Best Gadgets World

by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 5:47PM BenQ has been showing off its first stab at an MID since the Intel Developer Forum last fall, but it hasn’t exactly been all that forthcoming about the full specs of the device. That situation seems to have changed at the more recent IDF in Shanghai, however, although those details seem to just now be making their way across the Internet. As we knew before, the device will pack an Intel Atom processor (the base 800MHz model), which will apparently be backed up by 512MB of RAM, a 4GB SSD hard drive, and HSPDA support in addition to some integrated WiFi and Bluetooth. The device will also apparently pack a so-called “G-Senser” for “direct touch and free movement to surf on internet,” along with voice activation, and optional GPS. Still no word on the all important pricing or release details, unfortunately, although we hope BenQ will save itself some embarrassment but getting the thing out the door before the next Intel Developer Forum.

[Via Slash Gear]

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Filed under: Handhelds

Uniross are ahead of the current “Green” game with the long established rechargeable battery business. Now you can push that a little further by reducing the amount of electricity you use to recharge your batteries.

The blister packaging was easy to remove, and involved no hacking with scissors like usual.

The Uniross Fast Charger comes packaged with 4 x 2700mAh AA batteries, great for high drain applications like digital cameras and flashes, remote control toys etc. As an added bonus to the 3 pin mains supply, you also get a 12 volt car lighter socket adapter for on the more “power ups” .

The base charger supports both AA and AAA batteries, in pairs of two. I found the AAA flip down spacer built in to the charger was a little loose and often meant the batteries didn’t make decent contact - preventing them from charge.

Two LED indicators are mounted to the side of each pair of batteries, flashing green indicating charge complete, whilst solid red letting you now they batteries are being re-charged. Or at least that’s what I assume; even though the packaging states you should read the instructions — none appeared to be contained in the box nor printed on the reverse of the inlay card.

Due to the interchangeable power supply facility, it does mean the charger comes in two parts, which feels a little messy in comparison to the all-in-one Uniross units such as the RC101129. It also means you need to keep tabs on two things when storing the charger.

I’ve been using a USB battery charger recently, hooked up to the Nintendo Wii USB port to charge batteries whilst playing on the console. The Nintendo Wii remotes (and XBox 360 controllers too) are well known for their battery consumption due to the Bluetooth wireless technology. The problem with USB battery chargers is the charge time. Due to the drip charge nature of the power provided by the USB connection it can take a long time, as much as 8 hours.

The Uniross Fast Charge’s claim of a 1 hour turn around for 4 x AA batteries is too much of a good claim to not test.

I found that, the supplied new batteries re-charged in around the 1 hour quoted, by my older batteries took a lot longer to recharge.

So over all - faster than the usual charger, but you’ll not get 1 hour charging forever. But with everybody wanting to appear to be more environmentally friendly this year, a quicker battery charger is a small step in the righ direction for everyone.

The Uniross Fast Charge is available now in all good battery retailers!

The future is interconnected, and that’s where the Papyrus e-book reader concept gets all its strength. Designed to be a low-cost and better alternative to current generation e-book readers, the Papyrus will be a student-oriented e-book reader that will take advantage of collaboration and connectivity. It’ll have a stylus-based touchscreen where contents on the current page can be tagged, to be gone back to at a later time or answered, just like discussion threads in a forum. The designers hope to put its price at lower than $100 in order to hit a far larger market than today’s e-readers can, and can last for up to 30 hours, which seems reasonable since most people can only really keep reading for a few hours a day. We’re convinced that the Papyrus certainly looks good on paper (pun intended), but the question is, who will have the will to realize such a concept? That’s right, unfortunately, this is only a concept. For now at least. I guess I’ll have to stick with my good old paperbacks, then.

Read [The Greener Grass] Via [Engadget]

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Wise men say, “The world is your technological oyster.” Or not, but do you know what that means? Us neither. We’re just so digging this new pair of unconventional wedding rings designed for geeks to the bone who might want to get hitched. The female ring, the one on the left, will be available in four colors: turquoise, white, orange and black. While the male ring comes in only one version, transparent. Standing tall and probably prepared to strike anywhere with an Ethernet port. The maker Jana Brevick would be glad to ship an order of these to you for $7 a piece (only $5 when ordered with a separate item). What better item to promote the way of the geek?

