Best Gadgets World

Posted Mar 9th 2008 3:35PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: cellphones
Finally, iphone owners no longer have to mope around with a feeling of shame and embarrassment in their hearts: AT&T has blessed them with an “unlimited” calling plan. That’s right, if you so desire (and you do so desire, don’t you?), you can latch a $119.99 all-you-can-eat plan onto your super-device. Sure, it looks peachy, until you notice that despite your “unlimited” status, you still only get a measly 200 text messages, which is like a three-course steak dinner with no dessert. At least you’ll never again have to end a conversation with Mom because you’re worried about overages — though you’ll want to keep a close watch on those SMSs, since the prices seem to be constantly heading skyward.

[Thanks, impuLsive]

Posted Mar 9th 2008 2:08PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Gaming
Remember that Xbox 360 price cut we mentioned a few days ago? Well it appears that the Financial Times Germany is reporting that this Monday, Microsoft will trim the fat from the Arcade and Pro consoles, shaving €80 and €50 off the price tag, respectively. Of course, right now this is still unconfirmed by the boys in Redmond (or in any other official location), though the buzz in the community does seem to suggest that these cuts are coming. Hopefully if these become a reality, the company will break something off for folks on these shores as well — we need all the help we can get right now.

Update: See that photo above? it looks like that price cut really is happening. Good news for you, Europe.

[Via I4U News; Image via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

Posted Mar 9th 2008 1:37PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Portable AudioWord on the street (and by street, we mean mostly British tabloids) is that Paul McCartney’s deal to sell the Beatles back-catalog is done, and the Greatest Works of Musical Art Ever Recorded will be appearing on the iTunes store “within months.” Of course, we’ve been hearing whispers about this for what seems like a million years, and since both Apple Corps and Apple are delivering “no comment” and “rumor and speculation” responses on the topic, we won’t get too excited. Still, there does seem to be some serious movement on this front, with everyone and their mother saying the lot is to be sold any day now for around $400 million — which is no small sum. We will, of course, keep you abreast of any developments which will lead to you stocking your music players with the Fab Four’s work.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

At last week’s Apple event, Steve Jobs went over the SDK release and how they hope to manage it.  Job’s lightly reviewed reasons Apple would reject an iPhone application; things like privacy concerns, content, or interfering with their business plan.  Somehow, Sun believes they’ll build a Java version for the iPhone.

According to InfoWorld, Java is planning on running the Java Virtual Machine on the iPhone.  However, according to the iPhone SDK documentation, the use of plug in architecture isn’t allowed.  It will be interesting to see how Sun works around this.

From InfoWorld:

Sun came to the conclusion it could make a JVM work on the iPhone after taking 24 hours to look at information on Apple’s SDK. Sun saw nothing in the public statements preventing the JVM from being one of the applications enabled on the iPhone, said Klein. Apple released the SDK in conjunction with the beta release if its iPhone 2.0 software; the general release of iphone 2.0 is scheduled for June.

From the quotes used, attributed to Sun officials and analysts, they seem to forget Apple has complete control over the apps and absolute control over what gets on (unjailbreaked, at least).

Read [InfoWorld] via [Ars Technica]

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The social networking sites numbers for the US are in and the year to year comparisons are pretty telling.  MySpace is down 1% while FaceBook is up 77%.  The biggest movement is by some new comers, namely Fubar.com who grew by, get this, 3272217%.  Fubar is billed as “the first online bar and happy hour,” with free well drinks all night long.  OK, I made up that last bit.

All but two on this top 20 list had positive year over year gains confirming the general feeling that social networking is far from done.  Newcomers like myyearbook and linkdin saw triple digit growth proving these smaller, segmented markets have lots of growth potential.

More analysis can be seen by following the link below down the rabbit hole.

Read [Compete]

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My wife has a MacBook that I borrow from time to time. Now and then when I’m using it while plugged into the wall I’ll accidentally unplug the MagSafe power adapter. It’s really not a big deal, as it pops back into place rather easily. My wife, however, hates it when she knocks it out. I don’t really understand this obsession with having the plug stay in at all times, but at least I’ve found a simple gadget that will prevent it from happening in the future.

This is one of those things that you know the company that designed it will make a small fortune. It’s a simple piece of plastic that probably costs peanuts to make, yet provides a function that tons of people are going to want. You just plug it into the neighboring USB port, and it keeps your MagSafe adapter in place until you’re really ready to take it out. It’s cheap too, just $11.99.

Source: CrunchGear

Earlier this year we raved about the FPS Gaming Vest that punches you when you get shot, well if you don’t fancy being punched there is now an alternative, Mindwire V5 gives you physical feedback by way of electric shocks.

History of the Mindwire V5

“How much better would games such as Mortal Kombat or Streetfighter be if you were ELECTROCUTED each time you were hit!”

Sudenly there’s something to play for. Watch your opponent squirm as you beat him to a pulp, and fear every one of your opponents blows as you know its going to do a lot more than make your little animated character full backwards…

The Mindwire V5 works by connecting electrical pads to your body these then deliver a mild (we hope) shock when playing games. It has a ‘dumb dumb’ mode for existing games (reacts to the force-feedback signal) and offers other ’special’ features for specially designed games.

You can find more information and buy online for £99.99 (~$200) from the Mindwire V5 site [via The Sun].

Some USB gadget manufacturer somewhere decided to stick several USB objects together and slap a label on the product resulting in the USB Desk Assortment and Gift Set. What gadgets are included?

There’s a light so you can see in the dark, a warmer to keep that java fresh and warm, a lighted cup to stick stuff in and a mini vacuum to pick up those crumbs from your flavor saver. There’s also a button, but whatever you do, don’t press it. Don’t.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $14.99

Posted Mar 9th 2008 1:10AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Misc. gadgets
That great perpetrator of worldly ills, the cosmic ray, has at last met its match. Intel has patented the concept of an on-chip detector of cosmic rays which would auto-correct for soft errors caused by the cosmic ray’s interference. Apparently Intel is concerned that cosmic rays — those perky particles from space that blast through the Earth’s atmosphere and tamper with your precious bodily fluids — are going to become “a major limiter of computer reliability in the next decade” as chips get smaller and smaller. The rays have already been proved to interfere with electronics in small ways, so while Intel doesn’t have method for building an actual cosmic ray detector yet, they’re certainly getting a jump on the problem with this patent. We know we’ll certainly be sleeping better at night.

[Via Slashdot]

Posted Mar 8th 2008 6:54PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: cellphones
We’re sure there have been some really great Java Micro Edition apps developed over the years, we just haven’t been fortunate enough to find any that aren’t a Bejeweled variant run into many of them. But that could very well change with the news that Sun is using that fancy new SDK to develop a Java Virtual Machine for the iPhone, which it expects to have ready “some time after June,” and which will allow iphone users access to the vast libraries of existing JME apps. We suppose the real conundrum now is which Java ME app we’ll grab first: Harry Potter, or MapQuest Mobile. These choices, they overwhelm us.

[Via Mac Rumors]