Latest Gear Live Videos
Bleeding Edge TV 262: HP Garage tour video
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Full Episodes, Gizmatic, Features, Home Entertainment, PC / Laptop, Podcasts, Videocasts
The HP Garage is recognized as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. We got the rare opportunity to get inside of the Garage (thanks to our sponsor HP) to bring you a look at an important piece of tech history. Be sure to also check out our HP Garage photo tour. We also have a bunch of images in our HP Garage photo gallery.
We give you a peek at the rich history behind HP - if you are into tech, this is definitely one to watch. We get the story of how two men took HP from your average startup, to what we see today.
A big thank you goes out to HP and Verizon FiOS for sponsoring this episode.
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HP Garage photo tour
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Features, PC / Laptop
We had the honor of getting invited to tour the HP Garage, considered almost universally to be the “birthplace of Silicon Valley.” In a nutshell, the HP Garage is a literal 12’ x 18’ wooden garage. This is where Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett founded the Hewlett-Packard company, way back when in 1939. Yes, even HP was a struggling, bootstrapped startup.
The Gear Live crew, along with Xavier from Notebooks.com, Michael from Hardware Geeks, and Rob from Windows Now, got a fantastic history lesson from HP Archivist Anna Mancini. If you are a geek like we are, you would have had a blast hearing all the interesting tidbits that Anna shared. For example, did you know that the company name was decided by the flip of a coin? Had the coin landed different, the company would have instead been named Packard-Hewlett, and would no doubt have been nowhere near successful. That’s how those things work, right?
Another interesting fact is that the bread and butter of HP was their line of audio oscillators, which they actually made by hand. They even baked the metal slabs in their kitchen oven. Way to save cash, eh? After Disney ordered eight of them to use in conjunction with the release of Fantasia, HP was well on its way to the big time.
We’ve put together an HP Garage tour photo gallery, featuring a good 26 images that Xavier Lanier graciously hooked us up with. Check it out for a fantastic glimpse into the history of consumer electronics.
Read More 
| HP Garage photo tour
Gallery: HP Garage photo tour
Rock out with the Air Guitar T-Shirt
Posted by Lolita Beckwith Categories: Accessories, Casual, Culture, Music
If you’re a fan of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band, we’ve got a T-shirt for you. The design on this tee bears a striking resemblance to the faux guitar that comes with those, games so you’re guaranteed to be the star of the show when wearing one. Or for ultimate geekiness, you can crank up some Led Zep and make like the lad in the photo above. But we suggest you only do that around those who truly “get you”. Available in both men’s and women’s sizes for only $12 USD.
Read More | Gifts.com
Space Invaders baseball caps
Posted by Lolita Beckwith Categories: Accessories, Casual, Culture, Retro
Last year we featured lots of Space Invaders stuff, such as the bling, welcome mat, tote bag and even a baby mobile. Well we just found out the classic video game turns 30 this year. To celebrate, manufacturer Taito and New Era caps have teamed up to release a collection of seven black, fitted-style 59Fifty caps embroidered with the game’s characters. We think they’re a tad pricey at $57 each, but think of how great it will go with this scarf. According to StrictlyFitteds.com, the caps are available at Cap Collector One and New Era.
Read More | Strictly Fitteds via Gizmodiva
WALL-E GameCube case mod is awesome
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Culture, Mods/Hacks, Nintendo, Nintendo Gamecube
Allow us to introduce you to what just might be the cutest case mod we’ve ever seen - a GameCube made to look like WALL-E. We are sure this was no easy feat, what with the usage of acrylic paint, metal, plastic, and even plexiglass. If you haven’t heard, WALL-E is the star of the next Pixar film, WALL-E. Yeah, we know. Anyhow, the little robot was cute enough in the movie’s trailer - even more so in GameCube form. We knew Nintendo‘s little-box-that-could still had some sort of value left in it.
Read More | Bit-Tech forums
Halo 2 Zanzibar map done up LEGO style
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Culture, First Person Shooters, Microsoft, Xbox
See, it’s stuff like this that absolutely blows us away. We’ve seen a lot of people do some interesting things with LEGOs in the past, but we think this recreation of the Zanzibar map from Halo 2 may take the cake. This was done by a college student who seemingly had way too much time on his hands.
After nearly two years of building and thousands of dollars sunk into my project, it’s finished. This is my latest video which details how I made my famous Lego model of Zanzibar from it’s very first stage, to the now near completed form. I wanted to make this video so that everyone will get the facts straight. I originally sent the picture and video files that you’ll see in this video to Bungie Studios where they incorporated them into the Halo 3 Legendary edition bonus disk.
Check the video for the full scoop, and prepare to be amazed.
Has Microsoft Turned The Corner In Japan?
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Xbox 360
Microsoft has perennially struggled in Japan in the console market. The original Xbox did miserably in Japan and for the first year of its launch it seemed like the Xbox 360 was going to follow in its footsteps. However, the past few months have seen some fairly high profile titles hit the console along with some extremely aggressively priced hardware and software bundles. Gamasutra is reflecting on these releases to try and determine if Microsoft has indeed turned things around in that territory.
The site looks to the recent launch of Blue Dragon and its related hardware bundle as well as the release of Gears of War in Japan to try and find out where the truth lies. Blue Dragon was probably one of the strongest releases, but after the initial release spike, the game dropped off the sales charts fairly quickly. Similarly, Gears of War broke the top ten in sales for the week it was released, but very next week had the game dropping off the top 30 entirely. Reports in Japan had Microsoft badly undershipping the title, which would effectively kill sales, if true. But overall this seems to reflect on efforts by a company that still doesn’t really understand the culture, and this is quickly killing any temporary successes. Much of the feedback that Gamasutra received for their article seems to show a company that is badly out of sync with their target market, putting marketing money into badly conceived campaigns that fail to reach the consumer.
Read More | Gamasutra
New Survey Shows PS3 First, Xbox 360 Last
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Nintendo, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360
A new survey from recently the recently formed research company Interpret shows the Xbox 360 trailing in mindshare in the next generation console wars. Interpret’s survey targeted 2,000 online users; these users were then apparently weighted against 2004 Census data. In the data released to Next Generation, the weighted data shows 8.9 million consumers ready to pony up money for the PS3, 5.7 million would purchase the Wii, and 800,000 would buy the Xbox 360 at full price. It’s hard to attach much weight to the survey, though, without further information.
While Interpret LLC is a new company, its founders consist of veterans from ratings giant Nielsen; there is a lot of experience at the helm. But without more particulars, it is hard to judge if Interpret’s extrapolations are valid. There are some interesting points from the research; Interpret believes that while Microsoft has had tremendous success over the past year, the company has not been able to expand its audience beyond the hardcore gamer. It is also easy for gamers online to get an insulated view of the industry. Certainly, Sony has had a lot of bad news related to the Playstation 3, but a lot of this information will not trickle down to the mainstream audience. While this survey paints a bad picture for Microsoft, there is a huge gap between surveys, statistics, and the real world.
Read More | Next Generation
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