Jason Chen, Author at Gizmodo

Dr. Frog Reminds You to Water Plants, Plays One on TV

If your plants always look like they came out of the jungle where Predator and Governor Schwarzenegger did battle, invest in Doctor Frog. He’s an accredited Ph.D. in plantology, and uses what’s left of the lower half of his body—he was in a horrific golf cart accident—to detect the conductivity of your soil. Once he…

Gadgets Jason Chen

PSP Hardware Refresh Coming Later ’07, Says Sony

If you were thinking of buying a PSP at its new low price of $169, you may want to wait a little. At Sony’s San Diego gamer’s day, the company let fly some announcements about the handheld that says they’re going to do a “hardware refresh” later this year. https://gizmodo.com/retailers-wish-is-granted-psp-priced-dropped-to-169-249386 Whether it’s just a bigger…

Tech News Jason Chen

Hands-On Gallery: Colorware Makes Xbox 360 Elites Obsolete

Click to viewIf you’re one of the few who wanted an Xbox 360 Elite more for the color than for the HDMI or the 120GB hard drive, then you’re in luck. For around $99, you can get your own black (or blue or green or red or orange or whatever color you want) Xbox 360…

Reviews Jason Chen

Japan’s Rin Standing Speaker Emphasizes Visual Quality Over Sound Quality

Not that we’re saying the Rin doesn’t sound good—there’s no way we can tell without hearing it—but it seems to us anything that looks this weird can’t be something audiophiles will want show off to their audiophile friends. The unit’s made from a combination of imported Italian marble and Japanese engineering, which is great on…

Tech News Jason Chen

Cellphone Strap Cellphone Charger in the Shape of an Eraser

Only Japan could have come up with this item: a cellphone strap that’s not only shaped like an eraser, but houses two AA batteries and is actually a phone charger. Unfortunately, the only phones that can be charged with this thing are from FOMA and SoftBank—both only available in Japan—but we’re sure somebody can come…

Tech News Jason Chen

Transformers Movie Shirts Are Less Than Meets the Eye

As if the Transformers watches weren’t cheap and tacky enough, take a look at these Transformers movie shirts. They’re actually life-size wearable animated gifs, which light up like the $5 lapdance joint we frequent when CES rolls around. https://gizmodo.com/transformers-watches-make-you-feel-look-like-a-kid-aga-260359 Although we still have faith in the movie, all these cheap accessories and tie-ins aren’t doing…

Tech News Jason Chen

The Hydropolis Building Set

Are LEGOs not wet enough for you? Peep this Hydrodynamic building set. It’s essentially a construction set that lets you make water do all kinds of weird and fantastic-looking things, like flow from one container to another, and from that container to the next one, and not to mention dripping! Oh, we could tell you…

Tech News Jason Chen

HTC Elf Spotted, Looks Tiny and White

Here’s an HTC phone we haven’t seen before: the HTC 3450, or the Elf. It’s tiny, white, and has Windows Mobile 6—like a baby rabbit with a T-Mobile Dash duct taped to it. It also doesn’t have a keyboard, or a bunch of face buttons. It actually looks pretty great, in an iPod/minimalistic sort of…

Tech News Jason Chen

X-Keys USB Extender Lets You Rock Out From 150 Feet

If your Guitar Hero 2 controller keeps getting yanked because you’re rocking out from way across the room, check out the X-keys USB extender as demonstrated in the above video. The extender uses Cat 5 Ethernet cable in order to extend your USB experience up to 150 feet, which may cause signal degradation in normal…

Tech News Jason Chen

Commenter Hall of Fame: Strider_mt2k

We often do quiet assassinations of jackass commenters on the site, but once in a while we get one that’s really great. If you want to know who to emulate, take a look at strider_mt2k‘s comments. He comments on a lot of posts, which could potentially be annoying, but most of his stuff is either…

Tech News Jason Chen

Best Buy’s Insignia Releases First Handheld HDTV…Sorta

This 7-inch Insignia NS-7HTV is technically HDTV in the sense that yes, it does accept ATSC (the over the air HD signal). However, after receiving the signal the 7-inch TV displays the picture on its 480×234 pixel display. 480 x 234? That’s not even the 480i that the manufacturer claims. 480i is usually 640×480, not…

Tech News Jason Chen

Dealzmodo: Toshiba HD DVD Players With $100 to $200 Rebate

If you’re looking to get into the HD DVD game, Toshiba’s got a set of rebates coming up that’ll sweeten the pot. Starting May 20, if you buy a Toshiba HD-A2 (lowest price, $295 on Froogle) you’ll immediately get a $100 rebate in store. Whether that means online store is qualified, we’re not sure yet.…

Tech News Jason Chen

Windows Home Server to be Available on OEM (That Means You Can Buy It Solo)

We had a close look at the Windows Home Server (WHS) back in April, groping all its sweet, sweet home server features before we were shooed away by Microsoft’s people. Good news for PC enthusiasts who want to do their serving from an old PC: Microsoft’s just announced that they’re going to release WHS as…

