Hasta La Gadget!

Sofa specialty shop NOyes has a new campaign to recycle your old jeans into home furniture.

Sofa manufacturer NOyes has announced a service available from this month to turn your old jeans into a cushy stool. Sure, the idea of re-using denim is not particularly novel—we covered the more artistic installation of recycled denim creations at last season’s Japan Fashion Week. However, when an otherwise ordinary furniture manufacturer takes up this sort of project it shows the extent to which the idea of re-using materials (and eco-friendly lifestyle in general) has entered the mainstream psyche.

The promo website shows the process of how your jeans (three pairs are necessary) are transformed into the finished stool, complete with a video that demonstrates the whole hand-made process. It is a neat way of re-assuring increasingly wary consumers that they can be sure exactly how and with what materials the product was created (original production of the denim aside). After all, if those jeans had been up to no good, only you would know.

The custom denim stool costs ¥36,720 ($400) and orders take three weeks to complete.

Just in case Microsoft hadn’t locked down enough support for Windows Mobile at MWC last week, the company also managed to shake hands with a slew of PC makers in order to extend support for Mobile Broadband enhancements within Windows 7. It’s still quite unclear what all this means, but we’re guessing that the likes of Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Fujitsu will happily support WWAN modules from Huawei, Option, Qualcomm, Sierra Wireless and ZTE. The writeup also gives us reason to believe that WWAN connections will be more tightly integrated than before, possibly even showing up alongside potential WiFi hotspots when looking for a wireless connection. At any rate, we’re all about getting a signal regardless of location, so we’ll take this as a definite positive despite the glaring dearth of details.

[Thanks, Jacob]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Microsoft gets big support for Mobile Broadband enhancements in Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like that red Resident Evil 5 Xbox 360 bundle wasn’t just some tripped out figment of your imagination. Just moments ago, the package popped up for Xbox Live subscribers, detailing a handsome red Xbox 360 Elite with a 120GB hard drive, Resident Evil 5, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and a few other odds and ends (like a handful of cables). There’s an indication that you can pre-order the kit, but at this point, we’re not aware of any place to follow through. We’ll keep our eyes peeled, of course.

Update: According to the German press release we just received, the limited edition bundle will hit Europe on March 13th for €299 — likely $399 Stateside. Gallery updated with official press pictures.

Update 2: Boom! Pre-order at Best Buy for $399. [Thanks, Ivan]

Continue reading Red ‘Resident Evil 5’ Xbox 360 unveiled! (updated)

Filed under: Gaming

Red ‘Resident Evil 5’ Xbox 360 unveiled! (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Did you put down Rolando after a mere 10 minutes of play time, never to touch it again? You’re a cold, soulless person with nary a fun bone in your body, but you may not be alone. Pinch Media, whose analytics engine can be used to track the performance of participating iPhone apps, has found that merely 30 percent of people purchasing iPhone apps use them the next day, and free apps clock in at a miserable 20 percent. Over the long run, loyal users dwindle to just a single percent of downloaders — and this is where it gets strange: free apps get used a whopping 6.6 times as often as paid apps, which may not bode well for devs looking to make a decent living off the App Store, Windows Marketplace, Ovi Store, Android Market, and the million other mobile software store initiatives coming up over the next year. It’s likely a testament to the fact that your average free app is simpler (and possibly more indispensable day in and day out) than your average paid app — which means we should all be paying $15 for tip calculators and $25 for speed dialers.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

App Store stats suggest humans have attention span of gnats originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like those brain pacemaker researchers are a bit late on this one, as folks at Medtronic are apt to get the jump on advanced OCD treatment given a recent FDA approval of their device. Hailed as the first implantable device “designed to deliver electrical therapy to the brain to suppress symptoms associated with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder,” the Reclaim DBS (deep brain stimulation) Therapy was said to be able to treat OCD patients in cases where drugs and psychotherapy failed. Understandably, Medtronic is doing everything it can to get the product out by the middle of this year, and following up on its good fortune, it also proclaimed that it had started up a randomized clinical trial of DBS for treatment-resistant depression. There’s no mention of an expected price, but apparently only 4,000 or so will be needed each year.

[Via Vos Iz Neias, thanks yossi]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Medtronic’s implantable OCD treatment okayed by FDA originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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