Sep 17

ITG’s Windows XP-loving xpPhone now accepting pre-orders worldwide

Posted in: att, MID, Today's Chili, vodafone, Windows XP
ITG's Windows XP-loving xpPhone now accepting pre-orders worldwide

It’s been awhile since we last saw the xpPhone, a quick, quiet demonstration at Computex that left us doubting whether the thing would ever see the light of day outside a packed showroom floor. It seems our doubts are about to be put to rest as ITG, creator of the thing, has thrown up a pre-order page on the phone’s website. There’s no mention of a price, and indeed you won’t be asked to plunk down any cash right now (it’s not much of a pre-order), but what’s interesting is that it asks you to choose between 3G modules for Vodafone, Orange, or AT&T. That means ITG seemingly has aspirations of a global release for this thing, and while we’re not sure how many people are going to want to lug around a MID-sized monster celly with a “super big” 4.8-inch LCD and a weight of nearly a pound, surely some nation in the world has pockets big enough for this.

[Via Pocketables]

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ITG’s Windows XP-loving xpPhone now accepting pre-orders worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

DIY Fisheye Made From Broken Lens

Posted in: Today's Chili

diy-fisheye

What do you do if you drop a camera lens on the sidewalk and hear the sickening crack as the glass elements break into useless crystal fragments? If you’re me, you stand there, crying, until a passerby comes to give you a reassuring hug. If you are tough-guy Pat Joyce, from St. Albans in the UK, you suck it up and make a fisheye lens.

Admittedly, Pat didn’t actually break his own lens. He picked up a pre-broken Sigma 28-200 from the camera store in nearby Watford for £5 ($8). He took an unbroken element and added a short tube to keep the lens at the right distance from the front of his camera, a compact Canon Ixus 65. This in turn was flipped into macro mode to take the shots.

The pictures are surprisingly good, and the lens pulls in a huge field of view, just like a real fisheye — you can see the whole gallery of Pat’s pictures and even a time-lapse video over on Flickr. Thus, we learn a lesson. If you break something, don’t stand there blubbing like a stupid little baby. Instead, take the parts and get hacking.

Cheap Fisheye [Flickr via DIY Photography]

Photos: Pat Joyce/Flickr


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Sep 17

MP navi’s 4.3-inch touchscreen PMP slips through the crack

Posted in: PMP, South Korea, SouthKorea, Today's Chili

South Korea has a long history of pushing out wicked cool PMP / navigation / do-it-all devices, but MP navi’s first effort definitely aims low. Boasting a 4.3-inch touchscreen, an ultrathin chassis and support for more formats than you’d care to count, there’s not much here that sets it apart from the competition. Of course, just looking good goes a long way, so if you’re interested in saving this one from imminent obscurity, you’ll need to hop a flight to Seoul (mind that DMZ, though) and cough up ₩139,000 ($114).

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MP navi’s 4.3-inch touchscreen PMP slips through the crack originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

500 Colored Pencils Hanging On the Wall

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

colored-pencils

If you buy this spectacular set of colored pencils, you won’t actually need to draw anything. Just hang them on the wall for an instant work of art.

In all, there are 500 chromatic crayons, arrayed in five cases. You can buy the cases (without pencils) all at once for $260, or get them the old fashioned way — one a month for $52 a pop. For the pencils themselves, you need another subscription, and it’ll cost you an extra $33 per month, for 20 long, long months.

We see a problem here. If you are the kind of person who would display a spectrum of color like this, in anally-retentive chromatic order, it’s likely that you would go crazy looking at the empty cases for almost two years, as they laugh at you and taunt you with their frustrating incompleteness.

Instead it might be better to buy them for somebody you kind of don’t like, and watch them slowly unwind as the torture keeps coming, one dripping pencil-package at a time. Meanwhile, you can comfort yourself over on the product page by reading the names of the individual colors. Our favorites? I picked the very English “Tea with Milk”, Priya likes the “Frog Pond” for reasons unknown, and Dylan, being a true San Franciscan, went with “Drizzly Afternoon”. And Brian X Chen, dunker of iPhones and buyer of phallic motorcycles? He chose “Tragedy”.

Product page [500 Pencils]


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Sep 17

Z Corporation debuts “world’s most affordable” portable 3D scanner, still more expensive than your car

Posted in: Today's Chili

Sure, you might be able to get by with a home-built, even Lego-built 3D scanner in a pinch, but those looking for a truly portable, off-the-shelf solution have so far been limited to pricey options like Z Corporation’s ZScanner 700. Well, it looks like good ‘ol Z Corp has some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that it’s knocked over $10,000 off the price for its new ZScanner 600 model. The bad news? It’ll still cost you $28,900. That’ll get you a sampling speed of 18,000 measurements per second, however, along with an XY accuracy of up to 80 microns, resolution down to just 0.1 mm, a depth of field of 30 cm, a FireWire interface, and Z Corp’s own ZScan Lite software (Windows only). It also uses an eye-safe laser, so there’s nothing but hefty credit card bill standing between you and a trip to the uncanny valley.

