Friday, November 30, 2007
Gadgets
Recycled Xmas Decorations — May All Your Christmases Be Geek
10:50PM Addy Dugdale | Are these the perfect tree decorations for green geeks? Possibly. Made from recycled CDs and circuit boards, they are heinously expensive (around $7 for a circuit-board dangler, $10 for the CD version. Or you can get a set of three for $18 or $23 respectively. Or you can not bother。 What do people who buy stuff like this put on the top of the tree, I wonder? [Nigel's Eco Store via Gadgets News] More »
Gadgets
Polonium Pen a Pocket-Sized Must-Have for Anti-Putin Russians
10:19PM Addy Dugdale | Those of you who fear they’ve got on the wrong side of Vladimir Putin just might find the Polonium Pen a must-have. Basically a hand-made ion chamber with LED read-out, the Polonium Pen will sniff out excessive doses of the radioactive element in your cocktail, dim sum, or caviar when held over the suspect glass or dish. More »
Gadgets
Bel-Air Filtration System Uses Plants to Purify Our Environs
9:43PM Addy Dugdale | With more than a nod to NASA and James Dyson, French designer Mathieu Lehanneur’s Bel-Air purifying system uses plants to keep the atmosphere inside your house clean from nasty pollutants. The pint-sized air-filtration system acts as a miniature greenhouse, stripping the benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene from inside your home using three natural filters. More »
Gadgets
Minigigi MP3 Player a Cross Between Old-Skool iPod and Bubblegum
8:20PM Addy Dugdale | Kitsch lovers — and I can’t be the only person on the site who’s put in an order for the light-up Virgin Mary flash drive — may be interested in Minigigi’s oneQ MP3 player, available in Korea. Tiny wee, inside its rounded hot-pinkness lurks 1GB of internal memory, a battery that gives you six hours’ playing time, a built-in speaker, STN LCD display, voice recording and e-book functionality. As well as hot pink, you can get it in black, white and blue, and it costs a cheeky little $37. [Aving USA] More »
Games
Sony PS3 Beats Nintendo Wii Four Weeks in a Row in Japan
8:00PM Jesus Diaz | According to game magazine publisher Enterbrain, the Sony PlayStation 3 has beaten the Nintendo Wii for the first time in Japan: Sony sold 183,217 PS3 while Nintendo sold 159,193 Wii consoles in the four-weeks period ending November 25. Not a lot, yes, and while this is hardly a a sign of things changing anytime soon—and much less in the US and Europe, where Wii and Xbox 360 rule uncontested— it sure is a good sign for the beleaguered Sony machine. Needless to say, unidentified drunk sources have pointed out that the doorstep usage Xbox 360 in Japan keep increasing, but nowhere near those numbers. [Reuters] More »
Phones
Mysterious HTC CLIO200 Data Device Appears on FCC
2:28PM Jason Chen | The closest HTC device we could match this to is the Shift, a UMPC device that runs both Vista and Windows mobile—but the connection’s tenuous at best. What we do know is that the butt-side of this thing has air vents and a battery pack, which makes us think that this is a data-device instead of Sprint Mogul or Verizon XV6800 WM6 phone. Whatever it is, it looks like it has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, CDMA, and EV-DO, with enough going on inside to need air vents. Another thing that needs air vents? Our armpits, because we still haven’t showered today. [FCC] More »
Gadgets
Optoma’s Cheap 1080p HD803 Projector and its 720p Friends, the HD65 and HD71
1:17PM Sean Fallon | Optoma’s got a new 1080p projector coming out in December, dubbed the HD803. It’s new but its sits right below Optoma’s HD80, one of the first to break the $US3000/1080p barrier, in price and performance. The crib sheet on the HD803 reads as follows: 8000:1 contrast ratio, 1200 lumens of output, and a DLP DMD chipset from TI. The projector’s also armed with dual HDMI inputs, on top of the usual suspects. The price? $US2599, which isn’t bad for a 1080p DLP projector, even if we’ve seen brighter ones. Optoma also unveiled two 720p projectors. More »
Computers
Asus Shows Off Nova P22 mini-PC, Looks Like a Mac mini Dressed Up in Orange
12:40PM Matt Buchanan | It’s probably not going to take the desktop world by storm like the Eee has with notebooks—cause it’s not $500 for one—but Asus’s Nova P22 mini-PC certainly isn’t a bad looking machine. It’s got a form factor sorta like the Mac mini but it’s more angular and less curvy, with a Sunkist accent wrapped around it. So far what we know about what’s inside is that it’s got a 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 with a 1066-MHz front side bus. It’ll go for about $1150 in Taiwan, though no word on if, when and how much on our side of the ocean. Given the popularity of the Eee, Asus would be smart to capitalise on the brand name Eee’s been building for it outside of geek circles and get that sucker over here. But for cheaper. [Electronista, The Inquirer] More »
Hardware
The Virgin Mary Keeps Your Data Safe…in Her Womb
12:20PM Sean Fallon | If you have some really precious data that could use a little protection from above, you are in luck. This Virgin Mary flash drive will store up to 512MB of data and safeguard it from evil. When connected to the computer her LED heart will glow and “beat” —increasing in intensity when information is being transferred. Sure it costs €69 (or $115), but can you really put a price on protection straight from heaven? [Product Page via Ship of Fools via BB Gadgets] More »
Entertainment
