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Coming soon: cars that can tell when you’re not paying attention. Seeing Machines is working on a facial recognition system called FaceLab that uses lasers and dashboard mounted cameras to tell when you’re not keeping your eyes on the road or are starting to nod off, issuing an audible alarm to snap you back to…
Going a step further than Volkswagen, which a few months ago started giving away a 15GB iPod and a car kit with the purchase of a 2003 New Beetle car, Smart, a European manufacturer of low-cost, lightweight mini-cars, is not only including an iPod with purchase, their new i-move Smart Car comes complete with a…
Two new DVD/VCR combination players from Panasonic that take things a step further and adds a DVD-RAM burner to the mix, which is handy if you want to copy your VHS tape collection to DVD. Both the NV-VP31 and the NV-VP51S come out October 10th in Japan. Read
The British Civil Aviation Authority is saying there’s conclusive evidence that the use of cellphones on airplanes interferes with navigation: The British study, which involved using mobile phones on passenger-less flights, found that electrical equipment could cause compass freeze, navigation instrument errors, communication interference and false warning reports. We’re secretly pleased by this news, we’ve…
PC Magazine review of Sony’s latest addition to its Vaio W line of all-in-one desktops the ones with the attached keyboards which fold up), the PVR-W500GN1, which improves on its predecessors with a bigger, 17.5-inch widescreen display, a 2.66GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, a DVD-RW drive, and Sony’s Giga Pocket digital…
Scientists in Japan (yes, them again) have built a robot that is capable of going from lying on its back to jumping into a crouching position in less than three seconds. Jumping and crouching are about the only thing that the robot, which is named Daneel (get it?), can do — it can’t even walk.…
After many months of speculation, it’s now official: Motorola’s MPx200 will be the first cellphone running Microsoft’s Smartphone operating system to come out in the US, with AT&T Wireless as the carrier that will have the phones. No word on exactly when the phones will be out, just that it’s expected to be sometime before…
You know, sometimes it’s just too easy. Like with the new Isophone that researchers at Media Lab Europe created which is basically a sensory-deprivation helmet with a phone attached that you wear while in a flotation tank so you can finally give your full attention to the person you’re speaking with. I mean, c’mon, this…
They’re coming out with a new specification for USB that should make it easier for peripherals like webcams and digital video camcorders to stream audio and video to a PC. Read
It’s generally accepted that High-definition DVDs and DVD players are still years away from being in stores, mostly because the industry hasn’t been able to settle on a standard for the discs. But HomeTheaterHiFi.com has some illuminating details on how Microsoft is making an end run around the industry which means we might have HD-DVD…
Another study about the effects of cellphone radiation, this one suggesting that all those microwaves may lead to early senility, and even more frighteningly, may “cause proteins to leak across the blood-brain barrier.” We’re not exactly sure what that means (it has to do with a protein called albumin damaging neurons, apparently), but it definitely…
In case you missed any of them, some highlights from the past seven days of Gizmodo: Automatic inkjet cartridge refiller 40GB iPod out Tons and tons of cellphone concept designs Phones that decide when to ring Press eject and give me the tape New, cheaper Segway HT coming out Alaska Air’s digEplayer Pretec’s 6GB CompactFlash…
New Tablet PC from Acer that doesn’t fit into either the slate or convertible categories of Tablet PC – the TravelMate 250PE isn’t a slate or a convertible, it’s actually just a regular laptop with a writeable LCD screen and the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition software. However it does have one feature you won’t…
Portables.About.com ranking of the top ten portable (of course) DVD players, picking Toshiba’s SD-P2500 (pictured at right) as the best of the bunch, and Apex’s PD-10 as their pick for the best low-priced player. Read Amazon – Toshiba SD-P2500
Following on the heels of the news the other day of the Toshiba e405 is early word of another new Toshiba Pocket PC. The e805 will have a large (for a Pocket PC) 4-inch screen, 128MB of RAM, 32MB of Flash ROM, a 300MHz processor, CompactFlash and SD expansion card slots, and built-in WiFi. Read
New attachment that lets you make video phone calls over regular phone lines using a Game Boy Advance. The Campho Advance pops into the Game Boy Advance’s cartridge slot and has an embedded digital camera and a microphone so you can teleconference with other friends who have a GBA with Campho Advance. Comes out in…
Gamesindustry.biz recently got to play with Nokia’s new N-Gage gamephone which comes out October 7th, and not surprisingly, the verdict does not bode well for Finnish friends. Among their primary complaints, that putting in a new game is an overly convoluted process, requiring the phone to be opened up and the battery removed; that games…
We love the looks of Kyocera’s new supersmall digital camera, the Finecam SL300R, which is just 15mm, or 0.59-inches, thick, and has a rotating lens and a resolution of 3.17 megapixels. Comes out later this month. Read
Forget about having to buy another faceplate ever again. Nokia’s new tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE cellphone, the 3200, comes with comes with ten blank covers that can be printed on using a regular inkjet printer so you can have exactly what you want on your phone. The 3200 also has all sorts of other nice features, like…
Because they have a problem with, um, filling up with gas and then exploding, Sony Ericsson has recalled about 350,000 of its cellphone chargers. Read