Gadgetstronics

Now this pair of Skull speakers definitely don’t look too family friendly, but mom always taught me not to judge a book by its cover. In this case, the pair of speakers sound much better than they look, with a blue glow from within their skull cavities lighting up whenever you play your favorite tunes on it. GeekStuff4U is carrying this pair of Skull speakers for $71.75. Doesn’t sound as though the aesthetics is worth the price though.

Posted Jan 21st 2008 8:16AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: GPS
Yeah, we sure love our charts / tables too, and with Garmin’s nüvi lineup now bordering on thoroughly overwhelming, we’re glad to see the folks over at NaviGadget doing the dirty work and cranking out “the ultimate nüvi comparison table.” Click on for a much easier way to digest the latest outpouring of nüvis, will ya?

Some of you asked for it when we showed you the LEGO Steampunk Tie Fighter and here it is: a LEGO Steampunk Pod Racer, the Darling Apollo IV driven by Trenton Telgaard. Whoever that is. It’s also part of the LEGO Steam Wars contest, like the brilliant London Imperial Shuttle after the jump (right next to an hilarious LEGO animation set to Eddie Izzard’s monologue on Darth Vader’s at the Death Star’s cafeteria. A must for a monday morning.)

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I don’t know about you, but I find that quite funny. Funny in a Queen’s Seaside Rendezvous steampunkcampish kind of way, but funny. As opposed to hilarious, like the following monologue.

“Jeff Vader.” Definitely one of the funniest things I’ve found in a long time. [The Brothers Brick and LEGO Steam Wars Contest]

Buffalo is dropping a series of external optical devices in Europe. This model features a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combo drive. The drive can write Blu-Ray discs and reads HD-DVD. Expect Buffalo to launch this drive in March in Europe, price is still unknown.
[Source]

Ah, 2008, you are a cool year so far, but not as cool as 1958, when the Fulton Air Surface-to-Air Recovery System started to operate: attach yourself to a helium ballon using a nylon cable capable of sustained 4,000 pounds, shoot it into the air and wait until a cargo plane grabs you and takes you of dangerous areas, literally flying, Spiderman style. If you are a special operations soldier and have the guts to try it after seeing it in video, that is:

The system began its life as a variation of another crazy scheme using by spec-ops in World War II. Then, instead of a helium balloon they used a pair of poles, which were then grappled with a plane towing cable and hook. At the beginning of the 50s, Robert Edison Fulton Jr.—and inventor working for the CIA— thought about using a weather balloon and a nylon line.

He presented his invention to his boss, director of CIA technical research Admiral de Florez, who directed him to the military. The Office of Naval Research put him to work and by 1958 the first real Skyhook pick-up took plac, when a Navy P2V got US Marines’ Staff Sergeant Levi W. Woods with less shock than a parachute opening.

Th Air Force stopped using it in 1995, after years of winching people to the skies using C-130 Hercules and with only one casualty in 17 years of use. Long range helicopters made the system less useful, but Fulton’s invention is still alive in other armies: in 2001 a British Hercules rescued an injured spec-op soldier in Afghanistan.

And besides, any device that gets to be used in an actual James Bond movie (Thunderball) gets extra points for us. [Wikipedia]

Yes.digitrad.com offers a phone number that allows users to receive calls on their phones or computers via the virtual phone on their web page. They can also place international calls from their mobile phones for the price of a local call. This offer is currently limited to France: if you live abroad and would like to be called from France by your friends, your family or your colleagues for the price of a local call, it is easy, go to yes.digitrad.com and select a free number. If you live in France, you can call up to 130 countries in the world for the price of a local call, you can also receive calls on your computer, your landline or your mobile phone (receiving calls on French mobile phones is limited to accounts created during the time of the launch). In addition, you can get your voicemails in your email inbox. This service might be extended to other European countries later.

Belkin has just released the Conserve - an 8-outlet surge protector which aims to lower energy consumption by doing away with wasteful standby power. While this is supposed to help lower the overall impact on the environment while saving you a fair amount of dimes in the process, I would say an impact could only be noticed if the Conserve was adopted across a wide scale. Having just one person use the Conserve at home will probably not make a dent. The 8 surge-protected outlets consist of half a dozen “switchable” and two “always-on” outlets for easier energy use control. The Belkin Conserve retails for $49.95 each.

Some company IT departments who offer email via IBM’s Domino e-mail server might start getting some requests to load Lotus Notes on their iPhone or iPod Touch after an expected announcement next week at the Lotusphere conference. The Associated Press is reporting that IBM has teamed up with Apple to offer a version of Lotus Notes which runs on the Apple handhelds. The iPhone and iPod touch already come with the ability to connect to web-enabled mail and Microsoft Exchange, if a company has allowed the appropriate connection. As the AP article states, that connection is usually not something many businesses setup.

If a company already has a web-access license for the user then there will be no additional cost to use Lotus Notes on the iPhone or iPod Touch. If a new license needs to be purchased it will be US$39 per user per year. A software partnership between IBM and Apple is not much of a stretch since the two companies have previously had a partnership regarding hardware. IBM processors use to power Apple computers before they made the switch to Intel.

You can bet there are a lot of IT departments who run IBM’s Domino email server who are cringing at the notion that Lotus Notes will now be available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. They can just see that pile of requests now from iPhone and iPod Touch users who want to access their corporate email from their Apple handheld. Some corporate IT departments who have Domino may want to remind their users where they stand on supporting applications on Apple handhelds before the “wave” comes after next weeks expected announcement.

Read more from the AP article.

Posted Jan 21st 2008 7:21AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Transportation
We’ve already seen whips that brake for us, steer for us and wheel us into that last remaining spot on 5th Avenue without marring someone’s BMW, so it follows logic that we’d see vehicles that peer into our minds, too. Research done by a crew at the Technical University of Berlin has shown that a “smart dashboard” could one day deactivate distractions within the vehicle in order to improve driver response if things simply get too hectic. Reportedly, the system could switch off in-car gadgetry (you know, navigators, radios, Hello Kitty headsets, etc.) when one’s brain became overloaded in order to speed up reaction time “by as much as 100-milliseconds.” Of course, this is assuming that said brain won’t melt down even further when that beloved iPod inexplicably shuts off just as Slash gears up for some serious shredding in Welcome to the Jungle, but nevertheless, we applaud the effort.

[Image courtesy of TAMU]

Posted Jan 21st 2008 2:27AM by Evan Blass
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video While Korean manufacturer Tomato has never produced the most eye-catching PMPs, at least the company was pushing out some original looking products for awhile. Not so with the measly 2GB or 4GB ‘Video Touch,’ which doesn’t even try to deviate from Apple’s tried-and-true design, although it does a great job in lowering the bar with its its 320 x 240 QVGA screen. Supported file types include MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, MPEG-4, and AVI, although you’d really be doing yourself a favor by putting those 59,900 ($63) or 79,900 won ($84) towards a higher capacity, higher resolution device.

[Via PMP Today, image courtesy of mpnavi]