Gadget Access

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 29th 2008 at 1:45PM
If the E60 had you dozing last night, you’ll be conked out in no time by the time you finish reading this. Pentax is at it again, proving that point-and-shoot cameras can still be boring this day and age. The M60 tries to be fancy with a 10-megapixel sensor, 5x optical zoom, 2.5-inch lcd monitor, “approximately 36.5MB of built-in memory,” movie / panorama modes, a variety of scene modes and smile detection capabilities to boot. Expect this one to arrive late next month in blue, pink and silver for around £90 ($179).

[Via PhotographyPress]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

Oh, tech manufactuers… why do you think that making a phone or a hard drive look like a powder compact is the way to our hearts? Nothing makes me more annoyed - except covering everything vaguely girl-oriented in pink, perhaps.

As Engadget gleefully reports, Samsung has designed a concept compact hard drive that looks similar to a piece of make-up - and this picture shows it surrounded by make-up, to prove the point. You know, ‘cos we women are so crazy about cosmetics, we’ll buy anything if it looks like we can paint our faces with it.

So far though, this is just a concept - and maybe it should stay that way. I think the design is sleek and all, but I don’t agree with making tech designs gender specific. (Don’t small, sleek designs appeal to men, too?)

How about letting us all buy what we want, whether we’re male or female?

FROM GAMERTELL - Today (July 29, 2008) in Japan, Nintendo and 54 Japanese software companies filed a lawsuit against five Japanese companies who’ve been distributing R4 DS and similar devices which can be used for pirating DS games.
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For nearly HP users have had to deal with a defect in the NVidia Graphic processors installed in eleven of HPs most popular laptop models. Now, finally, HP is fessing up to it and offering warranty solutions to fix the problems.

The defect, which occurs in the NVidia G84/G86 series graphics chipsets, was initially denied by the Graphics manufacturer as being so widespread. But after Dell announced measures to deal with the issue, the writing was on the wall and HP was forced to take similar action since the defect hits models ranging from HP’s Pavilion dv2000, dv6000, and dv9000 series laptops, as well as the Compaq Presario V3000 and V6000.

“HP has taken appropriate actions for any HP notebook products that use the known affected Nvidia chips. We initiated a customer program to address this issue in November 2007, and have notified registered customers who have notebook PC models that are included in this HP program.”

The defect causes such notable problems as black screens, power issues, inoperative status lights, and booting problems. HP is offering users a BIOS firmware update to address the defect as well as numerous diagnostic tools to determine if a user’s laptop will suffer from the malady sooner or later.

Hat Tip – Electronista

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If you haven’t had enough of the novelty ipod speakers just yet, here’s another one for you.  This one comes in the shape of a shell.  Which just seems a bit bizarre and almost awkward.  Pig speakers, those were totally logical and cool.  This is just pointless, obviously.  Pig speakers are cooler, due to their pigish nature.  This, it’s just a shell.  Alright, so this may be cool to those with a love for the beach.  Especially in the middle of winter when you’re going out of you mind waiting on summer to come back.

I just gave myself chills, thinking about a time when it’s back to freezing all of the time.  Luckily we still have a bit of summer left.  The little speaker being a novelty speaker isn’t going to be exactly high powered.  It is however, cute.  Especially considering not only does it come in the silver color but a pretty green as well.  This USB speaker is being sold on Gadget4all for $12.50.

Source: pocketlint

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I remember the Japanese Pokeman characters from an addictive cartoon show which featured the just-too-cute-for-words yellow Pikachu, but as my daughter became older, he lived primarily on her DS. She should have entered the Pokeman Video Game showdown; she’s been playing it long enough.

Over the past two weeks, more than 1,000 Pokemon fans swarmed Los Angeles and New York, for the chance to become the ultimate Pokemon Video Game Champion. From as young as 6 to 43, contestants vied across the nation for their title, with the decision to be made in Florida.

Competing on Pokemon Diamond or Pokemon Pearls Nintendo DS ( who wouldn’t want one of those?), the Japanese finalists will take on the American winners August 16th at Orlando’s Disney World.

Winners receive: A trip for four to Tokyo, New York, or Oahu (Hawaii); a custom Nintendo DS game system, and a Pokémon prize pack. Valued at $10,000.

My cuddly 5′ tall Pikachu doll would have enjoyed the trip.

Ex-Google worker Anna Patterson has already sold away one of her innovative search techniques to Google before, but doesn’t plan on selling her latest idea to Google anytime soon. In fact, instead of helping Google, she aims to single-handedly take down the search giant. Her new search engine, Cuil, aims to be better than Google had ever been. Initially kept on a low profile, Cuil (pronounced “Cool”) was designed by three Google engineers and boasts the fact that it indexes about 3 times more pages than even Google does (around 120 billion pages). Whether this will convince Google users to make the transfer is another story completely, but they can definitely try.

The block result layout places results in a tiled manner around the web page instead of Google’s more generic ranked list style. However, both the page and its search results seem to take quite a while to load and the website has cut in and out of use the entire day. It’s definitely off to a rough start, but Patterson’s claim of its wider scope seems promising. The search results now, though, are lacking in many areas. They seem to either be repeat results, irrelevant material, or ad placement sites. Maybe the increased scope of sites may contain a greater number of useless web information. Either way, it seems that it has little chance of making that much of a difference in the web search sector. After all, Microsoft and Yahoo are spending millions of dollars on their search engines and Google still seems to be gaining more ground. Let’s hope that they give up soon and offer their techniques to the search giants again, because, quite frankly, most people “doubt [Cuil] will be keeping anyone at Google awake at night.”

Read [CNN]

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Peepholes are all very well, but you actually have to leave your chair to find out who’s calling, and that’s never good. Thankfully, there’s now a more high-tech option for the sedentary (or peephole-lacking) among us.

The Secure Sight records all your visitors, whether you’re in or out, so you can see who’s calling right now as well as who came by when you were at the market. (Better than TV!) You fit the camera to your door and put the viewer wherever is convenient.

Personally, I’d also put a sign up to let people know they’re on candid camera, so you don’t get any pesky accusations of eroding civil liberties… and also I’d consider upgrading to 4GB with an SD card.

Via Apartment Therapy.

The socially awkward have a new tool at their disposal: a service called Slydial (available only in the US) allows you to call someone’s voicemail, bypassing any chance of ever having to speak to a real person.

The possibilities are endless: that old friend who keeps calling, but you can’t stand to speak to? Give her a Slydial. The boss who scares you but asked you to ring him with some info? No problem! And that relationship that wasn’t going anywhere but neither of you dared to admit it? Well, it’s cruel, but Slydial comes in handy there, too.

Just don’t forget that all those people can also use Slydial to clog up your voicemail with their abuse…

Via Shiny Shiny.

Inject some fun into your house chores with the RC Floor Sweeper - a device that is guaranteed to get the kids scampering after you, asking for dibs on getting the floor cleaned. The reason is simple - one end of an electrostatic dust mop has been connected to an RC car, letting you clean your room in record time without having to walk around (at least until the range between the remote control and car is too far apart). This will take care of minor dust bunnies and all, but it won’t do nuts for stains on the floor. Other drawbacks include not burning any more calories and you’re polluting the environment with more batteries.

Source: American Inventor Spot

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