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This is a neat little idea from Asuka, a 1.8-inch HDD that looks like a cellphone. Slide it into the card slot of your laptop and it can transfer data at 1056 Mbps. Neat idea, huh?
Following last weekend's RPG kidnapping, the gaming community in Brazil has suffered another shock. 18-year-old has been hospitalized after being struck by lightning while he was gaming. Aguinaldo César Alves, from Jardim Campos ElÃseos, 60 miles from Sao Paolo, had one joystick in his hand and another in his mouth when he was hit yesterday afternoon. The proof, as if you needed it, that Mother Nature can be a bitch sometimes, was left in the teen's bedroom wall.
This cell phone concept design by Peter Lau allows blind users to easily dial numbers and make calls. It doesn't rely on Braille, but instead has differently angled keys that users can learn to recognise. So how do you send and receive an SMS then?
There are no details on this, but presumably it would be possible to have speech synthesis read out text messages. And I guess that the phone could also read your messages out loud as you compose them. There are no details however, like with most concepts, but it looks cool and it's probably invisible to radars with all those angled surfaces. [Sensory Impact]
Here's another case of the iPhone's startup problem, getting stuck into single-user mode right after turning it on. A reader just sent this video and high resolution photo, along with a description of how it happened. But fear not, Apple fans, because there's an easy cure for it.
Samsung has announced that it has developed the world's first LCD panel that uses DisplayPort. The 30-inch LCD, which goes into mass production in the second quarter of 2008, has 2560 x 1600 resolution thanks to the zippiness of the new interface which, at twice the speed of today's interfaces, transmits graphics data at 10.8Gbps.
These BarbieGirls MP3 players are bizarre for more than their creepy doll shape: apparently they are designed to teach your kids about exclusion and peer pressure. When you plug the $59.99 device into the included dock, they unlock exclusive content and chat rooms that only other kids with dolls can access, making them a My-First-Country-Club gadget as well as a portable music device. And yes, it gets even worse.
Yes, it's no iPhone and it's British, but the O2 Cocoon's has a blue LED screen that shines straight through its retro-70s white clamshell design. It can display time, caller or track information, whilst simultaneously looking awesome. Best of all, it can transform: it comes with a dock that converts it into a bedside alarm clock as you can see in the video after the jump.
After the first Hello World application, hacker NerveGas and the people at #iphone-shell have built Apache, Python and other Open Source apps for the iPhone. Yes, your iPhone can now be a Web Server and do all sort of 1337 things. This also means that third-party applications for iPhone will happen iPhone unlocking after the jump.]
Helio is announcing Activesync support for the Ocean. The phone will then be able to sync calendars, email, and contacts from an Exchange server. They're also doing a file viewer app that will view PDF, Word, Powerpoint, Excel docs. $10 a month for Helions with All-In service plans.
Worrisome iPhone users, are you dreading the day when your battery inevitably fails and sticks you with an $85.95 bill after you send it in to Apple to have it replaced? If you're not afraid to try something new, you can start saving a little less each month because ipodjuice.com is hocking a replacement battery for $45 ($65 after shipping). But will you get what you pay for?
After playing a little too much Viva Piñata, somebody at Sony decided to start mashing together random, seemingly incompatible product lines. The resulting mutation was the Hana, a standing lamp that also includes an MP3 player and full-length speakers. I guess they're targeting the "music lover who hates to listen in the dark and is too lazy to use more than one device at a time" market? No word on pricing, availability or Sony's plans to conquer the lucrative lamp market yet. [Sony Hana Lamp via plasticbamboo]
TiVo's $300 HD player was fully revealed on Tuesday, so it's a good time to explore TiVo's pumped up Unbox functionality that this and the Series 3/2 all have. TiVo has been working as a set top box for Amazon's Unbox movie rental and purchase service for a while, but only in the last few weeks has it been possible to buy movies on a TiVo without any intervention from a PC. Having used it for a week, I have to say it's imperfect, but nice.
