Let's kick this thread off with this: There is much awesome (and pervert potential) in this. Link: http://ardrone2.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en/index.html
God I hate the Iphone so much, it gets all the coolest shit!! On a side note, anyone have any of the Verizon equivalents and care to talk about them? Droid? ERIS? Any others?
Xbox 360's "project natal" No controller necessary to play games anymore. Has a 3d depth censor, rgb camera, multi-array microphone and custom processor running proprietary software. Facial recognition can be used to login to xbox accounts. Watch the video.
This seems to be the most appropriate thread. Anyone have a Powermat? Just wondering how well it works?
Does anyone else find these helicopters to be absolutely fucking terrifying? This, coupled with an article I read last week about the Military requesting that military drones be used in domestic airspace makes me kind of worried about this guy showing up in 30 years... Seriously, even the mind reading XBox freaks me out... How do I know it isn't going to catch me jerking off on the couch someday and email the video out to all my Facebook friends? Yes, I am the guy who put duct tape over his webcam on his laptop to avoid any... privacy issues. As for new gadgets and tools, I bought the coolest buggy whip the other day...
Currently in Shanghai and on a whim picked up an Ipad clone that runs on Google Andriod. Was only $110 and for the price I am pretty happy with it. Obviously has nothing on the real thing but purely as a wifi browser I am happy with it.
I am looking to get my mom an ereader soon as it would be the perfect thing for her. She's very non-techy at all and barely knows how to use a computer. I'm planning on helping with that, but that's another story. What are your thoughts on the current e-readers? I am looking at either a Kindle or a Nook. I am leaning towards a Nook as she lives near a Barnes and Noble and can go in and get help from them as needed. She's going to also be getting an internet connection later this year so she'll be able to download books from the device at home. She hates shopping so this will be perfect. Doesn't have to leave the house. Now, I have been downloading a shit load of torrents for ebooks. So many of them are in pdf format. Do these devices read pdf files alright? I've read about programs, like calibre, that allow you to convert from pdf to epub, which is easier to read on the devices? How can you batch convert a whole bunch of pdf's. Or should the pdf's just be loaded onto the reader. I don't have one and am a little interested for myself as well. I am not going to be buying an iPad anytime soon. I'm waiting a generation or two before I make that jump and like the idea of an E-Ink reader anyways as the backlit screen on an iPad would hurt my eyes and my moms after too long. The prices are pretty nice these days as well. So, to sum this craziness up: What's better, Nook or Kindle? Or others? Are pdf files decent on these devices? Is converting pdfs/txt/etc. a good idea and what's the best way to convert them? Any info or advice or links to resources, etc. would be greatly appreciated. With torrents, I could see myself obtaining everything I've ever wanted to read for free, or really just the cost of the reader.
I think this belongs in the "holy fucking shit" department: Controlling stuff with your mind. Link: http://www.emotiv.com/
Most appropriate place for this...http://www.cnbc.com/id/42966897 Microsoft is buying Skype for a lot of cash.
$8.5 Billion is a mind-numbing amount of cash for a company that had a net loss of $7 million last year. I'm going to spin this up into a new thread in a bit.
Got hooked up with a Google+ invite last night. It's... interesting. Still not sure how much I like the UI, but I'm sure once it's out of Beta that there will be more functionality to it. While getting a Beta invite is currently closed, there is a loophole. If you know someone who already has a + account, if they make a post and tag your email address, you'll get notified to join. Anyone else already in?
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.g4tv.com/videos/53969/samsung-chromebook-series-5-review/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.g4tv.com/videos/53969/samsun ... -5-review/</a> 3 of 5
I'm not, just waiting for my invite to come through. Been looking it over, and it does seem cool. The killer part of this, besides the "Circles" concept, and their attention on privacy from the start, is their integration with Google Apps. I think this is going to be a really big deal. They tried their social stuff before, and failed miserably, but it seems that they've learned from their mistakes. That, and it's not Facebook.
FYI if you know anyone on G+, you don't need an invite to get them on. Just add them as a contact in Gmail and drag them onto one of your "circles." Happy to hand out a few this way. Note that I'm not spending all day creating contacts and friending people, but I'll take the first 5 PMs... and anyone who regularly helps out in the tech thread. Or, ya' know, runs the joint here. Just PM me your email address.
I am not on Facebook, and I'm not really interested in using Google+. But, am curious what the big deal is. So, I went here to see the demo The fact that the have a sense of humor almost made me join. The "Huddles" demo includes a place where you can text to join the group conversation. Only, you can't really. No matter what you type, a predetermined response goes in. Purple monkey.
I guess this is the best place for this. I recently found a gadget that is going to save me hours and hours. Most tech guys are probably like me and have a giant number of bootable CDs. I have any number of operating systems that I have to install on various machines, a memtest boot CD, a boot CD for Acronis True Image, boot CDs that we make here that contain server images, etc. I only use a couple of them regularly but can need any of them and more at any time. So, maybe you've even gone as far as to set up one of these MultiBoot USB keys. Not a bad solution. But not all ISOs boot from them, and a fair number of systems - especially legacy systems - don't treat the USB key normally during the boot process. Additionally, even a 32gb USB key gets filled up pretty quickly when you're putting DVD ISOs on it. Enter the Zalman ZM-VE200. It's a hard drive enclosure. Not a bad one, either, by itself. It's a little tall compared to many enclosures but it's a quality aluminum enclosure, comes with a USB and eSATA cable, and a storage pouch. This hard drive enclosure is magic, though. If you store .iso files in a directory called "_iso" on the drive, you have the option of the drive emulating an attached CD drive using any of the ISO files. Very easy - just plug the drive in with the toggle switch pressed upwards, and it begins CD/DVD drive emulation. Select the ISO you want, and it mounts it. Boom. This is convenient for a lot of reasons. No additional software to mount an ISO file that you've downloaded - in some cases, I have to work clean to create images of servers, so I can't install extra software. No additional step to extract files out of the ISO if you can't mount it - especially good for freshly downloaded ISOs, no extra work. And the best part: I can now boot any ISO image I want. No burning. No need to have a CD or DVD drive in the target machine. Added bonus is an indicator telling you the temperature and SMART status of the drive. It was $45 for the enclosure, which is about double what you'd pay for any other decent enclosure, but for me the expense is minor compared to the amount of hassle it will save me. Highly recommended if you have a need for this kind of thing. At the very least, you can toss your CD collection and store your ISO files digitally without the need to burn a new copy every time you need one.
Wireless magic: DIDO whitepaper, Tomsguide's take. Essentially a way of providing access to the Internet wirelessly without interference from others using the same channel. Sounds exactly awesome.