Sci-fi fandom and the DIY ethic go hand in hand — and for evidence, you need only look at the large number of Star Trek and Star Wars-themed projects we’ve seen in this space over the years. Still, few of them have achieved the scope of the full-sized Dalek that Rob Bosher built for about £700 (roughly $1,140). Powered by an electric wheelchair and constructed mostly from wood, this guy can be piloted via remote control and even features working lights, a moving eye (a reconstituted magic eight ball) and a voice modulator for the creepy, alien order to “exterminate.” When not trying to slowly (very slowly) populate the earth with a robot army bent on universal conquest and destruction, Bosher hopes to use his project to make money for regional charities.
If there’s one thing we’re missing when we’re jamming “Cool for Cats” on Rock Band, it’s a Squeeze-worthy display of lights. That’s all about to change, with the introduction of Rock Gear’s HexoLight LED-lighting system, a flashing display of lights to the beat of your tunes. If transforming your living room (or bedroom, or dorm room) into a place that even Jools Holland would be proud to step into is high on your list of priorities, the HexoLight — which boasts an audio sensor to sync up to the beat and is compatible with nearly any stereo source — is probably something you’re going to want to check out. HexoLight is available today for prices starting at $30. Full press release is after the break.
Touch Bionics unveils ProDigits, which take the prosthetic hand a step further by allowing patients with partial hands to add fingers on a case-by-case basis. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10411528-247.html” class=”origPostedBlog”News – Health Tech/a/p
Kaitlyn Chantry is the editor-in-chief of CamcorderInfo.com. And she’s been so kind as provide us with her favorite camcorders picks in every key price range.
Flip MinoHD
Don’t be confused by imposters: the ultracompact Flip camcorder is still the hot girl that everyone either wants to have or wants to be. At $230, the second-generation MinoHD is more expensive than all those Flip clones, but you get what you pay for. It’s sleek and stylish—especially when you can design your own—and has decent video quality (for a tiny, trendy camcorder). Most importantly, it’s so easy to use that your granny could make herself the next YouTube star. [Review]
Note: Gizmodo actually preferred Flip’s Ultra HD, but only because it’s substantially cheaper than the MinoHD. More on that in our mini cam Battlemodo.
JVC Everio GZ-HM200
The JVC Everio GZ-HM200 doesn’t exactly roll off the tip of your tongue, but for just $580, it might roll its way into your heart. It can’t quite compete with the big dogs in our testing labs, but its digital image stabilization is surprisingly effective and the color accuracy left us slack-jawed. The HM200 is also small, easy to use, and has decent options if you want a little control over your video. And we just love having two SDHC memory card slots. [Review]
Canon Vixia HF20
The Canon Vixia HF20 is all about getting the complete package. It lacks the huge lens and high resolution of its big brothers, but it does have the sexy interface and powerful performance we’ve come to expect from a Canon camcorder. At $800, you’re definitely paying for that clear, sharp video and fantastic design. The HF20 is for people that want to save a little cash, but still want to own the cool toys. [Review]
Panasonic HDC-TM300
If you’re spending over a grand on a consumer camcorder, it’s pretty hard to go wrong. But this year’s Panasonics are the crème de la crème. They’ve got great auto features, are stuffed full of manual controls, and are smoking hot performers in low light. The TM300 (Panasonic’s 32GB flash memory model) feels like it was personally sculpted for your hand—and at $1300, it won’t break the bank. [Review]
There are obviously a lot of other great camcorders this year—for every budget and level of experience. Read all of CamcorderInfo’s picks for the 2009 Select Awards here.
Kaitlyn Chantry is the editor-in-chief of CamcorderInfo.com. She has reported on and reviewed everything from video games to coffee cups. CamcorderInfo has been using scientific lab testing and comparative analysis to provide consumers with comprehensive, unbiased camcorder reviews since 1997.
Just in time to round out your holiday shopping season, we’ve consulted the Web traffic oracles and compiled a list of the most popular laptops of 2009.
