Amid rumours that Motorola may spin off the handset division into its own company, CEO Greg Brown has announced he will be taking control of the unit in an effort to remedy its poor performance. With 3GSM around the corner and all eyes on Moto, they better have something good in the pipeline. [Reuters via RCR Wireless News]
Retro Thing got a neat submission from a reader in the form of a fake iPod ad made to look like it was from the 1950s. The ad (in full, below the jump) is based around a real gadget, the Regency TR-1, which was the world’s first transistor radio, and serves its purpose all too well.
The Air Force’s old bunker buster, BLU-113, was a bunch of explosives crammed inside of an old howitzer barrel. Its latest instrument of boom, the BLU-122, uses a new a steel shell with a hardened nose and 780lbs of thermobaric explosive to pound through 28 feet of concrete or 120 feet of dirt like styrofoam, with 70 percent more explosive power. If that’s not the ticket to scattering your bits everywhere, they’ve also got a bouncy bomb.
Most outdoor navs, like the Magellan Triton, just go from point A to point B when navigating off road. Current and future Magellan Triton owners are getting Primordial’s Ground Guidance logic, which calculates routes around rivers, steep inclines and dense tree cover by analysing aerial photography and elevation data (since no one could actually chart all the random routes over the wild.) The Primordial tech Looks pretty cool in action, too.
Onkyo appears to be the latest HD DVD defector, announcing they’re “suspending” support for the format. This comes on the heels of Blu-ray and Warner’s coup de grace and less than a year after Onkyo announced its lone HD DVD player, the DV-HD805. They haven’t closed the door all the way, but does anyone else see Onkyo “resuming” support for HD DVD? [Wesley Tech via Crunch Gear]
Free gadget alert! Our gossip-mongering celebrity-loving sister site, Defamer, has somehow managed to score themselves a couple of Hiptop Slides from Telstra to giveaway. We’re not saying bribery was involved, but we’re not saying it wasn’t, either.
To win, all you need to do is write an insightful, witty comment on how a Hiptop would change your life and why you really want to win one.
Considering you guys are an extremely eloquent and insightful bunch, you should have no problems walking away with the prize. Maybe. Hit the link to find out if you’ve got the literary skillz.
A new material relies on millions of tiny plastic fibres that can grip solids as the fabric slides across them, then quickly release those objects when pulled away vertically. The technology is based on the anatomy of a spider’s gecko’s foot, and may be used for things like hanging art on a wall, or wrapping a broken leg on a battlefield. Screw that stuff: I’d like to use it to build a Spider-Man climbing suit.
Unfortunately, it’s still a concept, but Current State is amazing—behind its glowing, sexy UI, it’s a real-time power management app that monitors consumption and lets you play with your power from anywhere. Devices are jacked in through plug-ends that bridge the plug and power socket, and after you sync everything, you can turn gear off and on or activate shutdown timers remotely. The monitoring app is pretty sophisticated too, showing you “hotspots” of suckage—I don’t think there’s an adapter for the Patriots yet, though. [The Greener Grass via Uberphones]
