We’ve seen the Motorola Aura before – we’ve even had some early feedback. But Damian Francis over at PopSci.com.au is in London for the global launch of the overpriced expensive fashion phone and has given some impressions of his own on the handset. And for the most part, it seems, Damo liked what he saw.
As part of the Honda Ecological Drive System (HDAS) that will be included with the 2009 Honda Insight, drivers will be alerted to their driving habits by a colour coded speedometer. When driving with a fuel efficient style, the speedometer goes green, indicating that you love the Earth etc. When some prick cuts you off on the freeway and you chase him down at 150kph, the speedometer goes blue, indicating that you despise this planet and everything on it. We’re not sure if blue is quite the deterrent Japanese engineers had in mind, but subtle gas guzzling notification is good idea that should save at least a few gallons of crude. Full details:
Doug Krone is my friend who started the dependable Japan importer Dynamism in the 90′s and he’s just launched Gizmine. Gizmine is different from Dynamism, a high end gadget site, by its content. I’d most summarily explain it as a collection of weird stuff on gadget blogs from Japan, but for sale. In fact, most of the inventory is stuff discovered on blogs and while walking through Shibuya on any given afternoon. Doug is also the man responsible for making Gizmodo Gallery possible. Below are a few of the pieces in his catalog that are my personal picks, and Doug says they’ll be adding new pieces every day til the end of the year. Not a bad place to find a gift for the geeks in your life. [Gizmine]
You may recall a case last year involving Julie Amero, a substitute junior high school teacher in Connecticut that was arrested and threatened with a 40 year prison sentence after the computer in her classroom began to display pornographic pop-ups in front of her students. Any one with even the slightest knowledge of computers could tell you that this was completely ridiculous—especially after learning that the computer system in the school was woefully ill-equipped to handle spyware and viruses. Still, officials and the police refused to admit that they had made a mistake and pressed on with their case. Now Amero has been forced to cut a plea deal in order to avoid jail.
Fact: Optimus Prime would be a badass no matter what he transformed from or to. It’s the soul of a Transformer that makes him great. Optimus Prime could save the world if he assembled from macaroni, puff paints, stringed popcorn or used baby diapers into a giant dinner, tacky sweater, festive Christmas tree thing or gross pile of refuse. The dude’s a hero. That’s just how it works. Oh, and this t-shirt will run you $US14 should you be considering the purchase. [Zazzle via Geekologie]
Traditionally, the name “Madcatz” implies generic, a peripheral that’s cheaper than those manufactured by Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. But the Madcatz Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition is an ultrapremium controller that will go for an ultrapremium price when it’s released on February 20th. $US150. But it might be worth every penny.
1.4 Billion Pixel Digicam Will Spot Asteroids Before They Hit Us Damn. Looks like Bruce Willis still has work to do…
HDCP Restrictions Rolled Back on New MacBooks They should never have been rolled forward in the first place.
Gesture-Controlled Light Switch is Like a Trackpad For Your House Someone make this a real product today (and then install it in my house).
Simple Hack Adds Power-Charge USB Slot to VGA Socket Do this and you can call yourself a hacker.
How Big Is the ISS Compared to Science Fiction Spaceships? Hint: Not big enough.
5 Gadgets You Can’t Skimp On (And How to Save Money Buying Them) I personally disagree completely with the satnav advice – TomTom is where my money is at, although the nuvi is a great product too.
Giz Explains: Why Intel’s Core i7 Processor Is a Beautiful Monster Because it’s big, blue and furry? No?
Frying up a turkey poses two health hazards—one from clogged arteries and another from the fryer itself. The folks at OObject have put together a list of 16 videos involving everything from proper use of a turkey fryer, to elaborate turkey fryer contraptions to deep fryin’ hillbillies holdin’ guns. And oh yes, there are several examples of things going very…very wrong. A turkey cooked with thermite? You had better believe that’s an explosion. [OObject]
We’re liking the trend. Not only did the Xbox 360 debut Netflix HD streaming, other Netflix supporters like Roku are slated to receive same update. Now Samsung has announced that their $US400 BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 will both receive firmware upgrades in early December to support Netflix HD streams as well. That’s good news, as Netflix HD is looking more platform-independent by the day.
Micron touted its super-fast RealSSD drives with 250MBps speed a few months back, but now its demonstrated a tech that’ll blow them out of the water: 1GBps transfer rates. It’s a bit cheaty since it uses two SSDs for a total of 16 data channels to access the flash memory, but that does give it a 200,000 input/output operations per second speed. And that’s too fast for SATA II’s bandwidth cap, so Micron had to use PCI Express. It’s a technology demonstrator, but Micron apparently plans to commercialise it “soon”. [Electronista]
