We got an exclusive scoop on Nintendo’s newest handheld right here!.

[Wired]

]]> http://edmodo.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/philippine-presidential-security-group-loves-payongs-eh/feed/ 0 edmodo http://edmodo.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/acer-predator-hunts-for-prey-asks-where-are-the-aliens/ http://edmodo.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/acer-predator-hunts-for-prey-asks-where-are-the-aliens/#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:47:43 +0000 edmodo http://edmodo.wordpress.com/?p=60 ]]>
Right now, I’m still very much in awe with my encounter with the Acer Apire G7700, better known as the Predator. Up close, it looks like a cross between a Lamborghini Reventon and a Decepticon Transformer. It also looks like a gigantic armor-plated insect; encased within the exoskeleton is a menacing organic entity. The paint job looks like it came from a sports car as well.   As gaming PCs go, the casing isn’t obscenely huge. The Predator’s size is quite near that of a Mac Pro (blasphemy!), although it’s a bit more wider.

I was expecting the front lid to have some sort of hydraulic assist, but I found out that the lid had to be manually lifted to expose the optical drives, multi-card reader, and hard drive cage door. The all-black front fascia is lined with vertical ridges, giving the impression that it’s one giant heatsink panel. The lid nicely fits on top to form a canopy. The two optical drives are hidden beneath a double mandible-like mechanism which open up sideways when you eject a disc. A little down below is the HDD grille door which emits a blue glow. It opens up to reveal the multiple hard drive bays. It all looks normal from the back with the usual cluster of ports. It comes with a color-matched 24-inch Acer G24 LCD monitor. Too bad the included Logitech G11 keyboard and G5 gaming mouse don’t come in metallic orange. The Predator that you see here is configured with the following: 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad CPU, nForce 780 SLi chipset, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 640GB SATA II HDD, 512MB GeForce 9800GTX, DVD-R and Blu-ray ROM drive. Retail price goes for P138,000 ($3,052).

The Acer Aspire One has a lot going for it: corporate muscle from the world’s third largest PC maker, Atom-powered goodness, learned lessons from the Eee’s shortcomings, and a market still hungry for subnotebooks. As the next step in subnote evolution, it should’ve been as good, if not better than the MSI Wind. At yesterday’s Acer’s launch event, I had a chance to play with the ultramobile that’s being touted as the next Eee PC killer. It seems it won’t be killing that many subnotes anytime soon.

There’s a lot to like about the One. The exterior has a nice glossy paint job, the keyboard is big, and the build quality and battery life won’t dissappoint. If the Wind has arrived for the Atom subnote party smartly dressed, the One seems to have forgotten to put on pants. Specifically, Acer seems to have forgotten to put in an adequately-sized hard drive like the ones you’d find in the aformentioned Wind and HP Mini-Note. Having 8GB for storage simply doesn’t cut it for people who live in 2008. Even Asus’ pre-Atom Eee PC 900 has a 12 to 20GB SSD. Given that the One is priced at P18,800 ($460), it’s well below the Wind’s P25,999 ($637) asking price. Although you get XP, a 10-inch screen, and 80GB hard drive for the extra dough spent on the Wind.

Grapple Gun
A pistol-shaped device that fires a charged round fitted with a grappling hook. The Grapple Gun’s barbed projectile is attached to a retracting cable which Batman uses for rapid vertical ascent and descent.

Atlas Rope Ascender
Designed by an MIT grad student, the Atlas Rope Ascender can propel its user upwards at the speed of 10 feet per second. It’s powered by batteries and has a 113Kg load capacity.

The Joker Says:
The Grapple Gun can also be used as a non-lethal way of subduing criminals. Batman can use it to ensnare fleeing miscreants.

Cape
Developed by Lucius Fox, Batman’s cape is made from a special shape changing memory fabric. The cape can turn into a glider when an electrical current from Batman’s gloves passes through it.

Wingsuit
Wingsuits gives skydivers and BASE jumpers the ability to glide and perform aerial maneuvers. Wingsuits come in two variants, a three-wing design with wings on both arms and between the legs and a mono-wing design where the entire body is a wing.

The Joker Says:
Bob Kane’s original design for Batman’s cape was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings.

Batsuit
Originally designed for the battlefield, the Batsuit consist of several layers of protection and multiple pieces of armor. The suit is made from high-tech materials such as Nomex and bi-weave Kevlar.

Future Warrior Concept
Currently in development by the US Military, the Future Warrior Concept suit consists of several subsystems including weapons and computerized headgear. The Combat Uniform subsystem offers three layers of protection for its user.

The Joker Says:
The Batsuit in Batman Begins has the most detailed description of a Batsuit. It even has its own origin and prototype form.

