CVS Camcorder download alpha

Cvs-Camcorder-1Someone has created a how-to for extracting video from the recently released CVS disposable camcorders. They are cheap devices intended for one-time use. Had the opportunity to fool around with these at a recent off-site for TBS. Interesting possibilities…

First you need to build a USB cable. Next, plug in the camera and create an inf file using libUSB. Finally, grab the OPS program and start extracting the video. Here is the thread announcing the release. Congratulations to BillW, morcheeba, daBass and anyone else who helped contribute to the project.

Here is Make’s chronology of how this latest development happened.

(Via MAKE:Blog.)

GTA: Liberty City Stories First Look

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PSM has an in-depth look at GTA: Liberty City Stories for the Playstation Portable and boy is it juicy. I think this may be the killer PSP app to date.

Guns? Check. Carjacking? Check. A fully realized 3D world in which you are free to do pretty much anything you want, including meeting with shady characters who send you on missions of questionable legality? Check, check and check. Yep, this is GTA all right.

This GTA takes place in the Liberty City of GTA 3, but this time around you play as Tony Cipriani, the guy who handed out missions in 3 – that role was voiced by Michael Madsen – hope he’s back in this version too.

Taking place three years before the events of GTA3, that’s about 1998 or so, for those who dont want to do the math- Liberty City Stories follows Toni Cipriani as he moves up in the criminal world. While it may not seem like it, three years is alot of time, and there are bound to be some changes. For example, three years before Sex Club 7 became the place where Luigi (Joe Pantoliano) gave work to the mute GTA 3 protagonist, the strip club was called Paulie’s Revue Bar.

The game sounds like it’s packed with almost everything that we love about Rockstar games, no, that doesn’t mean it’s just really, really violent. Liberty City will be a truly open-ended game, feature tons of customization and lots of vehicles to jack.

According to the article, the game will support downloadable content, but Rockstar is still being tight lipped about whether it will offer up WiFi multiplayer, MP3 support, etc.

GTA: LCS Unplugged [GTA Central]

(Via Kotaku.)

Flickr auto-finds coolest photos, related photos

Flickr has just released some new features organized around their the nature/relationships implied by user activity around the images on their site, an interesting expansion/improvement on their tagging structure.

Interestingness creates a daily page with the most ‘Interesting’ pics uploaded as defined by how favored the image is, how many comments exist for it, and how widely distributed the user interest happens to be. Very slick. The other new feature, Clustering, groups tags by concept. So the “cute cluster” gets broken in to “cute kittens,” “cute puppies,” “cute babies” and “cute smiles.” Bush gets broken into ‘protest president politics’, ‘green-flower-nature’, ‘grafitti-sticker-stencil’, etc. The flickr blog discusses the new features. Very slick stuff.

(via BoingBoing.)

Creating the Xbox 360’s Interface

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Design Interact has a fascinating story up that talks about the two-year process of designing the Xbox 360’s user interface. The process included Microsoft designing their own Flash-like animation tool, working with design firm AKOA and narrowing ten ideas down to one. The end result is a sucked in interface that resembles the console’s own sleek design and features the ability to quickly cycle through games, photos and other entertainment capabilities.

Xbox 360 [Design Interact]

(Via Kotaku.)

Photos, musings and miscellany – New and Improved!