Hasta La Gadget!

There’s also hope and change in the land of the brick: Behold the Presidential inauguration of Barack Obama in Lego bricks, complete with every single character that will be at the Capitol, including Lego Oprah.

They have every single character there, from his wife Michelle and his daughters Malia Ann and Sasha—the youngest resident of the White House since JFK Jr—to Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, VP Dick Cheney and wife Lynn, George Bush Sr. and Barbara Bush. as well as Dr. Rick Warren.

The fun thing is that every single one of them can actually be recognized (specially Barbara Bush, that’s genius), according to Lego designers who did the brick caricatures of the main characters as well as Senator Dianne Feinstein, Aretha Franklin, John Williams and performers Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo-Ma, Gabriela Montero, Anthony McGill, the Unites States Marine Band, the San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus. Even Oprah Winfrey is in the crowd.

You can see the Lego Presidential inauguration at Legoland California until Memorial Day.

Better late than never, we suppose — joining Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Palm, RIM’s officially opened the BlackBerry Application Storefront to submissions, just a hair after the December launch we’d originally heard. It sounds like RIM’s going to be doing more an Apple-style closed market than an Android-style free-for-all: apps will be “considered” for inclusion in the Storefront, which is scheduled to go live in March at CTIA. The lockdown’s not a big shocker considering RIM’s corporate userbase, but we’re can’t say we’re huge fans of this new trend toward closed stores. In any event, it sounds like RIM’s seeing big potential for its fledging shop — co-CEO Jim Balsillie recently told a panel that he’s expecting “dozens of music apps” in the store, which he thinks will be able to capitalize on the (sigh) “birth of digital music 2.0.” We’re not sure exactly what Jim means — he mostly said things like “remarkable revenue enhancement strategy” and “radical and dramatic enhancing set of opportunities” — but we’re all for shaking up the music business, so bring it on. It can’t be any worse than SlotMusic.

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Read – BlackBerry Application Storefront submission page
Read – Balsillie wants to shake up music

Filed under: Cellphones

RIM opens the BlackBerry Application storefront, says it’s going to shake up “Music 2.0” originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll be straight with you — while the Quantum Concord C Lab Quantum Gravity “watch” does, in fact, look pretty slick, we’re mostly taken with its marketing materials, which claim that the “aerial bi-axial Tourbillion mechanism” and “structure that makes emptiness its core material” grants the timepiece the ability to “defy all laws, including that of logic, and most of all, of gravity.” Yes, logic is being defied here. We’re not sure what other laws owning a timepiece valued at “infinite preciousness” allows you to defy, but we’ve got a stack of parking tickets, a Windows 7-related indecent exposure and at least one semi-legal Mac cloning operation going on here, so we’ll see how many flying clocks make it out of Switzerland when this thing goes on sale in March.

[Via WatchLuxus]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Quantum Concord C Lab QuantumGravity watch “defies all laws,” common sense originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, we don’t really know what’s going on here, but a “Shining” phone that looks almost exactly like the original version of the Kogan Agora Android phone just popped up on Alibaba with a three-day delivery time and a 100-unit wholesale price of $240. Of course, the Agora was just delayed indefinitely, so this could just be nothing; contracting design and development out to faceless Chinese manufacturers like Kogan’s doing is pretty much a deal with the KIRF devil, and those are definitely renders on the site, not actual pictures. Still, we’re dying to see a flood of non-G1 Android handsets shake up the mobile market, and if getting stoked over sketchy Asian copies of semi-vaporware Australian phones is how we have to get our kicks, well, we’re looking for new friends with an extra 24 grand and a healthy sense of forgiveness.

[Thanks, Raymanism]

Filed under: Cellphones

“Shining” phone steals a little Agora magic originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Having trouble figuring out how a touchscreen Eee PC could fit into your life? No worries, ASUS just did all the heavy synaptic lifting for you with the release of a near 6-minute video showing its new Eee PC Touch UI. A UI teased at CES and built specifically for ASUS’ new touchcreen Eees. All in all it makes a pretty case for why you should pick up a new Eee PC T91 or T101H convertible tablet later this year. Let’s just hope the processor can cope.

Continue reading Video: Sexy Eee PC Touch UI demonstrated

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Video: Sexy Eee PC Touch UI demonstrated originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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