If you're a die-hard Apple buff and want the world to know it, place your bid for this massive original Apple Computer sign. This sign comes from the era of the manly rainbow-colored logo and has been hanging on an authorized Apple dealer's store wall for years. The dealer is relocating and you can be the beneficiary if enormous Apple Computer memorabilia is your thing. You have five days to come up with the money; the current bid sits at $4,450 plus crating and shipping costs. Happy bidding! [Giant Apple Computer Sign via Gearfuse]
Posted by jenneth at 10:01 AM on July 25, 2007
Welcome to Wednesday folks. Mid-way through the work week, woo-hoo!
Control a Dead Frog Via the Web
Too gross not to link to it.
Greg Packer Seen in the Wild, Still First in Line
I'm glad this guy has found his niche in life.
Qantas Revives In-Flight Internet with Wi-Fi and Ethernet Access
Never mind that it's never made money for any other company, but A for effort for our Qantas.
Make Your Own Office Chair Bike
A fun project for the weekend, but don't ride it in public unless you want to get nerd-bashed.
Crashed iPhone in Single-User Mode
I can't help but link to all the anti-iPhone posts to make myself feel better about not having one.
Video of a WWII-era Airplane Landing on a Busy Highway
Three words for you: Fully Hectic Bro.
You know how you get the Han Solo shivers after you shove your arm into a cooler to find the last beer in a sea of Diet Pepsis? What you need is the cooler scoop, a scoop that proxys for your arm in order to dig out a drink without freezing to death. The only problems we could potentially have with this are the relatively short handle and the fact that the scoop only holds one, which means multiple trips are necessary—unlike the fishing net strategy we were picturing. [TaylorGifts via Cooking Gadgets]
XM CEO Hugh Panero was expected to step down after the Sirius merger, since Mel Karmazin was slated to be CEO of the new two headed monster. Now it's official. Here's hoping the soulless bot-DJs go next. [PR Newswire]
Is this green flying saucer plane the eco-friendly plane of the future? It's a design from the CleanEra project, aimed at making air travel more economical (in the environmental sense) by using lighter materials and weird ass shapes. Their goal is to get the carbon usage down to less than 50% of current planes. Whether this is light on the Earth is yet to be seen, it looks like something the Green Lantern would fly in. [LiveScience]
We present Gaywheels.com's survey of which cars are gayest (not that there's anything wrong with that). They base their research on their server logs, quantifying which cars get the most research from their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual readership. (I feel like the list is more gay than lesbo, however.)
Reader Jeremy's mother knows about his obsession with gadgets, which is why she sent him a gift basket full of gadget cookies for his birthday. The only thing she could have done better would be to include some modern gadgets like the iPhone or a TiVo, but her heart's in the right place.
The $69 iPhone Apple Care we told you about is now live on Apple's site. You can order online (free shipping) in order to extend your one year of complimentary iPhone repair service to two years. Telephone support, on the other hand, is still free for two years even without AppleCare. AppleCare is not available for residents of Alabama, Connecticut, Nevada, or Wyoming, so don't bother ordering it if you live there. [Apple]
This hearing aid-like device called SpeechEasy helps relieve s-s-stuttering by the "Choral effect." This effect, present when stuttering is reduced or eliminated when people s-s-speak or sing in unison with others, is replicated by piping a person's own speech back into their ear with a slight delay and on a slightly modified frequency. This in turn makes their brain think they're s-s-speaking in unison with someone else. It's definitely a great idea, but the SpeechEasy is only available in Europe as of now. [Medsy via Medgadget]
Sony's stealing a bit of Denon's release thunder today with its Elevated Standard line of home theater receivers. Not only does it have Wi-Fi, like the Denon, there's the PlayStation 3/PSP/Sony Bravia Xross Media Bar onscreen interface, six HDMI 1.3 inputs, Faroudja DCDi Cinema 1080p upscaling via HDMI, Sirius and XM satellite ready, Deep Color support, a 100-watt amp, and a Bluetooth receiver for streaming music from Sony Ericsson phones. The High end Denon has a better Silicon Optics Realta video processor, but its also almost 3x as much cheddar. There will be three models available. STR-DA5300ES for $1700 in September, STR-DA4300ES for $1300 in October, and STR-DA3300ES for $1000 in August. [Sony]
Most people may already be happy enough with 1 and 10 Gigabit speeds, but most people don't stream HD movies or move around entire hard drives over their network. The Ethernet Alliance knows this, and has just laid out a roadmap detailing how they're going to add 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit speeds to the Ethernet standard. Both these will start out in the server space (read: not for you), but will trickle down to the home and home office within the next few years. [ExtremeTech - Thanks Dom!]
