Set Top boxes have a big limitation in that you get Pigeon Holed into one device such as AppleTV or the forthcoming NetFlix unit, but the Myka could change the landscape forever. The Myka is a BitTorrent device which will work with anything the web has to offer and can download/play MPEG2, H.264, WMV and DivX media.
As Wired reports, the Myka is userfriendly because it takes the nerd out of the BitTorrent process. The Myka is intelligent enough to provide content (legal or otherwise) from a Peer2Peer network without all the advanced skills often required to pull off a BitTorrent download. The Linux based box is a simple connection to the TV via HDMI, composite (ouch), S-Video or SPDIF and connects to the internet via eithernet or WiFi. The Myka comes with a variety of internal hard drive configurations (80, 160 or 500GB) and includes an external USB port for additional storage or future connectivity / peripheral options.
“There’s no way the content providers will allow this pirate box on the market, right? Wrong. Myka already has the official BitTorrent service on board, which means it will carry legitimate content from 20th Century Fox, MTV, Warner and Playboy, amongst others.”
Wired posted a full interview with Myka’s president Dan Lovy, so if you’d like to learn more about the Myka set top box which will rule them all, jump.
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..or at least a professional sounding podcaster. I’ve considering doing the podcasting, but I want to build up my reader subscription a bit more. The Alesis USB podcasting kit doesn’t care who you are, it’ll work on Mac or PC computers. The kit is designed for the novice user with features an advanced technical geek would enjoy.
Stream from 16 bit, 44.1-48kHz directly from your computer and use the high-quality headphones for monitoring your session. The USB podcasting microphone makes it a snap to get connected and get going.
One of the best applications for this type of product, other than being self-absorbed and loving the sound of your voice on the net, would be setting up a portable studio for trade-show interviews with customers, clients and critics. With the ease of setup from the Alesis system, your booth could have a podcasting station for in depth interviews, tutorials on products or guest speakers you could immediately deliver to the world via podcasting and the internet. After all, the classic 10×20 booth with some posters and fliers is so old-school.
The Alesis USB podcasting kit is priced at just $99 bucks. A drop in the bucket for anyone reading this post.
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It’s not often you hear “vertical” and “keyboard” in the same sentence so I jumped on this article when I heard Kensington re-styled their C170 keyboard to include a vertical mounted USB port.
So now that I’ve settled the vertical+keyboard question, the next is why? Look at the picture, then make the jump.
Accordian USB drive, are you kidding me? This is nothing more than silicone wrapped around a USB adapter port. Sure you could slap some marketing gargon on there, like accordion USB drive, but we’ll all see past it.
None the less, I didn’t think of it so kudos to Jacek Ryn for such an idea. You can see his little gadget trap at Poland’s Fine Arts in Gdansk.
The concept is fairly simple and straight forward. Put a USB port and memory device into an accordion shaped silicone casing and call it something new.
Sorry, but this stuff kills me.Source:Â Core77.
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I’ve written about USB albums many times before and even a microSD music disk from Ricky Martin, but I thought he was going out on a limb. Apparently not.
SanDisk just announced a sponsorship in association with the Billboard Latin Music Conference and Awards from April 6-10 in Hollywood, Florida. I guess the sponsorship is a reflection on SanDisk’s marketing campaign to “Wake Up Your Phone” by providing pre-loaded entertainment on microSD cards. “Wake Up Your Phone” is focused on informing mobile phone users how they can capture their experiences and take their music with them by expanding the storage capacity of their mobile phones – or between the lines – “hey consumers, don’t forget to stuff your memory slot with a microSD card for $30.”
The Billboard Latin Music Conference will also offer attendees the ability to download additional multimedia entertainment to the microSD cards, such as photos and video, in the attempt to show there is more to do that just microSD music cards.
“This year’s Billboard Latin Music Conference is all about exploring the new way of doing business, so it is extremely fitting that SanDisk Corporation is an in association sponsor of the event,” said Leila Cobo, Billboard’s Executive Director of Content & Programming for Latin Music & Entertainment. “From ringtones to video, understanding and utilizing mobile technology is crucial for any artist or company that wants to succeed in the Latin music business, and we’re thrilled that SanDisk will be giving our attendees the opportunity to experience the true power of mobile entertainment through its microSD cards.”
The typical UFD sticking out of your laptop is probably nothing more than fancy shaped plastic, or possibly wood or even gold ($6,000). Today we look at the softer, fuzzier side of UFDs. Paul from Technabob uncovered these fuzzy little USB critters, created by a design artist Nifer Fahrion.
Nifer Fahrion has two version of her fuzzy USBs. The one above is called Maggie the Maggot and the one below is named Gizzy the Data Worm. I’d opt for Gizzy if I had to choose.
Honestly, I think these fuzzy guys are an example of what some kids could do on a rain day to kill some time. Grab some material, glue and let the imagination run wild. I’m tempted to try this myself and turn it into a USB tutorial, but I don’t think anyone would care or try.
SO, with that being said – if I’m off base and you digg this kinda stuff, hop on over to Technabob’s post or Nifer’s site and get ready to drop your $66 on a 4GB original.
Source: Technabob.
As an after-thought, if you are looking for another home-project, how about turning a Pez dispensor into something interesting.
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MSN has this exclusive i-Buddy design for their instant message customers. The idea is providing a visual message when a new instant message arrives. Akihabara reports the i-Buddy will perform various motions when an new instant message arrives which corresponds to the emotion of the sender. Not sure how that works, but…
The i-Buddy connects via USB port and cable and stands about 3″ tall. I’m not clear about the details, but it seems you must be apart of the i-Buddy community to use the i-Buddy USB figure. All features provided by the i-Buddy Community are free of charge, exclusively to those members. i-Buddy customers can login to express themselves through the innovative functions designed it.
