Technology Nirvana

For all of you Zune 30 owners who woke up this morning to find your PMP frozen in despair at the thought of spending another year alone, Microsoft has finally acknowledged their boo-boo and explains it thusly: There is a bug in the internal clock driver causing the device to choke on the last day of a leap year. Rest assured, however -- although they may not be releasing an update for the device any time soon, the issue should resolve itself whenever January 1, 2009 rolls around. So have a safe and happy New Year, and let's hope they do something about this by 2012.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Zune 30GB brickification acknowledged, Microsoft says to wait it out originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Have you ever jailbroken an iPhone? Ever used a software solution to “unlock” the iPhone’s SIM slot, freeing it from the shackles of its original carrier? Chances are, the iPhone Dev Team had something to do with it. This group, made up of some of the iPhone development scene’s finest minds, spends countless hours tearing apart the iPhone to make it do all of the things Apple won’t allow - and then figures out a way to make it work for everyone. It’s tough, unpaid, and often thankless - but they keep cracking away.

Later tonight, the iPhone Dev Team is expected to release “yellowsn0w“, a long-awaited software-based SIM unlock for the iPhone 3g. Though they don’t often do interviews, we were able to gab with one of the members, Pytey, just hours before their big release for a chat about who they are, how they operate, and a whole lot more.

Have you ever jailbroken an iPhone? Ever used a software solution to “unlock” the iPhone’s SIM slot, freeing it from the shackles of its original carrier? Chances are, the iPhone Dev Team had something to do with it. This group, made up of some of the iPhone development scene’s finest minds, spends countless hours tearing apart the iPhone to make it do all of the things Apple won’t allow - and then figures out a way to make it work for everyone. It’s tough, unpaid, and often thankless - but they keep cracking away.

Later tonight, the iPhone Dev Team is expected to release “yellowsn0w“, a long-awaited software-based SIM unlock for the iPhone 3G. Though they don’t often do interviews, we were able to gab with one of the members, Pytey, just hours before their big release for a chat about who they are, how they operate, and a whole lot more.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Audiolizer is a new music streaming service that lets you put your iTunes library in the cloud. After uploading your iTunes Library database file, the site will automatically compile a list of links to every song, allowing you to access your favorite music when you’re away from your home computer. Users can also manually search for individual songs.

As with a number of streaming audio sites, Audiolizer makes use of the YouTube API to serve its music (this ostensibly makes them less of a target for lawsuits, as they aren’t hosting any music). The system seems to work fairly well, through the presentation is strange - the “music video” shown alongside the player is only thumbnailed sized for some reason. You can still access the full sized video by clicking on the thumbnail, but it’s a bit odd.

Audiolizer would have been a great site if it came out at the beginning of this year - I love being able to have my iTunes library in the cloud. But SonicSwap does almost the same thing with a nicer interface. And then there’s LaLa which effectively makes both services obsolete: instead of using YouTube as a source of audio content (which can sometimes lead to incorrect results), Lala has forged deals with all the major record labels, so the majority of your music in streamed at a reasonably high quality bitrate with few false matches (check out our previous coverage for more on the cool service).

Fortunately, it sounds like Audiolizer is more of a side project than a full-fledged startup - the founders say that they developed the site in a week (they’re currently University students in Computer Engineering and Business Management in Canada).

Also, as an amusing sidenote, a TechCrunch user named Clayton came up with the domain name Audiolizer.com in a comment back in October. Looks like someone took his suggestion.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Amazon may have had their best ever Christmas, but they weren’t the only ones who witnessed record holiday sales over the past month. One of Amazon’s competitors, LightInTheBox, is a China-based global online distribution company that tripled its fourth-quarter sales over last year.

They didn’t disclose numbers, but they did boast that Amazon’s 16% increase in sales was much lower than that of their own company. Considering Amazon is a much larger company, I wouldn’t divulge my numbers either.

TUAW has the most complete description yet of the new Mac mini widely rumored/expected to launch at Macworld. It'll be topped with iMac-esque black plastic instead of white, and have a lip like Time Capsule.

