Engadget

Filed under: Household

While you gotta wonder who at the Gray Lady thought this thing up, the New York Times Garden Expert does seem like it might actually be kinda useful now that spring is finally here. Looking like a cross between a novelty fridge magnet and a circa-1993 RadioShack discount PDA, the Garden Expert contains 1000 answers to common gardening questions culled from the NYT's Garden Expert column, like "What flowers attract butterflies?" Not the highest of high-tech, but for $20 it's pretty hard to complain. And say, isn't a certain day coming up?

[Via OhGizmo]

 

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

Filed under: Robots

While we're no strangers to the crazy robots people build out of LEGOs, Daniele Benedettelli's LEGO Johnny Five has got to be the most awe-inspiring brickwork we've seen in a while. The NXT-based 'bot actually contains two NXT units that communicate via Bluetooth to provide Mr. Five a full range of motion from his 6 motors and as much input as he can handle from up to 8 sensors. Benedettelli built the model after careful study of Johnny Five photos to determine his precise measurements, and two previous attempts. While we applaud all this effort, we can't imagine how much time it's going to take her to plate version 4 in gold. Check the read link for plans and videos of Johnny in action.

[Via MAKE: blog]

 

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

Filed under: Laptops

The folks over at PC Perspective finally got their hands on the Asus G2 gaming lappy we first saw all the way back in October, and while it's got a couple trick features, it's also hot, heavy, and held back by a midrange GPU. Based on the massive Asus A7J, the G2 bumps the processor to a 2GHz Intel T7200 Core 2 Duo and the GPU to a 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1700, repackaging the whole deal in a slick metal case with an integrated OLED screen (no SideShow though, bummer), 1.3 megapixel webcam, and side-mounted red LED strips that throb with DirectX activity. Flossing all that gamer style doesn't get you anywhere if you can't run with the big boys, though, and that's where PC Perspective found that that X1700 just wasn't always up to the task, slowing down considerably during some of their tests. But despite this and some other potential dealbreakers (like being the heaviest 17-inch laptop PC Perspective has ever tested and requiring near-total disassembly to upgrade the RAM) the G2 left a favorable impression, offering competent, if not great, performance with more than a dash of style for $1900. Peep the read link for the full review.

 

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

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

We've got nothing personal against screen rotation, even the automatic variety has its time and place, but unfortunately for Plezo, our imagination is limited to about 90 degrees of this gimmicky stuff. Plezo's PM-220 shatters modern rotation convention by going for a full 360 degrees, allowing you to watch your screen in whatever funky screen configuration your heart desires. We suppose the extra flexibility could help out south paws and the like, but other limitations like a 2.2-inch screen and 1GB of flash memory aren't helping Plezo's case of using this thing as a video player. The dual headphone jacks, FM radio, voice recording and games are all nice touches, but we're pretty sure there are better ways to spend 109,000 won (about $117) in the great land of South Korea.

 

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

Filed under: Displays, HDTV

Along with that leaked Sony laptop info we saw this morning, there's word on some upcoming Bravia LCDs and projectors due for the UK this summer. Sony's prepping two front projector models -- the VPL-AW10 and VPL-AW15 -- with 6000:1 and 12000:1 contrast ratios, 1300 lumens of brightness, and 1080/24p input via HDMI, though there's no word on actual output resolution. There are also five LCD models in the works: KDL-40D3000U and KDL-40S3000U 40-inch models, the KDL-32D3000U and KDL-32S3000U 32-inch sets, and the KDL-26S3000U 26-inch model. All of the sets are 720p and include Bravia Theatre Sync for sending remote control data, three HDMI inputs (two for the smallest set), and integrated tuners, while the D-series models add 100Hz refresh rates. The projectors and the 100Hz LCDs will be available in the UK beginning in June, the KDL-40/32S3000U LCD models will hit the streets in July, and the KDL-26S3000U will be released in September.

