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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Still waiting to jump into the high def disc game? Or just wanted another weaker, cheaper player for the last-gen TV you phased out to your rumpus room? Well, whatever your reasons, some (not all!) Wal-Mart locations will be selling Toshiba HD-A2s for $100 — down from $200 — this Friday. Ridiculous, we know. Blu-ray gonna fight back? We hope so, we’d really like to get our hands on one for under $300, and not just by using our hookup that sells gear out of his trunk, you know?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Ryan Block

Famed maker of awesome Takara Tomy’s latest bundle of cool is a super cute air filter for babies. It’s outfitted with an antibacterial filter and Sharp’s “decontamination ion” purification tech (my AC in Japan actually had this too) so your offspring don’t inhale all the nasty, germ-y stuff floating around your house. It’s about $150 (17,640 yen), so it’s kind of pricey, but it’s smaller (115×80x140mm) and definitely packs in more cute per square inch than most air filters. [Fuji Sankei via Tokyo Mango]

Original post by Matt Buchanan

Filed under: Cellphones

Counting down the hours until the Voyager makes an appearance on Verizon? If so, here’s something sure to tide you over. Apparently, the handset’s datasheet has made its way onto the intarweb, and it’s got just about every detail you could ever want — save for a price and pinpointed release date, of course. Highlights include a 2.81-inch external touchscreen, VibeTouch tactile feedback support, V CAST Mobile TV, dual integrated speakers, a two-megapixel camera, microSD expansion slot and VZ Navigator preloaded. If you’ve undoubtedly got this one on your must-have list, hit the read link and eat your heart out.

[Via MobilitySite]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Darren Murph

Comcast ain’t so happy about the FCC’s vote to ban exclusive apartment contracts for cable providers. Says Sena Fitzmaurice, Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Government Relations:

“Consumers in apartment buildings and condos across the nation received a blow today from the action taken by the FCC. The result of this decision is likely to be higher prices for services and years of litigation and uncertainty for consumers. The significant concessions building owners have been able to bargain for on behalf of their residents will be lost.”

The argument for the bustup, however, is that by allowing tenants to choose their own provider, it’ll increase competition—since Verizon and AT&T want in the game, for one—and drive down prices as everyone’s forced to cut each other’s throat to sign up individual renters. Which way will it go? Who knows. The one thing we don’t doubt is Comcast’s ominous warning of “years of litigation” as this inevitably turns into a courtroom flustercuck. [Reuters, Flickr]

Original post by Matt Buchanan

If you’ve made the switch from incandescent light bulbs to CFLs in order to be more energy/money efficient, one issue possibly plaguing your otherwise greener conscience is where to recycle it after it goes cold in about seven years, since it can’t be recycled with glass bottles, thanks to its mercury content. IKEA to the rescue! They’ll take old CFLs off of your hands for free recycling, which is useful given the big push CFL bulbs are getting from everyone from Wal-Mart to governments. Of course, the snag is that’s only helpful if you have an IKEA somewhere in your general vicinity, but them’s the breaks. [IKEA via Consumerist, Flickr]

Original post by Matt Buchanan

Filed under: Gaming, Networking

Finally getting the street cred that its creators have so long desired, the PlayStation 3-based, distributed computing network known as Folding@Home is to be recognized by Guinness World Records. According to the group, the network is now the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world. The system, which utilizes the power of more than 670,000 PS3s to crunch data, has overall computational capabilities greater than a petaflop (which is a ton of flops). The linked consoles tackle a number of tasks, and scientists harnessing the network’s power are able to study complex medical problems — such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s — much more quickly. Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and head of the Folding@home project says, “Without them [the Folding@Home users] we would not be able to make the advancements we have made in our studies of several different diseases.” Now that Guinness has recognized the system, it can proudly stand next to luminaries such as the man with the longest fingernails, and fastest land animal.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Up until now, Verizon Wireless has charged people with any America’s Choice plan $5 per month extra to use the Mobile Web for any reason, and has charged airtime minutes while you use it. In a transition that is intended to pave the way for more variety of data usage, VZW is dropping America’s Choice altogether. The new Nationwide plans will have Mobile Web included, without a $5 monthly charge. But here’s the thing: instead of charging airtime for web and other data use, you will get charged $1.99 per megabyte of use. There are some exceptions to this rule:

You won’t get charged for data use if you are downloading songs from V Cast Music Store, or sending and receiving picture or video messages, though they still cost 25 cents a piece. Ditto for 15-cent text messages. Subscribers to V Cast video service (starting at $15 per month) will get unlimited data use for Mobile Web, as you would hope.

New add-ons to Nationwide include $20 for unlimited text messages and $40 for the full meal deal: monthly subscriptions and unlimited megabyte usage for Mobile Web, Get It Now, V CAST Video, VZ Navigator and Mobile E-mail. That is one “I HEART Verizon” plan.

Word is, some of this will also apply to the new BlackBerry plans, but I don’t have details on that just yet, so stay tuned.

It’s not a whoo-hoo, thrilling plan revision meant to save you loads of money, but it does show that Verizon is no longer clinging to this antiquated concept of airtime in a data-based world. I have confirmed that if you do want to ditch your old America’s Choice plan and swap into a Nationwide one, you will be able do to so without renewing your contract, just like we told you. [Verizon Wireless]

Original post by Wilson Rothman

Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon Wireless customers, you may want to sit down for this one. Samsung’s oh-so-sexy SGH-F700, which is currently thrilling quite a few Vodafone customers, could be headed to The Network — and soon. According to Phone Arena, the Verizon variant of the F700 will be dubbed the SCH-U940, but actual details beyond that are scant. We are told that the unit will boast a 440 x 240 resolution touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard and a two-megapixel camera, but beyond that we’re left to wonder. No worries though, as the phone will reportedly be landing “in a few months,” so keep your eyes peeled, cool?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Features, Peripherals, Wireless, Networking

You may have seen the Eye-Fi, launched this week, nearly a year and a half since we first heard about it. If you’re just catching up on the news, it’s basically a WiFi-enabled SD card (and accompanying web service) used to transparently and wirelessly transfer photos from your camera to your computer and/or a variety of photo sharing sites. Sounds like a great idea in theory, it turns out that the Eye-Fi is, in its current release, an answer seeking a question. Read on.

Continue reading Eye-Fi hands-on, impressions

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Ryan Block

newVideoPlayer(”hbomb_gawker.flv”, 475, 286);Rip Curl wetsuits may keep surfers warm in general, but nobody recommended hitting the waves in 20 degree weather, with wind chill factor bringing it down to -4 degrees Fahrenheit. Not until the arrival of the H-Bomb power-heated wetsuit, that is. All we know about this unreleased product is that it uses “fibre-heating elements, which conduct electricity that generate heat and warm the blood.” This video was shot last winter, when Floridian Adam Wickwire and Hawaiian Elise Garrigue went product testing in the “icy, unexplored oceans of the Arctic Circle.” [Rip Curl] Thanks, Matt!

Original post by Wilson Rothman