Anyone who is a fan of 1960s-era guitar idol mythology knows that crazy custom circuitry and effects pedals are nothing new. But the OpenStomp Coyote 1, the "world's first open-source guitar pedal" updates the trend for today's slightly more nerdy shredders, who can recreate the crazy circuit bending of yore in a custom software package that visually edits effects patches. On top of that, all aspects of the hardware--including the added LCD screen, 80MHz Propeller processor, microUSB and RJ11 interfaces--are documented, too, so feel free to open 'er up. It's shipping now for US$350. [OpenStomp]

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Giz Pick of the Week: The Nightmare Before Christmas

AU: Sorry folks, I think this schedule is US only - but I still hope the digital file version is available on the Region B releases...

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While visiting the Philips research lab here in Amsterdam I came across a company that is getting the Star Trek replicator closer to everyday life. Imagine being able to create any 3D object you want--a World of Warcraft avatar, a chess set, a lamp, a Lego piece you are missing, a house for a train model, or a fully articulated astromech droid--print it remotely, and have it delivered to your house in just 10 days, even without knowing any 3D software. This is exactly what Shapeways does. Not next century, but right now, today.

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Were the humble, boring old fire extinguisher to be reworked in the style of this concept design, dubbed Shooter, they'd be grabbed from the wall and used inappropriately in offices waaaay more frequently. Because, as its name suggests, the device is meant to behave like a friendly Nerf-style grenade launcher, aiming plastic pellets of CO2 into the flames. This has the advantage of keeping you away from the fire, with a better range than throw-style pellets, and less complication than a standard sprayer version. And more fun/danger at the office Christmas party too. [Yanko Design]

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Most of us can size up the functionality of a phone from its spec sheet, but a phone's practicality, usability and enjoyability falls to a whole other series of factors. Form factor is a biggie. In this clip, you'll see the Treo Pro literally sized up against the smartphone competition (including the Palm Centro, Motorola Q9H, the BlackBerry Bold, the iPhone 3G, the HTC Touch Diamond and more. If you're at work and can't play the audio track, just turn it off and you'll still get most of the effect. [CrackBerry]UPDATE: Video after jump:

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Canon's clearly trying to add a certain girly appeal to some of its latest digital cameras, since compared to the gruff, black 50D the upcoming E1 is particularly curvy and comes in vanilla, powder blue and baby pink. It's no optical slouch though, despite its simple looks, with 10-megapixels, 4x optical zoom and optical image stabilisation, macro mode, ISO80-1600 (with 3200 scene mode) and a 2.5-inch TFT display. It also takes AA batteries for convenience and weighs just 158g. Available in September for around $200. [Canon]

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Navigon's upcoming 7200T GPS unit has some pretty high-end features: voice destination entry, photo-realistic 3D views of roads with lane guidance icons and 3D landmarks built-in. But its niftiest feature is free real-time traffic info updates with no subscription fees, for life. That's just got to be handy, and comes over an FM receiver from Clear Channel's Total Traffic Network. The 3D road rendering is designed to stop you making the mistake I made last night: mistranslating a GPS display onto the complicated road interchange I was trying to cross because the two looked different. The Lane Assistant feature even tries to give you advance warning of which lane you'll need to be in before a junction. It's due in October for US$449. Press release below.

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According to the NASA International Space Station status report, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko used a digital camera with 800mm telephoto lenses and a video camera to take images of the "after-effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus." In theory, this seems to have violated the non-military use clause of the station, but Russia has claimed "humanitarian motives."

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HTC's certainly hitting the market with many a new phone at the mo, and here's yet another: the S740. It's a slider like the Touch Pro, with similar styling to both the Pro and the Diamond, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and US 3G aboard. It's also just 16.3mm thick, so it's skinnier than the Pro and almost exactly the same depth as the upcoming Dream. It'll run Windows Mobile Standard 6.1, apparently, on a 2.4-inch QVGA screen. There's quad-band support, a 3.2-megapixel cam. Full specs below.

