Casio has been pumping out G’zOnes like crazy. In a tiny over a year, the rugged watch maker has updated the phone twice, with the newest iteration being the Type-SL. But we’d to wonder — was Casio really improving on its ultra-rugged design, or just rehashing the same phone? To sort this matter out, we’d to destroy both our Type-SL and one of our editors.
. . . but we’ll get to that later.
As a whole the Type-SL packs few surprises. Like past iterations of the G’zOne, the Type-SL sports military grade resistance to water, dust, and shock damage. And once again, all that durability comes at the cost of looks. Previous versions of the G’zOne had a glossy plastic chassis and a flat smooth keyapd. These aesthetics have been dumped in favor of a rubberized coating, and a keypad with an angular, militaristic look. Oh and that awkward shock-dampening bumper/antenna from previous models?
Yup. Still there.
Features like Bluetooth and speakerphone also return, in addition to the external LCD, and camera. Problem is, none of these features have really improved. The Bluetooth still doesn’t permit file sharing, the speakerphone lacks punch, and the external LCD and camera are still ridiculously low-res. EV-DO abilities and multimedia storage are also M.I.A., making the phone an underwhelming choice for a music/web lovers.
Then there’s the whole ruggedized thing. The handset did fine in immersion and dust tests, but we wanted to up the ante for the shock trials. To test the Type-SL’s mettle, a local high school football and soccer team were drafted to beat the living bejesus out of the phone, and Wired’s de facto quarterback, associate editor Danny Dumas. Despite losing its battery a number of times, the phone still powered up and made calls after numerous drops, punts, and bone crushing blitzes. And get this — it wasn’t the hours of hard hitting abuse that demolished the phone, but one of Danny’s celebratory touchdown spikes.
That kind of durability is usually impressive, but let’s face it — Casio has had three shots at perfecting the ruggedized phone formula. They’ve obviously got the toughness down, but until the design catches up in terms of multimedia support and web access it’s unlikely that the Type-SL will ever eclipse its brittle competitors. —Terrence Russell
WIRED Takes a lickin’ and keeps on . . . calling. Camera flash doubles as a flashlight. Push-to-Talk compatible. Great standby battery life and talk time. Decent call volume and clarity. TIRED Hideous, ugly, unsightly. No EVDO support. Video quality is terrible. Weak speakerphone. 640 x 480 camera resolution is horribly outdated (the first G’zOne had 2MP!!!) Despite locking feature, battery pops off after most drops.
In honor of the upcoming Tahoe reader meetup on April 5th at Alpine Meadows, I’m going to be doing end of season reviews of some outdoor gadgetry that’s been floating around the cabin. First up, these electric socks originally designed to keep North Atlantic fishermen warm. The idea: Wool/Poly blend Socks with wiring and thin resistors that run from the D cells mounted in the top of the sock liner to under the ball of the foot. Sweaty feeling, and any activity causes sock droop as the batteries overpower the elastic. Yet, warmish. And $22.
Actually: These might make a good last resort, but the chemical toe warmers are a better bargain than buying a new pair of D cells every 6 hours. And let’s not forget, warming the torso with proper layering, etc, warms the extremities. [REI and the Giz Reader Meetup, thanks to Adam for being the leg model]
Do you really need that light on to not trip over your coffee table and break your leg? Let’s find out, shall we? The Consumption Feedback Switch is a device that monitors your electricity usage. If it feels you’re within your light quota when you flip on the lights, you’ll see a small, harmless spark. But if you’ve been one of those dolphin-unsafe villains from Captain Planet, reading a few minutes too long at night, a gigantic stream of deadly electricity will mend your ways pending you not die.
Alright, we’re actually not sure that you feel a shock at all since the word “spark” may have been the choice of a liberal Google translation denoting “small glow.” But we’d recommend keeping wasteful electrical usage down just in case. [product via dvice]
Comcast, BitTorrent Promise to Play Nice Comcast, which prevented the BitTorrent file sharing system from working properly on its network and lied about it, will now “work together” with BT as part of Comcast’s reinvention, reports the Wall Street Journal. “The companies are in talks to…
Comcast, which prevented the BitTorrent file sharing system from working properly on its network and lied about it, will now “work together” with BT as part of Comcast’s reinvention, reports the Wall Street Journal.
