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Solar-Powered PMP with Speakers Has Shades of OLPC

Yahee, purveyors of gadgets that look remarkably like already-established ones (if you don’t believe me, check their fat Nano, for starters) has come up with a solar-powered media player whose charging panels are on the inside. OLPC green in color, the PMP plays tunes, videos, and lets you view photos and play games on it.…

Sonic Impact T-Amp 2 Now Available

Remember the Sonic Impact T-Amp? It was that tiny $30 amplifier that, according to audiophiles, beat the crap out of $300 gear. Now the second generation is finally here at more than double the previous price. Fortunately, according to the “experts”, it also packs double the oomph and now it’s comparable to $800 gear: https://gizmodo.com/sonic-impact-amp-128453…

AT&T CEO Says 3G iPhone Next Year

Talking about the 3G iPhone at a meeting in California, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson declared: “You’ll have it next year.” He didn’t add any specifics but we hope this is not just some general statement (3G being the obvious next step in the iPhone) and that they are already well into the development phase, perhaps…

Magic Highway U.S.A. Publicity Stills (1958)

Kevin Kidney has uploaded some amazing Magic Highway, U.S.A. images taken straight from publicity stills of the era. He cleaned them up, spending upwards of an hour and a half on each image. As a Disney artist for over 22 years, Kevin’s Flickr account also contains great examples of his work on Disney collectibles. Kevin…

Video of miShare Doing iPod2iPod Tune Swapping (Uh, is this legal?)

You might have heard of MiShare, a $100 pocket Linux box that lets you clamp in two iPods, butt to butt, to send songs, photos, videos and—truthfully—any other kind of file you want to send from one to the other. In the video, you will see how straightforward it is to swap a couple of…

Robots Designed Only To Feel Pain

This robot dental patient screams “Ouch!” when a trainee dentist screws up. The Simroid dental therapy simulator has sensors in its mouth and an optional gag reflex, in case the dentist goes too far. Forget robots that selflessly care only about your pain — the cutting edge is robots that feel pain, and model it…

Piano Calculator Makes for Musical Math

If math wasn’t already annoying enough, this unique piano shaped calculator plays a tune with each key pressed. In the right hands, crunching numbers could become a tiny concerto. But in your hands, it will undoubtedly result in a swift and brutal retaliation by your fellow co-workers. Let’s just hope Phillip Glass doesn’t get wind…

Playstation 3 Turned Into “Crackstation” for Super Hacking Goodness

Forget Folding@home and its feel-good applications. There are cooler things to be done, like cryptography cracking. Taking advantage of the Cell’s vector architecture, a security consultant with Security-assessment.com has cooked up a way to to bust passwords open like bad Easter eggs really, really fast. His Crackstation shoves past “the current upper limit of 10-15…

Marine Research Facility Designed Using Star Wars Films

Using Star Wars films as one of the inspirations for his designs, a masters student at the University of Texas named Jason Mellard developed an aquatic research and housing facility to be located 50-100 miles offshore. Scientists studying marine and bird life would stay on the platform with their families in 6-13 month shifts and…

Toshiba Hoons Out 80GB Hard Drive For Autos

As a response to many companies and end users installing hard drives into cars for portable entertainment systems, Toshiba’s introducing the MK8050 hard drive that has increased shock tolerance and vibration dampening. The disk has a cushion of air around the head to prevent scratching, which causes data loss, swearing and begging. Expect to see…

Entertainment Tonight Mollycoddles I Am Legend

Entertainment Tonight manages to slap it’s plastic-surgeried, face-lifted, up-with-everything fake smile onto one of Hollywood’s darkest upcoming films, I Am Legend. Watch as Will Smith grins his way through an interview about playing Robert Neville, the last human being on Earth. Even director Francis Lawrence makes it look like filming this was a bit of…

TiVo Earnings Report: Profit’s Still Not Its Middle Name

I kinda thought (hoped) earnings report season was over. But it’s not! Today we’re looking at TiVo’s net loss of $8.2 million on total revenues of $75.5 million, which was “considerably ahead of guidance” and up (down?) from an $11.1 million net loss in the same quarter last year on revenues of $66 million. Given…

You Can’t Gestapo The Hitler Clones

With new Indiana Jones and Hellboy movies on the horizon, we’re reminded of heroes who fought supernatural Nazis from time to time. Heck, both Hellboy and Indiana Jones came face-to-moustache with Hitler, and Indy even got his autograph. But not all superheroes are so lucky. Some don’t get to battle the Big Bad himself —…

Q-BA-Maze Marble Toy Teaches Kids About Construction, Balls

Combining the concepts of LEGO with the concepts of Rube Goldberg, the Q-BA-MAZE gives you a set of 20 to 50 pieces that you put together to make a descending maze for marbles. It sounds boring from our description, so if you watch the video you’ll notice that it’s…only slightly less boring. This may be…

Apparently no good science books were published this year. That’s according to the New York Times, which isn’t exactly a bastion of scientific rationality. [Laelaps]

Readers Choice: Pick Your Favorite Inappropriate Giz Browsing

You asked, we listened. Now you can choose your own favorite Inappropriate Gizmodo Browsing entry from the 11 different runners-up we showed you yesterday (the naked one is a duplicate—you’re welcome). Which one will you choose? Mike Tyson, or reverse cowgirl shown above? Vote Now. https://gizmodo.com/inappropriate-gizmodo-browsing-contest-gallery-some-ns-327174

Blockbuster Wants to Bring the Joy of No Late Fees to Your Cellphone

After getting reamed by Q3 losses and basically conceding the online rental space to Netflix, Blockbuster looked to be refocusing on its B&M stores, ironically signified by its installation of in-store digital rental kiosks. So naturally its next move is cellphones. Yeah. Says CEO James Keyes: https://gizmodo.com/blockbuster-essentially-concedes-to-netflix-318076 We’re talking with virtually all of the major…

Video Games That Plunge You Into Existential Dispair

The arrival of dystopian scifi video game Mass Effect has us reaching for our Prozac . . . and our controllers. The darker and weirder the world a video game gives us, the better. Whether it involves an alien invasion, or a maniacal artificial intelligence, we love games that crush our dreams in an orgy…

Office 2008 For Macs Export Powerpoint Presentations to iPhone, iPods

Slogging through tens of seconds of load times when Office 2004 fires up is nobody’s idea of fun, but speedy Intel compatibility isn’t the only thing that Office 2008 will bring next year. The new version will have a feature to export PowerPoint presentations to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPod video/classic by way of…

SF With Actors But No Special Effects

If you’re interested in science fiction drama without any fancy flashes and bangs, check out Doing Time, a stage play that opens in Halifax tonight. Doing Time takes place in the future, when computers have become smarter than humans. The main character, Leda, is an amnesiac who may or may not be in prison. It…