Joel

Joel's posts

One Year of Game Boy Advance SP

Gamespot notes that today is the the one-year launch anniversary of the Game Boy Advance SP, and adding to the festivities (woo!) is Nintendo’s announcement that the GBA SP is the fastest selling videogame system ever. In North America over 6.5 million units have been sold, making the GBA SP the most successful Game Boy…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 23 '04

Heatwatch Stopwatch Tracks Humidity and Temp

iThe Extech Heatwatch stopwatch not only performs all of the standard ‘stopwatchy’ duties you’d expect, but also has the ability to monitor humidity and temperature at the same time. As someone who has jogged to the store for cigarettes in all sort of different weather, I am familiar with the secret bonuses humidity and temperature…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 23 '04

MuVo MicroDrive Transplant

Studio 2f has a short and sweet illustrated howto on removing that Hitachi MicroDrive from the Creative MuVo. If getting an otherwise-$400 4GB Compact Flash MicroDrive for only $200 sounds like a good deal, but you’ve been reticent to tear the little bugger apart without a hand to hold, this tutorial might take some of…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 23 '04

Cold Heat Portable Soldering Iron

Despite the fact that I am the world’s worst solderer, the smooth lines and features of this Cold Heat Soldering Tool still call to me. The AA battery-powered iron heats to 800° within a second, then back down to safe temperatures within another one to five. Portable soldering irons are a fine idea, but the…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 23 '04

Nintendo DS Spy Photo?

We have received another DS bounty entry, albeit one almost indistinguishable from its background. If it is another fake, it’s a fake of admirable economy, as the DS in this picture is only about 10 by 10 pixels in size. Like most of the entrants, the man who sent this picture had a story to…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 23 '04

JVC’s Tiny DVD-RW Sub-notebook

JCV’s new MP-XV941 is a new sub-notebook that is just barely big enough to contain its integrated DVD-RW drive. Into the package is built-in 802.11b/g WiFi and a physical footprint small enough to fit on an in-flight tray. A couple of these and some tiny parachutes and my intercontinental air-drop pirating scheme can get off…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

Pot-In-Pot Electric-less Cooling

Mohammed Bah Abba has just won the $100,000 Rolex award for his invention, ‘Pot-In-Pot.’ By taking a small pot and placing it inside of a larger pot, with moist sand in-between, people in Abba’s native Nigera—and anything else that might warm but without easy refrigeration—have been able to increase their food storage from three days…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

World’s Smallest Super 16 Camera

The A-Cam is the world’s smallest Super 16 motion picture camera, able to shoot 20-25 rolls of 100 ft daylight spools in ‘not completely silent’ operation. Unfortunately, the A-Cam can only be used to film monkeys. [Thanks, Ola!] Read

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

More Cellphones Kill U.S. Troops?

Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings postulates that the increased U.S. military deaths this month in Iraq could stem from the expanding availability of cellphones, which would make remote detonation of bombs much easier for enemy forces. He reminds us that the recent terrorist train bombings in Madrid were detonated by cellphone—it isn’t a high-tech, Hollywood-only…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

Sony Cli PEG-TH55 Review

If you’re a Sony Cli fan who has wanted a high-resolution screen but couldn’t really get with the giant clamshell and keypad program, the new PEG-TH55 is the slate-style Cli for you. The 320 x 480 display takes it up a notch from previous slate Cli s, and the integrated camera and WiFi certainly doesn’t…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

Toshiba’s Tiny Hard Drive Future

Toshiba has passed along some concepts for possible uses of that new 0.85 inch hard drive: the wrist PDA (seen yesterday on Gizmodo); the integrated headphone MP3 player; the digital wallet/electronic key; and the information specs. None of them are real, of course, and they all look sort of corny, but as usual, speculative items…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

Translucent Concrete

Having grown tired of the oppressive atmosphere concrete can give to a structure, 27 year-old Aron Losonczi has invented a type of concrete that allows light to pass through. By combining fiberoptic material with standard concrete, the newly-dubbed ‘LitraCon’ will allow silhouettes of outdoor shapes to pass through to the inside of rooms. Losonczi hopes…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

500 MHz Underwood No. 5

This 500MHz Mini-Itx machine has more style in its left shift key than most of the molded-plastic and brushed metal cases of the last 30 years. Of course, it helps that it is a retrofitted Underwood No. 5 typewriter, with integrated sound and CD drive. I really wish PC manufacturers would start offering more case…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

ClipDrive Bio Review

If a USB flash memory drive sounds like a good idea, but doesn’t have enough security for your liking, Memory Experts International’s ClipDrive Bio might be worth a look. It’s pricey—the 64MB version starts at $120, all the way up to $720 for a 2GB version—but the ability to lock down a secure section of…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

BlackBerry 7750

RIM unveiled their new BlackBerry 7750 at the CTIA Wireless 2004 trade show, with a 65,000 color screen and all the other features you’ve come to expect. It’s been interesting to hear the feedback from people lately about RIM devices; It’s rare to see something be so equally loved and reviled. Read

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

Olympus C-750 Review

Olympus’s new C-750 Ultra Zoom is only an incremental upgrade to the Camedia line, with a 4 megapixel CCD and 10x optical zoom, but still gets high marks in this review from Pyroport. Read [via I4U]

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

3D Vendor CeBIT Roundup

Beyond3D walked through CeBIT and slurped up a lot of good (if technical) information about the latest happenings from all the PC 3D vendors. Interestingly, it seems that while both ATI and NVIDIA have PCI-Express boards in reference form, everyone is waiting on Intel to push through motherboards that use the standard before waiting to…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

Water Taxi Himiko

The 114-ton Japanese water-taxi ‘Himiko’ was designed by anime artist Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato) “to appeal to the younger generation.” It does this by being awesome. [Thanks, Rich!] Read

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

BeoCenter Price Update

Just a quick update on that Bang & Olufsen BeoCenter 2 we talked about a week ago. Our man “Mike” inside tells us you can pick up the whole shebang for around $4,100, including the ‘connecting brick’ where all the back-end system connections are made. Most U.S. B&O stores should start seeing a few units…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

Control Games With Your Mind

Using your brain to control a video game character is nothing new, unless you don’t mean using your brain to control your hands, but just raw mind power, and then, yeah, that’s new. Researchers have developed a game and headset that allows the player to control a tightrope-walking man-frog (of course!) by focusing thought on…

Tech News JOEL JOHNSON Mar 22 '04

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