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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…

NYT: Asian Handset Makers Finally Fear the iPhone, Maybe

The NYT tries to spin the same old iPhone competition story with a seemingly fresh angle: Rather than going on about handset makers writ large adapting to the iPhone, the story at first seems to zero in on Asian companies, like LG and Samsung. But after what amounts to a long introduction, it elides actually…

ASUS PG221 Widescreen Multimedia Monitor

The ASUS PG221 is a 22-inch monitor with a feature set that rivals some home entertainment systems. Two 10W speakers and a 15W sub are built directly into the monitor, which can support 6.1-CH surround sound system with SRS TruSurround XT Technology (though we don’t see much in terms of additional speaker outputs). The monitor…

Outdoor Speakers Shed Light, Too

Leave it to the Italians to design these outdoor speakers that double as ice blue-colored lighting fixtures, saving energy with their compact fluorescent bulbs while rocking the night away with sound that better be high fidelity for their $700-$900 cost. Choose these weatherproof Ibiza speakers/lights by Italian lighting designer Oluce as either wall-mounted sconces as…

Golf Cruiser Makes Me Want to Learn Golf

The new 2007 Golf Cruiser is not your papa’s golf cart, but more like Tiger Wood’s kick-ass three-wheeler. It’s electric, running on a 1000W engine with an upgraded 36 volts battery that gives you 8 to 10 hours of operation. And although the top speed is 9.3mph, it can carry 397 pounds of gear. I…

Three-in-One Lawn Care Device Mows, Throws and Blows

Why take up all that room in your garage for a lawnmower, leaf collector and snow blower when you can have this three-in-one device that handles all three tasks and only requires a third of the space? Oh, wait. You can’t have this device because it’s just a concept, but its modular design by Gustav…

PSP Firmware Signals Downloadable Games

Hackers Software enthusiasts exploring the new PSP firmware updates found something ineresting: firmware 3.50 and 3.51 both include a “tiny module” named np9660.prx—better known as Sony’s official ISO loader good for launching games off of a memory stick. This finding is right in line with rumblings from Sony to expand upon their downloadable content and…

Solid Alliance Confound Their Critics With Naked USB Key

Solid Alliance, so beloved by fans of japanese kitsch, has gone in another direction with its latest USB key. Totally stripped down – I mean totally – the Hadaka’s only flourish is a little pink light that zings up when plugged into your computer’s USB. Weighing just 4 grams, the Hadaka is Vista Ready Boost-compatible,…

China Water Cube Almost Done, Probably with Help from Mon Calamari

Here’s the National Aquatics Center in Beijing, which is now almost finished. Although the bubbles in this gigantic Water Cube look like they are made of jelly fishes, they really use “two layers of a high-performance plastic film called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene or ETFE.” Mmmmmm’kay. So really, what do the jelly fish do? The computer-generated double-layer…

The iPhone Costs Apple $220 in Components

We’ve run a few stories on Apple’s iPhone manufacturing costs by now, including this dissection complete with component breakdown, but here’s another. When technology Austin analyst Portelligent dissected the iPhone, they determined the components of the 4GB model run $200, with the 8GB running just $20 more. But Portelligent admits that it’s tough to price…

MP3 Electro Belt Holds Up Your Pants While You Dance

With an MP3 player built into the buckle, Kristian Paljasma’s light-up Electro Belt is a neat concept. You charge and sync it via USB , and there are four interchangeable buckle plates with different designs which light up. But to any enterprising individual who decides to put Kristian’s idea into production, can we suggest something?…

iPod Sex Video

Anyone could get ten seconds of jokes out of making an iPod have sex with a Microsoft Zune. Gadgeteer-entertainers Chris and Ponzi Pirillo get four solid minutes out of it, and it actually stays funny. “Can I squirt something?” “What?” “That’s just what I do.” “Don’t make it weird.”

LG to Develop YouTube Phone

First it was the LG with built-in Google applications, today is a phone optimized for YouTube. LG announced today that they have signed an agreement with the company and will unveil it this year in Europe, probably before Apple releases the JesusPhone. However, the LG won’t be just a YouTube client. https://gizmodo.com/is-this-the-lg-google-phone-271239 It will allow…

Gigamungous Gigantor Coming to a Square in Kobe Next Year

You’ve got to love a mayor whose vision for municipal art looks something like this. A 60-feet statue of Gigantor is to have pride of place in the town of Kobe, Japan. The 135-million-yen structure (around $1.1 million) will weigh 70 tons and is going up for two reasons. The sculpture of the iron behemoth,…

V/a.g.r.a. Lamp Goes Down as Well as Up

Italian design lab Nonesiste has come up with this beautiful lamp. A collaboration with physicist Stefano Besseghini, the V/a.g.r.a lamp (did you see what they did there?) goes up when it is turned on. Romolo Stanco, the lamp’s designer, describes it as a “living lamp.” I could just turn it on and off all day…

Four-Way USB Hub with Extender Cable from Elecom

Elecom has come out with two ingenious four-way USB hubs that look like they would be more at home in a tool box than on your desk. Available in four colors – black, blue, gray and white – the U2H-FC024S is a drum design for you to roll the cable up on – so no…

Man and the Moon filmstrip (1970s)

The filmstrip Man and the Moon depicts moon colonization as something just around the corner. A video clip of the filmstrip is below and can be found in its entirety at Droppin’ Science. (On a sidenote, the Droppin’ Science website says that Man and the Moon was produced before the first moon landing, which isn’t…

Looks for Era of Brotherhood (1923)

Winifred G. Hedenberg laments the brutality of WWI in the February 12, 1923 Bridgeport Telegram (Bridgeport, Connecticut) article “Thinking Men and Women Predict Problems of World Century Hence.” The year 2022 will see a world reverted back to barbarism if another war on the scale of the so-called World War takes place within the next…

AIRcable Host XR Extends Bluetooth Range By 20 Miles

The AIRcable Host XR packs a receiver advertised at 10 times more powerful than the average Bluetooth dongle, with nearly 20 miles (or 30 kilometers) of range. The range sounds a little nuts—and requires an external antenna. With such an involved setup, the unit likely won’t do much for you unless you’re an industrial firm…

Glide wins the race to work around the iPhone’s crippled Web 2.0 support—word processing ahoy. [InfoWeek/Yahoo!] https://gizmodo.com/iphone-web-2-0-standards-support-sucks-274211