Gizmodo
In Brief
iPod Camera Connector Picture
I was hoping for something a little more amazing, I guess, than a little white plastic USB converter, but I suppose the $30 iPod Camera Connector is better than nothing. When will they make a little USB camera that fits on the end, or a camera shell that envelops the iPod and uses it as both the storage and the screen? (Thanks, Bob.Ross and Goop!) More »
In Brief
XM Ups Monthly Fee to $13
In a sign that they're happy exactly where they are, satellite radio operator XM has hiked their rates to $13 a month, a 30 percent increase from the precious $10 a month rate. If you're already a subscriber, you can save yourself some scratch by pre-paying for a year (or longer, if you're that sure in your ability to listen to All Albanian, All The Time programming for the next year). It was sort of inevitable&madsh;competitor Sirius already charges $13 a month already for their service. More »
In Brief
Fujitsu to Release 120GB Laptop Drive
Laptop hard drives are great, because they are so much easier to shoplift. I mean, you can put a 3.5-inch drive in your pants, but those little 2.5-inch jobs go in a front pocket, or even behind a wallet. Seriously, it's like digging up dead babies and candying them. Fujitsu would like you to know that they'll be making a new, higher capacity 120GB version very soon. They didn't mention how fast it was going to be, but I'd expect 4200RPM at best, or maybe 5400 if we're lucky. If you're the kind of person who replaces laptop hard drives with some frequency (they also make fine portable FireWire drives, as well), this will be good, if inevitable news. More »
In Brief
Spam: AsianLoad.com
Well gosh, let's see. I mean, it's great, but an hour later... Also, quit spamming me, thanks! Just because we have an elf for a mascot doesn't mean we suddenly got a fetish for all things Aquanet. More »
In Brief
LoungeLight LED Candles
Mom got me these Candela Rechargeable Lamps for Christmas, and despite her typical, sheepish excuses, they are actually sort of cool. I wouldn't explore an abandoned mine with them or anything, but they serve as occasional, dorky ambiance. These LoungeLight LED Candles, however, are way cooler (sorry Mom). Each way has a built-in LED and battery that lights the wax from the inside, providing a hippie fusion that really sets off your felt posters. And you can refill them (if you buy more candles from ThinkGeek), so it's not like it burns down so far then starts a chemical fire. More »
In Brief
Official: Wi-Fi on Airplanes Not Lies
So who else heard about internet on airplanes and said, "Golly, I can't wait to not afford that!" A person who calls hirself 'Alexander,'—the bishonen anime hermaphrodite avatar isn't giving me much to go on, although who are we to talk?—tried out the Boeing Connexion broadband service on a flight from Frankfurt and varified that it does actually work, then went on to talk about the battery life on their Axim X50. Awesome, glad to know it actually works and the Lufthansa stewards don't just come by and ink a big LOADING on your newspaper or something, but maybe next time you could benchmark it and tell us how fast it was. Also, do that other idea, where you were going to test Skype—that would almost make the $30 fee worth it. More »
In Brief
A Short History of Ringtones
The New Yorker, which is apparently a magazine and not a sandwich, has an article on the history of cell phone ringtones, the little bits of MIDI and MP3 that accounted for four billion dollars in revenue last year. While the history may not be enlightening—they started crappy, then got better—it serves as a decent round-up of the state-of-the-art in coworker frustration, as well. They neglect to mention the nascent trend among the cutting edge, where discordant sine waves are loaded onto different phones, forcing the evacuation of cerebrospinal fluid through the ears of every other person in your sales meeting. More »
In Brief
New Game Boy This Xmas, Says Not Nintendo
Sister site Kotaku passes on speculation from an industry analyst that projects Nintendo will be launching a new Game Boy this year to complement its Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance SP lines. From the chatter, it doesn't sound like a new product line, exactly, but instead another streamlining of the Game Boy Advance platform—hopefully something that uses the same cartridge formats, but in an even slimmer form factor than the near-perfect Game Boy Advance SP. More »
In Brief
Syntax Olevia LT25HVE
