Where the hell have you been?!

Ah, a good question.
Troubles with work have kept me busy for a few months but now it's all settling down in time for Christmas. Yay!


So what will I be up to over the Christmas period? Working. Christmas day and Boxing day off, back to work 27th, on holiday from the 28th and back at work from the 4th of January.
I still have a HUGE number of games I haven't played yet and even more that I haven't completed. First on the list of games to complete is of course Mario Galaxy. Then I have to start No More Heroes (which is actually a Christmas present hence why I'm not already playing it).


Busy, busy, busy.
That brings us to January's releases... The only two really worth mentioning are Rune Factory 2 and Smash Brothers Brawl, or 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズＸ in Japanese (dairantou smash brothers X) out January 3rd and 24th repectively.
Was I just going to let SBX come out and not get a good go on it? Hell no! I arranged for the day off work so I can spend it honing my skills and posting videos on youtube to make everyone want the game even more.


But let's enjoy Christmas first eh?

True and CHEAP global roaming

Cubic Telecom (Ireland) have announced the MAXroam SIM card which can be linked to up to 50 local numbers and so can be used anywhere in the world. The best part is that they claim to have negotiated the cheapest prices in any country you might find yourself. The handset that they are also pushing is both GSM and VoIP capable.

Sounds cheap but will it work in Japan?

Engadget

Media Center remote access upgrade

If you have a Media Center PC then you need WebGuide in your life. By linking to your MCPC via the internet WebGuide lets you programme your TV recordings and watch them back wherever you are. It was $18 dollars but now it's completely free...to MC users.

CEPro via Engadget

SILVIA, make us a coffee...

The days of robot maids are still far away, but every day we get closer. SILVIA is an "artificial intelligence platform", i.e. software-robot, created by Cognitive Code. The firm is working on adapting the software for many different devices, such as some high-end cell phones and PDAs. Engadget hopes for robots, but I think AI chat-lines will come first.

Engadget

Big Brother helps out

Not really the same as what we saw in the book/movie 1984, but a little more helpful. Sprint Nextel has said it will be offering Microsoft a user-locale based search program to make finding shops/etc locally easier. By using the location of the cell phone relative to nearby antenna it can give users more relavent results. Couple this with the use of voice recognition technology, where a person need only say "beer" to find a convenience store for example, and you're onto a winner. Probably.

This all depends on the area the user is in, so some places will be better than others. If they could also link this to navigation guide you be going that one step further.

REUTERS

Triops takes your picture

The Triops is certainly an interesting idea. To have three cameras 120 degrees apart so you can take some wonderful panorama shots when you're off on vacation...though it has yet to be released (if it ever will be).
It doesn't only take pictures when you push the shutter button though, it also responds to movement and sound. So you could leave it on in an old house and hope to catch some ghosts, get a 360-degree view of the living room while you and the wife/husband argue, or throw it at an annoying neighbor and capture the look on their face just before it hits.*
The Triops was a finalist in this year's BraunPrize.

* I cannot condone this kind of behaviour.

BraunPrize via Engadget

Wifi cell home

Sprint Nextel are releasing a wifi device called the Airave in order to boost the signal area of cell phones. How? By using customers' broadband internet connections and sending the calls over the internet. This will improve signal quality in homes because the signal doesn't have to travel through brick or concrete. It works for up to 3 handsets. They are also working on a model for businesses which would support more simultaneous calls.
The catch? $50 for the box and either $15 per person or $30 for the family package.

Perhaps this is what the subways should be looking into? Though you would need a compatible handset for it to work.
Yahoo via bbGadgets

Boosting US online digital music sales

As the number of CDs sold gets fewer and fewer, record companies are getting friendlier and friendlier with the idea of selling tracks by their artists online - and even giving them away.

For those living in the US and Canada, Spiralfrog launched on Monday September 17th and promises free downloads. The site is ad-supported and has a deal with the Universal Music Group, promising to pay them $4.4million this November.

Amazon is also apparently launching a music download site sometime soon.

This is all to compete with the iTunes service, which dominates the legal downloads at the moment.

Greener Britain

Well, this proposal will help towards that end at least. Monday saw a recommendation that the UK should aim for "carbon zero" and that all cars that use fossil fuels would become extinct by 2040.

Though the Liberal Democrats have not been in power in the UK in the last century, opposition parties should realise that it is not a problem that will go away and take notice.

BBC

Water-powered batteries

Weird Asian News reports these as "pee-powered" batteries, though I can't see anywhere on the packaging the sign saying you HAVE to pee in them. "To use you just have to put water in" it says. It's nice idea, but they're only intended for use in small radios and LED lights.
Another fantastic Japan-only item.

