Gadgets Mobile

by Darren Murph, posted Aug 3rd 2008 at 10:52AM
It’s hard to say if the pigeon you see above actually understood what he / she was doing, but apparently these birds can be taught to at least play App Store games in a very poor manner. The creature’s owner does note that Mr. Pigeon was pretty awful at racking up high scores on Tap Tap Revenge, but the important thing to realize here is that pigeon pecks do register as presses on the screen. Now that this is all out in the open, we fully expect a follow-up video next week of someone teaching their bird to dial a number on command. Vid’s after the break.

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Filed under: cellphones

While we’re not really a science blog, this news seemed big enough to post. The Phoenix Mars mission has confirmed that water exists on Mars by what they call ‘touch and taste’ tests, electronically of course. Next up, Phoenix will extend its mission through the end of September to search for life on Mars. They’ve already found nutrients (such as sodium, potassium and more) that exist in our bodies, but no organic materials yet.

Posted in Miscellaneous

by Darren Murph, posted Aug 3rd 2008 at 8:39AM
Mmm, touchscreens. Expansive, gorgeous touchscreens. That pretty much sums up our initial impressions after taking one hard look at James Piatt’s Plica concept. As you can tell, this foldable cellie opens up to reveal a pair of touchscreens just begging to be used for web browsing, texting and photo viewing. There’s also a mini-USB port and a headphone jack, though we’d certainly be interested to see how he plans on slipping a battery in there that lasts more than a hour or two. Can we get a major handset manufacturer to look in this direction — pretty please?

[Via gadgetell]

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Filed under: cellphones

For many of us, bacon is a staple in our diets, despite what doctors might tell us about the health consequences of eating too much of the delectable pork treat. I think some of the past bacon-themed gadgets we’ve talked about prove that this delicious pig part is a favorite among geeks and gadgeteers alike.

What if us humans were composed of such delicious meat? Would we have human meat farms? We wouldn’t go that far, but indeed, you might find many more incidents of cannibalism and bite injuries. If you’re brave enough to risk being serious cannibal target, and eager to show off your love for a nice plate of bacon and eggs, the Bacon & Eggs Bandages are a tasty way to cover your wounds.

Other than resembling a tasty breakfast, your wound will be kept safe from infection with the eggs and bacon proudly shielding the injury from outside bacteria. The Bacon & Eggs Bangages tin comes packed with seven 3″ long bacon strips, and seven 1-1/2″ fried eggs, allowing you to cover almost any minor wound.

For your own set of tasty breakfast bandages, you’ll only need to shell out a measly $4 for this creative wound dressing. Just keep your eyes open for suspicious looking people who forgot to eat breakfast that morning. That could only lead to unwanted appointments for tetanus shots.

Product Page

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Remember the older Windows 3.11 and Windows Milennium, where the speaker icon located at the bottom right hand corner of the screen was in 2D? Well, the Sonicum Speakers brings us back to the good old days by coming in a similar shape when viewed from the side - that doesn’t mean the sound they produce will be from the 1996 era.

Using NXT technology, the sound icon-shaped speakers produce beautiful quality sound, and the sleek sub-woofer throbs out some seriously stomach-wobbling bass. Of course they’re not just for swishing up your designer workstation and pumping out music from your computer, you can also plug any portable media player into them using the included cable. Hey we almost completed a sentence without using the word ipod! Oh blast, no we didn’t. Were there an award for the most beautifully designed and sounding computer (or iPod, damn we did it again) speakers, then the Sonicums would surely be standing atop the podium giving a really long speech, crying, and thanking their mother.

You can pick up a pair of Sonicum Speakers for £59.95.

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LiveCountingCrows is offering a free MP3 download of their live show in Charlotte, NC. Hurry up, only 10k available!

[ Download ]

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Its now official, Microsoft spent $500 million on the purchase of Danger. Of course this does not come as much of a surprise, after all that figure was the exact number that was rumored several months back. However, thanks to Microsoft’s most recent quarterly report this number has been confirmed.

Its always interesting to see just how much a company is purchased for, especially something of this magnitude, more important is just what Microsoft plans to do in order to make this a worthwhile acquisition.