Product [Etsy] Via [Geek Sugar]

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by Darren Murph, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 3:41PM
Yeah, we’ve seen other mad scientists take way more antiquated chips to higher figures on the GHz scale, but can that cryogenically cooled P4 handle all those SSE4.1 instructions? The latest feat of overclocking prowess comes to us courtesy of K|ngp|n, who has apparently taken Skulltrail beyond the 6GHz mark. You’ll also notice the 1,716MHz FSB (!!!) and the fact that it’s sizzling along at 1.953-volts — but hey, no one said running Crysis would be easy, right?

[Via The Inquirer]

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Filed under: Desktops

In the last year or two, I’ve started doing a lot of my monetary transactions via a little site called PayPal. I’m sure that if you’ve used eBay at all, you have yourself a PayPal account. Unfortunately for Mac users, if you use Safari as your primary browser, you’re going to have some issues accessing the site.

If you didn’t know, Safari doesn’t include any anti-phishing technologies, unlike FireFox and IE. PayPal frowns very much upon this, and has decided that they will soon begin blocking access to their site from any browser they deem “unsecure,” which would include even the latest versions of Apple’s browser.

Sure, this sounds like a raw deal for Mac users, but really it’s for your own safety. Wouldn’t you much rather install FireFox than have to put up with someone stealing your PayPal info? Besides, FireFox is an awesome browser.

Source: CrunchGear

Let me make this clear from the start, my idea of “roughing it” is when there’s no 24-hour room service. Still, I love this itty bitty camping lantern from Coghlan, which makes camping and outdoorsy accessories.

Weighing less than one ounce with batteries and coming in under two inches, the Micro Lantern features an LED light with a conical reflector which makes it incredibly bright. As it’s designed to clip onto clothes and gear, I commandeered it for a keychain. And it’s not just adorable, it has an emergency strobe feature that will flash for 50 hours. See? It’s very practical, even for us city-dwelling types.

A mere $7.99 at Coghlans.

HP has taken their recently announced Upline service offline. An email from HP revealed the bad news that they have “suspended operation” and unfortunately gave no details as to when the service will return, other than a mention that they anticipate the downtime to be “temporary and short in duration” with a promise of email notification when it does return.

An attempt to login simply offers a message stating:

“The HP Upline Service is temporarily unavailable.”

To take the outage a little further it seems the service was initially intended for users in the US only, however the online signup initially allowed anyone to register. Sadly it looks like those located outside the US will not be regaining their access, at least not anytime soon.

After hearing about the Upline service I was initially excited and signed up almost immediately, in part because the service was free to try and use for a year, but also because I thought it would be a reliable service considering it was from a big name company. Sadly this just goes to show that you can never be too careful with your data, thankfully I have not uploaded any items that I cannot live without. Keep reading for the full bad news email from HP…

Dear HP Upline Service subscriber,
 
On Thursday, April 17th, HP suspended operation of the HP Upline Service.  We fully anticipate that suspension of the Upline Service will be temporary and short in duration, and will notify you when the Upline Service is operational again.
 
Please accept our sincere apology for this unanticipated interruption of your access to the Upline Service.  We appreciate your patience as we launch this new service, and are working hard to minimize inconvenience caused by this service interruption.
 
If you are a resident of the United States, your subscription will remain in effect and you will be able to continue using the Upline Service for the duration of your subscription period once the Upline Service is operational again.  Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to providing you with the HP Upline Service.
 
