These twisting speakers are small (9 watt, 4.5 RMS per channel), but they’re bound to sound better than the notebook speakers you’ve got on your Lenovo. The set comes with two twisting satellites and a scrollable middle trackball wheel, which glows different colors depending on what you’re doing. Tap it once for bass control, again for treble, again for mute, and one last time to get back to volume. Fairly intuitive, and much prettier than a regular volume knob. They were available for $95, but they seem to have sold out now. Nevertheless, the silver/chrome finish should go well with your MacBook Pro, which goes well with all the other black/silver material that seems to be all the rage these days in computer design. Product Page [Firebox via New Launches] → Read More
What do you get when you mis a mac mini and a jack-o-lantern? A Mac-O-Lantern, of course. One industrious individual decided to embark on the task of making a case mod out of a pumpkin. I love the fact that he went through all the trouble of carving this thing up and putting together the case, knowing the pumpkin would only rot in a few days. Ah flirtations with futility. This is how we built the Mac-O-Lantern → Read More
Motorola announced today the availability of its Portable Bluetooth Car Kit T305. The T305 clips to the visor and allows drivers to communicate without removing their hands from the wheel. It features enhanced echo and noise reduction to provide superior clarity through the mic. And the 1-watt speaker is said to be amply sufficient. The T305 utilizes a multifunction button that allows users to activate speech commands and has a talk time of 14 hours. The Bluetooth Car Kit is available now for $79.99 from RadioShack, Best Buy and Sprint. Product Page → Read More
. Also befitting Johnny Drama & Co., the Miami Ink tattooed Dragon and Cherry Blossom RAZRs, both pre-tattooed so you won’t have to go to the shady phone tattoo parlor down on 8th and Franklin. I heard a Moto SLVR got stabbed there last week! If you’re more upscale, T-Mobile has the Dolce & Gabbana V3i, which comes in gold. Too bad this isn’t solid gold, or else you’d be totally robbed at gunpoint. Lastly, there’s the upgraded V3t phones, which is like the V3i, except the “t” stands for T-Mobile. Or “totally last year”, because this phone is already pretty outdated. T-Mobile [via Engadget Mobile] → Read More
Greetings all, I just wanted to chime in with a quick reminder about our advertising survey. If you haven’t done so already, please take a few moments to complete the survey so that we can better understand the needs of you, our readers. Thanks. → Read More
I’m just reporting on this since I don’t run Windows in my home — I’m a dirty Linux/OS X whore and proud of it — however Windows Media Player 11 is out, it’s loud, and it’s proud. The UI is considerably updated and it has direct connectivity to MTV’s URGE video service. You remember URGE, right? From that same channel that used to play music videos all the time? Anyway, please install it and tell me if it’s any good. I might break down and hook up some XP when the Zune drops, but until them I’m an iTunes girl. Product Page [Microsoft] → Read More
As we all recall, Microsoft has been famous for slapping all kinds of crazy crap on its product boxes. Well, that’s about to change, possibly because they can’t find any pictures of happy Vista users. What you see before you is an image of the new Vista box, encased in its own plastic coffin. MS Blogger Nick White writes: The packaging has been completely revised and, we hope, foreshadows the great experience that awaits you once you open it. So we’re talking souless OS X clone, then? Hey-o! I mean is it just me or does that candy-floss green background look . Announcing New Packaging for Windows Vista and 2007 Office System [WindowsVistaBlog] → Read More
Halloween is by far my favorite holiday. I’ve been a total slacker for the past couple of years, but one year soon I’m going to properly prepare. Anyway, MAKE is holding a DIY Halloween contest. Participants can enter anything DIY stuff related to Halloween. The qualifying categories are pumpkins, costumes, decorations/gadgets and treat-or-treat (a link back category).The best entry posted so far is this decapitated Marie Antoinette. Seems like a lot of effort. Cool costume though. Actually I just had a conversation with a friend who wants to go as a clown zombie next year with professional makeup and all. He estimates the costume will cost upwards of $2,000. I love Halloween, like I said, but that seems a bit excessive. Shrug. DIY Halloween [MAKE] → Read More
We just received confirmation that Condé Nast, owner of Wired and other magazines/websites, acquired Boston-based Reddit earlier this morning, and will make the announcement later today. The price is not being disclosed. All four reddit employees will relocate from Boston to Wired’s San Francisco office and become part of Wired Digital. Reddit, founded and funded in 2005, is a YCombinator company (see our interview with YCombinator founder Paul Graham here). The two original founders are Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and they were later joined by Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz. Reddit is a social news site that has always played second fiddle to Digg, although Reddit does have an active and loyal userbase. Users praise Reddit for having a very quick load time and no advertising. Like Digg, news stories on Reddit are submitted by users, and other users vote up or down on the story. When it gets enought “up” votes, the story appears on the home page. Wired will leave Reddit as a standalone site, and also integrate it into Condé Nast web properties. See our earlier coverage on recent Digg acquisition rumors. Update: Marshall and I just recorded a podcast with Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and it will be up on TalkCrunch shortly. We couldn’t get them to tell us the acquisition price, but they did tell us that the company has raised just $100k (all in summer 2005) and currently has an average of 70,000 daily unique visitors and 700,000 or so page views. → Read More
