Best Gadgets World

by Tim Stevens, posted May 29th 2008 at 8:37PMStellar photography seems like a wonderous thing: you and a loved one on a starry night taking beautiful images of the heavens — before making out. Unfortunately, anyone who has tried it knows it’s more often a frustrating exercise of fiddling with exposure and aperture settings on your SLR while it hangs precariously off the side of your telescope, held in place only by a flimsy adapter ring. The Imaging Source has a simpler option, a series of digital cameras designed for slotting into your scope like an eye piece, capturing the night sky at up to 60-minute exposures over USB or FireWire. The range starts at $390 for a monochromatic VGA model, going all the way up to $870 for color and 1280 x 960 resolution. Not cheap, but it’s probably a lot less than you paid for the equatorial mount on your new reflector.

[Via Picture Snob; thanks Jay]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

by Darren Murph, posted May 29th 2008 at 9:28AM
It’s a crying shame (okay, not really), but the long-standing availability of free WiFi to Nintendo DS users in Mickey D’s is now over. Apparently the contract that enabled the access has expired, and there’s no signs of a renewal happening in the US or Canada. Of course, if you’re incredibly desperate to kick some tires online while treating yourself to a supersize medium order of fries and a vanilla cone, you can fetch the Nintendo DS web browser add-on or WiFi USB Connector from the second-hand market and carry on. We, however, see this as a perfect excuse to avoid the temptations that lurk underneath the Golden Arches.

[Via DS Fanboy]

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Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Wireless

by Paul Miller, posted May 29th 2008 at 12:26PM
As always, Apple is busy at the patent office this week, with two recently uncovered filings to make life just a little bit easier for Mr. Joe Person Man. The first of these is a system to track how far away you are from a cell tower, and to warn you via your phone when you’re about to drop your call — with similar applications for GPS and WiFi devices. The other patent is a Bluetooth-based system to track down lost objects like keys or your Bluetooth headset via the age old method of “you’re getting hotter” and you’re getting colder.” Sure, Apple’s version might have a fancy readout on the phone display, but it’s the same basic principle — no triangulation going on here. Of course, Apple patents all sorts of crazy stuff that never makes it to market, but at least these two have a semblance of possibility.

[Thanks, Mark]

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Filed under: cellphones, Wireless

by Donald Melanson, posted May 29th 2008 at 2:25PMIt’s only just barely made it out into the wild, but DigiTimes is now reporting that ASUS has already stopped taking orders from resellers for its 8.9-inch Eee PC 900 in anticipation of the now imminent launch of the Atom-based Eee PC 901. That word apparently comes from some unspecified “industry sources,” who also claim that the Eee PC 900 was only ever a “transitional product” to begin with, which ASUS pushed out the door with a plain old Celeron M processor in order to get an 8.9-inch model out ahead of its competitors. Certainly a reasonable conclusion to draw, but a quick glance of online retailers shows that there’s still plenty of Eee PC 900s out there for the taking if you’re not sold on this whole Atom thing.

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Filed under: Laptops

by Donald Melanson, posted May 29th 2008 at 1:54PM Night view isn’t exactly a new technology, but Toyota’s latest implementation of it in its Crown Hybrid luxury sedan is a bit different than most. Unlike the company’s previous effort, which displayed images straight on the windshield, this one makes use of an LCD in the dashboard, which also does double duty by displaying the speedometer and all the vehicle’s other vitals. What’s more, the system also takes things to Terminator-like levels with a pedestrian recognition system, although that apparently only works at speeds below 60 kilometers per hour (the company says it’s also working on a means of recognizing bicycles and animals). No word on exactly what sort of premium all that will demand, but Toyota admits it’ll be “several times more expensive than the existing meters.”

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Filed under: Transportation

Product: Griffin Technology ClearBoost and Wave case
Price and Availability: Both currently available, the ClearBoost is $29.99 and the Wave case is $24.99
Rating: ClearBoost 5/10 and Wave case 9/10
Pros: Both cases offered solid protection for the iphone along with the display.
Cons: A personal issue, but they both make using the Apple dock difficult.
Overall: If you are looking for a solid case or a signal booster, then either of these from Griffin would make an ideal option to consider.