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Yesterday we had the FCC imagery to give us some of the HTC Dream's sizes, but today over at Androidguys.com they've got hold of engineering drawings that give us the full data: it's pretty skinny. Interestingly it's got a bent chin that looks a lot like the MotoRizr design, but the screen here slides to the side to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. By using the FCC dimensions and doing a little measurement it looks like the phone's body is around 0.64-inches (16.35mm) deep which makes it fatter than the iPhone's 12.3mm, but thinner than the HTC Touch Pro's 18.1mm. The screen bezel complies with an approx 3.5-inch screen, but doesn't confirm the size of the screen itself. We'll have to wait for the next leak for that. [AndroidGuys via AndroidCommunity]

A Giz reader sent us these images of the final prototype of the iControlPad, the iPhone accessory that will allow you to play games like Mario Bros., arcade games and Quake as they should be played, with a real directional pad and buttons. The final product will be all shiny, and as you can see in the feature list, it will include right and left shoulder buttons:

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After yesterday's dribble of info, Nokia's upcoming N79 and N85 are official now, and do indeed carry WCDMA support for US 3G goodness. The N79 has a 2.4-inch screen, 5-megapixel camera and comes with a 4GB microSD card in the box for storage, while the N85 has a 2.6-inch OLED screen, 5-megapixel cam and 8GB of microSD card storage shipped with it. Both also come preloaded with "10 made-for-mobile N-Gage" games and have FM transmitters aboard, for streaming your music over a nearby radio. Full specs below. Update: the N79 is due to cost around US$515 and the N85 will be around US$660, both expecting to ship in October.

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After much leaking of information, Nokia's N96 slider mobile phone is now official. It's a quad-band, US 3G-enabled (WCDMA) phone with a 2.8-inch screen, 16GB of built-in memory, a 5-megapixel Carl-Zeiss Tessar lens, A-GPS and 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi. The media-player functions of the phone get their own dedicated slide-out keypad, as we knew. It's due out in the last quarter of the year, and pricing is estimated by Nokia at around US$810. Full specs are below.

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I always look at new printer releases as the wholemeal bread in my daily gadget sandwich - sure it probably does my body (and Giz) good to add that healthy mix of natural printer fibre to the daily gadget diet, but really, it's boring - there's very little flavour.

But for whatever reason (probably the fact that I currently need a new printer), but the new Pixma MP980 looks pretty appealing to me. They've shrunk it down from the previous model, there's wireless built in, plus it scans and prints photos from negatives. And while all of those features have been around for what seems like aeons, the new environmentally friendly packaging, compact body and 2-way paper feeding have me begrudgingly reaching for my wallet.

But before I do, I'll be testing this sucker out to tell you whether it's worth the money when it launches in October.

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Even though the big Canon news of the moment is the official announcement of the 50D (which you can expect in AU from October 1 for a price still to be determined, incidentally), they've actually flooded the market with new product releases, from scanners and printers to these new PowerShot models (My inbox literally has 7 emails from Canon in a row).

The new Powershot range, including the A1000, A2000, SX110 and E1 models, all take a much more streamlined approach to design, so much so in the case of the E1 that journalists were asking why they weren't branded IXUS instead.

Aside from the engaging design, each of the new Powershot models is powered by AA batteries, plus the E1 comes in a selection of colours (including pink - huzzah!). They're all packed with Megapixels and zoom, as well as some of the more useful features like face detect and optical image stabilisation.

Prices atart at $249 for the A1000, the A2000 costs $299 and the E1 will cost $229. The SX110 IS is yet to be priced, but my money's on it being a similar price to the others.

This Christmas looks like it's going to be very competitive in the digital compact market, with Fujifilm and Olympus also offering low-cost cameras that are packed with features.

For the full release, head south:

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Canon's EOS 50D probably isn't the DSLR you were praying they would unveil at Photokina, but it does fill a gaping hole in their lineup between the low-end prosumer 40D and semi-pro 5D. The 15-megapixel shooter is their first DSLR with the Digic 4 processor, which has a few new light-oriented tricks up its sleeve, like lens peripheral illumination correction--it corrects for light fall-off at the edges of the lens--and it can more automagically brighten things, like pretty faces (and ugly ones, if you really want it to). Since you can crank the ISO speed up to 12,800--Canon's highest yet--presumably its noise-reduction capabilities are formidable, especially since Nikon has succeeded in making noise the new battleground in prosumer and higher level DSLRs.

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Technology Review has a fascinating photo tour of a ReCellular facility, where many of the phones "traded in" for new ones end up. Dealing with thousand of phones at a time, the workers are charged with figuring out which phones can be reused, which can be broken down into their component materials and which are just plain useless. The photography is stunning, and you're just about guaranteed to see at least one of the models you used to carry (or maybe still do) nestled among of the piles and piles of disused handsets. Most interesting is the undignified, molten fate met by parts of the least lucky StarTracs and Nokia bricks, pictured after the jump. [Technology Review -Thanks David!]

