[Think Geek via DVICE]

[Hacked Gadgets via Make via DVICE]

DALLAS —(Business Wire)— Aug. 8, 2008 Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile), today announced the availability of the Samsung Messager(TM) (SCH-r450) to MetroPCS customers at authorized dealer locations and company-owned retail locations. The Samsung Messager sports a sleek horizontal slider-design and QWERTY keyboard, making it easy for users to travel light and stay in touch while on the go.

"The stylish horizontal slider of the Samsung Messager is easy to use," said Bill Ogle, Chief Marketing Officer of Samsung Telecommunications America. "The Samsung Messager's attractive layout and QWERTY keyboard is a great fit for people who love text messaging."

Available in black, the Messager is packed with a powerful feature set, including a built-in 1.3 megapixel camera, SMS, MMS, email and IM messaging capabilities(1), advanced voice recognition, Bluetooth(R) wireless technology and speakerphone for easy, hands-free operation. The Messager's MP3 player boasts a rich user interface, while the external micro SD slot provides the user with up to 2GB of memory support.

For more information on where to purchase the Samsung Messager, please visit metropcs.com or samsungwireless.com.

Key features of the Samsung Messager include:

— Horizontal Slider with QWERTY Keyboard

— Stereo Bluetooth(R) Wireless Technology

— MP3 Player (microSD)

— 1.3 Megapixel Camera

— Messaging Services

— Advanced Voice Recognition

— Speakerphone

— Dimensions: 4.4" x 2.0" x 0.7"

— Display: 2.1" 262K TFT, 176X220 pixels

[Samsung]

The R4 is sold all over the place in Akihabara, the nerd district of Tokyo, and the employees at stores there have already noticed an uptick in sales.

The rush in demand has been amazing. These devices always sell well. But this weekend should be staggering, don't you think?

Yes, I do think. So if you're on the fence about getting one or just discovered their existence thanks to this lawsuit, now seems like a pretty good time to jump on board. For, uh, homebrew games only, of course. [Kotaku]

SEE A SPLASH OF 'POPBANG' COLOUR ON THE CHEVROLET MOTOR SHOW STAND!

- Unique Chevrolet Camaro painting wows crowds at British International Motor Show
- Paintings created with remote control cars
- Live demonstration on Sunday August 3

Visitors to the British International Motor Show will be able to check out unique renderings of a pair of very special cars on the Chevrolet stand.

The paintings, of the Camaro Convertible and Beat concept cars – both of which are the stars of the Chevrolet stand, are the work of 25-year old artist Ian Cook from Solihull, West Midlands. But instead of creating the images with a simple paintbrush, Ian used a somewhat unique method of artistry.

The images were created using remote control cars driven through acrylic paints, with further detail added by using old car tyres. As well as cars, Ian has also painted some famous figures from the world of motoring using the same method, including Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and F1 ace Lewis Hamilton.

"I wanted to be an artist from a young age and decided that to be successful I needed something completely unique," said Ian. "I've always been mad about anything with wheels and I figured that using cars to paint cars would capture peoples' imaginations, so I experimented at home by driving some remote control models through paint."

Ian, who calls his art Popbang Colour, used a host of replica GM cars to create the Camaro, including three models of the Camaro Concept itself, live on the show's opening day. He also created an image of the Beat minicar concept, both of which will be on display in the Chevrolet Drivers' Lounge for the duration of the show.

But those who want to see Ian create a masterpiece in person should pop along to the Motor Show, at London's Excel exhibition centre, Docklands, on the final day of the event – Sunday August 3 – from 10.00am.

There, Ian will be using his unique painting method to create an image of British racing star Rob Huff's Chevrolet Lacetti World Touring Car, a week after the series visits the UK for its annual visit to Brands Hatch.

"I can't wait to get started on the racing car," said Ian. "With the intricate liveries and body kits, competition cars require an extra level of detail, and that's where you need skill with the remote control cars."

One thing's for certain – Ian's next creation is sure to go with a bang. Or maybe even a pop...

