Spam Flood Blog: Interesting Stuff

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Interesting Stuff

6/13/2007 8:01:00 AM

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wearables

An inventor with no medical background looks to have already made quite a name for himself with his X-Finger prosthetic device, which gives folks that have lost fingers a full range of motion without relying on robotics. To control the device, the wearer simply pushes against a lever with the remaining portion of their finger, which sets the knuckles into motion, apparently providing enough force to hold a coffee cup or clutch a golf club. While inventor Dan Didrick's already churning out 100 fingers every 45 days, according to The Naples Daily News, he's apparently far from meeting the demand, for which he says he needs about $11 million in funding. Presumably, that'd also help reduce the cost of the mechanical digits, which currently run a cool $10,000 per finger.

[Photo courtesy of Lexey Swall / Naples Daily News]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/non-robotic-x-finger-replaces-lost-digits/#comments

6/13/2007 7:07:00 AM

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

There was a time (about 3 months) when these 7-inch ultraportables from Kohjinsha were all the rage in ultra-portable circles. Now however, we've got a $600 VIA's NanoBook coming out in an endless stream of OEM offerings on top of that supposed $200 Eee PC from ASUS. Hell, even Samsung slapped a decent keyboard onto their Q1 Ultra UMPC for thumbing around. Still, Kohjinsha's back with a second generation K600 model which gets a big bump to Intel's new A100 processor for XP/Vista and adds T-DMB television while remaining true to its â©800,000 (about $859) price tag. Not bad. Read-on for more pics.

Continue reading Kohjinsha's K600 gets an Intel A100 and DMB TV

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Office Depot Featured Gadured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/kohjinshas-k600-gets-an-intel-a100-and-dmb-tv/#comments

6/13/2007 6:39:00 AM

Filed under: Laptops

Attention Wal-Mart shoppers, we've got pics-a-plenty from Dell's new Inspiron lineup. Better yet, French forum lesDelliens proclaims to have the specs on not only the 1520, 1521, 1720, and 1721 already churning in the rumor mill, but also on a new 14.1-inch 1420. Everything certainly looks kosher but you'll have to judge for yourselves. Click-though for a glimpse at the purported specifications (via machine translated French) or just click into the gallery below. Mmm, so many pretty pictures.

Gallery: Pics and specs of Dell's new Inspirons

1720/1721

1720/1721

1720/1721

1720/1721

1720/1721

Continue reading Pics and specs of Dell's unannounced Inspirons: HHDs, Blu-ray, and RAID?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/pics-and-specs-of-dells-new-inspirons/#comments

6/13/2007 5:59:00 AM

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

Toshiba brings it in bulk today with their latest Dynabook, the Santa Rosa-based Satellite WXW. At 8.6-pounds and more than 2-inches thick, this 17.1-inch sled packs 256MB of DirectX 10-capable GeForce 8700M GT graphics -- the new top-o-the-line 8M-series GPU from NVIDIA. The display touts a 1,680 x 1,050 pixel resolution with a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300, ±R dual-layer DVD burner and loads of in-and-outs under its glossy red finish. Yes, even HDMI for a quick digital-out to your new flat panel television. Available starting today in Japan with 1GB DDR2 / 120GB disk configurations starting at ¥219,800 or about $1,805.

Gallery: Toshiba's 17-inch WXW with GeForce 8700M GT graphics

[Via Impress]

Read -- Toshiba
Read -- NVIDIA press release

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/toshibas-17-inch-wxw-with-geforce-8700m-gt-graphics/#comments

6/13/2007 5:30:00 AM

Filed under: Displays, Robots

Thanks to a beautiful marriage between digital signage company Fastrak and interactive voice response specialist Message Technologies Inc, consumers will soon be able to converse with in-store talking heads who will provide product information along with what we can only assume will be subliminal messages to max out your credit cards. These so-called Virtual Sales Associates will be positioned near particular items of interest ("Steve recommends you only buy iPod-brand MP3 players: always look for the apple!"), and are said to be capable of holding limited "natural language" conversations about said product. To include window-shoppers in their diabolical advertising schemes, retailers can also mount a VSA behind the glass and offer browsers a phone number for chatting up the salesbot. This is good news indeed for retailers like Best Buy, who will soon be able to not only automate the process of providing customers with fake pricing information, but also begin planting the seeds of those rip-off warranties even earlier in the sales pitch.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/virtual-sales-associates-poised-to-harass-interactively/#comments

