Gary Cutlack loves to “review” batteries, which is why he’s doing the world a service by testing what happens when you put batteries in the wrong way into a flashlight. Except he calls it torch. That’s right, he’s British, which along with Stuart Ashen’s video earlier, officially makes this dry British humour day here at the Giz. [Tech Digest]
Who didn’t like Super Soakers as a kid? You pump it a lot, it builds pressure, then it shoots liquid. In many ways, they were very similar to humans, which is why Lonnie Johnson, its inventor, is looking for ways to use harvest waste heat from humans to power a tiny Johnson system. The full name is the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy System, and it could be up to 60% efficient (standard car engines are only about 30% efficient) at the right temperature.
Everyone knows how completely horrible the built-in iPhone speakers are for listening to music or talking on speakerphone, which is why this DLO Portable Speaker for iPhone is totally necessary. You can carry it around in a little oval pod when not in use, but when you want to get down with the teleconferencing, just open her up and splay her to either side of your phone. It’s even got a little stand to prop up the iPhone, and the whole thing looks quite nice playing back music (it’s shielded from the GSM buzz) with its black and silver motif. US$49 gets you one. [DLO]
The more practical app of this personal radar project is in robot navigation systems—always a good sign when the functional side of something is robots—but it’s small enough to be mounted on a car’s bumpers to help spatially challenged drivers navigate the rollercoaster of parallel parking. (Unless they’ve got a schmancy car that does it for them.) Expect to see a smaller, cuter version with mobile phone integration for Japanese school girls any day now. [Pyro Electro]
Holland may soon be dotted with floating buildings as Dutch architects plan against global warming. The country is already 20 percent below sea level, and rising water levels are a concern. A flooded river is no threat to a floatable building with airtight foundations, and with slack built into electricity and water cables feeding it, the whole kaboodle can simply bob upwards. The gallery shows some building concepts, dreamed up by a company called Waterstudio, among others. Melting ice caps? Bring’em on. [Waterstudio, NPR via io9]
Only one consumer desktop—the Energy Star 4.0 Inspiron 531, but still a smattering of business wares, from notebooks to servers. [Dell]
9to5 Mac is reporting that Apple will have yet another event on February 26 in order to launch the iPhone and iPod Touch SDK, which will have native apps that reportedly offer Exchange and Lotus Notes support. And the best part is that updated MacBook Pros with Penryn and possibly the MacBook Air trackpad could also debut there.
Here is the new MacBook Pro 2008 in Photoshop mash-up wet dream form. Would we see something like this at the alleged—at least according to the usual rumourologists—special event at the end of February?
Stuart Ashen of Stuart Ashen reviews lousy gadget fame just reviewed the KenSingTon Vii, which has nothing to do with Kensington and nothing to do with the Wii. Intrigued? So are we. Watch as he shows off the Super Nintendo-esque 2D graphics as well as the surprisingly Wii-like 3D graphics. The developer actually did slightly more than a half-assed job on this—it’s at least a three-fourths assed job. And if you’re still interested in the Vii after watching, Ashen’s got a separate review of additional games that come with the console after the jump.
We uncovered the 13.3-inch 2.5-pound Lenovo Thinkpad X300 Series a long time ago, in the middle of January, and now Best Buy has confirmed it. The US$2,743.99 price looks right for the specs that we already knew about:
