Gadgets Blog

In this week’s Wired Gadget Lab Podcast, Dylan Tweney, Daniel Dumas, and Jose Fermoso talk about the next generation of the OLPC ultra portable laptop, and why its dual-display touchscreen book could be an awesome educational tool. It’s too bad it won’t come out until 2010 and that its price point will probably be twice as much as promised.

In addition, the team continues the countdown to the iphone 2’s release with the week’s juiciest rumored feature: Photo geotagging — a perfect way to find out where all the unlocked, black market iPhones are located around the world. Plus, they’ll go over the reviews of the Asus 1TB Laptop, and the almost-great Roku Netflix Set Top Box.

Finally, Jose talks about the wide range of (sometimes obscene) pricing at the Internet cafes he visited on his trip to Central America and why a giant macaw chewed on his neck. (The bird likely thought it was tasty.)

Thanks for listening to our podcast. If you’d like to subscribe to the feed, point your feed reader or podcast downloader to the Gadget Lab podcast RSS feed.

The audio player widget above requires Quicktime (you can download it at Apple’s page here). If you prefer, you can also download the MP3 file for this episode with this link: Gadget Lab Podcast #30 MP3.

Check out the previous twenty-nine Gadget Lab podcasts after the jump.

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #29: The Lowdown on the iPhone 2.0, The Flip 2 Camera Gets Tested, and The Week’s Best Reviews

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #28: Maker Faire, Samsung Glyde and Olympus E-420

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #27: Psystar, T-Mobile 3-G, and AT&T TV

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #26: The Optimus Maximus Keyboard is Released, Asus Ships a Boosted Eee PC, and The Science of Walking Barefoot

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #25: The Latest on the Psystar Apple ‘Hackintosh’ Story, Hybrid Cameras, and Rumors of a 24-megapixel Nikon!

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #24: Bold Predictions for the 3G iPhone, the Week’s Top Reviews, and Crazy Paintball Tanks

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #23: The 2008 CTIA Conference, Product Naming Trends, and Beckham’s Tacky Gadget

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #22: Motorola’s Split, The Sony Crapware Saga, and More

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #21: The Wireless Spectrum Auction, HTC’s Googlephone, and Evil Keyboards

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #20: Exploding Batteries, Lost gadgets, and the Week’s Best Reviews

(For links to podcasts episodes #1-19, hit the link for #20, above.)

by Donald Melanson, posted May 22nd 2008 at 1:54PM

Eizo’s certainly no stranger to high-end monitors, and the company’s now expanding its offerings yet again, this time with an LCD targeted specifically at gamers. Judging from the specs, however, the 24-inch FlexScan HD2452W should please just about anyone with the necessary money to spend, with it boasting a full WUXGA resolution, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 450Cd/m2 brightness, and just about every port you could want, including two HDMI — not to mention a 24p mode to make the most of those Blu-ray discs. About the only place it falls a bit short, it seems, is with the response rate, which clocks in at a hefty 16 ms. Look for this one to hit Japan sometime next month for the rough equivalent of $1,250.

[Via BIOS]

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Filed under: Displays

One of the most compelling moments of the movie Memento, for me, was when the lead character, who is suffering from complete loss of short-term memory, revealed a series of tattoos on his body to remind him of vital facts that he needed to know in order to survive. What else is as enduring or as accessible as a tattoo? My sister is such a post-it addict, that she not only uses a Stickies program, but she also keeps the actual post-its attached to her monitor. And then there are more post-its along her path out to the front door, and then a great big one on the front door to remind her of why she’s leaving. How much easier would her life be if she could just tattoo those reminders on her body instead?

Now she sort-of can, with ToDo-tattoos, temporary tattoos with lines for making neat to-do lists right on your hand. They come with a skin safe marker so you can write on the tattoos without fear of death by ink poisoning. This is one step towards my dream of having an e-ink display embedded in my palm (and another one in my husband’s forehead because I always have to remind him that he’s supposed to remind me to do something).

ToDo tattoos are $3.50 for a pack of 12.

by Nilay Patel, posted May 22nd 2008 at 2:28PM

Well, it took longer than 15 days to reach a resolution, but apparently RIM is going to back down and allow the Indian government to monitor the blackberry network in that country. What’s worse, it appears that RIM was more interested in covering its own ass than protecting user data during the negotiations: the only concession the company received from the Indian government was a promise that it won’t be held liable if there’s a leak of users’ personal information. Yeah, that ought to provide a sparkling incentive to keep things safe. There’s no word on when monitoring might begin, but we’ve got a feeling privacy-loving Indians might suddenly be in the market for a new smartphone.

