Gizmodo: Top
The Gadget: Lego Egg Timer.
The Price: $7.99
The Verdict: It's cute. It's makes a wonderful tic-tock noise. It helps you do roasted lamb and chicken and Beef Wellington and cakes. It's Lego. Really, it can't get any better than that. I only wish it could do more than one hour.
The Gadget: Lego Egg Timer.I bought the Lego Egg Timer while visiting Legoland in Denmark, at the end of my visit to the Lego factory. Since then I've used it many times and its design doesn't cease to entertain me. The top half of the mini-fig head rotates as it counts time, changing the expression as the minutes pass. Nothing else can be said about it, really, except that it's cute and it works great.
By the way, I will resume the chronicles of the Lego trip next week, after giving you a week of respite. Coming soon: an inside look at how the Lego bricks and sets are made, how they are designed from concept to final product, and what it's like to work there, among many other things. Stay tuned. [Lego]
The Gadget: The Moto E8 ROKR is a candybar music phone that makes use of a touch-sensitive, haptic feedback panel on the bottom half of the phone. It's nearly buttonless, save for a few on the side.
The Price: $199 (after 2-year contract)
The Verdict: Long story short, the hardware is great, the music interface is decent, the T-Mobile interface sucks. But let's start with the good. Not only do I like build quality, and how the button layout changes according to the phone's function, I also like that the haptic feedback really feels like the phone has buttons (Herrman is still convinced there aren't haptics). As a music player, the capacitive ring and menu system give it an iPod sort of feel, which is nice. It's pretty easy to use, and doesn't suffer from much lag. Syncing with Windows Media Player is a relatively painless process, but that means it's also Windows only (Mac Users have to transfer files via MicroSD, ugh).
The thing that makes me never want to touch the phone again is T-Mobile's UI skin, which takes competent phone software and turns it into a laggy, unresponsive pile of crap. Seeing as this phone is a T-Mo exclusive, I think it's important to highlight how much I dislike it. Frequently I try to enter into a menu for the camera, or text messages, only to be thrown back to the MyFaves home screen. After hitting another button in response, the phone decides it wants to go to the app I was originally trying to use, and then respond to my subsequent button pushing. The dialog boxes also like to clash with the menus, which allow for frequent input errors. I liken the process to playing voicemail tag with someone, which is to say it's totally annoying.
Other than that, it's just slow, the capacitive ring is no good for navigating the main menu, and trying D-pad feels cramped. So while I think the phone is an above average candybar, I'd hold out for a version running different software.
TiVo has been setting the bar for timeshifting television (what you want, when you want it) for the better part of a decade. Its latest models, the TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD, further refine and extend functionality to high definition TV and downloadable movies. But the future might not be so bright for TiVo, as other players such as Microsoft' Vista Media Center, Apple's Apple TV, Netflix's Roku player, and upstarts like the Vudu aim to drink their milkshake. What's a company to do? Innovate. Use the internet. Connect users together. Go beyond broadcast TV. Here's what we think TiVo needs to prioritize in their next box in order to dominate the living room for the next decade.
Most importantly, they need to embrace the internet, which includes BitTorrent. There's no sense in fighting it since people are currently using software like TED to automatically search for and download episodes of their favorite shows. It's like BitTorrent TiVo. West Coast users can even use it to download episodes shortly after it's done showing on the East Coast, giving them the ability to watch shows before broadcast and without commercials.
A source close to TiVo we spoke to says that they've looked at BitTorrent, but they need to differentiate between BitTorrent the protocol and BitTorrent in the sense that people are using it now to pirate shows. The current TiVos are designed to record two HD shows simultaneously, which leaves little power to run the fairly CPU-intensive BitTorrent protocol now. If there's a way to use it to help digital distribution in the future, TiVo will consider adding it. Here's how we think they can use the technology.
