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Florida’s finest: The Segway X2 Golf is sure to be a hit amongst retired dorks

What could be a more natural fit than Segways and golf? Players are already happy to embarrass themselves by dressing up in a pastel patchwork of Pringle, so why not make the humiliation complete and jump on the two-wheeled dork-wagon? And because a golfer won’t buy anything unless it is taylor* made for their hobby, the dedicated hole-hound can now get the customized Segway X2 Golf, with built-in caddy.

Aside from the regular gyroscopically-balanced niceties of the regular Segway, which will keep you upright no matter how many nips you take from your hip-flask during the round, there are some golf-specific additions. You’ll find a space for your score card, all-terrain, low-pressure turf-tires for negotiating anything from green to bunker, a wider track and higher ground clearance, and oversized handles so even retirees can team up and pull the thing from the trunk of a Cadillac.

The best thing, though, is the speed. The Segway X2 Golf not only roars past regular golf-carts, it allows each person to go find their own badly-hit ball. This cuts down on tedious time spent on the fairway and gets you to the real goal of golf — the 19th hole.

The Segway X2 is available only in the UK, for $8,000.

Segway X2 Golf product page [Segway]

*I know this looks like a mis-spelling, but think about it.

See Also:

• PocketPro Reconstructs Your Golf Swings on the iPhone
• Gyroscopic Golf Club: Slicer's Savior or Swinger's Snakeoil …
• Scam Gadget: Golf Ball Dowser
• Owner of Segway Company Dies in Segway Accident
• Fanboy Pimps His Tron-Inspired Segway

The BlackBerry maker recalls the tablets due to a faulty build of the operating system but says few of the buggy units made it to the consumer stage.

Originally posted at News – Digital Media

Seagate’s GoFlex Satellite comes with iPad software to browse its 500GB content

How does 500GB storage for your iPad sound? That’s kinda what Seagate is offering with its new GoFlex Satellite, an external hard drive with iOS-friendly Wi-Fi built in.

The drive is much like Seagate’s other GoFlex drives, and you can hook it up to any computer via USB2 or USB3. The difference is the wireless (802.11n) radio. This supports up to three connections and lets you access any media on the drive through a web browser.

However, if you have an iPad you can use a companion app — GoFlex Media — to browse the drive. This will let you view and play back any iOS compatible file, be it music, video, a document, or a photo.

You can’t send the content to other apps (yet) but you can at least cache content locally. Also, the drive’s Wi-Fi can’t connect to an existing network, so you’ll have to manually connect to the drive from your device, switching away from your home or work network as you do so.

The drive costs just what you’d expect: $200, or the same as a regular pocket drive and a MiFi wireless router together. It’s not cheap, but it sure is convenient. Available soon.

Seagate GoFlex Satellite review [CNET]

See Also:

• HyperDrive 750GB Photo-Storing Hard Drive for iPad
• IPad Camera Connection Kit Supports External Hard Drives
• How To: Stream Video to iPad From Network Drive Without a Computer …

Pix & Stix let you strum and drum in iPad Garage Band, just as nature intended

Garage Band is one of the stand-out apps on the iPad, whether v1 or v2. Not only is it easy to use, it’s fun. This is why I, a person who’s guitar’s main function is to hang on the wall collecting dust, have spent more time with Garage Band since I first downloaded it than I have with a real instrument in the past few years.

In some ways, Garage Band is more of an awesome game about music than a musical device itself.

And what makes any game better? Cool accessories. Enter Pix & Stix, accessory picks and sticks to help “play” Garage Band. In the kit you get two sticks and one pick. All of these have electro conductive tips so the iPad’s touch-screen thinks that you are tapping and strumming with a finger.

Of these, I expect the sticks to be more useful. It feels a little awkward tapping away at the on-screen drums with my flesh fingertips, and it’s quite hard to keep to a rhythm. A pair of sticks would clearly be way better.

But given the way we play the guitars in Garage Band, the pick may work less well. I guess you could hoist the whole iPad up in front of your belly as if it were a real guitar, but that seems like a recipe for dropping the thing. I’m sure that the inevitable guitar-shaped iPad holder is already on a designers drawing board somewhere, but until it’s real, fingers are probably fine.

The kit will cost $15 if it makes it to market. I say “if” as Pix & Stix is funding itself like a Kickstarter project, only without Kickstarter. Thus, if the goal is reached, you get the gear. If not, you get a refund. If you’re trusting enough to pay out on this kind of deal, go ahead.

Pix & Stix [Pix & Stix via Red Ferret]

See Also:

• Brush Stylus Paints on iPad
• Artists Keep Hands Clean with Tablet-Friendly Brush Stylus …
• Styluses
• Fingers-On With The Chunky Alupen iPad Stylus
• Garage Band: Apogee's Jam Connects Your Guitar to Your iPad …
• Fingers-On: TabToolkit for iPad Has More Cowbell
• Make It: iPhone Guitar Connection Kit

Seagate just took the wraps off what’s likely the niftiest portable HDD to cross our path in a long, long while. The GoFlex Satellite is part storage device, part wireless media streamer, and it manages to wear both hats with little compromise on either end. For all intents and purposes, this is a standard 500GB GoFlex HDD with a bit of extra girth, an AC input, an 802.11b/g/n WiFi module and a built-in web server. The reason for those extras? A simple depression of the on / off button starts the streamer up, and it’s ready for a connection in around 30 to 40 seconds. Once fired up you can stream data to just about anything — even iOS devices. That’s an impressive feat, not quite a “first” moment as Seagate would like you to believe (we’ll give that crown to AirStash), but still a rarity.

Our unit shipped with a GoFlex USB 3.0 adapter and a car charger, with the latter enabling users to entertain their children on long road trips — a nice addition, we have to say. Installation is a cinch; just fire up a media sync application that resides on the drive (for OS X users, anyway), and you’re ready to drag and drop files as if it’s any ‘ole HDD. No media management software or anything of the sort, thankfully. The purpose of having your media onboard is to stream videos, photos, documents and music to your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or any other tablet, phone or laptop with WiFi. You heard right — while there’s only a dedicated app for the iOS family, any WiFi-enabled device with a web browser can tap into this. Care to hear our take on this $200 do-it-all hard drive? Have a look at our review video just after the break.

Continue reading Seagate’s GoFlex Satellite portable hard drive streams content over WiFi (review)

Seagate’s GoFlex Satellite portable hard drive streams content over WiFi (review) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 May 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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