Looking for something a little different and exciting in the Android space? Acer’s Liquid A1 probably fits the bill. Sure, it’s another in a long line of slate-style phones with Android, but the quirky (if chunky) design and zippy Snapdragon processor are certainly worth paying attention to. The best part? It’s shipping now in the UK, with a price hovering in the £330 range (about $540 US). If someone manages to shoehorn Android 2.0 onto this thing we might start talking serious, but for now it’s probably a stretch for a bit of EDGE-only (or 3G if you win the tri-band lottery and us AT&T) import action in the US. The price of liberty and happiness, we suppose.
CNET has teamed with Root Wireless to create a tool for determining the best carrier for your neighborhood, commute, or workplace. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-10399194-85.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Dialed In/a/p
Google’s extension gallery for its Chrome browser opened for business this morning. We’ve taken a look around the offerings—most of them, anyways—and pulled out a few picks that deserve a spot in your formerly pristine browser.
Actually, rating these extensions by “worth the slowdown,” as is often the case with Firefox, doesn’t seem applicable here. Chrome renders pages just as snappily on a Linux install with eight extensions loaded, and the memory use seems not all that different. Your mileage may certainly vary.
We pulled out extensions from the gallery for highlighting that do something a bit different from widely-available bookmarklets, or at least fill a crucial need for those who use the web productively. You can disagree with our picks or tell us how blind we must be to miss a great one—do so in the comments, and if we missed a really great one, we’ll update the post.
You need to be running either the Windows dev version of Chrome, the just-released Linux beta, or a daily build that supports extensions. Mac users are, unfortunately, left out of the add-on party for the moment.
Google Mail Checker: Just what it sounds like. It sits in your address bar, keeps track of your unread messages, and opens Gmail when you click it. Take note that the author states it “does not yet work well” with Google Apps mail.
RSS Subscription Extension: Puts an RSS icon in the address bar when standard feeds are detected, and delivers the feed to a reader selection page when clicked. You can add custom readers beyond the standard five using URL syntax.
Xmarks for Chrome Beta: Just like the early Chrome alpha, this extension ties Chrome into your Xmarks bookmark account, synchronizing you between Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and across multiple profiles, if needed.
iMacros for Chrome: We haven’t had nearly enough time to discover what this cool tool is capable of, but it seems like a nice solution for anyone missing their crucial Greasemonkey scripts and other Firefox-only helpers.
Flash Block and FlashBlock: Both do the basic task of turning off Flash on all web pages, until you turn it back on for all pages from that domain. FlashBlock uses a keyboard shortcut, while Flash Black has a settings dialog with a list you can edit.
AdThwart and AdSweep: As you might guess, they both block ads, though they use different blacklists to do so. We’ve previously covered AdSweep in its early days. At the moment, AdSweep’s gallery page returns an installation failure—from Linux, at least. AdThwart is proving more popular, perhaps due in part to AdSweep’s troubles.
Brizzly: The helpful, time-saving, at-a-glance Twitter/Facebook client for the web integrates smoothly into Chrome. Click the button, and you get a quick read on what’s happening in your social streams, with images automatically shown and videos embedded. You can, of course, also tweet or update Facebook from here.
Google Voice Notifier, Google Wave Notifier, and Google Alerter: The first two do just what you’d think they do, but make lots of sense for services you want right away and might only occasionally check, respectively. The last is a kind of uber-notifier that checks Gmail, Wave, and Reader for new items. If you’re a heavy Reader user, you’ll obviously want to turn those pings off in the settings.
Chromium Delicious Plugin: All your recent bookmarks from the Delicious bookmark service, as well as quick saving of bookmarks from selected text/links or manual creation.
ChromeMilk: There are many, many tools that bring to-do manager Remember the Milk into your browser, but this one’s notable for popping up your task list right from the address bar—and offering Remember the Milk’s very slick iPhone interface as an option for pro membership owners.
LastPass: As previously mentioned, this extension fills in the gap that Xmarks’ lack of password syncing leaves on Chrome.
Fittr Flickr: Adds keyboard shortcuts, additional photo information, lightbox-style galleries, and more to Flickr photo pages, in the style of Gina’s own Better Flickr for Firefox.
What have you foun that’s worth installing, and bragging about, in the Chrome Extensions Gallery? Share the links and love in the comments.
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