We’d like to wish all of you a very Happy New Year! Celebrate the coming new year with friends, family, and loved ones! Most of all - have fun but be safe!!
As for us - we’ll be partying the night away somewhere in Beverly Hills tonight. Finally - thank you to all of you for making 2006 a wonderful year for Krunker. I wish you all the best for the coming new year!!
Felix and the staff at Krunker.com!
Yep.. I believe native New Yorkers will truly appreciate this item - it’s called the New York City “Walk/Don’t Walk” road tested chair and it’s designed by artist John Carter. Having been born and raised in NYC and now living in Los Angeles, I can truly say that I appreciate and even miss elements of that great city. The classic Walk/Don’t Walk signs are something truly unique in many ways to the Big Apple.
So yes - this chair is made of two NYC walk/don’t walk signs and YES - they work! The legs are made from reconfigured and customized steel street sign brackets with galvanized heavy duty self leveling feet. If you really miss the city, you can even configure the chair to come with “scuffs and stains” or.. you can just have it nice and clean. Be prepared to pay a pretty penny for this chair though - it costs a cool $3700 over at UncommonGoods.com.
[Check it out via GearLive]
Belkin Cable Free USB Hub Review
PC Magazine has posted what I believe is one of the first reviews of the new Belkin Cable-Free USB Hub which we mentioned earlier this month. The concept for the device is relatively straight forward. Make the hub connect to the PC over a wireless connection thereby eliminating the need to connect a wire to the PC at hand. All you’d need is a small USB dongle to communicate directly to the USB hub.
Unfortunately PC Mag gave it 2 stars out of five and provided the following verdict:
The Cable-Free USB Hub offers an interesting new technology, but $200 is a lot of money to replace a USB computer-to-hub cable, especially given the drop in performance I experienced.
It’s unfortunate the performance wasn’t better (and the price wasn’t lower). I was actually looking forward to this device once the price dropped somewhat. I really could use a break from some of the wires coming out of my systems here in the office.
We reported yesterday that the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) copy protection scheme found on HD DVD was broken by a hacker named “muslix64″ over at Doom9. As expected, many media and technology companies decided to investigate whether this truly was a case of AACS being cracked and if it was, whether it would be as damaging as DeCSS was to DVDs. After some investigative work, many are stating that AACS wasn’t really hacked or compromised. If anything was compromised, it was the Cyberlink PowerDVD application that “muslix64″ used.
According to Chris Lanier’s posting, the key (and problem) to “muslix64’s” backup software is that it needs the HD DVD’s title key in order to decrypt the movie. The title keys themselves are encrypted and are unique per movie. His software application didn’t actually have a way to get the title keys. Instead, muslix64 got the title keys by using PowerDVD to play back the HD DVDs and them performing a memory dump of the application software. PowerDVD leaves the title key unecrypted while in memory so as a result, muslix64 was able to get the title keys necessary to decrypt the movie.
So why is this not as severe as DeCSS was? Well first off - obtaining the title key isn’t a trivial task for the everday joe schmoe user. Secondly - even if a title key is compromised, it’s just one key unique to that movie. If a title key is found to be compromised, AACS has the ability to revoke these compromised keys. How does your HD DVD player get this list of compromised keys? Via future HD DVD releases! According to InternetNews.com, revocation information can be placed on future releases of HD DVD titles. Once the title is placed into a player for the first time, the player’s memory is updated with the new revocation information. The compromised HD DVD title will then no longer be playable.
Check out Chris Lanier’s blog entry and the InternetNews posting for additional info.
Digital Trends has published a review of the Nokia N93 clamshell mobile phone here on their website. The N93 is Nokia’s latest high end multimedia mobile phone featuring:
ok.. that’s enough I think when it comes to features. Seriously, this is one crazy Interne connected multimedia phone designed for the serious high end video bloggers out there. BUT.. what do the folks at Digital Trends think of the phone?
In many ways, the Nokia N93 is the first cell phone of the 21st century. It is likely that as the decade proceeds, there will be equally or even more extensively equipped cell phones that will be less bulky and less expensive. But until these phones appear, the Nokia N93 stands out as the best-equipped cell phone available.
