Monday, November 24, 2008
Gadgets
Key Fob Displays Your Crazy Driving Habits
11:29PM Mark Wilson | The Lemur Autovision is a key fob that records and displays a driver’s habits, including miles driven, average speed and the frequency of braking. With a base transmitter hooking into the car’s on-board diagnostics port, all information is fed directly (and accurately) from your car’s computer to the LCD dongle itself. Priced at $US80, it’s either a crappy way to spy on your kids or a convenient manner to track and curb your own bad driving. You decide, just don’t run me over in the family Camaro. [Lemur via OhGizmo!] More »
Gadgets
Zoybar Modular Instrument is a Guitar, Bass or Medieval Lute, Depending on Your Mood
11:01PM John Herrman | Stringed instruments are diverse in sound and design, but they all share the same basic shape. That similarity hadn’t really bugged anyone too much for the last few hundred years, but where most see variety Zoybar sees redundancy: they’ve proposed a modular, build-it-yourself guitar-ish thing, with interchangeable parts that can convert it into a wide range of necky, stringy instruments. Want an electric guitar? An amplified theobo? A single-stringed hobo-bass with a line out? Sure, whatever, it’s a Zoybar, man. More »
Computers
Dell Mini 9 Netbook Gets 32GB Solid State Drive Option For a Measly $US100
10:58PM Kit Eaton | Dell’s Mini 9 may be going for a pretty good price already (and an irritating disk error) but check out this deal sweetener: Dell’s added a 32GB SSD option for just $US100. The base model with that larger solid state drive is thus $US449—and to me, that’s pretty bonkers good value. [Dell via Engadget via Geekygadgets] More »
Peripherals
Marantz Dock Does Wireless Bluetooth Streaming From Your iPod
10:05PM Kit Eaton | This IS301 dock system from Marantz looks pretty swish, particularly as the dock part can be rotated for wall-mounting, but it’s a little confusing. It adds Bluetooth remote streaming to your hi-fi, which is nice, can charge iPods (including touch, but not iPhone) when it’s powered up, and it allows for direct control of Marantz receivers, but what’s up with the S-video out on the base station? More »
Hardware
Hardware Hoarder Builds Australia’s Largest Computer Museum In His House
10:00PM John Herrman | Max Burnet worked with computers for his whole life, and he hasn’t strayed far in retirement: he’s collected a massive amount of vintage computer hardware in his house, creating the what is claimed to be the largest collection of its kind in Australia, and one of the most extensive in the world. He’s got everything from a 20s era electro-mechanical tote board to punch card mainframes to the Apple Lisa in his huge stockpile, and odd curios aren’t neglected; he’s got early hard drive and RAM specimens, as well as a library of over 6000 vintage computing manuals. galleryPost('vintagegal', 6, ''); More »
Science
AdminPatch Pain-Free Hypodermic Alternative Does It With Millions Of Needles Instead
9:15PM Kit Eaton | Nanobioscience’s AdminPatch sounds like a pretty amazing way to deliver drugs into the body: it’s got a metal surface covered in millions of tiny microneedles that puncture the skin. You may instantly think “Ouch!” but since these are so small and pierce the skin shallow enough to avoid pain receptors, the system is apparently painless. More »
Software
Simple Hack Enables Roughly One Gazillion Japanese Emoticons On Any iPhone
8:54PM John Herrman | Emoji: if you’ve never heard of it, that’s because you’re probably not living in Japan, 12 years old, and a highly social schoolgirl. An emoticon standard that is widely used in the country, it was included in the iPhone 2.2 firmware on the SoftBank network, but not for anyone else. Apparently fed up with his lack of ability to graphically express his numerous LOLs, a developer has figured out a simple tweak to enable these icons system-wide, no matter which carrier you’re with. Naturally, to show anything other than unintelligible strings of Unicode the recipient’s phone has to support Emoji emoticons, but apparently all 2.2 iPhones, hacked or not, can display the icons. The patching process, after the jump, isn’t terribly complicated. More »
Phones
Meizu’s M8 iPhoneclone UI Demoed, Looks Cloned Indeed
7:52PM Kit Eaton | Meizu’s fabled M8 iPhoneclone may indeed be soon on sale, but until now we’ve only seen bits and bobs of its user interface: Now Meizu is demonstrating this with a neat little animation site. And guess what? Go on, you’ll never guess! …It’s a pretty similar beast to the iPhone. There’re some tweaks and differences of course, but Meizu’s taken inspiration from Apple pretty deeply into their own design. We’ll just have to see what it looks and feels like in the flesh to see exactly how similar it ends up being. [Meizu via Engadget] More »
Phones
Samsung Demonstrates Folding OLED Mobile Phone, Vindicates Thousands of Ridiculous Concepts
7:49PM John Herrman | Buried amongst the piles of Newer! Bigger! Better! TVs, pico projectors and paper-thin, flapping OLED screens at FPD in Japan was an absolute gem: a folding OLED phone concept from Samsung. This isn’t some half-assed, flat-to-sightly-bowed demo either: this thing folds over on itself completely. In its folded mode it looks quite similar to the D900, but the phone opens like a book to reveal a massive, bright OLED screen, creased down the middle. While we’ve got this luscious, luscious video, we don’t have much in the way of specs, and it goes without saying that this stuff is probably a long way from making it to market. [OLED Display] More »
Science
