There is no denying that musical games have taken off in the land of video games, but by this fall there will be at least three more of them out there.  You really have to wonder when consumers are going to say “enough!”  Well, until that day comes, here’s a handy guide to at least three more games that will be popping up just in time for this year’s holiday shopping season.

Guitar Hero 5

The franchise that has become synonymous with music games is returning with its fifth entry, aptly entitled Guitar Hero 5.  It will be released September 1st, and while this is sure to come as a surprise to many people, it will feature a random assortment of songs by various musicians.  Shocking isn’t it?

The game will be avaialble with and without instruments and will be avaialble on Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Wii and the Xbox 360.  The release date is set for Sept 1st, 2009.

Rock Band: The Beatles

Unlike Guitar Hero 5, Rock Band: The Beatles will focus on just the one band, but oh what a band it is.  The Beatles will be getting the full treatment with brand new animations and even limited edition replicas of Paul’s well-known bass being released!  The track list isn’t known yet, but you can surely expect some of their best known songs.  This does seem a bit odd though since they still haven;t legally released their music to digital downloads.

The game will be avaialble with and without instruments and will be avaialble on Playstation 3, Wii and the Xbox 360.  The release date is set for Sept 9th,  2009.

DJ Hero

A totally new entry in to the musical game genre, DJ Hero will have you using a turntable controller like a club DJ to control the game.  At this time Jay-Z and Eminem are the only confirmed artists announced so far to have music included in the game.

The game will be avaialble with a controller and will be avaialble on Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Wii and the Xbox 360.  The release date is set for Oct 27th, 2009.

All three sound exciting, now just comes the chore of choosing with one you want under the Christmas tree!

Digital photo frames have been growing in popularity for the past few years, but their singular purpose could put some people off from buying one because it is yet even more rel estate taken up on your desk.  Our desks are slowly being taken over by monitors, hard drives, USB hubs, speakers, so you really wonder who has room for yet another deice.  Well, Samsung opted to create a frame that shows you pictures, or, thanks to USB, can turn into a miniature second monitor when you need one in a pinch.

The Samsung SPF-85H sports an 8-inch screen with 1 GB of internal memory to store up to 10,000 photos, but the memory is expandable ia an SD Card slot.  You can do all of the usual tricks of setting up slideshows, fades and so on, but where this frame separates itself from the reat of the pack in the marketplace is the fact that you can use a USB acable to hook it up to your computer and use the frame as a mini-monitor.  The screen resolution only comes in at 800×600, but that is plenty for you to run things like a Twitter application or checking out your stock portfolio as it streams by.  Then when you’re done, flip it back over to your photos and off you go, and we do mean literally “go” as it has a rechargab;e battery that will let you use it off power for up to an hour.

If you do want a bit more screen, you can go with the SPF-105P which is widescreen and has a resolution of 1024×600, although the reviews aren’t as favorable because it is a widescreen view, and doesn’t work well on pictures.

This makes one wonder what digital frames will do next, but our bet is on TV reception of some kind.

Consumers continue to scream about DVD sets coming out constantly with slightly better features that force them to purchase the same thing over and over, but apparently the movie studios just don’t care.

While cruising through the Blu-ray section of Amazon today, I noticed The Lord of the Rings trilogy box set coming out, but I also noticed that of the 716 customer reviews, 577 of them were one-star votes.  That was when I noticed in the title it said “(Theatrical Editions)".  Oh good, here we go again.

Back when these movies first came out on DVD, we had the individual releases after each one was in the theater, and after Return of the King, we got a boxed set of all three together.  Shortly after that we got the individual Extended Editions, and then yet another boxed set.  Many people ended up buying multiple copies because they just didn’t have the patience to wait, or they weren’t aware this was a common tactic of film studios.  Either way, a lot of people ended up with more copies of these films than they needed.

Luckily I’ve personally learned my lessons over the years.  Such as, I will no longer buy individual seasons of any television show from HBO because they always releases a really nice boxed set when the series ends, and it always has more bonus features you can’t get anywhere else.  The same goes for a lot of standard television shows, such as Battlestar Galactica is now getting complete series boxed sets on both standard def DVD and Blu-ray, so hopefully not many people went through the pain of buying numerous half seasons.

There are even rumors that the Transformers DVDs I spoke of a few weeks ago will be combined into a series box set after they release all of the individual seasons.

Movie studios need to start realizing consumers are not endless pits of money that they can just keep dipping into time after time.  I have never purchased the Kill Bill movies, even though I want to, because I just know they will do a special edition set someday with the two movies combined.  I hate having to spend my time second guessing the studios all the time, but I also don’t want to give them any more money that I absolutely have to.

Amazon has had quite a bit of success with the Kindle and Kindle 2, but both have remained firmly in the realm of being niche products. With the introduction of the Kindle DX, the Internet retailer is aiming to penetrate other niche markets, but they are niches that happen to be huge.

