Hasta La Gadget!

Gizmodo and the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) have teamed up to bring you something amazing – the 2011 Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit, opening this Friday, April 22, 2011! As the technology partner for the exhibit, we’ve taken the technologies that change the way we live, work, love, play, think and feel and incorporated them in this year’s Smart Home to not only bring Gizmodo to the exhibit but also designate the home as smart living. The Smart Home, a fully-functioning, eco-friendly home built by MSI in 2008, also will feature an interior designed with re-purposed materials; coalescing the past, present and future to redefine what makes a house, a Home. More »

Nintendo has yet to confirm the cut, but several major stores have erased $30 from the Wii bundle, which includes the console, a MotionPlus Remote, a Wii nunchuk, Wii Sports, and Wii Sports Resort.

Originally posted at The Digital Home

Laptop makers seem to enjoy making our lives difficult by sneaking “buy now” labels onto their latest products and Lenovo has kept up that tradition by making its 12.5-inch ThinkPad X220 available without telling anyone. It’s now ready to purchase at the company’s online store, starting at $849 with a Core i3-2310M processor, and its convertible tablet sibling, the X220T, is also eager to be snatched up, though its starting price is $1,249 with the same CPU on board. Eight business days will be required for delivery to reach you, but we’d wait a whole lot longer than that for the gorgeous IPS display and extreme battery life on offer. Sadly, you can’t upgrade beyond the 1366 x 768 resolution nor away from the Intel HD Graphics 3000 “option,” but then we hear that PowerPoint presentations should be blindingly fast on these machines anyhow. Hit the source links to see just how high you can raise the price by maxing out the rest of the specs.

[Thanks, Dave]

Lenovo ThinkPad X220 and X220T now shipping, starting at $849 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen some rather homely cans in our time — wireless and otherwise — which is why we were delighted to see that Sony’s latest set of 7.1 channel headphones doesn’t sacrifice form for function — at least not on paper. The MDR-DS6500 setup offers up a slew of surround sound modes, including Dolby Digital, Sony’s Virtualphones Technology, a 100-meter (330-foot) operating range, and automatic tuning. Sony’s also promising 20 hours of listening for every three hours the things spend on their charging dock. We’re not sure how much they’ll set you back, but they are set for release sometime this May. Of course, we’ll hold our judgment until we actually hear how they stack up. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Sony’s MDR-DS6500 wireless headphones serve up surround sound in style

Sony’s MDR-DS6500 wireless headphones serve up surround sound in style originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For months we’ve been wondering aloud how Sonos would respond to Apple’s September AirPlay announcement. After all, Apple’s promise to “stream music throughout your entire house” steps all over Sonos’ reason to exist. Would Sonos start building its systems with BridgeCo chips? As it turns out: no. Instead, Sonos is opting for a rather ingenious solution, at a cost of $99. Rather than licensing BridgeCo technology at additional expense atop Sonos’ already costly components, the company has instead devised an approach that links Apple’s own AirPlay-compliant AirPort Express into Sonos’ proprietary wireless mesh network. The solution (illustrated after the break) works by first shutting off the WiFi on the AirPort Express base station and then stringing a cable between its audio-out and the line-in jack on any Sonos ZonePlayer, including the S5 all-in-one speaker. You then run an ethernet patch cable between the two and you’ve just enabled your iOS devices to play AirPlay audio to any (or all) Sonos device in the home from any compatible AirPlay app. Naturally, the Sonos solution does not integrate with AirPlay speakers like those from iHome, JBL, B&W, Klipsch, or Philips and the AirPlay audio won’t be synced with video; but it’s a start. The new functionality requires a software update to your system in the form of Sonos System Software version 3.4 — available now — which also adds iOS multitasking amongst a few other goodies.

Today also marks the official release of the free Sonos Controller for Android app in the Android Market making it a pretty good day to be a Sonos owner.

Continue reading Sonos adds AirPlay support as Android Controller app hits the Market

Sonos adds AirPlay support as Android Controller app hits the Market originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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