[Via SlashGear]

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Z Corporation debuts “world’s most affordable” portable 3D scanner, still more expensive than your car originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

Hard drive speakers look cheesetastic

Posted in: Today's Chili
hard drive speakers(Credit: Gizmodo)

The Hack A Day people say hard drive speakers aren’t new. Fine. Who cares when they look so cheesetastically retro good as these? I don’t.

The gangsta blue horizontal volume unit meter will satisfy your inner pimp too. Too bad it doesn’t have some much-needed …

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Sep 17

Thanko Microsports MP3 player is small, really small

Posted in: MP3, mp3 player, Mp3Player, Today's Chili

Thanko is a brand forever tied to crapgadgets. It can, however, surprise us occasionally as it has with its new Microsports MP3/WMA/WAV player in 2GB (¥4,980 / $55) or 4GB (¥5,980 / $66) models. Measuring 16×25×22mm / 8g, it’s about the size and weight of an average Bluetooth headset. And while we’ve seen similar micro players strung from lanyards, this is the first we can recall with an integrated ear-bud — the second bud attaches via USB-cable for stereo audio. Looks comfy, eh?

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Thanko Microsports MP3 player is small, really small originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

Sarotech’s WizPlat boxes 4TB NAS with BitTorrent client, biscuits

Posted in: itunes, Today's Chili

Let’s be honest: the standout feature of the WizPlat NAS-20 is its boxed-lunch design. Otherwise, it’s a pretty standard network attached storage device offering Gigabit ethernet, up to 4TB (2TB per 3.5-inch bay) in RAID 0/1 or JBOD configs, 2x USB for more storage, FTP, SAMBA, iTunes, and printer servers, and integrated BitTorrent client for 24/7 PC-less downloads. Unfortunately the design, while portable, pretty much eliminates any hope of constructing a stacked monument to copyright infringement.

[Via Akihabara News]

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Sarotech’s WizPlat boxes 4TB NAS with BitTorrent client, biscuits originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

Pentax K-x: World’s Reddest DSLR?

Posted in: Today's Chili

pentax-kx-whore-red

The first thing you’ll notice about Pentax’s new K-x DSLR is the color — fire-engine red (it also comes in navy-blue, white and black). Get underneath the ridiculous look-at-me skin and you’ll find that it has some definite improvements over the cheaper K2000, while coming in at just $200 more.

First, it shoots movies. HD movies, at 720p resolution and 24 frames per second. Second, it has a larger 12.4 megapixel sensor (the K2000 has 10.2), which can pump its pictures through the Prime II processor and onto the SD card at 4.7fps.

Then there is the usual slew of features, from shake-reduction to face detection, but the interesting part is the HDR feature, which grabs three shots with bracketed exposures and melds them magically into a single, high dynamic range image, theoretically retaining detail in both shadows and highlights. It’s nothing you can’t do in post, but having it in camera, as with other Pentax models, certainly makes it quicker and easier.

It looks like a capable camera, although it doesn’t offer much that you can’t get elsewhere — and pretty much any DSLR these days will take great pictures. If you are thinking of getting into the DSLR game, the best thing to do is forget about the camera to begin with, and think about lenses. The camera you buy today will last for a few years. The lenses you buy will last you forever.

Kit with 18-55mm lens, $650. Available October.

Product page [Pentax. Thanks, Michelle!]


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Sep 17

Hercules loads Windows 7 Starter on $399 eCAFE EC-1000W netbook

Posted in: netbook, Today's Chili, windows 7, Windows7

Is this really the first netbook to be officially announced with Windows 7? From Hercules? Yeah, we’re miffed too. In fact, we forgot all about the outfit’s eCAFÉ lineup — which briefly splashed down about this time last year — but we suspect this bugger may have a bit more staying power. The eCAFÉ EC-1000W is destined to ship at the tail end of October (you know, just after Win7 hits the streets), and while the 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, 1GB RAM module and 250GB hard drive are totally predictable, we get the feeling it’ll just feel nicer thanks to the revitalized OS. Other specs include a 10.1-inch display (1,024 x 600), 50GB of online storage, a chiclet-style keyboard, 802.11n WiFi, a 6-cell battery, integrated webcam / microphone, three USB 2.0 sockets, audio in / out, a VGA output, Ethernet and a multicard reader. Not bad for $399 — but where’s that $200 Win7 netbook we were promised?

Gallery: Hercules loads Windows 7 Starter on $399 eCAFE EC-1000W netbook

Continue reading Hercules loads Windows 7 Starter on $399 eCAFE EC-1000W netbook

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Hercules loads Windows 7 Starter on $399 eCAFE EC-1000W netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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