Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Looking very Gucci-like but selling for a reduced price of about $200, the Andrea Valentini laptop bag is certainly a good gift idea for the lady (or REALLY fashionable guy) on your holiday list. The company says it’s inspired by an egg, though I guess they really mean egg crate, and it’s made of a…
This Week in Kotaku: Best Buy, concerned about public reaction to some outlets’ mishandling of the 360 launch, issued an internal memo – and then set aside systems for a second launch. IGN dished out some Revolution specs so we scrawled up an editorial and passed out some tissues to wipe up fanboy tears. After…
Yes, that’s right, with everything you need to throw a martini tasting party in your very own home—except the booze, unfortunately—even you can be a good host for a night. Martini in a Box is a $30 kit that includes a 15-page party planner, stainless steel cocktail shaker, martini and food recipes and even party…
Start SOMA, a San Francisco emerging artists gallery, is offering hundreds of gorgeous cellphone wallpapers for $1.99 each. I don’t think these artworks have been created specifically for cellphones, but they are far sexier than most anything else I’ve seen to date. Start Mobile [via Darla Mack]
Forget mace and weapons, the Japanese are too hardcore for those types of crime prevention. Instead, they are rolling this out. It’s a handheld device that can do multiple things to ensure your Swap Meet Louis will stay safe. It can dial out two preset numbers and also be able to receive calls. On top…
Nokia is rolling with the big dogs now by pushing out a phone with a technology that hasn t been done much before in cell phones. The company is including read/write RFID capabilities into a mobile phone. The phone seen here is the 3220 NFC prototype that is capable of reading any RFID tags and…
Question (is) Everything: Design that answers unimagined questions by Michele Tepper It s a key truth about design: the questions you ask limit the answers you can come up with. If I m working on an MP3 player, the question can it help me find a good slice of pizza? isn t likely to be…
Wow. Now this is interesting. A company called Walletex has finally come up with a real “credit-card sized” USB drive, that really, truly looks and feels like a credit card. Meaning, it’s not just rectangular and kinda thin. The Wallet Flash 1.1 is being touted as the thinnest USB drive on the market and as…
“Cyclops” was just one of the new and fantastical prototypes from a group of young designers being showcased as part of the Leading Edge Design exhibition in Tokyo last weekend. Taking the form of a towering pillar of metal, Cyclops — now having been in development for a few years — is a robot that…
What’s this? Not only is there a possibility of an Intel-based Mac in the near future, but it’s also a laptop!? I’m so giddy I can hardly contain myself. This 13.3-inch model will allegedly replace the 14.1-inch iBook. Think Secret’s highly reliable source, the same one responsible for the first reports on the Mac mini…
Pretty sneaky, BET. In order to sell more ringtones, the TV network is now embedding text-messaging codes into music videos, giving you an easy way to download that song’s ringtone into your cellphone quickly and easily. Powered by Motricity, it seems about half of BET’s videos now have a 10-to 30-second pop-up that encourages viewers…
Generally the only time I manage to make music with Office is when I am bashing my head into the keyboard trying to work with Word and formatting. But Thomas has been thinking along the lines of real Microsoft Office music and has designed a drum sampler within Excel. The sampler is controlled via a…
The last time I used anything to alter my mood I ended up naked on the roof of KDR screaming the words to MacArthur Park. Therefore, I’m kind of incredulous as to the potential mood-altering capabilities of a radio with a big light on it. This radio uses one of the new multi-colored LEDs and…
The Japanese know we’re suckers for anything Mario-related. So when a guy on eBay puts up some official Mario “Bath Bombs” for sale, people in the states love it for two reasons: it’s Mario and it makes you smell like fresh flowers. Drop Mario into your hot bath and he’ll fizz you with his water-jet…
The PSP has been hacked for homebrews yet again — and this time it involves carjacking and indiscriminate gunfire. Using Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for the PSP, you can use a game save to load a “Hello World” application onto the PSP through the memory stick. Basically you’ll be swapping some files using…
Here’s a Euro-only HP laptop with a wicked 17-inch screen, powered by AMD’s Turion 64 processor and slanted towards home entertainment. The dv8000 is a desktop replacement, as you might expect, and includes ATI s Radeon Xpress 200M integrated graphics processor with just 128MB of dedicated RAM, though its dual hard disk drive storage system…
No more of this clip shiznit, says Sprint. The company finally realized that most people don’t care about getting a 3-minute preview of an upcoming movie or clip of an old David Letterman show, so it’s announced a service that will allow the users of Sprint mobile video phones to watch full-length films, television shows,…
Viewsonic has released two new MP3 players into the Japanese DAP market: The ViewPoP P10 and P20, each available with either 512MB and 1GB, sport an FM tuner, WMA playback, USB 2.0, etc., but the difference between the P10 and P20 mainly is the battery and display. The P10 has a blue monochrome OLED display…
Looking more like a children’s trashcan than a camera, the Pupillo is designed to shoot surveillance that can be transferred straight to your 3G phone (which nobody here in the US has yet, of course). Offered by Three Telecom in the UK, this gadget is battery-powered and being marketed as a sort of nanny-cam to…
The other day as I headed out of the Versace store at the mall, I felt like I was missing something to go with my sequin-beaded, pre-torn shirt-and-jeans ensemble. I needed an accessory that screams chic, but is retro and old school. Then I found these DIY mobile handsets that I could customize yourself with…