Topic: Holy Crap! *New Tech/Gadget Thread*

[TJ Spyke]

I am not sure, I haven't seen any articles on the new iPod Touch's mention Google Voice. You can use Skype though, so you will be able to at least talk to other people over wi-fi (I assume similar programs would work too).

[EasyCure]

Thank you, Apple, I have a perfect working oops classic that I was willing to put into storage for a 4th gen touch that I assumed would increase capacity. I didn't care about the cameras, faster processor, or new OS.

Alas they've capped the touch to 64Gb. We'll see what happens next year.. I'll just go spend my money  elsewhere

[TJ Spyke]

I always have wanted to ask someone about this, but do you really need to have that much media with you? I don't know how much actual space you have with the 64GB model (with the 8GB model you only have about 7GB of space to use), but I can't imagine needing all that space. Even if I add up all of my podcasts, music, and apps, I don't think I would even fill up the 64GB model. I know people who have hundreds of gigabytes of music, but I would never need access to all of them at once.

Easy, I guess keeping your iPod Classic would be the best choice for you since the new improvements to the iPod Touch don't interest you.

[NWR_insanolord]

can you use GVoice on the touch through Wifi?

Yes.

Actually, you could get a Touch and get a MiFi 3/4G portable wifi router and use it as a phone via Skype or Google Voice with a lower monthly cost than an iPhone, and on any wireless provider.

[EasyCure]

I always have wanted to ask someone about this, but do you really need to have that much media with you? I don't know how much actual space you have with the 64GB model (with the 8GB model you only have about 7GB of space to use), but I can't imagine needing all that space. Even if I add up all of my podcasts, music, and apps, I don't think I would even fill up the 64GB model. I know people who have hundreds of gigabytes of music, but I would never need access to all of them at once.

Easy, I guess keeping your iPod Classic would be the best choice for you since the new improvements to the iPod Touch don't interest you.

If you asked me, my answer would be "yeah, sure, why not!?" Technology like this is all about convenience. Whats more convenient than having all my music and movies in one place? I do a lot of driving in the car and its nice to have my entire library with me so I'm not confined to my old cd's. No more needing to change discs, no more feeling like I've heard the same song a million times. Hell even when I started burning MP3 discs for my car stereo, putting it on shuffle wasn't enough. I have all my music at my fingertips for those long drives to and from work, I have playlists set up for whatever mood I may be in, and shuffle for any other time.

Movies is the same way. Even if I'm just on the toilet at work, why the hell not watch an episode of southpark on the john? Sometimes my girlfriend and I will go see a movie, and the next showing isn't for about an hour. Sometimes we'll get there late so all the stores in the area are closed and we're just stuck waiting for that last showing. What do we do? Put on a movie and plop down either on the nice comfy couch at the theater, or head back to the car to watch it.

I wouldn't say the new features of the touch don't interest me. I'd say they're not the biggest selling points for me. The screen size makes me envious when my girlfriend decides to flaunt her ipod touch (that I bought her) over my Classic. Most of the movies I have are formatted for the touch's screen, so something like District 9 gets certain subtitles cut off. When it comes to downloading games, i'd prefer to have them on an ipod touch than my phone because I'd rather not drain the phones battery, so that would be a nice step-up from what I have now. Still, the camera thing isn't THAT big a deal for me (but i'd rather have it than not) and neither is face time or the new OS. Just gimme a bigger hard-drive, its all I ask.

[greybrick]

I always have wanted to ask someone about this, but do you really need to have that much media with you? I don't know how much actual space you have with the 64GB model (with the 8GB model you only have about 7GB of space to use), but I can't imagine needing all that space. Even if I add up all of my podcasts, music, and apps, I don't think I would even fill up the 64GB model. I know people who have hundreds of gigabytes of music, but I would never need access to all of them at once.

I had around 25 gigs of Apps before I did my hard drive cleanup, which is abnormal but I can see how you can fill a 64 gig even without a massive music collection. I also like to keep plenty of music with me for the commute, and think I have enough music to fill a 64 gig.

