Gadgets Blog

by Donald Melanson, posted Jul 3rd 2008 at 1:58PM

While some of the benefits of SSDs may be in question these days, it looks like those still itching to take the plunge on an SSD-equipped macbook air can now at least save a few bucks, as the premium add-on has just received a much needed price cut. At $599 for the upgrade option on the 1.6GHz model and $2,598 for the pre-configured 1.8GHz model, however, it still isn’t exactly a no-brainer, especially considering some of the prices we’re seeing now for larger drives. Slightly more palatable though, is the 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo upgrade option on the base model, which is now $100 cheaper at just $200.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Laptops

According to the Associated Press it sounds like Microsoft is going after Yahoo!’s online search operations again. This time the company is not looking to go it alone, however. They want to bring in News Corp. and Time Warner Inc., who maintain significant online assets.

When the news hit the street Yahoo! stock got a small 3% bump on Wednesday. Clearly, some stockholders reacted favorably to the idea of a sale of at least part of the company. It’s that favoritism towards a sale that is driving Carl Icahn’s bid to replace Yahoo!’s board at the next annual shareholders meeting on August 1st.

In the hope of side-stepping a battle with Icahn, AllThingsD Online is reporting that Yahoo! may be considering offering two board seats to Icahn to appease him. Unfortunately for Yahoo!, that’s not enough because it sounds like Icahn wants four.

It’s good to hear that the leadership at Yahoo! knows that if there is a way to settle this proxy battle with Icahn before the annual shareholder meeting they should take it. I’ll be curious to see if Icahn and Yahoo! would agree to something in the middle like three board seats.

If Icahn thinks he has a good chance of pushing his full slate through I can understand why he may believe that two seats are not enough. The fact that Yahoo! is even offering Icahn board seats shows the leadership at Yahoo! is nervous about the proxy battle.

Read more at the Associated Press and AllThings D Online articles.

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 3rd 2008 at 7:02PM

While the rest of the world goes off to win the hearts of environmentalists (and laypeople, too) with LED light bulbs, Hitachi Lighting and Seiyu are taking the road (way) less traveled. Reportedly, the duo has collaborated in order to pop out a “bulb-shaped fluorescent lamp that can be separated into a lighting circuit unit and an arc tube unit.” What this means is that the lighting circuit can be used repeatedly (up to 30,000 hours) while the arc tube simply gets replaced every 10,000 hours. The pair is hoping that the bulbs will take the place of traditional 60-watt incandescents, and considering that these only draw around 13-watts each, it’s fairly easy to see how Mother Earth would just love you for making the switch. As for pricing, we’re hearing that these will sell for around ¥1,500 ($14) apiece when they launch this October in Japan, so don’t plan on recouping your investment in energy savings right away or anything.

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Filed under: Household

Tesla Motors isn’t going to rest on their laurels with the Tesla Roadster as the company has big plans to roll out a 4-door, 5-passenger sedan in the near future. Dubbed the Model S, this will be the second vehicle to the company’s stable of full-electric cars, and production will commence in late 2010 onwards. It will retail for approximately $60,000 and will be able to run for 225 miles before another charge is required. Good to see such green initiatives taking place, and hopefully the price will drop in the forseeable future.

Internet users usually hit a brick wall when trying to search for content that is embedded in Adobe Flash media. Content of this type, whether in SWF or the more common FLV format, are never really available for web-crawling search engines to access. Well, not anymore.

Adobe is teaming up with search giants Google and Yahoo start indexing Flash content and run the Adobe Flash Player on their servers at runtime. Initially, this will mean not only the ability to search Flash content but better search returns for your queries.

The jury is still out whether this move will have huge or limited impact, initial signs bode well, especially when one realizes that there is a wealth of training, e-learning, and marketing content all on the Flash medium.

Google will begin offering Flash search capabilities within the week while Yahoo plans to do so in a future update to Yahoo Search.

Read [InfoWorld]

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Klipsch X5 Earbuds

Klipsch’s X5 earbuds are little bullet-shaped ‘buds that, despite weighing next-to-nothing, deliver big booming sound.

Like many other earbuds we’ve tested, the X5s must be inserted deep into your head to create a sound-isolating seal in the ear canal. We’re prepared to tickle our eardrums a little, sure, but because these ‘buds are so small and sharp, it’s not clear when you’ve got a proper seal or are about to poke yourself in the brain.

