A design team at Umea Design School created Constant Garden to act as a desktop speaker that gently plays gardeny sounds ("Oh— would you look at those weeds?!") and act as an audio secretary, prompting you about appointments. It's designed in rubber, and each of those Shrek-ear-like fronds holds a mini speaker that also lights up with LED magic. Apparently it's an attempt to "coordinate audio visual mechanics and integrate them more seamlessly into our daily lives," but, whatever— I reckon it'd look sweet on my desk, pouring out tunes as I work. Shame it's just a concept. [TheDesignBlog via Techdigest]

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We'll probably hear finalised details tomorrow when it's officially unveiled at Computex tomorrow, but here's the first shot of the Gigabyte M912. An 8.9" convertable touchscreen laptop packing an Atom processor, it's supposed to be another promising entrant to the lightweight, budget laptop ring. Hopefully we'll know just how budget Gigabyte means within the week. [engadget China via engadget]

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Sure, this all-in-one from Earth Trek is no good-looking gadget stand like the iClooly, but it'd be hard to beat it for convenience. You can use it to prop up your mobile phone (though how does it stick on? ... magic? love? glue?) and also charge it through a range of swappable connectors. It's also a three-way USB hub, and you can even jam in a range of memory cards from microSD to MemoryStick Pro Duo. Looks like the perfect thing to fling in your laptop bag when you're off on a trip. It's available in black or white, but there's no info on price. [Akihabaranews]

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Leave it to the Flash game makers of the world to treat a public egging with all the sensitivity and care of a mother kitten. While Steve Ballmer may have been attacked in Hungary, his sacrifice for Microsoft will not be forgotten. In Egg Attack!, you can play as the breakfast assassin or big Steve himself. Unfortunately, Ballmer doesn't get to fight back with his crazy tongue attack. He pretty much just gets to dodge and hide—and cry for yet another Egg McMuffin that never could be. [Egg Attack! via fakesteve]

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Today Western Digital announced its Scorpio Black 2.5" drive line, which reach 7200rpm, though at 5400rpm power demands. Like certain Fujitsu and Hitachi drives announced earlier this year, the speedy drives will ship in capacities from 80GB up to 320GB. The top model, with built-in free-fall sensor for drive protection, costs US$250. [WD]

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We've brought you inventions that aim to replace the scary-looking hypodermic syringe before, but this new design reinvents the device in a kid-friendly package. Designed by Christopher Holden, a student at Northumbria University in the UK, MediDome combines drug and needle in a stick-on blister, designed for a single use only. So it reduces the risk of needle-stick injury, and looks much friendlier to kids. You simply stick it on, and compress it until the drug is delivered: it's even got an integrated alert system to check you've not ruptured a vein, and a built-in tamper warning. It's now being patented, so it's a product we might actually see for real sometime. [Medgadget]

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I loved the glowing Full Moon sideboard from the other month, but I wasn't able to convince my wife it'd make a good addition to our home. I reckon I'd have more of a chance with Horm Voltaceleste, from designer Salvatore Indriolo as it's a touch more subtle but just as astronomical. The doors are decorated with embedded fibre-optics in the patterns of constellations, and there's interior lighting too. It's chipboard and poplar veneer, so though there's no info on price I reckon it wouldn't be a wallet-smasher. [Born Rich]

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Anyone out there with a fetish for hoovering in the dark (anyone out there with a fetish for hoovering, call me, because I need a new cleaning lady) might like this hacked Roomba. Ron Tajima has created the Pacma, using 448 yellow LEDs, and a control unit made of an MPU that connects to the robo-vac via a cable and uses Bluetooth. Fun? Ron, my rugs are just crying out for you. [YouTube via BotJunkie]

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Japanese company Green House is always coming up with nifty little accessories for us gadget lummoxes, and this FM transmitter for your car is no exception. Utterly reminiscent of a stick shift, you plug it into your car's cigarette lighter and tune into the radio. It connects to your entertainment system via an audio cable, and there's also a USB connection. Cost is US$28 and it'll be available in Japan in the middle of this month. [Impress]

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According to Quanta Computer—who will be the manufacturer—Sony will join the low-end ultra-mobile PC bandwagon with a notebook based on the VIA OpenBook reference design. As shown in the image, Sony's machine will use a 1.6GHz C7-M VIA processor, and while at this point it looks quite generic, it will be interesting to see if Sony—which is already known for its ultra-sleek sub-notebooks—would tweak the final design and technical specs.

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Spanish site Apple Weblog has discovered a hidden iPhone page from Movistar—Telefónica's mobile arm. The page officially confirms what we already said two weeks ago: Telefónica will sell the new JesusPhone. The launch day was not mentioned in the site itself—which was supposed to be secret, and has been taken down already—but the date that we announced remains the same according to my friends in the company.