The Kindle DX sports a 9.7″ diaganol screen compared to the previous 6″ sreen, as well as a 3.3 GB hard drive which will allow you to store up to 3,500 books, with a $489 price tag, but books aren’t the main focus this time. At some unannounced time this summer, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe will all offer discounted prices on the Kindle DX if you purchase a long term subscription to their publication. What the discounted price will be is not known at this time, but it had beeter be pretty signigifanct for this promotion to take off.

Where the Kindle DX may see its greatest new market penetration will be with the adoption of its use for reading school textbooks. So far five schools - Princeton, UVA, Case Western, Arizona State, and Reed College - have agreed to be part of the pilot program. The price of the text books won’t be significantly cheaper than their printed counterparts, if reduced at all, but the difference in weight may save some college students from injuring their backs walking to class with a backpack full of books. It will also be considerably nicer to use a search function to find the passage in a book you need as opposed to search for it by hand.

Where it may fall down is that one of the bonuses of having printed books is you could sell them back to recoup at least some of your initial investment when you were done with them. Unless something changes with the way the Kindle works, this won’t be even remotely possible unless you sell the entire Kindle to someone. It is also unlikely that college bookstores are going to be too happy about being cut out of the equation.

The major drawback as I see it will be the fact that the screen is still limited to 16 shades of gray. While this has been fine for normal books, and is even okay for newspapers, it is going to be rough with text books. What about graphs and tables? What about history books with works of art depecting major events? What about actual art history books? Until the Kindle gets a color screen, which there has been no hint of that happening, its chances of mass market success still seem limited.

The Kindle DX is a step in the right direction, but it still feels like it falls a bit short.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since the first season of the Transformers Generation 1 cartoon was on the airwaves in the USA, but that milestone is this year, and that means it’s time to break out some DVDs.

In 1984, the Hasbro toy company wanted to continue the success they had just had with the G.I. Joe toy line relaunch, and were looking for something else they could easily market with a cartoon tie-in.  They found the Diaclone toy line in Japan which consisted of robots turning into ordinary vehicles, and the rest was toy and cartoon history.

The Diaclone line had been popular in Japan, but they were fairly generic toys with no names for the majority of them, and no back story of how they all tied in to one another.  All of that was created here in the United States, and for some reason the resulting cartoon struck a chord with kids of the mid-1980’s that finds many of them continuing their love affair with the license to this day.

There aren’t many toy lines that can say they have been consistently on the shelves for 25 years, and have gone on to inspire two blockbuster live action movies.  The first Transformers movie, directed by Michael Bay, was released in the summer of 2007, and the second film, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is due out this June in theaters everywhere.  While it has been cool to see some of the beloved characters in real world settings, many fans, myself included, have been annoyed at some of the changes that have been made to what we remember as children.  Luckily there is a new DVD set ready to hit store shelves on June 16th that will let us relive some of what we remember from our childhood.

This isn’t the first time the first season of Transformers Generation 1 has been available on DVD, but after Rhino lost the license some years back to continue production, copies of those sets shot up in value to over $200.  This new set contains the entire first season, a disc of bonus materials, a collection of rare public service announcements and even some of the original toy commercials.  This is going to be a must have for the older fans who remember the show, and the newer ones who want to see how the whole craze got its start.

The set has a suggested retail price of $29.99, but can be found for as low as $19.99.  I’ve already pre-ordered my copy!

In a recent earnings call, Apple revealed, though some basic math skills were needed, that the iPod Touch had doubled its sales over the past 12 months. They informed journalists that 7 million multi-touch device users had been added to their user base, and 3.79 million of those were made up of iPhone users. This means that the iPod Touch made up the remaining 3.21 million users. Seeing as how the iTunes app store had a massive spike in app downloads at Christmas 2008, this number is fairly easy to believe.

So how does relate to gaming?  On average, Nintendo sold 7.86 million Nintendo DS units per quarter in 2008.  Seeing as when you add the iPhone and iPod Touch sales together you get 7 million units in one quarter.  Then you note that nearly a third of the 30,000 available applications are games, you can see that the nearly 1 billion downloaded applications adds up to a whole lot of game playing on the devices.  This suddenly thrusts Apple into the mobile gaming arena, and not one that you are sure they anticipated being in.

With iPhone OS 3 due this summer, and some major changes to the SDK (Software Development Kit) that makes app development even easier, you wonder just how many of these new applications will be games versus productivity apps.  It wasn’t until recently that Apple began really pushing the iPod Touch as a gaming alternative when they finally started talking about it in television ads, so who knows where it could be headed now sales wise with that promotional push.

It is assumed that the annual iPod line refresh in the fall will feature a new version of the iPod Touch, but it is unclear what exactly will change with the device that could possibly make it more game friendly.  It is unlikely that the design obsessed company would want to add more physical buttons to the device, so you will be stuck with the one button at the bottom and the accelerometer for movement.  Using a touch screen, while fairly innovative for now, also has its limitations on what can be done in a game.

Even with this “less is more” attitude that Apple has, it doesn’t seem to be stopping from people from turning their shiny gadgets into gaming platforms, it is only a question of when the limits of the system will be discovered.  As for what those limits are, that is anyone’s guess at this point.

