If you didn't get enough of the Vertipod from last month, another Segway-like flying vehicle called PAM has shown up on the radar —literally. Like the Vertipod, a simple shifting of the weight points the PAM in the appropriate direction. So, in theory, it should be simple to operate (so why do you need a pilot's licence?). More info after the jump.

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The Light CD Tower by Kwang Hoo Lee was inspired by the fact that people spend an ever-increasing amount of time sitting in front of their computers. In the end, he came up with a design that merged a lamp and a CD holder into one sweet looking practical device. Unfortunately, the design is not without its flaws. For one thing, the lamp would be rendered useless when filled with CDs, the device is battery powered (why not USB?) and CDs are on the fast track to obsolecence. Still, not a bad concept piece from a design perspective. [Designboom via Gearfuse via DVICE]

When you wire this perverted Santa to your Christmas tree, you can turn out the lights with a simple blow on his "magic candle." When you want to turn the lights back on again, a push of the button on the chimney will get the job done. Sure, a device like this could be practical if you don't normally have the tree wired to a light switch, but you have to wonder whether all of the innuendo was lost on the distributor. Kind of like when your mum uses words like "erect." Available for $US24.99. [Product Page via OhGizmo]

If you are anything like me, the women in your life are impossible to shop for. However, if you are lucky enough have a lady in your life that enjoys gadgets, Geeksugar has put together a guide that will help you find the perfect gift for girlfriends, mmus, and teen girls. They even have a section devoted to Grandmothers and female cousins. There are guides for the guys too, but if you ask me the women are where it is at. Seriously, what kind of gadget would you get your Grandmother? Big band music is not meant for iPods! [Geeksugar]

You have been a slot racer fan since you were a kid —plus, you have always enjoyed the Mario Kart series. So why not put your passions together with this Mario Kart Slot Racing set? Additional info and photo of the track after the jump.

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While the rumour has been floating around all week, the Wall Street Journal reports CompUSA has been sold to a liquidation firm, effectively putting the company out of business. The move is largely based on declining sales, with the company... Read More »

We've been keeping an eye on Dell's discontinued CableCARD systems since they first introduced them on the XPS 410s because they were a relatively cheap way to get HD recording on a reasonably-priced desktop. Well, fantastic news! Chris Lanier says that Dell's reintroduced the CableCARD option on their XPS 420s, which you can customise and get out the door starting at about a thousand bucks. According to Dell, this is a "functional upgrade to the platform", which means you'll be able to get the CableCARD on this line for the foreseeable future. Sounds like a cheap alternative to our set-top-box wishlist item. [Dell via Chris Lanier]

The USB Humping Dogs we all know and love have gotten a much needed upgrade. If you recall, previous versions looked as though they were indifferent towards all of the humping. I don't know about you, but if that was my sole purpose in life, I would be pretty happy about it. Apparently the manufacturers thought so too because the new versions feature smiling faces and perked up ears.

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USB Hubs come in all shapes and sizes (including fruit cake), but this is the first time we've seen a USB hub with individual on/off switches. This isn't only useful for switching off stuff without unplugging it and making a mess, it also helps save power when you're on laptop battery mode. It's a non-powered hub, however, so you won't be able to run four external USB hard drives off this thing. Those of you with four external hard drives should probably be getting a Windows Home Server unit and plugging those into there anyway. [Brando]

Today Palm issued a statement warning that revenue for the 2nd fiscal quarter would take a $US30 million hit due to a product that "the company had previously expected to have certified within the quarter." What this mystery product is exactly is not known, and so far Palm isn't talking (no doubt cowering in shame). [Palm via CNET]

GE's upcoming Cell Fusion series of phones uses Bluetooth technology to pair your mobile phone to your home phone so that you don't spend minutes looking for you tiny clamshell or slider while its ringing. GE has dubbed the first phone in the Cell Fusion series, the "No Jack" phone, and is geared toward "cord cutters," or those who no longer have a landline. The No Jack phone features a Bluetooth receiver that can pair with up to two cell phones so that you can make and receive calls on a standard sized cordless phone. The No Jack phone will be released in April 2008 in two models, 28127FE1, which just has one handset and costs $US80, and the 28127FE2, which ships with a pair of handsets for $US100.

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Have an old beater car sitting in the driveway that doesn't run and smells like ass? Grab a blowtorch, a hose and head to your nearest pet store. Apparently cars can make for some sweet looking aquariums —as you can see from the video of the car above which is currently on display in the Siam Paragon shopping centre in Bangkok. [doobybrain via about:blank]

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Today Asus rolled out the world's first EN8800GT graphics card with 1GB of Qimonda memory. The card is designed to provide optimum DirectX 10 gaming and multimedia playback performance even at the highest resolutions and quality settings. The unit also utilizes an integrated SmartDoctor feature, allowing users to overclock the Shader Clock for performance gains that they claim can exceed 10%.

ASUS also noted that a new Glaciator fan / heatsink hybrid keeps the GPU running at temperatures that are up to 7ºC cooler. Pricing details have not been made available, but you can expect to see the at card on store shelves by the end of December. [ASUS via Electonista]

According to a recent SEC filing, Sling Media's parent company, EchoStar, has formally changed its name to the DISH Network —a move that better aligns the company with its core satellite TV service. A spin-off company called EchoStar Holdings was... Read More »

We love perfectly shiny stunning aircraft models, but these wrecked sci-fi models attract us even more. It may be the fascination with their decadence or that they remind us of ourselves after a Friday night out, who knows, but there's something irresistible about seeing a huge gallery of AT-ATs frozen in time, destroyed Star Trek ships or rusty Terminators:

[UPDATE: I talked with Dimitri Kaliviotis, the creator of the AT-AT and professional model-maker for many Hollywood superproductions, who explained to me how he did it and other very interesting bits.]

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If you've been around long enough, you'll remember All Giz Wants—our series of fanciful and unlikely wishlist items that would totally make this the Best Holidays Ever if we got them. Here's one I've been wishing for for the better part of a decade: an all-in-one set top box that does everything.

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Speakerphones are usually seen in board rooms, but GE's Premiere DECT 6.0 Phone with Home Intercom brings it to your kitchen. While speakerphones aren't new to home phones, they aren't usually that effective and often produce distant-sounding calls that are filled with echoes. According to GE, the larger acoustic chamber found on its Home Intercom provides a superior, cleaner sound. The phone and speakerphone also include DECT 6.0 technology, which operates on a dedicate frequency to eliminate interference from wireless networks throughout your home.

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According to the developers at NullRiver, they'll be porting their Connect360 software to the PS3, allowing you to stream music and video directly from your Mac to your Sony console. The recent update to the 360 version allowed streaming of DivX and XviD, something that The PlayStation 3 will be getting soon as well. After spending the week watching this season of Dexter streamed from another computer on the network, we're high fiving each other over here at the news. [Thanks Dom!]

During the LG CES sneak peek, we saw the PC12 Table Top Audio System, a sleek, extra shiny system with a lot packed inside its compact body. There's a "vacuum-loading" CD player, a hidden 30-pin iPod connector on top, and an HD Radio receiver buried within. A USB connection in the back lets you hook up MP3 players, or drive-based sources of WMA and MP3. I'm pretty sure it will ship for around $300, and at that price, I'm pretty sure there's no battery-power option, but maybe that's next. (Doesn't it totally remind you of the football Flash used to fight off Ming's minions during their first showdown? Or am I just betraying both my age and my geekdom in one fell swoop?) Fact sheet after the hop. [LGE]

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We normally avoid posting things coated in Swarovski crystals like Asians avoid SARS, but this particular crystalised Wii looks spectacular. The console has the Twilight Princess Link/Wolf engraved on one side, the TriForce logo engraved on the other and the actual TriForce (with
Kanji labels) on the front. We're not sure how much it costs, but count us and Kotaku in. [Crystalicing]

As we told you last Wednesday, the iPhone Dev Team have opened up the source to AnySIM, the free SIM unlock software for the iPhone that lets you use your phone on pretty much any GSM network in the world. The source being open, on the other hand, makes it a lot easier for Apple to see what kind of vulnerabilities there are in their code so they can patch it up quicker for the next firmware release. [Google Code]

On a snowy day in North Jersey, LG decided the time was right to introduce most of the LCD and plasma TVs it would be showcasing at CES.