OPPO DV-981HD 1080p Up-Converting Universal DVD Player
With more and more people getting HDTV sets, upgrades to other components become more important over time. In fact if you got yourself a new large screen 1080p display this Christmas, you’ll quickly realize that your 3 year old DVD player isn’t quite up to snuff these days. What used to be a sharp picture just doesn’t look quite as good on a 60 inch 1080p display. So what do you do for those old DVD movies? You get yourself an up converting DVD player of course!
One such option is the OPPO DV-981HD as reviewed by the folks at Consumer Electronics.NET here. The DV-981HD is billed as a universal DVD player capable of playing back all sorts of media including the following (from their website):
The real key to the DV-981HD of course is the up-scaling capabilities. It’ll take your 720 x 480 interlaced video and turn it into 480p/720p/1080i or 1080p video.Other features on the player include:
Here’s the verdict from Consumer Electronics.NET:
It delivers a sharp picture that’s well beyond what any DVD can deliver on its own, as well as vivid color and lifelike enhancement options, all for a bargain price of $230. It’s well worth it. Highly recommended. 8.8 out of 10 stars.
[Check it out via Gizmodo]
Creston introduces CEN-IDOC - 2 way iPod interface for Creston touchpanels
These Creston announcements just keep on coming don’t they! (Can you tell that CES is right around the corner?). The latest product from Creston is the CEN-IDOC - a 2 way iPod interface that replicates the iPod experience on any Creston touchpanel you might have in your home.
With the Creston CEN-IDOC in place, you’ll be able to replicate the iPod display right on any Creston touchpanel system except with a much larger screen! Since there’s a 2 way interface in place, you’ll be able to control and navigate the iPod just as if you were working directly with the music player.
Features on the Creston CEN-IDOC include:
Creston introduces new TPMC-8X WiFi TouchPanel Embedded Windows XP OS device
There’s something utterly cool about these new Creston touchpanels I tell you. Don’t they remind you of those Star Trek Next Generation display panels that would pop up on the Captain’s desk? Heh.. ok.. maybe I’m stretching things a bit.. but the new Creston TPMC-8X WiFi TouchPanel is definitely a very cool device since it’s basically an embedded PC system.
The Creston TPMC-8X features:
Think of the Creston TPMC-8X as small media center devices that can be littered around the house. From each touch panel, you can check the web, monitor your kids, look at streaming videos, check your email, listen to music, and much much more. Yup.. if I only had the money (and the space!) for such a device.
Walletex developing the Wallet MP3 player - the world’s thinnest MP3 player
Now here’s a pretty cool MP3 player idea - it’s called the Wallet MP3 and it’s currently being designed by Walletex - the same people who designed the Wallet Flash device (shown above) - a credit card sized flash drive.
The Wallet MP3 player is billed as the world’s slimmest MP3 player and builds on the innovations introduced with the Wallet Flash device. Features include:
The Wallet MP3 player is still under development by Walletex and is due out on the market by June of 2007 with USB 2.0 support. You can expect storage capacities ranging from 128MB to 2GB for the Wallet MP3.
I tried to find a picture of the device but nothing showed up on their website.. sooo I popped up an image of their Wallet Flash device instead (which should be pretty similar I would imagine).
The folks at PhoneScoop.com have published an extensive review of the new Cingular Sync smartphone (otherwise known as the Samsung a707 mobile phone).
The sync features:
You can get the Sync right now for $49.99 after a 2 year contract, an online discount and a $100 dollar mail in rebate.
Here’s the verdict from PhoneScoop:
The Sync represents a significant step forward for Cingular’s 3G line up, whether judging based on data speed, looks or performance. In addition to the how well it handles standard tasks, especially browsing, it also performs well on advanced 3G applications like streaming video. Sadly, it falls short on many tasks like music playback, photography and Java performance when compared to many 2G phones, let alone 3G ones.
Krunker.com logo designed by Lydia Chung. Based on the original design downloaded from WPThemes.Info. Krunker.com is a division of Krunker Media.
