Joel Johnson

Lobster Catching Arcade Game

Gavin Anderson snapped this picture of the "Sub Marine Catcher," a traditional claw game that replaces the moldy stuffed animals with adorable clacking lobsters. Snuggle up with a crustacean tonight!

There should be a bonus token that you can capture that, upon removal from the tank, causes the entire contraption to heat to boiling and spits out bibs and cups of melted butter.

Marine Catcher or the claws of Death! [Flickr via Serious Eats via Eat Geek]

Joel Johnson

Creative Vado Pocket Video Cam just like the Flip Video Ultra, but pinker

Creative continues to transform into the niche electronics vendor it has always — despite proclamations otherwise — strived to be. It's announced the "Vado Pocket Video Cam," a $100 just-press-the-button-dummy VGA camcorder unmistakably designed to take a healthy 2-4% chunk of the Flip Video Ultra's share of the cheap YouTube camera market.

The Vado is available in silver or hot pink, has a removable, rechargeable battery (that's nice, and additional batteries are just $15), and can copy movies from its non-expandable 2GB of RAM over the flip-out USB connector.

Press Release [PR Newswire]
Product Page [US.Creative.com]

Previously • Creative Stops Hacker from Improving Their Product [BBG]

John Brownlee

Gallery of Grand Theft Auto 4 / New York City comparison shots

Sightseeing in Liberty City is a fantastic Flickr gallery dedicated to contrasting locations from Grand Theft Auto 4 with their real-world NYC counterparts. The bottom image, for example, is a comparison between Brooklyn's Paramount Theater and Liberty City's Canyon Theater. I must buy this game already... damn German censorship laws.

Sightseeing in Liberty City [Flickr]

John Brownlee

Place your toddler upon a robot mount

The Ringbo rideable robot is a tiny positronic mount for your toddler, controlled with a pair of ear-like joysticks, and though I would have loved this as a kid, my adult incarnation is disappointed: at first blush, I thought the Ringobo was a rideable robot potty-training toilet, and only lamented the absence of side-mounted cannons hooked up to the tank.

RINGBO Riding Robot [Korea Trade Show New York]

Joel Johnson

Demolition derby with farm combines

Each year the town of Lind, Washington, holds a demolition derby — with combines. I must attend this.

2007 Derby Gallery [Lindwa.com via Go Sleep Go via Oh Gizmo

John Brownlee

Conceptual bicycle tree lifts your bike to safety

A conceptual bike tree for cities with both a lot of bikes and a lot of bike crooks. Amsterdam, I'm looking at you: there is something seriously out of whack when a city's entire bicycle economy is based upon buying your bike back from the same brown-toothed junkie two to three times a month with the same nonchalance as a transaction with your local green grocer.

The concept's somewhat solid: the tree reduces bike rack clutter and lifts your bicycle above the bolt cutters of roaming thieves. It's certainly an attractive way to store bikes. Security is a finger print scanner, which may be a design flaw: after all, those bolt cutters can just as easily be used against your waggling digits as your bike lock.

Bicycle Tree [Coroflot via Gizmodo]

John Brownlee

Sternreiter alarm clocks will wake (or make) the dead

Many alarm clocks have come out in the past few years, trying to get you from hitting the snooze button by requiring you to perform some act of groggy, post-oneiric dexterity (like hitting a target with a laser beam) or a teeth-grating act of pseudo-robotic annoyance (like an alarm clock that rolls off the table and goes rushing around the room, squealing).

Still, why accomplish with circuitry what you can accomplish with ear drum bursting sound? The $49.95 Sternreiter Twin-Bell alarm clock ring at a volume of over 86db. There is no snooze. You either wake up, turn it off, then vomit out your heart, or your friends find you a week later, lying in a pillow puddle of your own gelatinized brains.

Sternreiter Twin-bell Mechanical Alarm Clocks [Alarm Clocks Online via Retro Thing]

Rob Beschizza

First Mobile Internet Device to cost as much as four Eees, three iPhones, 55 peggles.

The handheld PC fail crusade just took Jerusalem! The first mobile internet device (MID) was announced to be more expensive than than the bloated, unusable ultramobile PCs for which this new class of gadget is supposed to be a cheaper, cleaner consumer replacement.

At $1,119 in Australian dollars, the M528 3G will shift at the equivalent of about $1,050 USD. UMPC Portal's updated its post already to soften the blow, reporting that it hopes it'll be only $750 when it comes to the U.S., but the rationale -- "It appears that we might have stirred the sales and marketing groups into a re-think" -- doesn't quite add up. While the point that Aussies and Europeans just get screwed on consumer electronics is true, they're putting this thing out to bat in a pricing league way over what's expected for something supposed to occupy an intermediary spot between cell phones and subnotebooks/UMPCS. It's almost as if they've chickened out on the high-volume, thin-margin model that MID seems to imply, in favor of cashing in on the buzz by trying to sneakily rebrand UMPCs, devices with a reputation for overburdened hardware and wretched battery life.

We're supposed to be reasonable about these things, but by God, how can they keep cocking it up generation after generation? The lesson of the Eee, or, indeed, the iPhone, has simply not been learned: a handheld computer should be low-priced, with limited but productive functionality, not yet another dumb run at trying to get people to pay a grand for a bloatware-crippled shit trinket.

First Intel MID pre-order/pricing. Sit down before reading. [UMPC Portal]

Joel Johnson

Instant Action, the YouTube of 3D Gaming, coming to OS X soon

"Think about the amount of graphical horsepower in your bottom-end machine these days — it's totally suitable for delivering a rich game experience," explains Mark Frohnmayer, co-founder of indie developer Garage Games. That's what they're counting on with "Instant Action," a web-based multiplayer gaming portal that offers casual gamers more than just simple puzzle games. Even lowly office computers, built to browse the web and munge a few spreadsheets, now have enough power to play 3D games — first-person shooters, racers, even flight simulators — that would have been state-of-the-art just a few years ago.

"I think Nintendo demonstrated very well that cutting-edge hardware wasn't required for delivering really awesome game experiences," Frohnmayer continues. And because Garage Games was founded to provide the inexpensive tools and support for indie developers — including the "Torque" game engine, built on work started when many of the Garage Games founders created Tribes 2 at the legendary but scuttled game company Dynamix — the company has a lot of experience squeezing good graphics out of "baseline" PC hardware.

But it's not the graphics which are most compelling about Instant Action; they are good enough to serve the gameplay, and that is that. Instead, Garage Games has built an entire social gaming platform, complete with friends lists, leaderboards (soon), simple team functions, and all the other accoutrements of a modern games delivery platform right inside the browser. If digital download services like Valve's Steam are the iTunes of the PC gaming world, then Instant Action could be the first YouTube. Players can ever cut-and-paste a simple hyperlink to be sent to their friends. Anyone who clicks the link won't just be taken to InstantAction.com; they'll be added automatically to the ongoing multiplayer match in which their friend is playing.

Unlike YouTube, however, Instant Action isn't a place to discover loads of user-generated or indie content...yet. Of the current games, all are funded in part by Garage Games. Specifics on each development deal varies, but General Manager Andy Yang explained that Garage Games is letting these hired guns retain the IP to their games, which is laudable. While the games currently available show polish — I've enjoyed quite a few sessions of the simple FPS sports shooter, Rokkitball — Yang acknowledged that the current Beta phase of Instant Action is in some ways measuring time, adding new features and stability, while waiting for the platform's first smash hit.

Like Fallen Empire: Legions, perhaps, the next game to be launched on Instant Action, currently in closed beta. A sort of "Tribes Lite," the first-person team combat game keeps the jetpacks and skiing (now "skating") from Dynamix's classic Tribes and Tribes 2, but leaves most of the tactical gameplay features behind in favor of quick matches. As a Tribes snob, I'll never be happy until someone creates a full-blown, triple-A update to my most beloved game of all time. Bearing that unhealthy bias in mind, I've found Legions to be an engaging way to wile away a few minutes here and there. It's certainly the most involved web-based game I've ever downloaded in a couple of minutes and played.

But when I'm at my Windows gaming rig, I could also be playing other PC games. It's when I'm on the road with my Mac — no Parallels or VMWare to be found — that I often wish I could kill a few minutes cursing at the inequities of hotel Wi-Fi as a cover for my poor aiming skills. Good news, then, that Instant Action should also be available on OS X in "four to six weeks," give or take. The Torque engine, which currently powers all the Instant Action games (although other engines can and will be supported), already runs on OS X. And most of the games available for the Windows version of Instant Action are almost ported to OS X. (Even though Instant Action is web-based, the engines still run as executables in the background; you can't make these sorts of 3D games with Javascript or Flash yet.)

Instant Action is currently in invite-queued beta, although more slots will be opening soon. Legions will be moving out of lockdown in the next few weeks. Like all Instant Action games so far, the basic games are free to play, with optional skins, widgets, avatars, and guaranteed server slots costing extra. (So far no gameplay affecting items are available for purchase in games and it sounds like Garage Games intends to keep it that way.)

John Brownlee

Power On Self Test: What The Bible Says About Flying Saucers

Image: LP Cover Lover

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• HDMI Cable – 15-foot HDMI cable for $6, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• 5.1 Speakers – JVC 650-watt 5.1-channel home theater system for $62, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Hard Drive – The new Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10k RPM drive for $296, shipped. Just barely a deal at all, but it's new and shiny. [Dealnews]

• Headphones – Today's Woot! is a two-pack of RCA Lightweight Behind the Neck Headphones for $7, shipped.

Rob Beschizza

From rendering to reality: Asus's desktop Eee PC

Spot the difference! Granted, it's not the most flattering of photographs. But the journey from Maya to the material plane is clearly one of compromise. Engadget puts it bluntly: The Eee desktop looks "noticeably worse than the concept preceding it."

The Eee Box, as it shall be known, is still prettier than the smaller Dells and HPs. At 2.2 pounds, it has Intel's Atom CPU, a gig of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. It'll run Linux, and, if they want to sell any of them, be a lot cheaper than the Mac Mini.

ASUS Eee Box B202 desktop gets pictured: we like the concept better [Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Multitouch Missile Command

Steve Mason's implementation of Atari's classic game runs on an 8x4' display and allows one to basketfuls of warheads at a time.

I wrote a Missile Command clone for the multi-touch wall at Obscura Digital. Just like the original, except you can fire by touching the wall with your fingers. Save the Golden Gate Bridge from ICBMs. Fun for the whole family!

It's incredible to watch, making the already-frenetic original look like a cakewalk. Missile Command meets bullet hell:

randomWarGamesQuotation();

Missile Command[Steve Mason via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Hardbox drive enclosure is hard, not really much like a book

It starts with a good, if precious, idea: wouldn't it be cool if we made an external hard drive that looked like a classic hardcover book?

The idea is greenlit by the powers that be, and begins its journey through the colon of product development. One by one, committees, jobsworths and other executive polyps strip it of moisture and add in "must have" features like giant, blinking LED lights, until we get to the end result:

It's like those plastic kitchens they sell to little girls. Someone should buy a bulk lot of hard drive enclosures and orphaned Britannica Great Books, find a very sharp knife, and get cutting. Restore the sense of wonder!

Product Page [Hardbox via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Shocker: TV news hacks want you to spend your rebate check on televisions

WTAE, the ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh, just ran a story about people spending rebate cheques on televisions. It went from stern to drooling at record speed, with the "reporter" noting that for only a hundred dollars extra over the base model, one can "invest" in the 42" Visio model!

There are certain marketing-like words that we sometimes allow to creep into coverage--companies may unveil gadgets, boast of new features, or sport cheap crimson lipstick--but this one is just a beauty. Invest!