A new and useful take on the classic Russian stacking dolls from childhood. Give it to your favorite geek (though a non-geek might appreciate it more as a reference tool). From Art Lebedev Studio, for $35.
Are you the kind of person that likes to tinker around with DIY projects? I love my Dremel, and actively search for reasons to use it. If you’re the same way, and have a taste for pulling practical jokes on unsuspecting friends, then might I suggest looking into the DIY Digital Voice Changer Kit?
This kit is the absolute bare-minimum that you’ll need to pull off the best pranks, or add a little something to your music. You only get the small board shown, but it offers speaker output with 1.5W at 4 ohms. You also get a line out that will make it easy to hook up to your phone or music equipment.
A 9V battery is all you need to power this handy voice-altering device, which makes it extremely portable. Best of all, it will only set you back a measly $13.95. Surely you can find something amusing to do with this little gadget.
Source: UberGizmo
Further evidence that Apple is not overly worried about ceding ownership of the media player market: Software engineers working on the iPod apparently have spare time to secretly encode Lincoln’s second inaugural address in their work.
Such has been discovered by an iPod Touch owner who installed the January update and ran an odd-looking file through a property list editor and base64 converter. Up popped Abe’s stirring oratory. You know, the one that starts: "Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first…"
Super Tuesday iPod touch Easter Egg [TUAW]
Posted Feb 6th 2008 12:50PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Networking
If you’re reading Engadget today because your favorite Iranian gadget blog is offline, here’s why: a fifth undersea cable has now been reported as cut, responsible for knocking Iran and a few other million people mostly off the interwebs. Things were already looking awfully suspicious when a fourth undersea cable in the Mediterranean was cut yesterday, and while nothing about a fifth cable being cut necessarily means some sort of sabotage is to blame, it’s not exactly reassuring. Emergency measures are already underway to repair the cables, but we’re not sure our inter-continental Quake III Arena deathmatch can handle any more snips.
[Via Slashdot; image courtesy of I Love Bonnie]
Update: Just to be clear, early reports of the entirety of Iran being offline turned out to be exaggerated or perhaps entirely false.
Macworld has a roundup of goofy iPod cases, and it almost makes me want to give up my Zune and go over to The Man just to be able to use Speck Products’ iGuy case. The chunk of plastic armor has arms and legs, to make your iPod stand up nicely and look like a mutant cousin of Gumby.
Also slick: A custom protector made out of old cassette tape housings.
Product spotlight: 5 wacky iPod cases [Macworld]
Posted Feb 6th 2008 1:04PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
It won’t give you the non-stop learning of something like LeapFrog’s handhelds, but ViewPlus seems to think its new and improved IVEO system has its share of knowledge to spread nonetheless, although all that learning doesn’t exactly come cheap. Coming in at just under $600 for the basic kit, the system is centered around the IVEO touchpad (available in two different sizes), which can accommodate special tactile templates or custom templates made with the IVEO Creator software (available at an added cost). Those, in turn, interact with the IVEO Viewer software, which pumps out sound clips and other information about the items the user touches. While the company obviously thinks that makes the system ideal for all students, they say its also particularly well-suited to those people with visual or learning disabilities, and it even includes an output for a Braille display. If that sounds like the tool for you, you can grab the whole bundle now for $1,300, with additional curriculum packs for biology, math, health and geography coming soon.
In September I posted about Creative Lab’s Aurvana X-Fi Headphones and called them nirvana. I didn’t think they could improve on them, but this brand-new model, Aurvana Live! , is just as good, only without the noise-canceling feature.
Featuring natural, “live” sound and rich bass tones in comfortable, lightweight design, the headphones are a steal for $149. (By comparison, the Aurvana X-Fi costs $299.)
The true sound is due to a powerful Neodymium magnet driver with ultra-thin bio-cellulose diaphragm plus in-depth acoustic tuning,so you hear every drumbeat and every strum of the guitar, the way the artist intended it.
If the nosie-canceling feature isn’t important to you (though I love it for plane travel), then these are a great pick. There’s a handy comparison chart on this page so check which features matter to you, and pick the ones for your lifestyle.
iPod theft has gotten pretty common since Apple’s portable media player took the world by storm, so what’s an iPod owner supposed to do? Well, other than make sure it remains well hidden, you can always take the ingenious route by storing it inside the shell of an unused Sony Walkman. How ironic, using the dead “body” of the 80s iconic audio player to keep the millennium’s top PMP away from the sight of many. Just make sure you don’t use the iPod’s famous white earphones with it or you’ll probably give the game away. Folks who are great with DIY jobs will be able to find this a very viable project to keep them occupied over the weekend.
As expected Disney has re-entered the mobile market in Japan teamed up with Softbank. It is a little different than expected though, with the service being marketed to the 20-30 year old female market, as opposed to the younger market that was attempted here in the U.S. They will be offering the DM001SH (a rebranded Sharp 821SH) handset in a Shiny Silver, Sparkle Pink or Glitter Gold coloring. The DM001SH will offer 3G support and feature a 400 x 240 display, 2-megapixel camera, one-seg mobile TV and FeliCa. The handset will also include a special “D-button” that will offer users one-touch access to a Disney Web portal site that is being run in cooperation with Yahoo! Japan. The new Disney Mobile service will officially launch on March 1, 2008.
Via [IntoMobile]
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Here’s a sneak peak of Dell’s latest computer, the XPS 730 H2C which has been targeted to be the successor to the XPS 720. While it might not look too easy on the eyes, the innards are what matters when it comes down to framerates. The XPS 730 H2C will feature DDR3 memory, a minimum graphics setup of being triple SLI-ready, a generous amount of drive bays and pretty decent cooling that ought to get overclockers drooling to see how far they can push such a system. It will only be a matter of time before Dell pushes out thte XPS 730 H2C, so stay tuned!
