Hands-On With Now You Can Find It Locator (Verdict: Never Misplace Anything Again)

-from Gizmodo

I misplace stuff. A lot. The concept of putting my keys, wallet and cellphone in one set place when I get home is foreign to me (possibly because there’s no set place to put it). But with the New You Can Find It Locator from Skymall, it’s no longer a problem.

Seriously, now that we have this, we can throw our crap all over the apartment and still be able to find it.

Now You Can Find It

The NYCFIL comes with a remote and eight keychain tags that you can attach to all your stuff. The keychains work great for your keys, scissors, cameras or anything that’s big enough (relatively, with respect to the keychain) and has something to hook on to. Unfortunately stuff like cellphones wouldn’t work, because it’d make the cellphone huge and there’s nowhere to clip it to. But it also comes with adhesives so you can stick the locators on stuff like your TV remotes (or anything that has a flat surface).

The set also comes with a bunch of stickers to stick on the eight buttons on the remote so you can color coordinate your stuff. There’s enough to cover most of the gadgets in your house, and you in the case where you have eight sets of keys, there are even blank ones so you can write your own.

The locator remote itself runs on two AAA batteries (not included) and has a range of about 10-20 feet. Why am I telling you this? Because you can’t just stand in one place in the house, press the corresponding button, and expect to hear the sound. You’ll have to actually walk around the house and press the button every so often to locate your stuff.

In our tests, the 80% of the locators beeped on the first try, and 100% of them beeped by the second try. With regular usage, the locator units last about a year. It would suck if you couldn’t find something because the beeper was out of juice, so you’ll want to make sure to keep these things with fresh batteries.

And if you’re worried about misplacing the remote itself, there’s a magnetic wall mount that will make the remote beep unless it’s placed back on the mount.

Although it’s a little pricey at $49.95, the fact that I’ll never have to search for more than five seconds for our keys, remotes, cameras, tools and other knickknacks makes this a winner in my book. Time is money, and my time is apparently worth $49.95. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Skymall]

E3 Schedule Released

-from gamewad
E3, or at least the shadow of the former expo, “min-E3,” will be held this year from July 11th to the 13th at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. The ESA recently released a schedule of events for the show on the official E3 website.

Microsoft will get things started this year with their pre-E3 conference at 8:30pm on July 10th. Nintendo will be up next, hosting their conference at 9:00 the next morning. Sony will take up the rear with a conference at 11:30am on the 11th.

Third parties will be granted conference time, as well. The full show schedule follows:

7/10/07:

* 8:30pm – Microsoft Press Conference

7/11/07:

* 9:00am – Nintendo Press Conference
* 9:00am-5:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
* 11:30am – Sony Press Conference
* 1:00-6:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games
* 2:00pm – Electronic Arts conference
* 3:15pm – Activision conference
* 4:30pm – Midway conference
* 5:45pm – Konami conference

7/12/07:

* 8:00am – Take-Two conference
* 9:00am-5:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
* 9:15am – THQ conference
* 10:30am – Ubisoft conference
* 1:00-6:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games
* 1:00pm – Namco Bandai conference
* 3:30pm – Disney Interactive conference

7/13/07:

* 9:00am-3:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
* 11:00am-3:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games

On the hangar floor, booths will be set up for over 30 companies. Some notables who won’t have formal conferences include Capcom, Square-Enix, and SEGA, among others.

*Eddie R Inzauto – Senior Editor, GameWad.com

If things couldn’t get any worse, Sony gets sued over Blu-Ray

-from You Newb

A California company filed suit earlier this month claiming that Sony had infringed on a patent they held by using the technology they did with their Blu-ray DVDs. The California company goes by the name of “Target Technology Company” and they’re going after Sony for damages. The patent they claim Sony is stomping on is a patent they hold for how reflective layer materials are used in optical discs . The patent also covered the use of silver-based alloys that gave the same advantages of gold without having to use real gold. These alloys are allegedly more resistant to corrosion than just regular silver is, and help to give the discs a longer life.

