Hasta La Gadget!

These neat 7" USB monitors from Mimo look to be both cheap enough and handsome enough to be worthy of a place on my desk.

There are two models, both with the same 800×480 pixel resolution — the $200 740 which has a touchscreen, a webcam, a mic and audio in/out connections and the 710, cheaper at $130 but lacking all those extra features. Both can swivel into portrait or lanscape mode (good luck using portrait format with a Mac, though — OS X does some fancy pixel shading to make on-screen text look great but it fails when you flip things 90º).

So, why would you want a little 7" screen instead of a big extra monitor? Because you can have both. The Minos are hooked up via USB so you don’t lose a monitor port. They’re also ideal for all the crufty little notification windows you have on your standard desktop. Third, the $200 model has a touch screen and is therefore great as an application launcher.

I’m pretty tempted, although lord knows I don’t need any more junk on my tiny desk, cluttered as it is with three hard drives, an iPod dock, Wacom tablet, 20" monitor and sundry other detritus, in addition to my MacBook.

One more thing: See that monitor in the middle of the picture up there? That’s yet another mini-USB monitor, this time from D-Link. Same size, same resolution and uncannily similar. From the same factory, perhaps? And finally, yes, the headline was ripped directly from a piece of spam I received today.

Product page [Mimo. Thanks, Dave!]

There’s probably no such thing as an actual commuter bike — the perfect model varies depending on your needs. Wired.com editor Dylan Tweney has an old single speed beater that is so stripped down he can easily toss the thing onto the train. Boing Boing Gadgets’ John Brownlee has flip-down training wheels so he can safely return from beer soaked breakfasts in his Berlin barrio before starting work.

And Torkel Dohmens has designed his own lightweight, lidded recumbent with which to cut through traffic. The concept design, winner of the Commuter Bike Design Competition over at the Bicycle Design blog, would be fashioned from either carbon fiber or flax fiber, contain a solar panel in the roof to charge built in LED lamps and be driven by a rubber belt running through the body.

You may also notice that it is a recumbent bike, or almost. These are usually the preserve of bearded, lycra clad bike-hippies, people so into their chosen sect of cycling that they risk their lives in the streets every day, invisible to the cars around them. The "ThisWay" bike, though, is much more visible due to the roof and the position is a little less "recumbent" and a little more "chopper".

We dig it. It’s a little goofy looking, and you sure couldn’t carry it onto a train, but it certainly looks comfy.

We Have a Winner! [Bicycle Design, Thanks, James!]

We had a pretty good idea Verizon’s Hub would be loosed on Super Bowl Sunday, and sure enough, the landline killing machine is now available for ordering. The device itself will run you $199.99 on a two-year contract (after all applicable rebates), and if you’re still wondering whether or not this thing is even worth your time, why not have a look at our hands-on / impressions?

[Thanks, Carlos]

Filed under: Displays, Misc. Gadgets

Verizon Hub goes on sale for $199.99 on contract originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With the economy lodged so firmly in the toilet we’re always glad to see some sort of good news on that front, so check out the latest numbers from comScore that show the market for downloadable time-wasters on smartphones grew by a massive 291 percent in the period between November of 2007 and 2008. That’s thanks in large part to the iPhone and its App Store, with sales on that platform alone accounting for 14 percent of all mobile game downloads and nearly one third of all iPhone users reporting they’d downloaded at least one game. That compares quite favorably to non-smartphone users, of whom just 3.8 percent have downloaded a game, driving that market to decline by 14 percent since 2007. Overall the mobile gaming industry bucked recessionary trends, grew a healthy 17 percent, and will now be shopping in the husky clothing section.

[Via PHONE Magazine]

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Handhelds

Smartphone videogame market explodes in 2008; dumbphone market wounded, but struggling on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If Apple’s sat back and let the iPhone hacking community do its thing in peace (well, relative peace) so far, this little gem just might be what the doctor ordered to stir up the crap. Crackulous — available now in beta form through Cydia — claims to be able to strip the protection off most apps downloaded from the App Store, meaning that just a single user needs to take the plunge and buy a target app once to get it busted and into free circulation. You need a jailbroken iPhone to get Crackulous loaded, naturally — you’ll see Apple make a Windows Mobile-powered device before you’ll see Crackulous in the App Store — but seeing how PwnageTool is dead simple to use, this puts most users just a couple graphical tools away from foolproof piracy and the golden opportunity to take a few hard-earned bucks out of a programmer’s pocket.

[Via Funky Space Monkey]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Crackulous released, promises to bust iPhone app protection scheme originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Feb 2009 01:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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