Product names like "Atomic Bass" are a dead giveaway.
(Credit: Radius)
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve owned at least one MP3 player in your lifetime, and anyone who has used a portable audio player knows the earbuds that come packaged with these devices are–for …
Originally posted at iPod accessories
This one hasn’t exactly been the best kept secret in automotive circles as of late, but Mercedes has now finally come out and confirmed that it will indeed be producing an all-electric version of its new SLS AMG gullwing coupe. For those not immediately sold by the word “gullwing,” you may be slightly more impressed by the 48 kWh liquid cooled lithium ion battery pack at the heart of the car, which gets paired with an electric drive system tied to all four wheels that Mercedes says is “on the same high level” as the 6.8-liter V8 engine that’s in the non-electric SLS. Somewhat curiously, however, Mercedes isn’t doing any talking about range just yet but, as AutoBlog notes, it seems likely that it’ll be less than the 200 miles the Tesla Roadster gets, given its small battery capacity. There’s also unfortunately still no official word on a price or time frame for a release, but the current talk seems to be that it could be rolling out by 2015.
Filed under: Transportation
Mercedes confirms plans for all-electric SLS AMG gullwing originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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(Credit: CNET)After a steady stream of Netbooks and entry-level laptops, it’s nice to slip behind the seat of a deluxe mobile powerhouse for a change. Alienware’s new M17x laptop jams pretty much any high-end component you can think of into an imposing, matte, black chassis, including an Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300 CPU, dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 280M GPUs, and 1TB of hard-drive space.
While the system starts at a reasonable $1,799, you’ll need to configure something closer to our $4,849 review unit to really get the benefit of Alienware’s years of experience making high-end gaming PCs.
While playing around with the M17x was a blast, and we especially enjoyed creating wacky color combinations with the customizable backlit keyboard (this new version has four separate color zones under the keyboard tray), we’re left wondering if the era of the extreme gaming rig is over–replaced by a mix of 10-inch Netbooks and console games.
It’s an argument some have been making for years (or rebutting), but the oft-reported “Death of PC Games” really does seem closer than ever.
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Once again, we made it out to the Tokyo Toy Show for its 2009 incarnation (see our coverage of 2007 and 2008) and weren’t disappointed. A bit different than what we expected, but economics and other factors are changing the market a bit perhaps. Some old favorites, some new surprises, but still a fun toy show with lots to see.
What’s clear is that there’s still a huge production trend of toys that are used for cooking real food. We used to call those “appliances” back in the day, but if you make them pink, small, and plastic enough they pass as toys apparently.
Below is this year’s video round-up, with details below in the product descriptions:
Instead of just throwing in a bunch of pics like we usually do, or making separate blog entries for each product, we’ve decided to put them all together in this one big piece. Not only will you find details of the best toys from this year, but Japan Trend Shop has informed us that they’re going to be offering pre-orders for many of them. We’ll drop in the links as JTS has them ready to go. Enjoy!
I suppose it can also be a timer for real Cup Noodles, but the 3 Minute Cup Noodle Game gives you three minutes to perfectly assemble one of a variety of flavors of noodle before absolutely exploding it all into bits again.
One of our favorites. You can set up a mini golf course inside your house with Anywhere Family Golf, and play a round with the plastic golfer that looks suspiciously like teen golfing sensation Ryo Ishikawa. It even has a putter included to switch up for your short game!
We love bath goods from Japan, and if the Awa Awa Lan bubble maker can make this many bubbles for us everyday, consider us sold.
Crunchgear covered these Pellermodels pretty well here. Basically, you can print out your own figure with the faces of real people, allowing you to play dolls like Lord Helmet and create your fantasy date with, well, whoever.
Bowlingual has been around for a long time, but this new Bowlingual Voice version actually translates your dogs barks into human words and speaks them to you. No word yet on the extent of a dog’s vocabulary, but we can imagine that Japanese dogs like to talk about food alot.
These seem to be an eco toy of some kind called Cap heads. We just think they look cool.
This is another favorite. Put a coin in the dish of the Choken Bako and the dog goes wild, lapping it up until it disappears into the internal coin bank. The action is really funny to watch and is in the video above and on the JTS product page.
Clockman may not be so relevant to cultures that aren’t superstitious about blood types, but the interesting marketing angle is that they’re ties into these hugely popular blood type books we talked about here.