The lip conceals the Mac mini's optical drive slot, which is useful now since TUAW says that the new drive will be SATA, meaning it can be swapped out for a second hard drive, probably as a custom build option. The second drive is boon to the business crowd that uses Mac minis in server farms (like this one), since it not only adds more storage, but makes RAID1 mirroring easy.

No other details on specs—we're pretty interested in what processor these things will be packing—though it's looking fairly certain (as certain as these things ever look, anyway) that they'll have Nvidia's GeForce 9400m chipset from the new MacBooks in tow.

We'll know in about a week, along with whatever other surprises Macworld has in store. What would you like to see in the new Mac mini, besides a Blu-ray drive? (Cause that's what everyone wants.) [TUAW]

Filed under: Displays

Optoma's DLP PK101 pico projector up for pre-order at $399.99 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In exactly one week, the CrunchGear team will be descending on CES for your benefit. Why should we be going? Because it’s the biggest consumer electronics show in the world? Why are we going? Because we’re dumb suckers.

CES, if you’ll recall, is huge. It takes over Las Vegas for most of a week and the products announced there will grace shelves over the next year. However, to clear up misconceptions about the event I’ve created this primer for you, the reading public. Using the mneumonic device CES SUCKS THE BIG ONE you can easily remember everything there is to know about this great show.

C is for CES. It stands for the Consumer Electronics Show. It is very old. Your dad probably went once. It holds as much cultural relevance as the World’s Fair.

E is for entertainment. That’s what CE manufacturers are trying to really sell here. They want people to think of their products as “entertainment” rather than hard goods. It’s easier to sell someone a TV when it’s fun.

S is for suckers. That’s us. For going every year. For giving this show all the ink it gets.

S is for September. The stuff you’ll see at CES won’t come out until September, in time for next year’s holiday season.

U is unadulterated hatred. That’s what I have for this show.

C is cash. That’s what we have to outlay in order to go to CES each year.

K is knowing half the stuff we see there will never make it to stores. Many of the booths are populated by Taiwanese OEM manufacturers who are hoping a big box store will pick up their crappy iPod docks. But they won’t.

S is for Sands. That’s where we’re staying. We used to stay at the Excalibur but that got too depressing. Did I mention I hate Las Vegas?

T is for technology journalists. It’s nice to see a lot of them once a year. CES is like the pasty journo high school reunion.

H is for hatred. See U, above.

E is for excitement. The CES show seems really fun but it isn’t. That’s why punchy kids turned off a bunch of TVs last year just for fun.

B is for big TVs. That’s one thing you’ll see a lot of. Big TVs. Manufacturers figure they’re paying for the floor space so they might as well bring out the big guns. It’s essentially a big fat loss leader for them to bring out a 200-inch behemoth in order to garner the world’s attention.

I is for Internet. The Internet is destroying the big shows. Who needs to get in front of Joe Gadgetpack when he can see reviews of stuff he can pick up for the next year on the Internet? The news cycle is so quick now that a January show is forgotten by February.

G is for gambling. It’s the real reason so many CE folks like to go to Las Vegas. That and the whores.

O is for “Oh my god I don’t want to have to fly to Las Vegas this year.”

N is for netbooks. Expect to see plenty of those this year.

E is for everything will be OK. I’ll just keep repeating that to myself.

9 to 5's latest Apple rumor is that the iWork suite, Apple's Office competitor, is going to the cloud.

Which is good news because I hardly use Office and find myself in Google Docs when I need to use a word processor or spreadsheet. If true, there's no doubt in my mind it'll require use of the paid MobileMe service, which is right now a bit over priced. Adding more functionality to the service is a great way to add value, but Google Docs is free. [9to5mac]

If you’re bored or out of a job in these difficult times, or if you’ve always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur, then this Internet Entrepreneur Starter Kit will not help may be for you.

The kit contains 50 different Archie McPhee novelty items ready to sell on eBay, all of which are supposedly valued at $2,600, while you pay a mere $399 for it. Products in the box can range from action figures to night lights to erasers. The seller claims that if you sell everything in the box, you can make a $2,000 profit. Sounds like a good scam deal, huh?

[via Redferret.net]