The U.S. version of Nintendo's reward program, Club Nintendo, never seems to have quite the same caliber of awesome schwag as the original Japanese version. Items like the Wiimote TV remote that was never available here, and now this pixelated 8-bit Super Mario throw cushion.
Platinum members in Japan will have their choice of three new premiums including a 2012 calendar, a couple of game soundtracks from a handful of titles and this amazing Dot Mario Cushion featuring a pixelated version of the hero plumber from his old school Famicom days. Now given Mayan predictions, that 2012 calendar could be a real collector's item if the Earth does come to an end next year. But I'd take my chances with the cushion instead, ensuring my last days on the planet were at least comfy. The premiums are also available to members who cash in 400 points, so if you want all three and can afford it, I'd still say just get three pillows. More here.
Camping on the beach with the sound of the surf is a great way to relax, but when you're a surfer, it's also the easiest way to guarantee you won't miss a great wave when the tide rolls in. So the Wave Cave is kind of like an emergency shelter for a situation that's not really an emergency.
It's primarily designed for use as a padded case, capable of storing up to four surfboards of various sizes. But in a side pocket you'll find a pop-up tent that clips and zippers to the case, which doubles as a padded floor when empty for comfortable sleeping. The Wave Cave is available in three different sizes depending on how many boards you want to carry, and vary in price from about $260 to $315. It looks like each model provides the same amount of sleeping space when setup, and while the tent will protect you from the sun and the rain while you spend your days at the beach, it's not going to do much to keep your critical parents at bay.
Tom Boddingham only wanted a cool pair of monster foot slippers. What he received instead was a monster-sized slipper, after Chinese factory workers ignored an extremely crucial decimal point. Hurray for obvious marketing stunts!
The seven foot long shoe is in all likelihood just a stupid PR publicity scam for some brand of goofy monster slippers, but hell, I think they'd have more luck selling enormous house sneakers than they would with shoes actually meant to fit your foot. More here.
After all the pushing, squeezing and screaming, the universe has finally given birth to a new planet, in an eruption that two scientists managed to capture on film. The newborn pile of planetary pudge, named LkCa 15 b, was discovered by Drs. Michael Ireland and Adam Kraus, who, over the course of 12 months, successfully documented the event using Keck telescopes and a technique called aperture mask interferometry. Their findings, published in Astrophysical Journal describe a Jupiter-like gaseous planet that likely began forming some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.
Located about 450 light years from Earth, it's also the youngest planet ever observed, having dethroned the previous record-holder, which was about five times older. According to Ireland and Kraus, the LkCa 15 b is still being formed out of a circle of dust and gas surrounding a 2-million-year-old star. By observing a "young gas giant in the process of formation," the researchers hope to find answers to fundamental questions that have long eluded them. "These very basic questions of when and where are best answered when you can actually see the planet forming, as the process is happening right now"
Winter is creeping up. Luckily, your pet dog is there to greet you and offer the opportunity for a warming hug the minute you get home. But for animal lovers who are allergic to furs? Don't be discouraged — grabbing one of these USB Animal Cushions might be a solution.
They're no replacement for a real man's best friend, but they can get you toasty warm within a few seconds of a USB power. They also don't look as cute or have a face for that matter, but for $53, they're cheaper than owning an actual pet. And they won't wiggle away when you need that heat! The cushions come in three different colors with your choice of a dog or pig. Get it here.
Nearly a month after its initial announcement, Samsung's ready to deliver the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus to the good ol' US of A just in time for the winter gift-giving season. The WiFi-only device, which packs a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU with 1GB of RAM, Android 3.2, 3MP camera with 720p HD video capture and a 7-inch LCD with 1024 x 600 resolution, will be begging for your credit card as of November 13th at Best Buy, Amazon and other retailers.
Are you an early adopter? No prob -- you'll have the opportunity to pre-order yours at "select retailers" this coming Sunday, though no specific outlets were called out by name. The 16GB is the only version arriving so far, but Sammy told us to expect the 32GB flavor later this year or early 2012 (likely for $499, if yesterday's brief appearance on Amazon is any indicator).
All those awesome shots you've put on Instagram have got to be good for something other than collecting internet dust, right? That is right, because now you can turn those photos into the coolest iPhone cases I've seen.
