V-Moda Bass Freq Earbuds June 24, 2006
READ MORE Portable Media
If you are looking for some heavy bass on the go without having ginourmous headphone on, v-moda's Bass Freq earbuds may have what you are looking for. The Bass Freq earbuds are noise isolating and very bass-heavy earbuds designed to allow even the whitest of white guys to roll down the hood without being ashamed of listening to bass-heavy music.
They operate at a frequency of 8Hz to 22000Hz and can rock out 122dB at 20Hz. The fun doesn't end there, either. These earbuds are available in three different colors and the cable even includes on of those handy cable wraps.
Product Page (Japanese) [Via Akihabara]
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Design Concept: Winamp in the Material World June 24, 2006
READ MORE Portable Media
It's hard to believe that MP3s have been wildly popular for the better part of seven years now, long enough for us to find ourselves waxing nostalgic when we see this concept for an MP3 player that looks just like the first Winamp software interface.
Some of you wee whippersnappers may not remember Winamp, but yes, this was our first MP3 player, pre-iTunes, even before portable players came on the scene. We're just hoping someone will decide to build this one. Right now, it's just an interesting concept, but c'mon, manufacturers—somebody step up!
Winamp Player Concept [Mobilewhack]
Wearable Gaze Detector June 24, 2006
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Scientists from NTT DoCoMo in Japan dreamed up this pair of headphones with cameras attached that can detect what you're gazing at within 20 degrees. The two cameras record the scene in front of you, while a cursor superimposed over that image indicates where you're looking. It works using EOG (Electro-oculography) sensors that can pick up small changes in electrical impulses when you move your eyes from one place to another.
Let's hope the researchers are working on a more aesthetically-pleasing implementation of this technology. It's not exactly something that will make you über attractive to the ladies, guys. Even so, this is quite a technological feat, and one that might be used in research, or perhaps even have military implications. However, all this technology may not even be necessary in some circumstances—for example, most large-breasted women can immediately tell exactly where you're looking without any such paraphernalia.
Full-time wearable headphone gaze detector presented by DoCoMo [InC innovative communication, via SciFi Tech]
Nokia Gives Sanyo, CDMA Development the Can June 24, 2006
READ MORE Mobile phones
Back in February Nokia and Sanyo announced a joint venture that would be developing and producing CDMA devices. Well the unfortunate news is that this venture is now dead in the water before it even took off. Nokia will be pulling out of the CDMA phone manufacturing market because lack of interest and declining demand. America is one of the lone places that the CDMA standard is still popular and used. Nokia will continue to sell their current CDMA handsets but they will be reducing their own research and development of new CDMA devices. Nokia and Sanyo just need to hug it out. Hugging it out solves everything.
Nokia Drops CDMA Join Venture with Sanyo [Mobiledia]
Linde Werdelin Biformeter June 24, 2006
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I'm meeting with these guys next week but I thought I'd give you all a little sneak peek. I don't quite know what's going on here, but somehow this watch is attached to a tiny computer that measures a number of environmental conditions. The detachable part has a thermometer, pulse meter, chronometer, compass, barometer, and altimeter and was inspired by a "near death experience in the mountains in Switzerland." I suspect he saw the prices at the ski-lodge snack bar.
Not quite sure how this is different from the T-Touch, but we will soon see, I suppose.
Datasound: Music for the 23rd Century? June 24, 2006
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We're still scratching their heads over this one, the Datasound, a device that takes digital bits and turns them into music. On the left side of the "deck," there's a turntable-like device that plays old-fashioned 5.25" floppy disks, letting you scratch its sounds similar to a vinyl record. On the right is an odd kind of sampler with various objects inside that generate data and electronic noise. Under the glass, there's a hard disk, neon light, the innards of a flatbed scanner and some other unnamed electronic objects. All of this is fashioned into an enclosure that resembles a museum case.
Try as we might, we couldn't find an example of the sounds made by the Datasound even though the site teased us with the promise of downloading and hearing its noise music. Anyway, we're under the impression that you're able to perform musical songs by adding your own personal rhythm to the sounds coming out of it. The concept was created by Troika Design, a London-based group of artists who apparently have lots of free time on their hands.
Design Page [Troika Design, via OhGizmo]
Why VoIP May Cause Suckage June 24, 2006
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PC World is featuring tales of woe from the VoIP front. Get this: one lady spend 12 hours on the phone with tech support and lost the number (it was 867-5309, we bet) she and her family had had for years.
