RSS Feeds
|
BR DE ES FR IT JP NL UK US
Babblebaby
|
Defamer
|
Gizmodo
|
Kotaku
|
Lifehacker
Those of you whose families disowned them years ago may find comfort on this, the bleakest of days, in Evergreen's 18-buck toasty headphone-earwarmer combo. Then again, you may not. [Impress Japan]
Both Fox's Live Free or Die Hard and Warner's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix come with digital copies of the flicks for your computer and portable media device. PC World's reporting that Order's DRM will be very similar to Die Hard's except that it transfers to "your PC hard drive first and then moves to your portable unit." It'll work with "any device that supports Windows Media digital rights management." Die Hard's also PlaysForSure, meaning it totally doesn't play for sure on your gear.
This translucent plastic wheel packs all of your office necessities into one fun looking desktop design. These 'necessities' include: a stapler, pencil sharpener, staple remover, sticky note and paperclip holder, calculator, and a digital alarm clock. There is even a magnet on the back of each of the parts so you can attach them in areas where you would need them the most. Just don't be surprised when most of the components of your Stationoli go MIA inside of a week. Available for $US40. [Product Page via Chip Chick]
When it comes to the millions of dollars involved in smuggling drugs, even coked out dealers can tackle a big, complicated project. Recently, Colombian marines seized a homemade fiberglass submarine big enough to hold 4 crew members and 12 metric tons of cocaine —making it one of the largest such crafts found. Since the sub never saw action on the Pacific, there is no telling whether or not it would have actually worked. Still, if you had to die a slow death at the bottom of the sea, this would be the vessel to do it in. [Reuters]
Cesar at Zune Insider says a full batch of Zune 80s are ready to ship and will be in most stores within the next week (give or take a couple of days). Apparently, Microsoft anticipated a greater demand for flash... Read More »
• The American Consumer Institute estimates that consumers overpay for printer ink by $6 billion a year, since there is no competition in the market of printer ink. [Cameratown via Gadget Lab]
• Alltel will be releasing its version of the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 just in time for the holidays, with a price of $149 after a two-year contract. [Alltel via Crave]
• In response to a Zune song tagging problem, Microsoft has set up a support page with not so simple instructions for fixing incorrect song tags. [Microsoft via Gadget Lab]
Posted by Seamus Byrne at 11:19 AM on November 22, 2007
It's been almost two weeks worth of playing with the Samsung Widescreen phone and its super-duper support for the NextG Mobile Foxtel service. So what's the story? Is it worth changing services / plans / phones for?
In the most basic sense, this isn't a true enough mobile edition of Foxtel for my liking. It's still made up largely of looped content rather than streamed live channels. I'm not as down on the concept as I have been in the past, as it does adjust shows to deliver entertaining 5 minute bursts of content you can dive in and enjoy. Likewise the 15 minutes at a time 'rule' seems more like a battery-life failsafe - when you've been watching a while you do get bumped, but it pops up a 'resume viewing?' query so you can jump back in. Of course, if that happens right in the middle of watching something it's certainly a nuisance.
The Blackberry 9000-series phones are rumoured to have touchscreen keyboards, and Unstrung is reporting a series of quotes from analyst Carmi Levy about it. Levy could have good sources, or he could be giving us the analyst reach-around, repeating rumours first written about on blogs. I don't know. But if such a device does work, it sure sits in contradiction to RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis's negative comments about the iPhone's touchscreen keyboard. [Unstrung via Crunch]
Eager to get in on the Black Friday madness, Amazon's Camera and Photo department tipped us off to its special deals for Black Friday. For instance, we've never seen that Sanyo Xacti 720p HD camcorder (pictured above) for $US399.99. Good... Read More »
The staff of Mac|Life has a neat thinkfeature imagining future packaging for Apple software. They've got three concepts, all of which are eye-catching, attractive and Apple-esque, but they don't feel quite right. The first, by Mac|Life's own art director, for instance, might be eco-friendly with recycled packaging, but it still uses more material than is necessary, bucking Apple's trend toward absolutely minimal packaging.
When the world finally goes all to hell and the missiles start flying, a Geiger counter will be a handy tool for anyone who survives the blast. Be prepared by building your own Mr. Fission radar detector. The device works with a standard Geiger tube, a high voltage power supply, and a design based around a Motorola MC68HC908KX8 microcontroller.
