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I cannot tell a lie: the space hookah picture does not actually show the prototype devices being developed by Defense Department contractors to test if soldiers are sick or tired just by sniffing their breath. In fact, I think that man might be inventing the world’s bitchunest french horn or maybe one of those MIDI…
Eliot Van Buskirk writes a fun, if nerdy column for CNet about the world’s first MP3 players—and they definitely weren’t from Rio or Apple. While many of us in the US first bought the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300, a flash player with a massive 32MB storage capacity (honestly, it felt constricting even at the time),…
A British professor is urging for the use of ferrite beads on wired, hands-free headsets to absorb excess radiation that may travel up the outside of the wire. The same sort of ferrite beads are often seen on monitor cables—it’s that bulging cylinder right before the plug—and should add only pennies and a little weight…
Digital Audio Broadcasts are really starting to take off in Europe, where the smaller average country size means they can use shorter, and thus cheaper radio wavelengths. Or maybe that’s a lie and it’s because the format offers not only an improved sound quality, but all sorts of really smart, useful features like the new…
When I rolled out of floor this morning I thought, “Golly, I hope there’s yet another ass-eating memory card format to talk about today!” My prayers were met with a double blessing it seems, as a Taiwanese technology consortium not only announced a new format, but named it something that required me to look up…
It would seem to be a bit silly to spend all night safely tucked into an earthquake resistant bed, only to travel to school to be buried under a crushing wall of homework. (Ha ha, just kidding. I mean rubble or knives.) Come February 1st, children in Japan’s schools will start seeing these ‘earthquake resistant…
For as cool as $20 Skype USB handsets are, there’s something a bit cluttered about having seperate handsets for both VoIP and regular phone calls. The rapidBox is a simple USB router with three RJ11 (phone plug) jacks that lets you use the handsets you already own to make calls over the Skype network (including…
While New York’s blizzard wasn’t as bad as we expected, it still gave us plenty of excuses to hole up in our den, watching imported episodes of The League of Gentlemen on our region-free DVD player. Sure, we could have been outside cleaning off the sidewalk, but the thought of chewing through snow with a…
CQ-EFnet was looking through the same PSP documents we were looking at earlier in the day (but obviously weren’t quite as hammered) and discovered something potentially very disappointing, but inevitable—it appears that the Playstation Portable will be region coded. Now here’s the thing: we knew that. Japanese PSPs have had a “Region 2” label on…
Is there a clearer indication of Scottish technological superiority than, “No finger moisting [sic] needed to activate sensors?” Nevertheless, that?s the promise of the Master Gaita: a PVC MIDI bagpipe set. Music Thing has a piece comparing several different models of these wired wonders, and samples of their hallowed refrain. From $800-$5,000, underwear not included.…
PalmOne’s CEO Todd Bradley is leaving. Now nobody say sinking ship, okay? I think it’s premature to even mention a disinterested customer base and a product line that’s two years behind everyone else. And don’t even say that the writing graffiti is on the wall—that’s just cruel. Really, though, the company sales were supposedly pretty…
Who wants to read all about the American version of the Sony PSP? The FCC site has all the good info, including pictures of the internals (without smashing one with a baseball bat), as well as the complete drafts of the user manuals. Nothing incredibly shocking so far, but it’s fun to thumb through the…
Product Highlights • You Can’t Be Too Thin [Slate] Boutin on aacPlus codec. • Sony Ericsson T290 Gallery [IdnesCZ] • Nintendo’s Revolution Secrets [Kotaku] I don’t believe a word of it. http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/gossip/nintendos-revolutionary-secrets-030942.php Reviews • TechnOTunes MP3 Watch [LiveDigitally] • 3Com Travel Router: create your own wireless network [BIOS] Looks like it was ordered out of…
There’s a new Premini phone on Japan’s NTT DoCoMo iMode service, and as typical with the snack-sized phones, it’s really small and really nice looking. The new model, called the Premini-II, has a 1.3-megapixel camera and uses Sony MemoryStick Duo for storage (it’s built by Sony). The Premini series are some of my very favorite…
Canadian company Invacare is marketing the new HomeFill II Oxygen Compressor, a $3,000 device that acts as an oxygen concentrator, allowing otherwise home-bound oxygen patients to fill up their own smaller, portable tanks as they need to. The new system is expensive, but allows for small O2 delivery companies to achieve a higher overall efficiency,…
We’ve been nominated in the ‘best computers or technology weblog’ category for the 2005 Bloggies, the annual community choice awards for our internet’s weblogs. The voting site was down for most of the morning, so we’ll pretend we aren’t out here begging for more votes, but instead doing you a valuable public service by telling…
It’s just a concept for now, but this Aprilia Magnet looks like to be one of the most appealing phallic symbols ever ridden by man. Using a 550cc motorcycle engine, the low-slung trike has electromagnetic motors in its front two hubless wheels, meaning it maintains an extremely low center of gravity (low enough to make…
It’s the question of our age: does the iPod shuffle suck ass? While there’s nothing more I would enjoy than sitting around a toasty firewall and discussing the wisdom of releasing a screenless, feature-skimpy flash player in an age when almost every other comparable player has a screen and tons of features (but isn’t white…
Logitech has a new remote in its Harmony line, the 676, and is giving away 700 of them—100 remotes a day for the next seven days. It’s the standard ‘give us your survey and personal information’ gimmick, but you can’t beat free—and you’ve got a decent chance of winning as long as this doesn’t get…
DAPreview has information about the latest player from open-source darling Neuros. Called the PocketPlayer, the 5GB video-capable machine will feature Neuros’s typical hack-friendly open firmware, as well as the hardware power to play back MPEG4 video (although only at 10 frames per second). In addition, it’ll play just about any music that you can throw…