One of the most fundamental changes in the R700 cards—which are two RV770s with a PCI Express switch connecting the the two and double the memory—is that the GPUs actually communicate with each other, whereas past CrossFire configs had both cards basically rendering their own sections independently, then combining them. AnandTech says it's not entirely clear how much communication there will be, but there will definitely be more than there was. Also, the drivers still need to come up to spec to let the card truly shine, but the hardware is totally in the right place. [AnandTech]

The music player in its current form is a humongoid set of headphones that can do things like adjust the volume based on what direction you roll your eyes, or change the track by moving your eyes from side to side. The telephone is a ball-shaped ring that sits on your finger and uses bone conduction to transmit the sound of the caller to your ear. And theyre also working on a wristwatch that can interpret taps between the thumb and forefinger as remote control commands, like a modern day Morse code. But this is all R&D stuff, of course. Don't expect it in stores anytime soon. [AP]

PANASONIC INTRODUCES WORLD'S FIRST 6X WRITE-ONCE BLU-RAY DISC MEDIA*

Secaucus, NJ (June 18, 2008) – Panasonic today announced that it has developed the world's first Write-Once Blu-ray Discs (BD-R) with 6X writing speed*. The new discs will be available in both 25GB** and 50GB capacities.

Panasonic, which introduced the world's first dual-layer 1X BD-RE Blu-ray Disc in 2004***, 2X BD-R/RE Discs in 2006, and 4X BD-R Disc in 2007, is now launching the first 6X BD-R to meet consumer demand to read and write large amounts of data at higher speeds. The new 6X discs have a maximum data transfer speed of an amazingly fast 216Mbps. This transfer speed, along with the discs' high capacity, allows consumers to use these discs for a variety of applications such as storing high-definition video or backing up PC data.

The new discs feature a wide power margin at any writing speed from 1X to 6X. This enables high-quality recording, even if the drive's laser power fluctuates, resulting in greater overall drive compatibility.

Panasonic's adoption of newly-developed disc technology produces extremely level and well-balanced discs with highly precise signal grooves. This improves servo characteristics and enables the laser beam to focus to the right position even when the disc is rotating with 6X high speed, thus providing optimum reading and writing performance.

Specifications

6X BD-R

Format Name: Blu-ray Disc Recordable Format Ver. 1.3
Model Number: LM-BR25MDE, LM-BR50MDE
Data Capacity: 25GB, 50GB
Layer Constitution: Single Sided/Single Layer, Single Sided/Dual Layer
Recording Format: Phase Change Recordable
Laser Wavelength: 405nm （Blue-violet Laser）
Objective Lens Numerical Aperture (NA): 0.85
Disc Diameter/Thickness: 120mm x 1.2mm
Track Pitch: 0.32 μm
Minimum Mark Length: 0.149μm
Data Transfer Speed: 216Mbps(Max.)
Hard Coating

*As of June 18, 2008

**The capacity of Blu-ray discs is expressed in units of 1GB=1 billion bytes, but the capacity is slightly below that after formatting, so that the actual amount area that can be used will be less.

***Introduced in Japanese market only

[Panasonic and AVWatch]

TOSHIBA LAUNCHES WORLD’S FIRST LAPTOP WITH 128GB SOLID STATE DRIVE

Portégé R500-S5007V Measures 0.77-inches Thin and Weighs 2.4 Pounds Making it One of the Thinnest and Lightest Laptops

