The cat cam doesn't lie.
(Credit: Mr. Whiskers)In September, I, or should I say my cat, was an unknowing participant in a project put together by Nestle Purina PetCare's Friskies brand of cat food. The company doled out 50 little digital cameras that slip onto a cat's collar and then the cameras were set to take a shot once every 15 minutes. The 10 best photos were then uploaded to Flickr at the end of every day. (You can check out the Flickr group and see the results for yourself.)
The project ran for about a week and once it was over, I didn't really hear anything much about it again. Until Thursday. A reporter with the Associated Press put together a story about what cats do during the day based on statistics garnered from the cat focus group. The key stat: 22 percent of the cats' time was spent looking out of windows. (Of course, the percentages listed in the story are, you know, based on a group of 50 cats with only the best, most interesting photos used.)
That's all well and good, but I figured you might be more interested in how the camera performed. It's basically a toy and I wasn't expecting stellar quality. And, well, the results look like they were taken with a toy camera, which if you're into lomography can be pretty cool. Once you've grown tired of seeing the photos your pets shoot, you can always clip the camera to whatever else you want. What's nice is you can set the camera to take shots every minute, 5 minutes, or 15 minutes, and that the camera is rugged enough to take quite a bit of abuse.
The biggest downside is that the memory stores up to only 40 photos at 640x480-pixel resolution. Plus, if you're not fast about offloading the photos and the battery dies, you lose everything.
If you want to run your own focus group, the camera sells for about $50.
The Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble uses smartphones as primary musical instruments.
(Credit: University of Michigan)Generally, cell phone noise is pretty much the last thing you'd want to hear at a concert. But it's all the audience will be getting at a Michigan recital next week. And that's the way it's supposed to be when the Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble hits the stage.
Orchestra members are University of Michigan students winding up a fall course on turning mobile phones into musical instruments. The course merges engineering practices, mobile phone programming, and sound synthesis with music performance, composition, and interactive media arts.
The iPhone musicians broadcast their creations through custom-built speaker systems worn around the wrist.
(Credit: University of Michigan)Rather than just playing a bunch of converging ringtones, the students use their devices to create new interactive sounds in live performance. Their instruments of choice are currently iPhones and iPod Touches, and they use custom-built speaker systems worn around the wrist to broadcast their original artistry.
"The mobile phone is a very nice platform for exploring new forms of musical performance," said Georg Essl, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and music at the school who is teaching the course. "We're not tethered to the physics of traditional instruments. We can do interesting, weird, unusual things."
At their end-of-semester concert in Ann Arbor Wednesday, students will be doing more than firing up apps that turn the iPhone into an organ or ocarina. They have spent the semester building apps themselves and using touch screens, microphones, GPS, compasses, wireless sensors, and accelerometers to create sounds when they run their finger across the display, blow air into the mic, or tilt or shake their phones.
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Sharp's LC-32D47UT has solid energy saving features and a third HDMI input.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)None of the cheaper 32-inch LCDs we've compared recently will satisfy viewers seeking the best home theater picture quality. The main strength of the Sharp LC-32D47UT, for example, lies not in the fidelity of its image, but in areas that might be more important to shoppers at the entry-level price point: features and energy efficiency.
The former is comprised mainly of a third HDMI input, conveniently mounted on the side panel and quite rare for the breed. The latter will only save you a few bucks a year, at most, but over the lifetime of your typical bedroom TV, that can add up.
The sacrifice compared with other entry-level sets, despite the Sharp's relatively deep black levels, comes in other areas of picture quality, namely color and video processing. But if you want that third HDMI input and prize eco-consciousness, this little Sharp belongs on your own comparison list.
Read the full review of the Sharp LC-32D47UT
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Fancy yourself the next Lewis Hamilton? Yeah, us too--that's why our ears perked up like little meerkats when Nissan and Sony started a competition to let gamers become real racing drivers.
The international GT Academy competition--the second since 2008--is split into four main stages. Stage one requires competitors to record flying laps on a time-trial-based track in Gran Turismo 5 via the PS3's PlayStation Network. The 20 fastest entrants in each country will qualify for stage two--a national final. In stage three, the 20 fastest entrants from stage two will battle it out to reach the next round--a five-day boot camp in which they'll have the chance to drive real-life sports cars, including the latest Nissans, around Silverstone.
Read more of "GT Academy: Become a real-life racing driver with Nissan and Sony PlayStation" at Crave UK.
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Sarah Tew/CNET)
While Motorola Droid owners are prepping to get Android 2.0.1 delivered to their smartphone in the coming weeks, HTC Droid Eris users might be wondering, "Hey, what about us?" Well, the good news is that there is an update coming. The bad news is you're going to have to wait a bit longer.
Verizon said Friday that it plans to release an OS update for the Droid Eris, which currently runs on Android OS 1.5, in the first quarter of 2010. The carrier did not specify which version of Android it would release for the smartphone, but did say that customers will get support for Google Maps Navigation.
On a somewhat related note, Verizon is running a buy-one, get-one-free promotion for the Droid Eris starting Friday, December 4, and ending Monday, December 7. During that time, if you buy an HTC Droid Eris or a Motorola Droid, you can get a second Droid Eris for free.
Apple products have topped the list of the most popular computers sold in U.S retail in October, an analyst for market research firm NPD Group told CNET on Friday.
(Credit:
Apple)
The recently introduced 21-inch iMac was the top-selling desktop for the month, Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, said in an interview. Apple's high-end iMac 27-inch model took the No. 3 spot in the desktop category, he said.