Transformers fever is all but dead now, but that doesn't mean that the ladies can't get in on the something-becoming-something-else action. The Dos Caras jacket functions fine as a jacket, but when removed, can twist and turn and reconvene into a shoulder bag. Definitely cool, but kind of unfortunate that you have to pick one or the other. What will you do if you're both cold and need to carry a bunch of things? [Alice Kaiserswerth via Designspotter via Treehugger]
Motorola is the first major cellphone maker to officially plan on putting Microvision's Pico Projector technology in future gadgets. The laser-based display engine is being placed in a prototype for now, using a 854 x 450 image. [Microvision via Oh Gizmo!]
Art or science? That's the question you'll be asking yourself when you see this dead frog with a server embedded into its guts. Suspended in a clear glass of inert liquid, the frog has an Ethernet cable coming out of its insides, which in turn allows remote "visitors" to issue commands and make the frog twitch its muscles. It's definitely the most sadistic thing we've seen done to a frog since that Miss Piggy's S&M video. [Conceptlab via BoingBoing]
Wired has just launched their new How-To site, chock full of instructions and tips to do any number of things, some more useful than others (how to stalk people on Flickr? Awesome.). One that caught our eye was the Martha-Stewart-inspired Wii Cake. The problem? The cake is goddamned inedible.
The Fatty is an awesome name for a set of speakers. Designed by Hard Truckers, the crew behind the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound, both cones (they're 12" Tone Tubby Alnicos if you're interested) and cabinet are made of hemp, making The Fatty as friendly on the environment as it is on the eye and ear. Not so easy on the pocket, however, is the price...
Denon's compact home theater systems just got some big improvements. Both the S-302 ($1699) and the S-102 ($999), which are due in September, can upscale DVDs to 1080p; the S-302 bumps up all analog incoming video to 1080p as well. The S-302 also has built-in Wi-Fi and can display cover art of the music streaming from a PC or Mac. The new S-32 and S-52 are in the "clock radio" or iPod dock family, though they are far more loaded than the typical competitor. Both the S-32 and S-52 are wireless and networked; on top of that the S-52 will have an HD Radio tuner, a slot-loading CD player and a USB jack for local content.
Greg Packer, everyone's favorite professional linesitter, was spotted by our enterprising videographer Alex Goldberg this weekend at the Village Voice Siren Festival at Coney Island. Where was he? Up at the very front, of course. Whether or not he'd ever heard of any of the bands he saw is currently unknown. You'll always be at the end of the line to our hearts, Packer.
