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As you may have read earlier today, Digg introduced a new system to avoid the problem of two versions of the same story making it to the Digg homepage. Digg explains the technical solution in-depth on their blog , but we'd simply like to know this: if this system is so great, how did two stories about the new Digg duplicate detection make it to the Digg homepage, one on top of the other nonetheless, as you can see in the screenshot below:. There's a fairly good chance some mischievous Diggers did this on purpose, but nonetheless, it could go in the dictionary under the definition of "irony. ". Reviews: Digg . Tags: digg .

It doesn't do 3D and it doesn't curve all around your periphery , but Alienware's OptX AW2210 does a decent number for its just barely sub-$300 price tag. The 21. 5-inch widescreen LCD panel boasts 1080p resolution, two millisecond response time, 16. 7 million colors, and an 80,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. Throw in two HDMI and four USB ports -- sorry, no VGA or DVI here -- and you've got yourself a pretty nice option. The screen's on sale now via Alienware direct. Gallery: Alienware's 1080p 21. 5-inch OptX AW2210 priced for maximum street fighting . Filed under: Displays . Alienware's 1080p 21. 5-inch OptX AW2210 priced for maximum street fighting originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Well, iPhone OS 3. 1 Beta just went live on Apple's developer center and, as usual, it's a quest to figure out what has changed. Our lovely developer friends have already started tearing it apart in search of that hidden gem detailing the iPhone 4GFP (The FP stands for "Face punch"), and we're keeping tabs on what they find. Let us know what you uncover, and we'll add it to the list.

The Pirate Bay: Holes in the sale? Our own Doug Aamoth and JG Mason from Gadgetell. com discuss the recent sale of The Pirate Bay.

The Machinedrum is not something you can easily acquire. It's hard to find Elektron in your local drum machine shop - not that there are many drum machine shops out there but fortunately all their products can be ordered online - if the price isn't too steep for you. Anyway, I was eager to try this little beast out so let's see what it can do. The Machinedrum is a drum synthesizer with a small sample memory. It has 6 audio outputs and 2 inputs making it a device capable of serious routing and sound designing on stage or in studio. The heart of the machine is the 16 track sequencer which is very easy to use and unlike other devices out there it can in fact be used for live production. You get 64 step patterns out of the box - some are great, some are not - and 130 "machines" that are basically the sounds you can use and edit as you wish. Look and feel . It's a brick. I like the simple design and the square buttons although they are quite loud. The body is made of steel but the unit only weighs around 6 pounds. The screen could be bigger in my opinion. When you are performing live you often need to glance on the screen and it can be hard to read. In fact the black/white area around the screen could be used for a bigger screen making it easier to see things. Then again, you can read most of the stuff from the step sequencer and surely you wont be spending time editing sounds on stage. All the buttons and knobs are made of plastic and they react without latency. Control . Sound selection is done with the big black wheel. You can see which sound is selected on the nearby LED bar. Changing patterns is a piece of cake and I love how the Machinedrum handles that. By selecting a bank from A to H and pressing a number you can change the pattern on the next beat. Recording beats can be done in different ways. The original drum machine method is to select a sound and select when it should be played. The alternate method is live recording with quantize of course. It works like a charm. Effects are handled on the screen and it's easy to do some weird stuff with it. You can record the effect changes you made to your sound although it is hard to control them with a little knob. I love that the device responds immediately to everything. Sound . The Machinedrum sounds great. Superb quality kits can be achieved in a small amount of time (see video). Audio signals can be routed to any of the 6 outputs. A great thing to mess around is recording external audio and resample them. 2. 5 MB of sample memory however raises some questions. Why not include bigger memory or a CF card slot? Because of the lack of storage I'm refusing to call it a sampler. Resampling can be applied to the built in sounds as well opening a whole new world of sounds without limits. The sound is punchy, deep, delicate and very dynamic. Different kits will give you different styles from nu jazz to techno. Overall . The Machinedrum SPS-1 UW will cost you  $1790, shipping included. In the package Elektron's midi interface, a TM-1 is included. It might be a little too high for "just" a drum synthesizer. This device sounds great, it's easy to use and it's very compact. You can take it with you in your backpack and you can lay superb beats and patterns down in a minute. If you are looking for a sampler, I suggest you look somewhere else. However, to be honest the Machinedrum is the best drum machine out there. Period.