IRVINE, Calif. (June 17, 2008) – Toshiba’s Digital Products Division, today announced the addition of a 128GB solid state drive (SSD)1 into the innovative Portégé laptop series. Toshiba’s 2.4 pound2 Portégé R500-S5007V is the world’s lightest laptop with a 128GB SSD and DVD SuperMulti drive and one of the world’s thinnest with a SSD and DVD SuperMulti drive.
“With seven world’s first technologies the Portégé R500 series has served as a technology launching pad and redefined the ultraportable marketplace with its world’s first technologies and ‘green’ attributes, such as a transreflective LED backlit indoor/outdoor viewing display, the industry’s highest rated EPEAT Gold laptop and Energy Star 4.0 compliance,” said Jeff Barney, general manager and vice president, Digital Products Division, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. “First to incorporate a 128GB solid state drive is another major accomplishment for Toshiba and illustrates how the company is committed to delivering solutions that meet the needs of our customers.”
Utilizing the industry’s largest solid state drive capacity of 128GB, Toshiba’s
Portégé R500-S5007V provides ample storage space for carrying critical company data
and sensitive personal data while traveling. With no moving parts, SSD technology
provides customers with an enhanced level of reliability, durability and system
responsiveness.
To provide added convenience and on-the-go productivity, the Portégé R500 series was the world’s first laptop to ship with a 7mm DVD SuperMulti drive. The built-in optical drive reduces the Portégé R500-S5007V’s travel weight by providing users with an all-in-one solution, eliminating the bulk and inconvenience of carrying additional drives and cables.
For enhanced outdoor viewing, the Portégé R500 series incorporates the world’s first widescreen 12.1-inch transreflective LED backlit display, a feature that embraces the variety of lighting scenarios in which laptop computers are used including direct sunlight. Indoors, the LED backlit display produces an image rich in color saturation and superb quality. Outdoors, the transreflective screen lets the sun’s light pass through and reflects it out to bring the images on the display to life so users can switch off the LED backlighting off while outdoors and decrease overall battery consumption. This feature also makes the Toshiba Portégé R500 series an ideal choice for environmentally conscious users. This innovative display technology also enables users to expand their mobile computing boundaries beyond the traditional four walls of their office, home or local coffee shop to include locations with direct sunlight.
Measuring as thin as 0.77-inches, the Portégé R500 series uses Toshiba’s proprietary High Density Mounting Technology process to enable dual-sided motherboard component mounting. This innovative technology produces a motherboard that is one-third the size of a mainstream 15.4-inch notebook’s motherboard, while still providing users the same functionality.
The more than eight hours of battery life3 of the Portégé R500-S5007V gives users a full work day of normal computing on a single charge. To achieve this extended computing life, Toshiba subjected key system components to meticulous energy efficiency evaluation. Key Portégé R500-S5007V components use low power consumption technology including both the 128GB SSD and an ultra low voltage processor.
For executive durability and security, the Portégé R500-S5007V incorporates Toshiba’s EasyGuard™ Technology4 including advanced encryption, multiple level passwords and a fingerprint reader. These innovative features help prevent theft, and protect against unauthorized access to the users system, helping keep confidential information secure. In terms of data protection, the elimination of all mechanical moving parts from the hard drive Toshiba has designed a machine that further enhances the level of reliability and durability.
Additional information about Toshiba’s EasyGuard Technology is available at
www.easyguard.toshiba.com
The Portégé R500-S5007V Recommended Configuration (MSRP $2,999)5
• Genuine Windows Vista™ Business (32-bit version)
o Downgrade media for Genuine Windows XP Professional
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor U77006
o 1.33GHz, 2MB L2, 533MHz FSB with 64 bit
• 2048 PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM8
• 128GB Serial ATA solid state drive1
• 12.1-inch diagonal widescreen high brightness display
o 1280 x 800 (WXGA) – Transreflective backlit LED
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 9509
• 7mm, 8xDVD-SuperMulti (+/-R Single Layer) drive supporting 9 formats
• Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN10
• Intel® PRO/1000 - 10/100/1000 Ethernet
• Bluetooth® 2.0 + EDR
• 3-Year Standard Limited Warranty11

Complete product specifications for all models within the Portégé R500 Series are available at www.explore.toshiba.com/laptops/portege/R500. The Portégé R500 Series is available with a three-year standard, limited warranty11, which includes carry-in support at Authorized Service Providers throughout the country; or customers may utilize any of the 4,460 UPS Stores and Mail Boxes Etc. locations nationwide for packaging and delivery of the product to a centralized depot for prompt turnaround service. Customers can also choose to upgrade the notebooks’ service plans, including up to four years of extended warranty coverage.
All new Toshiba notebooks are RoHS-compatible12, effectively reducing the environmental impact by restricting the use of lead, mercury and certain other hazardous substances. Beginning in the third Quarter of 2008, Toshiba will offer a computer trade-in and recycling program for all manufacturer’s PCs to reduce environmental impact and promote efficient utilization of resources. To learn more about this free PC recycling program or to find out how to recycle other consumer electronic products, please visit: www.toshiba.eztradein.com/toshiba.

[Toshiba ]

The ultimate goal for Intel researchers is to give robots the sense of pre-touch, which they describe as having a range longer than touch, but shorter than vision (kinda vague, no?). Anyways, the video is worth watching, just to see the claw adjust to objects placed within its proximity. [Wired Science]

If you want a bigger challenge, you can take the vector-based PDF plans to print in a large format plotter to build your own life-sized, completely useless but absolutely awesome astromech. And if you do, please send me pics. [R2-D2 Plans via Star Wars Blog]

[redbubble via boingboing]

Macheads and Windows fanboys can now proclaim their love for their respective platforms through sign language...and oh damn! Is that a Linux Lover encroaching on your turf? Turn that mother out! All you nerds should be careful using these on the street though, since you could come across someone who might mistake them for their real-life gangsta counterparts. 7H|_|G L1F3. [Joey DeVilla]

Gear Crazy
No offense to Steve Carell, but I'm not talking about goofy Maxwell Smart crap—I'm talking about serious Bond-grade hardware: Inflatable getaway airplanes, remote-controlled spying insects, cigarettes that fire .22 rounds, hallucinogenic cigars, about 100 other tobacco-related instruments of deception and an ingeniously camouflaged speedboat or two, not to mention digital audio recorders and CCD-based digicams developed decades before their commercial appearance. They've all been built by CIA engineers and used successfully, at least in the test phase.

The extensively researched book chronicles the gear and the people behind the gear, operatives still shrouded in pseudonym (or even anonym) who went around Moscow on cold winter days planting listening devices in hotel rooms or dead-dropping microfiche in the middle of public parks. It's about the nerds in the labs who were asked to make debris-free drills and didn't balk, guys who were asked to mount blow-up sex dolls as pop-up in-car decoys and didn't laugh. (OK, some probably laughed.) In short, it's an incredible page turner, mostly because none of it was dreamed up by Sir Ian Fleming or any of his thousand copycats.

Whodunit
The book is so good because it's written by two of the only guys who could write it. Bob Wallace was a CIA agent for 32 years and the director of the CIA's Office of Technical Services (that is, "office of covert badass spy gear") from 1998 to 2002. A guy who chose spy work over journalism after leaving the University of Kansas, he did his first 20 years the hard way, in field ops. He admits that many of his own early exploits can never be written down.

Keith Melton is an espionage historian, something of an international man of mystery if I ever met one, whose most authoritative claim on this project is that he has the largest collection of espionage devices the world has ever (not) seen. You know that Palm III that features heavily in the 2007 spy thriller Breach, about late Cold War Soviet turncoat Robert Hanssen? Yeah, Melton owns that Palm III—Hanssen's original, complete with stolen state secrets. I asked Melton how he got it, and he just said vaguely that he has his ways. "Let's leave it at that."

Too Many Secrets
I asked both of the authors how they were allowed to release a book filled with spy secrets, and they admitted it had not been easy. By Wallace's account, the CIA tied it up for 18 months. Melton says it's more like two years, and that at one point the CIA deemed the work "the most damaging book on espionage ever to be published," and "a virtual primer on espionage." As you can tell, the CIA eventually consented to the book's publication, more or less intact.

"At one time, all this material would have been classified secret or higher," Wallace says. "But given the change in technology that has occurred, the time that has passed and the fact that the primary target, the Soviet Union, no longer existed, these stories could be written down to fill a major void in American intelligence literature."

In truth, the reason it can be declassified is that espionage involves totally different kinds of machines now, mainly laptops and BlackBerrys, and instead of needing microphones and cameras, agents need software to "listen" to chatter in the ether.

CIA's Secret Gadget Rooms
I asked Wallace if there was a secret room at CIA headquarters where all the gadgets hung from the wall, his answer was even better: there are multiple rooms, one for each department: the guys who did disguises and forged documents had one, the guys who did secret listening devices had one. "It was like going on a Hollywood tour," he says, only as OTS director, he was the guy giving the tours, to visiting congressmen and other senior Washington staff.

"I don't know that I ever had a bad visit with a congressman. You would put things in their hands to touch and feel, to operate and manipulate, and then you'd tell them the operational story that went behind the object: what it was used for, and the product that came from it," says Wallace, adding wistfully, "It was a dream job."

End of Spy Gear?
Melton says that Wallace may be the last OTS director to give those tours, or to bring a briefcase of neat-o hardware to his closed congressional hearings. In the future, directors would be "more likely to come and show you a printout or algorithm, something that could do more than 1,000 spies." Melton explains, "The gadgets are the spies, while the humans are support, now more than ever." How's that for making you feel sad and Matrix-y all at the same time?

If the age of the crazy cool spy gear has come to an end, all the more reason we should celebrate it. For the next several days, I will be posting spy hardware from Wallace and Melton's book with a "CIA Spytech" tag, stuff that will make you laugh, cry or just hide under your dresser for a while. It's amazing, chilling stuff and again, it's ALL TOTALLY REAL. Stay tuned! [Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to al-Qaeda]

While the R2-D2 wedding cake is not as advanced as the stunningly-accurate Maker Faire R2-D2, Charlene told us that she "bastardized an old camera for the lenses, with blue Halloween lights flashing behind throughout the whole wedding" for added realism.

The cake was the centerpiece in the wedding of two members of a Star Wars fan group in Alabama, which had all the guests dressed up as Star Wars characters, included the minister, who probably was wearing an R2-D2 beanie like mine. I've got to admit that it looks yummy, but seeing people eating R2's dome disturbs the Force out of me. [Thanks Charlene]

Make sure to watch the second half of the clip to catch a pretty remarkable reflection as the plane skims over the water. [CastleCreations]

We'll be honest, we don't even care that we'd be wearing video glasses. It looks like incredibly fun. [Product via Gearfuse]

Jesús Díaz: Have you tried to give your astromech droid actual "droid" powers? You know, like some complex sensory input and artificial intelligence, at least at the AIBO level.
Chris James: One of the top questions we get is, are they autonomous or can they be retrofitted with the electronics from the little interactive R2 from Hasbro. The simple answer is yes they can be or could be done, but (and it's a big but) would you want a 200lb aluminum droid running around bumping into things? At a convention or show full of kids it would be incredibly dangerous.

Even something small like the holo projector eye twitching could poke an eye out as kids look into them all the time. I've been at events where we've had frequency issues and it's incredible scary when a droid starts tearing off when you're not expecting it.

Having said that, there are a number of people working on AI R2's, mostly powered by Leaf.

JD: Are you planning to add them yourself in the future, though?
CJ: My droid is powered by a bunch of small PIC micro processors, so not a huge amount of processing power but I may add some sensor/intelligence, like rotation dome/tracking, and syncing sound to people talking to him. But I'd make it optional and under my control when I want it to be autonomous. So if people were at a distance he could track movement and respond with sounds.

JD: Seeing your R2-D2—and looking at current toy robotics—actually makes me believe that there's a possibility of having a Maybe not capable of calculating hyperspace jumps, but good enough to order him things using speech, rather than a remote. Do you think we will see multifunction droids in the spirit of R2 coming from companies any time soon?
CJ: I'm really not a robotics expert by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I see we're there right now in some area, but I can't see people owning cheap AI droids like C3PO or Artoo in our lifetime. It would be nice, but I just can't see Asimo gaining enough intelligence at a price we can all afford.

I would be quite happy to have this one combined with an HD projector, all speech controlled. [Artoo Detoo—Video by Brian Lam]

[Video and images courtesy of Bob Parrish]

Most big fans of the series and Star Wars know that both R2-D2 and C-3PO appear in several occasions in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the Well of Souls, which is the moment portrayed by this set, they appear in a post on Indy's right as him and Sallah remove the Ark.

Great detail from LEGO and good catch by Lindsay. [Thanks Lindsay]

• The HT-S4100 is a 5.1 systems that seems to lack HDMI, has a 200 watt sub and that same iPod dock. $479
• The HT-S3100 sub is powered by the receiver and lacks a dock. $379.

UPPER SADDLE RIVER, NJ (04/17/08) — Onkyo has introduced three new packaged home theater systems, each consisting of a flexible HDTV-capable audio-video receiver, five or seven surround-sound loudspeakers, powerful subwoofer, and an included iPod docking station on two of the systems. These systems, popularly called HTiB for "Home Theater in a Box," can be combined with a video display, Blu-Ray or DVD player, and cable/satellite TV box to provide a complete home theater surround sound experience.

The 7.1 channel home theater receiver included with top of the line HT-S5100 offers an amazing range of capabilities at such a modest price point. The HT-R560 receiver has three 1080p compatible HDMI inputs and one output. The HDMI Pass-Thru provides optimal video quality with separate connections for the audio channels. For optimum sound quality, the highly regarded Audyssey 2EQ room correction technology automatically adjusts the sound character and time delay of each speaker relative to the listening positions. Additionally, Audyssey's Dynamic EQ adjusts sound on the fly to optimize sound quality for any volume, particularly at low listening levels.

The HT-S5100 includes advanced Dolby and DTS surround sound processing capabilities, a powerful 130-watts per channel using Onkyo's Wide Range Amplifier Technology (WRAT), seven loudspeakers with outstanding sound quality, and a powerful 290-watt subwoofer and is Sirius Satellite Radio ready. The HT-S5100 system also includes a new dedicated Onkyo iPod dock and charging station, plus the company's new Music Optimizer technology to enhance the dynamic range of MP3 and AAC files which are normally compressed for headphone playback.

The more affordable Onkyo HT-S4100 and HT-S3100 are 5.1-channel systems with HDTV-capable component video switching, DTS and Dolby Digital surround processing, and five loudspeakers. The HT-S4100 has a 200-watt subwoofer and included iPod dock. The HT-S3100's subwoofer is powered by the receiver, and there is no iPod dock with this system.

All three systems include full-function remote controls, and are available in either black or silver finishes.

The Onkyo HT-S5100, HT-S4100 and HT-S3100 will be available in April with suggested retail prices of $579, $479, and $379 each, respectively.