Right now, I am still using a 16 gb iPod Touch, so the 64 will be a huge upgrade for me.

[NWR_insanolord]

Probably about half my 32 GB iPhone is apps. If you're looking to fit more music and aren't super picky about audio quality, check the box that says "convert music to 128k." If you have a lot of higher bitrate music it'll save you a lot of space, and I've never had a problem with the quality of 128k AAC.

[greybrick]

I am picky about music quality to a fault, in fact I would have stuck with the Zune brand if I hadn't had so many frustrations with my first one. The sound quality on a Zune 30gb is stellar.

Most of my songs are at 256-300 kbps

[NWR_insanolord]

With lossless audio files and the right headphones, an iOS device sounds as good as anything. I'm just glad I'm not cursed with the ability to tell the difference.

[greybrick]

iPod Touches do sound great, especially once you've ditched the headphones that come with it, but I can perceive a difference between audio on an iOS device and my old Zune. It could just be me never being happy with what I have.

Speaking of the iPod Touch 4g, what a bummer that it has a worse camera, and the official excuse is so that the device could be slim enough. I honestly would like to have the option to have an iPod Touch 4g with the exact same body as an iPhone 4. I like having my crappy Verizon phone with my iPod Touch as its sidekick.

[TJ Spyke]

The reviews seem to say that while the camera is not as good as the one in the iPhone, it is still a good camera.

[greybrick]

I just picked up the newest generation of iPod classic, meaning I now have 160gb of space to fool around with. It feels good to just click, "sync all." Plus, I ended up only paying $140 for it brand new. Thanks Costco!

[ThePerm]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HScYuRhgEJw

back to voxel technology talk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpfaFrazOn4&feature=related
funny, im working on a church with the same layout, then again..they pretty much all ahave the same layouts

[MaryJane]

Augmented Reality!

With the launch of 3DS Nintendo seems to be going big with AR, but so is everyone else.

Qualcomm (the people who made & then pulled Flo TV among other things) are looking to bring AR to all mobile phones with apps and other things, but its the 'other things' that has me curious. CNN just showed a flat map of an office that kind of looked like a 'Sim' game once a Verizon phone's camera focused on it. There were people walking around and they noticed when the phone was over them, and you could then pick them up and move them or just drop them for fun or for punishment for them being lazy, as the demonstrator did. They also made the point that this could be taken beyond gaming, with military purpose like looking at a plebian map and getting troop info on the device. The CNN host also thought of using between people also with a map for marking points of interest, which made me think of treasure hunts.

I find this all very interesting, and I hope that some ambitious company does do a treasure hunt 'thing' where when people find one item its taken off the map, and other items/sites pop up as the adventure goes on. This could even help the 3DS's Streetpass feature since it could encourage users to have their systems on and congregate in certain places.

Imagine if a 'game' you buy comes with a miniature map that displays your closest metropolitan area and the 3DS alerts you to nearby Nintendo/gamer events then you look at the map with the camera and AR to see where the event is. This could be used for other things like those unannounced concerts and meet-ups of like-minded people like NWR fans. For example, at a Disturbed concert there could meeting spots for people who like TOOL, Chevelle, Metallica and other bands. For Nintendo this could also be used to mark free wifi spots, VC and Pokemon giveaways etc.

There are so many ways for this technology to be used, I'm hoping that this is the 'next big thing'.

My only worry, as I started to say before, are the 'other things' (like maps) you need.

[Stogi]

The only AR I find even remotely interesting is if it's used in the same manner of say, a PokeDex. Meaning, I would like the system to recognize what I'm looking at and with one click, tell me all about it. But that's not even AR in the true sense.

[BlackNMild2k1]

The only AR I find even remotely interesting is if it's used in the same manner of say, a PokeDex. Meaning, I would like the system to recognize what I'm looking at and with one click, tell me all about it. But that's not even AR in the true sense.

That's sixth sense
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzKmGTVmqJs&feature=related | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDFKYrSJefc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUdDhWfpqxg

[Stogi]

Yeah I've heard about that for quite some time now.

[TheBlackCat]

I think the practical uses of augmented reality go far beyond gaming and social networking.  Using the real-time display from your cell phone's camera, you could do things like pulling up status of machines in a factory, count the number of each type of resistor in a big pile in a desk, quickly find the book you are looking for on a bookshelf, pull up recipes you could make with a particular ingredient on a store shelf, keep track of the movement of two street signs on either side of a tectonic fault line, keep track of the propagation of cracks in a pipe, or pull up chemical safety data at a spill site using a tanker truck's warning markings.

[MaryJane]

I think AR is different from what you're talking about, it may be more of the 'sixth sense' BnM mentioned. AR is seeing something that isn't physically there. Your mention of books on a bookshelf, would be AR if your device's camera was looking over a book listing that changed into a bookshelf on the device to show you where the book is, that would be AR. That would actually be pretty cool for ebooks, where when you go over the listing, it shows you books recomendations based on your previous purchases, or just show you the books you own on your e-reader and can be redownloaded.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Yeah I've heard about that for quite some time now.

I'm sure you have and I think you may have been the one to show it to me.

[TheBlackCat]

I think AR is different from what you're talking about, it may be more of the 'sixth sense' BnM mentioned. AR is seeing something that isn't physically there. Your mention of books on a bookshelf, would be AR if your device's camera was looking over a book listing that changed into a bookshelf on the device to show you where the book is, that would be AR.

I was more talking about the device's camera looking at the bookshelf, scanning the books' titles, finding the one you are looking for, and then having the screen highlight the book in the picture and continue to do so in real-time as you move your camera closer to the book in question.  For the factory, the camera would identify its orientation and position, figure out which machines it is looking at, wirelessly retrieve the machines' status, then overlay that status on the image it is displaying of those machines, and do so in real time as you walk around through the factory.  The recipe thing would overlay a text bubble with an arrow pointing to the ingredient in question, as would the chemical safety issue.  The fault line one would overlay a marker on the screen showing the previous position of the objects (along with textual information on how far separated they are), or even an interpolated video showing its movement, all independent of the orientation of the camera, and the pipe crack one would overlay a picture of the previous crack, or perhaps also a semi-transparent animation showing the crack's progression overlayed on the live picture of the current crack.  The resistor one would take a picture, categorize the resistors, show a list of them next to the live video from the camera, then when you click on one of the resistors in the list it would highlight all instances of that resistor in the live video of the pile.

[MaryJane]

Okay, now I understand and am intrigued by your ideas.

I just read on Engadget about NTT DoMoCo's AR Walker which is basically a HUD unit which attaches to eye glasses (prescription or just for the purpose of the unit) and it gives you directions by showing you arrows as you walk, and when you arrive a 'mushroom shaped man' holds up a sign to say you've arrived. What really interested me was that if you look up at the sky you get the weather forecast. Also, from the picture it looks small enough to not be dorky, which hopefully means by the time we actually can buy it, it'll be even smaller and better looking.

[ThePerm]

terminator vision

[TheBlackCat]

Which is frankly sort of weird.  Why would a robot need a heads-up display?  You could just feed the data directly into the processor.  If we had a way to feed data directly into our brain I guarantee you we wouldn't be using heads-up displays.  The processor has to take the time to generate and render the, modify the image, then turns around and spends the time to interpret those modifications, then read the text back in again.  If it has access to the data necessary to generate the heads-up display and the text, it should be able to just make use of the data directly. 

It is like routing the data coming out of your CD-ROM drive to a server in Siberia, having the server convert it to an ISO file, then emailing the ISO back to the original computer.   The data has to travel through your CPU before you can send it over the web anyway, why not just use it there?

Sorry for the rant, that scene always bothered me.  It looks cool but it makes absolutely no sense.

[ThePerm]

engineer got lazy...it saves space and still works. Robots designed future terminators, so maybe robots are extra practical. Or maybe because the robot was designed in a testing phase so that the programers could debug it, and then it wasn't taken out.  There are still Arwings in Ociarina of Time.