6/13/2007 4:28:00 AM

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Portable Audio, Storage

Standing in stark contrast to their "sense and simplicity" corporate slogan, we bring you the full line-up of Philips' Swarovski gear mentioned earlier. Available in August, the latest crystal-laden kit takes "technology to a fashionable new level for women." Perfect for little girls who grew up in a generation of Hello Kitty body fat meters and breath testers. Now go check the prices after the break sweetie. Better yet, have your oily man-servant do it, that's why you pay him.

Gallery: Philips' Active Crystals range features Swarovski, who else

Continue reading Philips' Active Crystals range features Swarovski, who else

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/philips-active-crystals-range-features-swarovski-who-else/#comments

6/13/2007 3:22:00 AM

Filed under: Portable Audio

Here ya go media streamin' fans, the Voiis mini Pocket Messenger Phone. The class 1 Bluetooth device allows you to interact with Skype and MSN Messenger calls as well as iTunes and Windows Media Player music within a 100-meter (max) radius of the included base station. It packs a built-in mic as you'd expect as well as what appears to be a standard mini-jack to connect your choice of headphones. The battery should last for 6-hours or 72-hours on standby. Available June 12th in Japan for an expected ¥15,900 or $130. Click-on for a few more pics.

Continue reading The Voiss mini Pocket Messenger: for Bluetooth putzing around the home

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games t games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/the-voiss-mini-pocket-messenger-for-bluetooth-putzing-around-th/#comments

6/13/2007 2:16:00 AM

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Storage

Hopefully this is the last time we'll be forced to post on this topic, but we're not holding our breath: now InformationWeek -- which quoted an Apple executive this morning stating the polar opposite -- is reporting that Sun's ZFS file system IS in fact included in Leopard, albeit with a number of huge caveats. According to a company spokesperson seeking to clear up Brian Croll's "misstatement," while HFS+ continues to be the primary system used in OS X, ZFS has been coded in as a latent, "read-only option available from the command line." An IW reader claims to have accessed the system through Disk Utility's Erase menu, and states that "ZFS is only available on non-boot drives on Sun systems, so this is also the case for Leopard" -- seemingly reinforcing Croll's later assertion that Apple is really only "exploring it as a file system option for high-end storage systems with really large storage." So there you have it: Sun's Jonathan Schwartz wasn't pulling our leg after all, even if ZFS fanboys won't be pleased with the (presumably) final word on this.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/13/leopard-does-does-not-use-zfs-part-iii-it-does-kinda/#comments

6/13/2007 12:20:00 AM

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household

The UK's now showing off what it claims to be the "first" zero-emission home design or, more specifically, the first to meet "level six requirements" of the Code for Sustainable Homes set to go in effect in the year 2016, according to the BBC. Designed by Kingspan Off-Site, the so-called "Lighthouse" design includes, among other things, solar panels on the roof and a biomass boiler on the inside that runs on various organic fuels, with a waste separation system also included to weed out trash that can be burned to provide additional power. The house also packs in additional insulation to cut down on heat loss, and boasts a "wind catcher" for ventilation in the summer. While those measures will apparently help to reduce the house's annual energy bill to just £31 ($61), the house itself will demand quite a premium over less efficient homes, costing about 40% more, although Kingspan says that'll come done if they're produced en masse.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/uk-unveils-zero-emission-lighthouse-home-design/#comments

6/12/2007 10:43:00 PM

Filed under: Storage

It looks like Samsung's not the only one trying to build a better NAND flash chip, with Toshiba now joining the fray today with news that it's made some advancements of its own. Much like Samsung, Toshiba's apparently managed to cram more storage into roughly the same size chips by changing the way the various elements are stacked, in this case busting things out into three dimensions. According to Toshiba, the so-called "pillars" of stacked memory elements can be squeezed into a tighter space thanks in part to some shared peripheral circuits, although that apparently comes at the expense of a longer and more complex manufacturing process. What's not clear, however, is exactly how big an increase that'll translate to in terms of bits and bytes, nor is there any indication as to when we might actually see some NAND units based on the technology.

[Via TG Daily]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/toshiba-announces-new-3d-nand-flash-technology/#comments

6/12/2007 9:09:00 PM

Filed under: Portable Audio, Storage

For fans of Jack and Meg, it's probably a long-standing dream of yours to purchase the Icky Thump album on limited edition thumb drives complete with cartoon renditions of the rockers, but even if it that understandably bizarre scenario never actually crossed your mind, you can still make it a reality. Apparently, the White Stripes are offering up their latest album on two fairly rare USB drives, each sporting 512MB of internal space, an artistic rendition of one of the band mates, and thirteen rockin' tracks in Apple Lossless format. Only 3,333 of each will be created, and while just one will run you a whopping $57.50, you may as well grab the duo for a discounted $99. Of course, we're still not entirely certain if these things are actually licensed by the band, but it's safe to assume that a seven nation army of fans will have these bought up before the legal teams can even get their case together.

[Via BoingBoing]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/white-stripes-album-sold-on-limited-edition-usb-drives/#comments

6/12/2007 8:03:00 PM

Filed under: Household, Networking

Microsoft has just announced a tasty banana for all you code monkeys out there, in the form of the first publicly available download (well, for non-beta testers at least) of the widely anticipated Windows Home Server operating system. Release Candidate 1, as this build is known, is said to offer a number of improvements over previous betas, and is the first version that participants in the Code2Fame Challenge can use to work on their entries. So go ahead, get your download on, and try to whip up some WHS add-ins that'll net you a portion of the $50,000 prize package.

[Via Windows Home Server Blog]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/windows-home-server-rc1-available-for-download/#comments

6/12/2007 7:43:00 PM

Filed under: Transportation

From the same company that let consumers create their own ads belittling it as an eco-terrorist and worse, comes a new promotional stunt that earns one lucky winner the right to drive home in a vehicle that's been scratched up by several thousand fellow contestants. Billed as the "world's first ever Scratch Car-d," the specific Captiva that Chevrolet gave away in the UK's Covent Garden this morning spent two months getting coated with the same silver latex used to make instant-win lottery tickets, which was then divided up into 16,995 tiny boxes to reflect the Captiva's price in pounds sterling. No word on who ended up with what's bound to be a pretty atrocious-looking vehicle, but we're sure that this one won't be too hard to spot on the streets of London.

[Thanks, Omar]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/chevrolets-scratch-car-d-captiva-cum-lottery-ticket/#comments

6/12/2007 7:17:00 PM

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Storage

Ah, the sweet aroma of competition in the air. That's what we've gotten a whiff of after catching an (admittedly grainy) shot of what appears to be an internal Blu-ray writing / HD DVD reading combo drive from Hitachi. The GGW-H20N should have no issues playing your favorite high-definition films on either format, and it can also burn 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray discs, BD-R, BD-RW, and the typical flavors of writable DVDs and CDs. Reportedly, the drive will also boast a speedy SATA interface and will posses a read rate of up to 6x and burn rate of 4x, but the most important detail (read: worldwide release details) was unsurprisingly omitted. Bring on the price drops.

[Via FormatWarCentral]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/hitachi-showcases-internal-ggw-h20n-blu-ray-burner-hd-dvd-read/#comments

6/12/2007 6:51:00 PM

Filed under: Gaming

As much as we'd like to believe we'd act as bravely as 15-year old Damian Fernandez in the face of burglars ransacking our house, the sad truth is that even equipped with Fernandez's samurai sword, we probably would have ended up more like his sister Deanne -- watching the action through slits in the closet door. Damian and Deanne were home alone in Hialeah, Florida earlier this month when a pair of young male assailants forced their way inside and began swiping valuables such as their parents' jewlery. But when one of the men busted into Deanne's room looking for her PlayStation 3 only to find an empty box, Damian was waiting outside with his blade of steel (artist's rendition pictured above), ready to deliver a crushing "strike" to the guy's chest. Long story short, Damian chased both idiots out of the house and down the street, where a police K-9 unit was later able to locate 21-year-old Javier Cotera cowering behind a palm tree. It's not clear if Cotera -- who's now out on bail -- has flipped on his buddy yet, but we can be pretty sure that both dudes are now the laughingstocks of the rest of their criminal associates.

