Chinavision ’s CVFH-N03-4G may not have the catchiest titles, but it does boast an impressive array of emulators to satisfy your on-the-go retro gaming needs — although we imagine those tiny shoulder buttons would prove irksome after a while. Support includes NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Game Boy Advance, SNK Neo-Geo and Capcom arcade systems CPS1 and CPS2 — sorry, no love for Atari 2600 or Commodore 64, here — all accessible through a menu that in no way, shape, or form resembles Sony’s Xross Media Bar

Continued here:
Chinavision CVFH-N03-4G portable emulator indulges your retro gaming cravings

We’ve seen plenty of crazy audio gear in our day, but nothing’s ever prompted as much drooling and downright lust as Open Computings DBeat, a monster of a rig that blends a full-bore 3GHz Core 2 Duo and 12-inch capacitive multitouch LCD screen with tracking controls, a DJ-oriented MIDI controller, iPod dock and a high-quality 4-in/6-out audio interface all into one integrated unit. Spec-wise you’re looking at 4GB of RAM and a 320GB drive, as well as a dual-layer burner — stuff we’d generally want to keep far, far away from our audio interface, but we’re overlooking that right now, because we’re in love. Harder to ignore?

View post: 
OpenLabs DBeat blends computer, audio control surface into amazing

As part of its newfound bankrupcy status, Ritz Camera’s gearing up to close more than 300 of its around 700 brick-and-mortar stores across the US, or about 43 percent of its retail presence. Starting April 4th, the affect stores will begin liquidation sales that’ll go on until — in the words of the press release — “everything is sold to the bare walls.” Forget DSLRs, if you were needing any fancy, brick-and-mortal shelving units, now might be your chance! Hit up the read link for a PDF listing all the closing stores.

[via EnGadget.com]

The HTC Touch Diamond 2 is similar to the Touch Pro 2, but without the keyboard, special speakerphone and conference calling capability.

Read the rest here:
HTC Touch Diamond 2 Hands On: I Might Like the Original Better [Smartphone]

Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.

Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can’t be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal.

Why would Google want Twitter? We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game. In a post last month called It’s Time To Start Thinking Of Twitter As A Search Engine, I wrote:

More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them. And those brands want to know all about it, whether to respond individually (The W Hotel pestered me until I told them to just leave me alone), or simply gather the information to see what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong.

And all of it is discoverable at search.twitter.com, the search engine that Twitter acquired last summer.

People searching for news. Brands searching for feedback. That’s valuable stuff.

Twitter knows it, too. They’re going to build their business model on it. Forget small time payments from users for pro accounts and other features, all they have to do is keep growing the base and gather more and more of those emotional grunts. In aggregate it’s extremely valuable. And as Google has shown, search is vastly monetizable – somewhere around 40% of all online advertising revenue goes to ads on search listings today.

If this is accurate, it’s a brilliant deal for Google – the value of Twitter is only going to go up over time. And it will be Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone’s second sale to Goolge – they sold Blogger to them just five years ago. But there’s one big question – where’s Microsoft in all this? Letting Twitter go to Google only hurts them, badly, in the long term search game. This is an asset they need to be competing for aggressively.

Of course, it’ll be sad to see Twitter become just another subsidiary of Google, if this happens. I would have liked to have seen the company spread its wings a little longer to see what it could do.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Read more here:
Sources: Google In Late Stage Talks To Acquire Twitter

Remember Zork? Sure you do. It was great. The grues, that scary white house, the keys, the puzzles… it was the ur-game, the game that defined many of our childhoods and the game we’ve been trying to find ever since. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished that the latest 3D RPG for XBox 360 or PC was more like Zork. There is only so many Hobbit knock-offs you can take before you yearn for the gnome of Zurich. Sadly – or maybe luckily – Activision decided to regurgitate the old game in on-line form, sell “turns” to addicts, and generally destroy Zork for an entire generation. Oh well. Things change and kids these days don’t care about good text-based adventures what with their Nintenders and PlayStations 3.

Lengends of Zork is clearly aimed at folks who haven’t played an online game in decades. It’s quite simple – you wander around, fight other characters, and generally recreate most of the boredom inherent in poorly-made online games and none of the beauty of Infocom’s original work.

Read more here: 
Legends of Zork Browser-Based RPG: Not the Zork You’re Looking For

Like Lam , I will forever be infatuated with midrange Sony Ericsson phones. SE knows what their devices can and can’t do and they work within those limitations.

Here is the original post:
Sony Ericsson T707: Who Says More of the Same Is a Bad Thing? [Cellphones]

If this guy looks serious, it’s because he is — serious about bringing you some awesome watch phones. Canadian firm Neutrano is working with Chinese OEMs to import, tweak, and certify some of those watch phones that we’ve unfortunately been spending more time reading about than actually using — and while they aren’t going to appeal to everyone, the stainless steel version is the closest thing we’ve seen to something we’d consider wearing this side of an LG . Fans of chunky, stylish wristwatches should be able to pass it off as a fashion statement of sorts — your friends don’t even have to know it’s a phone, really.

Original post: 
Neutrano’s Nutec WristFone watch phones at CTIA

DiggBar, the new shortURL and toolbar service from Digg, is certainly useful. I expect it to become my default short URL service on Twitter since it is so easy to create a short URL by simply adding Digg.com/ in front of any URL. It will redirect to a short Digg URL like digg.com/d1npNz, which is this story rendered with the DiggBar (click that Digg button!).

The Twitter crowd already loves this based on all the chatter I saw on the site today. This will also expose a lot of new people to Digg since anyone that clicks on the link will see the toolbar wrapper with the view count, Digg comments and other information on the top. And it will also increase Digg’s overall traffic substantially – unlike other short URL services, Digg doesn’t simply redirect to the longer URL. It keeps you on Digg and shows the site being pointed to in an iframe wrapper. You can get to the underlying URL by clicking on the X button on the top right.

But Digg didn’t stop there. They’re also using DiggBar for all stories on Digg as well. So all those home page stories that send massive amounts of traffic around the web are now redirecting right back to Digg, too. That keeps all that traffic in the Digg ecosystem, to the detriment of the sites being linked to.

For most purposes those sites won’t care. The page is still rendered and includes the advertising. The way most internal analytics software works means that page views will still be counted. But some services, like Comscore, won’t necessarily see the visit to the site, and will penalize the domain name.

I’d expect Digg to add text advertising to the DiggBar over time, sooner rather than later. It should be a material revenue source for them.

Overall it’s a brilliant move by Digg. I’m surprised no one has complained yet though about Digg home page traffic no longer going to the sites being listed.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

More here:
DiggBar Keeps All Digg Homepage Traffic On Digg

Due to a string of recent burglaries, residents of Buckinghamshire had been on the lookout for any suspicious vehicles nearby—so naturally, the Google Street View car was welcomed to the neighborhood with an old-fashioned mob.

Go here to see the original:
Buckinghamshire, UK Says ‘GTFO’ to Google Street View Via Mob [Google]