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We’ve seen this crazy motorcycle exoskeleton before, but its inventor Jake Loniak has just mocked up a video showing what it would be like in motion. Yeah, we’re pretty damn impressed, but the guy gets cocky:

I believe a working prototype could be made, but it would take a great deal of time and engineering. This isn’t fantasy. It’s a green vehicle, and all of the numbers are based in the real world.

But who would actually use this? Sure, it looks pretty amazing and you can park it vertically in a garage to save space, but imagine having to unfasten yourself from this every time you get to work. Or the supermarket. Or grandma’s house. At least with a Segway you can hop off and do your business. [Popsci via Crunchgear via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Original post by Jason Chen

PlayOn, a program that allows Vudu, ESPN, YouTube and CBS streaming from a Windows PC to a PS3, Xbox 360 or HP MediaSmart TV, has just been released as a free beta to the public (well, the first 60 days are free, after that it’ll cost $30). And to make things even better, the software should expand to support Netflix streaming and the Nintendo Wii within the year. Finally, that whole console becoming as complicated as a PC trend is paying off. [PlayOn via PS3Fanboy]

Original post by Mark Wilson

The 2008 Olympics have already started, but those of us stuck here in America and not lucky enough to own Vista must deal with NBC’s often delayed event broadcasts. Sure, if it’s American basketball or track you’re looking for, you can find everything you need without stepping away from your HDTV set. But if you’ve waited four years to watch table tennis or want to see how that Latvia-Angola rivalry plays out, you’ll definitely have to use NBC’s streaming online player. The Silverlight-based player runs well—even on a Mac—but it has a few rough spots when it comes to interface. If you want to make the best of your Olympic experience, here are the things you need to know. galleryPost(’olympicplayer’, 4, ”);

Streaming Player vs. HDTV
When it comes to content, there is no comparison—the web player will stream 2,200 hours of live video, where most of the stuff on TV will be glorified clip roundups of assorted events. But quality is a much different story. The streamed video is blurry no matter what size you watch it in, and even the full-size player is only about 720×480, so standard def at best. Also, while it’s understandable that NBC wouldn’t provide announcers for a North Korea vs. Nigeria soccer game, there wasn’t any commentary for a match between USA and Norway either. We find it almost impossible to believe that major sports like US men’s basketball would go without someone calling the games, but based on what we’ve seen so far this may be the case.

Finding Content
Seeing the player for the first time may tempt you to bust out the Rosetta Stone. It’s actually three players in one, starting with the standard player which is stuffed with ads, tabs, lists, menus and more. For this one, you’re best off browsing by channel (#1 in the pic above), clicking the sport you’re interested in and seeing what videos are offered. A button in the corner of the video section (#2) directs you to the enhanced player, which is the best way to watch—it’s got a bigger video screen and is so frill and distraction-free even Frank Costanza would approve. In the enhanced player, you can watch highlights (#3) and live content with picture-in-picture (#4), and swap between the two seamlessly. Searching for content is hard to do in the enhanced player, so you’re better off finding it elsewhere and switching over. Finally, a button on the left (#5) takes you to the “Live Video Control Room” which offers the most hyped way to watch the sports you crave—four-channel multicasting.

The Multi-Cast Experience
Gambling junkies and cubicle drones alike will love the multi-cast, which allows you to watch up to four events at once. For people trying to actually enjoy the sports, the largest video is still too small to see a score, and the other three are barely the size of postage stamps. Swapping between games is easy, but if you expand one to the full-sized player, you lose your other streams, and have to to add them all over again when you return to the multi-cast. Also, sifting through content is shaping up to be unbearable; you can scroll through about five games at a time, which is fine when there are only 16 available, but what will we do when there are hundreds of videos to sift through, by early next week?