If you’re one of those people who never surf, but like to wear surfing clothing for some reason, I’d like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to the La Brea Massive limited edition Zunes. Stussy, Union and Undftd represent the La Brea Massive stores, the most prominent retailers on La Brea Ave. Each retailer will receive two limited edition Zune kits to auction off. The kits include on logo-toting Zune with a staff picked playlist, Shure E5c headphones, JBL On Tour portable speakers and a Zero Halliburton case. The reserve price started at $350, but will surely fetch big bucks from some rich kid. The Auction started on the 28th and runs until the 13th. Auction Page [Hypebeast via Gizmodo] → Read More
that you bought on Amazon Unbox onto your HDTV, well, you’re in luck. That is, if you have an Xbox 360. Dave Zatz found a way to stream videos using your Media Center PC and your Xbox 360. 1. Download an Unbox video to your Media Center PC. 2. From the Xbox 360 Dashboard, go to the Media blade and select Media Center. Your Xbox will connect to your Media Center PC. 3. Select “My Videos” and then “Amazon” to see all of your Unbox videos. 4. Choose your Unbox video and enjoy! That’s fine for MCE users, but can you use Windows Media Player 11 to stream as well? Can any readers who downloaded and installed WMP11 fill us in? Instructions Page [Amazon via Zatz not Funny] → Read More
Google’s office strategy just got a whole lot richer with the announced acquisition of the wiki based company Jotspot. A business oriented service that plugs a long list of different applications like calendars and photo sharing into a wiki framework, we called Jotspot “the best business-facing hosted wiki available” when we reviewed its newest iteration this summer. We also reported on rumors that Yahoo! was going to acquire the company in May. See all our previous coverage of Jotspot here. Other than a wiki, most of Jotspot’s plug and play applications are things that Google already has its own versions of. The acquisition may have been largely motivated by the desire to bring on board an agile team able to quickly ramp up lightweight hosted business applications for collaboration. Google may push Jotspot primarily as a project management application, one of the most important missing pieces of the company’s office platform. In fact, far more than a wiki, I’m going to guess that when Google reopens Jotspot to new users it will be as a wiki based project management service. The Palo Alto company reports having more than 2000 customers who subscribe to services costing $5 and $200 per month. An intro page and screencast about Jotspot is still online but may not be for much longer. As of today all existing customers are no longer being charged and new account registration is closed while Jotspot is integrated with the rest of Google’s services. Founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer are also founders of early web portal Excite, now an IAC property. Excite was once considered a darling of the early web but was first acquired for less than $10 million. Jotspot raised one round of funding in 2004 for $5.2 million from Redpoint Ventures and Mayfield Funds. Joe Krause frequently points out that it cost only $100,000 to get Jotspot to market. Jotspot has often been discussed as one of the most successful and established enterprise 2.0 companies and I imagine the selling price was a good one for the small startup. Details haven’t been disclosed but Jotspot is a strong company, the deal has officially closed and Google said in its last earnings call that YouTube’s all stock acquisition was unusual. Google probably paid a substantial amount of cash for Jotspot. If Jotspot can be integrated as smoothly as so many other Google web applications have been, it → Read More
See this two-tone red-and-white clamshell? It’s Virgin Mobile USA’s latest handset, the Cyclops made by Kyocera Wireless. It’s not new new, but it was officially announced today, so talking about it doesn’t make us feel as dirty. The big deal is it’s the first phone from the carrier to benefit from a licensing deal with Warner Music Group to use with VM’s TXT Tones service. It’s also the first handset to have Virgin Mobile Audio Messaging, or VAM, which is IM but with voice instead of words. The music-based TXT Tones is basically a ringtone for text messages. So if you thought hearing someone’s ringer over and over again when they received a phone call was irritating, wait till you’re next to someone carrying on a text conversation. Each TXT Tone will run you $1.50 and if you want to take advantage of the WMG deal you better get to downloading ASAP; The catalog is only available from November 2 through November 14, 2006. The VAM service is a bit like push-to-talk as it lets you set up a buddy list, record a message for someone on the list and hit send. If they’re available, they hear the message, if they’re not it sits until they are back. So it’s like a phone call and voice mail wrapped into one. The best part is, your conversations can be saved, so you can totally screw people over by getting them to say something and then playing it back for others. The Cyclops will be available on Virgin Mobile’s site November 2 as well as in Best Buy stores for $99. It’s currently available from Best Buy’s Web site, though. Virgin Mobile Cyclops at Best Buy [product page] → Read More
