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This is not just some radio-controlled insect-like aircraft, no sirree. This is the DelFly II, a robotic dragonfly spy, developed by robot jockeys at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. While government agencies are not admitting to using such things, you can see how this hovering electro-insect with a camera on board might…
Despite the PS3 being the greatest home entertainment/gaming machine in history, people are reluctant to move on from their trusty, much-loved PS2s. You can’t blame ’em, as good games are still coming out for it and it has perhaps the best back catalogue of any console ever. That’s why it kind of makes sense that…
This Sanwa numerical keyboard mouse might not rock your world, but we must have at least a handful of accountants in the audience whose jaws just dropped. Featuring a side toggle button “safety.” normal use of the mouse is possible without going all speadsheet on Firefox’s ass. But once you toggle that button…oh boy (this…
Yes, the title could have been “Nokia’s Crappy Friday”: Reuters says the N-Gage gaming service and the new music store are “among the cornerstones” of Nokia’s big mobile-content push, yet today neither one is where it’s supposed to be. The new N-Gage gaming service, unveiled in August and due to launch this month, will now…
The business of ripping off people with more money than brains has just reached a new low. Innobitz tugs at the heartstrings of pet owners with JooZoo, an MP3 player for dogs that’s so spangled with genuine diamonds and 18 karat gold that it costs an astronomical $2000. Thank goodness there are no headphones, which…
The USB Far Infrared Pad is pitched as a solution for those aches and pains that are the natural byproduct of working sitting at one’s computer. We don’t know the $21.99 pad actually adheres to skin, but once stuck to carefully balanced upon the area of pain, 1.2W of USB juice heats the pad to…
Can you say WQUXGA? Toshiba can. According to a translated promo page, it built the 22″ “super Kousei small LCD monitor” with a resolution of 3840×2400. That’s 200 dots per inch! Toshiba admits, though, that the contrast ratio is 300:1, pretty bad even if you don’t believe in contrast-ratio reporting. In Japan, MSRP for this…
Before hell freezes over, let’s try a bit of in-line skating, but these skates offer more than that. Strap on a pair of Kian Khuan’s 720 inline skates, and a whole new dimension is laid out before us, because these super inline skates not only go forward and backward like any others, but can also…
The Zune 2 ad campaign has begun. The slogan has changed from “Welcome to the Social” to “You Make It You”—are they saying Zune owners don’t have friends?—and the visual appeal has become distinctly psychedelic, a combination of Alice in Wonderland, Yellow Submarine and Time Bandits. We notice that there’s not a lot of fetishizing…
Casio makes an odd egg-shaped label printer, but now it looks like the company has somehow shoehorned the innards of the device into a USB Label Mouse Printer. This one has a scratching our heads, but under certain circumstances it might dawn on you that you suddenly need a label ratcheting out of your mouse,…
Gotta love Newegg. Asus’s Eee notebook just went onsale there yesterday, and an unbox/grope video as well as a lengthy shot-by-shot dissection are already up. Despite seeing stock photos of people using it, the thing still seems almost unexpectedly and impressively pint-sized. Autopsy shot is this way, for the truly geeky. A closer look at…
I love useful useless pieces of plastic. RooKaps are just such micro-wonders that come in a rainbow of colors. They’re just replacement caps for USB drives, but the small city of headless drives I have wandering around my desk make them oddly compelling. Not so compelling is the price, though, with clear ones running $16…
The 1991 Pacific Bell concept video that we looked at in pieces a couple weeks back imagines a world of communication much like that of Connections from AT&T. Parts one through three of this unnamed Pacific Bell video appear below. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 See also:Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 1, 1991)Pacific Bell…
Buried in the pile of bad news that was Blockbuster’s Q3 earnings report (losses more than tripled vs. last year to $35 million) was the quote from CEO Jim Keyes that “the company will no longer be narrowly focused on its online subscriber count but instead will concentrate on the growth of, and report on,…
Dan Lyons, AKA Fake Steve Jobs is doing a reading of his new book, Options, in the valley. We’re at Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park—the most important book reading, being so close to the mothership. I recognize an Apple employee in the crowd. Woz is here, and when I approached him to say hello, he…
Okay, maybe the sky is falling for Sprint. According to the WSJ, Sprint’s board is looking at several hard choices regarding their risk-laden WiMax venture, one of which is to spin off the WiMax unit to merge with frenemy Clearwire, forming an entirely new public company. For investors, this might be a sweet spot because…
With all of the emphasis on saving energy and eco-friendliness these days, hand-crank technology has seen increased use in devices ranging from cellphone chargers to the OLPC. If the Freeplay Foundation’s LifeLight Project has its way, this old school technology may soon be used to illuminate the homes of Africa’s poor. According to estimates, as…
China’s TechFaith Wireless Communication Company has developed what they are calling the “World’s first WCDMA/GSM dual mode phone.” The “Twins” phone, as it has been dubbed, allows users the option of loading one WCDMA card and one GSM or loading dual GSM SIM cards. That means it would no longer be necessary to switch out…
Since the YP-P2 is Samsung’s attempt to take on the iPod touch, we thought we’d show you a touching video—one that Jennifer and I shot in a crowded Starbucks today—depicting its (mostly) touch-friendly interface. [Samsung] https://gizmodo.com/samsung-ships-yp-p2-media-player-bluetooth-phone-compa-317870
Appleinsider sources have learned that iTunes 7.5 could arrive as early as next week, or the middle of the month at the latest. The upgrade is expected to offer better management of duplicate song entries and prevent crashes resulting from iTunes Plus upgrades. [Appleinsider]