Thursday, October 18, 2007
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Classic Mac Becomes Sweet Jukebox
11:37PM Mark Wilson | One industrious modder decided that the bet use for his newly acquired Mac Classic was to make it into this personal jukebox. After ripping out the CRT monitor, he was able to squeeze in a new LCD display, 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo Mac Mini, extra 750GB drive and power supply. The only external modifications included expanding the disc drive for CDs/DVDs and adding a tiny opening for an IR receiver. OS X was modified to automatically load FrontRow upon booting, completing retro functional sweetness. Bonus pic: More »
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Panasonic Eyeball Scanner Is a Lot Like Grandma, Except For the Lasers
11:27PM Wilson Rothman | Panasonic’s newest iris-scanner, BM-ET200, shoots laser beams into your eyes from 20 inches away as you stare into a green light on its face. It can identify an individual out of a database of 10,000 users in just 0.3 seconds. Not only that, but if you walk up to it with a slouch, the $2,500 scanner will say, out loud, “Stand up straight!” So maybe not exactly like your dear old grandma, but close. [Gadget Lab] More »
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Polly Want a Wireless Doorbell?
11:25PM Charlie White | What, is this International Doorbell Week? The techno-doorbell scene continues its explosive growth and innovation, and following those two more-sophisticated MP3 doorbells we showed you earlier this week, this Chinese Recordable Parrot Wireless Doorbell approaches the realm of the absurd. This cheapshit $22 plastic bird is not like those doorbells, such as the ReBell and YourBell, both using your existing doorbell button and letting you plug your MP3s on board, but this one looks a lot better than they do and could be good for a few laughs. More »
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F-35 Lightning II’s Speech Recognition Controls to Open All Kinds of Fucked-Up Possibilities
11:15PM Jesus Diaz | The Air Force has announced that in addition to their helmet designed in insects hell, their upcoming F-35 Lightning II will be the first plane with speech recognition, designed to manage “various aircraft subsystems.” I don’t know how good the speech recognition system is, but I hope the list of subsystems doesn’t include “Weapons,” “Emergency Eject” or “Egg Freckles.” Really, did these people ever watch Firefox? [Air Force Link] More »
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Gold-Plated Juicer Bleeds Fruit and Wallet Dry
10:53PM Addy Dugdale | Sometimes a product comes along and bites you on the arse in such a way that you don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or take out a loan. This gold-plated kitchen bitch — a snip at 1500 quid (that’s over $3,000, exchange-rate fans) is a live enzyme “nutrition extractor” that also works well at extracting money from your bank account and rationality from your person. It also turns the phrase “carat juice” from a spelling mistake into a sad yet viable proposition. More »
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LavaGlow Wireless Controller
10:44PM Mark Wilson | The LavaGlow wireless controller is a new PS3 peripheral going for pizazz. Filled with liquid—not real lava as advertised—LEDs glow to successfully simulate hot magma in your hands (the controller comes in red, white and blue, so you might also be holding a blizzard and…uhh…tidal wave). Yes, this may be the worst peripheral we’ve seen in some time. But our real issue is that it doesn’t operate on the PS3s open Bluetooth channel, instead opting for 2.4Hz RF. Yes, prepare for dongles and yet another cheap peripheral maker screwing many consumers without them even realizing life could be better. Now you’re playing with lava! [product via businesswire] More »
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Verizon Adds Samsung SCH-i760, Palm Treo 755p and Two More WM6 Devices To Busy Smartphone Lineup
10:40PM Wilson Rothman | As Charlie speculated back in April, Verizon Wireless is adding the Samsung SCH-i760 to its lineup of Windows Mobile 6 smartphones. The QWERTY-equipped horizontal slider will cost $350 after $50 mail-in rebate and two-year contract. Verizon is also adding Palm’s Treo 755p to the lineup, as well as two more white-label WM6 devices with slide-out QWERTY keyboards—the Verizon Wireless XV6800 with Wi-Fi and a 2-megapixel camera; and the SMT5800 smartphone with 2-megapixel camera but presumably no touchscreen. Verizon hasn’t announced pricing on these three other phones. One hopes that the roll out will ensure maximum customer choice, but I can’t help thinking they may just confuse the hell out of customers with too many similar sounding options. Press release: More »
Cameras
Focus-Broken Canon EOS-1D Mark III to be Fixed Soon
10:22PM Charlie White | Although we were highly impressed with the $4500 Canon EOS-1D Mark III digital SLR camera when we first saw it last winter, the high-end super camera turned out to have a goofy problem: Its autofocus didn’t work in bright sunlight. Canon has reportedly agreed to fix the camera’s AI servo autofocus defect, and if you’re one of the unfortunate early adopters of that mofo cam, you can call 800 828-4040, give your serial number to one of the Canon reps, and they’ll call you when they have the parts and you’ll get your camera fixed right up, maybe even in the next couple of weeks. So much for being an early adopter. [Rob Galbraith, via FM Forums] More »
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Samsung IDTV F8 Makes Your Current HDTV Obsolete Again
10:19PM Jesus Diaz | Samsung announced a Full HD 1080p “IDTV F8 television featuring Motion Plus technology” just to annoy us with another silly acronym and technology name. What is IDTV? It means integrated digital television, a TV that comes with built-in MPEG4 AVC decoder and digital TV tuner. And Motion Plus? A processor that creates middle frames “anticipating the action” which, according to Samsung, offers smoother motion for Bruce Willis movies and sports like football, basketball and curling. It will be out everywhere but in the US for $5,699 (40″), $7,399 (46″) and $10,399 52″) at the end of October. [Hardware Zone] More »
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