Tech Gadgets Reviews

Posted Mar 1st 2008 2:23PM by Chris Ziegler
Filed under: cellphones, Handhelds

We’ve caught wind from a number of employees — or ex-employees, as the case may be — that i-mate’s US division in Redmond, Washington has all but disintegrated after a Friday bloodbath that saw the entire engineering, QA, and tech writing departments laid off, among others. Several honchos who weren’t cut left anyway, perhaps unwilling to work in a ghost town or as a show of solidarity to their fallen brethren; notably, the Chief Software Officer and VP of Sales and Marketing are both gone, leaving a sales director to be promoted to the lofty title of GM of what seems to be all US operations. Apparently, the Dubai-based firm is in the hurt locker after its inability to get the Ultimate line (also known as “the basket with all of i-mate’s eggs in it”) fully deployed to retail channels in the time frame it had hoped, and meeting massive resistance from US carriers to carry the devices, it’s been left with no option but to leave behind just enough employees to set up and maintain a web-based portal for purchasing unlocked devices in the States. To those who’ve been handed your walking papers, we wish you the best of luck.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

While Netflix has already announced they will be stopping the rentals of HD DVD titles, they have also announced some good news, but also hinted at some possible bad news as well.

With hd dvd now leaving, Netflix is confident enough to announce they will soon be offering four times as many titles on Blu-ray. This will bring the total of available Blu-ray titles from 400 to around 1,500.

Then in the little hint of posible bad news,

“It seems apparent that content will cost us more,” McCarthy said. “Whether we raise prices will be entirely a function of churn, subscriber acquisition costs and gross margins.”

Hopefully any increase in price will be done in a fair way, possibly splitting into more plans with a distinction between standard DVD and Blu-ray DVD’s. Personally I would rather not see an increase in price and would be more than happy to have a standard DVD only plan. While the price increase has not been made official yet, it does seem inevitable, Blockbuster has already raised their monthly fees due to the higher costs associated with Blu-ray.

Via [SlashGear]

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The Top Gun MicroFighter makes for an interesting gift for kids, and even I myself would not mind finding one of these underneath the Christmas tree this year.

Suitable for advanced level RC Pilots due to its advanced digital throttle and directional control, the Top Gun MicroFighter is capable of performing extreme loops and real-fighter style aerobatics. With the massive levels of thrust offered by it’s twin engine design, advanced take-offs and landings can be achieved. The Micro Fighter has a dual channel digital proportion control allowing up/down, left/right and forward speed control. Powered by a Lithium-Polymer battery, flights of 10+ minutes can be achieved on a single 30 minute charge from the controller.

The Top Gun MicroFighter retails for £29.99.

The TandemZ-1 Micro Chopper is not meant for novices as getting the hang of it comes with a rather steep learning curve to it.

For starters the Tandem utilises 3 channels (for up, down, forward and backward movement) and a dual trim system (for pitch and yaw), so novice pilots need not apply. It also boasts a sophisticated gyroscopic mechanism plus unique tilting rotors for additional control. Piloting this baby makes patting your head and rubbing your tummy whilst playing the xylophone with your feet seem about as difficult as pulling down your pants. And that’s what makes it so addictive.

The Tandem might come with a pair of powerful rotors, but they ought to be able to fly for approximately 10 minutes from a normal charge of up to 25 minutes. Sounds like diminishing returns if you ask me. This rescue helicopter retails for £39.95 and comes in red, blue or orange colors.

Posted Mar 1st 2008 1:04PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Transportation

There’s a decent chance your average hybrid owner wouldn’t know the difference between a lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride battery if their life depended on it, but we know you — dear reader — are not one of those “average” joes / janes. That being the case, you may be interested to know that the 2009-bound S400 BlueHybrid is in prime position to be the world’s first production Li-ion hybrid, which will offer up “compact dimensions and far superior performance” compared to existing rivals. M-B goes on to trumpet the technology’s “high ampere-hour efficiency, long service life, and great reliability, even at very low temperatures.” No word on just how astronomically high this thing will be priced at, but you can expect just shy of 30 miles-per-gallon in mixed driving conditions, for what it’s worth.

Trivial Pursuit DVD Let Loose
there are 1,000 amazing questions, challenges, facts and more, as well as film clips, daredevil stunts and hilarious spoofs, not to mention a whole new set of question categories with titles including ‘Gross’ and ‘Adrenalin’.

See price

Posted Mar 1st 2008 9:49AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Transportation

Tesla VP of Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Service, Darryl Siry, set the record straight on the whole airbag wavier thing: in case it wasn’t already clear, the Roadster does indeed have driver and passenger airbags. The waiver was regarding the fact that currently “front passenger airbag does not vary its deployment based on the weight of the passenger,” and thus needed the waiver not unlike other boutique automakers (he cites the Ferrari F430 as an example). Of course, this misunderstandings and misinformation might have been mitigated if Telsa just addressed the issue at the time (instead of waiting a month after the fact); we can only hope their non-metaphoric airbags don’t take as long to deploy.

USB Desktop Missile Launcher

The USB missile launcher is the perfect defence system operated from your computer. Plug it in, take aim with the mouse, fire.

Posted Feb 29th 2008 9:54PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Laptops, Storage

We know, we’re getting tired of Apple Blu-ray rumors as well — they’re right up there with refreshed Cinema Displays in terms of rumor persistence — but until Steve and the gang actually shove a drive into a machine we’re stuck with them. The latest says that Apple is actively pressing Sony for slot-loading BD-R drives but quality control issues are gumming up the plan. Reportedly, this latest ho-hum MacBook Pro refresh was to feature BD-R drives, but all Sony could muster up were Blu-ray / DVD±RW drives, which Apple refused. That seems a little odd, frankly — now that the format war is over and the competition’s already shipping mid-range laptops with slot-load BD-R drives, you’d think Apple would want to cash in that Blu-ray Disc Association membership card with whoever can supply the drives. As always, we’ll see when we see — it’s gotta happen sometime, right?

[Image courtesy of dadako.com]

Monster Cable iSoniTalk Microphone Headphone Adapter For iphone Microphone/headphone adapter

Get better sound and clearer phone calls with the Monster iSoniTalk; simply plug your own headphones into the iSoniTalk and clip the microphone on. Now you can enjoy superior music fidelity with your own high quality headphones, and youre ready to take hands-free calls.

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