Remember a couple of months back, and Hitachi’s announcement that it had developed fingervein-scanning technology? Well, according to a Hitachi press release, it’s going to be deployed in vehicles in the hope of cutting car theft. And that’s not all that the technology will be able to do.
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Esoteric Dutch blog Fresh Creation went to the Holland Innovation fair in, surprise, the Netherlands, and they found this crazy little — well, big, actually — thing. Park To Play lets you play games — Pong, Tetris, Pinball, Space Invaders etc — with your car. Yep, you didn’t hear wrong. Part art installation, part crazy, what-have-they-been-smoking-over-in-them-thar-low-countries-coffee-houses, they’ve rigged out the steering wheel and doors with sensors so that you can use the car to control the game. Headlights, brakes, car doors, they all become buttons to control the game with. I like the fact that the pinball flippers are controlled by the car doors. [Fresh Creation]
Industrial designer Roger Arquer came up with four ideas for a non-lethal mousetrap using household objects such as lightbulbs, paper clips, springs and pint glasses. And, of course, cheese. Check the gallery below for his ingenious devices.
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In a raft of announcements, Sonos today confirmed the existence of the $US99 ZoneBridge 100, and launched two more PC-free music-store options on the system, including Napster and Best Buy’s new Digital Music Store.
This is the interior of the new twin-turbocharged V6 2009 Nissan GT-R, a monster supercar, chicks-with-leather-and-attitude magnet and a wonder of engineering which we would probably only drive in the next Gran Turismo. Ironically, anyone who buys one starting tomorrow will be playing Gran Turismo too. All the time, in fact, since the multifunction display that is the star of its interior was designed with Polyphony Digital, the developers of the famous PlayStation GT games. And it shows, because it just looks awesome up close:
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Standing at 35mm thick, Hitachi’s Wooo UT series of LCDs earns them the accolade of world’s thinnest production LCD television manufacturer. Three sizes will be made available, either 42″ (¥430 000, $4,171) or 37″ (¥330 000, $3,201) at 1080p and a smaller 32″ (¥230 000, $2,231) model with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.galleryPost('WooUTGI', 4, 'WooUTGI');
Here’s what you do if you think your Vestax mixer looks dull as day-old dog doo: mod it. One of the guys from DJ Tech Tools swapped his boring old black knobs for arcade game buttons. How-to video is after the jump.
The not-so-secret Xbox 360 Arcade officially exists now and is on sale as of today for $US279.99. It’s packed with everything we’d heard previously: 256MB memory card, HDMI port, and five games (“PAC-MAN Championship Edition,” “Uno,” “Luxor 2,” Boom Boom Rocket” and “Feeding Frenzy.” What’s interesting is that it’s being marketed to families—formerly the Wii’s exclusive marketing domain, the word pops up 12 times in the press release for the Arcade (posted after the jump). Whether or not the new family-friendly spin will help it horn in on the Wii’s market share during the holiday reason remains to be seen, but it doesn’t feel unfair to call it a long shot.
It’s been a long time in the making, but Linksys is finally officially pulling the shroud off of the Ultra RangePlus line, including its dual-band draft-N/A/B/G router, the $280 WRT600N, and its $100 PC-card companion, WPC600N. The highlights:
• Two bands means traditional products can connect on the crowded 2.4GHz network while newer high-bandwidth products like Linksys’ DMA2100 and DMA2200 can pull streaming HD video from your PC with relatively less interference.
• Linksys Easy Link Adviser for Windows computers gives visual instructions and step-by-step setup. It also has a feature to migrate older devices to the new router.
• Storage Link USB 2.0 jack lets you turn any external drive into networked storage by plugging it into the WRT600N.
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These four devices in the i-Mate Ultimates line—the 9502, 8502, 8150 and the 6150— are i-Mate’s official push into the North American market. We’ve seen their Ultimates line before, but now they’ve promised a marketing campaign and sales direct from their website. Until now, the US market for Windows Mobile phones have been dominated by HTC and Palm (with some various other smaller companies picking up the end), but i-Mate’s a big contender overseas. Here’s what the four phones look like.
