Friday, October 03, 2008

Eee marketing getting adorably bitchy

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/409692492/

Filed under: Laptops

When every company out there is cranking out the same 10-inch 1.6GHz Atom netbook, there aren't many ways to make your product stand out: the obvious trick is to go low on price, but ASUS isn't messing with its profit margins. Instead, it's apparently going negative in the most adorable way possible -- check this hit piece on the Acer Aspire One. If all these frowny faces are to be believed, using the Aspire One will basically be awkward and unergonomic for a short while, at which point you'll burst into flames. Not only that, but ASUS can't even bring itself to spell out "Aspire," instead starring it out like someone might catch them saying it out loud. Very mature. Still, if anything can revive our flagging enthusiasm for the entire netbook category, it would be one of these WINNER crowns packed in with every Eee -- now that's a real differentiating factor, ASUS. Full image in the gallery.

Gallery: ASUS Eee vs A***** 1

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KDDI shows off Samsung-made 3.1-inch WVGA OLED display, 3D LCD panel

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/409708855/

Filed under: Displays

It's been almost a full year since Samsung first announced its plans for a 3-inch WVGA OLED panel, but it's now finally delivered, and found a partner in the form of KDDI, which was showing off the panel at CEATEC. As Tech-On notes, the panel is quite the upgrade over Samsung's current top-end 3-inch QVGA panel and, best of all, KDDI says that it'll be showing up in actual products "shortly," though it's not about to get any more specific than that. As if that wasn't enough, KDDI also had a new "3D LCD" panel built by an unnamed "Japanese panel manufacturer" on hand at the show. It boasts the same WVGA resolution as the OLED and employs a "parallax barrier method" to magically "convert 2D images into 3D in real time -- check that out after the break, and look for the panels to be productized by the end of 2009.

[Via OLED-DISPLAY.net]

Continue reading KDDI shows off Samsung-made 3.1-inch WVGA OLED display, 3D LCD panel

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Nokia hints at new touch-based Communicator

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/409723586/

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Every so often, Nokia will pop out a brick-like beast of a clamshell smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard -- a black sheep in Espoo's lineup in every sense of the word. These so-called Communicators even had their own custom Symbian-based operating system, Series 80, until the E90 came around and brought 'em in line with the rest of the S60 crowd. Of course, S60 just took a big leap to the world of touch today, and that means the E90's starting to fall a bit behind -- so what's next? Nokia dropped a little teaser during its webcast today in the form of a stylized touch-based concept bearing strong family ties to the E90 and its ancestors, suggesting S60 5th Edition won't spell doom for the form factor. If it materializes, history suggests it won't be a mainstream device -- but if the real thing can look as good as this render, who knows?

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Sony announces PRS-700 Reader with touchscreen

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/409746544/

Filed under: Handhelds

Sony's plan to launch an updated Reader today wasn't exactly a secret, but there are still some surprises to the new PRS-700 -- particularly the new six-inch touchscreen E-Ink display. Page turning is now accomplished by a swipe motion with faster refreshes, and there's a stylus and on-screen keyboard for searching and note-taking -- plus an LED reading light (not a backlight) for reading in the dark. Apart from that, it's basically the same deal as the PRS-505 -- internal storage for about 350 ebooks with SD and MS-Duo expansion and a 7500 page-turn battery life round out the package, as well as an updated online store. Of course, there's no Kindle-killing integrated wireless for the $400 price tag, but it'll be interesting to see how they stack up when the PRS-700 hits shelves next month.

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Sony Ericsson patent app takes the tedium out of zooming your camera

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/410013019/

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras

It's a beautiful autumn day, and you're out in the wooded path beyond the railroad tracks just taking it all in and killing some time. Hey, what's that? Why, it's the cutest bunny rabbit you've ever seen! Time to pull out that 8-megapixel C905 and... oh, this sucks, you actually have to press a button to zoom in and out! Screw this noise -- you're a visionary photographer, not a manual laborer. Happily, Sony Ericsson feels your pain, and a new patent application reveals that they're hard at work on a system to control your cameraphone's zoom level simply by moving it back and forth. Just get the phone closer to the subject, and boom, welcome to telephoto city, population one. We're still totally cool with the old-fashioned way of capturing Pulitzer-winning shots, but we're happy that someone's thinking of this type of stuff so we don't have to -- that'd be work.

[Via Unwired View]

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NICT, JVC Victor team up on no-glasses-needed 3D HDTV

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/410130335/

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Betcha didn't see this one coming, did you Philips? No sooner than the aforementioned company unveiled a rather striking 56-inch Quad Full 3D HDTV over on the left coast of the US did Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and JVC Victor one-up that with a 72-inch prototype of their own. Revealed at CEATEC 2008, the Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) set doesn't even require viewers to sport those face-consuming glasses to experience the effect. In essence, the display utilizes multiple projectors to really emphasize that elusive third-dimension, but the viewing angle is understandably limited. Oh, and we hope you're not too geeked up about this -- NICT stated that we probably wouldn't see these in the commercial realm before 2011. Ah well, at least there's IMAX to hold us.