? Use BitTorrent to download shows legally. Say you somehow missed recording a show because they changed up the schedule from Tuesdays to Mondays (unlikely since TiVo auto-updates the guide, but still possible if your internet connection is down) or you forget to set a recording for a new series or you start watching a series in the middle. Why should you be punished into waiting until the entire season is out on DVD to watch this? If you're tech savvy enough, you've already been hitting the torrents and grabbing the episodes?or even seasons?you missed. Why not have TiVo centrally record a show, then let you torrent it out, complete with commercials, if you happen to miss recording it yourself? The ads keep the studios happy, and the fact that you get to watch a show keeps you happy.
? Enable peer to peer sharing. A company called NDS tried to do this in 2007 before legalities made it impossible. Picture being able to watch shows with your friends across the country at the same time, streamed from users who've already got that recording on their TiVos. Using BitTorrent will drastically reduce bandwidth costs on TiVo, but still give a very fast transfer rate to end users.
? Stream network's web content. ABC and NBC have both started getting into web video in a big way, putting their shows online for viewers to watch the next day on a browser. Extend this to a TiVo box (keeping the ads in so people who need to get paid get paid) and you're set.
? Stream your shows anywhere, including laptops, cellphones and other TiVo boxes. Yes, would essentially be a Slingbox built into a TiVo, allowing you to watch your shows on the go with your cellphones without any additional hardware. But why not have your living room TiVo networked together with the one in your bedroom? If you recorded Lost on one and Heroes on the other, you could stream it to each other without having to waste hard drive space doubly recording it.
? Download movies from every service. This is a tough one, but TiVo should expand their current Amazon Unbox movie service to include iTunes, Netflix and whatever service decides to pop up between now and doomsday. Be service agnostic and everyone will love you. DVDs don't distinguish between movies sold at Best Buy and movies sold at Circuit City.
But TiVo can't survive off of networking features alone; they need to expand the core functionality of the box as well. Here's what we're proposing.
? Auto encoding and syncing to devices. TiVoToGo is fine for grabbing shows off of your TiVo, encoding them and uploading it to your iPod when you've got lots of spare time, but if you're in a hurry, it's not nearly as convenient. A TiVo only needs all its CPU power when recording two HD shows, so they can easily use the excess cycles during idle times to automatically encode shows into a format your iPod or Zune can understand. All you have to do is simply dock your player into a USB port and choose the shows you want to carry with you.
? Messaging and communications. This ties into the peer to peer sharing feature above, but being able to have Xbox Live-like messages exchanged between your friends or even being able to chat with them while you're watching the same show (group chat!) would be phenomenal. Or if you don't want their jibber jabber during the show, just chat it up during commercials. A branded TiVo wireless keyboard and a wireless headset would be optional peripherals, or you can just hook up your own USB keyboard and USB headset.
? Ultimate file playback support. The one thing that's absolutely necessary to make the TiVo the core of the living room entertainment center is support for popular file formats. We're talking h.264, DivX, XviD, OGM, MKV, MOV, FLV, and anything else people encode their videos with. This way even users who don't have cable TV can get a TiVo and use it as a file dump for their BitTorrented shows and movies. Playing these files back easily in HD, without prior conversion, would truly make this the ultimate set top box.
With an unpopular war going on, an unpopular president in the White House and an economy in crisis, sometimes we struggle to remember what makes this country great. July 4th should be a time to reflect on the positives?a day to celebrate our independence and recapture our patriotic spirit. For some of us, that may be easier said than done. However, I am confident that the following gadgets will serve as a reminder, to all nerds, why we live in the best country in the world. And if you are still not convinced, just remember?you could be living in Canada.