Target Technology is trying to stick Sony with an injunction that would keep them from infringing on their patent rights in the future. Neither side has said anything so far and it’s not really clear how serious Sony may or may not be taking this. One would think, that Sony could run the risk of being forced to stop using Blu-Ray technology in which case would pretty much put an end to their PS3 hopes and dreams. Most likely though, some sort of financial deal will be worked out. Probably with Sony having to shell out a lot of money just to keep doing what they’ve been doing.

Source: Gamespot

BitTorrent Malware Spreads to Media Players

-from Torrent Freak
When someone or something becomes a huge success, inevitably some people want a piece of that and try to cash in. The BitTorrent scene is no exception and in recent months we have reported on a raft of torrent clients hitting the internet, each installing malware on unsuspecting user’s PC’s. Sadly this disease is now spreading to their latest tool; malware-infected media players.

We have regularly reported on BitTorrent clients which also install malware such as Torrent101, BitRoll, TorrentQ and GetTorrent and have done our very best to let people know about the dangers of using such a product.

Unfortunately, as fast as we report such things, the malware peddlers can create yet another and another and another bad client with new names, but carrying the same bad story. However, these guys are very determined to get software such as CIDHELP on your machine, ready to watch your activities and to this end have become quite creative. Recently BitTorrent users are reporting that they have downloaded various pieces of video (usually a TV show) only to be confronted with a message during the first few seconds of the video which advises them to download a new media player called 3wPlayer, in order to view the rest of the file.

The displayed url directs the unsuspecting to the Play3W site, where they are given the chance of installing a shiny new media player.

From the screenshot you will see that there is a ‘more’ button and when you install this player ‘more’ is exactly what you get – more malware in the form of CIDHELP, yet again. It can be difficult task to uninstall it too, especially when you consider the veiled legal threat on the CIDHELP site – the vendor warns you could be in breach of the EULA if you try to remove it with your anti-spyware software. To get rid of the software, they advise to first turn off your anti-adware/spyware software and re-install the software, something that rings a few alarm bells!

It may seem that every pusher in the world is getting involved in the BitTorrent malware scene but a simple WHOIS on all the domains hosting the torrent clients listed above, (Torrent101 for example) including the 3wPlayer site, reveals that they are more than likely the same outfit, exploiting the less experienced members of the BitTorrent community. Anyone concerned about a particular torrent should take the time to read the user comments on the site where the torrent was downloaded from. Very often problems such as fake files are spoken about there.

Anyone needing a media player that will deal with almost any video format should consider the excellent VLC Media Player, available for free download. Those who still haven’t settled on a quality BitTorrent client will find everything they need by getting uTorrent. No spyware, adware or malware present in either product.

Zune to get wireless downloads, version 2 hardware, flash player

-from Zune boards

Sometimes you can never know for sure, but we’ve got some pretty convincing material from a Zune source which shows a beta build of firmware v1.4 (shown as 2.1.4, perhaps as an internal designation). Apparently you’ll finally be able to put your WiFi to good use (other than being a part of “the social”) by using open WiFi hotspots (no word on WiFi you have the key for) and Microsoft points for downloading tracks. (Sorry, no word about subscriptions, syncing, and the like. And yes, we know the wireless icon is missing; we were told it was accidentally omitted from the download UI in this build.) Also up to bat in the near future, further confirmation that we can expect Zune v2 and a flash Zune in the next month or so — perhaps just in time to remind people that Apple isn’t the only game in town when the iPhone hype hits its peak. One more picture after the break.

iPhone rumor du jour: June 20th release date

-from engadget

Ok, another iPhone rumor — you want to be looped in, don’t you? If not then just wait, there’ll be another post along shortly. Anywho, supposedly according to a CNBC “On the Money” report, an AT&T store told them Apple’s cellphone would launch on June 20th. Which is hilarious because if you call 10 different cellphone stores you’re bound to get ten different answers regarding the launches of upcoming products — especially the hottest phones. Why? Mostly just because those clerks read the rumors online just like you. Surely enough, the AP apparently called a bunch of AT&T stores and got launch dates franging from June 11 to June 22, but nothing certain from Apple or AT&T corporate. Still, makes for some amusing Friday reading, dunnit?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read – MacRumors reports
Read – AP follows up