College: four (or five, or six) years of crackin’ brews, listening to tunes, trippin’ out to light shows, and snugglin’ up to coeds at bonfires on the beach. Just in time for homecoming, we have an assemblage of crapgadets that should put you in good stead, including: iBottleopener (turns your iPhone into, well, a bottle opener, for a mere $20), the BONE iPhone portable amplifier (a large, ugly horn that essentially turns your handset into a Victor Talking Machine for $25), Glow In The Dark USB memory sticks (capacities up to 16GB for $90), and an honest-to-goodness lighter that does double duty as an 8GB flash drive ($37). Which one of these “party favors” isn’t doing anybody any favors? Cast your vote below. Read – iBottleOpener Read – BONE iPhone Case Series Read – Zip Zip Glow Read – USB Flash Drive Lighter (8GB Edition) View Poll Crapgadget: Animal House redux edition originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …AppleInsider: new MacBook Air ‘certain’ to be 11.6-inches, may have flash-based instant-wake ability
October 15, 2010 No Comment
Rumors of an 11.6-inch MacBook Air refresh are nothing new at this point, but AppleInsider says it’s confirmed a smaller version of Apple’s ultraportable is coming at next week’s “Back to the Mac” event , and that units are rolling off factory lines right now in preparation for near-immediate delivery. AI also says it’s been told the the revised machine will feature a novel new storage system called “SSD Card” that looks like a stick of RAM — a smaller form factor that would obviously allow the new Air to be even smaller, and possibly sport instant-on wake times, something that’s been rumored from other sources this week as well. We’ll be at the event live next week so we’ll see what happens — keep it locked right here. AppleInsider: new MacBook Air ‘certain’ to be 11.6-inches, may have flash-based instant-wake ability originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Well, ain’t this exciting! If you own an iPhone 4 or EVO 4G, it looks like the tyranny of the charging cable is soon to be a distant memory. That’s right: one of our moles at Best Buy has photographic evidence of new wireless charging systems, cases, and Powermats for both of the aforementioned handsets. Didn’t know we had moles, did you? We also analyze ‘chatter’ and sniff out KIRFs. In fact, we’re basically a full-blown Gadget Intelligence Agency — SMERSH woulda been proud of us. [Thanks, Isaac] iPhone 4, EVO 4G Powermats arrive at Best Buy originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Last time we left off in the tale of Windows 7 tablets, we’d taken a look at Netbook Navigator’s Nav 9 slate, which by review’s end had us not only wanting to send it back as soon as humanly possible, but concluding that something better just had to be on the horizon. Well, as luck would have it, just a few days later CTL’s 10-inch 2goPad SL10 showed up on our doorstep with some very promising ingredients — a capacitive touchscreen, accelerometer, front facing camera, and a Win 7 software layer. As we said in our early hands-on , we’ve been more impressed with the $499 (it will go up to $599 in late October) 2goPad than we ever thought we would be, but ultimately its Atom N450 processor and its software stand in its way of being the Win 7 tablet to kill ‘em all. You’ll want to hit the break to read all about it in our full review. Gallery: CTL 2goPad SL10 review Continue reading CTL 2goPad SL10 review CTL 2goPad SL10 review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Turkey’s $1 million humanoid SURALP robot gets a coming out party (video)
October 15, 2010 No Comment
Yet another country has a walking humanoid robot to call its own, joining the illustrious league of nations that most recently added Iran to its ranks. Turkey is the lucky ducky this time, officially unveiling the SURALP robot to the world. Yeah, that’s an acronym, “Sabanci University Robot Research Laboratory Platform,” but after seeing him in action we’ve taken to calling him SHAKY. The University has been posting videos of his progress for many moons now, an eight year project that has cost $1 million total so far, but he was only recently officially revealed to the world at a demonstration, wowing the crowd by handing someone a can and then, later, throwing that very same can into the trash. Maybe SHAKY 2.0 will learn to recycle — and to love. Continue reading Turkey’s $1 million humanoid SURALP robot gets a coming out party (video) Turkey’s $1 million humanoid SURALP robot gets a coming out party (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Woah, it’s an early one! Well, late if you think Thursday is the “official” day for podcasting. So it’s an early late one… look, what do you want from us? Get off our case, man! We’ll podcast when we’re good and ready. And we’ll be ready at 2PM today. More or less. Hit up the live stream and the chat after the break. And stop your grumbling. And button that top button. P.S. And don’t forget that Ustream has Android and iPhone clients as well, if you’re out and about and you can’t join in on the Flash-based fun below. Continue reading The Engadget Podcast, live… now! The Engadget Podcast, live… now! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 13:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Borders enlists BookBrewer for its e-publishing portal, ‘Time Cube’ guy asks where to sign up
