Hasta La Gadget!

Well, it’s almost cherry blossom season. In about two weeks’ time the first sakura buds will start to bloom in the south of Japan. As the season makes its way north we can witness the requisite stampede of families, office workers and underage kids, all vying for the same patches of grass beneath cherry trees in urban parks. Thus begins the annual spectacle that is the drunkard hanami picnic.

If competing for the same valued space with tens of thousands of others doesn’t sound like fun, then we recommend you get your hands on the Magic Sakura (まじっく桜), a desktop toy that recreates the hanami spirit in miniature.

The paper tree stands at 13.5cm (5.3″) tall and looks rather bare until you add the included “magic water”. Then pink blossom starts to appear within a few hours, eventually covering the whole tree. I guess this is the equivalent of a mini Christmas tree for the Japanese! You can have your sakura experience at home or work, minus all the crowds and fuss.

The Magic Sakura is priced 680 JPY ($7.5) and is available now inside Japan.

[Via Digital Gadgets Freak.]

Oops. Over the weekend, it seems as if 300 or so unlucky individuals were shipped a counterfeit processor from the normally reliable warehouses at NewEgg, and Hard|OCP has the images (and video) to prove it. Vincent Waller couldn’t have possibly been more eager to receive the Core i7-920 that he had ordered, but upon unboxing it, he realized that he had received a well-disguised fake. After a fair bit of digging, it seems as if one of NewEgg’s “long time partners” (D&H Distributing) got ahold of 300 fakes in a batch of 2,000, though not everyone’s buying the “it was an honest mistake” line — especially when you consider that said company has already issued cease-and-desist letters to the sites who published the news. At any rate, NewEgg has already arranged for an authentic CPU to be rushed to Mr. Waller, and it’s purportedly working around the clock in order to make things right with any other negatively affected customers. Hop on past the break for a look at the knockoff, particularly if you just took delivery of a shiny new Core i7.

Continue reading NewEgg sells 300 counterfeit Core i7-920 CPUs, KIRFers pump their fists

NewEgg sells 300 counterfeit Core i7-920 CPUs, KIRFers pump their fists originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mama always said that some folks just never learn, and we reckon there’s plenty of wisdom to be had from that very statement. Year after year, German police are called in to raid select booths at CeBIT (and IFA, to be fair), and yet again we’ve seen a booth cleared out at the request of powerful lawyers from a few companies you may have heard of. Word on the street has it that Apple, Siemens and Sisvel were all kvetching over patent infringements made by an unnamed company exhibiting at last week’s show, and within an hour or so of the fuzz showing up, the whole thing was stripped and a hefty fine (€10,000) was levied. Unfortunately, the exact details of who was violating what remains clouded in mystery, but for whatever reason, we get the feeling that something extremely similar will be going down in Hannover next year. We blame KIRFers determination.

Updated: Turns out one of our editors at CeBIT saw this whole situation go down at the FirstView booth. Within minutes the entire booth was surrounded by the Polizei, and though we tried to dig further on the situation our inability to speak German caused some communication issues so we decided it best to move on to the next craptablet on the floor. We will, however, always have the shot above to remember the confusing experience.

[Thanks, TheLostSwede]

Apple, Siemens and Sisvel patent infringement leads to CeBIT booth raid originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panasonic has the news day all to itself with its newfangled pair of Micro Four Thirds shooters, and in case you were wondering — yeah, this is the exact same duo that we saw slip out on Friday. Up first is the Lumix DMC-G2, which looks an awful lot like the G1 it replaces and is touted as the first interchangable lens system camera with touch-control shooting. Granted, we haven’t exactly warmed to the idea of using a touchpanel to fire off a shot, but hey, it is what it is. Other specs include a 12.1 megapixel Live MOS sensor, Venus Engine HD II technology, a 3-inch rear LCD and a 720p (AVCHD Lite) movie mode, though curiously enough a price and release date eludes us. Moving on, there’s the DMC-G10, which is supposedly the “world’s lightest” interchangeable lens camera with a viewfinder; this one packs the same 12.1 megapixel sensor and Venus Engine HD II as on the G2, but the 3-inch LCD lacks tilt / swivel / touch options. We’re still waiting on pricing for this one as well, but now is as good a time as any to mention that both fully support those obnoxiously expensive SDXC cards. Huzzah!

Panasonic gets official with Lumix DMC-G2 and DMC-G10 Micro Four Thirds cameras originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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