Don’t get too excited for this IM buddy, as Japan will be the first to try it, before the i-Buddy community rolls out to other countries.
All major browsers are supported by i-Buddy.com, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/7, Mozilla Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9. However, to ensure maximum compatibility, we recommend users to use either Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 2.0+. Flash player is required to browse certain parts of i-Buddy.com
Source:Â Akihabara News.
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Luigi had some of his clan review the BFG 9800 GTX Video Card over at i4u gadgets and I wanted to pass along their findings:
The BFG 9800 GTX runs on the NVIDIA 9800 GTX GPU. The core clock of the card runs at 675 MHz, the shader clock is 1688 MHz and the memory clock is 2200 MHz. the card has a 256-bit memory interface and a memory bandwidth of 70.4GB/sec. the BFG 9800 GTX has 128 stream processors. The card features 512MB of GDDR3 RAM and the card is PCI Express 2.0 compliant. Other features include HDMI capable with adapter and HDCP capable for protected HD content. Read the entire review:
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AVerTV Hybrid Volar MAX is a long name to describe the multitude of functions the USB TV tuner does. The USB based TV tuner stick has the ability to receive HDTV, Analog TV and FM radio on any Windows XP or Vista computer or laptop.
Unless you need specific subscription channels, you no longer have to put up with cable or satellite costs to get the High Definition TV everyone is craving for. The AverTV Hybrid Volar MAX does it all. For video quality, playback and speed consider this:
“The AVer MeidaCenter provides users more joy from Clear QAM digital cable TV. Advanced real-time H.264 recording compression significantly reduces CPU loading and the amount of hard disk space needed for recording. The optional 320×240 resolution enables users to save and playback video on an iPod.”
Don’t hold doubt either, the AVerTV Hybrid Volar MAX can truly present the details of HDTV in 720p/1080i resolution. With an exclusive Vista MCE Video Gaming Plug-in, the AverTV Hybrid Volar MAX resolves the
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The Sharper Image does seem to come out with some cool stuff. Example, they announced a laser beam music system powered by USB. The music system is shaped like a big “W” with laser beams spanning each post. Using your fingers or hands, breaking the laser beams produces pre-authored sounds.
Although it appears simplistic with only 6 laser strings, the pre-authored pulses allow you to play pulses, streams, riffs and loops from a variety of instrument selections. Configure the laser beam music system to play strings, keyboards, winds and percussion instruments.
The laser beam music system from Sharper Image includes 30 original songs in 19 different music genres. Genres include Jazz, bluegrass, classical, hip-hop, reggae, heavy metal and more.
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Press Release: Philips Launches New USB Smart Key for Dictation Product Line.
Philips is the first company to offer such a tool, which replaces current dongles and older security codes that had to be manually typed in. The USB Smart Key is now packaged with Philips SpeechExec Pro Dictate and Philips SpeechExec Pro Transcribe, as well as Transcribe software packages.
The USB Smart Key can simply be inserted into a USB port and the software will automatically access the license stored on the key. The license can then be easily transferred to a computer with the touch of a download button and, after download is complete, the key is no longer needed for licensing and users can work on that computer without having to keep and carry a dongle. If a user wishes to work with the dictation software on an office computer as well as a computer at home, the USB Smart Key allows him or her to switch from one computer to another without having to purchase a second license.
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It’s been said for a while now that WiiWare was expecting Karaoke ability under a software program called Joysound. It appears this is finally coming to fruition. The Joysound Karaoke program has some ambitious plans with over 20,000 title by it’s release in mid summer with an additional 1,000 songs added each month.
“Although it’s being referred to as a WiiWare title, Joysound is a bit different from the rest of the WiiWare lineup. Users download the Joysound program from a server that’s being exclusively set up for it. This server will also house the songs for downloading.
Hudson is currently considering a billing system based not on a per song rate, but on a subscription rate. Users will presumably be able to download as much as they want over a set period of time.”
As previously mentioned the Karaoke Joysound will be available in two packages. You can either download the software to run Karaoke but you’ll need to have your own USB microphone. Or a bundled package will be available which includes the software along with USB microphone. There are even talks about including
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SanDisk just announced a sponsorship in association with the Billboard Latin Music Conference and Awards from April 6-10 in Hollywood, Florida. I guess the sponsorship is a reflection on SanDisk’s marketing campaign to “Wake Up Your Phone” by providing pre-loaded entertainment on microSD cards. “Wake Up Your Phone” is focused on informing mobile phone users how they can capture their experiences and take their music with them by expanding the storage capacity of their mobile phones – or between the lines – “hey consumers, don’t forget to stuff your memory slot with a microSD card for $30.”
The Billboard Latin Music Conference will also offer attendees the ability to download additional multimedia entertainment to the microSD cards, such as photos and video, in the attempt to show there is more to do that just microSD music cards.
MSN has this exclusive i-Buddy design for their instant message customers. The idea is providing a visual message when a new instant message arrives. Akihabara reports the i-Buddy will perform various motions when an new instant message arrives which corresponds to the emotion of the sender. Not sure how that works, but…
The i-Buddy connects via USB port and cable and stands about 3″ tall. I’m not clear about the details, but it seems you must be apart of the i-Buddy community to use the i-Buddy USB figure. All features provided by the i-Buddy Community are free of charge, exclusively to those members. i-Buddy customers can login to express themselves through the innovative functions designed it.
Don’t get too excited for this IM buddy, as Japan will be the first to try it, before the i-Buddy community rolls out to other countries.
All major browsers are supported by i-Buddy.com, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/7, Mozilla Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9. However, to ensure maximum compatibility, we recommend users to use either Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 2.0+. Flash player is required to browse certain parts of i-Buddy.com
Source:Â 
