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Filed under: Announcements, Podcasts

Podcast fans,

I have some bummer news and some not-so-bummer news for you. I’ll cut to the chase (warning: it gets a little personal): after more than a hundred shows and almost three years of podcasting Peter and I have decided to put the show on hiatus. Yeah, I know, it’s seriously depressing to us too, but since the death of Pete’s dad we just haven’t been able to get the show back on track. So instead of dragging it out any further and keeping you all wondering, we figured it’s best to be realistic about things.

The no-so-bummer news is the Engadget HD podcast lives on, with Ben and his new co-host Steve running the show with our pal Trent producing. So yeah, it wouldn’t be infeasible for Pete or myself to guest over there every now and again. And hey, the Engadget Podcast is only on hiatus, there’s no reason it might not return later, or during events like CES.

To everyone who’s stuck by the show thus far, your loyalty and listenership means a LOT to us. It’s hard to express just how much we’ve appreciated the constant flow of support and input you guys have given us. Doing the podcast has always been one of the highlights of our week, and we’re looking forward to kickstarting the show again at some point down the road. Until then, you know where to find us!

Your pals,
Ryan and Pete

P.S. -It just didn’t seem right to post this without an audio note to the same effect!

LISTEN (Ṃ)
LISTEN (AAC)

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Ryan Block

I take my little 16GB Corsair Flash Voyager almost everywhere I go, yet even I’m not sure what situation life could present to me that would have me wishing for a waterproof USB storage device. Maybe I just lack imagination, but a coffee spill is about the most dangerous watery encounter I can foresee in the near future.

Korean company Gidis is launching their waterproof MDrive, designed by Young-Se Kim of INNO Design, next month (1GB and 2GB models). It’ll be priced at 39,000 and 59,000 KRW (about $41 and $62 US dollars), and there’s no word on a U.S. release. I’d buy it for the slim, red on black design, which I think is really cool, though I wish they had at least an 8GB version.

Via AVING.

Original post by Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women

Filed under: Portable Video

Apple has announced that it is to stop selling NBC’s TV shows on the iTunes Store, effective from the start of the new TV season this September (read: tomorrow). The New York Times was on the money when it said the reason for the cancellation revolved around NBC charging more for its shows: it turns out NBC wanted twice as much, with Apple saying it “would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99.” The press release from Apple almost sounds bitter, with the company stating that it decided to end the contract early, since NBC was happy enough with withdrawing “their shows in the middle of the television season.” Boo hiss NBC and Apple, don’t you see that the only people that get hurt in all this are the consumers?

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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

Last weekend the dark horde of nerddom descended on Seattle, entering the heart of the ‘Emerald City’ to gorge itself on the music, culture, and humor of gaming. The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) once again brought together fans of the influential webcomic for a festival that, without even trying, seems to be taking the place of old E3. Though they were expecting around 30,000 people, the word was that by early Sunday they’d already gone through some 40,000 badges. There were DSes everywhere, concerts at night, a packed exhibit hall, and benchmark comic strips created by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins adorned almost every wall. Despite all the people and the noise, somehow the event had a community feel to it that was hard to understand … and even harder to describe. I’ll try, though, along with impressions from games on the show floor and the incredible music of folks like Jonathan Coulton and the Minibosses. Read on, and All Hail Ball.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Displays, Features

The ultrathin Sharp LCD prototype we saw yesterday at the company’s press conference has made an appearance on the showroom floor (though out of our reach for fiddling with, provided it had any buttons), and boy is this thing… uh, thin. As you can see by the photos, the display practically disappears when you get around the side of it, and for those of you wondering about cabling, there’s nothing to see when you peek at the back, though we suspect that those tubes / bars holding the things up may have something to do with getting an image on these behemoths. Check the gallery for a full view of your television-watching future.

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

It’s been quite a while coming, but the ambitious CrowdSpirit project has finally moved from the hype-building stage to the beta testing stage. For those that missed it the first time around, the project aims to apply crowdsourcing to the development of gadgets and consumer electronics, with individuals able to submit ideas for products that then get voted on by the community at large. If a product makes it all the way through the process, the contributors to it will then earn “a share” of the product revenue. Judging from the current pace of things, however, that possibility seems to still be quite a ways off.

[Via MAKE:Blog]

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Features, Portable Audio

Let’s not beat around the bush here: the Archos 105’s OLED screen sucks. Sure it’s a 1.5-incher, meant only for the most rudimentary of song browsing activities, but we wouldn’t risk our precious eyesight spending another five minutes looking at the dim, pixelated thing. We’re not really crazy about the control layout either, but we admit the device is quite slimly proportioned — it’s just too bad about the OLED. The player will sell for 90 Euro player ($123 US), says the placard.

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Features

Sure, smile-detection might smell of gimmickry, but we like Sony’s new touchscreen T200 and T70 cameras all the same. Normally we’d say bigger is better for LCDs, but the 𔣨 looks like someone did a shoddy job of scaling the №′s screen up to size — same amount of pixels, now with more blur.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Paul Miller

mp4 | mov | hd-appletv | itunes | blip | youtube

This weekend, Action Girl and I show you how to make a Rubik’s Cube out of dice, magnets and epoxy. Interestingly enough, the first Rubik’s cube ever was made with magnets! We found inspiration in gfixler’s and burzvingion’s instructables.

The hardest part that we had with this was getting all the magnets in the right polarity!

Subscribe in iTunes and get the podcast and pdf downloaded automatically. - Link

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Original post by Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women

If you’re back-to-school or simply in the mood to make some new purchases you’ll enjoy this J.Crew leather laptop bag. With plenty of pockets to spare (3 interior snap pockets and back wall pocket), the bag features a removable leather strap with lobster closures, leather handle, antiqued brass-finish hardware, detachable exterior ID tag, and lovely printed cotton quilted lining. Your laptop will fit snugly inside, secured by interior elastic bands.

At $295, this bag is definitely an investment, but as you carry it down the path to work or to your classes, your inner professor will be sensed by the people passing by. By the way, when exactly are your office hours?

Price: $295 at JCrew.com.

Original post by Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women

Shuttle, the leading small-form-factor (SFF) PC manufacturer, recently launched a mini XPC home theater system, called SG33G5M, for media center applications. The device is currently available in the Korean market only. Based on Intel’s Bearlake ᯝ chipset and Graphics Media Accelerator 3100, the XPC is capable of supporting high-definition resolutions. In fact, its 3D performance easily outperforms any other competitive solution in the marketplace today, thanks to its compatibility with DirectX 9.

Other features include a built-in 7.1 HD audio chip with Dolby Digital Live! and DTS Connect certification, for rendering 3D games and action films. This Vista-ready SFF PC stores up to 4GB of DDR2-800 memory in dual-channel mode. It has an HDCP-compliant HDMI port, supporting outputs at 720p, 1080i, and 1080p resolutions. This also implies you can playback copy protected HD content via HDCP.

The SG33G5M also contains an internal Gigabit-LAN connector, an I.C.E. heatpipe cooling system, a 250-watt SilentX power supply, and an infrared remote control for Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate edition. An integrated VFD display on the front complements the device perfectly. In addition, it eliminates the need of wiring, as picture and sound are transferred digitally over one cable. The Shuttle XPC Barebone SG33G5M is priced at 421,000 KRW (around $450 U.S.).

Post by Rahul Prabhakar

Original post by Carol Mangis

An anonymous reader writes “SCO is asking the court to enter a final judgment on the Unix ownership issues so that it can seek an immediate appeal. The logic for this, according to Groklaw Editor Pamela Jones, is that SCO would rather appeal right away so it can try all its claims at IBM, should it successfully appeal the judge’s order. ‘Otherwise, SCO has to wait until Novell goes through trial to a verdict and then appeal, and while it is in the appeal process, IBM would go forward in its now much smaller version, based on the August 10th ruling … The trial starts, though, in less than a month and it will last less than a week, so none of this makes any sense if you look at a calendar. I think, therefore, it must be about FUD, so it sounds like SCO is on the move again.’ The text of the request is available online. “

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Today, Skip2PBX, an Italian-based company announced it is ready to launch its SIP-to-Skype gateway running on a PC running Linux. Mind you, this isn’t the first claim of a SIP-to-Skype breakthrough, however, they claim to be the only Skype to PBX Gateway to directly support a variety of telephony hardware including Digium, Eicon, or a USB box. Unlike Actiontec’s VoSKY Exchange Skype gateway products which maxes out at 8 ports where as the Skip2PBX claims up to 30 concurrent Skype PBX lines on a single serving PC. Impressive!

It features the ability to automatically finds a free line/port for the incoming or outgoing Skype call. Incoming Skype calls can ring to all lines simultaneously, even when calling the same Skype account number. Pretty sweet! With their Digium support in theory you can easily add Asterisk support for Asterisk-to-Skype calling.

“SIP functionality with Skip2PBX is here, and it’s here way ahead of schedule.” According to their press release, original estimates were promising the SIP versions of Skip2PBX by the “end of September”, while technical wizards at S2P’s Perugia headquarters confirmed early yesterday that the new update would be available in Beta by September 1st, followed with an official release before the end of September.

“We can’t deny that today Skype, acquired and owned by E-Bay, is currently the largest and most popular Internet Telephony service provider in the world today, and we have known from the beginning of our relationship with Skip2PBX that a direct SIP to Skype gateway was going to be a highly anticipated and very desireable feature for many of our clients worldwide.”  This and many other comments coming from the growing global circuit of Skip2PBX resellers and distributors.

According to Skip2PBX, &quotSkip2PBX Version 2.1 (with SIP support utilizing the G.711 codecs) will work in both the CLIENT and/or SERVER modes of SIP and this, once again, is another function which keeps Skip2PBX in a category completely by itself as an integrator of features which not only prove highly beneficial to today’s companies’ growing list of  VoIP demands, but also serve in maintaining Skip2PBX on very exclusive ground.&quot

“We here at Skip2PBX” all know and realize how much this feature (SIP Support!) has been a highly anticipated and requested feature from our support team, and we are absolutely thrilled and proud to be able to provide it in advance of our own target date.

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Original post by Ryan

Filed under: Features

The Sony booth screamed “budget cuts” after the Samsung and LG extravagance we had just witnessed — at its worst moments, we though we were looking at Best Buy shelves — but Sony isn′t really putting out a lot of new product at this year’s show, so it’s understandable. We′ve already seen the new S-series in person anyways, which is pretty much Sony’s highlight of the show, so we’ll let ‘em slide this year.

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Paul Miller