Batpod
Batman’s new two-wheel ride is equipped with cannons, machine gun and grappling hook. Because of the unconventional design, Batman rides belly down on the seat and steers the bike with his shoulders. Two separate motors provide power for the front and rear wheels.

Dodge Tomahawk
Powered by a 500HP Dodge Viper engine, the Tomahawk can achieve speeds of up to 675Kph. The front and rear wheels actually consist of a pair each in order to handle the power of the bike’s V10 engine.

The Joker Says:
The Batcycle made its first onscreen appearance as a modified 1959 Harley Davidson with a sidecar. A year later, a new Batcycle was made. It was derived from a Yamaha Catalina 250.

All Terrain Vehicles, especially the four-wheeled variant, rose to popularity in the ’80s as a recreational and utilitarian go-anywhere vehicle. Off-road performance was the primary concern in influencing its design  rather than aesthetics. After nearly three decades of improvements in engine and drivetrain technology, quads still won’t win any beauty contests. Unless you live in Japan, birthplace of the modern ATV.

In Japan, ATVs have evolved into dazzling quad-tastic street machines. These high-performance vehicles are the furthest thing from their mud ploughing and dune hopping counterparts halfway across the world. They’re so new, in fact, that the vehicles don’t have an established name yet outside of Japan. The vehicles are starting to be called as STVs (as in street), but we’d rather call them pimped-out civvie Mongooses in honor of the nimble four-wheeled vehicles in Halo 3. We could imagine ourselves riding this thing with a guy at the back holding a big friggin’ bazooka.

The vehicles are designed for paved roads and thus have stiffer, low profile sports-tuned suspension. The longer wheelbase gives it a rather predatory gait. In Japan, the STVs can be easily modified with aftermarket parts, but it seems that the smokin’ rims and radials in the photo are standard equipment. One guy is working hard on bringing this sweet ride to local roads so stay tuned.

[More photos and videos at JapanATV]

With its long history of election-related fraud, the Philippine government is finally stepping up to upgrade its ancient voting system. Despite being one of the first democratic governments in Asia, the Philippines has yet to implement a fully automated election on the national level. The current system involves manual tallying of vote summaries at some point, making it vulnerable to electoral fraud. That is about to change if a pioneering local election in the southern region in the Philippines proves to be successful this August. The region will be using machines supplied by Smartmatic-Sahi which will incorporate touchscreen technology, making voting simple even for voters who lack basic literacy skills. With the Smartmatic system, voting, transmission and tallying are fully automated. The system has already been used for elections in Venezuela and Curacao. [Comelec and GMA News]

It all started with the discovery of the title track on Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ album. The song’s mirroring of the social and political changes of its period started Filipino artist Lirio Salvador on a path that would lead him to other musical discoveries such as ambient sounds, John Cage’s chance music, stochastic music, and most importantly, the assemblage art form. Assemblage, as Salvador would later realize, involves the integration of various found objects.

Salvador’s first original creation from the mid ‘80s was a saxophone-like wind instrument fitted with an array of button-activated electronic horns. As the bassist of punk band, he also started experimenting with stringed instruments. After heavily modifying a borrowed bass guitar, he built a two-stringed instrument that would be the first of the Sandata (weapon) instrument series. Sandata 1 was built around the steel tubings from bus handrails. From the late ‘80s to the early ‘90s, Salvador pieced together various parts from gutted guitars, bicycles, transistor radios, cutlery, toy walkie-talkies, toy keyboards, and other found metal objects to make other Sandata models. He’s used everything including the proverbial kitchen sink since some models have parts derived from household plumbing.

Together with his punk band Publiko, which later evolved into Intermedia, Salvador exhibited and performed his instruments. True to the spirit of circuit bending, the Sandatas don’t sound like traditional instruments. They produce distorted harmonics and randomly generated music. Some of the instruments use off the shelf electronics, so it’s still possible to tune the Sandatas to play regular music. Salvador has created over a hundred of these Sandatas which have been displayed in art galleries and sought after by collectors worldwide.

While the all-metal Sandatas continue to be popular, Salvador has plans to create new pieces which are made of wood, glass, stainless steel, and plastic. He currently performs with his band Elemento, an avant-garde electronic outfit.

(Sandata photo by Benedict M. Micu)

More Sandata photos at Elemento Music

Although it still can’t beat the flying schlong that interrupted Gary Kasparov’s speech, Silverlit’s R/C Stingray is one bizarre aircraft. The Stingray’s airframe is shaped like a single wing with a central propeller in the middle. Because of its unique shape, its flight performance is halfway between a plane and a helicopter. It flies slowly making it ideal for indoor aerial acrobatics such as moving in a spiral. The Stingray’s EPP (expanded polypropelene) frame means that it’ll survive several crashes. This is the most important feature since you’ll never know when some dour guy will come swatting the aircraft in mid air.

[RED5 via GeekAlerts]