Gadgets and New Technologies

Brendan Vaughan’s collection of real-life tales of ingenuity, What Would MacGyver Do?, recently republished by Penguin, has a great premise: It’s a collection of true stories featuring the kind of situational hacking (bombs defused with paperclips, sheds converted into aircraft) that the TV show MacGyver made famous in the 1980s. The resulting book does make for some fun reading, if only to guffaw at the haplessness of people locking themselves out of their cars, forgetting to set the parking brakes, ripping their underwear in the heat of passion, or planning parties but forgetting to get the food. Sadly, most of the "MacGyverisms" are little more than standard-fare workarounds to ordinary situations. (Read the full post about ‘Book Review: What Would MacGyver Do?’…)

Share This

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Posted Feb 15th 2008 11:39AM by Joshua TopolskyFiled under: HDTV With HD DVD, things are just going from bad, to really bad, to worse, to car-crash-you-can’t-stop-looking-at. You can file this one under that latter category, as Wal-Mart has officially announced its intentions to stop stocking hd dvd players and movies by June. According to reports, the retailer came to the decision after Netflix and Best Buy made announcements concerning their position in the HD format war. (Read the full post about ‘Wal-Mart to officially discontinue HD DVD sales by June’…)

Share This

The latest Horizon line 414-LCR-X-A from Leon Speakers will definitely make a fine addition to your flat screen display at home, and it doesn’t take up much space unlike those huge speakers. This offering brings together the left, center and right channels in a single cabinet. Good to know that by forking over $2,495 for this, you get custom built dimensions and finish to complement your flat panel display at a depth of less than 4″. I don’t know - if you’re rich enough to pick this up, how come you’re living in such a small pad that requires space saving speakers? (Read the full post about ‘Leon Speakers Horizon Line’…)

Share This

While Vodafone claims that their new and advanced customer service available directly on the handset itself in real time is meant to provide users with a self care facility, I think otherwise. Chances are Vodafone is going to cut down on its support staff, hoping that this self-help service would be able to solve their support team from a whole lot of troubleshooting. Then again, I would think that clueless folks themselves might even find it difficult to navigate through such a self-help system, which is why they have customer service consultants in the first place. How effective do you think such a system will be? (Read the full post about ‘Vodafone Self-Help Service’…)

Share This

Posted Feb 15th 2008 2:13PM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Desktops, Laptops Upstart Montalvo Systems sure hasn’t been talking much about exactly what it’s doing with the $73 million in funding its received, but CNET News.com has now thankfully pulled back a bit of the mystery on the processor the company’s betting its fortunes on. Most interestingly, CNET reports that the chip is much more in line with the Cell processor than Intel’s or AMD’s offerings, yet it will apparently be “theoretically” capable of running the same software as those processors. Specifically, the chip apparently won’t be symmetrical, but rather employ a mix of high-performance cores and lower-performance cores on the same piece of silicon, which should ultimately cut power consumption by letting applications run only on the cores they need. (Read the full post about ‘Details emerge on Montalvo’s Intel-challenging mystery processor’…)

Share This

After an initial release delay of 16 days, today is the day that Everex is scheduled to begin shipping the Cloudbook, but sadly it is not looking that good. Everex still has February 15 listed as the shipping date, but a quick check of the few sites that are going to offer the Cloudbook are not giving us anything positive. Wal-Mart still has not added the Cloudbook to their website, ZaReason has it listed as “out of stock” and a listing on NewEgg is showing it as a “deactivated item.” Lets hope that Everex does not end up with another delay, should it become available it will retail for $399. Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed → (Read the full post about ‘Will Everex ship the Cloudbook today?’…)

Share This

Some new information has turned up that points to both AT&T and Verizon launching the Palm Centro. It is commonly know that they exclusivity deal with Sprint is ending soon and makes perfect sense that we can expect to see the popular handset showing up with other carriers, except this was previously rumored to be going to AT&T and T-Mobile. Now with the AT&T Centro all but officially confirmed for Tuesday February 19, we can also expect a Verizon branded model as well. Among the company’s new products, Coster said, will be a version of the Centro with phone service from AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. An exclusive deal with Sprint Nextel Corp. (Read the full post about ‘Rumor: Palm Centro to launch with Verizon’…)

Share This

Tefal’s new QuickCup boils water a cup at a time, and it does it in just three seconds, faster than it takes the promo site to load (it’s Flash). Water is passed through a spiral shaped heater for almost instant boiling.Two thirds of the regular Gadget Lab team are English, so we know a good cup of tea when we taste one, and on paper, the QuickCup looks like it can deliver. Tap water is filtered (cold water can also be dispensed) and because it is boiled one cup at a time, the tea will taste fresh. (Read the full post about ‘QuickCup Boils Water in Three Seconds’…)

Share This

Geeks get all the best clothes - and this is as high-tech as they come (right now). Never be out of the loop when you’re wondering the streets looking for your next spot. This hi-tech garment lets you know when you’re in a WiFi zone by graphically displaying the WiFi connections floating around the vicinity. Glowing bars on the front of the shirt dynamically change as the signal strength fluctuates. No longer do you need to be poking your smartphone, PDA, or opening up your laptop, to check for the local Wi Fi signal and its strength. Capable of showing strengths of 802.11b or 802.11g the WiFi Detecting T-Shirt is destined to become an essential travelling companion for all you roving surfers. (Read the full post about ‘Wi-Fi Wear’…)

Share This

While it may not have the same sexy aluminum exterior of the macbook air, the ThinkPad X300 is still not a laptop to ignore. We have already seen the specs and expected pricing, now we have found some nice clear shots showing off the nice look of the yet-to-be-released X300, and when you are dreaming of new products nothing is better than those “in-the-wild” style pics. Hit the read link below to check out the X300 in all its glory. Read [Flickr] Via [Engadget] Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! (Read the full post about ‘Lenovo ThinkPad X300; new images surface’…)

Share This