Essentially, shoddy, fly-by-night VoIP resellers are racking up all sorts of complaints do to poor customer service and general jackassery. How this is any different than any other industry is hard to imagine, but it does clearly deserve its own feature and sense of righteous outrage.
Web Phone Woes [PCWorld]
Cellphone Watch June 24, 2006
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This watch, the CEC GSM F88, is as ugly as sin but is also probably the coolest thing we've seen all morning. It's got a color display, speakerphone, 3-megapixel camera, and weighs a mere 3.5 ounces. How much is this amaze-o-phone? Try $1,100. Not available here, don't even ask for it. We're not getting it for you.
F88 Wrist Watch Mobile Phone [MobileWhack]
Rail Guns Over Pyongyang June 24, 2006
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The Navy is working on a 5,000 projectile-per-minute railgun designed to shoot explosive hell on a target up to 300 nautical miles away. While this definitely doesn't make for good vacation video footage, it does put 100% of North Korea at risk, provided we ever decided to send them a bit o' honey from the old U S of A. God, we're horrible, violent monkeys, aren't we?
Look Out, Pyongyang? Rail Gun in the Works [DefenseTech]
Mimoco USB Keys: Now White Trashier June 24, 2006
READ MORE Storage
Designed by Lili Chin, this improved line of Mimobots hearkens back to the days of greasers, socs, and pompadours. Their names are Ramona, Link and Betty-Lou. Even better, they now have little hoodies to keep them warm and they contain content by Brian McCarty and Phofo. What does that mean to you? It means that if you collect USB keys, it's time to open the piggy bank. Come on. It's art!
Product Page [Mimoco via ShinyShiny
Oracom UB890 Readying Release June 24, 2006
READ MORE Gadgets , Home Entertainment , PDA , Portable Media
Word around the block is that the anticipated Oracom UB890 finally got some official specs, which means it should only be a matter of time before this baby hits the shelves. It will be available in size from 512MB to 4GB. It supports MP3, WMA, OGG and WAV for audio and MPEG, AVI, WMV and ASI for video. It includes a 2-inch full color TFT screen that even supports e-book functionality. It has a line-in encorder, microphone, FM tuner, alarm clock, sleep timer and two 500mW speakers. The battery life is average at 13 hours of audio playback and 8 hours of video playback. It will be available in white and black and should be hitting the shelves shortly—at least we hope. – Travis Hudson
Product Page [Via dapreview]
portable technology pmp movies Music
Toshiba Losing £110 on Each HD DVD Player June 24, 2006
READ MORE DVRs , Gadgets , Home Entertainment , Storage
Toshiba. Not only does it have a flop on its hands with its HD-A1 HD DVD player but it's also losing about £110 for each machine sold. That's no surprise, since the players can't be cheap—they're actually Linux boxes disguised as old-fashioned VCRs from the 1980s.
Market research firm iSuppli did a teardown of the machine, reckoning that its components cost £370. Add manufacturing costs and boxing it up, and you end up with a figure north of £390. No wonder Blu-ray players cost £550. – Charlie White
Toshiba's Battle with Blu-ray [BusinessWeek Online]
technology hd dvd Blu-ray Toshiba
Sony Blu-ray Player Launch Delay: Why? June 24, 2006
READ MORE DVRs , Gadgets , Home Entertainment , Portable Media , Storage
In an attempt to set the record straight on the delayed launch of Sony's BDP-S1 Blu-ray player, ars technica went directly to the source. Sony insisted that there has only been one launch delay. The company said there had been confusion about the number of delays, denying that a ship date had been pushed back from July to August. The Sony spokesperson explained that July was the original ship date for the player to be sent to retailers, but the players had been scheduled to be available to consumers in August. This is why it seemed that the players had been delayed from July to August, according to Sony.
Sony acknowledges the latest delay that we reported yesterday, where the Sony Style website showed October 25 as the new launch date of the BDP-S1 Blu-ray player. But that date may not be accurate, either. Sony says its online site required a specific date, and so it picked October 25, but says the actual date is not that specific, and would only say the player would be shipped in "late October." Why the delay? Sony cryptically cited a "product software issue." – Charlie White
The real scoop on Sony's Blu-ray launch plans [ars technica]
Remote Buddy Expands Usability of Apple Remote June 24, 2006
READ MORE Digital Audio , Gadgets , Online , PC , Software
Bummed by the limited functionality of your remote that came bundled with your latest Apple computer? Yeah, us too. But iospirit has relieved our sorrows by releasing Remote Buddy.
Apple Lossless On the Way to iTunes? June 24, 2006
READ MORE Digital Audio , Gadgets , Portable Media , Software
Some of us here at Gizmodo are near-deaf from spending way too much time in musical environments exceeding 130dB, we're still happy to hear the rumor that Apple will soon distribute tracks compressed in its Apple Lossless compression format on the iTunes Music Store.
Audiophiles rejoice, because those rumors just might be true. In a private release of iTunes Producer 1.4, the application used by record companies to compress music for submission to the iTunes music store, the software is newly capable of encoding music using the Apple Lossless format. This is a really good thing, because heck, even with our addled ears, we don't much like the sound of Apple's Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format. – Charlie White
Apple Lossless format coming to iTMS? [Apple Insider]
music mp3 itunes Apple technology software
Samsungs Backpedals on Combo HD DVD/Blu-ray Player June 24, 2006
READ MORE Home Entertainment
Despite Samsung middle manager Kim Du-Hyon speaking out on Tuesday about how the company is considering a universal player, now Samsung appears to be backpedaling away from embracing the idea of a high-definition disk player that will handle both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. In a terse, two-sentence statement to the press, Samsung beat a hasty, yet subtle retreat:
"Samsung Electronics is fully committed to the Blu-ray format and currently only has plans to introduce a Blu-ray player to the market. Samsung is looking forward to a very successful launch of the BD-P1000 which will be available on retail shelves, June 25th for a $999 MAP price in the United States."Notice the word "only" in there, suggesting that Samsung might be a bit jittery about placing its flag over on the HD DVD side, even if it was just evidenced by an offhand remark uttered by a middle manager.
Will there still be universal players? There's still LG which publicly announced it would manufacture a player that goes both ways, and those in the know are saying other companies are sniffing around the possibility, too. We're thinking it's inevitable.
Samsung's Interesting Statement about Blu-ray to the Media [I4U News]
The Tamagochi is 10 Years Old June 24, 2006
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Go ahead and rummage through your junk drawer... we'll wait. Have you got little BumbyBits, your Tamagochi from back in the day? Good! No try to turn him on. No batteries? Go buy some, because you have to congratulate him. His genetic line is 10 years old and to celebrate, Bandai has created a limited series of swanky keychain pets in a special box.
There are only 3,000 of these fellows available for about $63. It's Japan-only right now, and will probably stay that way as fanboys snap up 50 of them at a clip and turn them into a long string of strange, hard love beads.
Tamagotchi in "tamatenbako" - 10 years anniversary special limited edition[Killian-Nakamura]
Anti-Migraine Machine: Just a Little Push and You’ll Be Smiling June 24, 2006
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Holy wow. You may not know this, but your faithful narrator, me, has migraines that would put a cow under. Every few weeks I get a real scorcher and have to lie down and wait for the pain fairy to cough me back out of her horrible, pressure fitted bowels. That said, there is some sort of device, called the TMS, which "interrupts the aura phase" of the migraine. The aura phase is the period where you kind of feel something coming on and some folks actually see stuff that ain't there like sparks, ninjas, and lightning.
"In our study sample, 69 percent of the TMS-related headaches reported to have either no or mild pain at the two-hour post-treatment point compared to 48 percent of the placebo group. In addition, 42 percent of the TMS-treated patients graded their headache response, without symptoms, as very good or excellent compared to 26 percent for the placebo group. These are very encouraging results."
Feel free to send this thing over to me, lads. I'll try her out. More as we find it.
Device effective in zapping the pain out of migraines [EurekAlerts]
Product Page [Neuralieve]
Acer CP-8660 June 24, 2006
READ MORE Digital cameras
Acer introduced its 8.28-megapixel CP-8660, not the most beautiful digital camera in the world, but it does have a rather large 2.8-inch LCD viewfinder. It also has a nice long 6x optical zoom that's coupled with its anti-shake technology to give you some steady telephoto action. In fact, its lens gives you the 35mm equivalent of 37 to 222mm. That's a long honking lens.
But then you'll pay for that in a bit of extra weight, because the thing weighs 6.3 ounces. Even so, it's fairly small at just under 4 inches wide. It also lets you record a voice memo so you can attach audio captions to images. No word on when it will be available or at what price.
Product page [Acer]
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