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A non-USB product from Brando, and one that’s surprisingly cute? Good grief, I nearly fell off my keyboard. These Firefly jars are solar-powered, charging up during the day and adding a simulated bioluminescent insect-ass glow to wherever you pop them at night. The kitchen worktop, perhaps—perfect for lighting your way to that midnight snack. Standing…
Modding clever-clogs Ben Heck was apparently daunted by the complexity of the Atari 7800’s internals at first, so he had to summon up the nerve to try this requested mod. Into the custom-built chassis he squeezed a 7-inch color widescreen display, a set of rechargeable batteries, combo driving/paddle controller and an A-V output. Though it’s…
The PSP 4.0 Firmware is out. But for those expecting holographic projection and Nintendo DS destruction mode, don’t get too excited: The main features—at least according to the official change log—are the internet search option under the network menu, and playing with the video playback speed using the up and down buttons. In any case,…
Chinese company Harbin Smart Special Aerocraft has spent 12 years and over $4 million developing its unmanned flying saucers. Somewhat reminiscent of the Honeywell Micro Air Vehicle, the unmanned drone has propellers that run on methanol, a top speed of around 50mph, and can stay at an altitude of around 1,000 yards up for 40…
Hot on the heels of the Optoma pico-projector that uses a TI chipset, TI itself has announced the “industry’s first home-theater lamp-free projector.” It uses a PhlatLight LED illumination source instead, and a Brilliantcolor chipset to give a 1080p display. This makes it capable of a 50% bigger color gamut than traditional projector tech (that’s…
This is the second thing I found in my trip to the center of the Lego universe. Road sign or secret tip? I tried the keyboard combo in my PowerBook and it didn’t work, but given the origin of the command symbol-as commanded by Steve Jobs and executed by Susan Kare-I thought it was well…
If getting Spore in the iPhone wasn’t enough reason to get excited about its potential as a gaming platform (despite the naysayers), someone has created a Spore version of Jar Jar Binks. You know, so you can download it and kill the bastard with your own hands. Again, and again, and again. Now somebody create…
I’ve never encountered a traveling salesperson, so I’ve not had someone trying to push a “revolutionary” product on me from the comfort of my home. But if the Prezenter PSR is anything to go by, traveling sales is about to get high-tech. It’s a custom notebook PC, designed to fold so that a 14-inch screen…
Joshua Heineman is obsessed with old stereo cards, those old photographs from the 19th century that contained two different views of the same subject to give the illusion of depth. He converts them into pseudo-3D GIF images that can be seen without glasses, on your monitor. The method is extremely simple, and while the jerking…
Japanese game manufacturer Mega House has come up with a winner. Biri Biri Kaze Hiki Wanko (which, translated, means Shocking Sick Puppy) is a cross between seminal kids’ game Operation, where you had to remove various parts of a patient’s anatomy with a pair of wired-up tweezers, without letting on to your parents that you’d…
Samsung’s new P400 Pocket Imager projector is designed mainly for businesspeople on the go, so it’s pretty tiny. Inside, its DLP unit is a native 800 x 600 resolution and its LED lighting pushes out 150 lumens, resulting in a 30- to 40-inch display capability with 1000:1 contrast ratio. It takes the standard RGB, composite,…
Sony has upgraded its HDR-CX7 flash-based camcorder to include face-recognition technology and Smile Shutter, which automatically takes a still picture as soon as the subject switches to full beam. The camera records in full HD at a resolution of 920 by 1080 pixels, and has a 10-megapixel camera for still shots. There’s image stabilization, and…
We broke the news on the X200’s specs but here’s the first photo. Looks like a Thinkpad. (Minus the trackpad, as Engadget notes.) [51nb.com via Engadget] https://gizmodo.com/lenovos-entire-new-thinkpad-line-leaked-x300-gets-sibl-378504
Some are hypothesizing that the iPhone will make for a kick-ass combination of the Nintendo DS and Wii, once firmware 2.0 comes out and the apps flow from the App store. I too thought, “who needs buttons when you can touch and tap and tilt your way through a game?” But as I held the…
In that same speech he revealed WiMax’s commercial launch date, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse mentioned that current customers will have first crack at the Instinct, the hottest phone they’ve got (with an equally hot price), as a way of showing that “Sprint, from now on, will place our current customers first.” So arbitrary specialness makes…
Asus’s Eee PC 1000H is the least Eee-like Eee yet—big, pricey ($649) and it has a regular ol’ platter hard drive. Laptop Mag says the extra screen real estate makes it the most productive yet, too, even though the colors don’t pop as much as the Wind. And the keyboard: “To say it’s an improvement…
After countless false starts, delays, death and rebirth, Sprint’s WiMax is finally launching commercially in September. Baltimore is the first city to get it, with a rollout in Washington, DC and Chicago by the end of the year-all current test markets for the service. Sprint’s promising 2-4Mbps per user. In making the announcement, Sprint CEO…
CherryPal has released some tantalizing details of its forthcoming desktop box, which they claim will draw only two watts and be “the greenest and most affordable on the market.” The otherwise modestly spec’d box has a few secret weapons: cloud computing and a tri-core Freescale processor with hardware video rendering capabilities. The teensy device is…
Garmin’s super-hyped GPS-focused nuvifone will be made by Asustek, according to “sources in the industry.” The move to outsource is a first for Garmin, which usually keeps all manufacturing in-house. Expect to see it in Q4 of this year. [Digitimes via Unwired View] https://gizmodo.com/nuvifone-garmin-drops-a-phone-into-the-gps-350894
Over the last six months or so, we have been keeping up with the entries in this year’s Next-Gen PC Design competition, posting here and there on some of the unique ideas that came down the pipeline. Finally, Microsoft has announced the winners and, not surprisingly, there are a few familiar designs on the list.…