Freedom of Speech:
Nothing says "America" like making our political leaders hump in action figure form. Start your own freaky Beltway love triangle involving George and Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Uncle Sam, John and Jackie Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Benjamin Franklin (horn-dog that he was) with these Political Posers action figures. They even threw Jesus in for some totally inappropriate fun. Available for $8.88 each. [Prank Place]
Don't like how Bush is handling things in the White House? Move him into another white house (the kind made from porcelain). You will knock him down a few pegs with a really dirty job. The George Bush toilet brush is available for $16.95. [Baron Bob]
Hillary may be out of the race, but you can remember her campaign for the nation's highest office every time you crack open a walnut. The Hillary Clinton Nutcracker is available for $19.99. [Teptronics via Link]
Knives With Guns In Them:
The G.R.A.D. features a .22 caliber gun hidden in a knife for people who don't think their enemies can ever be too dead. Second amendment! Wooo! Available for $699. [GunsAmerica (how appropriate) and Link]
Huge Grills and Competitive Eating:
It is no wonder that all of the grills out there vying for the title of "world's largest" can be found in the United States. The "Big Taste Grill" is 65 feet of meat-cooking mayhem. With surface area enough for 750 brats at a given time, its max output is 2,500 bph (brats per hour). [Big Taste Grill]
It's not a gadget but come on...competitive eating. If that doesn't scream America I don't know what does. Seriously?they have their own federation, like wrestlers. [IFOCE]
Texas:
Texas knows how to do America right?big and in your face. Case in point, the world's largest video screen is set to go up in the new Cowboys stadium next year. When it is finally installed, it will measure a whopping 11,200 square feet. [Link]
Excess and Laziness:
America is obsessed with acquiring wealth to live lavish, lazy lifestyles. Plumbing service provider Roto-Rooter had America pegged when it ran a promotion last year with a pimped-out toilet featuring a 20-inch LCD, DVD player, XBox 360, iPod with toilet paper stereo docking station, TiVo, Avanti refrigerator with beer tap, a bike pedal exerciser and cup warmer/cooler. [Link]
Over-the-Top Consumerism:
One of the most interesting things about America is that companies will try and sell us anything?and we will be right there, waiting at the check-out lanes with open arms and open wallets.
Star Trek- and MLB-themed urns are a perfect example of this phenomenon. Major companies and franchises put their names on products, and we are so enamored we want to take them to the afterlife. [Eternal Image via Link]
What could be more American than a pair of motion-activated, singing, vibrating breasts? How about a pair of motion-activated, singing, vibrating breasts that you can record your own song on? Indeed, "Jingle Jugs for Life" has an option to record your own message or song. And, in a truly American move, they have added a pre-recorded breast cancer awareness message on each product to keep the feminists at bay. Available for $39.99 (original version) and $49.99 for breast cancer awareness version. [Jingle Jugs and Link]
In the end, I can only hope that this little gadget-filled journey across our great nation has helped you understand just how lucky you are to be an American. So, get out there, cook up some BBQ, drink some beer and shoot illegal fireworks wildly into the air. It's the American way.
I'm OCD about my desktop. I keep exactly six icons on it, tucked in the upper left hand corner. So Dell's OS X wannabe dock?actually made by Stardock and licensed to Dell, but let's not pretend it's not an Apple reaction?sounds like a great way to keep my desktop immaculate. Who originated the dock or why it came to be aren't really that important. The fact is, lots of people who never would've used a dock are now going to when Dell ships these out. And that would be awesome, if the dock weren't so dumb.
Our review unit is an XPS M1330?Dell shipped us a fresh hard drive with Vista Ultimate and the latest Dell software. (The Dock will arrive on new Studio laptops, and eventually ship on some legacy systems, like the XPS M1330 and 1530.) Problem one is right when you boot it up. Windows started, and I thought they had accidentally given me a drive without the dock. The dock appeared a full minute after I started wondering WTF it was. Not a great start to the dock experience! A less savvy user might think the dock is just slow balls and turn it off. I did what I usually do when I get a notebook: Yank out the crapware, plus, in this case, the fingerprint reader and other Dell-specific software. Then reboot.
Dock comes up instantly. Yay. Okay, so while I don't find the default options useful, they were easy enough to swap out, move around, whatever. My desktop is spotless, the dock itself is beautiful. I'm happy?until I start using the computer. That's when I realize the dock's fatal flaw.
