Best Gadgets World

The Helio Mysto was first available on December 26, 2007, but was in very limited availability. Originally limited to Helio’s retail locations which are found only in New York and New Jersey.

The Mysto is now available nationwide and can be found in all the usual spots to include Helio’s website and phone sales along with stores and kiosks. The Mysto will be $149 for new customers and $320 for existing customers.

The specs include a 2-megapixel camera, built-in GPS, Bluetooth, a music player and a microSD memory card slot for additional storage. The Mysto will also feature applications similar to other Helio handsets such as GPS-Aware Browser and TellMe.

Via [Heliocity]

This DIY Fire Alarm Clock may be overkill, but hey, maybe you’re a little deaf? Eh? What’s that you say?

 This hack takes a standard cheap alarm clock, some interface components and a fire alarm bell to get the job done right. Normally these small alarm clocks use a piezo buzzer to attempt to wake you up. The alarm signal is hijacked from the clock circuit board and used as an input to the interface board.

Posted Jan 16th 2008 9:14AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming
Ready for more rumors of processor delays? This time, it’s Intel (not AMD) in the spotlight according to DigiTimes’ sources at Taiwan motherboard makers. Intel is said to be delaying volume shipments of their quad-core QX9770 CPU for high-end desktops until February or March instead of January as earlier believed. Worse yet, the proc is now rumored to cost $1,399 (in 1,000 unit quantities) when it ships — not $1,200 as thought back in November. Hey Intel, if this move has anything to do with an intent to monopolize the market in lieu of AMD’s inability to compete then let us remind you of something — the EU and a certain Attorney General are watching you.

A collaboration between a bunch of rocket scientists and car engineers at AFS Trinity Power in California has resulted in a new technology called Fast Energy Storage which will apparently improve the performance and durability of conventional hybrid cars at a relatively low cost.

The idea is to install an Extreme Hybrid drivetrain consisting of a set of ultra-capacitors hooked up to a sophisticated computer control system which will make better use of the batteries in a traditional hybrid set up. The result is conventional style acceleration and performance coupled with improved electrical range and battery life. Sounds cool, eh?

 The Extreme Hybrid vehicle differs from today’s popular hybrids in several ways. The most important are the increased capacity of the battery, the ability to recharge the battery from the electric power grid, and, equally important, the presence of a second Fast Energy Storage component that enables rapid acceleration and greater regenerative braking capability. The Extreme Hybrid requires the seamless transfer of power between a number of different devices, including traction motors, generator, charging system, and ancillary loads.

I hope you didn’t buy a new Apple laptop recently. Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air at Macworld today.

The MacBook Air is the “World’s Thinnest Notebook” - even thinner than the Sony TZ, which is 0.8 to 1.2 inches thick. It’s so thin it fits in a manila envelope. Seriously. See the image below! Apple’s goal was to make a high performance 3 pound laptop, with a full size keyboard, and large display.

The MacBook Air is so thin, it only has 4 ports: USB 2.0, Micro-DVI, headphone jack and a MagSafe 45w power adapter plug.

So what did Apple leave out? An optical drive. If you really want one, Apple is selling an optional external USB powered SuperDrive for $99. So how do you install software or get files off of CD/DVD? Apple has a new piece of software called Remote Disc which can be installed on any Mac or PC on your wireless network and will let you borrow that machine’s optical drive.

MacBook Air features:

• Magnetic latch
• 5 hour battery
• multi-touch gesture trackpad
• 13.3-inch widescreen
• LED-backlit display
• built-in iSight for videoconferencing
• full-size keyboard
• 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 2GB RAM standard
• 80GB drive (1.8-inch hard drive. Same as in iPods.)
• 64GB SSD option
• 802.11n standard WiFi (N is the most advanced wireless on the market).
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

You can pre-order the MacBook Air today. Apple starts shipping them in 2 weeks.

In addition to the MacBook Air, Steve Jobs also made the following announcements at MacWorld today:

• Time Capsule - a wireless backup hard drive companion to Time Machine
• iPhone & iPod Touch 1.1.3 software update - adds cell tower and WiFi location triangulation data amoung other things
• iTunes Movie Rentals - ability to rent new movies in HD
• Apple TV Take 2 - new Apple TV software allows you to instantly start watching movies you rent from iTunes

methodshop

Posted Jan 16th 2008 2:47AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Rest assured, we’ve seen a fair amount of totally sexy music makers in our day, but Peter Bennett’s BeatBearing has instantly become one of our favorites. The project is described as a “simple tangible user interface that uses ball bearings to program a sequencer,” and it enables the user to create a myriad melodies using sounds from the basic components of a drum kit. As with most musical things, this truly is better appreciated through video, so do yourself a favor and click on through to see it in action. And yes, we too are waiting in tense anticipation for this thing to go commercial.

[Via Technabob]

Posted Jan 16th 2008 12:17AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Transportation
Passengers on Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA will soon have something to talk about… literally. The company is joining the growing ranks of airlines that allow mobile phone and / or wireless internet service on flights. According to the Scandinavian airline, the new features will be offered sometime later this year, and will be provided by a new subsidiary, Norwegian AS. Now, if only they’d allow smoking again.

It first turned up just a few weeks back, and although it was based entirely on rumor at that point it seemed to have a pretty legit image to go along with the story, it turns out this one was true.

Palm has officially added the Pink Centro to their site. It will keep the familiar $99.99 price tag and is currently available at the usual locations to include the online Palm Store, online Sprint Store or a local Sprint or Palm retail location.

The specs will remain the same as the previous red and black models. Now with three colors available, we have to wonder whether or not we will be seeing any more in the future.

Read [Palm]

Is there some celebrity you secretly (or evenly openly) admire and whose autograph you would absolutely love to have? Well, if there is, chances are your quest is over, unless of course you seeking the signatures of Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, or others who are not only dead but unavailable in the truest sense of the word.

Thanks to Mobile Fun, a popular mobile accessory and content provider, autograph collectors now have an easier way to collect their favorites. Of course, like everything else it life, there is a price tag; namely, $10 each to get their autographs directly onto your phone in the form of a wallpaper. Some notables include: literary great, Charles Dickens and megalomaniac lunatics and mass murderers Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. (There is truly no accounting for the tastes of some.)

Mobile Fun is also currently involved in a very complicated system to get current celebrities to sign up and cash in by having their autographs distributed. According to Mr. Ruslan G. Fedorovsky, newly appointed Head of Mobile Fun:

“We already have lots of famous actors, sportsmen and even politicians, ready and waiting to use our Autographs System to sell their autographs for tens of thousands of pounds.”

Simon Aston, Premium Autographs System Product Manager of Mobile Fun added:

“Modern mobile phones have enough memory for avid autograph collectors to carry up to 10,000 copyright-protected autographs in their back pocket.”

So what are you waiting for? Get you red-hot autographs now!

Via [MobileWhack]

Posted Jan 15th 2008 9:24PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Robots
We haven’t heard much about the Carnegie Mellon-developed ROBOTC programming language since it went into beta testing way back when, but it looks like the kinks have finally been worked out — at least to the satisfaction of Innovation First, which has just rolled out a ROBOTC programming kit for its VEX robots. Among other things, it’ll let users write programs that allow robots to perform several tasks independently, and it’ll give them the ability to start, stop and pause the execution of a program directly from their computers. If that sounds like the upgrade you’ve been waiting for, you can grab the basic kit now for $100 even, or get a twelve seat multi-license for a comparative bargain of $315.