#saleschart { border: 0px solid #333; border-collapse: collapse; } #saleschart td { padding: 7px; border-bottom: 0px solid #ccc; vertical-align: top; margin: 0; line-height: 1. 3em; font-size: 100%;} #saleschart th. bottomrow { border-right: 1px solid #333; } #saleschart tr. features1 { border-top: 1px solid #333; } #saleschart td. bottomrow2 { border-right: 1px solid #333;} #saleschart th { font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; padding: 4px; background: #f3f3f3; border-top: 1px solid #333; } . Firefox 3. 5 arrives . Mozilla is saying its new browser is more than two times faster than Firefox 3, but what has us more excited is the support for plugin-free "open codec" video and audio playback. Wii MotionPlus impressions: it works, but so far the games aren't worth the fuss . At first glance it's a little difficult to understand the necessity of another motion-sensing add-on. Pirate Bay acquired by Global Gaming Factory, going legit like Napster . We'll have to wait and see how this pans out but it certainly smacks of a Napster v2 like situation at first blush. Other news of import. Verizon's BlackBerry Tour coming July 12th, pre-order page now live . Microsoft outs educational, inspirational Windows 7 tour videos . NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010? . Sony placing PS3 slim manufacturing orders for delivery in July? . Top ten rationales for illegally downloading HDTV shows . We're not saying we've ever downloaded anything off the internet that wasn't 100% on the up and up, or that we're here to judge those who have. Video: Palm Pre caught playing with GSM SIM in Vietnam . Having the Palm Pre on Sprint might be good for Americans driving their pick 'em up trucks down the CDMA data highway, but it doesn't do Europeans (or Palm's bottom line) any good over in the Old World. 2009 British Open broadcast confirmed in standard def on TNT & ABC . Oppo BDP-83 pre-orders now open for all (in North America) . Nokia N97 getting firmware 1. 1 on July 1 . BlackBerry Tour emerges in Alltel livery for those non-Sprint, non-Verizon types . The Daily Roundup: here's what you might've missed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Michael Bay's Transformers 2 Sneak Peek. Kindle DX Pisses Off Blind Students. Sony Can Give All PS3s PS2 Emulation—But Probably Won't. Band Uses iPhone Gimmick to Get Attention (and Succeeds). Anyone who still hasn't seen the movie might want to skip this spoiler-riddled "preview" presented by the master of explosions, crashes, booms and more explosions himself, but it's a must see for everyone else. We didn't post it because we didn't want to give anything away. [ YouTube ]. Students at Arizona State University know that the college-bound Kindle DX can read texts aloud. Only trouble is, it won't read menus out loud. Good goin' there, Beez. Bottom line: Until the menus are covered by text-to-speech, the blind students are going to fight it. We'll cover it if it becomes a federal case, or if Amazon caves and hires some accessibility programmers. [ ASU - The State Press ]. A recently discovered Sony patent from late last year shows how the Cell processor found in all PS3s can fully emulate the Emotion Engine required to run PS2 games, so no matter what model you have, you'd be able to play any game you owned. But don't dust off your old God of War disc just yet—why would Sony wait this long to get you this particular feature, and to get you jazzed about games that by definition they can't profit from? Our verdict: Ain't gonna happen. [ Siliconera via CrunchGear ]. A band I've never heard of (The 88. anyone? anyone? Maybe I'm just old) decided to record an entire song using a $10 four-track iPhone recording app called Four Track. Although technically you could probably line in a decent mic, they even used the iPhone's microphone. Studio engineers will tell you that that's not the best way to get a top-40 sound. But hell, it got them a USA Today story with photo, so bully on studio engineers. The song isn't even that bad—course, I'm listening to it on laptop speakers. [ USA Today ; iTunes Store link ].