This device is available on Etsy for a cool Jackson.  It is designed to look like a severed finger, complete with faux blood around the USB end.  The drive even comes packaged as crime scene evidence in its own zip lock bag with “CRIME SCENE” placed prominently across the bag for those who might fail to understand the joke.  Perfect for a Halloween gag gift for that special someone in your office or at home.  Even better for those poor souls with Halloween birthdays - a practical yet creepy gift.

If you have a multiport USB add-on be sure you plug it in carefully so that the wrong message is not sent.  OK, plugging it in carefully might actually send the correct message, but remember to say “Oops, wrong hole!” if anyone should comment on it.  Needless to say, this is one USB drive that lends itself to off-color humor.

This drive can also be used for your little computer users who will really enjoy the creep factor while missing most of the more sordid joke aspects of the drive.  Taking this USB number might just land them higher up the geek/cool scale and because is really is a USB drive, will probably avoid the normal teacher-confiscation of anything fun.

$20 is a lot to spend for just 1G of memory, but what you are really paying for is the comedic yuck factor.  This drive does come hot swappable, plug and play, without the need for any additional drivers.

Buy one now for the whole family on Etsy!

This would be the perfect accessory especially during football season.  While writing the latest term paper, take a break save the paper to your thumb drive then use the thumb drive to open your favorite beverage for catching the game on TV.  Just remember to SAVE the term paper before OPENING the beverage.

Items like this are also handing to have on business trips or personal trips.  While surfing the Internet, you can open your favorite beverage and download important info onto your memory drive.  You’re sure to have it with you because it packs so easily in your computer bag and won’t be confiscated by airport security.

TrekStor, the maker of this neat little gizmo,  has a line of thumb drives one of which comes with its own leather case complete with neck strap.  The thumb drives come in different sizes and speeds.  Most of the drives can be purchased in capacities ranging from one to sixteen gigabytes.

This nifty little brushed aluminum thumb drive/bottle opener comes in one to sixteen gigabyte storage capacities and is bootable.  The drive will retail between EUR 6.99 and EUR 49.99 or about $10 to $71. 

TrekStor is expected to release this drive sometime in October.

Yes, you read that correctly.  After death, your loved ones can turn you (actually part of you) into diamond.  You can become a family heirloom, literally.  Although I can imagine that being used as an engagement ring in the future could be a little interesting. “Will you marry me and wear my grandmother forever?”

LifeGem takes about 8 ounces (200 grams) of cremation remains or hair, if you choose to not be cremated, and begins the process of making a bit of you, your loved one, or your beloved pet into a diamond.  From initial collection through to finished diamond, an individual code is used to make sure that the right diamond goes to the right person.  The diamonds are actually engraved with the code for ultimate verification.

The “carbon” collection is subjected to intense heat to purify it.  Then the purified carbon (now graphite) is placed in a “unique diamond press” where it remains for several months under intense pressure and heat to become a rough gem that is then cut and polished into a diamond.

The diamonds can be created in a variety of colors - yellow, red, green, blue and clear and sizes - .20 to 1.5+ carats.  Depending on the size, quality and color of the diamond or diamonds you choose, prices range from $2,699 to $19,999. 

If you leave a large group of mourners behind the process can “ create over 100 certified, high-quality LifeGem diamonds as memorials for each family if they so choose.”  As with all bulk purchases, the price goes down by several hundred dollars per diamond.

Clearly, not all of you will become a family heirloom so an urn or burial plot will still be necessary.  LifeGems is not a funeral service but will work with whatever mortuary or crematorium that you choose. 

Needless to say, if you are looking for a cheap memento for your loved ones, this is not it.  However, you can finally become a “shining” reminder to those you leave behind.

Willcom Inc has created this GSM Kuma/teddy bear phone for the 2008 Good Design Expo.  From the picture, it looks as if the speaker portion is in the bears muzzle and I’m not even going to guess where the mouth piece is located. 

Willcom is not noted for novelty cell phones.  If anything its cell phone line up looks pretty standard, although colorful.  Most of the handsets are your typical flip/candy bar/smart phone variety but in shades of blue and pink not found here in America. 

The last phone Willcom issued a press release for was a “smartphone with fully-flat surface and two-mode touchscreen.”  Now they have this teddy bear which is certainly not a smartphone, flat or touchscreen.

You answer and hang up by pressing the bears tail.  The phone can have up to four numbers programmed in for speed dial (one in each paw) and will also have a vibrate function.  The phone would cost $500 without a contract if it hit the market or $199 with a contract.

I’m not sure this bear is very huggable but walking around New York carrying on a conversation using this new phone might get you instant psychological help.  I know it would in the North Carolina mountains.

One good aspect might be an inability to carry on an argument using this cell phone.  It would just be too absurd.  You just can’t use a phone like this to call and complain to anyone even your local phone company.

Serious conversations might also have a hard time happening with this phone in hand.  As far as concept phones for children, this might actually work but I’m not sure most cell phone companies target toddlers. 

What’s next? A tickle-me Elmo phone that laughs when a call comes in?

via CScout Japan and Engaget

photo via CScout Japan