“The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent’s technology more smoothly on Comcast’s broadband network, and allow Comcast to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast’s chief technology officer.”
Comcast ultimately confessed to interfering with the bandwidth-sucking protocol, but presented its misbehavior as a form of quality assurance and management— which was precisely the kind of network engineering newspeak that Network Neutrality nerds always said they’d end up excusing anticompetitive behavior with.
The new deal will have Comcast slowing traffic only for specific users who guzzle too much data, but they won’t stop messing around with BT until the end of the year. BitTorrent will work to “optimize” its software to run more effectively on Comcast’s network, which will be interesting to see in practice.
I keep thinking of what cellular networks are getting themselves into with these newfangled high-speed networks. Google offers no genuine results for “WiMax Bittorrent”,” a phrase I’d like to see more of.
Logitech Squeezebox Duet Logitech’s little black box liberates your music collection from the confines of your PC, streaming it via Wi-Fi to your Hi-Fi (or powered speakers). It also streams from Rhapsody, Pandora, Slacker, internet radio stations, local radio stations,…
Logitech Squeezebox Duet
Logitech’s little black box liberates your music collection from the confines of your PC, streaming it via Wi-Fi to your Hi-Fi (or powered speakers). It also streams from Rhapsody, Pandora, Slacker, internet radio stations, local radio stations, and can even pull down podcasts and RSS feeds. A sweet iPod-style remote controls all the action. Sound like any other magic music box you know? Yep, the Squeezebox Duet challenges the much pricier Sonos Digital Music System for in-home streaming supremacy, and almost comes away the winner.
But not quite. Setup is about as fun as getting glass shards stuck in your eye — especially if you configure Logitech’s SqueezeCenter software to tap your iTunes library. We also had trouble connecting to our SqueezeNetwork account, which configures all the non-PC music sources. And sometimes the remote couldn’t detect the Squeezebox base station. (Note to Logitech: Enough with all the SqueezeNames. Damn, yo!) But eventually we got the kinks worked out and rocked out with The Kinks.
Alas, SqueezeCenter doesn’t do DRM, so forget about streaming any protected tracks you bought from, say, iTunes or Zune Marketplace. However, it does support every audio format known to geekdom, from AAC to WMA Lossless. And if you upload your collection to MP3tunes ($39.95 annually), the Duet can stream it even when your PC is off. Want music in multiple rooms? Additional base stations run $150 a pop.
The Squeezebox remote resembles an elongated iPod, complete with color screen, album art, scroll wheel, and fuss-free menus. Unfortunately, sometimes the menus seem endless: To play one a Slacker station, for instance, you have to drill through seven screens. The remote frequently lags behind button-presses, too, causing sporadic false lock-ups. (Note to Logitech #2: firmware fix, please.)
Those gripes aside, the Duet rocks hard. Between your personal collection and the collective libraries of Rhapsody, Shoutcast, and RadioTime (which tunes in actual radio stations from around the world), it feels like you’ve got an unlimited music repository in the palm of your hand. Tired of tunes? A nature-sounds plug-in turns your stereo into a babbling brook, crackling fire or, if you’re into it, a whinnying horse.
A few software fixes could turn this good music-streaming system into a great one. But even now, the Squeezebox Duet temporarily alleviates Sonos envy on the cheap.
Report: AT&T Running Credit Checks on Pre-Paid Phone Buyers The Consumerist today wonders why AT&T refused to sell someone a pre-paid GoPhone for claimed “credit history” reasons. A little odd, given that the whole idea of these things is they require no contract and no bills, right? From the…
“Ms. Johnson blatantly refused to answer either of these questions and simply read some pre-prepared rejection script that was obviously coming up on her computer screen as rudely as she could in an attempt to interrupt me in mid-speech. Once she finally ran out of things to parrot I asked why it was that a supervisor in the AT&T order processing department did not know how the AT&T order processing process worked well enough to explain to me why my orders were being cancelled, and she said that this was something the credit department handled.”