Eco Otome solves the problem of Japanese women who want some noise to cover up their time powdering their nose. Now, instead of flushing the toilet before going, the tiny Eco Otome makes the toilet sound for you!
Like their friend Pekoppa, Hanappa flowers are meant to be talked to, and will move along to communicate with your sentiments. Like good little Japanese flowers, they bow ever so slightly in agreement, no matter what you say. I wonder what they’re really thinking…
Soon to be released for the Homestar Extra home planetarium, these new discs are a very cool change from the usual stars.
Now that there are already a million other toys out there to help us bake different foods, the Kururin Mochi Maker eliminates the need for the gigantic wooden mallet we all imagine that mochi is actually made with.
This is one of our favorites! We love toy cameras, but the Kurorin Shot is a digital camera that lets you take all kinds of pictures with toy effects, but with the ease of digital. Quite fun to play with I might add.
No idea how this works, but the Magic Pet is low-priced, lives in old PET bottles, and does little tricks (as seen in the video).
From Tomiya, this DIY Mechanical Fish likes to swim in the water, both on the surface and under.
We LOVE Maywa Denki, the brains behind the Bacarobo competition and tons of fun, silly, and creative inventions. The Otamatone is a bit like a theremin that needs touch, and plays electronic notes. Nice design too.
Sukasama Star Japan records you saying one thing, plays it for you backwards, and then lets you attempt to do the reverse. It’s pretty funny hearing the sounds in words that you don’t realize are there (see the video for what I mean).
If you’ve never been to a kaiten sushi revolving restaurant, you might as well bring the experience home. Why go out when you can race the Sushi Train Restaurant around the table, delivering food to your family and friends? Available for pre-order here.
After talking about it here, we finally got a chance to see the Uchiage Hanabi in action, and it’s pretty amazing. We were skeptical at first, but the fireworks look pretty good in the dark. Not like the real thing of course, but still a great effect.
If you like to catch your fake food as it bounces all over your grill, the Yakiniku King is for you.
Well, that’s it for now. We’ll continue to update this piece as more product information comes in, and we have more news about where to buy these great items.
Remember back in May when Blu-ray sales were reportedly up 72 percent for 2009? Turns out the high definition disc business is doing even better than that. The Digital Entertainment Group is reporting a 91 percent sales increase year-on-year, totaling $407 million, for the first six months of this year — an impressive feat, especially in this recession climate. Blu-ray rentals, too, saw a 61 percent increase, and on the less tangible side of things, digital distribution rose 21 percent. Despite all this, the report noted that overall consumer spending on prerecorded entertainment dropped 3.1 percent, and net profit down 2.2 percent… come on UMD, pick up the slack.
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Blu-ray celebrates 91 percent sales increase for first half of 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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An iPhone look-alike in a nano-sized package with a FM transmitter and Windows Media Player may make for a great gag but the device is for real and available in China and Taiwan. So are fake Blackberry phones and knockoffs of other popular smartphones.
Now Taiwan’s National Communications Commission has reportedly begun a campaign to crack down on the sales of fake handsets, most of which are produced in mainland China. The knockoffs known as “shanzhai” are popular among users who want additional features that may not be found in the real models. Particularly, the iPhone is a favorite since it is not available in China. Apple is yet to negotiate a deal with a Chinese telecom provider to offer the phone to users in the country.
The Chinese phone knockoffs are an annoyance to not just handset makers but also to regulators. The Taiwanese Commission has said the handsets lack tracking numbers and often don’t have valid radio frequencies they can operate on.
The Commission has said, for now, it’s crackdown will focus on those selling the devices. Users of fake handsets will not be targeted. And in what seems to be a strangely contradictory policy, users can continue to bring up to five “shanzhai” handsets from mainland China or Hong Kong. Meanwhile sellers of the knockoffs could face up to a $9000 fine.
No word on what happens to Kindle knock-off.