It's not a real "dock" but just a dumb, pretty shortcut bar. It can make your desktop tidy, but you still have to use the regular Windows taskbar to interact with applications and see what they're up to. When I minimize Firefox, it goes to the taskbar, and I can't pop the window back open from the dock. The AIM icon doesn't bounce when I have a new message. It just sits there, lifeless, looking high-res and pretty. And what I want, what I expect, what I'm subtly promised is something like OS X's dock. (Even if they won't let you stick it on the bottom.) If it was, and I could ditch the Windows taskbar, I would be in love with it. It would change the way a hefty chunk of the masses use their Vista computers, and maybe, just maybe, even keep them from making The Switch.
But it's not that. So instead of being in love with it, I'm just in like with it. [Dell]
Sony's latest PlayStation 3 firmware update 2.4 brought what the fanboys have been crying about since the console's inception?in-game access to the console's Cross Media Bar (XMB). But I'll tell you something, in-game XMB is fine and dandy, yes, but there were more pressing issues that Sony should have fixed first. In fact, I count 10 of 'em (because a list of nine would get me fired).
Smarter Firmware Updates
Let me agree to terms and conditions?a tiny 1K file transfer?before downloading the whole software update. Then once the update downloads it can roll into an install without me having to push some stupid buttons on the controller.
Automatic Downloaded-Game Installation
We're really still manually installing most game and demo downloads? Seriously? No, seriously?
Real Keyboard Support
The PS3 "supports" a mouse and keyboard. But keyboard support is still not functional or assignable in most games. Some middleware solutions would be nice here, Sony. I should be able to play anything on a mouse and keyboard by mapping SIXAXIS/DualShock3 buttons.
In-Game Web Browsing
OK, so here's an instance where we can access the XMB while in a game, but we can't really access it. Because you can't browse the web while in a game. I'd love the option to look up walkthroughs...err...hints and tips without going to the computer.
Controllers Don't Charge Without PS3 "On"
Why do I need to leave on my entire PS3 to charge one controller? A firmware update could program the USB portion of the console to stay powered on while charging like, say, the Xbox 360.
PS Home
Oh, I haven't forgotten. Though I'm becoming more bored by this once novel concept every day it doesn't appear.
Account Management
Let's just stick all those account management menus into the PlayStation Store. That way if I need to make changes to my account (something that would probably be prompted by a transaction at the PS Store), I don't need to revisit dead gray screen land.
Background Folding@Home
I'm as lazily, unconsciously altruistic as the next guy, so work with Stanford to make Folding @ Home even better. Let me use it as a background process for when I'm just hanging out on the dashboard, or browsing the PS Store. I know that playing some MP3s doesn't use all of the PlayStation 3's power, so let's use some of that extra number crunching to cure the world, or whatever.
Screengrabs
Any game, any time, I want to be able to perform a screengrab. I want to then be able to save the screengrab to my photo library or message it to a friend. This software technology has long been figured out, and it'd be nice to have for showing everyone how awesome I am all the time.
Lower Power Standby
The PS3's primary standby mode is super low energy. But if you want to access Remote Play (XMB, pictures, etc) through the PSP, it's suddenly sucking as much power as five refrigerators just sitting there. Surely there is a clever way that the PS3 can be activated through an SMS or email system that would make it more eco-friendly than just being on all the time. Remote Play is not something I'll use every day. And because of that, I've turned off the function completely?which is a shame because it's a pretty incredible idea.
It's not that the latest firmware update is bad; it's that the whole interface is so pleasurable to use and packing so much customization (for a console) that the rough spots can stand out even more. Come on, Sony, let's make the PS3 unbelievable.
The Gadget: Linksys' Dual-N Band Wireless Router just became official, giving users simultaneous 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands so 802.11N users and 802.11G users can coexist without N users having to use the crowded 2.4GHz space. Also, since it's dual N-band, two N users can connect (one to each frequency) without interfering with the other. It's styled in Linksys' new form factor, which helps emphasize that Linksys is more for consumers (especially compared to their parent company Cisco).
The Price: $199 MSRP, but Amazon lists it for $149 for some reason.
