The OnLive streaming game service that takes console and PC games, renders them server-side, then streams it to your Mac or PC, will go live on June 17 in the US (lower 48). More »

There’s no way to verify this except to test it, but Solar Components claims their Joos Orange charger has somewhere between six to twenty times as much “3G cell phone talk time per hours of sun” than their competitors.

This is where we’re confused though. Their chart shows that they have 120 minutes of talk time per hour of sun, but rate competitors at just 20 minutes of talk time per hour of sun. However, on their tech specs sheet, they say that they can “make more powe than any other personal solar charger on the market. Up to 20 times more.” Or, if you use their reflector kit, which brings in more sun, you can get 30 times more.

So, assuming it’s just six times more powerful than anyone else, the question remains: Are these guys just so much better and found a secret to solar power generation, or is everyone else just horrible engineers? Either way, Solar Components supposedly will ship this 5400mAh solar-powered battery in June at just $100. Sounds fishy for now, but we’d love to test it out ourselves to see. [Solar Joos via iPod NN]

AppleInsider found four cooling-related patents by Apple that might be used in future MacBooks in order to better keep temperatures from getting absurd as performance increases. The most interesting is the one that uses USB/Firewire ports as vents.

These ports would theoretically (while they’re not being used, of course) help increase airflow to vital hot parts, so that you wouldn’t have to create more vents on the other parts of the laptop. The downside is that if you’re the kind of person who likes to plug everything in and fill up all the holes of your laptop all the time, you’re cutting off potential ventilation.

Two of the other patents, one for sensing airflow and making adjustments automatically, and the other using heat-conductive hinge assemblies, seem more obvious and less innovative. The last, though, uses the Peltier effect which…

defines when an electrical current runs through the junction of two different metals. When electrons flow from a region of high density to a lower one, it allows them to cool. The application describes a “solid-state cooling mechanism” that would employ two sides to transfer heat away from the machine and help dissipate it.

So it allows additional cooling, but without having to employ more fans. Another way for the device to keep small and sturdy without cutting more holes and adding more air-pushing components. [Apple Insider]

These Force Series SSDs from Corsair have up to 280MB/s reads and 260MB/s writes, which are supposedly “class-leading”. Even if it’s not the fastest solid state drives on the market period, it’s the fastest Corsair’s ever made.

The drives will be available in 100 and 200GB sizes in about two weeks, and will support SATA II 3.0Gb/s. No prices for these yet, but our guess is you’re going to have to pay a little more for the higher performance. In comparison, Corsair’s other 128GB drives run around $400-500, depending on where you shop. [Corsair]

TomTom’s discounting their US and US+Canada navigation apps slightly, down to $50 and $70, respectively. They’ve done this before, on both apps, so it’s not unprecedented, but it is a good deal if you’re looking for iPhone Navigation. [App Store]

Today, YouTube is rolling out automatic captioning for all videos uploaded to the service, using Google’s speech recognition service. You can see a demo in the video above.

Automatic captioning with Google speech recognition was launched in November. This only had a few selected education partners to test out automatic captioning, until now.

There are many reasons for captions on every video: ESL viewers, people in other countries, searchability, not wanting to disturb others, loud locations and automatic translations to other countries.

The captioning won’t be perfect, since Google’s speech recognition isn’t perfect, but it is really, really cool, and is sort of one step toward the goal of speech to speech recognition in real time that Google is aiming for. By testing pre-recorded videos, they can help refine the tech on something that isn’t as vital or time sensitive, in order for it to be used in something that is—phone conversations.

Also cool, if your video gets captioned weirdly by Google’s system, you can download the captions in plain text and correct the captions yourself. This is much easier than captioning from scratch.

If you want to have YouTube go and caption something you uploaded a few years ago—because they caption newly uploaded videos first—you can manually request that as well.

Update: In response to some of the comments, yeah, it may use the same system as Google Voice’s transcription (not sure yet), but having more people come in and upload their correct versions of captions helps Google learn and improve their system faster, which helps all their speech-to-text services.

Update 2: I don’t usually get emotional at press conferences, but watching the students from the California School For the Deaf talk about how the auto-captioning will improve their lives is kinda making me tear up. Right now, I think this is cooler than anything I’ve seen rolled out in the last few years.

Update 3: I asked if this was the same algorithm currently being used in Google Voice, and they yes, more or less, if you’re talking about the base technology. Goog411 and Voice Search all have the same core algorithms, but each of these four have various conditions and issues that the algorithm needs tweaking to. So, you can probably expect a similar level of performance to Google Voice, or maybe even worse, if the videos have people who don’t speak clearly, or multiple voices, or a noisy background.

This Fit-U mouse from Spanish peripheral designer Rainbow has a neat idea. Its top is a detachable plate, allowing you to switch back from a desktop-sized mouse and a travel-sized mouse easily. Too bad the mouse is so bad.