 

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

Filed under: Features, Gaming, Peripherals

One of Ben's most popular hacks recently was the PS360 controller, a SIXAXIS modded into an Xbox 360 controller's shell, crashing his site not once, but twice upon its release. This project resulted in a lot of requests to duplicate this mod, showing either a very universal disdain for the PS3 controller's decade-old shape, or some strange obsession with the Xbox 360's chubby, winged form. Unfortunately. Ben didn't have the time to meet all these requests (plus he charges an arm and a leg), so we asked him to show you How-To build your own PS360 controller. It's not terribly difficult, just takes some time, elbow grease and, of course, lots of hot glue. Let's get started!

Note: This is an intermission project, part 3 of the "How-to: Make an Xbox 360 laptop" will be returning next week.

Continue reading How-to: Make a PS360 controller

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

VeriSign has already teamed up with PayPal to offer one-time use passwords on key fobs, but it looks like it's now found a way to make that additional layer of protection even more portable, partnering with Innovative Card Technologies Inc. to squeeze the disposable digits onto standard size bank cards. Apparently, you'll get a new password after each transaction you make online (displayed by pushing a button on the back of the card), making it theoretically impossible for anyone without the card to access your account, even if they somehow manage to get a hold of your regular password. While it's not clear when the cards will actually be put into use, VeriSign is promising to make an announcement about a "major bank" set to use the cards sometime this month.

 

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

Filed under: Storage

We're pretty impressed by OWC's "gotta plug 'em all" collection of ports on this new external drive, the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro, which features a "Quad Interface" and 1TB of 7200RPM storage in a Mac-friendly enclosure. The drive can handle FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0 and eSATA, and OWC is claiming speeds up to 80MB per second on FireWire and 150MB/s on eSATA, thanks to the Oxford 924 chipset. The $600 pricetag is a wee bit steep, but OWC is nice enough to include FireWire, USB and eSATA cables in the box, along with various backup softwares for Mac and Windows. We're getting a little tired of the Mac Pro-style cheese grater look, but you can find 1TB drives with a whole lot more ugly, that's for sure, so we won't complain too much. The drive should be available now, in capacities on down to 250GB if you're not quite ready to make the 1TB plunge.

 

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

Filed under: Laptops

We've already seen the AMD versions of HP's new Compaq business laptops, the 6515b and 6715b, but now, thanks to a couple of leaked maintenance manuals, we've got word of Intel Santa Rosa versions of those two models: the 6510b and 6710b. Just like their AMD brethren, both models come with a WWAN option, and the main difference between the two is the 14.1-inch WXGA screen in the 6510b and 15.4-inch WXGA or WSXGA+ screens in the 6710b. Processors range from the 1.8GHz T7100 to the 2.4GHz T7700, and both stick to Intel GM965 integrated graphics. Both laptops can be specced pretty much any way you can imagine, and can come with anything from Vista Business to SuSe Linux pre-installed. No word on price or availability, but with all sorts of Santa Rosa-tops getting ready to launch, it shouldn't be much longer of a wait.

[Via Notebook Italia]

Read - HP Compaq 6510b manual (Warning: PDF link)
Read - HP Compaq 6710b manual (Warning: PDF link)

 

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

Filed under: Wireless

Gefen has been talking up its wireless USB hub for quite a while now, but it looks like it could now finally be getting closer to a release, with the device making its all-important first appearance on the FCC's website. While there's not a whole lot to help it stand out from other similar devices, it looks like should get the job done well enough, with a promised 60 foot range and data transfer speeds of up to 70 Mbps, along with four USB 2.0 ports to accommodate your various peripherals. As with other wireless USB devices, however, the pleasure of operating your gadgets from across the room doesn't come cheap, with Gefen currently asking $399 to take your order, although it still isn't giving any indication as to when it'll actually ship.

Read - Gefen product page
Read - FCC documents

 

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

Filed under: Digital Cameras

When all else fails, repackage your device with some gimmicky new software and a new brand, then send it back into the field with a hyperbole-filled press release and see what sticks. That seems to be Pure Digital's plan here with the Flip Video, an exact replica of the drug store-friendly Point & Shoot cam, with a 30 minute version going for $120, and a 60 minute edition priced at $150. The main difference, other than that new Flip Video moniker, is some YouTube-friendly software that lets you edit and upload your videos to video sharing sites relatively pain-free. Of course, you can still do the photo lab thing and get your videos turned into a DVD, but Flip Video's video sharing thrust does seem to have a good eye for the current market, even if the actual tech is getting a little dated by now. The device should be available today.

