Wilson Rothman

Amazon Unbox Now Directly on TiVo, No PC Required

[Update] Living up to Amazon Unbox’s name and TiVo’s reputation, the two finally ditched the requirement of a PC to browse and select titles, and introduced a video-download service that exists entirely on the TiVo itself, allowing you to rent and buy movies and television shows. Movie rentals will range from $1.99 to $3.99, movie…

“Innovative” New Polaroid t703 Camera Not Innovative But Definitely Cheap

Polaroid, once the fun company that marched to its own weird drum beat, is now officially in lockstep behind every other electronics maker. The “innovative” new Polaroid t730 digicam boasts the following: • Bright 2.5″ color LCD screen lets you “see it before you shoot” • It can tag audio to any picture • It…

New Casio Exilim Cameras Have YouTube Capture Mode and Easy YouTube Uploading

Casio today announced it was getting cozy with YouTube, introducing two Exilim cameras that will have a YouTube Capture mode—640×480 H.264 video at 30 frames per second—plus bundled YouTube Uploader for Casio software that boasts “three easy steps.” The sleek 8.1-megapixel Exilim Card EX-S880 will come in red or black for $299.99; the slightly larger…

Taser’s Shockwave Cannon Array Like Many Little Bottles of Lightning Bolts

Taser just introduced this multiple projectile taser cannon as part of its 2007 Tactical Conference, appropriately named the Shockwave. Each one of those little green boxes can light up an assailant’s ass like any particular day happens to be the fourth of July. As you can see in the video, the biggest advantage of the…

Kimberly-Clark First to Elusive Hands-Free Toilet Paper Dispenser Market

Who but the greatest public-restroom aficionados knew that the “final touchless restroom frontier” was the electronic toilet-paper dispenser? I for one am surprised that no one has tried to market this already. But sure enough, I just heard from public-restroom mainstay Kimberly-Clark, who announced the JRT* Electronic Coreless, the world’s first touchless electronic bath-tissue dispenser.…

Netgear’s Storage Central Turbo Is Finally Shipping

We heralded its coming at CES; now we can rejoice that Netgear’s faster and thus aptly named Storage Central Turbo is now hitting stores. It lists for $200, but you have to supply your own pair of 3.5″ drives. The combination of gigabit Ethernet networking and SATA disk support makes it speedier. Do you want…

The Crash of the Flying PackBot

It’s Friday, so why shouldn’t you enjoy 70 seconds of flying, crashing robotic calamity? For the curious, this is what some have called a true-to-life transformer, an iRobot PackBot outfitted with a gas-powered propeller engine and a steerable parafoil. The concept, dubbed the Griffon man-portable hybrid, was conceived and built by iRobot’s Brian Yamauchi and…

Here’s One Magnetic Free Energy Machine That Actually Works

OK, so it isn’t the finest week for free-energy machines, but perhaps the boys at Steorn are just giving this category a bad name. Some seemingly free-energy concepts make sense, because they are powered not by mystical cosmic vibrations, but actual earthly ones. Scientists at the University of Southampton have created a generator that is…

Denon DHT-FS3 X-Space Surround Bar Coming To US?

Since most people don’t like running wires and speakers all around their living room, surround bars are becoming all the rage. A Denon model just started popping up in the UK press, a 150-watt bar with subwoofer, using something called “soundbeams” to project sound around the room, regardless of the floorplan. It’s enough to make…

World’s First Programmable Robot Dates Back to 60 AD (Video)

Anyone can build a cart propelled by a falling lead weight, but this one, originally designed by a Greek inventor named Hero way back in 60 AD, responds to a series of commands “programmed” into the axle. The string pulled by the weight goes forward and back depending on where it has been wrapped around…

Uncle Sam Wants You To Build Him a Battery Suit

The Department of Defense office of Research Engineering is putting up $1,000,000 for the team that can come up with the best battery suit for “dismounted warfighters.” These days, in order to complete a four-day mission, soldiers need to pack 20 lbs of batteries to power up all their assorted electronics (which also add weight).…

The Rise and Fall of the Steorn Orbo Free Energy Machine

They said it couldn’t be done. And it probably can’t. A year after an Irish company called Steorn promised a perpetual energy source that required only magnetism, not fuel, the device called Orbo was set up for a 10-day public demonstration. Yesterday, at the Kinetica Museum in London, was to be the scheduled unveiling and…

OpenMoko’s Neo 1973 Open-Source Smartphone Ships In October at $450 to $600

With all of the hullabaloo last week surround the iPhone, we nearly missed an update on the anti-iPhone, the world’s first open-sourced Linux mobile phone known as the FIC/OpenMoko Neo 1973. The phone has more internal flash memory and integrated Wi-Fi. It will be ready for customers in October, available in $450 and $600 configs…

After 8 years of trying, RIM can now sell BlackBerrys in China; the 8700G goes on sale in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities at the end of July [AP via NY Times]

iPhone Adobe Flash Support Coming

Critics have bashed Apple for omitting Adobe Flash support from the iPhone’s “real life” Safari browser, and with good reason: a quick spin around the Web on an iPhone reveals sites that don’t work, or don’t work well without the plug-in. Now, it’s rumored to be coming, via a quote from Mossberg himself. The question…

Cable Companies To Charge More For Box Rental, Thanks To CableCard

The good news is, as of July 1 cable companies are required to ship new cable boxes that use new bi-directional CableCards, a move mandated by the FCC to support CableCard-based alternatives such as TiVos and Vista Media Center PCs. The bad news is: Everybody’s gonna pay for it. By next January, set-top box rentals…

Verizon Wireless Launches an All-New Chocolate by LG

Just when the nightmares of the original Chocolate’s user interface have become less frequent, Verizon is introducing an all-new edition from LG. New to this slimmer Chocolate are a “vibrating touch keypad” and a navigation wheel with something called “Trace Motion light.” Besides that, it has photo sending and stereo streaming Bluetooth profiles, speaker-independent voice…

HD DVD Walking Tightrope But Still Moving Forward

While it seems that the HD DVD gang has been on a wobbly tightrope for years, surrounded by jeering Blu-ray supporters like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic, it sometimes feels like HD DVD could stay on that tightrope for a very long time. Last week we reported that it’s finally rolling out the long promised support…

iPhone May Sell Fast, But Not RAZR Fast

Click to viewIt’s no wonder Steve Jobs got into the phone business. He introduced the iPod in October 2001, and by April 2006, he had sold over 50 million of them. Now, 50 million units in less than five years is good, but Motorola sold 50 million RAZRs in less than two. It took Motorola…

Pininfarina-Designed Fabrik SimpleTech Drive Now Comes in 250GB 2-5-inch Portable

Just when you were coming down from the thrill of Fabrik’s Pininfarina-designed 3.5″ SimpleTech SimpleDrives, the company unveils a similar Ferrari-inspired line in a more portable 2.5″ USB-powered form. The drives range from the 80GB sapphire ($99) up to the 250GB charcoal gray ($199), with onyx and red in between. When you buy, Fabrik also…