The Price:

TBD

The Verdict:

Bad mouse, but great idea. The concept of being able to take a regular-sized mouse (the Large plate, in their terms), swapping on another cover and turning it into a travel-sized mouse is a neat idea. Some days you want a large, ergonomic mouse like Logitech’s, but some days you want a smaller one to shove into your bag.

The downside is how bad this mouse is at mousing. I placed it on two different mousepads and a desk, and it was never able to track half as well as the Logitech Performance MX mouse. Chunks and stutters were common, and most of the time I was fighting it like an old man new to computing in order for it to do what I wanted. The button presses were hard and clacky instead of being smooth and easy. Overall, bad times.

On the other hand, the top plate is easy to pop off and easy to swap, which is a plus. Its only plus. You have to ask yourself what kind of bag you have that can fit a travel-sized mouse but not a slightly bigger mouse, and what kind of mousing surface really demands a compact device, and that extra 2 inches just won’t do. My feeling is that it’s really rare.

So it if weren’t for the fact that this mouse doesn’t function very well as a mouse, it’d be a great mouse. But in the meantime, you should go with a Microsoft or a Logitech or a Razor; one of the people that have perfected mice sensors. [Fit-U]

Interesting idea for a customizable mouse


Large size plate not that comfortable for a desktop mouse


Travel size plate is about the same as other travel mice


Bad at mousing

Blockbuster’s not doing so well, closing another 500 locations in an attempt to straighten its ship. The latest tactic? Bringing back late fees, which they ditched back in 2005 in order to compete with Netflix.

Slashfilm says that the late fees will work on a $1-per-day basis up to 10 days, so the most you’ll ever have to pay is an extra $10. Blockbuster’s reasoning is that people keep new rentals an average of 4.7 days, which “[keeps] that title away from somebody else.” Which then means Blockbuster needs to buy more copies of the same movie to satisfy more customers, then try to sell those as pre-rented versions after the hype dies.

Personally, I’ve been grandfathered in on the Blockbuster Online program to still keep getting two free game/video rentals per month, and being able to exchange the online movies for a free in-store rental. That, plus having online rentals, keeps me coming back. But unless Blockbuster figures out an equivalent to Netflix streaming, it’s hard to compete. [Slashfilm]

Apple may be the current get-the-patents-then-sue-other-people-for-them guy, but Google’s loading up on their own too, and this time it’s for a subject that they really love: Advertising.

This six-year-old patent contains details like finding where you are, adjusting the content of an ad, how (and how much) advertisers will pay for it and various other advertisery components. Obviously serving up ads to your phone depending on where you currently are will be a huge deal in the years to come, and now Google might be able to lock other people out from doing similar things. You know, like Apple, if Apple decides to sue Google for violating any of Apple’s patents in Android. [Venturebeat]

If this leak is true (and it’s boring enough to be true), then it means webOS 1.4 should be hitting soon (like we thought).

Nothing on here is stuff we didn’t already know, including video capture, Flash 10 support for the Pre, improved speeds and a bunch of small fixes and upgrades. [Precentral via Everything Pre via Engadget]

This sushi-making robot, along with the Okonomiyaki robot and the omelet robot, aren’t new, but they are featured in this NYT story about chef robots to get you up to speed on machine-prepared cuisine.

The only question I have, since these robots are from Japan, is about where else that hand has been. [NYTimes]

The mini-giant Nintendo DSi XL, which is ALSO AN EREADER APPARENTLY, has just gotten a price: $190. It will be ripe for your purchasing on March 28.

I don’t even know where to start, but this iMaxi is exactly what you think it is. It’s designed to “protect” your iPad, and was made as a one-off on Etsy. I’m sure they’d make you more. [Etsy via Nerd Approved]

Just as we feared, Walmart is eliminating Vudu’s “After Dark” section after purchasing the streaming company/technology for $100 million. Walmart, who doesn’t sell adult films and only sells edited version of some music, basically just did what was in line with their image. Sad, since Vudu was the only big video streaming place where you could get porn from onto your TV? [Techcrunch]

Not sure why it took $2,500 and a student design competition to come up with this, but Trevis Kurz has invented a smoke alarm you can change the batteries for with just a broomstick (and your arms). [Housewares]

This man, Jack Rossi, created a simulation proton pack + thrower so he can play the Wii version of Ghostbusters with as much realism as possible. This is the result.

I gotta admire him for his preference of playability over having this-gen graphics. And for finding a use for all that junk he had lying around his house. [GBFans via Destructoid via Nerd Aproved]

Obama’s anti-trust guy thinks Google has some monopoly in them, and now so does Europe. If you remember back just a few years, you’ll recall that Europe was the big battleground that Microsoft had to fight in trying to prove that it wasn’t a monopoly, so this could be the start of some legal bad-news for Google. Or, it could turn out to be nothing, as it’s just a probe. [Business Insider]