 

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

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Given Michael Dell's admitted fondness for Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn, specifically) and Dell's previous announcement that it was heeding the call of geeks everywhere to offer Linux pre-loaded on its consumer systems, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Ubuntu would be the company's distro of choice, but it's still nice to hear the word coming straight from the source. The company's also getting a bit more specific on when we'll finally start to see Ubuntu-based systems rolling out the door, saying that it'll begin to offer Ubuntu 7.04 as an option on "select Dell consumer models" (both desktops and laptops) in the coming weeks. Now, if only they'd be as receptive to public feedback on their choices of hardware.

[Via CRN]

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We know, it's rather disappointing to check the local forecast on your Melitta MS1MSB or Wii weather channel, only to find the conditions completely not as you expected once you stroll outside, but those guesstimates could be getting a bit of help from weather tracking airplanes. Boeing has filed a patent application that would "using airborne radars to measure wind vectors," essentially strapping weather-sensing nodes onto an airplane so that it collects real-time data whilst passing across remote regions of the planet that typically get ignored. Better yet, the data could even be cross-referenced with nearby planes in order to estimate the best actual forecast for a given region based on numerous information sources, potentially yielding a more accurate look at forthcoming weather. Of course, all logic here would point to humanoid meteorologists being established to interpret and disseminate the information, but until all this gets real, we'll be playin' it safe with the weather forecasting umbrella.

[Via NewScientistTech]

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

By a fairly wide 420-3 margin, the House of Representatives gave a nearly unanimous thumbs-up to the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which would "prohibit employers from using genetic information or test results when making employment and health benefits decisions" if it gets a similar nod of approval from the Senate. Fortunately for supporters, the Senate has been known to look fondly upon similar legislation in the past, and if the bill becomes law, health insurers couldn't use "genetic information to set premiums," nor could they require customers to submit genetic tests. Essentially, this could ensure that any future human mutation hacks you inflict on yourself, or more frightening, any robotic humanoid whose genes would find it out, will be safe from scrutiny come interview time. It's about time to order up that oh-so-keen intelligent carpet, right, hiring managers?

[Via Wired]

 

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

Filed under: Digital Cameras

 

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

Filed under: Household, Portable Audio

If you're one of those folks who genuinely feel that Philips' Ambilight technology adds a whole new level to your television viewing experience, we'll tell ya, these are going to be awfully hard to resist. Ceratec's CeraLight Xeno audio system consists of four Ceraplanar flat diaphragm transducers and one subwoofer, and besides the 100-watts or so of power you'll have at your fingertips, these column speakers should delight the lighting freaks in the crowd with their remote-controllable brightness and color. Apparently, the LED-infused speakers can emit a variety of colorful glows depending on your mood, ensuring that there's never a lack of rainbow going on in your living room. Unfortunately, there's no word on price or availability just yet, but be sure to click on through to see these vivid sound sticks in action.

[Via FreshCreation]

Continue reading Ceratec's CeraLight Xeno audio system offers adjustable LED lighting

 

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

Filed under: Laptops

We got some more info today from a friendly tipster about Sony's upcoming and not-so-secretive summer laptop lineup. The FZ info we had for the most part, but it's nice to get a bit of confirmation that Sony is actually going with 2GB of RAM and Santa Rosa across the board for the Vista laptops, along with Blu-ray in the FZ11Z. The other goodness we've got here are the first pics of the 11.1-inch TZ series (shown above), some downright sexy ultraportables that are replacing the comparatively frumpy TX laptops. Sony is touting up to 9 hours of battery life, with 1GB of RAM and a 80GB hard drive in the TZ11MN/M, and 2GB / 100GB in the TZ11XN/B. Both laptops feature integrated cameras and microphones, just like the FZ series, and are running Vista Business on Core 2 Duo U7500 processors. Still no word on price, but the info we have has these hitting at least the UK in July.

