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While the original ColecoVision console would be a fine addition to any gaming enthusiast's home theatre setup, this custom Mini ColecoVision has eschewed nostalgia for modern technology, shrinking the console by 320 square cm in its new case all while making some really great hardware upgrades, too.
We all know about Pandora's troubles paying their ever-increasing rent to the RIAA Copyright Royalty Board, but now another one of our favourite internet music spots could be succumbing to corporate pressure as well. Muxtape, the site that allowed users to make 12-song playlists of their music and share them online has been (temporarily?) shut down. Their page is left with the simple message "Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA." And once again, the RIAA does its job to ensure that no one anywhere gets excited about music. [Muxtape via OhGizmo]
Over at BoyGeniusReport there's a bunch of images that seem to be leaked shots of an upcoming Nokia N-series mobile phone, the N79. It's faintly similar to the N82, and supposedly has a 2.4 inch QVGA screen, and a 5-megapixel camera beneath with flash. BGR suggests we may learn more on Monday, from Nokia itself. There's also a bunch of confusion over whether the pics are real, but they certainly seem it to me, complete with its strangely pinstriped rear shell. What do you think, guys: Real or no deal? UPDATE: It looks like are pics of a Chinese-made knockoff of the N79. Oh well. [BGR]
Ricoh's previous-gen R8 digital cam only hit the streets back in February, and it's now being replaced by the new R10. The R10 has a larger 3-inch screen, 7.1x optical zoom, and a 10-megapixel CCD sensor that can shoot at ISO80 to ISO1600. There's also four-person face recognition, CCD-shift anti-shake compensation, a 1-cm macro mode and lots of "easy" presets that make the camera do automatic leveling of contrast and sharpness in the images it takes. It's out in black, brown and silver September 5th in Japan at first for around US$450. [DCWatch]
This new photo-printer from Casio is one mixed-up gizmo: As well as standard photo-printing functions, it's got a 7-inch touchscreen and a full keyboard. So is it a mini computer with printer aspirations, or a printer with computing aspirations? Hard to say, but it's supposedly able to edit the photos you pop in from a memory card or mobile phone, and produce custom greetings cards, calendars and the like. And it comes with hundreds of built-in stamps and illustrations. You'd better be seriously into DIY greetings though: the PCP-1200 costs a whacking US$500 in Japan. [Far East Gizmos]
I had the perfect backdrop to review this Pentax W60 waterproof camera while vacationing in Hawaii last week. It's 10mp, has a 5x zoom, and does HD level video, but the only reason to buy such a point and shoot is that it's rated to 4 metres of underwater depth for two hours, and is the smallest waterproof camera of its kind. It would prove to be a fortuitous addition to my travel gear, catching some great shots of some of my first surf lessons and some rare aquatic life while other tourists fumbled with crappy disposable film cams.
The Eco Digi Mode camera is a 3-megapixel digital camera that you have to send in to get the images "developed", and the lab sends you back a wallet of photos and the developed film CD of the photos. "Um... what?" you may be now thinking... but that's exactly the design, even though it sounds like the disposable cameras of yesterdecade. The lab either wipes the cam and resells it, or breaks it down for parts—the 2.4-inch screen could go into a mobile phone, for example. They're cheap, at around US$12 in Japan, and the waterproof version could be fun, and I can see the sense in forcing you to recycle, since it's better than tossing a disused camera in the trash. But it's so bizarre a concept it's difficult to understand without a good long think. [FarEastGizmos]
Brando has a new universal battery charger available, working on the same jaw-grip/adjustable electric contacts principle as Thanko's version before. This time though, the gizmo is designed to be portable and draw its power from a USB source and it's got "high capability switch power supply with efficient transforming." It's even keyring mountable. So if you're constantly charging up a variety of batteries for all your gear, and don't fancy hauling all the power bricks around this might be an elegant solution. Can be yours now, for US$12. [Brando]
Nokia's just come up with a new entry in its Arte series of "jazzed up" mobile phones with the 8800 Carbon Arte. The old slider phone now has panels of carbon fibre in its front and rear faces, along with titanium and stainless steel. Internally it looks like the phone is pretty much unchanged, though now its storage has been bumped up to 4GB from 1GB. It remains a tri-band GSM phone, though, and Nokia expects it to hit the shops in Europe by the end of the year for around US$1,600. [Phone Arena]
Logitech is updating one of its most popular mouse and keyboard sets, the Wave Cordless Desktop with a slightly touched up Wave wireless keyboard--new paint and a longer, ridiculous three-year battery life--and a whole new mouse, the MX1100, which is a mutant hybrid of the oooold MX1000 and the more recent Revolution mice.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 1:43 PM on August 19, 2008
In Finland, your time is split between two things: working for Nokia and enjoying the pungent odours of man-sweat from your colleagues in the local sauna. Now, the mobile phone giant looks to have combined the two and created an online video series of it in an effort to communicate the benefits of their N-Gage platform to developers.