Sadly though, even with all that money spent you would have thought they could have come up with a better name for the latest Sidekick to hit the market, which if you remember was simply called the Sidekick 2008.

Lots of people see the Sidekick as less than a threat and something that is marketed to mostly younger and teenage users, but we have to remember they are a rising part of the mobile industry, it will be interesting to see just what Microsoft/Danger will do in the future to hopefully keep their customers from growing older and looking towards a “real” smartphone.

Read [Yahoo! News]

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Talk about trippin’ out your pet fish! The Globe Aquarium with LED Light will certainly induce some sense of disorientation into your finned friend’s limited world as it moves from a sunny, bright disposition during the day to a blue glow at night.

Simple and safe, our Globe Aquarium w/ LED Light is the perfect addition to any room in your house. Made with superior glass and aluminum alloy base with modern design, this aquarium will help provide a healthy environment for your fish. The aquarium holds 1/2 gallon of water. Comes with 0.8W LED Light.

I wonder which kind of fish would thrive best under such lighting conditions of this $49.95 “disco aquarium” - perhaps the betta as shown?

Product Page via Nerd Approved

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While you’re probably not going to have Rush performing live in your home anytime soon, there’s a way to have your own private live band, sans the annoyance of lousy humans not wanting to perform for you at odd hours. Not too mention, much cheaper than brute man power.

Tuned to perfection by Kenwood, the Little Jammer PRO is probably the only way most of us can get a live music performance in our home without our family members being in a crappy garage band. The Little Jammer PRO set ships with piano, guitar, drums, sax, bass, and trumpet players, all ready to perform for you whenever you feel the whim.

The “musicians” themselves all come prepared with a collection of 25 pre-made ROM tunes, spanning genres such as jazz, blues, and rock, with more expected to become available in time. If the beginners set of Little Jammers gets a little boring, a vocalist and other guest players can be bought separately.

While the Little Jammer PRO set only plays 16-bit polyphonic sound tones, it’s better than having no live performance at all. And the audio itself is 3D live surround sound. Sure, you can always just turn up your tunes and imagine you’re watching your favorite band perform, but no other band would perform the Girl from Ipanema on command. You can get your own live band for $499. Not cheap, but much cheaper than booking Rush.

Product Page

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NVIDIA won’t be resting on their laurels as they make yet another move forward in the world of gaming notebooks thanks to their new range of graphic cards that are touted to push the boundaries of today’s gaming to a totally whole new level. Other that cramming in more pixels and speeding up the frame rate while throwing in physics-related programming, how much more advanced can graphic cards get? Only time will tell, but in the mean time, read more about the newest NVIDIA GeForce 9800M and 9700M GPUs right after the jump.

The GeForce 9M Series GPUs, with their parallel processing design, are ushering in a new generation of ultra-realistic games by being the only GPUs to support PhysX technology. The world’s most pervasive physics engine, PhysX technology is being used by more than 25,000 developers worldwide and is already delivering dynamic 3D realism to more than 140 games across multiple platforms. With PhysX technology, developers can incorporate effects such as rigid body dynamics, collision detection, and cloth simulation, dramatically changing the way the games are played and how the on-screen stories unfold, and then accelerating those effects using the processing power of the GPU.

Some of the features include :-

• NVIDIA’s PhysX technology for real-time game physics calculations
• 112 processing cores for compute-intensive tasks like video conversion and transcoding
• New lightning-fast graphics engine for unprecedented performance, extraordinarily detailed environments, and film-quality game effects
• Support for NVIDIA SLI® multi-GPU configurations for the best gaming experience on a notebook PC
• Support for Hybrid SLI technology for longer battery life, cooler operation, and lower noise
• PureVideo® HD video processing features for improved color and contrast when playing back video
• Full support for the latest Blu-ray advancements, including BD-Live and dual-stream video playback
• Support for the new MXM™ version 3.0 graphics module specification

You will be able to find the new GeForce 9800M and GeForce 9700M Series GPUs from more than 20 notebook manufacturers, so be prepared to fork out top dollar (or whatever local currency you’re using) if you want to experience the latest and greatest in gaming. Of course, the onus is now on the software companies to write engines that will take full advantage of such graphical firepower.

Press Release

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