Photo: A fake iPhone (Andrew Currie/Flickr)
(via Unwired View)
Research in Motion hit a milestone today, only “achievement” wouldn’t necessarily be the best way to describe it. The BlackBerry maker has finally ended a long-running patent dispute with Visto Corp., paying out $267.5 million to settle the matter — a much larger fee than the $7.7 million Visto got from Seven Networks, but conversely a fraction of the reported $612.5 million RIM paid to settle with NTP years back. With it, however, comes a fully paid license to use Visto’s patents, and some of the plaintiff’s intellectual property by way of transferred ownership. So now that we can move on from that dispute, who’s next to take the mantle and vie for a piece of BlackBerry’s pie?
Filed under: Cellphones
RIM settles with patent holder Visto to the tune of $267.5 million originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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When Circuit City announced back in January that it was liquidating its assets after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last fall, it was sad to see the electronics chain close its doors forever. But just like athletes and singers who announce their retirement only to keep coming back, Circuit City is rising once again. This time, however, it’s an online-only presence, powered by Systemax, a Fortune 1000 company and retailer of brand-name and private-label products. (Systemax also runs CompUSA.com and TigerDirect.com.)
On the new CircuitCity.com, it’s a lot easier to find what you’re looking for. On each product page, you’ll find photo galleries, videos, product descriptions and specs, and customer reviews. I like the Quick Deal Links at the bottom of the homepage for quick access to deals.
Speaking of deals, CircuitCity.com is running a number of them on displays, laptops, cameras, and more. For today’s TechSaver Test, I’m going to challenge the site’s sales on the Samsung 2043SWX 20″ LCD Monitor, the Garmin Nuvi 265WT, the Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless G Router, and the Sharp LCC5255U Aquos 52″ LCD HDTV.
Find out if you should do your shopping on CircuitCity.com, after the jump.
We sort of saw the writing on the wall, but now Belkin has went and made it official: the FlyWire is dead. Originally showcased at CES 2008 and at practically every AV-related trade show since, the wireless HD-enabling FlyWire was seen as the poster child for wireless HD / HDMI by many, and the death of this product certainly doesn’t bode well for the technology as a whole. It’s true that AMIMON — the wireless startup responsible for the WHDI technology within the FlyWire and a few other devices — just landed an extra $10 million in VC funding, but still, we’ve literally been waiting years for this so-called “promising technology” to get a foothold in the market. Or even make a wave, really.
As has become customary these days, Belkin is also pinning the cancellation of the FlyWire on the economy, with a spokesperson telling us that the “retail price of $1,499 would be out of line given the current state of the economy.” She continued by stating that the company has “opted to halt production of FlyWire” and “will no longer be introducing [it] to the market.” Granted, the company does seem somewhat apologetic, concluding that “there will be some disappointed folks out there, but [Belkin’s] end goal is to introduce products that are accessible and that make sense in the current environment.”
Frankly, we’re not buying it. In April, Belkin affirmed to us that while AMIMON’s WDHI technology was “solid,” it was taking its sweet time in order to “pay very close attention to the user experience, such as the packaging, setup, and the quick install guide.” We could be way off base here, but we’d say the economy was sucking quite a bit harder in April than it is today. And honestly, that’s beside the point. A $1,500 device that enabled a Blu-ray player to communicate wirelessly with an HDTV is obviously a luxury item, and regardless of unemployment numbers, Belkin had to know that the FlyWire would only appeal to upscale consumers. You know, the same folks who also put in an order for a Ferrari California in 1H 2009 while their hedge fund dived.
To us, the sudden death of the FlyWire is more of an industry signal than anything. For quite some while, we’ve been wondering when the industry at large would embrace wireless HD and HDMI technology, and now we’re beginning to think that said embrace will never happen in any significant capacity. Even Wireless USB couldn’t cut it, and we’re guessing there are an awful lot more USB users out there than HDMI. If the price dropped dramatically and the sector consolidated a bit in order to agree on a single standard, we’d say wireless HD / HDMI has a fighting chance. ‘Til that happens, you can pretty much bank on the FlyWire fiasco becoming a model for the rest. Belkin’s statement in full is past the break.
Continue reading Belkin kills the FlyWire — does wireless HD / HDMI even have a chance?
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Wireless
Belkin kills the FlyWire — does wireless HD / HDMI even have a chance? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
(Credit: Slacker Radio)Don’t have a streaming radio application on your BlackBerry Storm yet? If you’re a Verizon user, all you have to do to get one is wait.
On Thursday, Verizon started rolling out the Slacker Radio application to every BlackBerry Storm user in its U.S. …
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