I'm no marketing wizard, but Guitar Hero Smash Hits could have been called Guitar Hero: Songs From The First Guitar Hero Games Before The Drums and Microphone Existed But Now You Can Play the Good Songs from Those Games on the Drums and Sing Too . Again, I'm no marketing wizard. And Guitar Hero Smash Hits isn't a bad game at all. It is what it is, though: a greatest hits game. If you've played all the Guitar Hero games before  World Tour and you're only interested in playing guitar, then you'll find little of value here. But if you liked all of the early songs and have always wished you could play the drumming and singing parts, then Smash Hits is worth a closer look. What's Inside? . Smash Hits features 48 songs from five earlier Guitar Hero games:  Guitar Hero ,  Guitar Hero II ,  Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s ,  Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and  Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. All the songs found on Smash Hits are the master tracks from the original bands, whereas some of them were professional recordings from studio bands in the earlier games. There's not a whole lot of difference other than that, though, except that you can now play the songs on the drums and you can sing using the microphone. Everything else is your standard Guitar Hero game: Career Mode with a loose storyline, multiplayer, or quick play, plus you can take advantage of the built-in GHTunes track editor now if you want to take a stab at making your own song. Why Not DLC? . Could all the tracks in the game have been made available as downloadable content and played on Guitar Hero: World Tour instead of inside of full retail packaging? Yes, absolutely. But Activision made an entire game out of it and you end up saving some money in the long run since you get 48 tracks for $60 — that's assuming you like all of the tracks, though. Who Would Like This Game? . This is a good game for people who loved the music from the first run of Guitar Hero games and want to be able to play the drum parts and/or sing the music parts. It's also a good game for someone looking to get into the whole Guitar Hero thing in the first place. I actually prefer the tracks in this game to the tracks in Guitar Hero World Tour. There's not as much fluff here — all the bands and songs are easily recognizable and more rock-ish, whereas Guitar Hero: World Tour contained a bit broader set list as far as genres are concerned. This one's got more pure rock and metal. Who Wouldn't Like This Game? . Anyone who just wants to play guitar and has already cruised through most or all of the Guitar Hero games before World Tour. You'd feel downright ripped off, as not a whole lot's changed on the guitar and bass end of things. However, you have access to all the songs without unlocking them first if you use the Quick Play mode and it's easier to progress in Career Mode because you just need a certain number of stars for new venues to open up — those stars can be attained through a pretty big selection of initial songs, so play your favorites to move ahead quickly. Finally, Guitar Hero Smash Hits doesn't feature downloadable content aside from fan-made GHTunes tracks. So if you own GHWT and you've downloaded new songs, you won't be able to play them in Smash Hits. That's a big omission, in my opinion. Activision could have potentially enticed a fair amount of early fans to pick up Smash Hits even though they've already played all the songs before had they been able to download new songs to the game. Conclusion . Guitar Hero Smash Hits is a standard Guitar Hero game through and through. There aren't a whole lot of surprises here but if it ain't broke, don't fix it (as they say). It takes the early music of the series and leverages some of the gameplay features from Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero Metallica to make for a solid game with an above-average setlist. If you like the series and you like the available songs, you won't be disappointed. I think it could have been priced at $40 or made available as downloadable content but at $60, it's still a good enough game to purchase if you're new to the series and want to get set up with a good track list or if you're a fan of the earlier games and want to play some of the earlier songs on drums or using the microphone. Complete Set List . Guitar Hero Smash Hits [Activision].

Jailbreaking emulation legend ZodTTD has started the ball rolling on Pre gaming by installing his PlayStation emulator, psx4all, on the smartphone—and while there are kinks to be worked out, he says it runs even faster than on iPhone. There's no denying the Pre has several huge advantages over the iPhone family when it comes to gaming, especially the hardware keyboard, and it looks like it won't be lacking in the graphical department, either. The emulation is still in the early stages; there's no sound and he hasn't figured out the screen scaling yet, but this little demo of Wipeout XL looks incredibly smooth. ZodTTD says a fuller, more polished version of psx4all for the Pre should be coming soon, and with any luck, this'll be the first hurdle on the way to a substantial gaming community for the Pre. [ ZodTTD via Engadget ].

Here's a quick tip for you Mac users who are going to be downloading Firefox 3. 5 today. Give this optimized version , named Shiretoko, a try. It's only for Intel Macs, but it's supposed to speed up boot time and whatnot. I don't know, I use it (along with this icon pack ) and, all things being equal, I think it works just swell. So give it a shot!.