Gadget Access

by Paul Miller, posted May 17th 2008 at 3:15PM
Good news for the cyborgs in the crowd: the ruling by the International Association of Athletics Federations that barred double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorious from a shot at the Olympics has been overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Detractors from Oscar’s entry into the Olympics have cited a suspect study that says Oscar could be using as little as 25% of the energy of other sprinters, thanks to the mechanical advantage of his “Cheetah” prosthetics, which basically act as springs. Others feared that this could set a dangerous precedent for the entry of bionics into athletic competition, but the ruling was rather tightly worded, and if related cases come up they will be tried individually. Of course, Oscar still has to qualify, and his personal best in the 400 is about a second off the qualifying time for Beijing. Even if he can’t make it, he plans try for the world championships and the London Olympics in 2012.

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Filed under: Wearables

by Paul Miller, posted May 18th 2008 at 9:01AM
Man, Mr. Orange Beanie sure does have quite a bit of cash to be burning on subnotebooks. You earn that mowing lawns, kid? Ah, we get it, a little bit of modeling on the side, huh? Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone. Apparently ASUS and MSI have been caught red handed using the same photograph to peddle their wares. The best part of all is that neither shot is original — they both swiped a stock photo featuring our friend Orange here with a good ol’ MacBook. Don’t worry though, we’re sure he installed Linux on it first thing. Original pic is after the break.

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Filed under: Laptops

Care to see what lies under the hood of your preferred WiMAX-running mobile Internet device? Well, look no further, as we have this very interesting 5350 Intel WiMAX / Wi-Fi card up and available for onlookers on the FCC web site. It also comes with its own user manual, as well as a WiMAX manual (for n00bs, I assume). This is the exact same critter that a lot of WiMAX hopefuls have been, er, hoping about, and now that it’s out, I guess it’s time to speculate what kind of device will really carry this first. Will it be a Nokia Internet tablet, a UMPC, or another obscure-brand MID? For now, we can’t say for sure, but feel free to get close and comfortable with the card via the Read link to the FCC web site.

Read [FCC] Via [Engadget]

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Rumors have been circulating around the tech industry that Best Buy could be planning a buy out of mail movie rental service Netflix. AlleyInsider claims that Best Buy has been mulling the idea over to purchase the company for $44 a share, yet what could Best Buy’s purchase mean for the popular service?

Netflix has been touted as the superior of the mail rental services (mostly compared with Blockbuster Online), and some are hesitant to think that a buy out from Best Buy would be the best decision for the service. Of course, this all depends on how Best Buy would handle things if a Netflix acquisition were to take place.

So what could Best Buy actually do for Netflix that hasn’t already been done? For one, wouldn’t it be pretty cool if Best Buy started offering in-store movie exchanges, much like Blockbuster does? You’d be able to swap a shipped Netflix movie out at you local Best Buy for a new movie, and have an additional movie shipped right out to you.

An acquisition from Best Buy could also mean that some special customer packages might be included with certain purchases. Such as, if you were to buy a DVD player at a Best Buy store, you’d get a discount on monthly fees for a certain amount of time. Maybe they’d also speed up the development of the Mac compatibility with Netflix’s Instant Watch feature.

Of course, this is all wild speculation, but we’re not quite sure an acquisition would be a bad thing, as long as Best Buy stuck to offering the stellar customer service that Netflix has been known to dole out to their subscribers. A mismanagement of the situation could cause mass chaos within the Netflix community, but if things are done right, we can be expecting some great things for the future of online movie rental. This is even if Best Buy is in fact planning on the Netflix purchase.

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I’m not sure why a lot of people seem excited about this, but T-Mobile has just officially outed the Scarlet Red version of the Moto Sidekick Slide, as we earlier reported. The new version offers a purely cosmetic change over the old one, so that means you still get the same big, clunky slider with QWERTY-keyboard that could be considered a whiz bang gadget—back in 1999. You should be able to get first dibs for it by paying up $199.99 a piece with a two-year service agreement. Visit local shops or online stores for deal specifics.

