Hasta La Gadget!

Statue of Liberty? Striking, but a bit demure. Trenchcoat-clad Stalin statue in Gori, Georgia? Iconic, but disheartening. Giant RX-78-2 Gundam statue at Shiokaze Park in Tokyo, Japan? Unquestionably badass. The massive biped is currently under construction, part of a celebration for the 30 year anniversary of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series. When completed it will be full-scale, standing 59-feet tall, weighing 35 tons, and even shooting “light or mist” from 50 different points along its structure. All systems should be fully operational by July 11 — hopefully soon enough to stop the forthcoming Zeon armada.

[Via technabob]

Filed under: Robots

Gundam turns 30, celebrates with the most awesome statue ever originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 May 2009 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We like a good netbook that’s so small it doesn’t have room for any pesky, legacy inputs keeping you tethered to the wall (and thus The Man) — but we’re not sure we’d consign VGA and Ethernet to the Closet of Obsoletion just yet. Onkyo seems to be opening the door, moving the two ports to a USB break-out box on its latest Sotec, the DC204A3. That wouldn’t really be a problem if the adapter didn’t look to be about a third as big as the netbook itself (see for yourself after the break). Otherwise we have a slender but standard Atom N270 netbook, with 945GSE graphics, 1GB of ram, and a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 display. Notable is the 32GB SSD, which sounds quite nice, but with a ¥49,800 ($529) asking price, you’re certainly paying for it. Available to forward-looking Japanese starting at the end of the month.

[Via Akihabara News]

Continue reading Onkyo’s new Sotec DC204A3 netbook has 32GB SSD, no love for VGA or wired Ethernet

Filed under: Laptops

Onkyo’s new Sotec DC204A3 netbook has 32GB SSD, no love for VGA or wired Ethernet originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 May 2009 10:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We know things may not be all hunky-dory in the world of PNDs, but seriously Magellan, you owe us an explanation here. After MiTAC snapped up the outfit’s consumer products division way back in December of last year (yeah, half a year ago), we’ve heard absolutely zilch since. Until today, naturally. If documentation found in the always-telling FCC database is to be believed, it looks as if the long standing Maestro line is about to grow another member. The Maestro 4700 user handbook explains that the unit will boast support for voice commands, a OneTouch user interface, Bluetooth, traffic alerts and a presumed 4.7-inch display. We’d expect the company to come clean with an official price and release date in short order. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via GPSTracklog, thanks Rich]

Filed under: GPS

Maestro 4700 slips by FCC, proves Magellan still has a pulse originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 May 2009 09:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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T-Mobile Austria got a jump on the rest of the world by listing the 32GB iPhone on its site–a phone that doesn’t currently exist.

If the ad is in fact correct, it would confirm the persistent–and fairly believable–rumor that Apple’s popular handset is getting a storage bump when it gets refreshed later this summer. There aren’t any specs on the page beyond that, sadly.

Threadless, the democratically designed T-shirt company, wants to see your tweets. More specifically, it wants to print them on a T-shirt.

Twitter Tees by Threadless, launched earlier this week, is exactly what it sounds like: a new line of T-shirts based on Twitter. Threadless explains:

Twitter Tees will feature notable Tweets submitted and voted on by Twitter users, with art direction and design of each t-shirt by the
in-house creative team at Threadless. Anyone can submit a Tweet for inclusion. Twitter users will vote on submitted Tweets, with two new Twitter Tees selected and printed each
week. They are likely to be as diverse and varied as the conversations happening all day on Twitter.

But wait, that’s not all! There are prizes to be had!

Twitter users whose Tweets are selected for printing will receive $500
($360 in cash and a $140 Threadless gift certificate). In addition, the
first nominator of a printed Tweet will receive $140 ($100 cash and a
$40 Threadless gift certificate).

To kick things off, Threadless has already selected and designed four, well, let’s call them tweet-shirts, shall we? The following designs are available immediately for $18 each:

I’m huge on Twitter, by Boing Boing co-editor @xenijardin

140 is the new 420, by @mutgoff

The messaging system we didn’t know we needed until we had it, by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone

In space, no one can hear you tweet, by @LouisTrapani (Side note: If I were Mike Massimino, the astronaut who recently became the first person to tweet from space, I might take offense at this one.)

Submit one of your own tweets, nominate your friends’ tweets, or purchase one of the four inaugural designs at twitter.threadless.com.