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This iPod Touch-only stand from Rockridgesound blows the iPhone Xtand out of the water in its iMac-alike styling— it's even got the drive slot there on the right-hand side. Handy for propping the iPod up when you're watching movies, the iClooly's got tilt and rotate functions, and you can connect up the dock connector and headphones whilst it's in the mount. You can own this bit of shameless Mac fanboyness for around US$47 from RockRidgeSound. [Av Watch]

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The Akihbara News]

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Long unofficially official, Asus is finally showing off its Atom-based Eee PC 901, which is remarkably speedier than the 900 with a 1.6GHz Diamondville processor. Expected to launch tomorrow, besides the predicted addition of Bluetooth, the specs are otherwise the same: 1GB RAM, memory card slot, 12GB of storage for the Windows XP flavor, 20 for Linux. Asus is promising four to six hours of battery life. There is a WiMax version in the works (it's being shown at the WiMax Expo), but it's a little further out. No pricing yet, but we'd heard US$650 earlier. [PC World]

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Nvidia's launch of its Tegra processors makes World War Mobile official, with multiple major players cramming serious juice into tiny, ultra efficient chips for a range of mobile devices. Nvidia is calling Tegra "the world's first computer on a chip for mobile visual computers" which squeezes a CPU, GPU, system memory and more onto a dime-sized chip that Nvidia says is 10x more efficient than the competition, with up to 30 hours of HD video playback (WSJ says 26). It's for so-called mobile internet devices that fall between smartphones and subnotebooks (like Nokia's N810), so it's taking on the lowest end of Intel's Atom chips, though we'll have to see how it fares head-to-head.

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Did you see Lam sweating it out in his Wii Fit review? Did that cause you rush out to the store, hands trembling with anticipation, in an attempt to procure one for yourself? Of course it did, but you probably came home empty-handed because the thing was basically sold out weeks before it even launched. And now we know why: the US Dollar sucks, and it's causing the notoriously conservative Nintendo to shift stock to places like Europe and Japan.

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Intel's Senior Technical Marketing Engineer for Corporate Demonstrations Craig Raymond had his lucky hands all over the new ASUS M51VA Centrino 2 ("Montevina") portable at a pre-Computex demo session today, and—delay or no delay—he came away loving the freedom of Intel's new chip and WiMAX. Sure, he's an Intel guy talking about an Intel-equipped laptop, but he sounds like he put the thing through the paces, starting with a highly scientific test using World of Warcraft.

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Do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya? Does Blu-Ray have five years left before digital distribution knocks it out of commission, or just four? So I ask again: Do you feel lucky? Annnnd, scene. Anyway, all kidding aside, this immense collection of all things Dirty Harry arrives on store shelves (brick and mortar, digital or otherwise) in a mere two days. It includes a bunch of released, updated and never before released stuff, including—wait, what's that there? A badge?!

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The townsfolk of North Oaks, Minnesota want to be able to pick their nose, flash cars, conduct drug deals and fall down on the sidewalk without the whole world knowing about it, so they've forbidden Google Maps Streetview cars from crossing city limits. At least those are the only reasons I can think of as to why this quiet community of 4,500 would want to go all Wuher at Chulum's Cantina and ban Google's voyeuristic fleet of droid-like camera cars.

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There's only five more sleeps until the Australian snow season kicks off, and even though a quick check of the NSW resort's snow cams shows that there isn't too much of the powdery white stuff on the ground at the moment, it's still shaping up to be an awesome year in the "alps". Why, you ask? Because this year, there's an awesome new gadget to track your runs using a combination of GPS and GPRS technology.

It's called Flaik, and last Friday it walked away with the top prize at the Australian International Design Awards.

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How's this for an Apple coup? On Friday Mark reported that Apple could be positioning .Mac for a serious overhaul, which was known in rumour mill circles at the time as Mobile Me. Today we received another update as MacRumors discovered that the Netcraft page for Me.com lists Kenneth Eddings, the official technical contact for many Apple domain names, as the DNS admin for the site.

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It's still not 100% confirmed, but one helpful tipster just sent this in:... Read More »

After viewing this pic of Rahul Sood, the CTO of HP's gaming division this afternoon, we're left to wonder here at the Weekend Gizmodo news desk whether the MacBook Air was misnamed. Perhaps MacBook Shank is more apt; or the MacBook Shiv; or even something cross-promotional, like the Ginsu Mac. Regardless, we've seen this thing cut bread, and we know its cousin the MacBook can cut skin. No optical drive? Who needs it! This thing can help you lay down a podcast and win a bar fight at the same time. Bonus points to anyone who can name that cake. [Rahul Sood via TechCrunch]

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