If you are interested in building one of these yourself, the designer is in the process of developing a simpler, cheaper version complete with detailed information and schematics. Until then, you can hit him up for some info on the project in the following link [N1VG via Hack a Day via Make]
The ground-breaking GPS vs. Radar case has been decided and, much to the chagrin of perpetual speeders like myself, the Sonoma County Superior Court has ruled that 17-year-old Shaun Malone was guilty of speeding.
The court case represented the first time that anyone had contested a ticket based on the data obtained by a GPS tracking device, and it appears that the failure of the defence was due largely to the inability of either side to accurately determine when the radar gun clocked him and where the GPS tracker marked him at 45 mph. Apparently, the system took readings every 30 seconds —if these readings were more frequent, there would have been a much better case for raising reasonable doubt. My guess is that we will see a lot more of these cases turn up as the technology progresses. So all hope is not lost. [Press Democrat]
We just got some hangtime with Art.Lebedev's non-vaporous Optimus keyboard at the Wired Store in SoHo, NYC, and it is as shiny, pretty and luxuriously pointless as billed. Enjoy the video, then check out our impressions and a gallery:
iPhone developer Pumpkin plugged "rental" into a string search of the iPhone's lockdown daemon file—which authorizes the iPhone for services—returning a curious set of hits:
pumpkin:~ pumpkin$ strings /usr/local/share/iphone-filesystem/usr/libexec/lockdownd | grep -i rentalThe code's there, so where's the goods?trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not retrieve FairPlayID
trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not initialize FairPlay context
trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not verify the rental bag response: %d
load_rental_bag_request: Could not retrieve FairPlayID
load_rental_bag_request: Could not initialize FairPlay context
load_rental_bag_request: Could not generate rental bag request
.....
Cowon will finally release their Q5 (Q5W for American markets) media player in US stores before the end of the month. The 40 GB model will cost $US550 while the 60 GB will cost $US600. [Electronista]... Read More »
Apparently, the folks responsible for illuminating the Rockefeller Christmas tree this year have decided that the benefits of LED lighting can no longer be ignored. This year, the tree will be decked out with 30,000 LED lights as opposed to the traditional incandescent bulbs.
The move is expected to reduce the display's electricity consumption from 3,510 to 1,297 kilowatt hours per day. And if that wasn't green enough for you, the tree will also be recycled into building materials to be used by Habitat for Humanity. And the branches will probably be used in a nutrient-rich mulch that will nourish mother Earth, hippies will dance and sing - and so on and so forth. The lighting ceremony takes place on November 28, and the tree will be illuminated daily through the first week of January. [CNN]
Its full name is Excellent Mobility and Interactive Existence as Workmate, and this second-gen version of Hitachi's EMIEW office worker robot is a lot better looking than the original. At its launch today, however, things didn't quite go to plan, and what was meant to be a showcase in up-to-the-minute robot fabulousness turned into a ZOMG-I-think-it's-drunk moment.
The snow is starting to fall now but in 2009 most people won't care about it anymore. Except maybe Al Gore. The Bearfire Resort will offer then a year-round ski resort—complete with ski tracks, snowboard park, snowball caverns, ice rafts, climbing walls and bobsleds—in the middle of Texas, next to Bearfire Mountain. And the best part is not the stunning 250-foot tall, 35-acre artificial Glacier Peak mountain, but the fact that it all looks straight out from World of Warcraft.
TrackingTheWorld has come up with a potential solution to the problem of letters that go missing in action. Letter Logger is a quarter-inch-thick device that fits into a standard number 10 business envelope and allows the US Postal Service to... Read More »
Most of Buy.com's Black Friday deals are crap or cheaper elsewhere—like their Sling Pro package—but we picked out the couple of nuggets for you, and they're available today. Personal favourite is the Darth Vader/Death Star transformer with the ability to... Read More »
Amazon just announced it's going to jump into Black Friday early, busting out a group of computer peripherals starting tomorrow (Thanksgiving). The online store will offer additional items on Black Friday, and even more on cyber Monday. All the listed... Read More »
As suspected, Motorola has identified an issue with the battery contacts as the source of the problem on the Sidekick Slide and are currently testing an updated model. T-Mobile and Motorola hope to have the Slide back in stores next... Read More »
God bless the Black Friday, as the format war keeps raging on thanks to it: Amazon will give you ten movies for free when you buy the $US199 Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player (or the HD-A30 or the HD-A35.) And... Read More »
In case you missed the news, the Wii's swapping out MP3 support for AAC, killing your custom MP3 soundtracks. This little change is bundled with Photo Channel 1.1. But, it's optional—not a mandatory system update—so you keep on keepin' on with MP3 by blowing off the upgrade. The switch is probably due to some licensing snafu, so it's not a big deal. Especially if you just ignore it. [Go Nintendo via Kotaku]
When Gigabyte released their first UMPC, the U60, there was plenty to like, including the split keyboard. With the M704, Gigabyte is essentially releasing a refreshed U60 with a new look, a slightly bigger screen and a beefed-up processor. The second-gen UMPC will have a 1.2 GHz VIA processor, 768 MB of RAM, 40-60 GB HDD, a 7" screen and a three-hour battery life. Availability and pricing for the M704 is still hazy at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it priced in the same range as the U60. [Crave]
Sprint issued a statment today, announcing an upcoming ROM update for the HTC Mogul will bring GPS and EV-DO Rev. A to the phone in Q1 2008. [Boy Genius Report]... Read More »
I hope this turns into a real series of ads, if only for the schadenfreude value. It's pretty great: Annoying guy plays with iPod touch on subway, gets his gear jacked and laments all the "sweet features" he lost, like the calendar for scheduling photo shoots with bands and stuff. Now all he can do is wistfully stroke the box until he goes back to the Apple Store. [College Humor via TechEBlog]
Compact fluorescent bulbs get more popular every day because of their energy-saving characteristics, but their conventional corkscrew/spring design leaves something to be desired. Enter Hulger, a bunch of British designers with a bent for the unusual, who have bent those tubes around into crazy configurations, making something that once appeared rather prosaic into an artform. You're looking at a prototype of the spaghetti-like bulb, and we're all hoping to see a shipping version before too long. Now if they can just make them instant-on and light 'em up with a warm colour temperature of 2700 Kelvin, they'll really be onto something. [Core 77]
Oh, sweet contradiction—Jeff Bezos in open letter to Author's Guild, 2002:
"When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this."Amazon Kindle Terms of Service, 2007:
Soon, pilots from all airlines flying into Israeli airspace will have to enter a numbered sequence to prove they are not terrorist hijackers. The secret code will be generated by the Security Code System, designed by Elbit Systems complete with a credit-card-sized keypad. Authorised pilots everywhere will eventually be issued keypads, 10,000 in all. For security reasons, the Israeli government won't go into detail about what pilots are supposed to do, exactly. But they did mention what would happen when pilots failed to do it:
Take out your holiday frustrations on SlamMan, a defenceless sand-filled dummy that might just remind you of most of your family members. He has LED target lights that suggest punching patterns for you, and even includes a pair of 12-ounce boxing gloves and a video to teach you exactly how to open up a can of whoopass on him. It might be the best $249.99 you ever spent, maybe even keeping you out of jail. [HomeVisions, via The Uber Review]
Oh good lord. Someone has invented a fart protector. After you've eaten the Thanksgiving turkey equivalent of a horse, some of that tryptophan is going to eventually turn into methane, and you're going to need some serious butt protection like this. This patented Gas Grabber anal pad uses activated charcoal to neutralise those toxic fumes, sparing all of your beloved family members from your willful violation of their airspace by your noxious kamikazes. So far, it it's just in the patent application stage, so this special mojo filter won't be available this Thanksgiving. Too bad. [Inventor Spot, via UberGizmo]
Okay, you caught us. We've been sleeping on the job, but only because we want to help you, dear reader, to get a better night's sleep and ease out of bed the next day, no worse for the wear. Come along with us into the world of sleep-enhancing and wakeup gadgets, where there are snake-oil salesmen trying to sell you a sack of goods, and others peddling products that actually work. We're here to help, testing out this stuff, subjectively determining which of these devices are legit, and which ones merely add pointless bells and whistles to your nightly cycle. Here we separate the best from the rest, searching for the perfect devices to help us sleep, perchance to dream.
We'll rate each product with Z's, with five Z's (ZZZZZ) being a complete relaxation-inducing miracle, and one Z leaving us frustrated and tired.
The new firmware for Canon's 
Creative's Singapore product page for the ZEN is showing that the media player is available with a 32GB capacity. Since there is no other reference of the 32GB version, this could simply be a typo on Creative's part. [
As a Thanksgiving surprise, the theme to Halo will be available as free, downloadable content for Guitar Hero III. Can Master Chief shred with all that gear on? [
The Asus Eee 4G Surf drops quite a bit spec-wise compared to the standard