The Verdict: Great. Even though the outside shell has changed from the traditional utilitarian Linksys blue and charcoal to a shiny dust-magnet black, the innards still carry on their workmanlike quality. We placed it on the second floor of our three floor house and it was able to cover every room, including through the walls to all the bathrooms. File transfers were speedy and comparable to the Apple Gigabit Airport Extreme we've been using for a while. The on-router configuration website is typical Linksys, but it also comes with their slightly newer EasyLink Advisor configuration application that helps you set up your network if you're not used to diddling with this stuff.
The upside is that if you have both N and G devices co-existing on your network now, this is a good solution to not slow down the N devices. Plus, one N device doesn't slow down another N device if they're using different frequencies. You also get a USB port for easy network storage sharing. Its Darth Vader glossy black is pretty much the polar opposite of Apple's Luke-white Airport Extreme. Since the prices are so close and the feature set is almost the same (Apple's $179 vs. this one's $149/$199), it's really up to you which style you want. [Amazon]
Here's Mani getting the name right and explaining some details.
Update: Here are a few more technical details on how this WRT610N differs from the recently released WRT600. The 610 has 3 dual-band antennas compared to the 600's six single-band ones. Also, 610 has enhanced QoS, Mac Setup, it's EnergyStar certified, and comes with the LELA 3.0 management utility. Plus, of course, it looks nicer.
Famous designer Philippe Starck recently revealed he felt a certain shame that all the things he'd designed were not essential for living. This turbine, which he designed with the help of generator company Pramac, can theoretically provide a single home with 20-60% of all the electricity it needs. The name, which needs work, or at least the prefix "turbo" in front of it, is "Democratic Ecology." If the performance is indeed true, at $633, it's actually a steal and I'd order one right now. [inhabitat via Boingboing]
Deep in the northwest corner of Kobe, Japan, there's a factory hidden away among green rice paddies, and sleepy farming villages of tiled roofs. If you were to travel here, to Takatsukadai?the middle of nowhere?you'd find Panasonic's Toughbook plant quietly making notebooks with the world's lowest failure rate. Well, not so quietly, actually. They employ a regimen of over 500 different tests, smashing, dropping and soaking Toughbooks, with over a thousand sacrifices each year. This is where I learned how the old computer plant manages to pull it off, miraculously, almost all under one roof.
Deep in the northwest corner of Kobe, Toughbooks have been pulled from car fires, blown up and stopped bullets. Their outer strength is derived from magnesium shells; Panasonic says they are 20x stronger than the typical plastic laptop case.
After the design comes the testing, where only the fittest prototypes and models survive. Fittingly, the slogan of the Kobe plant is "Productive Destruction." Toughbooks are put through a battery of tests under MIL-STD-810F. Here are some of the highlights of the super rugged laptop testing:
Drop Test
Also known as the "Transit Drop Test," this procedure involves dropping the powered-down machine from three feet onto each face, edge and corner a total of 26 times. The computers are dropped onto two-inch plywood placed over a steel plate on top of concrete?the triumvirate of hard everyday surfaces. Visual checks and a Windows boot-up are done after each test.
Water Resistance
The Toughbook is placed in a water spray chamber for 12 straight hours, powered on but with its ports closed tight. Afterwards comes an inspection for water "intrusion."
Thermal Shock and Temperature
When shut down, the computer is subjected to three cycles of massive temperature swings, from a balmy 205o F to a chilly -60o F. Separately, Toughbooks are turned on, and tested actually operating at temperatures ranging from -4oF to 140o F. For these tests, Panasonic uses special environmental chambers made by a company called Espec. (Hopefully they don't also build saunas.)
Altitude
With the help of an outside firm, Toughbooks are tested to see if they withstand the most challenging air pressure conditions that could be encountered in military aircraft.
Humidity
This test takes 10 whole days to complete. Toughbooks are placed in a chamber with extreme jungle-like humidity at temperatures fluctuating between hot (86oF) and impossibly hot (140oF).