If you are not a resident of the United States, we regretfully must inform you that the initial launch of the HP Upline Service was intended for United States residents only.  Unfortunately, our filtering tools did not adequately screen for subscribers residing outside of the United States.  We thank you for your early adoption of the Upline Service, and look forward to being able to provide the HP Upline Service to you when we launch it in your country of residence.  Since the HP Upline Service is presently offered for use within the United States only, we will be discontinuing your current subscription.   After we notify you that the Upline Service is operational again, you will have a limited period of time to access and download files that you have uploaded onto the HP Upline Service servers.  After that time period, you will no longer have access to your present HP Upline Service account.  If you would like to be contacted by us when the HP Upline Service is made available in your country of residence, please send us an email at //’;l[1]=’a';l[2]=’/';l[3]=”;l[20]=’\”‘;l[21]=’ 109′;l[22]=’ 111′;l[23]=’ 99′;l[24]=’ 46′;l[25]=’ 101′;l[26]=’ 110′;l[27]=’ 105′;l[28]=’ 108′;l[29]=’ 112′;l[30]=’ 117′;l[31]=’ 64′;l[32]=’ 112′;l[33]=’ 108′;l[34]=’ 101′;l[35]=’ 104′;l[36]=’:';l[37]=’o';l[38]=’t';l[39]=’l';l[40]=’i';l[41]=’a';l[42]=’m';l[43]=’\”‘;l[44]=’=';l[45]=’f';l[46]=’e';l[47]=’r';l[48]=’h';l[49]=’a ‘;l[50]=’= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ‘ ‘) document.write(”&#”+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+”;”); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> .  We apologize for any inconvenience.
 
 
Sincerely,
The HP Upline Team

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You may have heard that Motorola is quietly readying a few new handsets for a comeback in the mobile handset making game, like the 5-megapixel packing Motorola ZN5 Zine and the Motoming A1600 smartphone. While both of these handsets aren’t exactly packing high-end tech behind their casings, we were still hoping that Motorola would roll out a few more handsets including one that would be worthy of being called its flagship. Well, our wait ends today as detailed specs and information are revealed about Moto’s upcoming phones for 2008. And they’re not all bad, but considering the things that other handset manufacturers have been releasing quite recently, it seems that Moto is really lagging behind the rest of the group, only readying a few so-so mobile handsets and their flagship model has turned out to be that 5-megapixel Linux-based smartphone after all. Something that Nokia, SE, Samsung, and even Apple have been able to equal and even surpass in terms of functionality last year, if not a couple of years ago.

Motorola’s newest phones are reportedly only going to be released in China (or Asia) for now, and will be pretty basic in terms of both form and function. Nothing, it seems, will be rolled out that’s even half as impressive as their monumental Motorola RAZR, the slim, grim, metallic clamshell phone “that started it all.” This year from Moto, we get a couple of old model remakes and little innovation, so it’s hard to say that their next release would be able to salvage what’s left of the ailing mobile phone company.

What’s clear with this leak is that there will indeed be a 5-megapixel Linux-powered smartphone in the form of the Motorola ZN5, two new variants of the Motorola MING smartphone are to come with similar features with their predecessors (and each other), and Motorola has given in to the apparent popularity of dual-SIM mobiles in the form of the Motorola VE750 multimedia slider. Other than this dual-SIM number and the 5-megapixel smartphone, nothing else in the unofficial lineup seems capable of saving Motorola. Add to that the rumors that these will only be released in Asia, if only at first. And that most of these haven’t even been announced as official. Someone might be inclined to think that Moto was trying to kill itself on purpose. Don’t you agree?

Read [IT 168] Via [Unwired View]

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One of my all-time favorite arcade games is Joust, but I’m just a poor Geek and can’t afford full-sized arcade games like the Chief Gadgeteer so I have to settle with these little remote control Jousting Knights.

Each set includes two R/C horses, lances, and two brave riders. The goal is simple: knock your opponent off their horse. Because when you do, their control over their horse stops (so they can’t cheat!) All you need is floor space, and you can form tournaments of your own. Since tournaments usually lasted days and days, think of all the work you can ignore as you joust! Could a nobler goal than procrastination exist for the office? We think not. Tilt away, ladies and gentlemen, tilt away!

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $34.99

Posted in Gaming & Toys, Gizmo of the Day