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

For those dwelling in England who enjoy a touch of privacy in their day to day lives, help could be on the way. Amidst the smattering of new surveillance methods being installed and implemented within the nation's border comes a second inquiry into the "constitutional implications" of such invasive measures. If you'll recall, the Commons' Home Affairs committee has already planned its own review, and now the UK's Constitution Committee will be "conducting an inquiry on the consequences of the collection and use of surveillance and personal data by the State." Basically, the group is trying to visualize just how damaging all these CCTV installations, car trackers, and behavior monitors are on the "relationship between individuals and institutions." Another aspect will be to scrutinize whether UK citizens need additional protection under the law from such voyeuristic tactics, and judging solely by the sheer multitude of surveying going on over there, we couldn't complain with a little extra shielding. [Warning: Word Document read link]

[Via El Reg]

 

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

Filed under: Laptops

Just when you thought you'd seen the end of MacBook quality problems -- hey, what more could go wrong, right? -- here comes another structural integrity snafu to put a nice bow on things. An unfortunate flickr group has formed around gathering evidence of a rather uniform cracking at the edge of the MacBook's hand rest area, which is apparently putting a crimp in the style of a good collection of MacBook users, including a particularly heavy-palmed user (actually, some people are blaming it on an overly strong magnetic latch) whose MacBook cracked again a mere two weeks after being repaired. No precise word on whether Apple is feeling generous with repairs here, but a few anecdotal reports make it sound like Apple isn't buying claims of it being a problem with build quality. We can understand a bit of skepticism, but given the fact that this isn't the first time cracking has appeared, we would hope Apple fesses up and fixes these things right quick.

[Thanks, Elvis]

Read - flickr group
Read - Worst offenders
Read - Forum discussion

 

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

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Gaming, Handhelds, Peripherals

No real surprises here -- except for how long it took Sony to kick this thing out the door -- but European PSP owners will finally be able to join their Japanese brethren in playing with the much-anticipated PSP camera peripheral now known as the Go!Cam. The €50 (~$68) cam will hit PAL regions on May 16th bundled with the so-called Go!Edit software package, and though we doubt it's as full-featured as the apps shipping with the PlayStation Eye, it sounds like your basic editing and enhancement functions are taken care of. No word yet on a US launch -- we'd expect an announcement to follow quite soon -- but since we almost forgot this darn thing existed in the first place, we look at any release at all as nothing short of a complete and total victory.

[Via DCemu]

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Haven't picked mom up a special Sansa C250 just yet? Weren't even planning on it? Well now you can stop fretting about where the coinage will come from to buy her a gift, as Intel and Skype have teamed up to offer the Gift of Gab come May 13th. The two firms will be charging the low, low price of nada for unlimited SkypeOut calls to landlines or mobile numbers that originate in the US or Canada for Mother's Day, giving us boys and girls here in the top sections of North America a full 24 hours to concoct and deliver an appropriate speech to that overseas-based mom. Of course, this offering could ensure that the "busiest calling day of the year" remains the champ in 2007, but regardless of what everyone else is doing, make sure you pencil in a phone call of your own a couple Sundays from now -- there's just no excuse left.

 

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

Filed under: Robots, Transportation

Joining the Land Walker, Robotic Giraffe, and the Anchorage Mecha as some of the most exotic, over-the-top ways to get from point A to point B is the Mondo Spider, which required a team of skilled engineers and "thousands of hours" in order to assemble. The creators seemingly spared no cost on the mechanical arachnid, as it boasts an impressive array of gears, linkages, and sheer quantities of metal to bring it all together. The man-driven beast cranks up like your average vehicle, but slipping it into first gear gets the spidey's legs a-crankin', and before long, it actually gets up to a respectable pace and commands respects from anyone close to its path. It may not shoot rubber balls or pass a state inspection, but we can't imagine too many vehicles standing up to this intimidating monster. Catch the videotaped demonstration in the links below.

