Ever since we heard about the Slacker Portable we were a little excited, but the object of our portable streaming radio affection has just come up for its first review seating. According to the fine fellows at Wired, it is slacking its way into their hearts as we write this very article.
In what appears to be an embarrassing error, the Italian parliament may have accidentally legalised P2P music downloads. The new law allows Italians to legally share music over the internet, just as long as it is done for non-commercial gain and the music is degraded. The controversy arises from the definition of the word “degraded.”
The Wiimote is alright and everything, but what good is all the motion control in the world if you can’t pistol-whip player 2? This Colt .45 Wiimote mod doesn’t make the Wiimote fire bullets, but with this much “gunmetal” aluminium plate, the police will goomba-stomp your ass before you can say “Duck Hunt” anyway.
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Those arty chaps at the Royal College of Art have created some great looking mobile phone concepts. The designs were put together for a competition that was sponsored by the cellular network 3. The runners-up included the Vase phone, which begins as an empty “vessel,” but has features added to it gradually, according to the user’s needs. The Teiko cellphone was designed for children, incorporating GPS for parental tracking and a rugged general construction.
Georgia Tech is going to create the nation’s interdisciplinary Ph.D program in Robotics, pulling from various engineering (mechanical, electrical, biomedical, aerospace) and computer science disciplines to form a more focused program. Other schools tend to offer a concentrated look at one area of robotics. The idea behind Georgia Tech’s program is to get students to think about robots holistically, rather than only focusing on one aspect of a bot with minimal knowledge of the rest.
This new Sandisk 32GB SDHC card may give you colossal space for HD video capture, but we’ll see if the Class 4 speed rating holds up under such pressure. The card is driving down memory prices though – despite costing US$349, it’s half the cost of Toshiba’s model a few months ago. It won’t be available until April, and by then at least one memory hungry camera will need such huge capacity. [Wired]
Tesla plans to enter the gas-electric hybrid market, with the first range extended vehicle (REV) to hit the streets by the end of 2009. Their all electric models negate the use for a gas motor entirely, but by adding a gas motor they will be able to produce hybrid vehicles with better performance.
Researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory have designed a lightweight, foldable solar panel design which they predict will function at 80% efficiency (the best solar panel prototypes operate at about 40%). The researchers’ secret is the implementation of nanoantennas, which have the ability to absorb not only light, but heat from the sun as well.
Ever wondered what an iPhone would look like if it took on a semi? Wonder no more, for Mike Beauchamp’s iPhone went one-on-one with a huge, mo-fo of a semi, and guess what? It was not disintegrated into a plastic/metal mangled mess, oh no. The iPhone stood tall, and only lost part of its brushed aluminium buttocks. Best of all, the resilient little sucker was still working at the end of it. The iPhone may lack muscle in the haptic feedback department, but it sure as hell has some balls. Check out the gallery for some more shots of the carnage.
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Have you had enough of lightsabers? Wasn’t the breakdown of how we roll on Thanksgiving enough to keep you entertained? Wasn’t the synopsis of why Superman would be futile to a lightsaber attack enough to fill your Jedi/lightsaber/superhero demand for the week? Are those two questions the stupidest you have ever been asked? Should I stop with all the damn questions, and let you just watch the Ginsu Jedi lightsaber commercial? Yeah, I’ll just do that. [Metacafe]
