Tech Gadgets Reviews

I know what you’re all thinking. Here it’s nearly April, and Mother’s day is coming up, and where, exactly, does one go to buy radioactive isotopes? Maybe a glow-in-the-dark Tritium keychain for the kids? Or bit of certified genuine Trinitite–that would be glass that was created from the desert sand by the historic Trinity nuclear test explosion in 1945.The answer is United Nuclear, a website that sells the nuclear tidbits listed above, as well as a variety of other scientific curiosities like aerogel, magnetic ferro-fluid, levitation kits and samples of the kinds of chemicals that they don’t put into chemistry sets anymore.

If you have a passing familiarity with chemistry, and for example, are familiar with what you can do when you mix up aluminum dust with powdered iron oxide and light it, your reaction may range from “hey, cool!” to “oh my gosh!”

United Nuclear can also set you up with a neodymium magnet the size of can of peaches if you want. These things are STRONG–at first the warnings about having to plan your route through rooms with metal objects and computers and losing fingers are dire enough to bring smiles to kind of people who enjoy dangerous things, until you get the part where United Nuclear tells you about a small child who lost a hand when his father left two of them unattended.

As you look through the various “read this warning or die” labels on the site, you might be curious about who is selling this stuff. The owner of United Nuclear is Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked for the government at Sector S-4, which is of course, where the alien spaceships are being reverse-engineered. The lack of any evidence for his claims to have received degrees from MIT and Caltech is due to the government’s erasure of his identity.

Of course it is. In addition to his United Nuclear site has his own website at Boblazar.com, where he provides “recreated” details about his time studying the alien spacecraft.

UFOs aside, Bob Lazar’s other hobby these days is more closely aligned with items found in his current inventory–the annual Desert Blast that he holds out in the desert where like-minded individuals go off into the sands of New Mexico and blow stuff up. And by “like-minded individuals,” I mean any human male over the age of 36 months.

I don’t know about you, but geek-gift registry is going to be on United Nuclear from now on. After all, there’s only so many USB Rocket launchers one man can have.

The official specs for the LG Vu are in and it seems the recent speculation about two versions was correct. The Vu will be available as the CU920 with TV support and the CU915 without TV support. Both models will, of course, feature the large 3-inch WQVGA 262K color touchscreen.

Other features that are shared between both models is 3G support, a 2-megapixel camera and HTML web browser. The Vu has just 120MB of internal memory, but also has a microSD slot with support for up to 4GB of additional storage. The Vu measures in at 4.25 x 2.16 x 0.51-inches and weighs just 3.16-ounces. The included 1000mAh battery is stated to give up to 3-hours of talk time.

Although it has not been officially confirmed, an announcement is expected to come very shortly, perhaps during CTIA which runs April 1-3, 2008.

Via [IntoMobile]

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Motorola has been working on a 5 megapixel camera phone in collaboration with Kodak for what seems like years. Finally, the partnership might be about to bear fruit with the launch of the new Motorola Zine ZN5 camera phone at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas tomorrow.

The Zine will be the first phone released since Motorola split itself in two in an attempt to stop the company’s mobile phone division slipping even further into the red. This won’t make the Zine any good, though, as it still comes from a company whose last innovation was to paint the RAZR pink and sell it as a new phone!

More pics and derision after the jump.

Indeed, you get a sense of how bad the new Zine will be when you read that it looks like the ROKR E8 (see the above pic - it’s the phone on the left), which didn’t exactly set the world on fire, and despite having a 5 megapixel camera (which will therefore lead to some pretty huge files), will only come with EDGE connectivity. Yup, that’s right - not even 3G let alone HSDPA, just super-slow EDGE, which gives data transfer speeds not all that dissimilar to ye olde dial-up!

So, prepare for a lot of Motorola hype tomorrow when CTIA Vegas opens its doors, but expect to be sorely disappointed. Motorola’s mobile handset division is in deep trouble at the moment because it failed to compete in terms of style, features, marketing and any kind of understanding of what the consumer actually wants; don’t expect all that to change just because the company has spun off its mobile handset division.

[Source: UnwiredView]

More and more geeks are going to a dual monitor setup to not only provide for me monitor space (real estate), but also because it allows for placing tools and uilties on one screen, while the second screen can be used as an actual interface for editing, drawing and other creative endeavors. Sadly, though, because these monitors are separate entitles, one has to deal with the encasement on both interfering with the unbroken image that can move across both screens. That is, until now. If it gets picked up by a manufacturer, this Double-Sided Transforming LCD Display will enable for an unbroken wide screen image, that can also double as a second separate screen. Wow.

At this time, the monitor is only conceptual and as such, a few hurdles remain in the way, chiefly, whether a bezel-less retractable monitor can be manufactured for an affordable price or if it will be the domain of business applications like the tri-screen Zenview Command Center Elite, which uses a a “special lens” that erases the bezel between images. And then there’s the programming involved which would allow for a second channel to be displayed when the monitor is in the back to back position and then switch to the master view when placed in the dual, wide screen mode.

Still, this is where cool gadgets begin, with an idea. If it it can be pulled off, it could be a breakthrough for those who want an affordable, dual screen option.

Only time will tell.

Hat Tip: Gear Fuse

The latest version of the iphone 2.0 beta software has been released (this time it’s actually called 2.0, not 1.2) and there are already some interesting rumors. The Boy Genius reports that the Safari Browser now has YouTube support built in, so instead of being bumped off to the iPhone’s YouTube player, you can stay in the page.

The Boy Genius speculates that this might signify the coming of Flash to the iPhone. We say “not likely”. While Steve Job’s flip-flops are well known (He said “Who wants to watch movies on a screen that small?” shortly before the ipod Video was launched), his anti-Flash statement rings true. After all, Flash is terrible on the web. It’s slow to load and eats browser resources; two things you don’t want on a phone.

New iPhone 2.0 firmware has YouTube plugin for Safari! [Boy Genius Report]

Posted Mar 31st 2008 1:20AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio, Robots

Sony just turned out the Rolly music player in black. A surprise blown by the FCC just last week. At least we can wonder at the colorful end-caps at a cost of ¥1,500 (about $15) per. Of course, if you scoffed at the original Rolly, then the April 19th, Japanese release of the new ¥40,000 (about $400) dancing-speaker bot won’t likely tug at your pawnshopped heartstrings either.

[Via Impress]

This portrait of Steve Jobs is made up entirely of Apple products, up to and including the macbook air.

Sure, Charis Tsevis’ portrait (a commission for Fortune Magazine) isn’t the most original of approaches, but the combination of the prosaic mosaic and the Soviet propaganda-style photograph seems somehow appropriate for the notorious control-freak Jobs. Bow down before your master. NOW.

Huge, full sized image [Flickr via Geekologie]

If you were an early Windows Vista adopter, you might have had a rough time with Microsoft’s newest operating system last year. Crashes? System hangs? BSODs? Shockingly, Microsoft isn’t at fault for your less than perfect experience. Ars Technica has reported that a 158-page bundle of email correspondence (PDF) regarding the ongoing “Vista Capable” lawsuit has been made public. The data reveals that NVIDIA accounted for 28.8% of Windows Vista crashes last year. In total, 1,663,748 system crashes had been reported to Microsoft in 2007 and NVIDIA was the problem in 479,000 of those cases. In comparison, Microsoft was responsible for 19.9%, ATI took 9.3%, and Intel with 8.8%.

Microsoft was quick to release a statement:

“Microsoft takes exhaustive steps in testing hardware compatibility internally, as well as by working directly with our partners, to address compatibility long before customers experience an issue,” the software maker said. “However, testing can only be conducted under so many different circumstances, particularly with such an exceptionally complex code that graphic drivers have. Understanding this, Microsoft has set up a system to help quickly identify the problems, work to fix them and, if warranted, potentially push them through to customers via Windows Update. NVIDIA has taken similar steps, and since launching Windows Vista, Microsoft has seen great progress in addressing potential issues by NVIDIA.”

I find it quite in good faith for Microsoft to retain itself from blasting NVIDIA for possibly being the root of Vista’s public impression of being unstable. But who is really to blame here? NVIDIA or Microsoft? I place fault equally between the two companies: NVIDIA for releasing drivers that lacked proper testing and Microsoft for their failure to provide adequate support to its third party vendors. While the data is an eye opener, it is important to note a few points:

1. Companies are pretty much guaranteed to suffer issues whenever they launch a new product, particularly software. NVIDIA is no exception and their eager venture to make drivers for Microsoft’s newest operating system was impossible to be bug free early on.
2. Before the ATI fanboys rave in, NVIDIA owns a larger portion of the graphics card market than ATI. So, it shouldn’t come to a surprise that NVIDIA has caused the most problems.
3. The information released is a year old. NVIDIA, as well as the other vendors, have since made significant improvements to their drivers. In fact, NVIDIA has responded to the news by creating a website that allow users to easily report any driver issues they come across.

The information came into light after a federal judge gave the green light for a class action suit to continue against Microsoft, which was filed in April 2007. The lawsuit argued that the software giant misled consumers with its “Windows Vista Capable” promotion program. In 2006, the program placed “Vista Capable” stickers along with a “Premium Ready” phrase on various retail computers that gave the impression to consumers that the machines were capable of running Vista, including the top-of-the-line version of the OS. However, that proved not to be the case, as consumers began complaining that their Vista-capable machines could not run more than Vista Basic—a clear misuse of the company’s use of the “Premium Ready” notation. The early emails that were submitted as evidence revealed that Microsoft caved in to Intel by lowering Vista’s graphics requirements, making it easier for computers integrated with Intel’s weak graphics chip to get the Vista Capable sticker.

Read [Ars Technica]

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Microlighting

You can have this for ?85.00

The long rumored Windows XP-based Eee PC will soon be hitting the market here in the US. With all the recent commotion about the Eee PC 900, the XP rumors had seemed to die down just a bit. The updated Eee PC will keep the same specs as the current Linux-based model, except for the OS, which will be Windows XP Home.

Perhaps the best news; the Eee PC will keep the same $399 price tag and we will not have too long to grab one for yourself, they will be available at Best Buy locations beginning April 9, 2008.

According to the folks over at Laptop, Asus is planning on also bundling a 4GB SD card in with the notebook to offer some additional storage space. With the small internal 4GB SSD, after Windows XP is installed and with just a few other programs they were left with just 153MB of free space.

Via [Laptop]

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