"Apple gets a bounce whenever they come out with new computers," Baker said. "For the most part, October was a down month on the Windows side because [PC manufacturers] were working through inventory before the Windows 7 launch."
The company also took the top spot in the notebook category in October, with the $1,199 MacBook Pro, Baker said. Overall, Apple took 4 out of the top 10 positions for notebooks in U.S. retail for the month, according to Baker. In addition to the top-seeded MacBook Pro, Apple also secured the 8, 9, and 10 positions.
"[The $1,199 MacBook Pro has] always been a great seller," Baker said. "It's priced pretty aggressively for Apple, but to some extent, it also benefited from the same slowdown on the Windows side."
NPD has not released an official report on the sales data, and Baker declined to give CNET a rundown of the other computers in NPD's top-10 lists for desktop and notebook retail sales in the United States in October. It is important to note that while the NPD data includes online and retail stores, it does not factor in direct sales.
Sales of computers in October were obviously very good for Apple, but Baker doesn't feel that the so-called "halo effect" from the iPhone or iPod is what is driving sales. Rather, he points to the overall consumer experience.
"Over past few years, Apple has continued to gain share in the market, and there are a lot of ways to explain that," Baker said. "It could be the stores, the computers themselves, the iPod, or iPhone. I think it's a combination of all those things."
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CNET Audiophiliac Steve Guttenberg joins The 404 Podcast for a special Friday episode all about the art of music appreciation. We love having Steve on the show because he actually comes prepared with topics of discussion, and today he launches right into a thoughtful point about how music has become background filler for the digital generation.
It might be because MP3s and digital audio watered down the listening experience compared with putting a needle on a record, but we suspect the current generation is so used to hearing overproduced music with pounding bass and autotuned vocals that they wouldn't recognize musical talent if it were performed live in front of them. Kids these days, I swear.
After we're done complaining about people younger than us, we address the ongoing prevalence of digital abuse. Cyberbullying took an ugly turn earlier this year when 13-year-old Megan Meier took her own life over a fake MySpace profile. Tragedy struck again in the form of another 13-year-old, Hope Witsell, who committed suicide after finding herself the subject of constant taunting and abuse over a nude picture message that made its way around her school. As a tech podcast, we also examine the role that text messages and cell phones play in the hands of young people and how parents can protect their kids from digital abuse.
It's not all sad news on today's show, though. We can always depend on Steve to bring the most random and hilarious anecdotes, and be sure to listen to his uplifting message at the end of the show to start your weekend off right. See you back here on Monday!
EPISODE 480
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Much like Vizio, budget TV brand Westinghouse has decided to capitalize on the usual energy efficiency of small-screened LCDs. Its "greenvue" line, which includes the SK-H640G series, is said to surpass Energy Star by 20 percent.
That's not a very high standard yet, however, and according to our tests, the 32-incher, while among the most efficient of its kind, will save you at most a few bucks a year over similar TVs. Compared with those TVs it also came up a bit short in the picture quality and features departments, but its simple design and control scheme could appeal to bargain hunters fed up with a typical HDTVs' complexity.
Read the full review of the Westinghouse SK-H640G series.
Technically, there's no reason the Zune couldn't have a huge game library.
(Credit: Microsoft)While there's no shortage of handheld game systems on the market--the Nintendo DS and DSi are still selling well and the PSP continues to hang in there, while the App Store expands its catalog every minute--one of the seemingly no-brainer bets in the mobile gaming realm hasn't happened yet: the Zune.
We say "no brainer" for several reasons:
- Microsoft has a successful gaming platform in the Xbox 360, emphasizing online and downloadable gaming.
- Microsoft, compared with Sony and Nintendo, is best able to take on Apple in terms of a media-management software store and the ability to build an equivalent music/games/movies catalog, and making that product PC compatible.
- The Zune HD now plays games.
The first point is obvious. The second is debatable, but we say this because Sony, while having a decent media library on PSN, just isn't historically great at building cross-platform software for syncing the PSP, and Microsoft's global software reach is simply stronger. The third is technically true--Microsoft launched a small collection of completely free-to-play, ad-supported games for its OLED-screened Zune HD last month, and one of them happens to be an adaptation of Project Gotham Racing.
It's an interesting prospect (and one we've wondered about before) because the Zune HD processor, an Nvidia Tegra, has both HD processing muscle and 3D graphics capability. We downloaded and played with all the Zune HD games currently available--all 12 of them--with some curiosity to see if the Zune could compete as a game device.
... Read moreApple on Friday quietly updated its high-end Mac Pro computer with an option for a faster processor.
(Credit:
Apple)
First noted by AppleInsider, the 3.33GHz quad-core Intel Xeon option will add $1,200 to the price of the base configuration, which currently sells for $2,499. An option for the 2.93GHz processor, introduced in March, is still available for an extra $400 over the base model.
The current Mac Pro base configuration ships with a 2.66GHz quad-core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor.
The custom configuration options for the Mac Pro also enable buyers to add up to 16GB of RAM, as many as four 2-terabyte hard drives, and a variety of graphics cards, in additional to other components and software.
When it introduced the Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro in March, Apple added options for the Nvidia GeForce GT 120 and the ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics cards, as well as three channels of memory designed to cut latency by up to 40 percent on the machines.
While Apple's iMac and Mac Mini are recognized by most consumers for their design, the Mac Pro is the machine of choice by many IT, graphics, and audio pros for its superior power.