Weird Asian News via Coolest-gadgets

Ice Cream for the depressed

An excellent idea for cheering people up - an ice cream vendor that gives you a portion directly related to how sad you are! The sadder, the more ice cream you get.

So far there's no word on a release date or pricing for this but perhaps with these in an around Tokyo we'll be able to see some happier businesspeople.

WeMakeMoneyNotArt (E) via UberReview (E) via
Gizmodo Japan (J)

Bluestring pulls the strings together

AOL, owned by Time Warner, are testing a new site which gives you a set disc space and lets you bring all your photos, music and videos from a multitude of sites and keep them together.

To view the site and peoples media on there you would not need an account, though obviously to gather all your bits and pieces you would need a (free) account. AOL has confirmed in a roundabout why that it will not be compatible with Youtube to start with.

REUTERS

Interactive websearching

Think beyond what we have now and to those computer systems they use in the movies. A prime example would be the computer from the recent film "Sunshine" which understands spoken English and responds in kind. It's perfect for searching for information and refining searches as you go.
A similar system is the dream of Powerset, a company hoping to bring us the next generation of search engine.

By learning from what it reads, the program will be able to locate the desired information much more efficiently than a standard web search. At least that's the idea. Powerset have yet to release the finished version but the public can sign up to their website for more details.

REUTERS

Gaming death

After an apparent 3-day gaming session on the internet, a 30-year old man in Southern China collapsed and was declared dead at an internet cafe. The other customers in the cafe left soon after, shocked by what they'd seen.

CNN

Yahoo enter social-networking

Yahoo is currently testing out a new social-networking service titled "Mash" and is hoping to break into the scene currently dominated by Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and others.

Will they have something up their sleeve to beat their rivals is the real question.

REUTERS

Microsoft hit by EU ruling

Question: How many copies of Windows Vista can you buy for $689,900,000?
That's the fine that a European Commission slapped on Microsoft today for "anti-competitive conduct".

In brief:

Microsoft wouldn't release certain technical information about Windows, other companies had difficulties running it properly on their servers.

MS competitors felt it was unfair that the Windows operating system came with Windows Media Player. The EU court agreed and asked Microsoft to sell a version of Windows sans-WMP.

REUTERS

Non-stick chewing gum

No, there is no teflon in this chewing gum...as far as the company developing "Rev7" have told anyone.
In an effort to help keep the streets cleaner, Revolymer, a company born out of Bristol University in England, have been working on a chewing that will come off things easier. It's claimed the result won't stick to anything.
The polymers used for this have yet to be approved by EU health and safety, though if completed with no problems it's possible that the gum could hit the shelves in 2008.
The question everyone will be asking is "How does it taste?" and apparently it tastes very similar to the chewing gum currently available.

BBC

SNES-PC hybrid nightmare?

It's an interesting idea. Take a Super Nintendo, pull out the insides, slap in the workings of a PC...the put a SNES emulator on it...makes you wonder why eh?

Can't say that I wouldn't mind giving it a go myself, and there are enough secondhand consoles hanging around Akihabara. Just got to get onto translating the instructions...

Via Gizmodo Japan (Japanese) DIY SNES-PC (Japanese)

$100 Laptop...isn't

It was a nice price in theory. The One Laptop per Child Foundation admitted back in May that the "$100" XO would cost $176 a piece. This has now been raised to $188.

The XO runs on the LINUX operating system and uses an AMD processor.

If they ever sell these directly to the general public I for one would be interested in buying one.

Japan Pic of the Week

Yes, it does.

I've been trying to take this picture since I saw this on the train a few weeks ago.
This was taken on the Tsukuba Express (TX), one of Japan's newest trainlines, which opened in August 2005. It is the only trainline to and from Tsukuba (つくば市) in Ibaraki Prefecture, the scientific research capital of Kanto. It runs from there to Akihabara in a little as 38 minutes.
Just as the train pulled into Moriya (守谷) station the opportunity presented itself.

Super Mario Galaxy Japan Release Confirmed

Finally.

Wii owners (although it was technically a week or so before the launch date) that played Super Mario Galaxy at Nintendo World in November of 2006 and that read today's Famitsu rejoiced* when they saw Nintendo has confirmed the Japanese launch date as November 1st.

Happy days are indeed here again, or will be from November 1st.


* This assumption was based on my own feelings of exuberant bliss when I stumbled across the less-than-half-an-A4 page article this afternoon.

Japan launches lunar probe

4 years after the initial launch date, the Japanese Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) have finally got "Kaguya" off the ground and into space.
Designed to orbit the Moon and gather a variety of data about it, JAXA hopes it will help to shed new light on its origins.

BBC JAXA

Japan video game sales for August 27th - Septmeber 2nd

Let's have a look...

