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New Hot Wheels Toy Is Basically a Flip Camera With Wheels

hot wheels camera.jpg

During our tour of the Mattel booth at this year’s Toy Fair, the company repeatedly hammered home the point that it’s looking for creative new ways to sell its Hot Wheels line to older folks–those who grew up on the toys–including a new Funny or Die video starring Jeremy "Mercury Poisoning" Piven. 
The new Video Racer line is hands-down the coolest innovation for the brand. These standard Hot Wheels-sized vehicles have a built-in video came on their hood and an LCD on the bottom. They’re really tiny Flip Cameras with wheels. Set them on a track and they’re shoot up to 12 minutes of video footage at a 1:64 scale.
They charge and sync via USB and ship with simple video editing software, so you can make your own highlight real. The cars will be out this fall for $60.

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Boeing Unveils the 747-8I, Now the World's Largest Commercial Airliner

Boeing 747-8I

If you thought the Airbus A380 was huge, you were right up until yesterday, when Boeing unveiled the brand new 747-8 Intercontinental, a near-supersonic massive commercial airliner that can fly at speeds of up to Mach 0.98, or 7 knots shy of breaking the sound barrier. Boeing has had the 747-8 in tests for months (with a freighter version of the aircraft already logged 1700 hours of flight time,) and in design for years, with the project running in parallel to the 787 Dreamliner project, both of which represent the next generation of Boeing's airline fleet. 
The 747-8 is a wide-body airliner that, when completed, will be able to carry close to 500 passengers on-board There are already two airlines with orders in for the 747-8, including Lufthansa and Korean Air.
[via Wired]

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Rumor: Dell might buy AMD

AMD shares were up 5% yesterday based on a rumor that the company could be up for sale, according to ZDnet. The possibility that AMD would be available for purchase, and that Dell may be the company to make the acquisition, was started by Barrow’s, who said,

I would say the…

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Next version of Android will combine Gingerbread and Honeycomb, arrive on a six-month cycle

Eric Schmidt didn’t give a ton of details about the future of Android during his MWC 2011 keynote, but he did drop one interesting tidbit: the next version of Android will “start with an I, be named after a dessert” and combine Gingerbread for phones and Honeycomb for tablets into a cohesive whole. We’ll just go out on a limb and say that he’s talking about Ice Cream, and that we’ll see that Fragments UI construct used to bridge the phone / tablet display size gap. Unfortunately, Eric didn’t say anything about timing — just that updates have been happening on a “six month cycle.” Considering that Honeycomb has yet to officially launch on any devices, we’d say that’s not so long to wait — but of course we’re also dying to know more as soon as possible. We’ll let you know if we hear anything good.

Next version of Android will combine Gingerbread and Honeycomb, arrive on a six-month cycle originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google demos Android Movie Studio for Honeycomb

Google won’t let anyone take pictures during its MWC 2011 keynote, so you’ll just have to trust us when we say Eric Schmidt just demoed a new video editing application called Movie Studio for Honeycomb tablets. The app was built from the ground up for tablet devices, and it features everything you’d expect: a timeline-style editor, picture effects, soundtrack and audio support, and of course, HD support with uploads to YouTube. Unfortunately we don’t know much else about it, but we’ll be digging for more details, so stay tuned.

Update: We snuck a picture! You can see the timeline and the playback controls — it looks really nice, don’t you think?

Google demos Android Movie Studio for Honeycomb originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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See the new Windows Phone 7 features in motion (video)

See the new Windows Phone 7 features in motion (video)

Sure, you clung to every word we typed yesterday at Steve Ballmer’s MWC keynote, where a suite of new Windows Phone 7 features were announced. But sometimes seeing is believing, sometimes a picture is worth 1,000 words, and sometimes just watching a video is simply more fun. Microsoft has you covered, revealing a number of clips detailing the new Kinect “experience,” multitasking, and IE9. They’re all embedded below, so click on through, won’t you?

Continue reading See the new Windows Phone 7 features in motion (video)

See the new Windows Phone 7 features in motion (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Coca-Cola Secret Recipe Outed – Report

cola_recipe.jpg

Coca-Cola’s recipe is said to be one of the best kept secrets in all the world (particularly now that we all apparently know what goes into a bucket of KFC)–you know, the one that only two people in the world know, so they’re not allowed to fly on the same plane, because if it were to crash, we’d be plunged into an age of Coke-free darkness.

Oh, and also, there are armed guards who stand outside a vault holding the secret recipe all day, every day. So we hear.

Now the secret has apparently been blown by the folks at Public Radio International’s This American Life. Yep, Ira Glass and his bespectacled minions have blown the lid off of this sucker. That’s actually the recipe above. There’s also a PDF on This American Life’s site.
Coke, for its part isn't comment directly on the discover. Instead, the company is saying things like, 

The ingredients used in our beverages are listed on the product labels and many people have tried over time to crack the secret formula of Coca-Cola. That secret combination of ingredients holds a special place in the history and mythology of Coca-Cola -something we continue to celebrate as we mark our 125th anniversary this year.

Among the ingredients are: alcohol, orange oil, lemon oil, nutmeg oil, and cinnamon.