Dust Resistance
Superfine silica flour is applied to the machines in a 140o F environment at a facility in Yokohama; this punishment goes on for 8 hours while the laptops are turned on. They pass the test if moving parts don't bind or become blocked, and relays and contacts continue to operate properly.
Vibration
Toughbooks are clamped to aluminum plates that simulate the mounting in vehicles, and then are subjected to various intensities of vibration while turned off and on. When on, the HDD also spins.
Hinge Durability
In a test you can easily envision, Toughbooks are put through 30,000 cycles of open-and-close-and-open-and-close, testing hinge sturdiness.
Keyboard
Nasty-looking typing machines pound Toughbook keyboards through their paces, testing them to withstand 25 million keystrokes. (Wonder how long they have to type before complete works of Shakespeare appear...)
Spills
Toughbooks are tested for their ability to fend off spills, one of the more common assaults to a laptop. Mil-spec requires them to withstand more than 6 ounces (200 cc) of... whatever.
Compression
At the development stage, Toughbook covers and bases are squeezed super hard, tested to withstand over 980N (100kgf) of pressure.
Electromagnetic Interference
During development, electromagnetic wave testing is performed in the plant's 10m radio-frequency anechoic chamber, used to check conformity with CISPR and FCC electromagnetic regulations.
Although not to the level of the mil-spec lines, whose testing is detailed above, Panasonic's business-rugged models?the kind our Benny Goldman tested in his own, uh, laboratory?are dropped from 3 feet, pelted with dust, doused with 6 ounces of liquid (half a can of Coke), squeezed, pounded on the keyboard, stretched open for hinge reliability, and shocked with an electrostatic discharge. Notebooks also go on racks at the Kobe factory, and are given massages. Using Panasonic-branded handheld massagers (what else?) testers check for vibration resistance as part of an "aging" process. The vibe simulates shaking during shipping.
The plant was established in June 1990 and began PC production in August 1991, now turning out an average of 2,500 to 3,000 Toughbooks a day. In 2007 production hit 660,000 units?Panasonic plans to ramp up output to 800,000 units this year and then 1 million units by 2010. The plant can turn out Toughbooks in up to 2,000 variations of memory, hard disk, LCD panel, software and shiny magnesium-alloy shell, in 10 different colors. Repairs are also carried out on-site 365 days a year.
A Matsushita warehouse in nearby Osaka holds $14 million dollars worth of components, about 2.2 million pieces in 60,000 varieties. The warehouse operates under a system it calls "5S" for five words in Japanese: seiri (arrangement), seiton (tidy), seisou (cleaning), seiketsu (cleanliness), and shitsuke (discipline). Like the factory, which requires all visitors to remove their shoes and don slippers as in a Japanese home, it's spotless.
When the iPhone 3G hits July 11th, it will be available at both AT&T and Apple stores. So beyond a little extra pretentiousness at the Apple stores, is there anything different between them? What if you need to start a new plan? What if you need to transfer a number? Can Apple handle the complicated stuff?
Actually, AT&T has told us that there will be no limiting difference between the two stores, except one thing. If you are a business or enterprise customer, then you should buy your iPhone from AT&T. Here are the full details on business scenarios:
For those business, or enterprise customers, they will get their iPhone 3Gs through their normal IT processes. This will ensure that their business can take advantage of any corporate discounts that may apply.
Activation will work [one of two] ways:
? If your company pays the bill for your iPhone 3G: Your IT department will provide you with iPhone 3G, just as it does any other device. Then, all you need to do is sync it to iTunes from your computer and it will be good to go. You do not need to go to an AT&T retail store.
? If you pay the bill and are reimbursed for it by your company: Buy the iPhone in an AT&T retail store. Give the salesperson your company's contract number with AT&T and the device will be activated.
And if you're still wondering about details like pricing, be sure to hit up the FAQ.