[Via Gearlog]

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Thursday, October 02, 2008

phreetings.com

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Month's Top 10 Most-Liked, Most-Recalled New TV Spots

Nielsen IAG Research Ad Ratings: Consumers Like Wrigley's 5 Gum Ad

Source: http://adage.com/article?article_id=131365
Published: September 30, 2008

NIELSEN IAG TOP 10 MOST-LIKED NEW TV ADS
Aug. 18 to Sept. 14, 2008

TOP MOST-LIKED SPOT
Wrigley's latest spot, 'Elixir,' for its newest gum brand wants to convey "How it feels to chew 5 Gum." In the current TV effort, which viewers liked the best last month, chewing a stick feels like a massive amusement park water ride.

Rank

Brand

Description

Index

Wrigley's 5 Gum

Woman in a factory is engulfed by purple-colored liquid; mouthwatering berry sensation as you chew; stimulate your senses.

154

Olive Garden

Never-Ending Pasta Bowl--Man has done the math on this never-ending pasta bowl; 42 different combinations, just $8.95.

134

Wrigley's Doublemint Gum

Slim Pack--Chris Brown sings about Doublemint Gum; bounces the pack around while dancing; slips it into his pocket (:30).

133

Dove Chocolate

Moments you love you want to experience over and over; woman with brown satin sheet; now in three individually wrapped portions.

130

Campbell's

Select Harvest--Woman in a blind taste test; Progresso: artificial ingredients, MSG; Campbell's: 100% natural chicken, carrots.

127

Wrigley's Doublemint Gum

Slim Pack--Chris Brown sings about Doublemint Gum; bounces the pack around while dancing; slips it into his pocket (:15).

125

McDonald's

Dollar Menu--Man asks what he can get for a dollar in travel agency, taxi cab, tanning salon; how 'bout McChicken/Double Cheeseburger.

125

Glade

Fabric & Air--Mother wishes family well on their way to school and work; sprays bottle through house; then plays tennis, lunches.

125

Lowe's

Man looks around backyard at the things he didn't fix during the summer; his wife reads Lowe's circular; come in this Labor Day Weekend.

122

Verizon

V CAST Music with Rhapsody--Man lists all the songs on his playlist through wedding, birth of child, child's graduation, old age.

122

Source: Nielsen IAG (iagr.net)
Only new ad executions considered, airing weeks of August 18 to September 14, 2008. The Likeability Score is the percentage of TV viewers who report to like "a lot" an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing TV (among those recalling the brand of the ad). These scores are then indexed against the mean score for all new ads during the period (Likeability Index). 100 equals average. For example, with a Likeability index of 154 the top ranked Wrigley's 5 Gum spot has proven to 54% better-liked than the average new commercial during the past four-week period.

NIELSEN IAG TOP 10 MOST-RECALLED NEW TV ADS
August 18 - September 14, 2008

Rank

Brand

Description

Index

Pizza Hut

Tuscani Pastas--People attend a pasta tasting and are captured on hidden camera; it's so decadent; Pizza Hut delivered the pasta (:30).

242

Pizza Hut

Tuscani Pastas--People attend a pasta tasting and are captured on hidden camera; this is delicious; 3 lbs with breadsticks (:15).

217

Dannon

Activia--Jamie Lee Curtis asks Jillian Kogan to tell her story; living with occasional irregularity; saw Activia in her mom's fridge; liberating.

210

Taco Bell

Volcano Taco--Who ate my volcano taco? man blows smoke and fire from mouth; could be the spiciest taco ever; 89 cents (:15).

210

Glade

Angel Whispers--Scented Oil Candles; woman in bubble bath; friend calls, says she's at the spa; husband knocks, says it's her aromatherapist.

203

Apple

Mac--PC hides in pizza box in an effort to catch college students; Mac is the #1 notebook on college campuses.

194

Taco Bell

Volcano Taco--Who ate my volcano taco? man blows smoke and fire from mouth; could be the spiciest taco ever; 89 cents (:30).

192

Electronic Arts

Spore--Tired of your universe? what do you want to be when you evolve? how will you create the universe?; download the creature creator.

185

Maytag

Performance Series--People line up to vote; Maytag Repairman fixes voting machine; the lever was jammed; pulls out punch-card ballots.

180

Apple

Mac--PC wearing royal attire sits on throne; switching computers is a hassle; bring PC into an Apple store; free file transfer.

179

Source: Nielsen IAG (iagr.net)
Only new ad executions considered, airing weeks of August 17 to September 14, 2008. The Recall Score is the percentage of TV viewers who can recall within 24 hours the brand of an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing TV. These scores are then indexed against the mean score for all new ads during the period (Recall Index). 100 equals average. For example, with a recall index of 242 the top ranked Pizza Hut spot has proven to be nearly two and a half times as memorable as the average new commercial during the past four-week period.