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Unstoppable: the first Blu-ray film with Android-compatible Digital Copy

It’s a little shocking that it’s taken this long to get a Digital Copy that’s compatible with Android, but clearly it’s the week of shackles being broken. Just yesterday, Qualcomm announced that all future Snapdragon devices would be cleared for Netflix streaming, and now Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is announcing that its impending Unstoppable launch will allow Android users to watch the flick on the go. By enabling the transfer through BD Live, it marks the first time that this has been possible with Google’s mobile OS, though it should be noted that consumers will need the disc itself, a WiFi-connected BD player, Android 1.6 or higher and the free PocketBLU app to make the magic happen. Both the movie and app can be downloaded starting today, but here’s the real question: are you willing to invest in a movie just to experience Digital Copy… on Android?

Continue reading Unstoppable: the first Blu-ray film with Android-compatible Digital Copy

Unstoppable: the first Blu-ray film with Android-compatible Digital Copy originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!)

Boy oh boy, HTC is entering the tablet arena with quite a bang. The company has just taken the wraps off its brand new 7-inch Flyer Android tablet, which touts a 1.5GHz single-core CPU, 1GB of RAM plus 32GB of flash storage, an aluminum unibody construction, 1024 x 600 resolution, a tablet-optimized version of Sense, and… what’s this, a pressure-sensitive stylus! The HTC Scribe trademark we saw floating around in legal waters turned out not to be the branding for a tablet, it’s actually the name HTC gives to the technology enabling what it calls a “groundbreaking pen experience.” Other details include a 5 megapixel camera on the back paired with a 1.3 megapixel imager up front, a 4000mAh battery rated to last for four hours of continuous video playback, and memory expandability via a microSD card.

The Flyer will ship in Q2 2011 with Android Gingerbread 2.4 on board. HTC says it’ll be indistinguishable from 2.3 as far the end user is concerned, though we all know it won’t be quite as good as the 3.0 stuff. We’re told not to worry, however, since the new version of Sense being introduced with the Flyer will be the focal point of the company’s software offering. As far as HTC is concerned, Sense matters more than the underlying platform, and the reason Honeycomb isn’t the shipping OS here was explicitly stated as HTC not having enough time with the latest Google code to customize it to the full requirements of Sense. Guess that settles that.

There are a couple more software enhancements, both marking the introduction of the fruits of HTC’s recent deals: OnLive cloud gaming will be coming with the Flyer in the form of an app you open up to access the web-connected bored-relieving service, while that Saffron Digital acquisition has turned into an HTC Watch app for movie streaming and downloading.

We spent a bit of quality time with a Flyer unit recently, although we weren’t allowed to turn it on, and our early impressions are rather mixed. On the one hand, we do appreciate the ruggedness and durability that’s afforded by the one-piece aluminum shell, but on the other, the Flyer is quite the chunky beast in your hands. We’d imagine strapping in such an extra-speedy processor is the main culprit for its extra girth, though the Flyer is, ironically enough, not terribly light either. We found it heavier and generally a lot less polished from a design perspective than Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. Anyhow, HTC should have functional units for us immediately following its MWC presser this morning, and we’ll be delving in deeper with this super-specced device. Hang tight!

Update: Pictures of the Flyer can now be explored below and we have video awaiting your audience just past the break.

Update 2: Even more video!

Continue reading HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!)

HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 05:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A STD Love Story: Gonorrhea Takes a Piece of Human DNA Forever [Science]

In the first instance of gene transfer between a human host and bacteria, Gonorrhea was recently discovered to have a human DNA fragment. What the..how the..huh? Supposedly, it’s a relatively recent evolutionary event and scientists have no idea what it means. And though it’s a pseudo love story between star crossed lovers, I’m actually scaring myself as I read more into it. Scientists say: More »







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CSI: Internet

ShamusI’m aware of the whole CSI TV show craze, and the meme that sprouted up around it. I actually watched an episode of the show back when I was writing about the CSI-joke quest in World of Warcraft, just so I was familiar with the material being satirized.

However, even the WoW quest wasn’t as stupid as this:


Link (YouTube)

I realize that certain compromises are made for dramatic effect, but the very idea of examining the reflection in a person’s eye, in a photograph taken from an overhead angle, on a security camera… sigh. It would have been less immersion-breaking if they just resorted to elven magic to find the killer.


Link (YouTube)

So, a couple of detectives are surfing the internet on their mouse-less large-screen TV, when one of them realizes the website they’re looking at is being updated live. They decide they need the IP for this website. Or for someone who is updating the website. I’m not sure they know themselves. And then one of them says, “I’ll make a GUI interface using Visual Basic, see if i can track an IP Address out of this.”

Here is a cool project:

Try to list everything wrong with that conversation. It’s hard. Josh and I worked on it for a minute or two, and we were still coming up with new, ridiculous things to point out. There is so much wrongness packed in here it’s actually sort of daunting.

Of course, if she was really doing what she said she was doing, it would look like this:


Link (YouTube)

Hello? CSI? Yes, I’d like to report a crime. You see, apparently someone is stealing money from CBS. I don’t know what they look like, but I know they’re posing as a writer on a procedural crime drama. They’re writing hilarious gibberish and then making off with a paycheck at the end of the week. Catch them? No! I don’t want you to catch them. I want you to put me in contact with them. I’ve been writing stuff that’s coherent for a few years now, and I have to say it’s a lot more work and way less profitable. If you could hook me up with a job writing asspull fiction, I would really appreciate it.