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Stop staring at the plastic wrapped photos from our pre-CES tour and have a look at Samsung’s totally uncovered 1.5-inch thick Blu-ray player. The BDP4600 is sure to kick off an all new battle of “thin for thin’s sake” amongst CE manufacturers, but honestly, given the emphasis on design or complete lack thereof on most Blu-ray hardware so far, this can′t come a moment too soon. What does it do? Your guess is as good as ours, until Samsung decides to let loose with the specifications.

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Samsung’s skinny Blu-ray player uncovered originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Richard Lawler

It’s actually pretty amazing what you can do with four extra USB ports. For instance, you can chill a Coke Zero for you and three buds. You can power four sets of warming gloves. You can cover the family in USB-heated blankets. Whatever you choose to do, you′ll likely have a much easier time hooking things up if using the 4-port USB Revolving Hub. Two of the sockets remain flat, but two can rotate up to 90-degrees each to provide ultimate plug-n-play flexibility. Claims yours in black or white for $12.

[Via Coolest-Gadgets]

Filed under: Peripherals

4-port USB Revolving Hub is simply useful originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Made perhaps either to humor those who are slightly paranoid or to truly address the public’s issues regarding data security (or both), Lenovo introduced the new ThinkPad USB Portable Secure Hard Drive. Apparently called the Mobile “Vault” as well, the external hard drive comes with a keypad with the sole purpose of guarding your drive with a passcode. Up to ten users and one administrator can share a single 160GB or 320GB drive, each one getting a unique user ID.

Other than the physical keyboard, the drive also uses 128-bit advanced encryption as a security standard. The hard drive is as small as a 3×5 index card, is perfectly pocketable, and has built-in USB cable. Both the 160GB and the 320GB versions of the Lenovo ThinkPad USB Portable Secure Hard Drive will be available this mid-November for $179 and $219 respectively.

Original post by Mariella Moon

Hewlett-Packard wants to employ a new tactic to market netbook computers in the U.S., offering them at a steep discount to customers who sign-up for wireless service contracts.

This bundling of cellular service with PCs isn’t done in the U.S., but in Asia and Europe wireless carriers routinely knock hundreds of dollars off the price of a computer if a customer also buys a long-term service contract.

Maybe AT&T and Verizon Wireless are interested?

For example, Taiwanese carrier Far EasTone Communications sells the EEE PC from Asustek Computer for $29 with a two-year contract, rather than the usual price of $429.

Hewlett-Packard says the surging interest in netbooks — stripped-down computers that offer basic applications and Web browsing — is driving the move. With the economy fading and lots of high-speed cellphone networks available, the world’s largest computer seller by revenue sees bundling as a way to move more of its computers into customers’ homes.

Yesterday, H-P introduced three new netbooks, including a $399 HP Mini 1000 and a $699 HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition, with flourishes like a “red with peony flower”-colored case.

More at the Wall Street Journal.

Tags: asustek, at&ampt, eee, far eastone communications, hewlett-packard, hp mini 1000, netbook, verizon wireless

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Just can’t get enough BlackBerry Storm minutiae? Well, Verizon’s popped out a few reels of B-roll that should just about do it. Check them all out after the break, with enough screen clicking, device rotating and battery installing to crack even the most hardened of RIM fanboys.

Continue reading BlackBerry Storm in action, ad nauseam

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Blusens hit the scene in a big way last October, but for whatever reason, we haven’t heard from ‘em since… until now, that is. The Blu:Brain Home Entertainment Device features a somewhat misleading name, as there’s (regrettably) no built-in Blu-ray drive to speak of. What it does have, however, is a remarkably sexy shell, twin digital TV tuners (DVB-T), a removable internal hard drive, Ethernet / WiFi connectivity and a USB port. Essentially, this here box can serve up all sorts of multimedia (high-def content included) via HDMI, though word on the street says it won’t even be available to order until 2009.

[Via Gizmos]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

Now that pico projectors are actually headed to end users, we’re seeing a number of companies hop in the fast lane to production. Take Microvision for instance — these guys were taking their sweet time by introducing the PicoP beamer back at CES, and now we’re looking at a freshly revamped version that has already begun shipping to OEMs for “evaluation and end-user testing.” Reportedly, the device shown at CEATEC featured a “thinner, smaller and brighter PicoP engine and several image quality enhancements” over the unit displayed at CES, and it officially boasted a WVGA resolution that could be blown up to 100-inches in size. Unfortunately, we′re still waiting to hear how long it’ll be before this one slips into consumers’ hands, but we′ve a feeling it’ll be sooner rather than later.