[Thanks, Rishab J.]

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Filed under: cellphones

Gone are the days when I judged watches at least partly based on how easy it was to read the time from them. Now, the time of day flashes everywhere - on our cell phones, computer screens, TVs. Try ignoring the time for half a day without taking yourself to the middle of the woods with no electronic connection to the rest of the world. Really, it’s hard to get away from it without drastic measures.

Online store Tokyoflash Japan, which trades on the idea that these days, telling time from a wristwatch is rather beside the point, sells watches with sometimes complicated LED displays which are fun to look at but challenging to read time from.

We are all slowly becoming aware that as of February 9, 2009 we are going to see a switch from analog broadcasting to digital only, which, as we here already know, that means some people are going to wake up very confused as to why they are not able to watch TV. I am sure lots of you out there are looking after and taking care of those who are less than familiar with this situation, however just in case you are speaking a little to geek for them to truly understand, here comes Florence Henderson, yup, Carol Brady to save the day. I am sure she can speak in a little more down to earth terms, so sit your parents in front of the computer and hit play. While the video itself is slightly entertaining, they could have made it really fun to watch by offering up Carol Brady in the old Brady kitchen. Keep reading to check out the video below.

Read [Digital Tips] Read [Business Wire]

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For those of you that are not exactly thrilled by cooking every morning HOAP-3 is a trained robot that can assist in making omelets and even learn other tasks. It isn’t quite the fastest machinery, so not one you would snag from the local shopping mall just yet. However, the idea of a cooking robot is enough to make most of us lazy bums salivate in anticipation. Sadly, you have to teach him every single move and have to place the objects in his hands, but he can do the tasks once taught. Plus the creator has him saying very random comments as he cooks, like once he identifies swiss cheese, mentioning he has heard it was very good.

He has the robot grate cheese, beat the eggs as well as dice up the ham. However, he isn’t quite to the point of cracking his own eggs or the actual cooking process itself. The robot prepares the supplies ahead of time though, even if you do have to spoon feed him information. I would suggest watching the shorter video because the longer one is well, excruciatingly long. It is eleven minutes of him teaching the robot to do every little task, but it was quite informative. At this point I’d have to say it is still faster to cook the eggs yourself, so no worries about this cooking robot stealing jobs, for now at least.

[via technabob]

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Pentax has just released the Optio V20, which is serving as an upgrade to the current V10. The new V20 comes with a few additional features, but keeps much of the same specs such as screen size. One of the main upgrades includes zoom going from 3x to 5x and Digital SR mode to ISO 3200 and ISO 6400. Additionally, the LCD screen size remains the same at 3-inches. Some additional, new, and neat features are its smile recognition software as well as blink detection. Unfortunately, this is only set to be released in Japan for now. Expect this digital camera sometime next month costing around $288 US. Keep reading for another picture of the V20, which shows off its backside.

Via [Gizmodo]

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Imagine, if you will, that Jackson Pollack had survived into the 1980s. Further, imagine that the abstract expressionist had vomited onto a pair of shoes. In this unlikely scenario, the Puma Disc Blaze Tetris Pack would surely have been the result.

Based on the 1994 Disc Blaze sneakers this foul, fluorescent footwear keeps the trademark disc tightener lace replacement, but ladles on some distinctly 80s “style”. Already available in Japan, where they will no doubt be very popular for a day or two, the Tetris inspired sneakers are coming Stateside any minute now. If you encounter a pair in the wild, we suggest that, to protect your eyes, you only look at them through a pair of Ray Ban Aviators.

Puma Disc Blaze 1990s Tetris Pack [Kicks on Fire]

Have you been thinking it’s time for a hardware upgrade? We can always go for a higher storage capacity, especially now that the terabyte is becoming increasingly available for personal computers. As media moves ever closer to being completely digital, we need room for all of our music, movies and e-books.

Marshal Japan has announced their new Dual SATA HDD Rack which can hold two separate drives, up to 2 TB of extra storage, configurable with RAID 0. HDD racks are becoming more popular with manufactures as drive size grows and old hardware compatibility starts to fail.

Marshal’s new Dual SATA HDD Rack is compatible with both 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives, leaving your options open for mixing and matching the hardware of your choice, while keeping the drives organized and easily swapped. The Marshal rack is only adaptable with USB 2.0, which most new computers support.

No price has been announced yet for the new racks, but you’ll be able to pick up your own from GeekStuff4u.com when they become available.

Marshal via AkihabaraNews

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