Peripherals
Wireless Surround-Sound Headphone Battlemodo
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 6:30 PM on January 5, 2008
Problem: you want to watch a movie or play a game in glorious surround sound. But someone in your house is sleeping, studying or just annoyed that you are playing BioShock for the third time to get all the achievements. The solution: wireless surround-sound headphones. We tested the three of the most popular models to ensure that you won't buy the wrong one, become sad then throw your life away with booze and drugs.

The What: DXG has always gone for the low cost bragging rights and they've reached the height of their budget crusade with this $US150 HD camera that records to 1280 x 720 at its highest res. We've seen tapeless camcorders do this before, but that price is pretty insane. It records in H.264 quicktime files, and the camera takes 5mp native stills.
If we had to add anything to Nokia's already feature rich N-series phones (the
The Basics: OLED Picture frames! The 2.8-inch screen has a wrist strap, and works as an alarm clock and calendar. The 1.5-inch version has a keychain. They hold 3000 and 120 photos, and have 10000:1 and 1000:1 contrast ratios, respectively. Rechargeable.
Spykee, the built-it-yourself Skype robot, just got three different models that you can build him into—one of which is a her. We've got the first images of the Spykee Cell, Spykee Vox and Spykee Miss, all of which have a video camera, MP3 player, VoIP phone, microphone, louspeaker, motors, and the ability to shove an iPod into its crotch. The best thing about this guy is that you can control him from anywhere in the internet. Well, maybe that'd be the second best thing—the first best is still the fact that he has an iPod where his junk should be. Get yours from Erector. [


Warner announced earlier today it was
Tipped to this during
Darth Vader 
















We have all doodled an idea or a bit of important information 







CHICKASHA, Oklahoma (Agencies). Chickasha-resident James McFarlan, a 45-year-old computer analyst and part-time fabric designer, drove this morning into Annie Svenson's home roof after what he referred to as an incident with his car GPS. "I told him [Sheriff Furillo] that my GPS made me do it. I was just driving when the nice sexy voice inside the box told me to turn left while I was driving through the bridge on Frisco and 62nd," said McFarlan after being released by the police. "She was like, come on, do it. Do it! Dooooo iiiit!!!" The next thing McFarlan recalls is 78-year-old retiree Mrs. Svenson in her nightgown, knocking on his windshield.
The Bottom line: Remember that urban tale of the drug running lambo doing 200mph runs using merely nightvision? FLIR, used to making commercial nightvision systems for law enforcement, marine, and airborne vehicle has trickled the tech into civilian hands. The PathfindIR is their first infrared nightvision adaptable for any car, although they'll be demo'ing at CES in a BMW. The camera (below) gets mounted in a grill, and the AV output hooks into any LCD and even some dashboard nav systems. The video looks to be a relatively low res 320 x 240, with a wide 36º H x 27º V field of view. The best news: the IR system lets cars see 5x further than high beams. 
The Skinny: Polk Audio SurroundBar 360 DVD Theater rocks the 5.1-channel sound with one slim bar-shaped bank of speakers. Pop a DVD into the separate console and you've got an instant home theatre that can toss sounds every which way. The Catch: We're wondering how gutsy that "PowerPort" bass is going to sound, but fear that our socks will remain completely on throughout. Jump for another pic and the press release.
The Skinny: Another Bluetooth-enabled dock from iLuv, this one boosts the wireless range to 300 feet w/ BluePin II. Sound is supposedly better than previous models courtesy of iAura, plus it has speaker phone capabilities. The Drag: Their past model X99 model only had 6 watts per speaker, which is not a lot of output juice—this one might be similarly impotent.
The Skinny: The i720 is a line-in iPod/iPhone and hands-free Bluetooth remote, with FM transmission and a caller ID display, plus call reject, transfer and other basic phone commands. It's small, black and fairly attractive and seems pretty useful for ardent multi-taskers. The Catch: It's something else taking up valuable pocket space.
The Skinny: Another FM transmitter/hands-free Bluetooth mutant, this kit is for your car, and plugs directly into the iPod's dock port to charge it as well. Call reject, transfer and the usual hands-free Bluetooth commands. It's definitely more useful than standard iPod car kits. The Catch: Kind of ugly. And I'm tired of lower case i's.
The Skinny: The iLuv i1255 is a basically a DVD player with an iPod dock slapped on top. It plays DVDs, VCDs, and CDs plus puts media from the iPod on your TV, a common trick nowadays. Basically if you're in the market for both a bare-bones DVD player and iPod dock and wanna save shelf space. The Catch iLuv's i1155 is much sleeker, portable and works all the same angles.
What could be more secure (not to mention masculine) than a rainbow coloured fan that clips onto the side of a Laptop? Besides looking awesome, these screens can be customised with a company logo making them powerful promotional tools. Plus, Lapstix are versatile—you could use them to shade your laptop display from the sun, or possibly as an actual fan that can bring relief from scorching temperatures. Prices range from $US2—$3 per unit when purchased in bulk, and they are available in a variety of less ridiculous colors—fortunately. [
This Takata airbag design is… interesting. Essentially, if you get in a car accident your face will be thrust quickly between two giant, inflatable ass cheeks. Or are they giant breasts? Depending on what you're in to, you could see it either way. In any case, I can certainly see how it would be more comfortable to mash your face into than a normal airbag, but is it worth the embarrassment when the paramedics arrive? Also, how do they compare to the feeling of having your face smashed into a real butt at high speeds? Commenters, I assume a few of you know, so fill us in. And hit the jump for the full ad.
• A Purdue professor is paying students $US30 to sniff animal poop and using the research to improve estimations of odor emissions on farms. It's days like this that I am happy I went to Indiana University. [
I've always been kind of jealous at the array of attractive birth control cases exes have had to tote around their anti-baby pills. Condoms typically come in boxes and wrappers that are clumsy and ugly. The XYXX condom case wants to change all that with a package you actually want to keep in your pockets. Yeah it's pretty phallic looking, but we're talking about cockwrappers here.



As excited as we were when Hitachi showed off its
DisplayMate is the standard of the video testing game, and now it just got a whole lot easier to use with DisplayMate USB Edition. To run any monitor through DisplayMate's sophisticated suite of visual tasks, all you need to do is plug this USB drive into the monitor's PC, an LED lights up on its tip, and a dialogue box pops up on screen, offering to run it right from there with no installation necessary.



Kleer wireless technology has shown promise in terms of both energy efficiency and sound quality when compared to Bluetooth, which is why some may find these new MX W1 earphones from Sennheiser appealing. The device allows users to enjoy clear wireless audio from any Kleer-based portable player —there is even a feature that allows multiple MX W1 users to share a single stream. There are no details on pricing yet, but they are expected to arrive in May 2008. [
Last night, Intel pulled out of OLPC, citing founder Nicholas Negroponte's
Nintendo's just dropped the hammer on the
As if we needed another display standard, along comes DisplayPort, approved last year and just about to sally forth on graphics cards
Fujifilm has slimmed down its FinePix camera even more—now it's just 19.8 mm thick—but the redesigned FinePix Z100fd still manages to cram 8 megapixels of imaging goodness into its slim form factor. It's available in four colour combinations, and even has a few smart features such as face detection technology that can identify 10 faces in the frame, sensibly focusing so all might be as sharp as possible. Looks like a lot of camera for $US249.95, available this month. [



