by Ryan Block, posted May 31st 2008 at 12:17AM We’ve got your summer crapcamcorders right ‘ere — three new RCA Small Wonder cams to make your Flips flop. (Read the full post about ‘RCA intros three new Small Wonder budget camcorders’…)
I don’t know about you, but glowing USB gadgets seem to be all the rage these days. Well, why not join in the fray with the USB Moody Star Hub? This features a quartet of USB 2.0 ports in different direction, ensuring none of those ports will go to waste. It will rotate through all seven colors, and since it draws power from your USB port, there is no need to lug around a heavy and ugly power adapter. The USB Moody Star Hub measures 75mm x 75mm x 18mm and weighs a pocket-friendly 45 grams. It will retail for $12 a pop. (Read the full post about ‘USB Moody Star Hub’…)
by Darren Murph, posted May 30th 2008 at 5:46PM If you’re anything like our boy Ryan, you’ve been wearing that Wii Fit out ever since you took delivery. Unfortunately, you’ve probably been doing a bit of unintentional jogging when logging miles back and forth to the local mini-mart for batteries. If you can’t seem to keep your Wii Balance Board charged, Nyko has introduced a novel solution: the Energy Pack for Wii Fit. Our pals over at Nintendo Wii Fanboy were able to get ahold of this very unit and put it through its paces, and generally speaking, they were quite impressed with the $20 peripheral-for-a-peripheral. Head on over for the full writeup and a smattering of pics.Read PermalinkEmail this7 CommentsFiled (Read the full post about ‘Nyko’s Energy Pack keeps your Wii balance board juiced’…)
Two things immediately sprang to mind when I saw this new invention: “Why didn’t I think of that?” and “Where was this when I was in high school?” From what I know, these Wordlocks are the first combination locks that allow you to set your combination using words rather than numbers. If you’re like me, and can’t remember a number sequence, these are for you. With a variety of products from padlocks (great for lockers, toolboxes, etc.), bike locks and TSA recognized luggage locks, you’ll never need to remember a number combination again. (Read the full post about ‘Wordlock combination locks - easy to set, never forget.’…)
Apparently the legal department of RIM got to CrackBerry before we could and had them pull the pictures down, but at least we still have the pamphlet shots. The blackberry KickStart, RIM’s first entry into the flip-phone market, got a hands-on experience from CrackBerry and it seems as if they are pretty darn happy with it. The basics include opening the flip to answer the phone, closing to end it, seeing the caller ID on the outside LCD screen, and external music controls (as expected), but here’s where RIM comes in. On regular candybar BlackBerry’s if the phone is holstered, the message will automatically appear once you pull it out of the holster. (Read the full post about ‘CrackBerry gets a BlackBerry Kickstart hands on’…)
Blockbuster is about to launch a pilot test of its in-store kiosks for downloading movies into portable media devices. Sounds cool? Even cooler is the fact that downloading one movie would only take a customer two minutes. And we’re not talking here of short half an hour movies but movies for rent in all their full-length glory. No less than Blockbuster’s Chairman and CEO James Keyes will be the one to demo the pilot kiosk during Blockbuster’s shareholder meeting. But don’t get too excited about this uber cool service yet folks, because the in-store kiosks only contain a few titles of movies, as Blockbuster is still negotiating with major studios regarding the possibility of including their movie titles into Blockbuster’s in-store kiosks database. (Read the full post about ‘Blockbuster preps up 30 seconds in-store movie download kiosk’…)
by Ryan Block, posted May 30th 2008 at 7:24PM It struck us the other day as we were going over some back posts that since the launch of the ASUS Eee PC (and the numerous products that have followed, from the MSI Wind to the HP Mini-Note), to the best of our knowledge we’ve all yet to have any normalized, agreed-upon name for these kinds of devices. Yes, they’re technically “ultraportables” (which we usually define as being any relatively small laptop and under four pounds), but to say an Eee PC is in the same class as, say, the Lenovo X300, the VAIO TZ, or the macbook air would be kind of misleading.We’ve heard “low-cost ultraportable” and “laptop-lite” used to describe these kinds of machines, but it seems best to let you decide: leave your best suggestion for what we all should all call this emerging product category, and we’ll put it up to vote next week. (Read the full post about ‘Eee PC-like ultraportables - name that product category’…)
by Joshua Topolsky, posted May 30th 2008 at 7:06PM In a move of unsurprising proportions, StyleTap announced today that it will be bringing its Palm OS emulator to the iphone and ipod touch… officially. This basically means that every one of those precious Palm apps you couldn’t live without will now be easily accessible via Apple’s devices, thus seriously threatening the argument for keeping your Treo 600. Gregory Sokoloff, CEO of the company, said that the response to a video posted in February of a demo version of the software convinced them to take the plunge. Palm, now might be a good time to stun us with your new OS.Read PermalinkEmail this17 CommentsFiled under: cellphones, HandheldsTags: hdtv, laptops, dap, home theater (Read the full post about ‘StyleTap’s Palm OS emulator officially coming to iPhone and iPod touch’…)
by Darren Murph, posted May 30th 2008 at 3:25PM Nothing too notable here — just that Toshiba is apparently fixing to unveil a brand new DVD player in the age of Blu-ray that will be “capable of producing high-resolution images from regular DVDs.” As you’re laughing heartily, ponder this: are we looking at a simple upconverting DVD player? Or will that Cell-based SpursEngine chip bring “super-resolution” to a standalone deck? (Read the full post about ‘Toshiba knows no shame, plans to release super-resolution DVD player’…)
Earlier this week, some Swedish dude got a lot of notoriety for pretending to "draw" a planet-sized self-portrait using GPS tracking. Today, we bring you a Finnish guy who is doing it for real, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale. Antti Laitinen has used a GPS to "draw" his face across maps of various European forests and cities. He started by tracing his portrait on a map. Then, with a GPS recorder in his pack, he started trying to walk the line he drew, using just a map and a compass to get his bearings. (The GPS was just for recording his path.) When he was done, he uploaded the GPS path to his computer. The result: A self-portrait of the artist as a drunken psychotic. But hey, GPS lines are a little wobbly. (Read the full post about ‘No-B.S. GPS Art: From Geocaching to Geodrawing’…)