[Via Wired]

 

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

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Hendrix, McCarney, Cobain -- don't underestimate the power of lefty guitarists. Got a twitch to take your Guitar Hero licks southpaw? Check out Engadget reader Kevin M's handiwork; not really a how-to in the vein of our own Ben Heck, but it certainly proves those prepared to will a custom-flipped controller into being can do so with some light soldering, hot glue, and a weekend of labor. Prepare for faux-stardom, sinistral face-melters.

 

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

Filed under: Household

While we've seen hordes of clever marketing gimmicks in the past, a few involving those flipping signs that rotate through various spots, Front Design is taking the billboard approach to a cupboard in an attempt to showcase a new form of art. The aptly-dubbed Changing Cupboard rocks a bevy of turnable panels on an everyday piece of furniture, but due to special effects that aren't entirely disclosed, it can flip squares over to constantly evolve into a new piece of design. Of course, the pixel morphing unit makes a whole lot more sense when you see it motion, so go on, click through for a peek of your own.

[Via CubeMe]

Continue reading Front Design's Changing Cupboard displays pixelated art

 

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

Filed under: Portable Audio, Wearables

Don't count on Ashley Gehman's rendition of Apple's stock earbuds to come bundled in with a special edition iPod anytime soon, but if you're looking to permanently affix such icons to your lobes as a tribute to your fangirlism, these are for you. The iArtifact iPod earbud earrings look to be made from sterling silver, sport the tell-tale dimples across the top, and on top of all that, they're wireless. All jesting aside, these completely non-musical body adornments should light up the eyes of your favorite lady, and while these haven't gone commercial just yet (probably some papers left to sign regarding that whole Made for iPod agenda), we could definitely see these things selling like hotcakes in Apple stores worldwide.

 

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

Filed under: Networking

It's always only a matter of time. A little less than a year after the first quantum cryptographic network was demoed, a group of researchers at MIT have announced a working implementation of a hack that's been around in theory since 1998 but never implemented. Skirting around ol' Wernie Heisenberg and that Principle of his, the team exploited quantum entanglement to read the encryption keys encoded in photon polarizations from their momentums, avoiding detection by either end -- in other words, doing what was once thought impossible by cryptographers. The system isn't perfect, however -- in this early incarnation it can only nab 40% of transmitted data before giving itself away, and more importantly, it requires the invention of a "quantum non-demolition box" before the attacker can be anywhere but the same room as the receiver, since right now both attacker and receiver need to be using the same photon detector. Sounds like that might put a damper on that whole "undetectable" thing. Still, the researchers sound upbeat -- they're saying the work proves that no secret is truly safe. We're just wondering if they're pushing MIT to rename their department SETEC ASTRONOMY.

 

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

Filed under: Household

Continuing on in the grand tradition of products designed to let you be a lazy as possible, the "All-Sound-Catch Cubic Pillow" doesn't look particularly comfortable, but that doesn't appear to be the point. The cushion lattice allows you to stretch out on the couch without muffling any sound, allowing you use the smallest possible amount of energy to, say, talk on the phone. We're just worried that the Lazy Wii Guy will get a hold of one and cause, like, a negative energy vortex that destroys the universe.

[Via TokyoMango]

 

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

Filed under: Desktops

Taking a much more, um, direct approach to educating consumers about the need to conserve energy, the EnergyTree concept PC presents a simple proposition to the user: use energy efficiently, and the tree contained within the case will be cared for. Get greedy with the juice (by joining the Engadget Folding@home team, for example), and the tree will be straight-up poisoned and killed. The concept, by UK evil genius designer Ben Arent, was recently picked as one of the 34 finalists in the 2007 Microsoft StartSomething design competition. The tree PC (treeputer?) contains a host of sensors and interfaces to monitor energy usage in an entire house, and can even turn ancillary devices on and off to keep your energy usage low (and that tree alive). While it's interesting to see an explicit attempt to turn energy consumption into an emotional experience, we think we're going to stick with those EnergyStar stickers -- they never threaten to kill anything.