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This release adds support for Pwning the 2.0.2 5C1 firmware on the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as an update to the latest version of Installer.app. Mac-only for now but, as usual, just sit tight for a few days. [iPhone Dev Team via TUAW]

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Most avid World of Warcraft players don't wonder too much about what it would be like to truly run as often and as far as their avatars, because a.) that sounds hard and b.) they're too busy wondering would it would be like to run at all. Nonetheless, some crafty young WoWers managed to hook up a couple of treadmills and joysticks to their computers in such a way as to simulate actually running across Azeroth. Even when some handicaps were programmed into the system, the (sort of) reality was clear: WoW characters are FAST.

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Panasonic's DMR-BR630V Blu-ray Disc Recorder Does VHS Tapes Too
It sounds so stupid it hurts, but what's the bet Panny sell truckloads of them?

Swedish Scientists Test iPhone 3G's Antenna: It's Fine
That's right! It's not Apple, but Optus, Telstra and Vodafone that are screwing with your 3G signal.

Free iPhone Tetris Getting Pulled from App Store
Quick - get it while you still can!

Geek Licence Plates Show Just How Geeky the Road Can Get (Very)
Any of you geeks got anything better out there?

Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard Update Comes in November
It's like an early Christmas present from Nintendo Microsoft

Wind Turbines Murdering Bats By Popping Their Lungs
Won't somebody pleeeaaassee think of the bats!?!

Leave it to the BBC to introduce a show about robots attacking humans and generally making a mess of the landscape that's both funny and tailor-made for the ADHD audience. The Wrong Door is a violent, live-action Robot Chicken prone to the same breezy matter-of-factness that made Terry Gilliam's Python interludes both funny and horrifying. Check out the clip above, where a computer takes revenge on a frustrated user, and after the jump, where the Soldier Spray cannon reveals a new way to deploy troops in times of need.

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The International Defence Exhibition of Land Forces went down in Moscow this past weekend, and it seems like it was a pretty a great time, judging from these photos sent in to our good friends at English Russia. First stop, obviously, is to strap on the Tevas and nautical print Hawaiian shirt for a quick sit in this bad-arse anti-aircraft (I think?) battery. And as you can imagine, that's not all the fun to be had for the whole family with all the heavy weapons around.

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On the list of ways to go, having your lungs explode is definitely on the gnarlier side. Too bad for bats in treehugging locales, though, because that's what's happening to them, due to a pretty serious error with their awesome echolcation systems crossing with the seemingly benign forces of Bernoulli's principle put into motion by the turbines' huge spinning blades. Ouch all around.

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At the Intel Developer Forum last week, a lot of the buzz on the demo floor was around new Atom hardware. There were the requisite netbooks and EeeClones floating around, but it seemed like peculiar little quasi-computers, or palmtop Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) stole the show. Sure, it's impressive to see a full, net-connected Vista or Ubuntu desktop running on something the size of a Sega Game Gear, but who exactly is supposed to buy these?

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While the city of Philadelphia is content with using 3D images to deter speeders, the authorities in ShanXi province, China are taking a far more drastic approach. They built a 100 foot (30 metres) long, 2 foot (60cm) high, winding speed block smack dab in the middle of the Jing Zhuang highway. Sure, it scratches up cars, looks hideous and causes massive traffic jams, but hey--by screwing everyone it manages to screw the speeders. Suck on that leadfoot!

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If you thought this post was going to contain a "in Soviet Russia" joke--think again. Besides, spending a whopping US$990 on an iPhone is hardly a laughing matter. Actually, the price is a bargain compared to the 600,000 or so iPhones that have hit the market through unauthorised sales--but it is still well out of the budget of your average Russian citizen.

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On Sept. 9, Universal will release an amazing 10th Anniversary Limited Edition of The Big Lebowski that's packed inside of a mini-bowling ball. A goddamn bowling ball. And it'll have all-new bonus features, which I hope/suspect is filled with John Goodman screaming various permutations "fuck" a lot. For only US$24. Why so cheap? Because it's only on DVD. WTF, Universal?

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Microsoft's just gone on the record with RPG-TV and said the Fall Xbox 360 Dashboard Update will be hitting in November, which technically is still a part of Fall. Previous updates have also been released in late November (as close to Winter as you could push it while still being Autumn), but all those new features coming this time might be cause for delay, even though they skipped the Spring update for this reason. Seriously Microsoft, will we have to wait another three months to get the ability to make a little avatar that looks like ourselves? You're forcing us to turn on our Wiis? [RPG TV via Kotaku]