Japan's Nikkei newspaper—their Wall Street Journal, so by no means a shady source—is reporting that Nintendo will launch a new version of the DS later this year with a built-in camera and music playback, as well as more powerful wireless. The camera will be used for new types of games—who knows what Nintendo would cook up with that, though I'm sure it would involve taking pictures of yourself.

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Apple has committed to work with the state of Massachusetts to use its VoiceOver technology from Mac OS X to make its iTunes and iPod ecosystem fully usable for the blind. Before the agreement, Apple had already been making strides: VoiceOver and Braille support for OS X and closed captioning for iPod and Apple TV have already been implemented to a degree. But Apple's taking it even further.

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A reseller says that they received an email from Apple telling them to remove and destroy all Apple TV displays and literature by Sept. 30 at 5PM. While it could simply be because the licensing for shows and movies used in the ads and displays is running out, the supposed letter from Apple mentions a webcast "kick off" on the same day.

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Microsoft has launched a site all about the New Xbox Experience which gives you a feel for what it'll be like in motion by simulating the new dashboard. It also has some videos of new features in addition to the avatar creation one we already saw, like Parties, deeper social networking and more community content. I'm pretty excited about it. Too bad the site doesn't mention a date, though Major Nelson swears it won't be right after that massive outage on Monday. [New Xbox Experience via Kotaku]

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Researchers at Purdue University are developing new tech that will turn every mobile phone into a roaming nuclear weapon sniffer and are lobbying Congress to legally require mobile phone users and carriers to participate. The Distributed Nuclear Detection by Ubiquitous Mobile Phone project would be kind of like the massive mobile phone dragnet in The Dark Knight, but it would look for terrorists sneaking dirty bombs and nuclear weapons instead of the Joker.

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Parallax has just released their NES controller socket to the delights of modders everywhere. Instead of forcing them to chop up an old NES to get the 7-pin socket, Parallax has made it available for only $US2 on their site. The NES controller would be great for all kinds of little projects, from robots to old-school gaming devices, and we're really looking forward to seeing what inventive modders can do with the humble and much-loved controller. [MAKE]

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After punting their agreement with Dish Network to sell satellite as part of a triple play package, AT&T has decided to settle down with DirecTV. They'll keep hawking Dish through Jan. 31, after which they'll offer DirecTV anywhere they... Read More »

The UN's International Telecommunications Union announced Friday that mobile phone subscriptions will reach 4 billion by the end of 2008, far more than half of the estimated 6.7 billion total world population. Of course, there are some, like John Mayer, who throw off that number by having more than one mobile phone (damn you, Mayer!) but it's still a huge milestone. The bump from last year's total of 3.3 billion is primarily due to emerging countries like China, India, and Russia, as well as lower prices and lots of healthy competition between carriers. [BreitBart via Drudge]

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Windows finally has a slogan you'll remember—not a bad one, either—so it was only a matter of time before it was transformed into the next internet meme. Take When Obama Wins, blend with Redmond's latest branding, shake, and you've got And I'm a PC. You can pound the refresh key to see the genius (or not) of the hundreds of subversive sloganeers before you, or add your own. So far, it's mostly a mix of McCain jabs, Windows smears, and Mac & Linux cheerleading, but still fairly entertaining. What kind of PC are you? [And I'm a PC via Ad Freak via The Presurfer]

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The Gadget: I can sleep through anything. I do, notoriously. It's why I already have three alarms: My current super clock has two built-in, and I set my phone. But it's still not enough. So Brian told me I had to review the only thing left to try: the Sonic Bomb, which has a 113dB extra loud alarm—louder than a jackhammer or chainsaw—and a bed shaker.

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Sony's site has an absolutely hilarious page explaining how Intel's Core 2 Duo chip helps you multitask with cartoons featuring two odd, party-hat-wearing elfin caricatures. Read on for my analysis, with the caveat that I speak not a word of Japanese.

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Kids these days, with their baggy jeans and their MTV and their fancy networked booming boxes, they don't know the joy of sitting around the old-timey radio and listening to the soothing stories. The Areaware 2B radio just might be the bridge to these whippersnappers: its visible vacuum tubes have a cool retro feel, not to mention a warm sound, and the minimalistic design is hip with the Apple generation. And thank god, this radio is only a radio, without any wifi, 3G, DRM, or any of those other scary acronyms. The 2B will ship in November for a price of $US550, but what's a few hundred dollars for such comforting simplicity? [Apartment Therapy]

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One of the croissant-snarfing editors at Gizmodo France passed along this article that alleges the Mac Pro's gives off toxic vapors. Translating from the language of love to the language of guns, soccer mums and hot dogs results in a bit of discombobulation, but the gist is that a CNRS lab researcher got a Mac Pro, and after his eyes and respiratory tract were repeatedly agitated by a "stench," decided to break down the noxious vapor coming off the Mac Pro. They found "seven volatile organic contaminants." Though the worst they do inhaled is cause skin, eye and respiratory irritation—ingested is another story—benzene is the most troublesome, since inhaling it eight hours a day over could affect one's bone marrow. Apple's response?

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If you were thinking about pre-ordering the T-Mobile G1 and just didn't get around to it yet, it looks like you're out of luck, since they've sold out. While there definitely won't be anything like iPhone launch day madness, don't be surprised if the launch supply is exhausted by demand and they're a bit scarce in the immediate aftermath. How many of you guys pre-ordered one? Update: Looks like it's back up. [Android Community]

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Like Yahoo and MSN before them, Walmart is turning off its DRM servers on Oct. 9, effectively putting any DRM'd songs you bought from them into a cold stasis they'll never wake up from, since they'll become totally unmovable unless you circumvent the DRM. Walmart went through this earlier with their video store, though it didn't matter since no one bought anything from it. Walmart's music store is DRM-free now, though I doubt that's any consolation to people who actually paid for music that's now nigh useless.

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Microsoft has scheduled simultaneous service outages for its Xbox Live and Zune platforms this Monday, September 29th, starting at 12:01 PST. These "regularly scheduled maintenance" outages will take up to 24 hours for Xbox Live and up to 48 hours for Zune. Read on for the details.

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You might think that the entire history of personal computing is too complex to explain in a reasonable amount of time. Too bad Canadian animators Superbrothers teamed up with singer-songwriter and all-around awesome dude Jim Guthrie to prove your reasoned point wrong with this badass music video. The story: two heavily pixelated scientists decide to have a dance battle that echoes the transition from primitive '60s machines all the way up to today's cloud computing. The video is after the jump.

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3M's new Mobile ID Reader scans MRZ and RF chip data from passports and visas and immediately checks them against local or international watch lists by using wifi or GSM/GPRS EDGE networks. It seems like a great tool to further make you feel like you're living in some scary dystopian sci-fi novel, especially when you hear that dastardly monopolist Bill Gates got his little-loved Windows Mobile 6 OS onto the device.

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