Hasta La Gadget!

Designers have gone beyond simply creating eco-items that won’t harm our environment. They have begun to express their ecological & social protests through their products. Their creations are scornful reactions to the destructive environmental acts of the past and present that have affected countless members of society. Specifically, design company Vipp and supermodel Helena Christensen (both Danish) have expressed their social-environmental concerns by taking design to an incredibly praiseworthy place. Trashcans created by lead designers were auctioned off to raise money for the children affected by the Chernobyl disaster (CCPI-Chernobyl Children’s Project International), and for the impoverished individuals of New York City (Foodbank) at the opening of the Vipp showroom in New York. Hopefully designers worldwide will become influenced by these actions. Many have already and many more will also start using their talents to help the less fortunate and change the world.

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TrendsSpotting.com is a trends agency focused on developing exciting tools for Trend Spotting. We follow current trends and are constantly looking for new ones. We specialize in trends research and the social media. Dr. Taly Weiss, TrendsSpotting CEO, is a Social Psychologist, with extensive experience in branding strategy and marketing research. Feel free to explore our trend spotting tools on www.trendoScope.com.

Audio baby monitors, for anyone who has ever used them, are both a great invention and a curse at the same time because you leap up at every little sound. These days, audio monitors are old hat and video monitors are all the rage.

This is the Y-Cam Knight Online Baby Monitor which is a video camera that includes Wi-Fi so that it can connect to your wireless router, allowing concerned parents to keep tabs on their little smoochikins from any PC or laptop in the house. You can even check in on the little one with your iPhone.

We’ve decided to end the Engadget Black Friday Giveaways with a blast from the past. Remember this guy? It seems like only a week ago that Apple was being accused of ripping off this LG and Prada collaboration with the iPhone. Ah… memories. Well, you can at least still impress some folks down at the local discotheque with this one — just make sure no one accidentally pours a vodka and Red Bull on it. Here’s how we do it.

We’ll put up a gadget on the site, and you can only enter it until the next gadget lands (usually within a couple of hours). If you miss your shot, sorry, we’re moving on to the next gadget. Good luck! Oh, and don’t forget the rules. (Yeah, there are always rules.)

• Leave a comment below. That’s it! Who loves you, baby.
• You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.) You can enter different giveaways in today’s Black Friday giveaways, but you can only enter this one once.
• If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
  
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers or US contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winners will be chosen randomly.
• Entries can be submitted until the next contest goes up. After that we’re all done. Good luck!
• Full rules can be found here.

Last round’s winner: Apitt! (Remember, winners are selected at random.)
This contest has closed, the winner is mj! (Remember, winners are selected at random.)

Filed under: Cellphones

Black Friday Giveaways (part 10): the LG Prada phone originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Interestingly enough, a lot of the gripes you readers had with the original Rock Band were addressed by Activision in the rivaling Guitar Hero: World Tour (cymbals, anyone?), but we’re pretty sure the picky ones out there still have something to complain about. And seriously, when dropping upwards of $180 to $190 for the full-on band kit, you absolutely have a right to nitpick. Now that you’ve hopefully rocked through a few set lists, how are you enjoying things? Are the revamped / new instruments to your liking? Are the sensors accurate enough? Do you wish there was a freestyle mode in order to give real drummers free reign over what beats they play? Is your equipment holding up under the intense pressure of rockin’ it all night long? Grab a mic and spit your feelings (in rhyme or prose, whatever) below.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

How would you change Guitar Hero: World Tour? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We caught sight of Psyclone’s WildCharger-based TouchCharge kit for the Xbox 360 a few weeks ago but, in case you missed it, the company is also offering similar kits for the PlayStation 3 and Wii. At $49.99 the PS3 version is actually the cheapest of the lot, due to the fact that it’s able to use the controller’s own rechargeable battery, while the $59.99 Wii version and $69.99 Xbox 360 version each include some rechargeable batteries of their own courtesy of Psyclone. The charging pads themselves are, of course, interchangeable, and you can even charge more than one device on a single pad, although finding the necessary controller adapters separately seems to be another matter.

[Via The Gadgets Weblog]

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

PS3, Wii users get Psyclone TouchCharge pads, too originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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