Doug Aamoth…

Hello John Biggs -

I would like to be the CrunchGear intern. At 28 years of age I’d probably be the oldest, creepiest intern that CrunchGear has ever hired. That being said, I don’t look a day past 26. I should also tell you that I’m taller than most people so I would be good at seeing over smaller, scrawnier geeks at trade shows. Although since I’m so old, I’d probably get tired at around noon.

Those words began the e-mail I sent on May 31st, 2007, in response to a post titled Desperately Seeking CrunchGear Intern. I ended the e-mail by saying, “Thanks for your time and I’ll be floored if I hear back from you…”

And I was floored. I was truly floored.

Up until that point, gadget blogs were a read-only affair for me. I was on the outside looking in, thinking how insanely wonderful it’d be to write about gadgets for a living. My dream job–absolutely, 100% my dream job. Little did I know it’d turn into a nightmare.

Just kidding. It has been, continues to be, and will always be a dream job for me. I can honestly tell you that there hasn’t been a single day I’ve woken up and wished I didn’t have to go to work. I hope that’s come through in my 4,036 posts here.

In that spirit, I want to make it clear that I’m not leaving for any reason other than having perpetual, ever-present, non-STD-related ants in my pants. I made it almost three years at CrunchGear, which is longer than I’ve made it anywhere else. I truly loved my time here.

Those of you who have been reading CrunchGear for a while may recall that one of my favorite games in the whole wide world is SimCity 3000. I look at my work here as a city I’ve been building for a while. It’s big, it’s sprawling, and I’ve used up every tile of space. It’s beautiful and I love it, but it’s time to start working on a new city. My CrunchGear city isn’t perfect by any means, but I’ll hopefully use what I’ve learned here to build another great city.

I’ll be joining fellow CrunchGear alumnus Peter Ha over at Techland, where I’ve been doing weekly video reviews for a while. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, the timing seemed right, and I can promise you that what I’ll be doing over there won’t be all that different from what I’ve been doing here. There will be more videos, more weird “what is this doing on a gadget blog?” types of posts, and more bright blue instead of bright orange.

I can’t thank the readers here or my fellow writers enough. Words couldn’t possibly express how grateful I am to be doing what I’m doing but, as a writer, I should probably try.

To the readers: I love you guys. You’ve made me a much better writer. You’ve taught me the importance of thorough research, the importance of trying to keep straight-up news posts non-biased, and the importance of keeping my videos short and entertaining. I’m sure there are a few of you who may be happy to see me go but I hope there are more of you who have felt like you’ve gotten your money’s worth from me. Readers are absolutely the lifeblood of any good site and I tried to keep that idea at the forefront of my mind during my time here.

To the writers: You guys are hands down the best crew I’ve ever worked with. It takes a special kind of crazy to work here—long hours, frozen budgets, stolen coverage, miles upon miles of trade shows, exploding live blogs, worn out keyboards, and wondering if what you do for a living really makes an actual difference in the grand scheme of things. I can tell you that what you do does, indeed, matter because I still remember what it was like to be a reader. And a big, big, big thanks to John for turning me from a reader into a writer.

I’m going to miss this place terribly, but I’m excited for what’s next. Thanks for the memories, everyone. I’ll leave you, if you don’t mind, with some of my firsts and favorites:

Firsts!

• First post ever: WiiWare: New Indie Wii Shop Channel Games in 2008
• First scuffle I got into with a reader, who it turns out owned the site I was bad-mouthing: Old Crap-Ass Phones That Cost Way Too Much
• First big-boy interview: Interview With Acer President Gianfranco Lanci
• First post that made me truly skeptical of PR and marketing: Who Else Got Burned By An ‘End Of Summer’ Promise?
• First on-camera video review: Samsung Juke review
• First live podcast: Live CrunchGear podcast today at 1:00 PM, Eastern

Favorites!

• Recommendation Rescinded: Comcast’s TiVo interface
• How come nobody told me about the Dallas airport?
• Review: Keychain Breathalyzer + Flashlight
• All About Linux 2008: Great Moments in Linux History
• Line for Boston Apple Store stretches four city blocks
• Video Review: Flip Mino digital camcorder
• Two Boston-area magicians involved in bar brawl, each sustains massive loss of hit points
• Sweater Friends
• Real Bigfoot carcass to be shown this Friday…or not
• Review: Penguin Home Soda Maker
• CrunchFail: Doug and Greg crash and burn at Rock Band challenge
• Blogger frustrated with iMovie, sees man on Segway
• Review: Health Energy Potion
• Video Review: Snuggie Blanket
• Smittens: World’s dumbest mittens
• Video Review: Batter Blaster pancakes in a can
• Simpsons ‘Comic Book Guy’ apparently selling lawn darts now
• MIT’s EurekaFest showcases high school students’ problem-solving prototypes
• Review: WristOffice mobile device holder
• An open letter to the creator of the pretzel dog
• Breath-based glucose sensor developed (and why it may never make it to market)

Ah, good times. Thanks again for the memories, CrunchGear. Don’t be a stranger.