Syntax has announced a new Olevia LCD TV, the LT26HVE, which will offer a 1,280 by 780 pixel resolution in a 26-inch screen. So that's fine and everything, but not that notable, except for the price: just $900 MSRP, which is really pretty affordable, considering the rest of the specs. Syntax claims they've been able to lower the price thanks to building their own video chipsets in-house. Whatever they did, they should keep on doing it. More »
In Brief
More Siemens SF65 Details
Overclocker's Workbench, of all people, has some more pictures and light details of the Siemens SF65 cameraphone, the 1.3-megapixel clamshell that is the German manufacturer's answer to the Sony Ericsson s700i. It's not likely to hit our shores, sadly, but we may not be missing that much—while the camera functions look potentially good, no expandable memory might limit its usefulness, especially when coupled with the lack of Bluetooth that makes offloading pictures easier. It looks nice, though—it's hard to hate the flip around screen that gives you the best of candybar and clamshell form factors. More »
In Brief
Sharp Refrigerator Heats Food Up
This new fridge from Sharp can not only keep food cold (crazy!), but also has a space in the middle that keeps food warm—up to 130F degrees. The idea is to keep leftovers toasty for working salarymen who have to stay late at the office. If the whisky proves warmer than their beds, though, the fridge can be automatically set to flip over to cooling mode after a set period of time. And in the next chamber over, it's still making ice cubes. More »
In Brief
Gizmodo Tweaks
For months readers have been asking, "When will Gizmodo get a robot head logo?" I'm pleased to announced that after weeks of toil from our webben technicians, your robot logo desires have finally been met. Along the way, they took the time to add the new Kinja guide, RSS feeds per subcategory (so you can pull out just the bits that interest you, if that's your style), and absolutely no comments or user feedback, because you're all yammering monkeys who have nothing worthwhile to add (although you can always kvetch in irc.gizmodo.com #gizmodo, if you need to). More »
In Brief
Pretec Allegro Player
Remember the Pretec iDisk Tiny, one of the "world's smallest" flash drives? Pretec has released this Allego MP3 player which isn't all that fancy or special by itself, but happens to use the Pretec iDisk Tiny as storage, powered by a AAA battery. Flash memory is getting so inexpensive that this sort of efficiency is hardly necessary these days, but I still think it's nifty. The thing is, it looks like you have to take the rotating cover off the iDisk, which gives you something else to misplace. More »
In Brief
T-Mobile Says They're Patched Up
Kevin Poulsen explains the lax security procedures at T-Mobile that made last week's Paris Hilton leak possible on WiredNews. Apparently an exploit to their WebLogic application server allowed anyone to extract customer records for at least 18 months after the vulnerability was first announced. T-Mobile has publically started they've contacted 400 people whose information might have been compromised, but it seems likely that thousands more could be at risk. T-Mo says they have the holes patched up, but won't list specifics of their actions. Obviously some holes, like the Caller ID spoofing voice mail issue we thought we discovered last week (but has been known for a lot longer, it seems), are still wide open. More »
In Brief
KidSmart Talking Smoke Detector
Once, deep in sleep, my brain assured me that a nuclear meltdown was imminent in whatever phantom building I was in at the time, when in fact it was my alarm. I did not wake, apparently because nuclear meltdown is commonplace or something. Matthew Ferris and Bruce Black have developed a smoke detector that would hopefully wake even me. The KidSmart Vocal Smoke Detector relies on the 'cocktail party effect,' where a person's own name or a familiar voice is more easily discernable even against a great deal of background noise. Allowing the user to record their voice onto the device, the KidSmart plays back the recording and a standard warning tone when it detects fire. More »
In Brief
iPod triPod
We know that you would do anything for your iPod. So when you discovered, deep inside, the iPod wanted to be a helicopter, you did not mind. Sure, using these triPod speakers might occasionally send your tiny hard drive crashing to the table below (especially if you throw it into the air, expecting a slowed descent), and you no longer will be able to read what song is playing, but you can't stifle the dreams of those you love, no matter how retarded. More »
In Brief
