Hasta La Gadget!

Man, it’s amazing the difference a single letter makes. Take the Framee-L, for example — a stately, classically styled digital photo frame that would do practically any coffee table proud. Now have a gander at the almost frightening Framee-M (above). iriver has evidently coerced Disney to afford it the luxury of producing this here digiframe, which — sad to say — looks downright shoddy from here. The unit will be made available in both Mickey and Minnie flavors, with each housing 1GB of internal storage space, a 3.5-inch 320 x 240 resolution display, SDHC expansion slot, a built-in clock and a multimedia player for good measure. It’s taking Japan by storm as we speak for ¥9,999 ($111).

[Via DAPReview, thanks Michael]

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Displays

iriver’s Framee-M digiframe: only tolerable for Mickey enthusiasts originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Ever wonder how netbooks pack all that laptopy goodness into such small packages? Laptop Italia has your answer, tearing a Compaq Mini 700 (aka HP Mini 1000) into its individual components, supposedly for the sake of enabling you to repair the thing at home, but we think the real motivation is rather less instructional and more exhibitionistic. Regardless of your intentions, the site provides an extensive guide on how to take apart HP’s tiny laptop, starting by pulling the battery and ending with a picture of where the 3G modem would go if this particular model had one. Unlike some teardowns we’ve seen in the past, this clinical looking disassembly, if reversed, looks like it might actually put the thing back together again — if you’re into that sort of thing.

[Thanks, faber]

Filed under: Laptops

Compaq Mini 700 innards exposed by Italian fetishists originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Toto (the toilet maker) and Daiwa Housing are teaming up once more to offer a sequel to their infamous 2005 “Intelligence Toilet.” The new “II” is equipped with all of the original health monitoring features (urine sugar analysis, blood pressure check, BMI and body weight measurement), plus an additional function designed to appeal to women: urine temperature measurement and analysis.

According to the press release, this data can be used to determine one’s basal body temperature and hormone balance—information which can help women keep track of their menstruation cycles, in addition to increasing physical awareness with the aim of “smarter” dieting and skin care. Like the original, all of this information collected by the toilet is beamed through your home network to your PC where it can be monitored in the form of charts and graphs.

While an innovation like the Intelligence Toilet is quick to make headlines both in Japan and overseas, the question remains: how many people are actually shelling out the ¥350,000 ($3,500) plus (and upwards of ¥610,000 or $6,100) to have one of these systems installed in their homes? On that note, it was interesting to learn that Daiwa has reportedly sold 10,000 Intelligence Toilets since the April 2005 debut (Toto makes them, Daiwa sells them). Not exactly a revolutionary number, but not a mere pittance either. Their sales projection for the II is more modest: 4,800 in three years.

For a more in-depth look at the world of Toto toilets, see the recent PingMag interview with Mariko Shimasaki from Toto. For those of you in Tokyo, Toto also runs the excellent Gallery Ma, an architecture and design gallery (with a noteworthy book shop) in Nogizaka near Tokyo Midtown.

Unless you’re Bono*, you will only wear your sunglasses in bright, outdoor light, which is why these Solar Powered Sunglasses are such a great idea. That they are shaped like infinity itself is a mere nerd bonus from the designers of the "Self-Energy Converting Sunglasses", aka SIG.

They’re just a concept right now, but we’d suggest that someone (please, not Oakley) gets making these things soon. Running a cable to your head from your MP3 player is an everyday task, so the wires shouldn’t be too annoying. The specs should also have built-in earbuds to cut down on clutter, and a much longer cable to hook up phone or iPod — the one in the picture is ridiculously short.

Add in a couple of LCD displays and a waterproof keyboard and I’d be in heaven. I could blog from the beach, simultaneously turning my skin into bronzed, wrinkled leather as is the custom of all Brits living in Spain.

Product page [Yanko via BBG]

*If you are Bono, we have a request. Any chance of releasing a decent song ever agian? Your last good album came out 20 years ago.

See Also:

• Medusa: Crazy, Dreadlocked Leather Wig Hat Thing From Oakley …
• Shock! Oakley Makes Non-Hideous Sunglasses
• Review: Oakley Split Thumps Turn You Into Dork Incognito

pspan class=”mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”wind-up-remote.jpg” src=”http://uk.gizmodo.com/wind-up-remote.jpg” width=”328″ height=”450″ class=”mt-image-right” style=”float: right; margin: 0 0 20px 20px;” //span/p pAre you a fan of ‘wind-up’ devices? There’s undoubtedly a place for them, and we can see a genuine use for wind-up radios and wind-up torches, but a wind-up remote control? Now it looks like things are being taken a little too far./p pIt’s touted as an energy saving solution and while there is some credibility to this claim in that there will be a few less batteries in landfills, it’s difficult to see a large market. br / /pimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://feeds.uk.gizmodo.com/c/552/f/9581/s/2a53ffe/mf.gif’ border=’0’/div class=’mf-viral’table border=’0’trtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=Wind-Up Remote Saves Batteries, Environmentlink=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/12/29/windup_remote_saves_batteries.html” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif” border=”0″ //a/tdtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Wind-Up Remote Saves Batteries, Environmentlink=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/12/29/windup_remote_saves_batteries.html” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif” border=”0″ //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/27588655985/u/0/f/9581/c/552/s/44384254/a2.htm”img src=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/27588655985/u/0/f/9581/c/552/s/44384254/a2.img” border=”0″//a