[Via digg]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/you-dont-tug-on-supermans-cape-you-dont-spit-into-the-wind/#comments

6/12/2007 6:23:00 PM

Filed under: Handhelds

We already had a pretty good handle on General Dynamics' ruggedized, Flipstart-like GoBook MR-1, but the company's now gotten official with it, and is providing a few more specs and clarifications. While the MR-1 shares much in common with the Flipstart, it has gotten a few significant upgrades, including a 1.2GHz Core Solo U1400 processor, some new wireless options (including WWAN by the end of the year), and a hard drive boost to 80GB, with 16GB and 32GB SSD drives also available as an option. Of course, perhaps the most significant upgrade is its newfound ruggedness, which meets or exceeds MIL-STD 810F specifications for temperature, drop, and vibration tests, as well IP-54 specs for dust and humidity. Getting the biggest boost, however, is the device's price, which will come in a hefty $4,450 when it's released in September.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/general-dynamics-gobook-mr-1-gets-official/#comments

6/12/2007 6:02:00 PM

Filed under: Features

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

Last week's Switched On discussed Lala.com's introduction of free music locker services that sync directly to the iPod (and only the iPod). However, because it believes the sampling capabilities of the original Napster days were key to driving music purchases, Lala is also developing something that is bound to shake up subscription music services such as Napster and Rhapsody -- free and unlimited streaming of user-selected music from major labels.

Once agreements are secured, Lala will essentially be giving away the rough equivalent of Yahoo Music's Unlimited's $5/month PC streaming service.. While Lala's version will have some offline functionality with cached tracks, it doesn''t yet offer tethered or a la carte downloads the way that Yahoo! Music and other PlaysForSure services do.

At its preview launch, Lala will offer access to the complete Warner Music library -- hundreds of thousands of tracks -- and is pursuing agreements with the other major labels, as well as independents. It expects to pay approximately $140 million on licenses in the next few years to spur huge increases in music sales via viral and social network marketing; something that Napster.com's limited free listens were unable to do.

Continue reading Switched On: I'm in ur site, hearing ur t00nz

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/switched-on-im-in-ur-site-hearing-ur-t00nz/#comments

6/12/2007 5:39:00 PM

Filed under: Meta

Here's your chance to show some love for our very own Pete Rojas, who made the dynamically shifting Business 2.0 Who matters now list. He's trailing behind some serious bigwigs, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try our damnedest to push him up the ranks. Seriously, let's see some hustle for the man who redefined hustle!

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/peter-in-business-2-0s-who-matters-now/#comments

6/12/2007 5:09:00 PM

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras

Liquid lenses have been kicking around as the Next Big Thing for a while, but outside of cameo appearances in a couple Samsung cellphones, they haven't exactly made waves in the market. That may be in part due to the fact that they can be made smaller and cheaper than conventional optics, but haven't been able to provide zoom or particularly high resolution. All that might be changing, however, as a Fraunhofer Institute team working in conjunction with French firm Varioptic has developed a system of 4 liquid lenses that can snap from 1 - 2.5x magnification at the touch of a button. The system isn't quite ready for primetime yet -- exposure times are still a little long, it can't zoom continuously, and the assembly is a little big at 29mm -- but the team is already considering solutions to those problems and is ready to go to the prototype stage. With all the interest from cellphone manufacturers, we'll bet they solve those problems right quick.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/german-researchers-create-zooming-liquid-lenses/#comments

6/12/2007 4:32:00 PM

Filed under: Announcements

Incredibly, Engadget Mobile's still celebrating its glorious relaunch -- and why shouldn't it? Celebrations mean giveaways, and today, "giveaway" means a shiny new Sanyo M1 for Sprint. Equipped with a full gig of onboard storage, the M1's pretty much a music fan's dream, so why not take a crack at winning it? Click on!

