It's not quite midweek, but according to readers at Sony's PlayStation blog, the new firmware update 2.41 for PlayStation3 is now available for download. Hopefully when you fire up your update it'll be a smoother process than for some 2.40 users. Update: the new, improved update has brought a nice new, improved platinum trophy with it—photo below.
[Kotaku and Playstation Blog—Thanks Eric]
Filed under: Gaming
As a large bunch of readers have noticed, the Apple store is down everywhere. If you consider the timing of the iPhone 3G's and MobileMe's launch (which has to hit New Zealand nearly a day ahead of the US) some preliminary setup kinda makes sense. We'll keep you posted. Update: the store's back up. No obvious changes, so it was likely maintenance to set things up for later in the week.
Filed under: Laptops
The Gadget: The LG Decoy, now available at Verizon Wireless, is the first US phone to include a Bluetooth earpiece that rides piggyback—and charges up—on the handset itself when you're not using it. galleryPost('LGDecoyReview', 3, '');
The Price: $180 after $50 mail-in rebate and 2-year contract, but remember that includes the Bluetooth earpiece.
The Verdict: The combo is obviously useful at a time when law enforcement is getting increasingly hostile to people who hold their phones while driving. My wife is the only person I know who actually got a ticket for talking on a cellphone—and who still refused to use Bluetooth on the grounds that it was too much to remember to charge and carry—so it made sense that she'd be the perfect candidate to give the Decoy a test spin.
"I love it," she told me, after a few days of using the Bluetooth headset everywhere she went, then diligently snapping it back on the phone when she was done. It's comfortable, especially for a one-size-fits-all piece, and it sounded perfectly fine when she was using it to call me. (Traditionally I have not been impressed with LG's Bluetooth execution, so that's a good thing.) When you plug in the phone, the screen says it's charging both batteries.
This being otherwise a fairly run-of-the-mill Verizon slider, there are no big surprises with the interface. Thankfully, it's not a faceful of RED when you turn it on—in fact, you can see here it's a cool, non-Verizony blue. It has a quick launch, so unlike on older LG phones, you don't have to dig deep into menus all the time for favorite functions. My wife's biggest gripe is that, since the directional stick in the middle is also a button, it sometimes points up or down when she's trying to hit OK, or vice versa.
It's no big deal for her, though, since she abhors touchscreen phones. Though I myself am excited by the new touchscreen phones from Sprint, Verizon and of course AT&T, I don't think my wife is alone in her lack of touchscreen interest. And for those people, the good news is that the LG Decoy may be a one-trick pony, but it's a pretty useful—and unique—trick. [LG]
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Blu-ray recorders have been on the scene for a while now, but now that the format war's over, it looks like more companies are starting to commit to BD-R devices -- like Pioneer, which announced today that it'll have a Blu-ray recorder out in Japan by the end of the year. The company didn't say what model it would be or what price point it was aiming for, but the tech is being jointly developed with Sharp, so hopefully it's have a family resemblance to units like the 1TB AQUOS BD-HDW20 in everything but the $2,611 pricetag.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Filed under: Digital Cameras