It looks to be an ongoing series, with the first episode showing more nipple-fur and hot engineer bod than I was hoping for, earning it a slightly NSFW rating (if only to protect your reputation among colleagues as a heterosexual male).
Canon has teamed with Amosu to blingify a limited edition series of Powershot cameras with 2.22 carats of diamonds to be pitched by the the lovely Maria Sharapova. They're not for sale, but you'll have a chance to win one of the five—which are valued at between US$10,000 and US$12,000 each—at an event Canon is calling "Canon Centre Court" in October. We're hoping we win and that the tennis champ personally delivers our prize. [Marketing Daily via Born Rich]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 12:20 PM on August 19, 2008
The Gadget: Samsung's 46-inch Series 6 LCD TV.
Price: The RRP's $3,849, although you can pick it up cheaper in the shops.
The lilliputian IdeaPads from Lenovo are coming, as we know, and now they're a little closer, having passed through the FCC's certification process. This is the final regulatory hurdle the IdeaPad S9 and S10 faced before going on sale in the US and comes just in time, as the duo of subnotebooks are expected to hit shelves next month. [Engadget via SlashGear]
Apple's tacking on an addition 60 days to the 30 days it already doled out to MobileMe subscribers, which means you've got an entire three months extra to wait out the issues you've been having. Apple sent out these emails today to MobileMe subscribers, but if you're one of the ones with MobileMe mail snags, you might not have gotten it. Well you've seen it now! Apple has some more clarifications in case you're not sure if you qualify. [Apple]
Curbed's got a complaint report from the residents and visitors near the SoHo Apple store in NY, all of whom are really angry at what the store's been doing lately in terms of bugging its neighbours. The latest offense--the anvil thrown off a ten story office building onto an already arthritic camel--was the Jonas Brothers event held August 12. According to the complaint, "thousands of young teenage girls...screamed incessantly on the street for hours for their idols, blocking traffic, injuring one resident in the rush, and inconveniencing scores of other people and businesses." Speaking as a guy who has little kids screaming their faces off outside his window when he's trying to work, I can sympathise. [Curbed - Thanks BrooklynBum!]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 10:28 AM on August 19, 2008
Are you a Three customer? Do you feel inadequate when you travel outside the major metropolitan areas as your phone drops back to Telstra's 2G network while all your friends boast super-fast 3G speeds on their "other network" phones?
Well, feel inadequate no longer, with Three today announcing that they're expanding their 3G network to cover 96% of the Australian population by next year.
The expansion looks like it will be a combination of using 3's own network, plus piggybacking on Telstra's NextG network as well, although just how much of the latter will be happening is unclear. What is clear is that 3 are already working on the expansion, with 50 new sites, including Newcastle and the Central Coast of NSW, scheduled to go live by the end of the year.
At the moment, Three reaches a paltry 56% of the population with 3G. For me, I just hope they patch up the black spot near Sydney airport for when I'm on the train, so I can spend more time on Giz. Cos I love you guys.
UPDATE: I've heard back from 3 on a couple of questions I asked them - turns out that the extra infrastructure they're building will take them to over 60%. To get up to 96%, they're jumping in bed with Telstra's NextG (the 2100MHz network NextG also uses is a 50/50 joint venture with 3).On top of that, once the ink has dried on their deal with Telstra, it should bring down roaming costs. To what, we'll have to wait and see, but if it's cheaper than the current roaming charges, then it's good news.
Press release is below:
Some medical students have come up with a handy replacement for the EpiPen called the EpiCard. It's roughly the size of a credit card and has built-in audio instructions on its use to help the patient self-administer the treatment if needed. Those of us with hardcore life threatening allergies have to keep a treatment like the EpiPen around, but they can be cumbersome. Having something like this that you can take anywhere is just what we need. [EpiCard via MedGadget]
I think NBC's web-only Sci Fi series The Gemini Division is about an alien, or a robot, or an alien robot that somehow got Rosario Dawson to be its girlfriend. I like that. I also like the Rosario somehow got her deliciously moisturised hands on what looks like a "Windows Mobile" phone, which Screen Junkies was kind enough to point out. That phone ain't Windows Mobile. If that phone is Windows Mobile, I'm Diane Keaton. And let me tell you, Diane Keaton is a lot manlier than I can ever claim to be (and looks nicer in a suit). Maybe buff alien robot guy brought it from wherever he came from and gave it to her as a present?
