Hasta La Gadget!

Sorry, that’s not your cup of joe. While it looks very much like a travel mug, the Sony SRS-V500IP is actually an iPod player dock with a speaker.

The “mug” is a 360-degree Circle Sound Stage 16W stereo speaker. Designed so that everyone around you can enjoy the music, the speaker distributes sound evenly without sticking anyone “behind” the speaker.

When driving, pop the mug into the car’s cupholder, and use the in-car power adapter to keep treating your passengers.

The dock comes with a an iPod/iPhone cradle and a 3.5mm stereo audio input for non-Apple devices, whether it’s a computer or another MP3 player.  A remote control can switch between two input sources and adjust volume. Adapters for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS are also included.

Priced $239.99, the Sony SRS-V500IP is available in black, orange, or pink, from AudioCubes.

This is Mel Gibson. Odds are you know him already, perhaps work in such blockbuster films as 1979’s Mad Max, 1981’s Mad Max 2, 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and 1990’s Bird on the Wire. You may also know him from the bizarre anti-semitic rants he’s been known to go on, from time to time.

Back in July, phone calls surfaced online in which Gibson made some truly upsetting to his Russian artist girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva. )You’ve no doubt already heard and read them enough. We will spare you for the moment.) It’s for this reason that marketing duo Mark DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum have borrowed Gibson’s likeness for their new campaign, Offlining.

The campaign is asking computer users to make this Yom Kippur (September 18th) “a ‘No-Device Day’ for people of all faiths.” Naturally, when they thought of a Jewish high holy day, Mel Gibson immediately sprang to mind. The text accompanying Gibson’s image reads, “You don’t have to be Jewish… to make amends for your tweets on Yom Kippur.”

Also included in the campaign are fellow tarnished celebrities Tiger Woods and Lindsay Lohan. Their “ads” read You don’t have to be Jewish… to atone for your texts on Yom Kippur” and “You don’t have to be Jewish… to make amends for your tweets on Yom Kippur,” respectively.

The images are available now as e-cards. The campaign itself may be enough to make you want to shut down your computer and just walk away…

California-based flash memory card manufacturer SanDisk has created a small, super-skinny new memory chip the size of a stamp that can hold up to 64 GB of memory.

The SanDisk iSSD measures a diminutive 18 by 20 by 2 millimeters and weighs less than a gram. At 64 gigs (with smaller capacities available), the chip doesn’t quite offer enough oomf for a fully-functional laptop, but should be able to add some memory power-ups to just about everything else.

For now, the company has not released a price on the chip, but is making it available to manufacturers for evaluation. Should tech manufacturers like what they see, we will see this chip make way for all sorts of super-slim, super powerful devices coming our way.

This is the newest entry in the realm of SSD (solid-state drive) technology which allows for memory chips that are increasingly small, require no moving parts, and can run fan-less. They are the reason our gadgets and gizmos continue to get smaller, flatter, lighter, and more powerful.

via NYT

FusionGarage, the company behind the much-hyped (and nearly equally reviled) JooJoo tablet scored some key legal victories in its fight against Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch.

Arrington’s suit, it seems, was tenuous at best, given the fact that TechCrunch and Fusion Garage never actually had a contract when they decided to go into business on what was then called the CrunchPad. Engadget’s Nilay Patel calls out the particularly legally suspect “misappropropriation of business ideas” claim.

A court in San Francisco ruled on the suit, which was originally filed in December of last year, dismissing all but that “breach of fiduciary duty” complaint. Writes Patel,

Fiduciary duty has always struck us as TechCrunch’s strongest argument, and the court’s now effectively ruled that Fusion Garage and TechCrunch were indeed involved in a joint business venture with legal obligations to protect each others’ interests. That’s not a bad position from which to proceed — although TechCrunch now has to prove that Fusion Garage actually violated its duty by releasing the Joojoo on its own, which is a whole new fight.

The germ of the JooJoo bagan in July of 2008, when Arrington announced his intentions to manufacturer and release a $200 Internet tablet, enlisting Singapore-based manufacturer FusionGarage to help bring the device to life. By November of last year, FusionGarage announced that it was no longer working with TechCrunch, rechristening the device the JooJoo.

After numerous delays and low pre-orders (around 90 total units in the first couple of months, according to paperwork filed in conjunction with the lawsuit), the device finally began shipping in March. The JooJoo has since been plagued by negative reviews from critics and professionals, particularly in light of the launch of Apple’s iPad.

OLED’s failure to do anything for the mainstream so far outside of phone and camera displays is only bittersweet: sure, we don’t have millimeter thick TVs yet, but LCD has gotten slim enough that it hardly matters. So, in keeping with tradition, LG has stolen its own OLED thunder today. In line with earlier rumors, it will be showing off a 0.11-inch thick 31-inch 3D OLED display prototype at IFA this week, but that poor little OLED-that-would will be sharing a booth with a ready for retail 0.35-inch thick LCD that comes in big people sizes. Despite our undying affection for OLED, we know which one we’ll be (theoretically) taking home in the windowless van we (theoretically) plan on parking out behind the Messe Berlin.

LG’s 31-inch OLED prototype to slice through IFA originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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