[Via Crave]

 

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

Filed under: Ask Engadget, HDTV, Home Entertainment

The week of Ask Engadget is still going strong. We're committing a whole seven days to taking your questions -- which you can hit up ask at engadget dawt com with -- and putting the best ones up here for discussing by your fellow readers in the comments. Saturday we got specific with "No Trab" in an audio recording quest, now we're going to open up a whole can of worms with a question from Dan, who's looking for a TV:

"With the enormous variety of HDTVs out there - the various technologies (LCD, Plasma, DLP, Laser, OLED), the various specifications (HD formats, native resolution, contrast ratio), various inputs (HDMI, DVI, VGA, Component), and various tuners (NTSC, ATSC, QAM, Cable Card) - how does one go about choosing 'the best' HDTV? Are there any tips / tricks that go into shopping for an HDTV? What are the absolute do's / don'ts in shopping, purchasing, and using an HDTV?"

Naturally, there's plenty of info for Dan to gorge himself on over at Engadget HD, but does anyone have a favorite resource / game plan / reality check / super-oh-my-gosh-HDTV-model to help the guy out with?

 

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

Filed under: Household

Let's face it, being a pet in the modern era is pretty tough -- our furry friends live under constant surveillance and face crippling self-esteem issues brought on by a society hell-bent on upgrading them, and even replacing them outright with videogames and robots. Adding to the list of products designed to relieve Fluffy from these terrible burdens, Japanese outfit Medical Life Care Giken claims to have invented a patch to measure the stress level of cats and dogs. Based on studies linking sweat production to stress, the pin-sized patch goes on your pet's paw and changes color based on how much sweat it detects, allowing you to schedule doggie-therapy sessions accordingly. While we're not certain why it took a multi-year partnership with researchers at Toyama University to develop a sweat-powered animal mood ring, we only hope that Giken is hard at work on the fish and turtle versions of this patch -- it's been looking mighty tense in that tank.

[Via MedLaunches]

 

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

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Household

Though Savant Systems' "Rosie" home control system is in pre-beta right now, its aims for the home automation and media server markets are still quite lofty, and the team seems to have the chops to back it up. The modular system is centered around the Rosie Server, which features dual Xeon 5100 procs, 32GB of DDR RAM and 2.25TB of RAID 5 storage. It's all controlled from an interesting touchwheel remote (that weird bowl-ish thing in the picture above) and various touchpanels, and can pipe high quality audio, 1080p video, and home automation commands throughout your home. Setup is purportedly 1/100th of the time of competing solutions, thanks to some fancy modular design. Savant is planning several packages for its system, including the Rosie Control, which includes a full complement of home control serial, GPIO and IR ports; the Rosie Video Switch, which packages the Rosie Control with an 8 x 8 HDMI switch; the Rosie Audio, which features iTunes-based media management and all sorts of high-end audio specs and outputs; and the Rosie Combo which throws it all together in one, and we're sure will cost your life savings. No word on when this is due or what it'll cost, but we'll be keeping an eye out for sure.

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wearables

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

 

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

Filed under: Features

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

Earlier this month, concerns among Apple fans and glasses among Apple-haters were alike raised as word came from the Cupertino castle that it would miss its self-imposed deadline for Leopard by four months. Rather than deliver Leopard (perhaps code-naming it Cheetah would have sped up development?) at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June as originally planned, the next major version of Mac OS would ship in October. The culprit was pegged as the iPhone, Apple's self-described revolutionary handset that has already changed some of the rules of the wireless business even as it has yet to change any customers' experiences.

Apple pointed to the sophistication of the iPhone's software, a mobile version of Mac OS X, dismissing any concerns that the phone's operating system is an expedient port. Mac fans should take heart, though. The iPhone's short-term ill effect on the Mac could translate into long-term benefit as Apple's developers may pick up optimization techniques working with the handset's small memory and storage footprint, perhaps fueling its long-speculated ultraportable PC.

