This Japanese pricing of 8,800 Yen ($75) for the WiiFit should give you a good idea of how much that Nintendo Wii balance/exercise/yoga board is going to cost in the US. It’s going to go on sale December 1 in Japan, and if Nintendo wants to cash in on any kind of Holiday sales at all, you know they’re going to try and pump it out before December 25 here as well. In comparison, the Wii is 25,000 Yen in Japan ($213) as opposed to the $249 here, so you could probably expect the WiiFit to go for a bit more than $75 when it swims over. [Famitsu via Kotaku]
This USB drive holds 512MB of doggie data like pictures and its favourite diet, which is perfect for attaching to an actual dog so whenever it gets lost, people can use it to figure out exactly where to return the dog to. Of course, a slip of paper with your address and phone number would be the same, but since when did crazy arse Solid Alliance worry about practicality. The best part is that it’s chewy and rubbery, so if it ever gets eaten it’ll come out the other side relatively intact—unlike other USB drives. [Rakuten via Tokyo Mango]
The summer Xbox 360 HD DVD promotion that offered you five free HD DVD movies of your choosing (out of a pile of their choosing) has been extended to February 28, meaning you can still get in on this free film deal if you’re planning on going high def for Christmas. Bettter yet, they’ve added additional movies from Swordfish (lousy film, topless women!) to Troy (lousy film, topless men!) to The Frighteners (pretty decent film, topless Michael J. Fox!). Best to check out the list if you’re even thinking about this deal.
Category A Aeon Flux Babel The Italian Job
Category B Hulk Pitch Black The Thing
Category C Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Swordfish Full Metal Jacket
Category D Firewall The Frighteners U2: Rattle and Hum
Category E Black Rain Darkman Troy
Sony offered details on their updated PC Blu-ray burner today, with 4x speeds that can write 50 GB in 45 minutes. The BWU-200S connects to the motherboard via SATA and will burn HD formats to standard DVD as well. The drive also burns to DVD at 16x (one of the first Blu-ray drives to do so), and uses Cyberlink BD for all its playback, editing and burning needs. The BWU-200S starts shipping next month for $600. [Electronista]
According to AppleInsider sources, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has been finalised and well on target to make its rumoured October 26th ship date. This comes in addition to the news that Apple has finished two new builds of Mac OS X 10.4.11–which are likely to be the final update to the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system. [AppleInsider]
U.S. technology services company EDS has a shopping cart concept that promises to read each products UPC code and return information about calories, nutrition, ethical sourcing and the environment. It could also warn people if they are buying too much junk food–thereby reducing our need for nutrition fact labels. [Reuters]
Server dramas overnight == late, late feed bag. Mea culpa! -SB
Remember Airwolf? Probably not. However, there are probably tens, if not dozens of Airwolf fans out there–and any one of them would love to get their hands on one of these 26 fully-functional helmet replicas up for sale on Ebay. Each helmet features a functional LED targeting bar, speed visor, electronic switches, and battery-powered electronic Power-Pack with Belt Clip. Truth be told, I was a big fan of Airwolf back in the day. Perhaps the publicity will spark a Jan Michael Vincent comeback. One could only hope. [Ebay via Uberreview]
A reader just sent us in this tip about the music service/player Slacker, which coughs up music over Wi-Fi, Satellite, and the interwebberpipes. We saw this a while back, but until now there wasn’t a definitive release date. However, slacker support says: “The portable player is scheduled to be released within the next month or two. At this time it is the final steps of production.” Things are looking good for slackers. [Thanks Tipster!]
The Honda CR-Z hybrid concept is designed to the nines. The reality check, even if this is just a concept, it’s a concept built around Honda’s current gen hybrid in this generation’s Civic Hybrid/Accord. No matter—the LED headlights, body lines, and dash are kind enough on the eyes:
