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review

Lightning Review: Datto Network Storage With Offsite Backup

The Gadget: Datto's Backup NAS, a 100/500GB network storage device that automatically uploads whatever is on it to Datto's servers, giving you an off-site copy of your important information in case of a catastrophic loss. More »

3g iphone

100+ iPhone 2 Designs I Guarantee Steve Jobs Won't Unveil Anytime Soon

I recently challenged you all to come up with the most ridiculous iPhone 2 concept designs possible, and boy oh boy did you ever deliver. What you're about to see is over 100 of the most impractical, nonsensical and flat-out retarded cellphone designs the world has ever seen. No, you won't be seeing any of these on stage at WWDC next month and you certainly won't see them at the Apple store, but hopefully the sheer insanity and creativity of your fellow readers will tide you over until the real thing drops. Enjoy.


at&t

Free AT&T iPhone Wi-Fi Is Officially Back

The flip floppery AT&T iPhone Wi-Fi access has finally been made official, with AT&T adding a note on their own iPhone plan page that reflects the free Wi-Fi. That's 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, some of which are at Starbucks, some of which are at a Barnes and Noble. Finally, now with wireless access, you've got something to read at Barnes and Noble. [AT&T]

discs

Criterion Collection Going Blu-Ray!

When it comes to the fine art of presenting movies on discs, Criterion's treatment of films, in quality and extras, finds itself unparalleled. And that's why it is amazingly good news that they're finally going Blu-ray. More »

nintendo wii

Nintendo Wii's Nintendo Channel Screenshot Tour and Hands-on

The Wii's "Nintendo Channel" just went live, giving you a way to both watch trailers of current and upcoming Nintendo games, and feed Nintendo information on what games you play. What's the latter for? So Nintendo can better customize the trailers of games to recommend to you, thus making you buy more games and completing the cycle by feeding THOSE stats back to them. How good is it? Okay, I suppose. The other stuff, like downloading DS demos and finding game information (how many players, whether the nunchuck is supported) is more useful. Hit the jump for a huge gallery tour.

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sprint's $100 million mistake

Sprint Spending $100 Million to Kick iPhone in the Nuts (iPhone Wearing Cup)

Starting May 9th, Sprint will begin a massive, $100 million marketing campaign aimed straight at the iPhone's nether regions. Stacking its 3G Instinct against the iPhone, Sprint hopes to show that EVDO and GPS make their product way better than anything coming out of Cupertino. The problem isn't that the Instinct is necessarily a bad phone, or that Sprint is a worse service than AT&T. It's that Sprint's series of commercials will cost the company $100 million to promote a message that will most probably be a moot point in one month if/when Apple announces their 3G iPhone. Here's their second commercial: More »

home entertainment

Pioneer Kuro 2008 First Impressions: New Thin Plasma and Projector Beat All

Today we took a look at the Kuro 2G plasma compared to the 1G and others. We also had a look at the JVC-made projector that Pioneer is branding Kuro Elite. The hype—if not the price—seems totally worth it. But instead of trying to tell you how much I enjoyed the display of in-yer-face contrast comparison, take a look at the pics I snapped. I marked some with shutter speeds, so you can get a better sense of what we saw. More images of the thinnest Elite plasma monitor and a look at the projector after the jump. More »

star wars

DIY R2-D2 Is Even Better than the Real Thing

Chris James' R2-D2 won four Make Magazine editors' choice ribbons at Maker Faire and it's easy to see why: not only does it have every detail from the original—except having a little person inside—but this one is even more charming, capable of singing the Star Wars theme, and Indiana Jones sound bites. It only needs to have a built-in projector to be absolutely perfect. We asked Chris about the obvious next step: installing sensory inputs and artificial intelligence to make it truly autonomous. His take—and another video of R2 dancing with kids at Maker Faire—after the jump.
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home entertainment

Pioneer's 2008 Kuro Line: Thinner Blacker Plasmas and an LCOS Projector But No LCDs

Today Pioneer is revealing its official 2008 Kuro TV lineup for the US. As we expected from European announcements, it includes second-generation Kuro plasmas—thinner, with five-times-deeper black levels than the first critically acclaimed Kuro plasma—and a Kuro-branded LCOS projector originally developed by JVC. What's missing here are the smaller-sized Kuro LCDs that Pioneer is offering European flat-panel shoppers. Here's the full product rundown, plus the reason for the missing LCD piece of the puzzle: More »

gaming

Razer vs. SteelSeries PC Gaming Gear Battlemodo: Which One Made Me a Better Gamer?

Not to be a prick, but I'm a better gamer than probably 80 percent of you. At any given first-person shooter, I will probably kill you more than you kill me, and by a decent margin. The point is, I'm good—but I'm no pro. I've actually always been skeptical about "pro" gaming gear, and the sliver of an edge you might gain by paying a lot more. I put complete setups from both SteelSeries and Razer—using my beloved, well-worn five-year-old Logitech gear as a control—through a rigorous multi-day Battlemodo to definitively answer a single, fundamental question: Will pro gaming gear make me a better gamer? More »

skyfire browser

Hands-on With Windows Mobile Skyfire Browser Beta 0.6

Skyfire just got its 0.6 update, bring with it a few more features (listed after the jump) and a bit of compatibility increase that makes it feel more like a real browser than it was even when we saw it at CTIA. The overall idea is the same: Skyfire servers render pages into image form, which then makes it onto your Windows Mobile phone over an internet connection. On our Sprint HTC Mogul, Gizmodo loaded pretty damn fast over EV-DO, and features like Flash actually seemed to work well. More »

zune update

Zune 2.5 Update Screenshot Tour

If you haven't yet gotten the chance to update to Zune 2.5, here's a screenshot tour that takes you through the new and notable changes. A lot of the stuff is the same—it's only a point update and not one to change the fundamental features—but there are great updates in the social portion of the software. Hit the jump for the full tour.


blu-ray

Panasonic's DMP-BD50 Their First BD-Live Blu-ray Player

Today in NYC, Panasonic showed off its DMP-BD50, the company's first BD-Live Blu-ray 2.0 player—and the second in the market besides the PlayStation 3—setting the price at $700. It's an improvement over the DMP-BD30, which will stay on the market as a $500 step-down. In addition to BD-Live (and the requisite Ethernet port), it will decode all new DTS and Dolby Digital codecs internally, as well as bitstream them to a compatible receiver, if that's your preference. The player, initially announced at CES, will ship in "late spring," presumably the next 4-6 weeks, and will not need a firmware upgrade to be 2.0 compatible—a requirement of the $400 Sony BDP-S350 player due out around the same time. Fact sheet after the jump. More »

wireless nunchuck

Lightning Review: Nyko Kama Wireless Nunchuk

The Gadget: Nyko's Kama, a Wireless Nunchuck for your Wii that syncs up with an included dongle on your Wiimote.

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htc

Hands-On with the HTC Touch Diamond (Verdict: Slightly Sluggish, But Has Nice UI Touches)

The HTC Touch Diamond—iPhone Killer or just another Windows Mobile device? It kinda reminds me of a mini-iPhone. A couple of nice design features: the animated weather display (you can have up to six places' weather forecast bookmarked) makes me think of the widget on my MacBook; the click-wheel in miniature that lets you zoom in on the screen; and there's a very nifty little feature that automatically switches the phone onto silent mode when you lie it on its front. UI was much more attractive than I was expecting, but the touchscreen takes quite a bit of getting used to: it's sluggish to the touch, compared to the hot-butterish iPhone, but the HTC rep assured me that it's not a final version of the software, and everything should have been ironed out by the time of the European and Asian launches next month. So, to answer my questions, No, and No.


launch pad crash

NASA Launch Complex Gets Demolished, Bounces Back

We have seen many spectacular demolitions, but the destruction of the Mobile Service Structure at NASA/USAF's Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, is perhaps the most striking of them all: instead of imploding down, the whole ultra-strong metal structure falls to it side and actually seems to bounce on the ground—shattering cameras a mile away—looking almost intact after the dust clears up. The sound, even from the distance, is deafening. More »

smartphones

HTC Launches the Diamond—Small and Very iPhone-esque

So, this is the Touch Diamond. It's small, slim, "a holistic experience," according to Horace Luke, HTC's Chief Innovations Officer, and "just like your life." Out in Europe and Asia next month, we should get our hands on it later on this year, and it's the closest thing so far to an iPhone that hasn't come out of Cupertino. Not surprising, since Luke and his team wanted the design to be worthy of MoMA. I'm just not sure about the diamond design on the back. Here is a gallery, the specs and some of the choice quotes from the presentation:
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zune update

Zune 2.5 Update Brings TV Shows, More Social Networking, Improved Software Features

The Zune 2.5 Spring update launches tomorrow, and with it comes purchasable TV shows and even more social networking functions. The big part is more tightly-integrated social stuff—like being able to see your friends' Zune cards inside of the Zune software instead of heading to your browser—the upside of which is automatically getting the full tracks that your friends have recently listened to if you're a Zune Pass subscriber. This takes up about 100 megs per friend card. There's also improvement in the player itself, like the return of auto playlists and the introduction of gapless playback. Wee! More »