16 Feb, 2008
King 5 has a nice little video, giving us a brief look into one of the fifty-two hubs that Netflix has nationwide. This location is the Northwest hub and it is just south of Tacoma, Washington. They have 40 employees and can process 110,000 movies per day. At least one employee is averaging around 950 per hour (which is around 18,000 per week), while the company standard is around 650 per hour. Lets hope she gets a nice bonus every so often. Employees are up at least every other hour for scheduled exercise breaks where they move around and stretch to avoid cramps and stiff bodies. It was also mentioned that the employees enjoy a free Netflix membership as a perk of the job. (Read the full post about ‘A sneak peak inside a Netflix Shipping Center’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
Posted Feb 16th 2008 10:39AM by Nilay PatelFiled under: LaptopsThe folks over at Laptop already hooked us up with some unboxing pics of Everex’s Cloudbook, and now they’ve posted up some quickie first impressions of the would-be Eee killer — and it looks like Everex could use that extra delay time to polish things up. The Cloudbook’s gOS build was found to be reasonably speedy and the minuscule trackpad designed for thumb usage actually grew on the reviewers, but what really killed the machine was a host of video glitches Everex says are the result of the wrong OS version being installed on the machine. (Read the full post about ‘First impressions of the Cloudbook: rough around the edges’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
Posted Feb 16th 2008 11:43AM by Darren MurphFiled under: Gaming Select owners of Guitar Hero III for Wii have been moshing uncontrollably as best they can in mono for months on end, but it seems as if Activision has finally got its interconnects sorted and will start issuing replacement discs. According to direct end-user reports and the (admittedly blurry) shots in the gallery below, the firm is now dishing out pre-paid envelopes in which customers have to ship back their faulty GH III disc and wait “3 to 4 weeks” before getting a new, stereo-enabled one free of charge. Live sans your favorite game for a month, or keep rockin’ in the monaural world? (Read the full post about ‘Activision cranks up Wii Guitar Hero III disc replacement program’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
Posted Feb 16th 2008 8:05AM by Richard LawlerFiled under: Home EntertainmentSamsung’s See’N'Search set-top box that intelligently and automatically pulls content from the internet to match whatever TV show is on sounded nice enough, but we wanted to see it in action. Apparently the good people at Samsung have also perfected their wish-granting technology to match the the unit’s metadata scrapers, because here’s a demo video. Check it out after the break, and be mindful of your thoughts, wouldn’t want to distract Samsung’s R&D from preparing that sandwich we just telepathically requested. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung’s See’N’Search set-top TV / Internet box demo video’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
The AT&T branded Centro has not officially been announced yet, but that is not stopping at least one AT&T retail store from selling the phone anyway. A lucky user over on the Treo Central Forums was able to make the purchase at a Denver retail store. What else is there to do after you purchase an unreleased and unannounced phone, unbox it and post the pictures. We can only assume that the official release will come Tuesday February 19, unless you are also lucky enough to get yours early. As you can also see from the above image, the Centro appears to be running the phone app from the Treo 680. Looking good. Read [Flickr] Via [Treo Central Forums] Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! (Read the full post about ‘AT&T Palm Centro in the wild’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
Posted Feb 16th 2008 8:29AM by Richard LawlerFiled under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentJapan’s NHK has followed up The Hollywood Reporter’s earlier indications Toshiba was ready to dump its money-losing hd dvd business, with news that the company is prepared to cease manufacturing software and hardware, at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. This caps the worst week ever for red, when HD DVD was dumped by Netflix and Wal-mart, pushed to the background by Best Buy and put on — an apparently incredibly short — deathwatch right here. Toshiba is mum on the subject right now, but we hear there’s plenty of cheap players and movies in a dumpster around back of the HQ. (Read the full post about ‘Toshiba pulling the plug on HD DVD already? - Yup it’s over.’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
Posted Feb 16th 2008 6:10AM by Joshua TopolskyFiled under: Gaming Well you knew it was coming. That PSP hack we told you about a few weeks ago has hit the interblogs, and we predict all hell will be breaking loose any moment. Un-retired homebrew mastermind Dark_AleX has come up with a little number called Timemachine, which is capable of spinning your PSP back to all sorts of crazy firmwares at the touch of a button. We know you can hardly stand finishing this post due to excitement, so… get out of here and grab it![Thanks, Craig]Tags: sat-nav, home theater, video game, DVD (Read the full post about ‘PSP super-hack hits the internet’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
Posted Feb 16th 2008 2:41AM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Misc. gadgets, Robots As if there weren’t enough toys out there already to make us grown-ups incredibly envious of kids today, Playskool’s now taken the wraps off its new Kota the Triceratops “toy,” which looks to be the closest thing to a Pleo that you (or, rather, your kids) can actually ride. While we’re guessing Kota’s few notches below Pleo on the robo-evolutionary ladder, the 40-inch tall toy at least has movement sensors on nine areas of its body, and is able to react to you by moving its head, tail, mouth, and horns, not to mention play “adventure-themed songs” at the push of a button. (Read the full post about ‘Kota the Triceratops makes our childhood toys look like wooden blocks’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
CD and DVD burners are so common nowadays, that it is hard to find a PC without CD-RW\DVD-RW drive. Sometimes, when your friend brings another cool DVD, it is a pity that you cannot just copy it without going to nearest PC. It slows the process, and laziness prevails in most times. Imagine that there is a gadget that will simplify this process. That will be capable of copying CD and DVD without need of PC connection, portable and rapid! Fortunately, such gadget really exists. EZ Dupe Ultra Slim Single-Target Portable DVD Duplicator is a portable disc-copying machine. Just slide into source DVD and blank one and in minutes you will get one complete copy of source disc. (Read the full post about ‘Copy CD\DVD on the go without PC’…)
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16 Feb, 2008
Stuff reviews the Palm Treo 500v and writes, “The phone quality was very good with both ends of the connection sounding crisp and clear using both the device and the supplied headset. Photos taken on the 2 MP camera are of similar quality to other 2 MP phones. The only major negative I had is the battery life as I found it needed to be recharged every 2 days or so with reasonable use.” Read more about the Palm Treo 500v. Tags: gadgets, video game, cool gear, Ogg (Read the full post about ‘Palm Treo 500v Review - Stuff’…)
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