Gadgets Base

Posted Mar 21st 2008 5:55PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Gaming
We still think Gibson’s attempt to claim that Guitar Hero violates its patent on “simulating a musical performance with a musical instrument” is totally unfounded and ridiculous for a number of reasons (it involves a “3-D headset,” for one), but we can sort of see why the company is now suing Harmonix as well — they’re a Fender outfit, after all. The third in a series of petulant lawsuits filed by the notoriously litigious guitar maker over the patent claims Harmonix, Viacom, and Electronic Arts are all liable for Rock Band, but it’s not clear if Gibson is going after just the guitars or the drum kit as well, which is probably closer to actually counting as an instrument. Of course, the patent itself hasn’t changed since the last time we read it, and it’s obvious that Gibson’s going to have itself quite a challenge convincing the court that playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band involves musical instruments of any kind — after all, it’s just Simon, right?

Disclaimer: Nilay is a lawyer and a rock star, but he’s not your lawyer (or your monkey, man) and this is not legal advice or analysis.

If I didn’t work from home and had anything approaching a decent sense of balance, I could totally see myself cycling to work. But I hear a lot of horror stories from cyclists in major cities about drivers who just don’t respect the environmental option and try to hustle bike riders off the road. A company called Action Cameras suggests that cyclists try one of their wireless helmet cameras to catch these criminals in the act. The video cameras attach to a cycling helmet and record directly to an SD card (up to 2 GB is available).

It seems that by the time the Motorola Z9 is officially released we will not have anything new to learn, so far we have seen the first leaked image way back in July 2007, then some more details hit the FCC website earlier this month, only to have the official white paper show up yesterday.

Well, as of yesterday we were just waiting for a price and official release date. Now one of those two bits of information can now be checked off the list, it seems that AT&T is planning to charge $249.99 for the Z9, that is of course with a few rebates and a two-year agreement.

With just a release date left to ponder, its a shame this latest leak did not let us in on that, but based on the rate of information leaks on the Z9 I would imagine that we will be seeing that in a day or two.

Via [EngadgetMobile]

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Asus joins the multimedia notebook race with its new M50. Touting the M50 as a personal entertainment center, Asus has included Altec Lansing Speakers and Dolby Home Theater software in the M50’s elegantly designed body. Asus even went further with the M50’s overall look and covered the body with super glossy finish to serve as a tough coat and hopefully offer additional protection from abrasion.

But aside from the external design, what could probably make the M50 click among notebook consumers is its HD Blu-ray capabilities that support HDMI transfer. Making the Asus M50 even more appealing is its innovative interface that is said to be both easy and convenient to control. The M50’s touch pad doubles up as a control deck to control video and music entertainment. With a mere tap of the finger the user can access the controls to play, stop, pause, mute and skip audio and video files.

So much for the entertainment value of the Asus M50 we cannot forget that it is after all a notebook and not a home entertainment system. The Asus M50 will include an Intel Core 2 Duo T7100~T7700 processor, your choice of ATI Mobile Radeon or nVIDIA GeForce graphics, a 200-500GB hard drive, up to 4GB of RAM, a hybrid TV tuner and a 15.4-inch display.

To make the M50 even more interesting, Asus added an additional data security feature, with the use of fingerprint scanner, users can be assured that their files are protected from unauthorized eyes. A release date and pricing information has not yet been announced, but with specs like this, is safe to expect nothing cheap.

Read [Asus] Via [Mobile Tech Review]

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