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/engadget-mobile-keeps-the-giveaways-going-with-sanyo-m1/#comments

6/12/2007 4:01:00 PM

Filed under: Cellphones

Good news for those of you in Taiwan (and America, too) who can't wait to get acquainted with HTC's Touch, as its creator has reportedly announced that it will be deployed shortly in its "home base," with an American launch to go down before the dawn of 2008. Peter Chou, chief executive officer at HTC, has purportedly stated that it would "only be fitting if the first country in Asia to sell the Touch was Taiwan," and also noted that Chunghwa Telecom would be its "exclusive partner in distributing and retailing the handset" in that country. On the home front, all we know is that the Touch should indeed be found on American shelves before the year's end, but here's to hoping it's closer to today than December 31st.

Read - HTC launch in Taiwan
Read - HTC launch in USA

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/htc-touch-to-launch-first-in-taiwan-us-bound-by-years-end/#comments

6/12/2007 3:29:00 PM

Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets

Ok, it's time to coronate the Engadget mascot -- we know how you've waited to find out whose character is going to appear on Engadget (and take home the Wii). We're just as stoked as you. Whenever you're ready, the winners are posted after the break.

Continue reading Wiem>Winners of the Engadget Mascot contest!

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/winners-of-the-engadget-mascot-contest/#comments

6/12/2007 2:58:00 PM

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

While yesterday's WWDC may have been relatively uneventful for those keeping an eye out for hardware refreshes, Steve made sure he showed off the desktop of Leopard in as much detail as possible. Interestingly, the newfangled dock he managed to brag about may have looked a tad familiar, and as a clever user over at Maxasia points out, it is. According to him, the dock revealed yesterday sports a "troubling resemblance" to Sun's Project Looking Glass. Of course, Apple's icons do look a bit less grainy, but especially when you consider the silver platter that the shortcuts seem to hover over in both iterations, you can certainly start to to see the similarity. But hey, it's not like Apple hasn't been down this road before, right?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-project-looking-glass/#comments

6/12/2007 2:29:00 PM

Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals

Just months after Philips went nuts and introduced a plethora of new input peripherals, Kensington is pulling a similar move by launching its colorful Ci Lifestyle Collection of wireless mice and keyboards. Each device was designed to be as thin as comfortably possible, sport advanced power saving abilities, and easily fit into the road warrior's bag of choice. Kicking things off is the $34.99 Ci70 wireless mouse, which comes in around 35-percent slimmer than common competitors and touts an automatic sleep mode to save those batteries. The $39.99 Ci70LE simply adds a dash of colorful (and bubbly) design, while the $34.99 Ci75m gets even smaller for the mobile crowd. The $39.99 Ci85m sports a Quics a QuickStart feature that powers the mouse up as soon as the PC turns on, and opts for an ExpressCard receiver instead of the USB dongle that its less expensive siblings rely on. For those looking for a keyboard / mouse combination, the Ci70 Wireless Desktop Set throws a Ci70 and a low-profile keyboard together in a convenient $79.99 package, and those who've already warmed to the cutesy allure will be delighted to know that all of the aforementioned devices are currently available for pre-ordering.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/kensington-launches-ci-lifestyle-collection-of-input-peripherals/#comments

6/12/2007 1:58:00 PM

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

For those looking to make the leap to home automation whilst making sure that elegance is taken into account, Control4 is hoping its newfangled Home Controller HC-300 will fit the bill. The relatively low-cost IP-based home controller offers up a multitude of serial, infrared, and video sensing ports, plays nice with standards-based communication technology including Ethernet, WiFi, and ZigBee mesh networking, and can dictate multi-room music, smart lighting, advanced temperature control, and security without breaking a sweat. Most notably, however, is its ability to output the graphical user interface in sparkling 720p, meaning that you will no longer be ashamed of flashing your home controller's GUI on the big screen. Additionally, Control4 revamped the device by adding an anodized black aluminum chassis and a glossy black faceplate, and it plans on shipping these things out sometime in July for a respectable $699.