Hardware sales:

DS lite  101110 units
Wii       47639 units
PSP       21810 units
PS3       16816 units
PS2       15835 units
Xbox 360   2062 units
GBM         489 units
GBA SP      407 units
DS          138 units

Software sales:

DS      54.0%
PS2     20.8%
Wii     11.4%
PS3      7.5%
PSP      4.5%
Xbox 360 1.0%
Other    0.7%

Famitsu (graph on the left is software, graph on the right is hardware)

Robot maids soon-ish

The aging population of Japan is a big problem. The Government is having to deal with both the falling birthrate and the increase on retirees. Without the future taxpayers how can they deal with all the elderly drawing pensions? A very difficult problem to deal with, as is finding a workforce to replace those people retiring.
Step in the robot maids. They clean at night - no overtime or extra pay. They don't ask questions, or complain, or take sick days (not that Japanese workers do anyway). They also don't get paid - and don't pay tax. Currently in use at Fuji Heavy Industries, and of course being researched by more companies than I care to name.

Reuters

UK game sales up 46%

First I should say: nothing to do with me. My money goes to the Japanese video games market.

Sales of video games in the US were up 46% this August compared to last year. Recently, Sony cut the price of the P$3 but $100 to "just" $500, and Microsoft cut the Xbox 360 by $50 to $350. This saw sales fo the 360 up 63%...but sales of the P$3 down 18%. Sales of the Wii were down 5% from July but were still the same as the P$3 and the 360 combined.

Reuters

Growing AIs

In the real world we learn by interacting with objects, people and the environment around us, so why not let Artifical Intelligence learn from interacting with a simulation of the real world?
A US firm called Novamente has developed software that does just this, but only for virtual pets at the moment. They're confident that there'll be a market for intelligent pets in life-simulation games like Second Life.

Transferring your Aibo's personality to and from Second Life anyone?

BBC

New Kohjinsha SA series

I love Kohjinsha (工人舎), I really do. They make some really cool mini-laptops like the SH6KP10A which I paid ￥119'800 for at the end of July. 2 weeks later they released a version identical except for swapping out the 100GB HDD for a 32GB SSD and the price tag went up by ￥80'000.
Then they released a version with a faster processor and 120GB HDD. ￥129'800.
Now they've updated the older SA series (which uses XP rather than Vista) with a touch screen, faster processor and 120GB HDD for only ￥109'800.
Are they going to realise it's getting too difficult for consumers to choose? Why not just have a customisable laptop like DELL/etc. will make you?

Kohjinsha Official Site (Japanese)

Google Moon

It was bound to be suggested by someone. Google and X-Prize have announced a $20million prize for the firm that lands a rover on the Moon, drives it around a bit, takes some video and a couple of nice pics.

There's a bonus if they can get to the Apollo lander, and if they can survive the Lunar night.

Time to start strapping your off-road RC cars to rockets boys.

BBC

iPhone i(partial)Refund

Steve Jobs (great name) announced that people that paid $599 for their iPhones will be getting $100 store credit to spend at any Apple store.
Apple received hundreds of complaints after Apple cut the price of their 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399. Another case of the early bird that catches the worm gets burnt unfortunately.

I wonder if they sell stuffed Steve Jobs toys in Apple shops...

CNN

Sony actually sells some PSP (games)

It took the release of Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core to do it but they may yet catch up to Nintendo's DS sales...

Famitsu has some good pics taken around Yodabashi Camera's Shinjuku Nishiguchi Honten in Tokyo. Hardly the queues we saw for the Wii or the PS3's release but not bad none the less (this is only a game remember).

The launch of the remodelled PSP is next week, and it'll be interesting to see the queues. I'll be watching avidly from the comfort of my sofa, wondering how many of the people queuing overnight will actually be Japanese...

Great use of Alka-seltzer

Why use it to get rid your hangover when you can use it to study the behaviour of spherical water globules in micro-gravity?



I'm looking forward to the experiments involving beer...I personnally would LOVE to see what happens to the bubbles when there's no gravity to escape from.

Suckered in...finally

Hardly breaking news.

I joined Facebook.

Now people I've happily avoided for years can pretend they like me from afar.
I can hardly wait.

Atom art shines

IBM immortallised themselves more than a decade ago by writing their company logo in atoms. Now, 17 years later, to demonstrate their latest printing technique they've created a copy of Robert Fludd's Sun using 20'000 gold particles.

The smallest counterfeit reproduction ever? At 0.00000006 metres (60nm) in diameter, I think so.
There's no price tag for this image yet, though I highly doubt that IBM would sell it anyway.

BBC News

Welcome to K-News!

In case you're wondering, the K stands for Kryss, i.e. me.

I'll be bringing you some interesting news stories about whatever tickles my fancy. Feel free to comment on whatever you like.