Duracell’s new PowerSource Mobile 100 could be the new best friend of anyone who tends to carry a lot of gadgets around. It can extend the runtime of just about any portable devic—and even provide up to two hours of additional juice for your laptop. If that wasn’t enough, it also has one AC outlet and two USB charge ports so you can charge multiple devices simultaneously. I would completely fall in love with it if not for the $140 price tag. Unfortunately, convenience never comes cheap. [Product Page via Ubergizmo]
After a five month beta, iPod owners can finally look outside of iTunes for their video content thanks to RealPlayer. As part of the RealPlayer Plus package, it is now possible to transfer downloaded video content to the Apple iPod Nano, iPod Classic and iPod Video. Naturally, that opens up a world choc-full of non-DRM protected videos for users to enjoy. A beta version for Mac users is also available. The RealPlayer Plus package will set you back $39.99 —a small price to pay if you ask me. [RealPlayer]
Firefox 3.0 Status meeting notes have revealed that Mozilla will leave about 8 in 10 bugs untouched before the final version is released. Instead, they have decided to devote their attention to correcting the most serious bugs in order to strike a balance between stability and the impending release schedule. [Mozilla via NYT]
Sure, straps can be handy for those of us with overly buttery fingers, but for the rest of us they serve little purpose (unless being massively annoying is considered a purpose). However, the folks at WirelessGround may have changed all that with their new USB enabled Leather Hand Strap. The idea is simple —a strap with hidden mini and standard USB connectors to facilitate sweet electronic love making between your phone and your computer. Plus, it can charge any other compatible gadgets you have lying around. On sale now for $12. Addtional photo available after the break.
A source in content creation has informed me that the Reader is coming on Monday or Tuesday, just in time for the holiday season. Information was limited, but apparently “a dozen media partners” were to be involved with launch, which implies non-book providers.
That could be interesting if weekly and daily news sources could be downloaded over the Kindle’s EVDO data connection, which was discovered in FCC docs so many months ago. If you know more, please drop me a line—this thing could destroy the Sony reader if it has connectivity and I am hungry for details.
Winning the Green Tech Grand Award and “Innovation of the Year” nods from Pop Sci, Nanosolar PowerSheets pack a whole lot of potential into their Paris Hilton-cheap, Nicole Richie-thin panels—we’re talking solar power for 30 cents a watt, compared to the $3 it costs now, without silicon or laying the panels on glass. “You’re talking about printing rolls of the stuff—printing it on the roofs of 18-wheeler trailers, printing it on garages, printing it wherever you want it.” If you wanna know more about the black magic coating the panels, check out Pop Sci’s spectacularly detailed coverage. [Pop Sci via BBG]
Lysandre Follet’s watch concepts assume the identity of a pair of Nixon timepieces, throwing pong or tetris into the inner workings while avoiding excessive nerddom. The watches balance throwback games with simple, clean designs that don’t look to irony for their appeal (like the designer retro-reissue of the Casio Databank). If this were ever real, I’d seriously consider buying it. [Yanko Design]
Two billion images uploaded to Flickr. The 2,000,000,000? A photo of the golden tree on Market St in Sydney’s Chinatown. Big up for the Aussie connection, and to ‘yukesmooks’ for pinging their shot up at just the right moment.
Imagine being able to store every second of your life on a computer and then calling up digital snapshots of individual moments with a quick search. If Gordon Bell, the head of Microsoft’s Media Presence Research Group has his way, this technology could become a reality. The idea behind MyLifeBits or “surrogate memory” as Bell has dubbed it, is that people should be concerned with living life, not “maintaining our memory systems.”
MyLifeBits consists of a “Sense Cam” developed by Microsoft that takes pictures when it senses that the user may want a photo, sound recording equipment and a complicated software program that can help the user recall information using simple keywords. According to the researchers, a 1TB hard drive could easily hold all of the text documents, voice files and photos over the course of a person’s life —but would only be able to store four hours of video a day for a year. Naturally, that reality wouldn’t make MyLifeBits very cost effective in a more complicated form. It may be just as well though, do you really want video floating around of that time you got drunk and hit on that dude with long hair?
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On our blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visit to the world’s largest building site, aka Dubai, we stopped for a gawk at this, the Burj Dubai. Currently the tallest structure in the world, it stands at 156 stories and 585 meters high, but is expected to reach around 800 meters when finished. Designed by Adrian Smith, the tower continues the Armani-Samsung love-in, as the Italian designer is putting his name to a sexy hotel, while the Korean mega-corp is one of the three constructors on the skyscraper. But the cruelest cut of all is that Burj Dubai (burj means “tower” in Arabic) will be dwarfed by Kuwait’s Burj Mubarak Al-Kabir, which will measure 1,001 meters when it is ready. But that’s not expected to be until 2012 so, until then, size queens will be eyeing up Dubai. [Burj Dubai]