[Via CEPro]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/control4s-home-controller-hc-300-outputs-gui-in-hd/#comments

6/12/2007 1:27:00 PM

Filed under: Desktops

Seeing as the last time we heard from HTPC-manufacturer Moneual it was pimping the million-dollar Jewelry PC, the $695 base pricetag on its new Inovy series of desktops seems downright frugal. The machines, available in six colors, feature liquid-cooled 64-bit dual-core Athlon 4400+ processors, integrated NVIDIA 6100 graphics, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and a vertically-mounted dual-layer DVD burner that adds a little flair into loading your optical media. No word on where any other ports or bays might be located, but seeing as the Inovy tech specs boast of a 2.88MB "floopy" drive port, our guess is that the company is still locking some things down. Moneual says the units were available as of June 1 and are only being manufactured in runs of 1,000 for each color, so those looking to bring a little glitz to their living rooms had better hurry.

[Via ChipChick]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/moneual-inovy-desktops-spice-it-up-in-six-colors/#comments

6/12/2007 12:57:00 PM

Filed under: Displays, GPS, Transportation

Despite cries of privacy invasion from the city's many drivers, interactive entertainment / advertising / navigation platforms are still being rolled out in New York's 13,000+ cabs, with major player TaxiTech's eTaxi solution the latest to receive approval from the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission. One of four companies certified by the TLC to fill a mandate requiring these rigs in all cabs by October, TaxiTech has teamed up with hardware partners Apriva, Ingenico, and Grey Island Systems to offer a very polished looking setup centered around a 15-inch touchscreen capable of delivering a whole slew of valuable infoswag. (Click here to check out a video of the eTaxi interface). Like Digital Dispatch's SmartCab system before it, eTaxi gives passengers the ability to track their route in real time (no more pricey "shortcuts" for unsuspecting tourists), kick back to some ad-supported video or music content, bone up on historical info about the city, and even pay their fare with a credit card, tacking on a pre-calculated tip with the push of a finger. Sounds pretty convenient to us; let's just hope we don't have to start eating part of the multi-thousand dollar per car annual fee it's costing cab companies to install these luxuries.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/taxitechs-interactive-etaxi-system-approved-for-nyc-cabs/#comments

6/12/2007 12:36:00 PM

Filed under: Laptops

Much as they did back at the time of Vista's launch, Sony decided to refresh a bunch of its laptops in one fell swoop, today announcing no less than 21 new VAIOs in four different model ranges. Those include the VAIO A, BX, FZ and G series, which each get upgrades of varying degrees. The top end of the lot are the VAIO A series laptops, which pack 17-inch displays (1920x1200 on the higher end model), T7100 or T7300 Core 2 Duo processors, up to 2GB of RAM, two 120GB hard drives, an optional Blu-ray drive, and NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics. Taking things down a notch, the FZ series laptops each boast 15.4-inch displays, along with Core 2 Duo processors and slightly smaller hard drives, while the VAIO BX models will give you a choice of 14.1 or 15.4-inch displays, Core 2 Duo processors, up to 2GB of RAM, and a max 120GB hard drive. Rounding out the line-up is the VAIO G, which is lightweight in more ways than one, boasting a 12.1-inch display, a Core Solo U1400 processor, 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive. Look for all them to roll out in Japan over the course of July, with them starting at just ¥109,800 ($900) and going all the way up to ¥400,000 ($3,285).

[Via Impress and Akihabara News]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/sony-busts-out-vaio-upgrades-aplenty-in-japan/#comments

6/12/2007 12:05:00 PM

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Apple, HD DVD and Blu-ray

Yesterday when Steve showed us 10 of his favorite new Leopard features, he left out at least a couple we were a little more than interested in: HD DVD and Blu-ray support. While Tiger does have support for HD DVD and Blu-ray drives, it's not able to play back Hollywood movies from either format. Someone at MacRumors has discovered that the new ~~DVD~~ Movie Player.app in Leopard now includes preferences for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Sure, Tiger included a preference pane for "HD", but this was for discs with H.264 encoded HD video created in Apple's DVD Studio Pro -- or the like. Of course, this isn't the only thing needed to add next-gen Hollywood movies to Leopard, but we're hoping Apple can pile on the rest before October, like AACS, HDCP, VC1 and of course an actual drive shipped with a new Mac.