[Via AboutProjectors]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

It’s one thing to hear 3.46- x 4.12- x 1.46-inches. It’s another thing to see how giant someone’s hand looks beside Dell’s absolutely minuscule M109S pocket projector. Based on a hands-on session with a near-final prototype of the pico-PJ, the cats over at Popular Mechanics were mighty impressed with what they saw. They noted that “colors were a little more washed-out than a top-end home theater projector,” but given the size and the manageable $499 price tag, it still managed to wow. Peep the in-action video in the read link.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays

We’ve been waiting ever patiently for this to get official, and at long last, that Project Projector we saw leaked in July has been revealed. Formally christened the M109S, this 0.8-pound beamer arrives with a native 858 x 600 resolution, a projection distance of up to 94.5-inches and a mercury-free LED light source that lasts up to four years. Moreover, it packs the ability to suck power from a Latitude or Vostro AC adapter if you′re caught in a pinch, and yes, it’s available today for $499 in the United States. As for the rest of the world, you wait.

[Via AboutProjectors]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

Sony Ericsson is taking the viral route on marketing with its forthcoming Xperia X1, launching a new “alternative reality thriller″ centered around a mysterious character named Johnny X. There’s not much meat in the video the company is desperately trying to sneak into your daily YouTube diet, but at least we get to see action-packed chases, Memento-stealing plot points of the highest order, and one weird, seemingly backmasked utterance of “Johneeeeeeeeeee… X!” Hit the read link for the full clip, and check out another video after the break which helps to unravel the mystery.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Continue reading Sony Ericsson goes viral with Xperia X1 marketing

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

This week’s Made in Japan:
Mobile Camera Strap Lenses, Fukuda-Inspired ASCII Art, Recotana’s USB MIDI Controller, The “Full Color″ Print Gocco, 8-Line LED Kanji News Reader, Music With Crispbread and Credit Cards, Papercraft Made Easy with Fibercraft Paper, Controlling a Nokia 5110 LCD w/ the MAKE Controller, and a Falling Dot Clock w/ the Tera Clock Library.

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Original post by Mike Dixon

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

A heaping handful of fresh alleged screen shots of S60 Touch’s user interface are floating around, apparently yoinked off the platform’s PC-based theme editor — not as cool as if they′d been lifted from a Tube, granted, but still good enough to give us some clutch insight into where Nokia’s taking this thing. As revolutionary as the move to touch control might be for S60 as a platform, the UI looks shockingly evolutionary so far in fact, to the untrained eye, there are portions that are virtually indistinguishable from S60 revs of yore. That’s good news (we suppose) for S60 diehards who aren’t interested in learning a new paradigm — and we′re all for the VGA support here — but it’s bad news for anyone who was planning on having their noodles positively baked by Espoo’s engineering manpower and massive R&D budget. Let’s all just hold off on the negativity until Nokia gives us something official to ogle for the time being, though, our boring UI-dar is definitely on high alert.

[Via Symbian Freak, thanks Misha]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Gaming

If for some reason you’ve been so far outside of the natural world that you were unaware of Nintendo’s impending Wii Fit firestorm, this should get you back in the swing of things. Today the big N has made the forthcoming release of the exercise / gaming sensation officially official in the States. The device is available exclusively at the Nintendo World store in New York City starting today, but will hit other shelves on May 21st, will run you a thrifty $89.99, and launches with software containing more than 40 activities. Of course, you’ll never get to experience any of those activities, as there’s already a run on stock, and if you haven’t pre-ordered then you’re pretty much left to the whim of eBay sellers and their inflated prices. Thanks Nintendo!

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We′ve already seen some wind turbines designed to float offshore, but Canadian startup Magenn Power has some ideas of its own for getting wind power off the ground and, judging by its latest tests, it seems to be making some considerable progress. Its solution, dubbed the Magenn Air Rotor System (or MARS), is designed to float between 600 and 1,000 feet above the ground, and spin on the horizontal axis to generate electricity, giving it a power capacity of anywhere from 10 kilowatts to several megawatts depending on the configuration. While they’ve apparently yet to extract any juice from it, the company has at least recently gotten a prototype off the ground at a massive airship testing facility in North Carolina, and it has apparently now set its sights on an outdoor test, although there’s no word as to when that might go down. What’s more, as Greentech Media reports, while the company apparently plans to first market a 100 kilowatt version for industrial use, it also hopes to eventually enter the consumer market with smaller models that people “can take camping or use at their cottage,” although it admits that prospect has been put on the backburner for now.

[Via Protein]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Digital Cameras

It’s a little jargon heavy, but Dyxum forum moderator Shao Z. has documented the process of modding up some 60’s era f/1.2 Minolta lenses and setting them to work with his Sony A700 DSLR. Obviously the Sony Alpha series comes from a Minolta heritage, but it took adding a ROM chip and machining some mounts to get the lenses to work with the A700. The plus side is that the process keeps infinity focus and focus confirmation intact (the lens itself is manual focus), as well as Sony’s in-camera Super Steady Shot. The lenses work with all Sony DSLRs, as well as the Minolta 5D and 7D film cameras, and he’s selling one on eBay if the whole modding experience isn’t your thing.

 

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Original post by Paul Miller