For all you Apple TV users out there, Apple’s now released firmware version 2.3. The patch, downloadable through the media hub’s built in updater, now lets users stream music from AirTunes to any speakers connected to an Airport Express or other Apple TVs in the house. You’ll also get the ability to use third-party remotes, and make playlists that include a mixture of audio and video formats. [Apple Insider]
Looking for a stress ball that’s sure to anger the hordes of PETA? Here’s one shaped like a chicken that crows in pain when you squeeze, hit or shake it. Let the chicken have it whenever work’s got you down and it’ll be sure to make you feel all plucky again. This fun little toy even comes in three sizes, priced $US13.90 for a large, $US9.90 for a medium and $US6.90 for a small, so that you can choke different sizes of chicken depending on where you are and how much stress you need to release. [Brando]
It’s hard to overstate how important the BlackBerry Storm is to RIM and Verizon. It’s RIM’s bold effort to fend off the iPhone and Verizon’s best hope for a star handset that draws people in, or at least keeps them from bailing. The Storm’s major innovation is what RIM calls SurePress—the entire touchscreen is fat, honkin’ button—which has been paired with a redesigned, finger-friendly BlackBerry OS. We’ve already showed you a lot of what the fuss is all about, but now that we’ve spent some quality, uninterrupted time with the Storm, here’s why we think it falls short of its promise. galleryPost('blackberrystormreview', 3, '');
Microsoft’s $US15 Zune Pass subscription service—a pretty sweet deal already—has just porked up their offer by giving you 10 free songs that you can keep every month. We’ve talked about Zune Pass in our Zune reviews before, but it’s basically access to all of the Zune Marketplace for only the price of a CD a month. Since most of their catalog (90% or so, including all the majors and a few indie labels) is already in MP3 format, you can load these free songs on any kind of device you want, like your iPhone or Android phone or PS3 or Wii.
I’ve been playing with the Chumby Internode sent me to review for about an hour now and despite some early reservations, I’m now completely head over heels in love with the plush Wi-Fi widget.
It’s like some kind of high-tech cake, with layer upon layer of fantastic widgets and clever implementations of simple Web 2.0 things like RSS feeds and social networking. After working through the simple setup process and waiting for a relatively quick firmware update, it was a process of discovering just what the Chumby can do. And while I’ve only scratched the surface in the short time I’ve been playing with it, my Chumby (affectionately named Chunk) has already become my new alarm clock, internet radio device and de facto Twitter feed reader.
There is a lack of local widgets at the moment – Internode’s own offering is a bit disappointing, showcasing only Internode-specific news and their internet radio channels (but you can use Pandora, which is much more comprehensive in its versatility). I’m desperately hoping we can get a Giz AU widget available soon, although at the moment I’m just using the Chumby feed reader to do the job for me.
I’ll have a more comprehensive review next week, but as it stands, I’m loving every inch of the Chumby so far…
Have I ever told you guys how much we love you? Well, we love you. A lot. And we know that somewhere, deep inside, there’s a part of you that loves us too.
That’s why we’re going to ask you guys a small favour. We want you to vote for nominate us in this year’s Weblog awards. We want you guys to go out there and tell the world that you reckon we’re the best blog in the world (or at least Australia/NZ).
It’ll only take a few minutes of your time, and if we win, I’ll buy you all a beer*. Simply click on these links and nominate Gizmodo Australia. *Best Australia/NZ blog *Best Technology blog
We’ll also be asking you to vote in a couple of weeks, but we really want to ensure we get some nominations, so head over and help us out. We’d do it for you, if you were a blog**.
At last you can avoid the hassle of taking your Lasonic Ghetto Blaster every single time you go to the park: Now the park will have boom boxes the size of a park bench, with more than 500 watts of high quality ghetto thump. You only need a mobile phone with Bluetooth audio support, and the Boom Bench will be yours to annoy every single person 10km around you.
Back when the iPhone launched in Australia, there was a lot of confusion over what plans were the best. Fortunately for us, financial guru and Giz reader Andrew from Numbersinaflash.com came up with a simple to use online calculator to work out which plan was best for individual users.
Well, almost five months later and the touchscreen phone du jour is the BlackBerry Storm on Vodafone. And to try and help potential customers out, Andrew has once again crunched the numbers and created an online, flash-based calculator to help you decide what plan is the best for you.
If you’re even remotely considering picking up a Storm next week, you should definitely check out Andrew’s calculator. [Numbersinaflash - Thanks Andrew!]
Hey Brian, Did you hear that PC Magazine is ending its magazine edition and focusing solely on the online space? Sad to hear. I was one of those kids that grew up having a subscription to PC Mag in the house, every month reading what crazy uncle Dvorak (plus those other dudes) had to say about something or other. SCSI. And Windows. Stuff like that. Although I haven’t had a sub to them in years, it’s always sad to see an end to something you used to enjoy. Supposedly EGM might be getting the cut as well, but that’s a decision for next year.
Don’t you hate it when you spend a while on the computer in a frigid room and your fingers start to get ice cold? You can’t take the time to warm your hands back up because your boss is breathing down your neck, but it’s getting harder and harder to type by the minute because you’re losing mobility to frostbite. Thanko is here to the rescue with its new USB wrist warming strap, which delivers a controlled 40°C (104°F) to heat the blood rushing to your extremities.