Posted by Nick Broughall at 9:29 AM on August 19, 2008
A few years agio at CeBit in Sydney, you could gain entry be scanning a barcode that you'd received via MMS on your phone. It was awesome. Then it disappeared, never to be heard of (by me) again. But now, according to Danny Gorog over at APC, the next generation of that tech is on its way to iPhone users around the country, with Qantas developing ways for you to check in to your flight using your iPhone.
It's still a little while away yet, so in the meantime you'll have to settle for just being able to browse the Qantas website in a format especially designed for your iPhone. ANZ and NineMSN are also jumping on the iPhone-friendly website bandwagon, although both only have limited functionality as well at the moment.
The real question is though - is this just a few companies trying to leech some of the iPhone's neverending hype machine, or are they trying to create a truly convenient service using the iPhone's impressive feature set? Only time will tell...
[Qantas for iPhone via APC Mag]
Earlier today Google released the Android 0.9 SDK r1 Beta, boasting of a pile of API updates and a visual refresh that moves it one solid step closer to actually, you know, showing up on a phone. A long changelog and a few screenshots are great, but we've fired up the SDK's emulator for a guided tour of Android's salient features.
My guess is that most of the guys out there would love their own R/C hovercraft, but the bottom line is that not everyone can afford a fancy commercial version. Well, if you have some junk lying around the house, some time on your hands, and you don't mind a hovercraft that is butt friggin' ugly, you can build your own R/C model for under US$50 (depending on what kind of junk you have lying around) and the instructions from Project Hovercraft.
A few years ago, AMD was the king of performance per watt with its K8 architecture, while Intel kept pushing the Pentium 4 faster and hotter, until it basically had to chunk its NetBurst architecture. So this is something of a nostalgia trip for AMD fanboys: In Tom's Hardware's tests, a 1GHz Athlon 64 2000+ using the years-old K8 architecture "beats the Intel Atom 230 in energy consumption and processing power" and "outperforms [it] in several benchmark tests" even though the Atom chip is running at 1.6GHz chip. How?
Posted by Nick Broughall at 7:58 AM on August 19, 2008
iPhone Jailbreak Now QuickPwned: No Need for iTunes-Based Restore
If jailbreaking's your thing, then this, too, is your thing.
Lumitop Bras Add Eye-Grabbing Glows to Lady-Chests
Are there any women out there who would wear this in public? If there are, welcome to Giz!
Guy Builds Olympic Village Replica with 140,000 Playing Cards
I don't know if I should be blown away by this is or concerned for the mental health of someone who would do this.
Zapp Brannigan Ray Gun For Sale (Only Shot Once At Disgruntled Underling)
Anybody taking note - this is officially now on my Xmas wishlist...
Rock Band and Guitar Hero Instruments Will Finally Play Nice Together on PS3
This might actually make Rock Band affordable, if the going rumours are true...
Boy that Michael Phelps is fast. No one can argue it, he can dominate in almost any style of swim and possesses one of the best dolphin kicks in the world. That is, one of the best kicks aside from some random guy using the Lunocet monofin. Because while Phelps is able to swim at an inhuman 8 kilometres per hour, the average swimmer using the carbon fibre Lunocet will routinely hit about 12.9kph. Is it too late for us to book our tickets to Beijing?
The iPhone 2.0.2 update is here and is supposed to fix a bunch of bugs that users have been seeing since iPhone 2.0 hit. Like Boy Genius said before, it's going to be targeting iPhone 3G users, but the changelog of "bug fixes" is vague enough to imply that everyone will see some benefit. Grab it now from iTunes.
The Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch designed by NASA back in the '70s puts your puny Earthwatch to shame. Its anodised aluminium body can withstand temperatures from -148 to +260° Celsius, and its sassy red exterior is sure to impress any ladyaliens you meet on your travels. There's no confirmed price, but with a limited run of less than 2,000, we're betting it won't come cheap. [Josh Spear via men.style.com]
I think NBC's web-only Sci Fi series The Gemini Division is about an alien, or a robot, or an alien robot that somehow got Rosario Dawson to be its girlfriend. I like that. I also like the Rosario somehow got her deliciously moisturised hands on what looks like a "Windows Mobile" phone, which