When Should You Buy Your Next Gadget? 
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Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time For 10x the price of a George Foreman grill, this $200 grill/hot plate set better cook 10x the amount of stuff. It does. From the horrible Japanese translation, this Zojirushi grill looks like it can roast meat, grill vegetables, make fried rice, smoke meat, cook vegetables, make chow mein and a bunch of other things. And of course you can pack it up into a really, really hot briefcase afterwards. Only in Japan (so far).
Impress [via Tokyo Mango]
OK, so it isn’t the finest week for free-energy machines, but perhaps the boys at Steorn are just giving this category a bad name. Some seemingly free-energy concepts make sense, because they are powered not by mystical cosmic vibrations, but actual earthly ones. Scientists at the University of Southampton have created a generator that is fueled by the tremors of everyday life. It makes a trace amount of electrical current, but it’s enough to power sensors and, eventually, small machines.
Some of you iPhone users have been complaining about the period key being banished to the numbers and symbols keyboard layout. Well quit your whining, here’s a quick and easy way to get around that. All you have to do is press and hold the numbers key, and without lifting your finger slide it over to the period (or any other punctuation mark) and let go. Ba-da-bing you’ve got yourself a period and the keyboard has automatically switched back to letters again. Pogue’s Awesome iPhone Period-Typing Shortcut [Missing Manuals]
If you’re anything like us, your major complaint about pajamas is that they’re just too hard to take off. That, and how urine stains never seem to wash out completely. These magnetic pajama buttons don’t do much about problem #2, but they totally take the clothing-removal equation to the next level.
Of course, these magnetic fasteners are designed for the elderly and disabled, but our question is this: Why isn’t this on all articles of clothing? Think about it, you could remove clothing LIKE THAT. That means perverts could go around and rip off women’s clothing with minimal effort, which just leaves us with the one question: Why isn’t this on all articles of clothing?
Magnetic Pyjamas [Plastic Bamboo]
This Fiat 500 plays ball with Microsoft, building in Windows Mobile to give you GPS, USB connectivity and Bluetooth goodness all in the same car. Jointly developed by Fiat, Microsoft and component company Magneti Marelli, the car’s voice-activated system lets you connect any Bluetooth device to its stereo system, giving speakerphone capabilities as well as text-to-speech readouts of your SMS messages.
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If the official iPhone Bluetooth headset is $129, what would you expect it to have? More than just auto-pairing via the dock, right? Well, a reader just told us he called up Apple support and asked them whether the headset supports noise cancellation. They said no. Not only that, they recommended that he buy a Jawbone instead.
So what’s the big deal about this headset? Auto-pairing? The Apple logo? The fact that it’s small? We’ll test it out ourselves and see whether it, or the Jawbone, is worthy of your cash.
We told you that YouTube on Helio’s 3G was free now, but they’ve gone and added a couple more features to it since Monday. First, Helio users can record videos on their Oceans and upload them to Helio Album. Why’s that cool? Because if you configure your Helio Album correctly, it can push those videos to YouTube and Flickr (for pictures, we’re assuming).
In non–YouTube news, the new MySpace Mobile 2 app is available on the Ocean now. It’s much better than the old app, and actually lets you Photocast by publishing pics to your bulletin so your MySpace buddies can see. Great for up-to-date vacation pics for your co-workers to get jealous at.
Although Sony has yet to confirm anything, the camera world is full of little whispers that a new camera is about to join its Alpha range of digital SLRs, along with a range of full-frame lenses. There is all sorts of speculation about the model number (so we won’t bother going into that) but there is a general consensus about what the new boy will come with…
12.8-megapixels Light sensitivity up to 3,200 ISO Speeds of 10 frames per second in JPEG mode SSS In-camera anti-shake compensation Minolta-patented touch sensor strip
New Alpha and lens range launch imminent [Photoclub Alpha via Wired]
While all of you iPhone owners are busily pushing the envelope with your new gadget, taking calls, pinching images and locating sushi bars, some people are actually coming up with useful, critical applications. No, not hacking it. I mean making it the perfect friend for the Peeping Tom in you. At least according to this story by one of our readers.
Since most people don’t like running wires and speakers all around their living room, surround bars are becoming all the rage. A Denon model just started popping up in the UK press, a 150-watt bar with subwoofer, using something called “soundbeams” to project sound around the room, regardless of the floorplan. It’s enough to make us jealous, but then we realized that Denon is having a line show on July 24th. My bet is that we’ll see it there. Now the only question is, will the £700 ($1,408) price be lowered for the US? Knowing Denon, probably not. Denon DHT-FS3 X-Space Surround Bar [AVReview]
