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I saw this the other day and didn’t get a chance to post it. This is absolute madness: The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will set up an industry-academia-government research and development unit this year that will work to commercialize virtual reality television by 2020, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Tuesday. That’s right. Virtual…
Steve Lapp, Canadian and energy efficient car collector, has thrown together a solor-powered Toyota Prius. His design has improved the fuel economy by 10%, which is almost two times better than Honda and the redesigned Civic engine. Lapp is predicting another increase of at least 10% with the 270 watts. The unfortunate feature is the…
The ongoing war that is raging in households between console and PC gamers will take another step towards peace. This is all thanks to the Max Shooter keyboard and mouse adapter for the Xbox and PS2. This peripheral will finally give those big-mouthed PC gamers playing on Xbox Live a chance to prove themselves and…
We know you are sick of hearing about this thing, but this one will be quick, I promise. The lab monkeys over at PC Magazine have gotten a hold of one of these beauties and have offered up a miniature preview/review. They sum it up by saying this PDA is the cat s pajamas in…
The buzz in Finland—do they have buzz in Finland? I thought it was just polite chatter.—is that the Nokia N91 (“The One With the 4GB Hard Drive”) will/will not support iTunes. Nokia is actually being pretty coy about the whole thing, suggesting that the N91 is a computer, after all, and could conceivably support iTunes…
Another day, another new personal media player. The i-Station v43 will be available in a few different types: one being a standard media player, another model including GPS and a third model featuring digital television. All models support a barrel-full of different codecs and also include Tivo-to-go. In fact, the manufacturer, DigitalCube, had some interesting…
My usual stress eraser tends to come in a large Foster’s can but this might do nicely as well. Designed by Frog Design and marketed as a “drug-free” solution to stress reduction—doesn’t the device then become the drug?—the StressEraser by Helicor is a standalone device that reduces stress through yogic breathing or something. Not much…
DavesiPaq clues us in that the HP iPAQ hw6515 has made an appearance on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile site, which probably means it’s going to be released soon. The page lists full specifications of the hw6515, like the 64 MB SDRAM, 3-inch transflective TFT display, SD/MMC card slot, integrated quad band, EDGE support, Bluetooth, and integrated…
Canon has just announced the Canon MVX4i, a 4.29 Megapixel digital video camera, which is apparently the first ever digital videocam to have over 4 megapixels in a single CCD sensor. It sports a DIGIC DV processor, RGB Primary Color filtering, 10x optical zoom, high-res 16:9 widescreen mode, Electronic Image Stabilizer (EIS), a 2.5-inch LCD,…
Cue the James Bond music, because you’re about to witness cubicle protection, ninja-style. The Lazer Trip Wire uses infrared beams to recreate those high-tech red beams you see in spy movies, only this time, it won’t be protecting Fort Knox, but your tiny cubicle instead. Once you hook up the units, you’ll even get a…
Infinium Labs, creators of the Phantom—the absolute coolest thing in the world which can play like all the games from every game maker in the world and can also like be cool and do cool stuff—has a new CEO. I heard that the old CEO was playing the Phantom, like a pre-release version, and he…
Well, look what we have here. Amazon.com’s already taking pre-orders for the PS3, and apparently they’re selling it for $299.99, which puts it at equal pricing with the low-end of the XBox 360. No idea if this is the final price, but it sure looks pretty convincing. Pretty interesting how Sony was going crazy warning…
Some die-hard Trekkie would probably love to get his hands on this. A guy from New Zealand modded this Barbie doll to a) look like a Star Trek crew member, and b) act as a Bluetooth handsfree headset. Yes, that’s right, it’s embedded with a Bluetooth headset. According to Ms. Barbie herself: You can use…
What does it take to figure out America today? Two former corporate types and a Segway, apparently. Steinbeck did it with a truck and a dog, but we’re far beyond that level of discourse now, folks. We need advanced robotics to figure out the national zeitgeist. The premise is pretty simple: two guys, Josh and…
These all-in-one PCs have been around for a while now, but this one is pretty unique. A buddy of mine used one of those “all-in-one” desktop things where the PC is inside an Atari 800XL looking keyboard. It gave him cramps. Hopefully this one is a little better. Tucana Innovations, an Australian company, has fitted…
The folks at Belkin are really hitting a high level of granularity with their new Belkin Dock Adapter, a $20 little nubbin that fits on the end of your Shuffle, thereby giving it the patented iPod dock slot. There are a few places this thing would be useful i.e. using portable iPod speakers, recharging on…
This is not all that surprising, really, but it’s pretty big. Fossil, one of the largest watch distributors in the US, has taken SPOT watches out of their upcoming pipeline as a reaction to Microsoft’s decision to pull back on new SPOT developments and totally re-tool lots of the features. Since they were originally introduced,…
Rumors are flying that Apple is giving their Powerbook G4 lineup one last run around the track before sending it to the glue factory. Word has it that the last updates will include high density displays with a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, a 30mhz speed bump, DDR2 RAM, and a written apology…
The military’s billion dollar flying robots could be used for tracking UPS and FedEx packages. That’s the word from Darpa’s program director for Joint-Unmanned Combat Air Systems (speaking at the DarpaTech 2005 Conference). He says the unmanned, and unarmed, aircraft are outfitted with software and ground systems that have a number of potential commercial applications.…
BioHazard, one of the stars of BattleBots, has been busy pumping out progeny. BattleKits, which come in multiple weight classes and sizes, are ready-made competition robots containing drive trains and controller mounting points making them a great jumping off point for those wishing to create a death-dealing super cyborg. Each is based on BioHazard’s award-winning…