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New Sony Vaio Gets SSD, Hefty Price Hike

Sony is hopping on the SSD laptop bandwagon, releasing a new Vaio without a platter HDD. The Vaio TZ18GN is an 11.1-inch ultraportable with a 32GB SSD, Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB of RAM and, unfortunately, Vista preloaded. It weighs in at a svelte 2.5 pounds, which is a bit heftier than Toshiba’s “world’s lightest”…

Philips Aurea, the Luxury Ambilight

Philips has been cranking out LCD Ambilights for a few years, upgrading the line in relative moderation. But their new Aurea televisions (a prototype pictured here) are a more aggressive take on ambient television lighting. Fully LED back-lit, the Aureas will actually glow through the case border, creating a dynamic frame effect. To minimize visible…

Comb-Over Expert Scoffs at Baldness Cures

Those of us who are follicularly challenged take great fascination in baldness gadgets, such as the HairMax Laser Comb which didn’t impress us much. But why not just learn how to do an elaborate comb-over like this Japanese guy? He must be the world comb-over expert. Take a look at what he does with a…

Batmobile Tumble Case Mod, Bye Bye Mac

After finding himself bored by his Wal-Mart R/C Tumbler, one modder decided to do the only logical thing: make the toy into a badass case mod. While the specs are a bit on the lame side—AMD Sempron 2800+, 40 gig HD, 736 MB of DDR 400 ram and a CD/DVD drive—we’re still fairly certain this…

Broken iPod 5G Replaces Hard Drive for Compact Flash

Tarkan Akdam hated the iPod until his wife demanded one. However, instead of getting a new one he went the cheap way: got a broken one on eBay, a couple of small parts, a 4GB Compact Flash card and ended up with a custom 5.6mm x 51mm x 61mm module to replace its broken hard…

Piano in a Can is Useful in a Strapya Kinda Way

Strapya might just have come up with this year’s most useless thingy, the Piano Can. Housed in what looks like a baby-food tin is a polythene keyboard that may or may not have been made out of an old plastic bag. It’s got two play modes: annoying; and very annoying. All this for just $9?…

DARPATech Bots Can Walk, Climb, Hover, Kill and Look Cute at the Same Time

DARPATech 2007, the Pentagon CES, always brings all kinds of weird robots ready to defend the troops and help kill the baddies. Like the Organic Air Vehicle, which uses a laser to pinpoint targets floating from nine miles away. And the Micro Air Vehicle, a monitoring hovering bot that can alert troops of enemy presence.…

Dancing Robot Humiliates Robots Everywhere

Country of Japan: the next time you spend $4.5 million on a robot that uses motion capture to precisely emulate human movement, please teach it karate. Or at least a pasa doble. [telegraph via shinyshiny]

Solar Bikini Returns to Siggraph, Intimate Gaming Bra and Boxers Debut

Siggraph 2007 (which stands for Special Interest Group/Graphics) is underway, and one of our favorite parts of the annual design and innovation shindig is the Unravel fashion show, where this year’s strange brew includes an updated version of the solar bikini and intimate controllers for a couple to play video games by touching each other.…

For the six people with an Xbox 360 Core system, GoGamer’s offering the 20GB hard drive for the same price as a 512MB memory card—$49.90. [GoGamer via Cheap Ass Gamer]

Giant Lego Man Bobs up on the Coast of the Netherlands

Holidaymakers in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort were joined yesterday by an enormous Lego man. The eight-foot-tall yellow figure was spotted bobbing around in the sea just off the beach and subsequently rescued. Although he would not give his name, the man, who is thought to be British, has been made to feel at home.…

Apple’s update spree continues with Boot Camp 1.4, which brings Apple Remote pairing, backlit keyboard support for the MB Pro, updated graphics drivers and assorted other small fixes to the Windows table. [Apple] https://gizmodo.com/apple-software-updates-imac-already-287513

Man Mods Concrete Pipe into a House

We’re big fans of weird buildings – from holes cut in the walls of concrete buildings to crazy bumpy skyscrapers – but we’re not sure whether we’re fans of this, a house made out of a pair of concrete pipes by Chinese man Xin Yucai. [Ananova] https://gizmodo.com/crazy-rotating-wall-makes-you-wonder-if-you-are-crazy-t-267081

Shadow Lamps Turn Your Friends into Live iPod Ads

Melding tradition and technology, shadow lamps are a new way of keeping up with your friends in Japan. Less intrusive than a web cam, the system pipes a live video feed from your friends houses via the internet, and projects their silhouettes onto a lampshade – rather like the iPod commercials. The inspiration, according to…

Amazon Invests in Demand-Based Pricing Digital Music Store

Amazon recently dumped an undisclosed amount of cash into AmieStreet.com, a start-up digital music store that throws in an element of social networking: track prices rise with their popularity. A song’s price starts at nada, but as more people download it, the price tag balloons until it hits a 98 cent ceiling. The cool twist…

Blockbuster/Netflix Blood Rivalry Gets Bloodier: Blockbuster Buys Movielink

Blockbuster’s acquisition of Movielink makes it a bit late to the IP VOD party, but we get the feeling the goal isn’t so much to break new ground as it is to plant their feet more firmly in their showdown-to-the-death with Netflix. https://gizmodo.com/hands-on-tivo-unbox-movie-rentals-pc-free-282025 In the deal, Blockbuster also picked up the rights to show flicks…

Did Microsoft Deceive With ‘Vista Capable’?

A judge has ruled that a trial against Microsoft can proceed to decide whether they misled people with their “Vista Capable” advertising campaign. Two PC buyers have started a class action, and are arguing that they bought machines that weren’t capable of running Aero, even though they were marked as “Vista Capable.” https://gizmodo.com/vista-capable-now-means-vista-handi-capable-251239 Microsoft is…

Die Bike Runs on Biodiesel, Capable of 130 mph

This is Die Bike, a biodiesel motorcycle that has been built from a car engine and a bike body by an Oakland collective called The Crucible. A recent test-drive got the eco-bike up to 130 mph, but its creators are hoping that, with a bit of modification, their baby will hit 160 mph on the…

World’s Biggest Camera, Not So Portable

On Monday the world’s biggest camera took the world’s biggest picture – a not very wallet-friendly 31′ by 111′. The camera body was an aircraft hangar, the film was cloth soaked in light sensitive chemicals and the exposure was a tedious ten days. Of course, there are limited options with a camera this big, and…

Ooma, the free-VOIP-for-life-after-you-pay-$400 service is now taking pre-orders for mere mortals (non-beta testers). If you take the leap, it’ll hit your doorstep next month. [Ooma] https://gizmodo.com/400-ooma-gives-you-free-voip-and-landline-calls-for-li-280087