, saxophone and piano, although there are only 50 preprogrammed melodies. Nintendo has sold 77.5 million Nintendo DS handheld devices worldwide, nearly 23 million in Japan, far outselling Sony Corp.’s rival offering, the PlayStation Portable, at 41 million globally — 10 million in Japan.

Source: AP

Mobile Projector Phone, Do We Need One?

Here’s another mobile projector phone concept but this one is a bit more thought out, tho not without its problems. It offers portability and the communications functions of a mobile phone with a projector to support a new lifestyle.

As you’ve probably guessed, anything on screen can be projected onto a wall. There’s support for real time conferencing tho the camera faces the ceiling when in projector mode so I guess you’ll look like some floating head from the viewer’s perspective.

Perhaps the only reasonable utility is the ability to watch stored movies on a large screen, possibly HD since storage capacities have ramped up exponentially. Users can enjoy an array of multimedia this way, everything from videos, maybe video games, and TV.

Now to the obvious problems. Projectors produce a lot of light to get sharp saturated images. Surely a phone’s battery would run dry within minutes if tasked with such a job. Not so according to the designer. The projection system is part of a newer generation of miniaturized video components. That combined with advancements in battery technologies provide for an acceptable viewing experience.

Made of polycarbonate that is highly durable, insulating and energy saving with a graphite sheet to increase heat conductivity to dissipate heat. The edge is made of aluminum to enhance heat radiation away from the projector module and function keys. In another words, this thing would get hot!

Designer: Eun-Young Kim

Source

Sony unveils new 10MPx Cybershot cameras

Sony Electronics on Thursday announced two new Cyber-shot digital cameras, the DSC-T700 and the DSC-T77. The cameras retain Sony’s slick T-series form factor with slim, pocket-friendly brushed aluminum bodies, sliding lens covers, and multiple color choices. The 10.3-megapixel T700 is intended to double as a high-res portable photo frame, while the entry-level T77 comes with additional automatic shooting modes.The Cyber-shot DSC-T700 replaces the DSC-T300 and offers 10.3 megapixels, 4GB of internal storage, and a 4x optical zoom. The star of the show, however, is the camera’s crisp and bright 3.5-inch, 921k-pixel LCD touch screen, which offers three times the resolution of the T300. To compare, the improved LCD is the same size as the screen you’ll find on an Apple iPhone, but images should look even crisper: the T700 offers 210 pixels per inch (ppi), while the iPhone has only 163 ppi.

To encourage users to put their T700 to work as a portable photo frame, the camera will ship with software that will easily sync, transfer, and organize pictures from your computer—even those not taken on the T700. The app will also automatically resize images for storage and viewing on the camera’s LCD. The T700 should hit store shelves in late September for about $399. The second new camera, the entry-level Cyber-shot DSC-T77, replaces Sony’s DSC-T70. Like its predecessor, the T77 has a 3-inch LCD touch screen and a slim-form-factor (just 0.6 inches wide). It improves on the previous model with 10.1-megapixel resolution (up from 8 megapixels) and a 4x optical zoom (up from 3x). For the T77, Sony has also added more features to its automatic shooting mode, including anti-blink, red-eye reduction technologies, and improvements to the Smile Shutter function, which captures an image when the camera detects a smile in the frame. The T77 should also be available in late September and will keep the T70’s price of $299.

Source: Pc Magazine

Cryptex Mobile: Feel the code

Opus Dei has been needing a mobile phone to call their very own since the demise of the Knights Templar. If only designer Marc Schömann was catholic and lived 600 years ago, this baton style mobile phone might have saved them from a Dan Brown style disaster. This phone called “_______” (yup, it has no name) uses haptic technology to provide physical feedback for making a call. To turn it on…twist a section, to dial a number…twist a bunch of sections, to make an international call…break your wrist! There is no display and no buttons. The vibrate feature should prove popular with 50% of the world’s population.

Designer: Marc Schömann
Texts from the designer:

You turn the dial of every element to the desired cipher. If you entered the number you turn the first segment “to phone” (green LED). If you want to hang up the call you turn the first segment to “hang up” (red LED). The phone works without buttons and without a display and based on the old dial phones.