Via [HipTop3]

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One of Silicon Valley’s oldest companies is boosting its effort to acquire the youngest customers. CNET was at a Teens and Tech conference when Hewlett-Packard officials announced a forthcoming line of computers and other devices catering to - and in some cases, designed by - teenagers.

The HP execs quoted talked about something called its Teen Council, which will offer suggestions for product design and how they are used. I’m curious as to how many times the name of a certain Cupertino-based company with a piece of fruit as its logo was mentioned when this Teen Council offered its advice.

HP’s TouchSmart PC is mentioned as an example of an company product that was designed with teens in mind. But when I covered the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas - where the TouchSmart made its debut as an example of a new Windows Vista-powered machine - the buzz on its potential use was focused on managing media in livings rooms and kitchens. Of course, it’s easy to imagine its touchscreen capabilities used by the teen in the family; I look forward to the HP television commercials (and they do produce some cool spots) highlighting that very scenario.

Read [CNET]

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It seems that John Mayer may have some more connections than just with Apple, it looks like he is also in good with RIM as well. If you remember back in January he was lucky enough to get his hands on a macbook air before they were available to us regular folks, now its the recently announced and still unreleased blackberry Bold.

Showing off the Bold on his site, he also gives a nice little statement about how the word “geek” is dead and goes on to mention that the Bold “has blazing fast 3G and twice the screen resolution, and the fonts look like something out of the New York Times.” I guess, if nothing else it at least has the geek seal of approval from John Mayer. This almost makes me wish I had stuck with those guitar lessons when I was a kid, maybe I could also be getting cool tech toys before anyone else.

Read [John Mayer]

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How many of you still listen to your old cassette tapes? I’m going to guess that very few of you do. Now, how many of you still have a tape deck in your car? While many people have upgraded to a CD player, not everyone has managed to do so. That’s why you might want to look into this Bluetooth Cassette Tape Adapter.

I remember back when portable CD players became popular, they started selling cassette tape adapters that would hook into them. This works on the same principal, only instead of running a cord to your old CD player, it connects to your mp3 player via Bluetooth. Unfortunately you will still have a cord sticking out, as it needs to pull power from your car’s cigarette adapter.

The device will run you around $35 depending on where you pick it up. On one hand, CD players are so cheap that you’re better off installing one of those in your car. On the other hand, this will save you the hassle of trying to remove the old stereo (those can be a real pain sometimes), not to mention the fact that many people are shunning CDs for MP3 players anyway.

Source: GeekAlerts

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Here’s another way to accessorize your monitor besides sticking Post-It notes all over it.  This Posy Cozy by artist Darlene is a knit holder that includes a plastic vial to hold flowers and comes with a gift card and Velcro to attach to the side of your monitor.  It is available in many different colors and costs $10, $14, or $15 on Etsy.  This would be a great way to have a flower arrangement at your desk without taking up desk room.  If having water in the vial would be too messy for you, you can just put fake flowers, or put pens instead.

But let’s say that knits are not your thing and you just want the vial.  Well if you have an HP monitor, you can get this Easy Clip kitfor $9.99 that has a flower vase, plus a headphone holder and two photo holders.  I suppose these products would be more suitable for a home computer than for a work computer since flowers might look too whimsical for work.  But I think they’d make the computer look more cheerful!  The Windows XP Control Panel includes a couple of flower wallpapers, so if it’s OK to have flowers as the background for your screen then it should be OK to have flowers on the sides of the screen too.

Via [geeksugar]

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Two Chinese companies, Zarva and Zippo recently came together to create a new MP3 player. This new player is dubbed the Zarva Zippo MP320 and Zippo is the official partner of Zarva.

Basically, the MP320 is going to come with a small screen, and is not going to support video playback. Nearly all MP3 players these days comes with video playback, so it’s pretty rare to see a mp3 player without video playback. Additionally, for audio, MP3 and WMA are the only formats supported. Other features include 7 EQ’s, integrated microphone, A-B repeat and USB 2.0 connectivity. Furthermore, it is going to be really cheap, only 188 yuan, which is around $27 US, and only available in a 1GB model. Expect the MP320 player to only be available in China.

Via [PMP Today]

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