Archive for December, 2007
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High Tech Kids Gift Guide
MTV Rock Band Special Edition
Letting gamers go beyond air guitar to fulfill their rock n’ roll fantasy, MTVs Rock Band ups the ante over Guitar Hero by including master lead guitar, drums, and a microphone for vocals to get both your grove and your game on. Very similar to Guitar Hero, the band can not only master recordings from legendary artists, they can do it in career and world tour modes.
Cost : around $250
Power Tour Guitar, Les Paul Edition
If your kid wants to go beyond 5 buttons and game play to grinding with a real axe with real music, the Power Tour Guitar Les Paul edition may be the perfect way for him/her to learn. The Power Tour Guitar uses lights, rather than strings, to teach the user how to play several legendary classic rock songs. The lights flash indicating where to place fingers and strumming actually plays the tune digitally. Hook it up to the optional amp and you’re ready to rock n’ roll!
Cost : around $50
Continue reading » High Tech Kids Gift Guide
Phantom Lapboard isn’t vaporware after all
I don’t know if you pay much attention to gaming news, but a few years back there was a company touting a revolutionary gaming console that you could get for free with a monthly subscription that would net you game downloads. Well, needless to say it’ll be arriving around the same time as Duke Nukem Forever (See: never). While we all pretty much guessed from the start that it would never come out, I thought that their combination keyboard/mouse lapboard was pretty cool. So when someone told me that they were actually selling it as a standalone product, I flipped.
Continue reading » Phantom Lapboard isn’t vaporware after all
Lighted Message Board
How many of us actually have message boards but do not really pay any attention to the stuff displayed on it? The Lighted Message Board could change things around. Here are some of its features.
The Lighted Message Board retails for £19.95.
Source: TechChee
Heart Hand Warmer to use again and again
It’s the time of year where, if you spend a lot of time outside doing outdoor activities (or if you have to watch someone else do those outdoor activities) it’s pretty likely that your hands will get cold. Those chemical hand warmer packets are nice, but you only get one use out of them.
The Continue reading » Heart Hand Warmer is a red, heart-shaped chemical hand warmer that can be used over and over again to keep your hands nice and toasty. On the inside, there is a small metal disc that when moved back and forth a few times in the clearish gel will turn the gel opaque. Heart Hand Warmer to use again and again
Kanguru USB Duplicator
Let us face it, USB flash drives are the wave of the present and future, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. We have (or I should say we had) devices that could copy 3.5 floppies all at once, and we have devices that can copy many CDs at one time, so why not a device that can copy many flash drives?
That is the premise behind the Kanguru USB Duplicator. It comes in two sizes, and the largest has the power to copy information onto 24 USB flash drives at once. The other one can do about nine.
Continue reading » Kanguru USB Duplicator
ITRI Makes Big Stride in Digital Paper
I’m looking forward to the digital paper decade, where all our information will be moving and active on digital paper as both a hard copy and soft copy all at the same time.
The Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan has made a great stride in this effort with their debut of the 10.4 inch Cholesteric LCD (Ch-LC) flexible display and flexible LED backlighting unit.
The unit has two plastic substrates with a thickness of less than 10mm, and its structure is less than 10 millimeters. This takes the thickness of a traditional color Ch-LCD and cuts it in half.
Continue reading » ITRI Makes Big Stride in Digital Paper
iPond plays sounds, stores fish
Fancy this portable speaker that carries a fish along with it? That’s exactly what the iPond is – it hooks up to portable audio devices like the iPod, but has in recent times drawn the ire from animal rights groups as the iPond is said to offer inadequate space for a fish to live. Meant for Betta fish (also known as Siamese fighting fish), the 650mm iPond has been said to be insufficient, since a single Betta fish requires around 10 liters of water to swim around and receive a proper amount of oxygen. In addition, the speaker is located at the bottom, so your favorite trance sounds might actually unsettle the fish further. The iPond retails for $60.
Source: Gizmodo
Crimson RC Blaster universal remote control system announced
Zilog, a universal remote control market leader has just added to its line of consumer solutions the new Crimzon RC Blaster system. This universal infrared remote control system will be able to integrated itself to any digital device easily, providing immediate remote control capability. It will feature the market’s most comprehensive code database, boasting an easy to implement API as well as a robust new IR learning function that helps universalize all remotes in the digital home. A wide range of applications will be targeted by the Crimzon RC Blaster IR system, including set-top boxes, satellite and cable receivers, IPTV, DVD recorders, media center hubs, PDAs, toys, cellphones and even secure monitoring systems.
Continue reading » Crimson RC Blaster universal remote control system announced