NYTimes: The Steamy Way to Dinner

Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times

By JULIA MOSKIN

Published: September 30, 2008

SHIRLEY CHAN, a Chinese-American Web site designer, was born in Hong Kong, lives in Brooklyn, and has never cooked a pot of rice in her life. "One billion Chinese people cannot be wrong about rice," she said: virtually every household has at least a basic rice cooker. As a child, it was her chore before each meal to wash the rice, measure it into the machine, and press the button. "It always, always comes out perfect," she said. "Until I came here, I never even knew rice could burn."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/dining/01rice.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

Panasonic's 150-Inch TV In Action: It'll Melt Your Brain, Empty Your Wallet and Ruin Your Life [Hands On And Sizemodo]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/407451389/panasonics-150+inch-tv-in-action-itll-melt-your-brain-empty-your-wallet-and-ruin-your-life

How big is too big? That's the question that you inevitably ask yourself once you spend any amount of time with Panasonic's new 150-inch plasma TV prototype. We visited it in Panasonic's towering warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey last Friday, running it through its paces with 4K footage, Blu-ray movies and Playstation 3 games. After spending a day with it, was it the type of thing I honestly wanted to set up in my living room?

Maybe. Maybe not. The standards that we use to measure other TVs don't apply here. Have you ever seen a TV taller than yourself? A TV that uses more energy than your washer and dryer? A TV that needs to be carried around on a forklift? I'm guessing you haven't. This thing is in a category all its own.

Man, is it impressive. If you stand within a few feet of it, it fills your entire field of vision, quickly making you motion sick if you're playing video games or watching a movie with lots of action. Even standing 20 feet away, you still feel like the TV is the only thing in the room. It's a 4K set, so if you've got the proper ultra-HD footage pumping into it, it makes 1080p look like a second-rate resolution, but even with 1080p, it's absolutely stunning.

Iron Man looked like he was going to jump out of the TV. Robert Downey, Jr.'s baby blues were the size of watermelons in anything closer than a medium shot. Everything was just so big. Seeing a shark leap fully out of the water to devour a seal in Planet Earth becomes even more mindblowing when the shark approaches life size.

And video games? Forget about it. You haven't lived until you've played Call of Duty with life-sized enemies. As I decimated! Mahoney over and over again (note to Mahoney: you suck), I felt my hands getting slick with sweat on the controller, my head whipping back and forth to try to see him around corners. My body felt a dissonance because I wasn't moving my legs or having my body jolted with recoil from my automatic weapon.

I've played video games on big TVs before. I visited Panasonic last year to do similar, uh, "tests" on their 103-inch plasma. And while that was awesome, it still felt like playing games and watching movies on a really big TV. The 150 transcends regular TV to become something more. It's like something out of a sci-fi movie, a living wall, a form of primitive virtual reality. It's so overwhelming that you can't really fathom putting it in your house because you can't see it fitting into any kind of reality you inhabit.

Inside the warehouse, we placed a 42-inch plasma next to it that looked pathetic, like something you'd put over your toilet to watch SportsCenter while you take a leak. I wanted to put it in my pocket. Even the 103-incher looked sad and small next to it. And trust me, a 103-inch TV doesn't look sad or small in too many situations.

If this were a true review, I'd have to complain that, since a 4K TV does to 1080p what your new HDTV does to standard-def, you're bound to watch a lot of crappy looking TV on this. If 1080p looks bad, think about all of the channels that come through in standard def. And if you're planning on streaming Netflix movies via your Xbox onto this TV, be prepared for digital artifacts the size of your head.

But you know what? This TV isn't designed for you to put in your living room. Sorry. It's a TV from the future, generously! time-te leported back to the present by our friends at Panasonic. You aren't going to hook a VCR up to this thing, and neither are they; it is designed to run with precision-mastered footage, and our current lack of worthy video doesn't diminish the ridiculous potency of the thing.

Believe it or not, Panasonic will begin selling the 150-inch plasma sometime next year, probably for about twice as much as the $70,000 103-incher. Will it be snapped up by anyone? Probably. There are always sultanates and NBA stars looking to have the biggest and most expensive TV in the world, and this definitely fits that bill. But again I'll ask: Is it something normal people would benefit from having in their living room?

I'd say no, but not out of broke resentment and the fact that this would quadruple my energy bill and require me to knock down most of the walls of my home to even get it inside. I don't think people should put this in their living rooms because, when you get down to it, this isn't a TV. I don't want to imagine people watching Two and a Half Men on it. To check the weather on The Weather Channel on this thing would be an act approaching sacrilege. It's more than a TV: it's a glimpse into the future, it's a brazen display of hubris and overkill, and it's a visceral, skin-searing experience. It belongs on spaceships and in museums, not in living rooms. It's only right.

Fantastic Patchwork Panoramas Using Just the iPhone Camera [IPhone]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/407560490/fantastic-patchwork-panoramas-using-just-the-iphone-camera

Who says you can't do amazing things with the iPhone's camera? Using only its subpar shooter and some skillful manual stitching, you can actually create some incredible patchwork panoramas. The crappiness of the cam actually gives the shots a lomographic sheen that meshes really with the whole hand-stitched patchwork aesthetic. If you want to make your own panoramas right from your iPhone, you can also use PanoLabs' free app. You can check out a few more awesome compositions below, or see the whole set here.