Welcome to the future of digital photography, friends. This $25 camera measures 13.5 millimeters thick and takes what I can only assume to be mind-blowingly detailed 640×480 photos. That’s not all! The built-in memory holds 52 images! There’s no expansion slot but like I said, it holds 52 images. You’re not going to need an expansion slot, am I right?

That’s not all! Again! The camera connects to your computer via USB 1.1, which is much better than USB 1.0 (by 0.1, to be precise). Other features include a built-in viewfinder (no LCD screen), lithium-ion battery, and compatibility with Windows 98 through XP.

Please take turns ordering this, as we don’t want to overwhelm the site’s servers.

Gift Digital Camera Winait CD130BT [Lightinthebox.com via Red Ferret]

Fun fact: If you took one of every available Wii accessory and laid them all end-to-end, they’d stretch around the world 17 times! Add this Balance Board pushup bar to the line.

For realsies, though, if you’ve been using Wii Fit you’ll agree that doing pushups is a bit on the awkward side. I find the Balance Board to be a little too narrow for my hulking frame and that, coupled with my shockingly feeble upper body strength, means that I’d probably order this attachment to make doing pushups easier and then be like, “This hurts more now!”

The science behind the whole thing is that it’ll allow you “to perform deeper pushups.” You can also re-jigger the angle of the handles if you really want to impress the cartoon Wii Fit lady instructor. The Wii Push Up Bar is up for pre-order on Amazon for $25.

[CTA Digital via Gizmodo]

Remember NBA JAM? Remember that there’s a new version (“new” like how Hollywood just re-makes old movies now) coming out for the Wii? EA Sports has released the above teaser video—and it’s truly a teaser; don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

There’s apparently supposed to be a much more involved launch on Spike TV tonight. Hopefully they’ll reveal a launch date. The current NBA season is just about over, so I’d guess that the game will be launched shortly before next season starts in the fall.

[via Kotaku]

Short Version: The AVerMedia MTVHDDVRR is a PCI Express video capture card with HDMI, component, S-Video, and composite inputs. The card retails for around $100 (you can find it for close to $90 online) and is capable of capturing up to 1080i video.

Features:

• PCI Express video capture card
• HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite inputs
• Records up to 1080i resolution in MPEG-2 format, also records H.264 and iPod formats
• Includes low profile bracket and 10-in-1 input cable, plus on-card HDMI input

Pros:

• Easy installation
• Good recording quality
• Relatively inexpensive

Cons:

• Included media center software looks like it’s from 1999
• No 1080p recording
• HDMI connection is wildly unpredictable

Review:

The AVerMedia AVerTV HD DVR video capture card (model number MTVHDDVRR) is for people who want to digitize footage of some type. Be it old VHS movies or camcorder tapes, video game console gameplay, or grabbing shows off of a DVR, the card handles most recording tasks pretty well.

Setup is easy, provided you’ve cracked open a desktop and installed something before. The card face has two slots; one’s an HDMI port and the other is used for the included 10-in-1 AV cable that’s got component, S-video, and composite connectors. You can plug a bunch of different sources in at the same time and then switch between them using AVer MediaCenter.

The included AVer MediaCenter looks and feels like very early DVR software. It’s got TV, Video, Audio, and Photo functions but you’ll just use the TV function to record stuff. The video player, audio player, and photo viewer are just fluff.

Recording works well over anything but HDMI, which was a total crapshoot depending upon which device was hooked up. My Comcast DVR box caused the software to crash every time without fail (see photo below), my Xbox 360 would sometimes only record the sound but no picture, and a Gateway notebook with HDMI output worked fine every time. For reference, I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, the latest 64-bit Beta drivers for the card, and latest AVer Media Center software. I used the latest stable, non-Beta version of the card’s drivers for a while, too, and experienced similar results.

Anything hooked up via component, composite, or S-video recorded just fine without any problems. So it’s likely an issue with HDMI’s digital handshake and could also have something to do with the whole copy protection thing (HDCP). After a while, I just stopped trying to hook things up via HDMI. Here’s a video of HDMI video capture that actually worked—a Gateway notebook playing a 720p video recorded at 720p by the card.

Download the full-size original MPEG-2 file…

Your format options for capturing HD video are MPEG-2 and… well, that’s it. You’ve also got H.264 and “iPod” settings but they max out at 720×480. The maximum HD resolution is 1080i, so plan accordingly.

Conclusion:

I can’t broadly recommend this product due to how poorly the included software handles HDMI connections, but if you’re patient enough to wait for AVerMedia to get all the kinks worked out and you’re content to only use the component, composite, and S-video connections, then you’ll find everything to work relatively well aside from the HDMI input. On the whole, though, there are more stable options out there right now.