Indeed, a four-month delay is not serious in the lifecycle of a modern desktop operating system and seems like an extra weekend in the context of the multi-year delay from the original launch timeframe of Windows Vista. And while Vista may have been more of an overhaul than any of Apple's recent dot-upgrade operating systems, we don't yet know what may be some of Leopard's most compelling features. What we do know is that Time Machine is not yet at the point where Apple could have used it to go back before the iPhone project got started and start working on Leopard four months earlier.

Continue reading Switched On: Spreadable fruit

 

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

Filed under: Displays, HDTV

Taking a page out of Samsung's book of naming conventions (see Bordeaux and Cannes), LG has introduced the Quidam series of flat-panels: six LCDs based on a show by world-famous performers Cirque du Soleil, which follows a little girl's desire to escape from sadness and alienation into an imaginary world -- fitting for a screen you use to forget about your dreary life. With a semicircular stand and automatic brightness adjustment sensors, the sets will be available as a 32-incher for $1,614 or 42-incher for $3,336.

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

 

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Looking for an exciting new way to earn money flexing that 20th century brain of yours? Try inventing gadgets! Americans spend more the $100 million a year on these useless, dangerous or just plain idiotic devices, which can often be found in 5 and 10 cent stores. Or something like that. The folks at Modern Mechanix unearthed this interesting advertorial from 1935, which hopes to inspire folks to design and patent their own "gadgets," little widgets that the magazine defines as "something that we would like to own, if it doesn't cost too much, yet something that we can do without if we absolutely must." We've been trying to look around the Engadget HQ and decide what we could live without, but decided that was just silly -- next thing you know it, stupid magazines from the past will be trying to tell us we don't need our Nabaztag reading us news in the morning, or LED umbrellas to know what the weather's like outside. Clearly preposterous.

[Thanks, Charles S]

 

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

Filed under: Desktops

Can't help but chuckle at Dell's semi-admirable attempts at "community involvement" in product design decisions. To its credit, Dell does seem to be listening up on the Linux issue -- though we have to wait and see how well the execution goes -- but this latest "You Choose" question posed to the Dell IdeaStorm community isn't exactly going to change the world. Dell wants your vote on two different clear sidepanel designs for its XPS 710 H2C desktop which was unveiled at CES. Sounds like a good idea, unfortunately, the options are laughable: you can vote for a decent but perhaps over the top "X" design, or a square window that was clearly drummed up after the marketing team decided it'd be a good thing to "ask the community" in an attempt to generate interest. In the end, it's all pretty silly -- don't they know that what the people really want is to pay double the price for a gaming desktop with pretty pictures on it?

[Via Geekzone]

 

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

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Laptops, Peripherals, Tablet PCs

As if the influx of products like the Wiimote, SIXAXIS controller, and DoCoMo D904i series of handsets hadn't yet convinced you that motion control is the future of PC input (well, either that or knuckle rapping), BT is currently field testing a USB dongle that promises to bring the excitement of gaming to boring computing tasks. Like other implementations before it, the so-called Balance technology uses a small accelerometer to translate various tilts and movements of a connected laptop or UMPC into certain commands, letting you violently shake your expensive gear to do something as simple as empty the trash. Actually, the current trials aren't meant to enable an even lazier lifestyle for your average geek -- at least in the short term -- but rather to give disabled individuals a way to hop on the mobile computing bandwagon without having to deal with finicky trackpads, control nubbins, or onscreen thumbboards. While no specific plans for a commercial launch have been made, BT anticipates that a product stemming from this research will hit the market in two to three years, just in time to be replaced by the thought-controlled input devices that are once again being trailblazed by the cutting-edge gaming community.

[Via Reg Hardware]

 

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

Filed under: Laptops

This swollen, bloated MacBook Pro battery comes to us courtesy of Engadget reader Brade, whose ridiculously broken cell continued expanding even days after it was pulled from his system. Silver-lining: Apple was cool about replacing the thing. So let it be known: battery safety comes before productivity, so make sure your unit isn't one of the recalled batteries, and for God's sake, if you're seeing the swell, take it out and quarantine that thing immediately. (See also part 3, part 2, the original, and the recall.)

 

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