goggles

Wow, the new Sharp i3 Wall is a lot of TV! I'm tempted to ask who needs that much TV but that would be a silly question. I work for CNET after all!

A few highlights of this beast: It has thirty 60-inch liquid crystal displays mounted 6.5 millimeters from one another. It will cost $550,000 when it launches in Japan later this year. No joke!

Before you start emptying your 401K to be able to afford this (and if you have that much in your 401K, good for you!), keep in mind the equation for TV … Read more

When backed into a corner, the FCC acts less like a bear and more like a kitten ... which is probably a good thing for the Internet overall. Facebook takes another lump, the HTC Evo shows up for pre-order at The Shack at all places, and Google Chrome is faster than a potato. Well, French fries, to be really accurate.

New U.S. Push to Regulate Internet Access http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703961104575226583645448758.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20004313-266.html

Facebook patches … Read more

This past weekend I was at a wedding where the bride, groom, and both of their families came from different sides of the Pacific Ocean (Japan and central California to be precise). At the party the night before the ceremony a few of us broke out our phones to play with translation apps, which of course, led to comical results.

One of the highlights was when the groom-to-be (who happens to be bilingual) looked at my attempt to translate "I think you've had enough beer," from English to Japanese and said "That's good, but far … Read more

Google has added another company to its shopping cart--this time it's U.K.-based Plink, a visual-search provider.

In a blog post Monday, Plink co-founders Mark Cummins and James Philbin announced the deal as "exciting news," especially for a company that only went public four months ago.

Plink apparently caught Google's eye by developing an Android app called PlinkArt, which lets you photograph and upload a snapshot of a painting that Plink then identifies to provide details about the artwork and its artist. You can then share that artwork with other people via your smartphone. PlinkArt … Read more

From the makers of the Digital Underwater Camera Mask comes a new gizmo that lets adrenaline junkies capture their skiing adventures. Liquid Image will be showing off its new 335 Snow Camera Goggle at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.

The shooter is part of the new Summit Series of ski masks with integrated cameras. The hands-free snapper has a 5-megapixel image sensor that's also capable of recording 720x480-pixel videos with audio. Controls are laid out on the right side of the snow goggles and are large to facilitate users wearing gloves. The eyewear has 16MB of internal … Read more

We tip our hat to Google for creating a novel mobile app that uses pictures to prompt a search, not just text or vocal input. When you take a photo through Goggles, the free app scans the image, matching your picture against its database and returning a result. Goggles can read bar codes, landmarks, logos, books and DVDs, signs, and products. Things like plants still give Goggles trouble, and results aren't always consistent scan to scan. As Goggles is still a product of Google Labs, it's more experimental than fully baked. But it's a good experiment, and … Read more

It appears that the Google Goggles search-by-sight tool could soon work not just with mobile phones, but through Google's Chrome browser, too.

"I am working on a 20 percent project to facilitate the input of Web image searching," Google programmer Xiuduan Fang said in a post Tuesday to the Chrome Extensions mailing list titled "Chrome extension for Web Goggles. The 20 percent figure refers to a Google program that permits engineers to devote a fifth of their time to projects of their own choosing.

"We would like to have some browser extensions so that the … Read more

Yahoo has a new program to spread kindness. But Cooley hates it. Why? There's no app for that. We also discover the true meaning of holiday hate when Tom and Brian fight over the rights of the customer when shopping. And we review the JooJoo and Boxee. And Natali lets on that she hates Brooklyn. At least when Brooklyn has no food.

Boxee Beta is cleaner, better, still closed http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10410159-250.html

And Boxee Box will launch next … Read more

If simply playing the hotly anticipated shooter Modern Warfare 2 isn't enough, you might be tempted to shell out extra for the $149 Prestige Edition of the game (over the typical $59 standalone game disc).

Inside the oversize box, we found a copy of the game in a metal case, a small hardcover book of production art, and most importantly, a pair of plastic--but functioning--night vision goggles. Said goggles, which required five AA batteries, also came with a small plastic bust of a game character's head--perfect for storing and displaying your goggles when not using them to sneak … Read more