AVerTV HD DVR [AVerMedia-USA.com]

It’s Tecmo Bowl, but on your Xbox 360 or PS3. And without the NFL-licensed players and teams. But with a 3D-style look and feel! You can go old-school and play in 2D mode, too.

It’s actually the SNES version of Super Tecmo Bowl, redone for the present day and with some extras thrown in here and there.

Apparently you’ll be able to edit teams and rosters, so with a little work you could get everything all squared away with the real-life names. The big addition here, too, will be online multiplayer. That means you can use the time between now and when the game’s released to track down all the kids that used to live in your neighborhood growing up.

I’ll be buying this, price be damned. I’m guessing we might be looking at around $10 but I’d go up to, and including, $15. I don’t know how I’d feel about $20. Probably not great, but that’s not to say I still wouldn’t buy it. No hard and fast launch date yet other than Spring 2010.

[via Uncrate/LA Times]

Using a foam packing peanut to hold a nail or screw in place is brilliant. I like to think of myself as a pretty mild-tempered person but any time anybody’s asked my wife about the most angry she’s ever seen me, she always tells the story of when we first moved into our apartment here in Boston and I went around the house hanging our window blinds. Shoulda used peanuts.

The universe was angry that day, my friends. Forces everywhere were conspiring against me. Every single screw that needed to be driven into a window frame wobbled violently and then fell to the ground. Over and over and over again.

I finally succumbed to using a power drill to bore starter holes where each of the screws would eventually go but, of course, I hadn’t properly charged the battery and couldn’t remember where I kept my drill bits. Basically, a project that should have taken an hour ended up consuming me with rage for the better part of what felt like eternity.

Anyhoo, I should have used foam peanuts. That’s the takeaway. Hold the screw in place, get it started far enough into the wall that it’s stable, and tear the foam away. Simple.

10 Uses for Foam Packing Peanuts [This Old House via Lifehacker]

Harmonix has officially announced that Green Day: Rock Band will hit retail on June 8th of this year. Interestingly enough, Green Day frontman Billy Joe Armstrong confirmed that the band was working on the game in a radio interview back on June 8th of last year. Mind? Blown.

The game will be priced at $60 on PS3 and Xbox 360, $50 on Wii, and there will also be a $70 special edition game for PS3/Xbox 360 that “Includes special packaging, export and six Green Day DLC tracks ($22 total value),” according to the press release.

You’ll have 47 tracks to play with, all of which will be exportable to Rock Band, Rock Band 2, and Rock Band 3 when it’s released. The game also features “the three-part vocal harmony technology Harmonix introduced with the award-winning The Beatles: Rock Band.”

Coming Soon: Green Day: Rock Band [RockBand.com]

AMD is finally looking to get into the netbook game for real. Forget about the thin-and-light NEO chipset that’s been out for a while—we’re talking about an honest, netbook-specific chipset based on the company’s Fusion initiative that’ll blend power-sipping CPUs with ATI graphics. The platform will draw between 10 and 15 watts of power and will be designed for screens 12 inches and smaller.

With all these netbooks coming out now that are powered by Intel Atom CPUs paired with either Broadcom HD graphics accelerators or NVIDIA ION GPUs, it appears that AMD must finally be thinking to itself, “These guys from all these different companies have to pair this CPU with that GPU or add this accelerator because Intel’s GPUs stink. We have our own CPUs and our own powerful ATI GPUs. We could do this much more easily and cheaply.”

AMD’s Nigel Dessau told InternetNews.com the following:

“It will have a good processor integrated with graphics, so you won’t need the Ion graphics to give it half-decent performance… If we’d had a part, we’d have been in this space. We didn’t have a part so we went and worked on a part for the thin and light space. The plan is to come to market next year with a Fusion part that fits it nicely in a netbook type thing.”

With the impending confusion that’ll be caused (or is already being caused) by all the pairings between Intel, NVIDIA, and others, AMD is in a prime position to come in with a few netbook chipsets comprised of its own AMD CPUs and respectable ATI GPUs, price them $50 less than comparable Intel offerings, and watch the sales roll in. Unfortunately by 2011, who knows what state the netbook market will be in? AMD can’t just show up and say, “Look! We have a new platform that’s better than the Intel + ION pairings from last summer!”

The company’s got a big opportunity here. Netbooks aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but people are expecting to be able to do more and more with them—an area where Intel has purposely under delivered in order to try to convince consumers to purchase more expensive CPUs. As it turns out, most consumers don’t really care how fast the CPU is. They just want to watch HD videos and play games. If anyone can deliver that experience in a single, integrated, inexpensive package, it’s AMD.

[HardwareCentral via Liliputing]

I’m not the most organized man in the history of men but it’s not for lack of trying. It’s more for lack of will, determination, time, time management skills, cleanliness (both personally and around the house), money, proper genetic predisposition to organization, and more.
Mostly it’s because it seems like too much work, even though it [...]