The Final Word
NBC’s done a fair job so far with their streaming player and by offering up an unprecedented amount of Olympic coverage. But by trying to make things easier, the network seems to have made them harder. It’s decent for diehards of weird sports like fencing or those who need their content more live than Bill O’Reilly. But using it feels obtuse, like it’s the bastard love child of Windows Vista and Symbian. However, Microsoft’s Silverlight is not to blame—you can’t even detect the difference from Flash. It’s all about content management: At this point there are increasingly vast amounts of material, some live, some taped and mostly impossible to tell the difference, which may even be shockingly announcer-free. Maybe NBC will figure this stuff out when the games really get rolling, but for now it’ll have to settle for a Bronze. [NBC Olympics]

Original post by Benny Goldman

newVideoPlayer(”/Beijing_Olympics_Fireworks.flv”, 475, 376,”"); Today is August 8, 2008: 8/8/8. A special day in history because of many reasons, starting with today’s opening of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. I’ve been watching the ceremony live all morning here in Sweden, and it has been truly amazing at moments, like when the whole city lighted up with the biggest display of fireworks I’ve ever seen. And apart from the fact that the date itself looks cool, in the technology world, 8/8/8 is also special for other reasons:

1876 - Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph, a precursor of the photocopier.
1908. Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It’s the Wright Brothers’ first public flight and the French public goes wild.
1910 - The US Army installs the first tricycle landing gear on the Army’s Wright Flyer.
1929 - The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight.
1946 - First flight of the Convair B-36. The B-36 was the largest mass-produced piston engined aircraft ever made and the biggest wingspan combat aircraft ever built.
1974 - Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces his resignation, effective the next day.
1989 - Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission - Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.

[Wikipedia, Gawker 2008 Olympics Coverage]

Original post by Jesus Diaz

newVideoPlayer(”/MythBusters__Exploding_Steak_Myth_giz.flv”, 506, 423,”");Mythbusters returns for a whole new season tomorrow, August 6, and they were nice enough to drop a preview of their first episode off while they were on their way to blowing shit up. One of the experiments they’re going to test is whether explosives can tenderize a steak as well as a traditional tenderizers. Can it? We’re not sure—you’ll have to watch Discovery at 9PM tomorrow to find out. [Mythbusters]

Original post by Jason Chen

The video is pretty self explanatory, but here it is for those who can’t see it: A man and his wife had been noticing lots of ants on their computer desk but couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. It wasn’t from outside or anywhere else in the house. Later, the wife tells the husband that the printer wasn’t working correctly. He checked out the printer/scanner combo only to find that the ants had turned it into a home. The video’s pretty good, but what’s he going to do next? Throw out the printer/scanner? Evict the bugs? What would you do?

Original post by Matt Hickey

Toyota’s Segway-competing Winglet may look agile and nimble in photos, but how does it perform in motion? Quite well, actually. A lady with capri pants can ride the M version around with relative ease, using her weight to direct the Winglet around in a figure 8 so other Japanese men can take photos of her from every angle. The only thing left to see is the price. Will this be affordable enough so we can all don our short pants and ride outside in style? [Japan Times]

Original post by Jason Chen

newVideoPlayer(”/mojave.flv”, 506, 423,”");Remember Microsoft’s the Mojave experiment? Where they took XP users who didn’t know a lot about Vista, stuck them in a room, showed them a mysterious OS that they loved, then revealed that it was Vista. Here’s the video they took of the experiment.

What’s interesting about this experiment is that sure, people who don’t know a enough about Vista are kneejerking their way into hating it. These people are the ones that are easily convinced with a slight-of-hand that Vista is good. But what they didn’t show was the day to day usage of Vista, like accidentally installing an XP printer driver and not being able to print. Sure, we like Vista just fine, but this demographic that Microsoft has in its video would be just the kind to not really be tech savvy enough to fix the aforementioned printer problem.

What can we conclude from the Mojave experiment? Pretty much exactly what we thought of Vista: that it’s not that bad. Definitely not as bad as these people previously thought. [Mojave Experiment]

Original post by Jason Chen

Canon’s AVCHD HD10 camcorder got an excellent reception earlier this year, and now Canon have tweaked it slightly into the upcoming HF11 version. The most important tweaks are doubling the internal storage from 16GB to 32GB and the addition of a 24Mbps high quality MXP imaging mode. Otherwise, most features of the camera remain the same. Similar tweaks have been made to last years HG10 HDD camera, adding in the 24Mbps shooting mode, a 120GB drive and now allowing movies to be saved onto SD card whereas before it was limited to still imagery. Both cameras will be available in August for $1,300.

Original post by Kit Eaton

The second Futurama DVD hasn’t even stopped spinning in our drives and we’re already looking forward to the third one. It’s a much geekier affair than even Futurama fans are used to, as they’re delving into the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Will this Ender’s Game Futurama movie be any good? We’re pretty sure it will, seeing as the Kirk and Spock heads are back, and that was probably one of the best episodes ever.

Original post by Jason Chen