It turned out with our testing, the deeper you push the X5s, the better they sound. While running on the treadmill — ok suffering on the treadmill — the sound started to wobble, so I pushed the featherweight nuggets increasingly deeper into my ear canals. The reward for such blatant disregard for my own safety? Audio nirvana.

The racket of the treadmill and my own sweaty huffing and wheezing was sealed away while the aural experience inside becoming equal to a set of big cans; thumping bass, sparkling highs, and solid middle notes.

If you’re dead set on wearing these while exercising, you’ll have to cinch down the chinstrap to get these little buggers to sit still in your ear. Oh yeah, you’ll also look like an idiot. So if you are the running/jogging/parkour type and the cinch down does not fit your mojo, you might want to look elsewhere.

The crazy thin cable is also just a nudge annoying. It ends up flopping all over the place and gets tangled up easier than many other ‘buds we’ve tested. But this is a minor quibble easily overlooked once the tunes begin to roll.

And on a final (slightly random) note: why can’t the audio industry come up with Braille-like markings on the right and left earbud? I’d give up my firstborn child just so I’d never again have to scour my headphones for the tiny type that indicates which ‘bud goes in what ear.  —Jim Merithew

WIRED Big can audio quality in the guise of wee earbuds. Sharp sound and sharp design. 0.398-ounce weight? What are these things made out of, aerogel?

TIRED You’ve got to push (and I mean really push) the buds into dangerously deep areas of your ear to make them work properly. Cinching the cable to keep them tied down will make you look ridiculous.

$250, klipsch.com

Ferrari has just released the F80 all-in-one home entertainment system that was designed and constructed with help from Meridian Audioin. It features the following :-

• 2.1 speaker setup
• High-quality amplifier
• Digital sound processor
• CD player
• DAB/FM tuner
• DVD player
• Auxiliary audio inputs

The entire audio system measures just 408mm x 230mm x 185mm, making it small enough to fit onto just about any cramped place. I would say that this audio system will be pretty expensive considering the Prancing Horse’s involvement.

With Metal Gear Solid 4 for the playstation 3, and just about every game to come out for the Xbox 360, you might feel like the depth of gameplay on the Wii has been a bit on the light side since its introduction. Complaints aren’t completely unfounded, either. The Wii is severely lacking in RPGs of any sort, or any fun, competitive platformers (with the exception of Super Mario Galaxy and No More Heroes. Still, the console continues to outsell the competition and part of that is based on expectations of games to come. One game that has a lot of people curious is Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars.

The game is being produced by Red Fly Studio and began as some incredible concept art, that has seemingly formed into a beautiful, dramatic game. New screenshots released today show off some of the surroundings and enemies that you’ll find on your travels through the human world of the game, with all sorts of accessories such as motorcycles and oil jugs all around to aid in your weapon-making.

The other big news on the game came yesterday in the form of the music direction, apparently helmed by Primus frontman and all-around awesome character, Les Claypool. With his music completeing the ambiance of this fungular world, Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is shaping up to be a huge delight.

Read more at Nintendo Wii Fanboy and, again, Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Most users are growing accustomed to manufacturer’s way of getting out of tight spots. Is your console having problems? Well, a firmware update will normally fix it. Unfortunately, this clearly isn’t the case with Sony’s latest 2.40 firmware upgrade for the playstation 3. Problems range from microphone issues to frozen consoles, and this has prompted Sony to pull the upgrade for the moment. Unfortunately for most users, sites are stating that the only known fix at the moment is a hard drive reformat, which will effectively wipe all the current saved game data.

Transcend has recently introduced a new digital photo frame into its line up, the T.photo720. This sleek-looking digital photo frame promises to display digital photos in high-resolution (800×480) format with its 7-inch widescreen TFT panel. It comes with a 2GB internal memory and supports both JPG and BMP image formats which can be displayed either one at a time, in a slideshow view or a thumbnail view. If the 2GB storage is not enough, the digital photo frame also comes with MobileCard slot for direct input of microSD and M2 cards.

For its special feature, this digital photo frame is equipped with Automatic Orientation Sensor (AOS) that detects when a photo is horizontally or vertically rotated and automatically adjusts image placement on screen for optimal viewing. The T.photo720 plays both movies and video and supports AVI, MOV, MPG, MP4, 3GP and motion JPEG video formats. In addition, the digital photo frame also functions as a music player with support for MP3 playback and an FM radio with 20 preset stations.

The T.photo720 digital frame will be available in either black or white, however the release date and pricing information are not yet available.

Via [FarEast Gizmos]

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