Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

What started as a $150 white Zune last month has quickly dropped to $80 of brown. Factory refurbished of course, but if “brown” plus “Zune” evokes the urge to cough up your wad then by all means, Woot away. Hard to beat the value for these monies.
[Thanks Daniel T. and everyone who sent this in]
 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Laptops
Last week Asus finally revealed pricing and specs for their much anticipated Eee PC ultra-portable laptop. Anticipated not so much for the specs — 7-inch LED-backlit LCD, 2 to 8GB of flash storage, up to 1GB memory, WiFi, and webcam — but for the low, low $199 retail price. Rightly, more than a few of us were dismayed when the entry-level model was revealed to actually cost as much as US$358 in Taiwan and an expected $300 (pre-tax) price when launching Stateside before the month is out. The culprit? Well, according to DigiTimes‘ Taiwanese component insiders the relatively steep price is in large part due to an unexpectedly high cost for the 7-inch LCD panels. Asus had expected to source the panels for about $15 each but found themselves paying AU Optronics (AUO) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) up to twice as much for the hardware. Feel better […]

Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Everyone loves observing their favorite gadgets splayed across a table in pieces, chipsets and radios fully exposed for the world to see, but nothing quite beats the delicious build-up and eventual pay-off of a tear-down captured on video. And with hot little devices like Samsung’s 8GB, Bluetooth 2.0-equipped YP-P2 and YP-T10 DAPs, the time-honored dissection ritual seems particularly suited to filming. Thanks to Korean YEPP fan LikEraser, you can watch it all go down after the break, and even catch a full description of the individual parts by clicking on the Read link. Warning: those who value their hearing / sanity will mute the embedded videos and substitute a favorite tune instead.
[Via YeppYepp]
Continue reading Live! Nude! DAPs!: Samsung P2 and T10 dissected on video
 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games […]

Original post by Evan Blass

The boffins at Chonnam National University have created a microscopic robot to be used in medical procedures to clear blocked arteries. The miniscule robot has six legs and walks in the same manner as a crab. The researchers have discovered the robot is capable of traveling a whopping 55 yards in three weeks.
The tiny warrior, on reaching the designated location, is able to release stored drugs to disintegrate the blockage. The awesome medical tool doesn’t even need a built-in energy source; the main body is rectangular, the three hind legs are longer than the three legs at the front, by attaching to heart muscle the legs bend at the time of cardiac contraction, propelling the machine forwards. Sugars in the patient’s blood provide an alternative energy source. (How crazy is that?!) Testing has not yet begun, but is due soon.
All in all, this paves the way for the fall […]

Original post by Haroon Malik

Filed under: Cellphones
Didn’t think we’d have to bother debunking something this obviously satirical, but about a zillion people have tipped us today with a link to a post on iPhone Savior about “Geoff Evila,” who reportedly went into a coma in early June, causing him to miss the iPhone launch he had been so eagerly awaiting. He awoke from the coma four months later, and supposedly his close friend “Steve Denots” convinced the local Apple store in Chandler, Arizona to help recreate launch day for him so Geoff could experience what he’d missed.
Sounds totally plausible, like the kind of filler you see every night on local TV news, right? Yeah, well besides all the obvious markers that this is a joke — “Evila” is “Alive” spelled backwards, and the author’s name, “Earl Sorel” is an anagram of “Real Loser” — the pic accompanying the post was actually taken on […]

Original post by Peter Rojas

Adam over at Daily Tech Talk just threw down an exclusive giveaway promotion by FastMac. If you pop along to an Apple retail store on Leopard launch day, the good lads from FastMac will be throwing free T-shirts in your direction. Check out the awesome movie inspired themes that will be available:galleryPost(\’FastMacTGI\’, 4, \’FastMacTGI\’);
Quantities are limited, but the Ts look cool. Curiously, you can drop Adam an email with your details, he’ll send those onto FastMac and they will, in return, forward onto you a box of T-shirts to give out at your local Apple store. If no one’s checking, that will secure you a season’s worth of trendy Apple inspired apparel. You’ll have to hold the ladies back, you sexy styled beast. [Daily Tech Talk]

Original post by Haroon Malik

Filed under: Desktops
One of our readers dropped us a note to tell us that his new 24-inch iMac was exhibiting condensation build up behind the screen: he’s not the only one, with a few people on the Apple Support forums and elsewhere also reporting the problem. Our tipster says that condensation builds up in the lower corners, goes away, and then comes back when the surrounding environment drops in temperature. Moisture plus computers doesn’t compute, so make sure to report the issue to Applecare if you’re seeing the same issues. Hopefully Apple will step up and publicly recognize this as a fault sometime soon.
[Thanks, Lee B.]
Read - New iMac condensation inside screen (Apple Support)Read - Condensation behind iMac glass (DPreview)Read - iMac Aluminium Condensation (MacInTouch)
 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Conrad Quilty-Harper

The Korean Demilitarized Zone is soon to be guarded by the, ironically titled, Microrobot. Check out the gallery below:galleryPost(\’MicroRobotGI\’, 4, \’MicroRobotGI\’);
The unmanned vehicle may sound like a companion for your Roomba, but that it certainly is not. The Microrobot is entirely remote controlled and the operator officially has a rocking job. Infrared cameras, sonic waves, headlights and a stereo are all instruments used in assisting with navigation. The robotic jeep will not only save your behind, but it will also save a few watts of energy too, as it runs on a rechargeable lithium battery. Gosh, if only my manhood was ironically named Microrobot. You know, instead of the name being a brutally factual observation. [Aving Networks via Sci Fi Tech]

Original post by Haroon Malik

Filed under: Wearables
Hungerhill School, a secondary school in Doncaster, South Yorkshire is running a trial that involves tagging the uniforms of pupils with RFID tags. The tags pull up data including academic performance, the child’s current location, and can even deny access to certain restricted areas — behind the bike shed, perhaps? The trial has raised the usual questions of privacy and human rights, although since the trial is voluntary and provides convenience by auto-registering pupils, the current iteration of the trial isn’t a particularly great violation. Call us when kids get tags from birth, then we’ll take to the streets: but probably only because ours missed out. We’ll take our tongue out of our cheek now.
[Via Picture Phoning]
 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Conrad Quilty-Harper

Rudy Heeman was meant for greater things, as is obvious by his superhero last name, Heeman. The lunatic mechanic from New Zealand has spent the last 11 years constructing a flying boat / hovercraft. Is there any better way to spend 11 years? We think not. We can only imagine what Mr. Heeman’s telephone conversations entail:
Heeman’s friend: “Sup, man?”
Heeman: “Oh nothing much, I’m just flying across the ocean in my flying boat.”
The vehicle, dubbed the Hoverwing, has taken Mr. Heeman 800 hours of assembly time and is only now nearing completion. During the first test flight, the crazy genius did not allow his daughters to watch in case he ended up as a mangled mess. He also chose a location close to the local hospital to ensure help would be at hand if needed. He seems to be capable of understanding basic risk, but his lack of respect for the […]

Original post by Haroon Malik