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The legitimate and undeniable coolness of some of British luxury cell phone maker Vertu’s design innovations as well as their use of insanely fancy materials is made a non-issue for most of us by their equally insane price tag. But flourishing one of these big-ticket items (some models go for upwards of 10K) at a…
Despite critics’ reservations, JetBlue has no plans to cut off its television feed during emergencies, even after passengers were able to watch Wednesday’s near-disaster (involving a faulty landing mechanism) live on their individual seatback monitors. JetBlue currently has one of the in-flight entertainment setups, offering 36 DirectTV channels and, in the next few months, over…
One time in college someone gave me something to try and I ended up sitting around for about 10 hours thinking about how we depend too much on friction, man. If cars didn’t have to use friction, they could go so much faster! This idea is kind of like that idea, but much cooler. Brendan…
If you’ve ever had an urge to hang your MP3 player from your neck, iRiver Japan is giving you a few options. The new N11 line of neck strap players are coming out Oct. 15 and will range from a 256MB version to a 1GB version, with a 512MB player rounding it out. Though pretty…
NOAA has been sending an unmanned Aerosonde drone airplane over this last wave of monster hurricanes to amass unprecedented weather data, a kind of sweet use of a technology developed for military intelligence. Also recently flipping their switches from Evil to Good have been the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s spy satellites, as they’ve mapped the path…
Availability: Oct 4 in Japan Price: $630 If you’ve been dying to find a place to store your digital images, look no further. The Epson P-4000 Multimedia not only gives you “80 GB hard disk drive, so it can double up as a portable storage unit for any PC or Mac files,” but also gives…
The iFM is an odd little duck. It’s a combination iPod remote, FM tuner, and microphone that adds quite a bit of functionality to the tabula rasa of the iPod. Compatible with most models—except the Shuffle—and has a nice white backlight and LCD screen for displaying the frequency and mode. I like the design, but…
Finally, now I can swim in shark-infested waters like I’ve always wanted. A bright fellow called Vladimir Vlad has filed a patent for a shark-repellent wet suit that creates an electrical field. The idea is that sharks have sensitive receptors in their noses which would normally help them track prey, but when faced with an…
Think of this as Teflon for your walls. A new paint, called Lotusan, has been developed by Sto that is self-cleaning. Intended for mineral, cement, and concrete surfaces, the paint mimics the water-beading effects on lotuses, causing rain to slide down the walls, thus reducing chances for micro-organism growth (The picture shown is the before/after…
The moment I read this was “feel-good fashion,” I balked — I’m just not one for anything that sounds too Age of Aquarius, if you know what I’m saying. Then I looked into this further, and it does seem kinda cool: these are clothes that literally make you feel good, physically speaking. Clothes under the…
Here’s a great question from a reader—I don’t have the answer but will offer a brand new, factory-sealed copy of the game Burnout Revenge (for PS2 or Xbox) to the person with the best answer. i have a question only you can answer… i’ve been asked by users of my site to video their Central…
I can’t remember for the life of me where I found this link, but here it is. Those crazy kids at Thanko are at it again with this computer desk that lets you use your desktop computer in bed. Sure you could use your laptop, but where’s the fun in that? Plus apparently you get…
Yeah yeah, enough of the iPod nano news, right? Well, too bad, here’s another one for ya. Since the main reason everyone seems to be harping on about the nano is its oh-so-purdy aesthetic, this invisibleSHIELD full-body wrap offers protection for the nano while showing it off. There’s this demo video you can watch with…
Today’s DAP Headlines: Toshiba has introduced a newer, smaller, and sleeker Gigabeat, we’ve got more details on the shaver/Mp3 player known as the Safa q200, and finally, a player with “Metro Sexual Style”, the Mpio HD400. Toshiba’s original Gigabeat F-series of Mp3 players were labeled “iPod killers” by many, with its sleek look and beautiful…
Forget those stupid tiki torches and citarella candles, the new techie landscaping objet d’art are these outdoor plasma lamps from LazyBone. A little large, but they’re battery operated, bright and completely wireless. And they kinda look like light sabers, which could be either a plus or a minus. $33 each. Glowing Accents Outdoor Plasma Lamps…
What I love about Cnet is that they sometimes do the heavy-lifting for us common folk. Take this roundup of “elite” media centers from specialty vendors. These are the sort of companies that filthy rich folks can call on the phone and have a service rep custom build them a media center with terabytes of…
Toyota is now integrating Bluetooth into its Japanese vehicles for use with the new G-Book Alpha service. For us stateside folks, it can most easily be compared to OnStar. For this to work, your vehicle needs to have some sort of GPS navigation system and a Bluetooth enabled phone nearby. Book Alpha is capable of…
There is still no technology that cannot be hacked. Save inscribing your pin number on the inside of a diamond. If you can read, write to it, or broadcast it, chances are someone will find a way to snoop. A recently released paper, wonkily entitled Analysis of the Texas Instruments DST RFID, documents all of…
Sharpened Up for a Bit of the Ol’ Ultra-Useless By Brendan I. Koerner As a Geekish-American pre-teen, I kept two publications stashed beneath my boxspring: the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue (especially the one with Elle McPherson in the Dominican Republic) and the latest Sharper Image catalogue. Man, how I loved peeping those seemingly fancy gadgets,…
USA Today reports from the floor of Demofall, and while they say the technologies shown lacked the “wow factor” of previous shows (PalmPilot and TiVo both debuted at Demo conferences), they offer up a list of stuff that caught their eye. [USA Today] The dangers of playing your iPod too loudly continues to be a…