[Via AVSForum]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-to-support-hd-dvd-and-blu-ray/#comments

6/12/2007 11:43:00 AM

Filed under: Handhelds, Portable Video

While it's not like we expect e-dictionaries to hop on the fast track of upgrades or anything, it's been way too long since Sharp's flagship Papyrus received any attention, but the day has finally come for a successor to take over. The PW-TC920 picks right up with a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 resolution touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, handwriting recognition pad, SD flash card slot, internal handwriting translation ability, and is offered in both red and black color schemes. The real kicker, however, is the 1Seg TV tuner that allows you to kick back and enjoy a television show in between study sessions, and the headphone out jack ensures that the crowd around you won't become annoyed with your antics. Unfortunately, there's no word yet surrounding a future price or release date, but hey, school's out for the most of us anyway, right?

[Via Electronista]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/sharp-papyrus-pw-tc920-defines-words-tunes-tv/#comments

6/12/2007 11:22:00 AM

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

While some of you may be holding out for a 1GB Radeon HD 2900 XT, those looking to spend a little less can get a bit of instant gratification. ATI has just announced that the Radeon 2400 HD and 2600 HD are now shipping to board customers, meaning that a few more DirectX 10 graphics cards will be hitting store shelves in the not too distant future. Both cards will also include the company's Unified Video Decoder (UVD), are based around a 65-nanometer chip, and will support HDMI and HDCP. Time to start scouring the neighborhood couches for spare change, eh?

[Via TGDaily]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/ati-ships-out-radeon-hd-2400-and-hd-2600-graphics-cards/#comments

6/12/2007 11:02:00 AM

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Storage

Much to the dismay of those Macheads who've started hitting size limits in Tiger's HFS+ file system (all ten of you), Apple has confirmed to InformationWeek that Leopard will not in fact adopt the more capacious ZFS alternative as promised last week by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. Senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS Brian Croll told IW point blank that "ZFS is not happening," contradicting Schwartz's assertion that his company's 128-bit file system would be bringing goodies like built-in data integrity and virtual storage to the iMac and friends. Meanwhile, Sun had no comment on the matter. Of course for most users creating an average Word or Photoshop document, this reversal really doesn't mean much, and may in fact be beneficial when we consider the higher processing demands made by the so-called 'Zettabyte File System." For changes in Leopard that are actually, like, real, you can check out our roundup of the new features right here.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/apple-no-zfs-for-leopard/#comments

6/12/2007 10:42:00 AM

While Tzero has been at the forefront of ultra wideband technology for some time, the firm is upping the stakes even higher with its WiMedia-based TZC7200 ZeroWire chipset. The UWB semiconductor solution was designed to dned to deliver "real-time high-definition video" either wirelessly or over cabling, and can even open new doors for "distributing entertainment content throughout the entire home using existing coax." Reportedly, this device can pipe multiple streams of HD video through your average cable network at the tune of 480Mbps, and it boasts application integration including IP, UDP, TCP/IP, multicast, and unicast. Notably, ZeroWire is "comprised of both a Radio Frequency IC (RFIC) as well as a baseband and media access control system-on-chip," and while the chipset is listed is being available immediately, you'll need to contact Tzero yourself to fetch the pricing details.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/tzeros-wimedia-based-zerowire-uses-uwb-for-hd-streaming/#comments

6/12/2007 10:22:00 AM

Filed under: Wireless

Sometimes, just sometimes sanity prevails. Remember Wibree, Nokia's proposed Bluetooth-like (but not Bluetooth) solution for short-range wireless cable replacement in low-powered devices? Well, as of this morning, Wibree, and its 10x lower power consumption (but shorter range) will become part of the Bluetooth specification for ultra low powered wireless devices. Once the spec is integrated, products like watches, toys, and even healthcare devices (er, pacemakers?) can join your Bluetooth Personal Area Network. You know, after the spec is finalized during the "first half of 2008" which will undoubtedly extend to Q3 of 2008 and then Q... ah hell, you know how it goes.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/wibree-is-now-bluetooths-ultra-low-power-wireless-standard/#comments

6/12/2007 9:57:00 AM

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

We've seen there's a bit of confusion after a certain not-entirely-lucid portion of Steve's WWDC keynote yesterday, wherein he announced "top to bottom" 64-bit integration in Leopard, what he characterized as a first for the industry. As we all know, Apple is only shipping on one versone version of Leopard, so that led some to believe they'd be left in the lurch, their G4s, G5s, Core Solos, and Core Duos rotting on Tiger and unable to make the jump past 10.4. Thankfully, that ain't the case.