Source

Microsoft offers new 60GB version of XboX 360

Microsoft today announced an Xbox 360 console with triple the storage space of the original console, but for the same price of $349. Available in retail stores in the U.S. and Canada starting in early August, the upgraded Xbox 360 will include a 60GB hard drive for storing music, movies, television shows, and game content. In addition, Microsoft today dropped the price of its 20GB Xbox 360 console in the U.S. and Canada to $299 while supplies last.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Arcade, which comes with a 256MB memory unit and five Xbox LIVE Arcade games, will continue to sell for $279, and the premium Xbox 360 Elite with a 120GB hard drive will also stay at the $449 price. The Xbox 360 60GB console includes a wireless controller, HDMI output, headset, free Xbox Live Silver account and a one-month Xbox Live Gold subscription.

Source: Cnet, PC World

Apple cuts price of MacBook Air by $500

Apple Inc. has quietly reduced the price of its most expensive notebook by $500, cutting the cost of the upper-end MacBook Air to $2,598. The MacBook Air, which Apple launched in January to some fanfare, has been sold in two configurations since then: with a traditional 80GB magnetic platter hard drive and a 1.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, or with a 64GB solid-state drive and a 1.8-GHz CPU. Solid-state drives (SSD) are built from flash memory and, unlike hard drives, have no moving parts.

The MacBook Air with the solid-state drive is more expensive than the one with the hard drive, but several Apple-specific Web sites, including AppleInsider, noticed that Apple had dropped the price of the SSD-equipped model by 16% on Thursday, July 3. Prior to the price cut, the solid-state MacBook Air sold for $3,098. The less expensive hard-drive-equipped MacBook Air retained its $1,799 price tag, according to the Apple online store. The price cut came from changes on two of the MacBook Air options. Selecting the SSD now adds $599 to the price of the notebook, compared to $999 earlier. Also lowered was the 1.8-GHz processor option, from $300 extra to $200.

Source: Computerworld

JVC Camcorder Records Up To 50 hours!

Running out of space in your camcorder or camera is one of the top complaints from people who document every part of their vacations (another is poor battery life), and JVC has come up with a simple way to deal with it: juice up the hard drive capacity.

The upcoming GZ-HD40 and GZ-HD30 will not only include dual format recording (AVCHD/MPEG-2), but the HD40 will supposedly last up to 50 hours of recording time (in EP recording mode at 120GB). That's enough for a full weekend's worth of action, even if your dad 'forgets' to turn it off. ('Read the instructions Dad! Jeez. Here, give it. You know, just go over there and pour the chips on the bowl will ya? Thanks.')

Interestingly, the cameras also include a UI device called 'Intelligent Grouping,' that groups similarly themed scenes together. This appears to be camcorder’s version of the all-too popular 2.0-style tagging function. There's no word about whether these 'groupings' are automatic or whether they will allow you to define them. For example, I'd like to group all of my 'random head collisions in the middle of my vacation trip' clips, (which will help for the pleasant CAT scan coming up), and of course, not all of them occurred at night, or while playing sports.

Olympus' Omni-directional Camera Sensor Makes Pictures Look Like HAL-9000 Clones

If the imaging group at Olympus has its way, we might soon start to take pictures with omni-directional cameras. This will either lead to panoramic, life-altering photo perspectives, or it just might make pictures unnecessarily complicated and so dizzying as to be useless.

Yesterday, Olympus' Future Creation Lab announced a new 360 CCD sensor/lens combo prototype that will allow photographers to take pictures of 360-degree views. These types of sensors have a curved symmetrical axis, and are about 1.18 inches in diameter.

The way they work is that as light passes through the curved lens when taking a picture, the internal reflection is captured in a wide-angle 360-degree limited view, allowing for a 'full' perspective of a single image. It's assumed that the sensor in development will be able change the magnification and size of the viewfinder's perspective. In a way, this is just a different approach to adjusting the depth of field.

The omni-directional system is also defined as axisymmetrical, but the sci-fi inclined will inevitably call it something else: Pictures that look like HAL-9000.