October 15, 2010 No Comment
We guess that Barnes & Noble can’t have all the fun, huh? You’ll soon have another option for self-publishing your wildly fantastical (and wonderfully fact-free) rants: Borders has announced that it’ll be using the BookBrewer platform for its new eBook publishing service. Beginning October 25, $90 will get you one ePUB format book, complete with ISBN and distribution to “all major eBook stores,” including Borders and Amazon. Does that mean that your pamphlet, EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE IN ONLY 24 HOUR ROTATION will finally be taken seriously? Nah, probably not. PR after the break. Continue reading Borders enlists BookBrewer for its e-publishing portal, ‘Time Cube’ guy asks where to sign up Borders enlists BookBrewer for its e-publishing portal, ‘Time Cube’ guy asks where to sign up originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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With Epic 4G styling, a front-facing camera and a $150 post-rebate price, it’s easy to mistake the Samsung Transform for a high-end phone. Don’t. The reality is that it’s a evolution of Samsung’s mid-range Moment and Intercept more than anything else — you’re paying an additional $50 here to get a front-facing camera, an LED flash and a few welcome tweaks, but the same ho-hum performance plus a few new annoyances to boot. Where does it improve and where does it fail? Find out in our full review. Gallery: Samsung Transform unboxing and hands-on Gallery: Samsung Transform and Epic 4G, sized up Continue reading Samsung Transform review Samsung Transform review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Some might say that you have somewhat of a problem when calling a solid state drive “cute,” but what do they know, anyway? Iomega’s newest batch of external SSDs are easily the most adorable we’ve seen, as these 1.8-inchers can just about slip into any oversized Fifth Pocket that you may have. Available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB sizes, the diminutive drives support USB 3.0 and are built to be lugged around and occasionally dropped, stepped on or used as a stress-relief tool. Specifically, the metal enclosure is engineered to handle drops from up to ten feet, and the 256-bit hardware encryption ensures that only you and your cronies will see what’s inside. The company’s also tossing in its Protection Suite (loaded with anti-virus, cloning and backup applications), and it’ll be hawking these in early November for $229, $399 and $749 from least capacious to most. Oh, and that noise you hear? A hundred million USB 3.0 flash drives getting all sorts of perturbed. Gallery: Iomega External USB 3.0 SSD drive Continue reading Iomega serves up adorable 1.8-inch External USB 3.0 SSD pocket drives Iomega serves up adorable 1.8-inch External USB 3.0 SSD pocket drives originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything on the Nabaztag front. Violet, the company that built the original “ambient” bunnies, went bankrupt but was snapped up by MindScape a year ago. Now MindScape is ready to show off the latest addition to the Nabaztag family, dubbed “Karotz.” The WiFi rabbit runs on Linux, with a 400MHz ARM CPU, 64MB of RAM and 256MB of storage, so it should have plenty of headroom for that vibrant hacker community that sprung up around the first two Nabaztags. Karotz can also run off batteries or be plugged in via USB, and has the same RFID reader functionality of the Nabaztag/tag. The biggest new feature is a webcam, which will purportedly have face recognition (to be paired with Nabaztag’s existing voice recognition), along with allowing you to check up on your home from a smartphone app. Karotz will retail in France starting in November for €150 (about $210 US), followed by the UK in December and February in the US. Hopefully Karotz can find a bit more market success than its ill-fated predecessors. Gallery: Karotz press shots and a peek under the hood MindScape’s Karotz continues the proud Nabaztag lineage originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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