Admit it, some of you did this, too. You just didn’t have the guts to make a video. Some language NSFW, so find your headphones.

Filed under: Displays

Whoops! Looks like Sumitomo President Hiromasa Yonekura was "misquoted" just a few days back, and there may actually not be any large OLED TVs churned out by the outfit in 2009. According to a new report, Sumitomo is currently "working with partners," thus the "timing of any product launch is not just its call." No worries -- we're fairly certain someone else will step up to the plate in your absence, right guys?

[Via OLED-Info]

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It’s a long, arduous and ongoing task, but Digg is still feverishly working on improving the comments system, as they’re considered by some to be the core of the social interaction features on Digg’s site. You may recall that a few weeks back Digg released some updates to the comments system, and looked to the users for feedback and subsequent tweaking. Well, the feedback has been considered, and the tweaking has been tweaked. Here’s a quick rundown of the most recent changes to Digg’s comment system.

Presentation:
Comments won’t drag on your computer. As some submissions get a boatload of comments that take a lot of time to load, Digg now manages each page of displayed comments by a processing queue, meaning the load time is faster so you can find more quickly something snarky to respond to in your own smart alec way. The primary goal with this specific modification is to minimize the amount of replies that are left via AJAX, which should take some pressure of the Digg servers.

Additionally, Digg will also show the total number of Diggs and buries for each comment, on the Digg count, and the timestamp has been modified again to display in hours in minutes for posts less than 24 hours old.

Organization:
New sorting fields have been added, which includes a new “Controversial” option that shows comments with the most divergent rating score. This could be a fun feature, as it speaks to some of the interest we’ve seen from third party applications showing only the most negative comments on Digg and other sites like Twitter.

Posting:
No more fretting! No matter how many times you change your mind about the up/down vote you gave a submission, you can change the vote as many times as you’d like.

Most Importantly, Preferences
New user settings allow you to choose how many discussions will initially load, as well as whether these discussions should be expanded or collapsed by default. What’s more, the filter options for comments have been improved or individual Digg counts, making your constant status check-ins a bit easier.mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/digg-comments-upgrad/

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Dish Network people were excited on Monday when it was announced that 22 new HD channels would be added to the HD package, bringing the total number of HD channels the satellite TV carrier offered up to 95, putting it on par with competitor DirectTV. What Dish forgot to mention was that just hours later it would be dropping 15 older HD channels, mostly Voom related, to leave it at 80 channels.

That didn’t stop Dish execs from quoting the 95 channel score in a press release. It’s possible one hand didn’t know what the other was doing, such as the execs not knowing a drop was going to happen. Or it was a case of generating good PR for PR’s sake.

We haven’t heard back from Dish yet, so we don’t know the story, but either way, we smell a rat.

Israeli startup PopTok has done a brave thing. It’s created a plugin that combines emoticons and movie quotes (which, used in excess, are two of the most annoying things known to man). The plugin is currently Windows only, offering support for AIM and MSN Live Messenger with more protocols on the way.

The JVP Studio-funded startup wants to replace emoticons as we know them with short snippets of Hollywood movies, television, and music videos. After downloading the PopTok client, users can choose from hundreds of clips which have been culled from such quotable classics as “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” and “Austin Powers”. The site has formed partnerships with a number of studios, so all of this is done legally.

Unfortunately, PopTok is going to run into a number of problems. Only users that have installed the PopTok plugin can see clips immediately - everyone else just gets a link to a page that shows the movie. It’s unlikely that many people will take the time to open their browsers for a three second payoff, so the program is going to have a hard time gaining traction.

PopTok is fun at first, but I’m afraid it has the potential to be one of the more annoying plugins on the web (if any of my friends start to use it often, I’ll probably block them). That said, I’m probably not the program’s target audience. Instead, PopTok seems geared towards the tween and teen markets, which are far more likely to embrace this sort of thing. If the program can get a sizable user base in the youth market then it stands a chance at saying, “Show me the money!”, otherwise I’m afraid it’ll be “Hasta la vista, baby.”

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

A U.S. Army contractor has developed an Iron Man-like suit that can amplify human strength by up to 20 times. (You’d almost be able to lift Biggs, then!) The suit, developed by Salt Late City-based robotics house Sarcos, is expected to go into trials next year. If all the bugs are worked out—the battery currently only lasts about 30 minutes per charge—the Army says it may one day actually be used in the battlefield. In the meantime, it’ll be limited to auxiliary roles like lifting cargo.

So yeah, pretty awesome, and exactly the type of thing I want to see my tax dollars going toward.

Filed under: Desktops

Nothing seems to be official just yet, but it looks like VIA is set to both adopt an always-desirable 45nm manufacturing process for its processors and roll out its first dual-core processors by the end of 2009, at least if the "sources at the company" DigiTimes has heard from are to be believed. Unfortunately, there's apparently no further details on either of those tantalizing possibilities just yet, but the company has done a bit of bragging about its current CPU shipments, saying that it expects its shipments in the first half of 2008 to equal its total shipments in 2007 -- a number that only seems set to go up if Isiah's benchmarks are any indication.

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Well, well, well. The RIAA is not having a particularly good week. In the Tanya Andersen case (where the RIAA sued an innocent person), the court has awarded Andersen $108,000 in legal fees from the RIAA. You may recall that the RIAA had protested having to pay legal fees, which the judge smacked down. Note that this is entirely separate from Andersen's racketeering case against the RIAA.

However, the much bigger news concerns the infamous Jammie Thomas case. As you'll recall, the RIAA won that case, even though it now admits that it said false things under oath. Much of that decision hinged on the fact that the court said that "making available" was infringement, which is the opposite of what many other courts have been saying. In fact, it turns out that it went against the binding precedent in a different case within the same circuit. The judge has now admitted that he may have committed a "manifest error of law" in his jury instructions, and it sounds like he's going to order a new trial.

This is a big deal. The RIAA has been holding up the Thomas case over and over again as proof that (a) "making available" is infringement and (b) that courts will award huge fines for those caught file sharing. If that decision gets tossed out (not even by an appeals court, but by the judge who ruled in the first place), it will suddenly make the RIAA's claims relating to that case disappear completely.

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