Isn’t the answer obvious? GoPhones and other prepaid services are just a marketing plan to turn you into bona fide contract slaves somewhere down the line.
For currently unknown reasons, several world wide web griefers decided to screw with epileptics last weekend by posting flashing and multicolored images in a support forum run by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation. About three percent of epileptics are photosensitive, which means that the flashing lights and colors can trigger migraines or seizures. Way to go, assholes.
Monitors of the Epilepsy Foundation’s board responded swiftly and managed to take down all the offending posts about 12 hours after the attacks began. Though the foundation reports that nobody was killed by the prank, a handful of people were adversely effected. It’s like Snow Crash with fewer katanas and more 15-year-old children who need to be pummeled in the face. Where’s Hiro when we need him?
RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old IT worker in Ohio, clicked on a forum post that caused her screen to suddenly be overtaken by a pattern of various colored squares flashing rapidly. The assault made her “lock up,” she stated.
“I don’t fall over and convulse, but it hurts,” she told Wired. “I was on the phone when it happened, but I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak.”
Very circumstantial evidence points to Anonymous, the infamous hacker clan with a grudge against the Church of Scientology. But, even with my limited knowledge of the hacking world, they don’t sound like the right culprit to me. Though various members of Anonymous are pricks, they’re also sanctimonious pricks. I’ve never head of them doing anything without loudly attaching a cause to it first. [Wired]
Why, in the midst of a major Windows Home Server push, would HP introduce a little Linux-based NAS at half the price? And why would HP make the $300 Media Vault mv2120 so full featured and easy that its $600-and-up MediaSmart Servers look A) too bulky B) too expensive C) too overloaded D) all of the above? Is HP telling Microsoft there’s no need for Windows Home Server, especially in light of its recent troubles? Or is HP saying that WHS is nice, but it’d be nicer if it was actually priced as an accessory? Whether the new Media Vault is a lurch away from Microsoft’s gravitational pull, or whether it’s a placeholder until Redmond can come up with a formula for $300 WHS boxes, it’s a pretty cool little machine.
See, one of the reasons I liked Windows Home Server so much is that after dealing with many NAS products from the storage companies and networking hardware makers, the MediaSmart server was easier to setup and had a lot of useful apps ready to go at the start. Maybe you like a clean drive, an empty warehouse on your network, but it’s nice when some of the initiative is taken for you.
That’s why I was relieved (though a bit startled) that the 500GB Media Vault—again half the price of the 500GB MediaSmart Server—was ready to do so much right out of the box.
I plugged it in, ran the Windows-only set up, and was immediately able to back stuff up, either using the super-simple screen for music, movies, etc., or the more comprehensive tool, where you can tell it what you want to back up and when you want it done.I did it on both Vista and XP machines, and was happy to be able to check out my contents afterwards on the PCs and even on my Mac. (WHS only lets you see your backups via a tedious drive emulator, one that obviously doesn’t run on Macs.)Even though the $299 version comes with just one fixed 500GB drive, it also has a bay so you can add another 3.5″ SATA drive. I powered down the unit, dropped in a 500GB on that I had lying around, and fired it up again. The LED went purple to show that it saw the drive but needed a format. I went to the Media Vault control center, picked the drive, formatted it (as a RAID 1 mirror of the first drive) and voila, in minutes, we were set and, on the unit itself, Drive 2’s LED had turned blue.I haven’t done any HD video streaming or anything like that yet, but with a gigabit ethernet connection, I don’t think I’ll have a problem. In fact, though HP says that the Media Vault can’t do multiple simultaneous video streams like the WHS, I can’t really figure out what I, personally, would miss if I kissed the WHS goodbye and stuck with the Media Vault. Here’s how the comparison plays out:
What’s not as good as MediaSmart Windows Home Server: • Won’t do multiple streams of video like WHS • Only two drive bays (a fixed and a spare) instead of four • Lets you backup multiple PCs, but only one at at time from the PC itself, not through a WHS-style master control
What’s the same as MediaSmart Windows Home Server: • iTunes music aggregation &bull Photo webshare • Remote access and web-based file browsing (1-year free) • Connect via Mac for basic use as a shared drive
