Gadgets Blog News

Posted Mar 7th 2008 12:32PM by Joshua TopolskyFiled under: Portable Audio Do you have a constant, annoying ringing in your ears? If you’re like us, you probably suffer from at least a mild form of tinnitus. Whether it’s from exposure to massive jet engines, or just listening to Reign in Blood one too many times, you probably wish there was some way to stop the incessant noise. Well, a company called Neuromonics may be able to help, using an audio player which alternates a mixture of white noise and music to train your brain to ignore the ringing. The player gradually reduces the level of the white noise, and after six months of treatment, patients can use the device as needed. (Read the full post about ‘Neuromonics Oasis quiets the ring in your ears, won’t stop the voices’…)

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I must be dehydrated, because I’m writing about another drinking-related gadget. This one is a bit more simplistic than the single-serve blender I spoke of earlier. Some people tend to burn their hands (or tongues) on hot coffee or hot chocolate, which is never fun. Other times you’ll leave a cup sitting around for longer than you realize, then take a swig of a disgustingly-cold drink. That’s never fun. This simple mug makes it blindingly obvious how warm your drink is. The mug is coated with a heat sensitive glaze which changes color according to the temperature of the beverage contained within. Sure, it’s not a necessity to have your cup tell you how warm your drink is, I think you can find out yourself. (Read the full post about ‘Temperature changing mug might not be useful, but is still cool’…)

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Posted Mar 7th 2008 11:26AM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Portable Audio, Portable Video MPIO’s many PMPs may not always turn heads, but it looks like the company has done alright for itself with its new V10 player, which boasts a 3-inch WQVGA touch screen display and some all around decent specs. That includes 8GB of storage (with an SD card slot for expansion), an FM tuner, TV output, and support for just about every audio and video format you could ask for, with Windows CE 5.0 serving as the basis for it all. No word on pricing or availability just yet, but you can catch a glimpse of it in video form by hitting up the link below. (Read the full post about ‘MPIO intros V10 touch screen-based PMP’…)

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Posted Mar 7th 2008 10:52AM by Joshua TopolskyFiled under: Robots Apparently the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University has been quite busy as of late… building an army of robotic snakes. Though we’ve seen droid snakes before, bot-makers at the school have been investigating the myriad possibilities of single-task snakes, coming up with configurations for swimming, crawling, and climbing, amongst others. The program is concerned with enabling the bots to take on a diverse variety of terrain and tasks, made easier by the fact that the little guys aren’t limited to wheel-based movement. To really get an idea of the possibilities (and extreme creepiness), check the video after the break. (Read the full post about ‘Snakebots traverse terrain, plan silent, midnight attack’…)

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Samsung and Adidas teamed up last year and made some announcements on their new (at the time) SGH-F110 slider style handset, but after the initial announcement they hype seems to have fallen away. With a new announcement, Samsung and Adidas have announced they are planning to release the phone, which is expected to be launched next month, a price has not yet been announced. The Samsung SGH-F110 is an Adidas branded phone that has some good features for anyone with an interest in fitness. On the phone side, the F110 will be a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM slider and feature a 2-inch display, 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, FM tuner, mp3 player and have 1GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot for additional storage. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung, Adidas make the fitness-minded SGH-F110 official’…)

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Posted Mar 7th 2008 4:40AM by Darren MurphFiled under: Robots We’ve seen paintball guns destined for robot mounting, but darkback2 reckoned it was entirely more wicked to actually construct his own paintballing overlord from scratch. Apparently, Gepetto wasn’t born to a be a killer (nor a lover, for that matter), but the idea of remotely controlling a security guard outside your domicile really gets our gears turning. (Read the full post about ‘Gepetto robot fires paintballs, demands respect’…)

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With HD DVD officially having been declared a dead format, this news should not come as much of a surprise, but Samsung has officially killed off the BD-UP5500 combo player. The BD-UP5500 was originally introduced at CES this past January and seemed to be a dead product right from the beginning. In a statement from Samsung they seem to feel that it still remains a good product, but not really a needed product. According to Samsung that while it “remains a practical solution…the window of opportunity is smaller than it was before. In light of recent announcements, Samsung will not introduce the BD-UP5500 Duo HD Player.” Current owners of HD DVD media may need to start looking for a replacement to their current movies, possibly sell them off on eBay and move over to Blu-ray. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung ends BD-UP5500 combo player, before it even existed’…)

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In keeping with the actual name pattern, as opposed to those strange letter number combo’s, Verizon has taken the Samsung U740 and renamed it the Alias. The odd twist here is the U740 is not a new released and was originally added to their lineup back in February 2007, perhaps Verizon is hoping this new name will help with branding and attract more of a following. If nothing else the name change from Verizon just makes it seem like it belongs in the current lineup a little more as it keeps the same pattern of other handsets such as the Venus and Voyager. Via [Mobile Mag] Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed → Tags: home theater, speakers, high definition TV, computers (Read the full post about ‘Verizon renames the Samsung U740, now dubbed the Alias’…)

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Posted Mar 7th 2008 4:04AM by Thomas Ricker If you’ve grown tired of the cold corporate design sensibilities of most NAS products (uh hem, Buffalo), then check the Wizplat NAS-20 from Sarotech. This 2-bay NAS box supports a pair of SATA disks for what should top-out at 2TB of roll-your-own storage on your gigabit Ethernet network. It features a pair of USB jacks, built-in iTunes and print servers, and even a BitTorrent server which should allow your home PC to take a rest from your 7 x 24 downloading scheme. Color us impressed while we wait for the price and ship date to be announced. (Read the full post about ‘Sarotech’s Wizplat NAS-20 makes stealing fun’…)

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Posted Mar 7th 2008 2:52AM by Richard LawlerFiled under: Displays, HDTVSay goodbye to Kuro as we knew (and loved) it, as Pioneer officially announced it’s ending all in-house plasma panel production and will build HDTVs based on panels bought elsewhere. The source went unnamed pending a final agreement, but Panasonic will likely follow up the 42-inch its providing with plasmas of up to 60-inches. Due this fall are Kuro-edition LCDs, combining Pioneer’s ultra-thin speakers and exacting picture quality standards with screens built by Sharp (hopefully this time sans-banding issues) that should see release Europe first. (Read the full post about ‘Pioneer officially ends in-house plasma production, Kuro LCDs coming soon’…)

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