Just when you thought all the weird stuff came from Japan. UK company Captive Media has unveiled a video game console that installs above a modified urinal with sensors that you use to control the action of the game with your stream. See it for yourself in the video below.
One thought here is that the video games will help guys with their aim, but I think it make work in the opposite way. Just one of the games offered is a skiing game, and my video game skiing history tells me that might involve a lot of flailing left and right. I’d hate to be the person who has to clean the bathrooms at those pubs. To be fair, the games they use seem to be calibrated more to their need, which may alleviate some of my concern. Perhaps more effective – though arguably less fun – are products like the Urinal Fly which have been out for some time.
Stranger, still, you can post your scores to Twitter via the Captive Games Twitter account. I’m guessing the logistics behind inputting your own Twitter username and password were a bit much.
I’m not sure if this urinal video game console is a good or bad idea. What do you think?
There’s more to the Star Wars story than you’ve been told in the movies. I always thought so, too, but apparently there’s a LOT more. I didn’t know just how interesting it was behind the scenes making these movies come to life until I recently began reading The Secret History of Star Wars : The Art of Storytelling and the Making of a Modern Epic, a book by Michael Kaminski, a cameraman in the film and television industry and Star Wars fan.
The Book And Its Secrets
Years ago, Michael Kaminski didn’t set out to write a book. Instead, he wanted to show his appreciation for the Star Wars Saga by writing a lengthy essay about its history to publish online. This essay evolved into a 600 page detailed account of everything Star Wars became from its inception through to current day. Spending a ton of time and reaching out to hundreds of sources for his research, Kaminski not only pieced together an incredible story of the birth and evolution of the single most successful series of films in movie history, but he did it in a way that makes it compelling to read. Instead of just throwing some facts on paper and organizing them, this author displayed some great writing and got me hooked from the first page. The book’s introduction paints a vivid picture of a twenty-eight year old George Lucas sitting at his desk just barely beginning with a title on a rainy Tuesday night.
Kaminski keeps the reader involved as you’re watching it play out in front of you, dropping hints and shocking nuggets about the evolution of Star Wars along the way. Although I’m nowhere near the end of this book, I’ve found myself stopping to tell my wife interesting bits I’ve read. One great example is that, according to The Secret History of Star Wars, Darth Vader originally wasn’t Luke’s father. Vader and Luke’s father actually had scenes together in early drafts and it was only through time and by necessity of the rest of the tale that Darth Vader wound up as Luke’s father.
If I tell you more about what I’ve read, it will not be much of a secret, but I will say that this book intrigued me by title alone and drew me in from the beginning. It’s $39.95 price at Barnes & Noble is beaten by a price of about $27 at Amazon and would make a pretty good gift for any Star Wars fan. I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan, and I’ve been having a hard time putting the book down.
Win This Book
The book doesn’t cost much to buy, but free is even better! For the next 7 days, you can enter to win one of two copies of The Secret History of Star Wars. Just follow the entry instructions below and come back here next week to see if you’ve won a copy. Entering is as simple as clicking the “Do it” link, following any instructions, and then clicking the “I did this” button. If you’re already subscribed to JoeTech.com via email or you already follow me on Twitter, you can skip right to the “I did this” button for those entries. Good luck!
In the past, I had a chance to play with a pretty cool cell phone watch from China, but today I’m looking to another part of the globe for an even cooler offering.
I’m Watch, from Italy, seems to be turning some heads lately. This watch from a company called Blue Sky disguises all the tech savvy of a full sized Android or IOS smart phone into a beautifully designed watch. Looking more like an iPhone for your wrist, this Android powered smart watch is set to hit CES in January while it simultaneously opens up for U.S. sales.
The watch will boast an app store filled with applications and compatibility with IOS, Android, Symbian, Bada, RIM, and Windows 7. The I’m Watch also features “the first ever capacitive touch display on curved surface”. This all fits in a device a little bulkier than a normal watch and at a price not too far off from an iPhone. I’m waiting for the availability of review units in January, but until then, the video below offers a pretty good preview of how I’m Watch works.