Tech News Jason Chen

Butts-on With TreyChair: The Transforming Office Chair

You may remember the TreyChair—the chair that also turns into a stool and a floor rocker—because we showed it to you last week, but we finally got to get our hands and butts on it over the weekend and fully test it out. https://gizmodo.com/trey-gaming-chair-is-both-an-office-chair-and-a-gentlem-258737 After grinding our rears into it for hours and hours on…

Reviews Jason Chen

Halo 3 Zune Up For Pre-Order, Released June 15

Fans of the special edition Halo 3 Zune can head over to EBGames or Gamestop (they’re the same thing) and pre-order one for the release on June 15. https://gizmodo.com/first-pics-of-the-zune-halo-3-special-edition-259877 If pre-ordering this is anything like pre-ordering anything else at EB, you’ll hand them five bucks and they’ll try and get you to pre-order the Halo…

Tech News Jason Chen

Thanko’s MP3 Alarm Clock Provides Japanese Style Retro Wakeage

Crazy uncle Thanko’s back from looney town again, this time bringing you a gadget that’s halfway sane and quite useful to boot. On the surface, this alarm clock may seem like a standard retro-styled alarm clock, but if you look deeper you’ll realize it’s actually an MP3 alarm clock. The bells on top do absolutely…

Gadgets Jason Chen

Pur Water Purifying Fruit Flavor Cartridges Are Both Fantastic and Horrible

As if drinking regular water isn’t enough for kids these days, Pur is introducing Pur Flavor Options, which is a fruit cartridge you can stick into their Pur water filter systems. The upshot? Now you can flip a switch and get filtered fruit-flavored water from your tap, which has the taste of water you used…

Tech News Jason Chen

HP e-Book Reader Design Fakes Turning Pages

Although there’ve been lots of eBooks the past year, none of them have had this HP concept that was demoed at the HP Mobility Summit. Instead of pressing a button to turn the page (which you can presumably still do) there are touch strips on the top, bottom, and sides of the ebook that you…

Tech News Jason Chen

The Wassup Speaker Looks Like a Pokemon, is Ten Years Too Late On Catchphrase

The strange company b2 has announced their newest speaker line, the Wassup. Normally naming a speaker “Wassup” would be strange enough, but these guys have put in the extra effort and made their speaker shaped like a rabbit Pokemon. Buneary, is what we’d say it was. There’s no doubt these speakers are going to sound…

Tech News Jason Chen

Brando’s Wii Crystal Cooler Looks and Causes Cool

Not quite the ghetto fabulous Wii cooler we saw before, this Brando Crystal Wii cooler acts both as a stand for your console and a fan to cool it off. Best of all there’s loads of Blue LED light streaming up around the base into your Wii. https://gizmodo.com/wii-gets-a-cooling-fan-258362 You say tacky, but the case-modder inside…

Tech News Jason Chen

Jason Chen

Dr. Frog Reminds You to Water Plants, Plays One on TV

PSP Hardware Refresh Coming Later ’07, Says Sony

Hands-On Gallery: Colorware Makes Xbox 360 Elites Obsolete

Japan’s Rin Standing Speaker Emphasizes Visual Quality Over Sound Quality

Cellphone Strap Cellphone Charger in the Shape of an Eraser

Transformers Movie Shirts Are Less Than Meets the Eye

The Hydropolis Building Set

HTC Elf Spotted, Looks Tiny and White

X-Keys USB Extender Lets You Rock Out From 150 Feet

Commenter Hall of Fame: Strider_mt2k

Best Buy’s Insignia Releases First Handheld HDTV…Sorta

Dealzmodo: Toshiba HD DVD Players With $100 to $200 Rebate

Windows Home Server to be Available on OEM (That Means You Can Buy It Solo)

Butts-on With TreyChair: The Transforming Office Chair

Halo 3 Zune Up For Pre-Order, Released June 15

Thanko’s MP3 Alarm Clock Provides Japanese Style Retro Wakeage

Pur Water Purifying Fruit Flavor Cartridges Are Both Fantastic and Horrible

HP e-Book Reader Design Fakes Turning Pages

The Wassup Speaker Looks Like a Pokemon, is Ten Years Too Late On Catchphrase

Brando’s Wii Crystal Cooler Looks and Causes Cool

Cursor’s New Tool Lets Users Delegate to a Team of Coding Agents

Nvidia Needs to Remind Itself What PC Gamers Actually Want

Iran Says It Hit Oracle Facilities in UAE

‘Invincible’ Season 4 Is Doing Right By Debbie

Artemis 2 Day 2: Follow the Mission With Our Live Updates 🔴

New Theory Says We’ve Been Overcomplicating the Big Bang

Marvel Might Have Finally Dealt With One of the Most Hated ‘Spider-Man’ Characters Around

China Is Trying to Grow New Forests in This Notorious Mega-Desert. It’s Working

RAM Prices Are Threatening the Viability of the Raspberry Pi and Single-Board Computing

Michael B. Jordan’s First Post-Oscars Film Looks Way Cuter Than ‘Sinners’

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?