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Apple Becomes Third-Largest US Music Retailer
Posted by Seamus Byrne at 11:52 PM on June 23, 2007
Apple has become the country's third-largest music retailer, bitch-slapping Amazon aside for the bronze.
With a 10% market share, Apple sits close behind #1 retailer Wal-mart (15.8%) and #2 Best Buy (13.8%). All findings were recently reported by NPD Group and are based upon their survey of 400,000 people age 13 and older.
Preemptive strike: We are such Apple fanboys.
Real question for the comments: Can Apple reach the top spot?
Apple Now Third [reuters]
Hey lay-deez! Don't you wish there was some way to control your iPod other than your iPod? Specifically when you're sunbathing in a bikini? Well, good news. Now there's a bikini with built-in iPod controls that may or may not electrocute you if you try to swim in it.
Its perfect for those days where you're too lazy to even pick up the music player that's right next to you and instead want to just reach the same distance and hit buttons that are impossible for you to see. It's product design at its finest. 
This crazy Batman-esque steam-powered car is an entry to the British Steam Car Challenge, which intends to both break the land speed record for steam records and give a lot of people steam burns in the process.
This entry has four boilers and can go up to 200MPH in the Utah Salt flats, some of the flattest tracts of land this side of Keira Knightley. Steam Superman is jealous. 
If your apartment complex pool is anything like ours, it's 10 feet wide and 20 feet long, which means you can do about 5,000 laps before you get tired. What we need is a pool treadmill, this $3,999 gadget that creates a downstream current so you can swim in place but still be swimming.
Sure, $4,000 is a lot of money, but it's pennies compared to remodeling your pool to fit more than two old dudes and some kids. 
Not everyone can get in front of a crowd and be as confident in the crap coming out of their mouths as a Tony Snow or a Steve Jobs. But this SteadyPointer lets you exude a cool confidence in the laser- pointing part of your presentation by stabilizing your jittery hand, which is almost as good. So you could in fact be shaking like someone injected caffeine straight into your eyeball, but nobody would be the wiser.
From the video demos, it actually looks like this thing works. 
We're not fans of hiking—obviously—but this Picnic For One design would be the thing we'd take with us if we were hiking. The container is waterproof and skinnable (in case you don't like military grey), and contains a plate, a cup, cutlery and room for spices. Plus, you know, food.
So after you finish up your picnic for one, you can neatly pack everything back into the container before your throw yourself off the cliff because you've got nobody to go hiking with you. 
We always knew the Xbox 360 failure rate was high, but the only time Microsoft's put any sort of solid numbers on the thing it was always somewhere around 5%. Retailers here in Australia, on the other hand, have just reported a failure rate of somewhere over 30% historically, though things seem to be getting a bit better. That's pretty ridonkulous. It's a good thing Microsoft support is usually pretty good about taking them back, so you don't have to go all Picard and shout about how many lights there are over the phone.
From what we've seen in unconfirmed reports on the Net, the problem comes from insufficient cooling for the GPU. This in turn causes the three red lights, which means you're going to have to send back your 360 to Microsoft and possibly get a dirty refurbished unit in return. If you're really, really lucky (and French), you'll get a unit with 
Today in New York, Tivoli Audio founder Tom DeVesto unveiled plans, what he called "five years worth of work," for two Internet radios modeled after the company's successful Kloss Model One and SongBook radios. The Kloss Model One look-alike will be called NetWorks, and the SongBook-styled one, shown above, will be the NetWorksGo. Price has not been announced, nor has a ship date, but the company is aiming for this fall.
Here's a differentiating factor among PCs: The EXO Ultra Gaming PC, built by ex-Alienware system designer Garrett Bain, will be running GPUs chosen from the top ~1% of all NVidia's GPUs from a particular manufacturer. (That's unique.) Looks like now that the big corporations have bought up all the bigger boutique PC makers, there's room for a new generation of gaming PCs, built with even more dedication to being stupid, stupid, stupid fast. The EXO prototype is that, and there's more inside that sets it apart as one of the systems able to go the extra mile.
•Each EXO prototype has a polished aluminum chassis frame, and this one has carbon fiber panels all around. You can, however, order whateverthefrick panels you want, including woods like bamboo, diamond patterned steel plate, and more. Whatever. Seriously, not just what you can select in a drop down menu in a browser based shopping cart.
•Instead of routing power supply cables through you entire case, they've got a mobo tray mounted "power strip" with short lead cables to all components. Very clean.
• Like I said before, the EXO has an exclusive deal with NVidia to get their top ~%1 of the bin. That means that the chips inside of the EXO machines will be of higher quality, and shipped to overclock. (A first.)
and...
This super-cool project by some dude takes an old newspaper box and hooks up a 17-inch monitor to it so he can get digital headlines every day. Inside the box he stores the monitor, a Mac mini, and speakers/subwoofer for some audio as well. Using AppleScript, he fetches the front-page news of various other newspapers from Newseum so he can get a quick view of what's going on every morning.
See it in glorious video after the jump.
There's a group out in Tulsa who does whatever it takes to get their haul. They cut open ceilings and walls, rappel down surfaces, disable security systems—even climb through air ducts—and manage to make off with $60,000 to $400,000 per strike. And all without leaving a trace of their identity. Sound a bit like the movies? It does to us, too, but we can't help but imagine what kind of gadgetry these guys carry with them.
Now they've turned their eyes toward electronic heists. At a Best Buy in Tulsa, the burglars entered the store by breaching the ceiling, rappelling down to the store office and cutting a hole into it, taking care of the alarms and surveillance of the store, and then took around 50 laptops and 60-inch plasma TVs. And then they took the safe, weighing a few thousand pounds, which is evidently a trademark of this particular ring.
Got a Belkin router? Feel like getting some free cash? (* AU: Live in America? -SB *) Well, a class action lawsuit settlement recently decreed that if you bought one of 37 Belkin products between October 13, 2002, and February 5, 2007, you may be entitled to a refund. Check the deets over at Consumerist and see if you qualify. 
Now what exactly does this spectacular babe have to do with gadgetry, you ask? Have you been living under a rock? That's Megan Fox, one of the big stars of Transformers, the upcoming megagadget flick by Michael Bay. Here she's posing for the ace photog at Maxim magazine, among a few others.
We figured that was reason enough to serve up a batch of pictures to gawk at. Ya know, to prepare you for the movie's debut on July 3. Here's a preview of some of the distaff eye candy you'll be watching. Time for a reality check: So who's hotter, Megan Fox or Optimus Prime? 
The iPhone is the most hyped up phone ever, and it's coming next week. People are going to be 
That 
Those crazy Brits are flying voice-controlled helicopters now, using a Direct Voice Input system by QinetiQ that lets pilots fly their Gazelle helicopters by simply yelling at them. So far the makers claim 90% "effective speech control" of the helicopter's "non-safety critical avionic functions," but we're just wondering what avionic functions on a helicopter aren't safety-critical. And let's see—to shoot the guns, you yell "bang!", right?
The system is speaker-independent, so it doesn't need to be trained for each pilot's particular voice or way of speaking. Now this means that backseat drivers can actually have some real power. Let's just hope carmakers aren't tempted to try this shit. 
Got 20 minutes to kill at work on a Friday? Watch this younger, less handsome Jobs-alike explain to you the detailed features of the iPhone. While we still haven't made it through all 20 minutes yet, we'll let you know if there's anything unannounced in here.
Update: 
We're finally getting to some more expensive docks in our Super, Mega, Ultra iPod Dock Battle. On one corner, we have the JBL On Time. It's our second clock dock, and it's pissed (we think...tough to tell). In the other corner, we have the XtremeMac Tango. It smells excellent—like our favorite variation of RightGuard. Both units retail for a deuce of Benjamins.
How will this fight end? Only one can win!
The purpose behind Hitachi's nefarious brain-machine interface has finally been revealed! The company's planning to make the most badass interactive train set ever.
This Digg PC will show your true allegiance to your favorite social news site. It's shaped like the Digg logo, and I can only presume it comes pre-loaded with AWESOME PICS, Apple rumors, baby pictures of Kevin Rose, and Ubuntu Linux. 
Is there a worse combination than being cripplingly lazy and a total germophobe? You live in fear of situations like when you drop your sandwich on the floor, don't want to eat it, but just can't handle the thought of going through the effort of making another one. My God, your life is a constant struggle.
Well, this automatic paper towel dispenser should make your life at least a little easier. It'll hand you paper towels automatically without you touching it, which will appeal to your lazy self as well as the part of you that worries that germs are coating the dispenser. $66 might seem a lot for a simple device such as this, but it's cheaper than a psychiatrist. 
In the MP3 world, boring box designs might be king, but that's not stopping MPIO from trying to break the mold. The new wedge-shaped FL500 eschews buttons, replacing them with knobs you can mess with. There's a knob for volume and one to switch player functions between MP3 playback, FM radio and sound recording—that third one (bottom left) isn't actually a knob at all, but a necklace clip, so you can wear the thing. What's the inspiration for the wedge?
If you ever find yourself with a hankering for CDs again, this Teac CD-X10i might crank out enough tunes to float your boat. Those flat speakers, each driven by 5 watts o' juice, aren't going to rock the Casbah, but they might be sufficient to wake you up in the morning with the system's alarm clock. They don't look too shabby, either. Besides that CD music, you can tune in FM and plug in your iPod, too. Look at another pic, and more of my guff, too.
In the end, shoving the guts of a Gamecube into a tissue box and tissues into the cube is only fitting—it's just about time for it to pass on to the shelf of dusty systems. Sure we can play our 'Cube games on the Wii, but it's just not the same. It's okay to cry. We won't make fun of you.
Things iLuv about the iLuv Wine Glass Dock:
The chick in the silver bikini.
The Nusskubus nutcracker, uh, system is a set of beechwood cubes with a a variety of hollows for cracking nuts of myriad sizes. After setting your desired nut in the appropriate spot, smash the other cube into it and you're ready to go. Or you could save $35, be a man and just use your fist.
Wow, we managed to get through three entire sentences talking about a nutcracker without a single innuendo. That's quite the accomplishment on our part, no? 
We're always blathering about buying this and buying that, but why not just fix the iPod you have? That's what Instructables shows you how to do using a folded-up business card. This mod is so easy, just getting the iPod open is the hardest part.
It seems that over time, a springy piece of foam inside the iPod gets too flattened for certain contacts to touch each other, but you can wedge a folded-up business card inside and get it snugged up and working again. The resourceful handyman who offers this trick says he's already gotten two left-for-dead iPods working in just a few minutes. Neat. 