Online video accounts for an astounding percentage of the internet’s traffic. YouTube, alone, sees about 48 hours of new video uploaded every minute and about three billion video views per day. Still, we find ourselves often looking to third party applications to handle video tasks our base operating systems don’t do – or at least not well enough. A good example of this is downloading video from sources such as YouTube.
Today, I spent some time with the Elmedia Player software and tried many of the features offered in the free version as well as the PRO.
Notable Elmedia Player Features
The free version of the Elmedia Player leaves out most of my favorite features, but that’s to be expected. I found, however, that even the free version is very well polished with a lot of options and advantages over most of the free video tools I see. Here’s a list of most of what you find in the free version:
- Support for many video types (FLV, SWF, XAP (Silverlight), RM and RV (Real), AVI, MOV, MP4, WMV, DIVX)
- HTML5 video support
- Zoom in and zoom out options for SWF and EXE (or APP) files
- Growl and browsers integration
- iTunes-like playlists and star ratings
The PRO version, offered for only $19.95 on Eltima Software’s web site, hones in on a few key features that the product is really designed for and delivers in those areas. While this software isn’t littered with too much fluff, there are a few extras that don’t seem entirely necessary (like video ratings). Regardless, they’re not in the way and, more importantly, they didn’t distract Eltima from doing a good job with the core features. Some of the PRO features include:
- Download Video – even RTMP streams
- Full-screen mode
- “Always on top” mode
- Make a screenshot of the current frame
- Convert file into series of images
Of course, downloading video from a wide variety of sources is the feature I’d pay for, but the screen shot and “Always on top” features will also come in pretty handy. Less needed, but great on occasion, will be the option that lets you take a series of images – I’m thinking animated GIFs here.
Hands On Testing
After installing the software, my first test (as seen in the image at the beginning of this review) was to head to YouTube and try to download one of my review videos. In the past, I’ve used plug-ins to download a video, but Elmedia Player takes a different approach. You paste the URL to a web page into the software and it loads the page like a browser. When it does this, it looks for any videos or links to them in the page’s content and makes a list for you to select from. I first downloaded just the video that I was after, but then I tried the “Download all” option which grabbed everything in site.
Tip: You may need to start playing the video in the preview page before it will appear in the list to download.
Once a video is grabbed, it’s listed under the Downloaded section, where you can pull up everything from just today or broaden the listing. The organization extends in a different way to the file folder structure behind the scenes as well. Here, a folder is created that is named after the page you downloaded from.
While this software’s core features are not that unlike some free browser plugins on the surface, the extra video formats it supports can be invaluable. Additionally, some of the browser plugins I’ve used in the past can be sporadic in their reliability. I haven’t used this software long enough to be certain it will stand up to the many challenges I have in store for it, but so far, everything indicates that it likely will. Finally, one thing that Elmedia Player will not do that the browser plugins do all too often is cease to become useful after I upgrade to the latest browser version or switch from one to another. Being browser-independent has its advantages.
Conclusions
Cons: The only con it that it’s not free – well, it is free, but the best and really useful features are in the PRO version. Pros: This is well-built software with some thoughtful extras, the price is low enough to barely be a factor, and it doesn’t care what browser you have or version. Want 15% off? No problem. Just use the coupon code JOE-TECH-PROMO when you purchase.
Don’t Have 20 Bucks? Win It Here!
That’s right. Even if you’re just a little interested, I have been given not one, but two PRO upgrade codes to give out to lucky winners. Just follow the entry instructions below and come back here next week to see if you’ve won! Entering is as simple as clicking the “Do it” link, following any instructions, and then clicking the “I did this” button. If you’re already subscribed to JoeTech.com via email or you already follow me on Twitter, you can skip right to the “I did this” button for those entries. Good luck!
