Ever since we heard about the Slacker Portable we were a little excited, but the object of our portable streaming radio affection has just come up for its first review seating. According to the fine fellows at Wired, it is slacking its way into their hearts as we write this very article.
Among the things they liked about the player included the supported artworks, band biographies, ability to store Wi-Fi keys and the option to have access to a free, or paid, enhanced music services. The Slacker Portable also auto refreshed channels when it detected a trusted network, as well as automatically refreshing whilst recharging.
What didn’t go down so well was the buggy touch sensitive strip; the jog dial was far better, and was used instead. The free mode meant only 6 songs could be skipped per hour. as well as the terrible obligation to listen to adverts during […]
Original post by Haroon Malik
In what appears to be an embarrassing error, the Italian parliament may have accidentally legalized P2P music downloads. The new law allows Italians to legally share music over the internet, just as long as it is done for non-commercial gain and the music is degraded. The controversy arises from the definition of the word “degraded.”
Andrea Monti, an Italian copyright attorney, said all music sold on major music download sites is degraded. As such, exchange across P2P networks of these files, and any equivalent type of recordings, would seem to be legal under the new law. The law does restrict the sharing for “educational or scientific” use, but prosecuting offenders will nevertheless be more problematic because of it. The president of the RIAA counterpart in Italy was said to be confident in the restraints of the new ruling, but we imagine he crapped his pants as he said that. [Ars Technica]
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Original post by Haroon Malik
The Wiimote is alright and everything, but what good is all the motion control in the world if you can’t pistol-whip player 2? This Colt .45 Wiimote mod doesn’t make the Wiimote fire bullets, but with this much “gunmetal” aluminum plate, the police will goomba-stomp your ass before you can say “Duck Hunt” anyway. galleryPost(\’wiipistol1\’, 3, \’\');[projects]
Original post by Mark Wilson
Those arty chaps at the Royal College of Art have created some great looking mobile phone concepts. The designs were put together for a competition that was sponsored by the cellular network 3. The runners-up included the Vase phone, which begins as an empty “vessel,” but has features added to it gradually, according to the user’s needs. The Teiko cellphone was designed for children, incorporating GPS for parental tracking and a rugged general construction.
galleryPost(\’rcagi\’, 6, \’\');The LED cellphone had a simple layout, with basic functions illuminating according to need. (Coincidentally, that isn’t too dissimilar to a concept we have seen before. Borrowing inspiration were we, Mr Art Student?) The overall winner was the Free Key, which had 40 programmable keys beneath a flexible LCD screen. Check out the lot in the gallery above. [BBC via Textually]
Original post by Haroon Malik