Keep reading to check out the full review, and don’t forget to check out our follow up post with some more “real-world” pics of the Griffin cases…

Read [Appletell] Product [ClearBoost] Product [Wave case]

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Tasers have been used by cops for centuries, alright, maybe not that long, but long enough. By now you would think we know all we need to know about them. They zap, it hurts, end of story. One thing tasers are not supposed to be able to do is affect one’s heart in anyway. Well recent events have doctors concerned about the use of tasers. Apparently one genius was running from the cops and decided to hide in a lake. This brilliant criminal chose not just any lake, but a freezing cold one.

Since the water was extremely cold his heart experienced an atrial fibrillation, meaning, he had an irregular heartbeat. Once the cops tasered him his heartbeat returned to normal. Then upon this occurring, he began resisting arrest once again. Wow, am I glad they saved this guy’s life, I’m sure he will go on to do such great things. The entire event does have doctors concerned since tasers aren’t supposed to affect your body to that extent. The tasing company, have been quick to point out that this particular instance could be explained by many other factors besides the device itself. Which means as of now, there is no proof that we should be alarmed, so feel free to carry on and taser yourself to your heart’s content.

Source: Crunchgear

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Are you an over shopper? No matter how many times you go to the grocery store you always wind up buying too much food. This surplus of extra food eventually expires and is quickly introduced to the trash can. But why? Why do we waste so much food when we can use it for creating something usable?

The Kitchen Composter takes all of your leftover or rotting food and composites fully-usable fertilizer within two weeks using only 10 watts of power. The extra fertilizer not only saves you money from your local garden product dealer, but would be awesome to use on your home garden, growing your own family some fresh veggies.

The composter does its thing over a period of two weeks and notifies you that the job is done with a red light. The selection of 6 colors allows you to mix and match with your home decor, so the composter doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

NatureMill offers some special goodies behind the scenes, including free field technician repair and even replacement of the entire unit up to three years after purchase. So you figure that the initial $395 investment will set you back a tad in your finances, but over time, you’d surely make all of that back and more.

Product Page via EcoFriend

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Every once in a while, some company will improve on something that you wouldn’t think needed any improvement at all. Take the grand piano, for instance. Its sleek blank ebony framework and perfect ivory keys are a symbol of pure music.

And yet, Yamaha has made the grand piano even more perfect with the recently unveiled Disklavier Mark IV, a piano that can “play itself, teach you to play, and perform in sync with your favorite CDs”.

It is also one of the first pianos to have a Wifi connection with 802.11b specification. As far as I know, the Disklavier is also the only piano with a remote control. This PDA-type pocket remote controller has buttons and a full-color LCD touchscreen, and some models include a tablet-PC remove with 10.4 inch touchscreen.

Another feature is its open-ended software-based architecture with Linux Operating System, which is fully upgradeable. The Mark IV’s hard drive is 80 gigabytes, which completely trounces the 16 megabytes of flash memory in the previous models.

Other features include some family entertainment features such as karaoke-file compatibility, microphone input and vocal harmony in the piano’s built-in speakers or external sound system.

I could probably fill three articles with all the other features. Anyway, these pianos are available in many models for about $11,000 to start.

Source

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Many of us either remember or have owned a Mathmos lava lamp. I personally owned a purple one that I used until the lava turned into tiny little clumps that wouldn’t go back together to form its original nice and flowing form. Well Mathmos has created a new lamp that seems like a slightly more modern and fun lighting solution. However, it does seem quite a bit more boring than the lava lamps. The lava lamps had that cool moving lava, this just has a colored light bulb.

Alright, so it is more complicated than that. The bulb is a chrome metal bulb that changes colors with internal LEDs. The cover around it is mouth-blown glass. To turn on the lamp you just shove down on the top of it. Once you do it will fade gently from red to pink to purple then onto blue. The site claims it is much more mesmerizing than your average colored light bulb. Although I am extremely perplexed as to how it is in anyway different. It is meant to set a nice soothing mood, so likely it doesn’t flash away like a strobe light. Unfortunately, they are all sold out for those of us in the US, however, you can snag one through Firebox’s UK site for just under $55.

Source: pocket-lint

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