Apparently Japan has more use for a tiny DVD player integrated with the Wii than the US or Europe, but Nintendo Japan’s just confirmed that they’re getting an “enhanced” Wii with DVD functionality. There are currently plans to release a version of Wii in Japan featuring DVD playback. There are currently no plans to bring this model to Europe or the US. Are they really so tight on space there in Japan that a regular DVD player is too big and they need one to be in their Wii? Then again, maybe with DVD playback modders will be able to burn Wii games onto DVDs. Japan to get Wii with DVD player [Games Industry via Kotaku] → Read More
The Roomba/Skooba people, iRobot, has released the first public photo of a new project in development, code-named Sentinel. It’s a networked technology that lets one user simultaneously control and coordinate multiple semi-autonomous robots via a touchscreen Tablet PC. The U.S. Army’s Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) program scraped together the money for the project, which includes intelligent navigation so your robots can head to a preset destination independently. Sentinel’s capability will allow warfighters and first responders to use teams of iRobot PackBot robots to conduct surveillance and mapping, therefore rendering dangerous areas safe without ever setting foot in a hostile environment. All I can say is, “Finally!” This looks pretty sweet, and as soon as I get my hands on a few million dollars, my robot army and I will rule the earth! Or at the very least my apartment! Then you’ll all be sorry. Or at the very least my cat will be! iRobot Sentinel Project [company site] → Read More
, now some unscrupulous bastards are sending out Lik-Sang phishing emails. An eagle-eyed reader sent us an email pretending to be from Lik-Sang that includes a “link” to PayPal. Our records indicates you can retrieve an additional $ 9,99 USD refund in your PayPal account. In order to successfully retrieve the refund please confirm your existing PayPal account on this page [link to ljk-sang]. Please notice that the confirmation of your PayPal account is needed to have this refund send into your PayPal account. Is there some sort of phishing HQ out there where all the crazy bastards go to read the blogs and try to grab a piece of the fake pie? WTF? These guys are more topical than South Park. → Read More
The PlayStation 3 will require a total 380 watts of power to run, which is more than eight times the power required by PlayStation 2 (45 watts) and more than twice the power demands of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (160 watts). This is one power hungry machine. If you play the PS3 for an hour a day for a year, it will cost you around $20 (thanks Gizmodo). PlayStation 3 Hearts Electricity [gizmodo] → Read More
Microsoft is taking action (or trying to at least) against Xbox 360 users who have firmware hacks on their consoles to run game backups. If your console is modded, Microsoft will simply ban your gamertag from Xbox Live. The problem is, Microsoft is starting to hit the wrong people for an unknown reason. Here’s a post from the Xbox forums from Furydog, whose account was banned for no reason: I have two Xbox 360’s and since Friday October 13, 2006 I have not been able to connect with my two 360’s. According to MS customer support my status codes indicate that I have MODDED 360’s, which I don’t. I have contacted several different people and I only one person (GreenJohnny) has responded to me but he was not able to assist me. Although, he did confirm that the status codes I received indicate that my systems Mac addresses are banned because their supposedly MODDED. Xbox Live Support responded telling the gamer that it’s investigating the issue and apologized for the inconvenience. Nothing else has come out of Xbox Support, so hopefully you won’t get banned for no apparent reason. There’s more information about how Microsoft is tracking gamers and banning them, check it out at the link below. Microsoft Begins Banning 360 Modders [xboxic] → Read More
Oh yes! Today’s the day that Mac fans everywhere can watch their favorite episodes of Deal or No Deal wherever they go with the SlingPlayer beta for OS X. The beta came a bit earlier than we were expecting, but the final release should be sometime in Q4 2006. Whether it’s on the john, on a boat, in the rain, in Kazakhstan, or even underwater, as long as you have an internet connection, your Mac can stream Howie’s bald head for your enjoyment. Three viewing modes give you flexibility in your viewing style: SlingBar™ – docks SlingPlayer on either the right or left of the desktop, allowing you to watch your television and work with other applications simultaneously Resizable Window – move it around the desktop just like any other application, making it small or large Full Screen – for a real break watch your shows as big as your screen can get It’s still just a public beta, so expect some kinks that still haven’t been worked out. Nevertheless, Sling owners who are also Mac owners should be happy. Download Page [Sling] → Read More
