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Do you remember the story about Cameta Camera from yesterday? The company was bribing Amazon reviewers to take down negative reviews. Now more fraudulent reseller practices are coming out of the woodwork, as TheCellShop.net was found to be offering this little incentive to their buyers to bump their scores on resellerratings.com:
We like Terminator as much as we hate companies who rip-off the work of artists without even crediting them. This is apparently what happened with the poster used to promote the bland Sarah Connor Cronicles TV series: some blogs are reporting that the Fox channel's poster was allegedly copied straight from a striking montage created by someone else before the series were even announced. Compare the full images after the jump (NSFW).
Now we're not sure what's going on with Keyport now. Two weeks ago they managed to ship a unit to NOTCOT to fool around with, but apparently there's SOMETHING going on in the manufacturing process that makes it unsuitable for shipping it out to paying customers. Keyport told Josh five months after he paid and shipped them his keys that they were going to refund his money, but keep his keys. Wha?
The Guardian did a little research on this Psystar, the company that vows to continue selling their generic Mac OS X clones even if Apple decides to sue them. Turns out that not only has the Miami Chamber of Commerce and BBB never heard of them, there's essentially no trace of them on the internet at all. As if that wasn't enough to make Psystar seem more than a little questionable, their address on the contact page changed completely now and earlier today from a residential address to a business one.
WTF? It's a $39.95 PC. Could this be the machine to beat the $200 OLPC at its own game? It's billed as a "cheap desktop computer," and then gets worse from there. First of all, it's a refurbished IBM PC from the late 20th century, probably occupying many a junk heap by now and maybe even some museums. Its shipping and handling costs $24.95. It has a Pentium III running at 933MHz. Oh, and it doesn't include an operating system, just a Windows 2000 COA (Certificate Of Authenticity). We can go on, but let's don't. Our conclusion? It's way overpriced at $64.90. So line up, suckas. [HCDI Trading]
Usually this kind of awesome is relegated to Chinatown shops, but this fake Wiimote produced by LA-based ToyQuest is available in that most red-blooded of American institutions, Wal-Mart. The $10 to $15 Wiimote-"inspired" toy actually features motion controls for the built-in game, but thanks to the tiny, cruddy screen you can't see anything when you're waving it around, making it impossible to play. But it does rattle when you shake it, making it the closest thing around to Wii Samba di Amigo maracas. [About]
Our buddy Dr. Ashen of crappy gadget fame just reviewed the the PolyStation 3; a horrific knockoff of a famed Japanese console that only a snarky British gentleman can properly go to town on. Not to spoil the ending or anything, but there's a reason why he calls himself a Doctor (and no it's not like why Judge Reinhold calls himself Judge). [YouTube]
We've been running into quite a few high-end audiophile devices lately, some of them outlandishly priced. Cases in point: those $7250 speaker wires from Pear Cable, or that $6,820 wooden volume control in the pic above. We're wondering how far this audiophile affinity goes, and would like for you to help us. What's the most outrageous audio product you've seen? Send us your nomination in the form of a URL to tips AT gizmodo.com, and we'll put together a gallery of all the most extreme entries. We're not necessarily making value judgments about whether any of these products actually make any difference or not, we just want to have a grand exhibition of the extravagant lengths to which audiophile products have extended. Have they gone overboard? Let's line them all up along with their prices, and then we'll let them speak for themselves.
For her birthday, a 14-year-old girl from Texas wanted an iPod. So her mother took her to the Target in Fort Worth to buy her one. After surely promising to not load the device with "devil music," the family purchased the new $350 iPod. And then they opened it. And it was full of rocks. (And not pretty rocks like we used to make this article look better.)
Ahh, but they lied, you say? They went home, took the iPod, grabbed some rocks, refilled the box, high-fived like mofos and cashed in? Not the case. Because when the family returned to Target, they were forced to take in-store credit and so they had to head to another Target to buy another iPod (because apparently the Fort Worth Target store carries one iPod at all times). At the second store, the girl bought another iPod and opened it in front of store employees. What did they find? More rocks.
Lesson of the day? Buy your gadgets online and save tax. [startelegram via ars]
We've seen all sorts of iPhone wannabes from China, but this SPhone is made of paper and it will be yours for just 3,999 Taiwanese dollars or $122. You may not want it, however. Not because it's made of people but because actually, according to a Taiwanese reader, it's made out of paper so people can burn it at funerals. That way, according to him, dead people will get it in the afterlife. And even while it may be for burning, it comes with specs:
