Gadgets Blog News

If there was one thing that the 43-year old Chris Clark regretted not doing, it was not buying more domain names when he bought pizza.com in 1994. Clark who used to run a consultancy firm will become $2.6 million richer when the transaction for the purchase of pizza.com is completed in a couple of days from now.

Looking back 14 years ago, Clark, who lives in North Potomac, Maryland, did not think that he would be making a big amount of money from the domain name he purchased. He was just trying to attract a pizza company to his consultancy firm when he bought the domain back then. But after receiving no response from the pizza company, Clark still continued paying the annual renewal fee to keep the domain name.

(Read the full post about ‘Pizza.com owner earns $2.6 million for selling $20 domain’…)

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Do people still buy standard definition video cameras? Panasonic seems to think so. The company has announced that its pocket-sized SDR-S7 will be arriving in Japan later this month. Weighing only 182grams with its battery and SD card, the camera can record 16:9 or 4:3 video at VGA (640 x 480) resolution in MPEG-2 format. The camcorder can shoot in three video modes: XP (10 Mbps), SP (5 Mbps), and LP (2.5 Mbps). Video recordings are stored via SD cards, with up to 16GB support—allowing up to 13 hours of recorded video in LP mode.  The featherweight SDR-S7 is equipped with a 2.7-inch widescreen display, 10x optical zoom, stereo microphone, 0.6 seconds Quick Start, and USB 2.0 for fast file transferring.

(Read the full post about ‘Panasonic’s lightweight SDR-S7 camcorder announced’…)

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Posted Apr 4th 2008 5:23PM by Darren MurphFiled under: Transportation General Motors doesn’t have long before everyone and their cousin expects to see at least a few Volts on the road — and it knows it. In an attempt to make sure the deadline is met, the firm has battery testing going on ’round the clock in Michigan and Germany that will theoretically simulate a decade of use in just two years. Additionally, it’s placing batteries in test Malibus in order to get a feel for real-world results. (Read the full post about ‘GM cranks up battery tests for plug-in Volt’…)

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This new Chinese PMP called the AOC X600, comes with a pretty unique feature which allows it to play RMVB files on the player itself, or you can use TV-Out option to play them on your big screen TV. Aside from playing RMVB, it’s pretty much your average PMP, but it is actually pretty cheap considering what it comes with. Beginning with its screen, it sports a nice 3-inch display with a 400 x 240 resolution, and 16:10 aspect ratio. Additionally, it can also play FLV, AVI, MOV, ASF, MP4, WMV, 3GP, MGP, MP3, WMA, APE, FLAC lossless, and TXT files. No matter what audio or video format you have on your computer, you are almost guaranteed to be able to play it on the AOC X600. (Read the full post about ‘New Chinese PMP, AOC X600, brings RMVB support’…)

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eMusic, together with the Music Intelligence Institute, presents this Music Intelligence Quiz developed by experts in the music field. It consists of 30 multiple-choice questions covering many genres and eras of music. The maximum number of points is 180, and there are 5 levels of music intelligence: Top 40 Radio Listener, Air Guitarist, Birthday Party DJ, Mix-Tape Master, and Musical Magician.

What’s great about this test is that, unlike other assessments out there, you are not obligated to provide a name or email address or register in order to see your results, although after you view your results eMusic invites you to check out some music suggestions based on your music intelligence level, but that’s fine.

(Read the full post about ‘Fun music IQ test brought to you in part by eMusic’…)

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Posted Apr 4th 2008 3:07PM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Household We’ve seen plenty of houses of the future, but none quite like this so-called Bioscleave House by artists Madeline Gins and Arakawa, which promises to force people to “use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium.” Those equilibrium-inducing measures include, as you can see above, a vast undulating floor (somewhat curiously made of concrete), as well as off-kilter power outlets, walls painted in about 40 different colors, and windows of varying heights, all of which is designed to keep occupants and visitors “on guard” at all times. That equilibrium also comes at some risk, however, with visitors required to sign a waiver before they enter (children aren’t allowed in at all). (Read the full post about ‘Bioscleave House aims to maintain equilibrium, requires waiver to enter’…)

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The Pantouch digital photo frame from Pandigital takes some pages out of a standard book (pardon the pun), featuring slide motion and touch controls that enable users to go through the photos using a patent pending ‘page turn’ effect, which effectively simulates a photo album courtesy of a simple forward/backward motion swipe. In addition, there are icons available for your fingers to tap when accessing digital photos, MP3 tunes and video clips. Depending on the size of the photo frame, you will have to fork out anywhere from $120 to $250 when they hit retail shelves this May. (Read the full post about ‘Pandigital PanTouch digital photo frame’…)

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Posted Apr 4th 2008 1:28PM by Donald MelansonFiled under: HDTV, Home Entertainment We’d already heard it was delayed, but that apparently hasn’t stopped some pics of Hauppauge’s much-anticipated HD-PVR from landing in the hands of a moderator of the SageTV forums, who has kindly posted them for all to see. As you can see, however, it isn’t exactly much to look at, but the promised real-time H.264 compression of 1080i video from a component video source should be more enough to make up for any design quibbles. What’s more, if that same SageTV moderator is to be believed, Hauppauge should be starting to take pre-orders for the device relatively soon, possibly as early as today (it’s still expected to set you back about $250). (Read the full post about ‘Hauppauge HD-PVR shows itself, pre-order said to be coming soon’…)

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Fujifilm has announced their new Finepix Z20fd, a point and shoot camera which offers a nice compact design, but otherwise seems to be a mid-level digital camera with a few more advanced features that you wouldn’t really mind missing out. The Fujifilm Finepix Z20fd is touting a video mode function as its major selling point. The video function button is located just beside the shutter button at the top most edge of the camera. Hence, you can quickly shift from the normal camera to the video function. For some more goodies, the Z20fd has a 10-megapixel 1/ 2.3-inch CCD, 3x optical zoom, from 64 to as high as 1000 ISO sensitivity, the usual face recognition technology, a 2.5-inch TFT LCD with around 150,000 pixels, 45mb internal memory and takes SD/SDHC memory cards for additional storage. (Read the full post about ‘Fujifilm intro’s the Finepix Z20fd, point and shoot digital camera’…)

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Nokia has finally launched its N-Gage gaming service with high hopes of revitalizing the ailing mobile gaming market. (And possibly earn a few more bucks?) Although an official announcement will be made on Monday, the N-Gage blog took one step in advance and informed the loyal N-Gage followers who were testing the product during its beta stage, that the N-Gage platform is already opened. The N-Gage is fully compatible with Nokia’s top mobile phone series – the N95, N81 and N82. With Nokia striking a deal with major cellphone game developers such as Electronic Arts, Gameloft and Glo Mobile they should prove to be successful. Nokia hopes to have around 25-30 games available by mid-2008 and add another 25-30 during the second half of the year. (Read the full post about ‘Nokia opens N-Gage mobile gaming service’…)

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