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As if a pogo stick wasn't already an accident waiting to happen, now here comes the Flybar, catapulting you four feet (and maybe even six if you push it) off the ground with its heavy-duty rubber bands. To give you an idea of how dangerous this is, notice all of the users are wearing helmets. Another indication: One of its designers/endorsers, Andy MacDonald, is a pro skateboarder who probably thinks nothing of balancing atop a metal banister as he slides down its length that runs alongside a long flight of concrete stairs. If you have an extra $350 lying around, along with some really good health insurance to cover all those broken bones you're sure to soon acquire, this Flybar might just be for you. [BoysStuff, via UberGizmo]

One of the biggest complaints about Blu-ray is that not everyone supports the same "BD Profile," which means not every player has the same capabilities. Don Eklund, EVP of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, promised an update for the PS3, which is the most popular Blu-ray player by far, that will allow the player to support BD Profile 1.1 starting later this month. The update brings the PS3 up to the Final Standard Profile and will give it features like Picture in Picture and an internal memory of at least 256MB (the PS3 obviously has more). We're still waiting for the update to BD Profile Metal Gear Solid 4. [Home Media Magazine via Reg Hardware]

I got a sneak peak at GE's upcoming phone line, including the slick Photo Phone that will be introduced at CES2008. The phone combines a traditional cordless phone with a 7-inch digital photo frame, and includes picture caller ID. The feature, which is commonly found on mobiles, allows you to assign a picture to a phone number so that you'll not only see the caller's number, but also their face.

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Sega's put a stop to the Dreamcast 2 rumours quickly, reiterating that they're going to stay a software company and not re-enter the console business. They told GameDaily this:

We're very happy being a platform agnostic company and have moved up the ranks the past three years from #11, to #9, and now stand at #6 in terms of our market share by units among third-party publishers. We like our current strategy and have no plans to change in the middle of this outstanding growth.

Following up on the Windows Mobile 6.1 details and pictures, Boy Genius has a video walk-through of the latest Microsoft Mobile OS. If you can hear the guy's voice over the music (we had a hard time), he says it's AT&T branded, so it'll definitely hit AT&T some time early next year. (You may want to mute the sound, since that's all he says.) The responsiveness seems to be about the same as current versions, but we'll have to wait until we get our hands on it to make sure. [Boy Genius]

We've seen some tough notebooks before, but this Augmentix XTG, which is actually a ruggedised Dell Latitude ATG630e, wins the prize for ruggetude. Noah Shachtman from Danger Room took this monster out into the field—in Iraq of all places—for some real-world battle testing, and calls its hefty "Armoured Protection System" overkill even for that harsh environment.

You see, in Iraq, most of the guys in uniform already have to schlep around 40, 50, 60 pounds worth of armour, ammo, helmet and radios. So they want their laptops to be as light as possible—not the other way around. Plus, they're not whipping out their notebooks in the middle of a firefight; they're using 'em back on the patrol base. So there's no real need for so much reinforcement. I felt kind of silly hauling such a beast around.

Following up on the rumour that Warner Bros. was going exclusively Blu-ray from October, BusinessWeek has their own sp˜eculation that Warner Bros. will be swapping to the Sony side. The rumour stems from a quote from Lionsgate vice-chairman Michael Burns (who may or may not know what he thinks he knows) who says "The rumour is Warner is coming aboard soon." Not much else substantiates this rumour other than the quote, but who knows, maybe Burns knows someone calling the Blu-ray/HD DVD shots over at Warner. [BusinessWeek]

We just met with a high-ranking source inside LG, who tells us that their second-generation Blu-ray/HD DVD combo player is shipping now for the MSRP of $US999. Think that's too much when you can get separate Blu-ray and HD DVD players for the grand total of less than that? Well, just wait until after Christmas, when it officially drops to $799. (This is the MSRP too, the street price could be even less.) Not too shabby for the privilege of saving one cabinet slot on your home entertainment setup.

At first I thought this Stormglass weather predicting instrument was a joke, reminding me of that old weather device that featured a picture of a donkey whose tail was made of yarn. Its deadpan instructions told us "if tail is wagging, the weather is windy; if tail is frozen, weather is cold; if tail is smoking, weather is hot". Well, this device is not that. It's a bottle full of magic liquid that's said to be able to actually forecast the weather.

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Besides not shutting your pirated version of Vista down when you fail to activate, Service Pack 1 will also bring a huge performance boost when you transfer both small and big files over your network. As you can see from the chart, throughput to and from Windows Home Server will jump to 3x, and throughput between Vista PCs will improve for small files but stay about the same for large files (chart after the jump).

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One of the problems we can see with the Tesla Roadster is that you still have to suck up pollution-causing power to run the thing, even though it doesn't directly pollute the air with noxious internal combustion engine fumes. Now Solar City has teamed up with Tesla to provide solar panels that you install on the roof of your house, and then those panels feed power to the outlet for the Tesla Roadster. So now you can go from 0-60 in 4 seconds, guilt- and gasoline-free.

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