If you still rock the bunny ears we salute you. But odds are, you probably get TV one of two ways: Cable or satellite. There's a newer way: IP, that is Internet Protocol, TV?in this case, the TV delivered over the internet by your phone company. Verizon and AT&T push FiOS TV and U-Verse, respectively, in select regions of the country where their fiber networks have been built out. (Update: As has been pointed out, FiOS TV isn't actually IPTV, my bad.) In a lot of ways, it's the TV of the future?in part because most of you can't get it yet. Beyond that, the technology that delivers it to your home, as well as who is doing the delivering, opens up some pretty sweet new interactive possibilities. And even for regular old boob tubing, the way it's architected means its good for HD buffs.
But first, the basics. The difference between the TV you're used to and this fancy IPFreelyTV stuff is that IPTV is delivered to you like any other data sent over the internet?in data packets. You even plug an Ethernet cable into your receiver box/DVR. Of course, the internet's a messy place with lots of muck bouncing around the pipes and you'd be really pissed if the Yankees game stuttered or crapped out, so this is all running on the telco's "walled garden" network with a fat, dedicated lane for video. (Your internet service, which is bundled since it's running on the same network, runs on a different lane, delineated by quality-of-service, or QoS, protocols.)
Now that that's out of the way, back to why its good for HD. With a standard cable setup, the channels are basically always being piped into your home, whether you're watching or not. To add more channels, they've gotta compress 'em down farther or open the pipe up, especially since HD eats up a lot of bandwidth. Since IPTV is sent in regular ol' data packets and the system is two-way (the nature of internet protocol), they're basically only sending what you ask for, when you ask for it. So theoretically, they could offer way more HD channels than cable, since they're not as limited here. Also, like that mythical Xbox 360 IPTV box, the number of streams you can watch/record simultaneously is basically only limited by your bandwidth.
The two-wayness of the infrastructure is another point of awesomeness. It can be used for actually useful interactivity?one of AT&T's apps for the Olympics can bring in a stats feed you can check out while watching the game. Or regular internet video, like YouTube, can be piped in and integrated with the other video on your box. It's all just regular data over standard internet protocols, so there's a lot of flexibility to do stuff you simply can't with a traditional setup.
The problem is that building the infrastructure necessary for IPTV service is slow and expensive, largely cause it requires a heavy fiber optic component. Verizon runs fiber all the way to your door (which is why it can offer those crazy FiOS internet speeds), while AT&T runs it to the node, which you're then connected to with copper and (which is why U-Verse internet is slower). So right now, both have puny subscriber numbers?1.2 million FiOS TV customers, and a scant 379,000 on U-Verse TV.
Still, there's a lot of potential in IPTV, even if it's taking forever to get to your doorstep. AT&T actually showed me some of the stuff that could be at your door in the 6-9 months?and beyond?and it's definitely worth getting excited about. We'll be telling you all about it later.
Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Send any questions about IPs, TVs, chewing gum or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.
The Gadget: Stitched drum covers for Rock Band from "Premium Rock Band Drum Covers", which give you five different levels of padding for sound dampening. They come in four-color style, all-black, and four-color with a white sidewall for the Wii.
The Price: $34 + $10 Shipping
The Verdict: QUIET! They're form-fitting around the drum heads and are tied in place with a shoelace-like string. You can put up to four "pads" under each cover, and at three (which we tested with) it muffled drums quite nicely. This muffling will make your neighbors and family members very thankful when they're trying to read or watch TV in the other room. On the other hand, you're going to naturally try to drum harder, which tires you out faster, but increases responsiveness of the drums a little bit (no more hits that are too soft).
The downside is that it's slightly harder to tell when you're hitting the edge of the drum as opposed to slightly inside the edge, but that's more of a skill thing that you'll overcome as you get better at the game. They're quite secure when tied off correctly. On the whole, we'd pay $34 for a pretty good quality set of pre-made drum covers that actually work and can take a good beating. It's better than taking up crochet and practicing for a month before making some yourself. [Drum Covers]
If you're an expert at the drums and already memorized which color is which, you can opt for the all-black version, which looks a bit nicer and doesn't draw as much attention to itself.
Then there's the Wii version below.