What’s better than MediaSmart Windows Home Server: • Web-based remote controls work great on Macs • Quieter, with less drive noise on a regular basis • Easy to back-up the server itself to a USB drive • Easier to access Windows backups, especially from a Mac • Probably does not share the same data corruption bug as WHS
In the end, this product isn’t just another NAS, but a bold statement that HP is making, that it doesn’t have to be saddled by the rough riders of Redmond when it can build (license?) its own practically identical box at a lower cost. Now I know that there are some things that you can only do with a PC-like server running a full OS, but honestly, what are they? I mean, do most people, even die-hard server-needers, give a crap? I want to know from you folks: Why bother with Windows Home Server when the Linux-based alternatives are on the surface equally friendly, equally powerful and—oh yeah—half the cost? [HP]
The first pictures from the G.I. Joe movie (coming out next year) were just released and they give us the first small glimpse into the design of the characters. From the looks of Snake Eyes above, the filmmakers are going…
The first pictures from the G.I. Joe movie (coming out next year) were just released and they give us the first small glimpse into the design of the characters. From the looks of Snake Eyes above, the filmmakers are going for a Batman Begins, realistic gritty-cool look, rather than a Batman Forever trip-candy cartoon crap look.
And if you mention that this isn’t technically a gadget, then you didn’t blow up your G.I. Joe toys when you were a kid, or used them as eating utensils, or played with them as table tennis pads, or pretended to speak to them while your parents weren’t paying attention. Because that’s what every kid I knew did back in the day.
Remember last week’s post about the toy gramophone which records not onto a wax cylinder but instead onto a coffee cup? Make magazine’s Phil Torrone took a trip to Tokyo and visited the toymaker, Gakken. Here’s the video of the…
Remember last week’s post about the toy gramophone which records not onto a wax cylinder but instead onto a coffee cup? Make magazine’s Phil Torrone took a trip to Tokyo and visited the toymaker, Gakken. Here’s the video of the “Edison-Style Cup Phonograph Kit” in action.
And if you don’t care about a gadget which will record audio onto a plastic cup (in which case you might be reading the wrong blog) then watch it for the Gakken guy singing “Hey Jude”.
Thanks to Make you’ll no longer need to trawl Ebay to get one. The magazine’s online store is selling them for $35.
In honor of the upcoming 
Do you really need that light on to not trip over your coffee table and break your leg? Let’s find out, shall we? The Consumption Feedback Switch is a device that monitors your electricity usage. If it feels you’re within your light quota when you flip on the lights, you’ll see a small, harmless spark. But if you’ve been one of those dolphin-unsafe villains from Captain Planet, reading a few minutes too long at night, a gigantic stream of deadly electricity will mend your ways pending you not die.
For currently unknown reasons, several world wide web griefers decided to screw with epileptics last weekend by posting flashing and multicolored images in a support forum run by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation. About three percent of epileptics are photosensitive, which means that the flashing lights and colors can trigger migraines or seizures. Way to go, assholes.
Why, in the midst of a major Windows Home Server push, would HP 
I did it on both Vista and XP machines, and was happy to be able to check out my contents afterwards on the PCs and even on my Mac. (WHS only lets you see your backups via a tedious drive emulator, one that obviously doesn’t run on Macs.)
Even though the $299 version comes with just one fixed 500GB drive, it also has a bay so you can add another 3.5″ SATA drive. 
I powered down the unit, dropped in a 500GB on that I had lying around, and fired it up again. The LED went purple to show that it saw the drive but needed a format. I went to the Media Vault control center, picked the drive, formatted it (as a RAID 1 mirror of the first drive) and voila, in minutes, we were set and, on the unit itself, Drive 2’s LED had turned blue.
I haven’t done any HD video streaming or anything like that yet, but with a gigabit ethernet connection, I don’t think I’ll have a problem. In fact, though HP says that the Media Vault can’t do multiple simultaneous video streams like the WHS, I can’t really figure out what I, personally, would miss if I kissed the WHS goodbye and stuck with the Media Vault. Here’s how the comparison plays out:
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