As we mentioned yesterday (but didn't really dig into), Leopard isn't entirely like Windows, where you're expected to install the 32 or 64-bit variants of the OS based on the system / CPU that will run it. We discussed this with Apple, which expressed that this latest version of OS X takes a far simpler approach for the end-user than multiple hardware-centric OS versions, opting instead to run both 64 and 32-bit apps and drivers on any 64-bit machine (read: Core 2 Duo-based), and defaulting to the usual 32-bit app / driver operation on 32-bit Macs. In other words, users with 64-bit capable Intel machines will see a performance boost if running 64-bit apps, but those that don't have a newer Apple box won't be at all penalized -- nor will they be unable to upgrade. So, we cool?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/fret-not-64-bit-leopard-will-still-work-with-your-machine/#comments

6/12/2007 9:32:00 AM

Filed under: Digital Cameras

More from Kodak in the form of these four from Kodak's M series of ultracompact shooters. The 7 megapixel M753, 8 megapixel M853 (pictured), and 8 megapixel M873 each sport 2.5-inch LCDs while the 8 megapixel M883 dials it up to a 3-incher. The top-end M883 offers face detection technology, a full metal chassis, and ISO 3200 sensitivity. All the cameras feature a panorama stitching mode and MPEG-4 video capture which maxes out with a 640 x 480 resolution at just 15fps. The $149 M753 hits in June, the $179 M853 and $199 M873 in August, and $229 M883 in September -- each available in several colors. More photos as we get 'em.

[Via Photography Blog]

Continue reading Kodak's four slim shooters: the M753, M853, M873, M883

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/kodaks-four-slim-shooters-the-m753-m853-m873-m883/#comments

6/12/2007 9:01:00 AM

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Well, we knew it wasn't going to be earth-shattering, but this first shot of the mic for EA's Singstar-meets-DDR Wii game Boogie doesn't even set off mild tremors. The USB unit is the first mic for the Wii, however, and that's gotta count for something, right? Still, we're not giving up hope for Nintendo to finally ship the fabled Wiimote microphone that plugs into that unused "audio translator" chip -- it's gotta happen sometime. Right?

[Via Wii Fanboy]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/eas-boogie-mic-for-wii-is-unexciting/#comments

6/12/2007 8:43:00 AM

Filed under: Gaming

European gamers hoping to score a PS3 with a larger-than-60GB hard drive had better bust out their screwdrivers -- Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president David Reeves isn't planning on selling that 80GB PS3 in your hood anytime soon. Writing for MCV, Reeves says the larger hard drive only makes sense in a market like South Korea, which has "very high broadband penetration and the people there are used to downloading content, so they require a certain size hard drive." Ouch, way to underestimate your customers -- better start downloading more movies, Europe. Reeves goes on to say that he doesn't "feel" competing with Xbox Live since Sony is in a "different stadium," and that it doesn't have "eyes on the competition in any way." We're not going to tackle that one, except to point out that if Sony was looking at the competition, it might notice that 120GB hard drive said competition now has available.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/sony-no-80gb-ps3-for-europe/#comments

6/12/2007 8:21:00 AM

Filed under: Cellphones

Can't afford the $750 or so required to pick up a Nokia N95 right now? Fret not, as the Chinese knockoff factories have been workin' overtime in order to crank out a somewhat similar alternative to fit the bill. The E-PDA V16 comes in a bit larger than the authentic iteration and includes a three-inch QVGA touchscreen, three-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, multimedia player, and a touch of tacky to top things off. Of course, any of your pals that are in the know won't be impressed by your fy your futile attempts to fool 'em, but considering that this thing won't cost you nearly as much coin as the real deal, it might be worth the embarrassment (or not). Catch a few more snapshots of the impostor after the jump.

[Via iTechNews, thanks lionsense]

Continue reading Keepin' it real fake, part LIX: E-PDA V16 mocks Nokia N95

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/keepin-it-real-fake-part-lix-e-pda-v16-mocks-nokia-n95/#comments

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