If you're like us, you've been waiting for AV receivers to catch up with the digital age. Today, Denon introduced a huge line of receivers, with features that are up our alley:
• Wi-Fi in the two priciest models, AVR-5308CI ($5,199) and AVR-4308CI ($2,499)
• USB inputs for bus-powered HDD, along with AAC, FLAC, WMA Lossless, MP3 and WAV decoding
• Networking connectivity for both PCs and Macs (via Twonky Media)
• A friendly user interface (don't call it Cross Media Bar!) that makes setup and networking easier, included on the two priciest mentioned above plus the non-Wi-Fi 3808CI ($1,599)—see gallery for examples
• HDMI 1.3a compatibility and 1080p output across the board; with 1080p upscaling on the higher-end models
• Auto room setup that starts automatically when you insert the tuning microphone
Although the most notable feature in the Qosmio G45-AV680 laptop is the fact that you can burn 30GB onto one HD DVD-R disc, its other specs are quite good as well. There's Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, four Harman Kardon speakers, a built-in sub, a PowerMate-like silver control knob with blue LED light, 17-inch 1920x1200 display, 2GB RAM, Intel T7300 Core 2 Duo processor, and a built-in webcam. The price for all this? $3,199. Not too bad, considering the HD DVD-R and the first class features. [Businesswire]
Elgato improves on their USB High Def solution for Macs by introducing the HDHomeRun, a network-connected device that can actually service multiple machines at once. There are two ATSC (over the air or unencrypted cable but not standard cable) tuners, which means two people can watch 24 and Heroes at the same time. The whole setup runs you $199, which is kind of steep if you compare it to the $299 TiVo HD. [Elgato]
Today in Jersey City, Denon unveiled its flagship DVD player, the DVD-3800BDCI, coming out this fall. It will be among the first to sport the BD-ROM version 1.1, which means it will have dual audio/video decoders to take advantage of picture-in-picture content, and has an SD card slot, so that you can download web content. It does not have an Ethernet jack, however, so you will have to use a PC to download content to SD. It's also, according to Denon, the world's first high-def disc player to use the Realta HQV video processor for super-badass video cleanup. The processor will clean up Blu-ray discs, if that tells you anything.
Today at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City, Denon unveiled a massive line of new home-theater gear, mostly centered on the themes of network connectivity and easier setup.
• Networked ASD-3N and ASD-3W iPod docks ($179.99 and $229.99, out in August and September, respectively, with the "W" adding integrated Wi-Fi). In addition to providing a TV interface to access both video and audio content on an iPod, the docks pull music and photos from PCs and Macs on your network, and can be connected to any component, not just Denon stuff.
• DHT-FS3 surround sound bar and "super slim" subwoofer, which not only complements the docks but can be a nice low-profile surround-sound option under a flat-panel TV. Rare that these things fit below your TV unless they're wall mounted. We saw this before, but didn't expect a US arrival.
• RC-7000CI IR/RF Remote Control, which becomes an RF two-way remote system when you add the RC-7001RCI adapter—basically an RF dongle with its own IR blaster. When you use it with Denon components, you can see metadata, like what's playing, right on the remote's screen.
A steam-powered mechanical computer designed two centuries ago by British inventor Charles Burbage has been the inspiration for an energy-efficient nano computer. The tiny, ultra-robust device is the brainchild of a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who say that their machine, which could go boldly to places where silicon chips fear to tread such as car engines, would be constructed from nanometer-sized components just billionths of a meter wide. If successful, the technology could be used for anything from toys and domestic appliances through to military defense systems.
Just when most other airlines and airplane manufacturers are removing in-flight internet access, Qantas goes the exact opposite direction (into our hearts) and adds internet access. The A380 and 747-400 planes that will make up their web-enabled fleet will have both Wi-Fi and a charging slot to plug your laptop into. Not much else here in the way of pricing or availability, but expect a lofty surcharge if you want to get a seat with both outlets, an Ethernet port, USB ports, and a 17-inch built-in LCD. Service starts in February 2008, but you'll be getting sub-dialup speeds as everyone clown-cars into a 432kbps connection. [APC Mag]
Designer Jin Woo Han figured if you want both a digital camera and a digital picture frame, why not put them together and display the pictures with the same device you used to capture them? In this design concept Han calls the Samsung SS 700, he determined a happy medium size where the point-and-shoot camera is not too large and the picture frame isn't too small.
Can't get enough time sitting in that office chair of yours? Make it into a bike! Instructables has a "simple" nine-step solution for turning your favorite office chair into something you can actually ride to work. This ensures that once you actually do get there, you don't suffer from biker's ass or commuter's sweat, two things that make you absolutely irresistible to Carol in accounting. [Instructables via Geekologie]