No, they're not gold-embossed or diamond-studded, but they're covered with your art. It's an elegant expression of who you are, and it's a truly unique case because only you can print your design. Casetagram has four layouts to choose from: even squares, even circles, uneven rectangles, or uneven circles, and you can choose whether you want it on a white case or a clear case. You just sign on with your Instagram ID, and pick the shots you want. Easy peasy.
This is one of the best uses of Instagram's API we've seen. You can get cases that fit the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, and they'll run you 35 bucks (which includes international shipping). Make one here.
Qaddafi: dictator, despot, dead, man of immense style. If you knew your reign of shitty terror was moribund, wouldn't you want to go out in style? And so he did, wielding this gold pistol to the very end.
The glistening piece was looted by Mohammed al-Babi, easily one of the most awesome dudes on the planet at the moment, who took it off Qaddafi's after he was shot up. This will be one hell of a family heirloom. So long, Moammar. You left behind a pretty awful legacy, but your taste for so-tacky-it's-cool weaponry was fine indeed.
The first renders of the HTC Rezound have appeared online, thanks to some of the device's cases going up for pre-order. You can see that, like the Sensation XE, the phone has red-glowing soft keys -- a bit of a departure from HTC's traditionally conservative design language.
If you recall, the phone formerly called Vigor is said to have a 4.3-inch screen, a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1GB RAM, Beats Audio and an 8MP rear camera. Now that you know what the Verizon 4G cellular telephone will look like, you'll be able to pick one out of a lineup when it's available, which should be on November 10th for $300 on contract.
OCZ Technology's pushing SSDs on step further this morning, with the introduction of the Octane SATA 6Gbps and Octane-S2 SATA 3Gbps SSDs. These guys promise "record-breaking access times" and up to 1TB of capacity, with Indilinx Everest internals playing things out on the inside. Oddly enough, the company claims that this is the world's first SSD to hit 1TB, but in fact, we saw the first one from pure Silicon way back in early 2009. At any rate, the company claims that these guys can deliver up to 560MB/sec of bandwidth and 45,000 IOPS, and they rely on a proprietary page mapping algorithms allow for steady mixed-workload performance.
The Octane series also includes a number of features unique to Indilinx -- including latency reduction technology -- enabling both read and write access times as low as 0.06ms and 0.09ms, respectively. Aside from that 1TB flagship, there will also be 128GB, 256GB and 1TB models, and while no pricing details are being outed just yet, we're told to expect around $1.10 to $1.30 per gigabyte. Interested? They'll start shipping on November 1st.
HTC may be busy pondering its Android 4.0 future, but Sony Ericsson is apparently ready to take a bite out of Google's Ice Cream Sandwich. Yesterday, in a post on its Facebook page, Sony Ericsson's Dutch branch stated that it will indeed upgrade its Xperia lineup to the latest Android OS, though it didn't offer any details on release dates.
Sony Ericsson is currently rolling out the upgrade to Gingerbread 2.3.4 across its entire 2011 Xperia smartphone portfolio. This software upgrade will be available through a phased roll out in select markets. Beyond Gingerbread 2.3.4, we plan to upgrade our 2011 Xperia smartphone portfolio to the next Android platform made available to us.
The company went on to say that all official software announcements will be posted on its blog.
Ice Cream Sandwich here! Ice Cream Sandwich is here! And in the world of Android, that can only mean one thing (besides a bunch of nerds whining about not having their update yet): Oh god I need to know what's next.
The name might already be settled, but for now, what you think will be coming down the pipe in the next iteration of Android, and more importantly, what alphabeticalized dessert it'll be named after.
When Al Gore first created the internet (hard wink, everybody), the plan was for Big Brother to collect your data, not Silicon Valley titans. Now Google, the company that mainly tends the gates to the web's vast array of information, is stepping up to its "Do No Evil" motto, and making encrypted search the norm -- for account users. While Gmail's long had SSL set as a default login, good ol' Joe Public's had to specifically access Mountain View's dedicated encrypted search page for anonymous surfing privileges. No longer, as Gmail users signed in to Goog's suite of web services will be automatically redirected to https://www.google.com where their searches and results will be hidden from prying eyes. The protection doesn't extend out to web advertisements, so those specific clicks willdeliver the same metric-relevant info that helps marketers optimize their hyper-targeting.
Wait no more. Google and Samsung have just made the long-awaited Galaxy Nexus. Those with bantam hands need not apply, as this 4.65-inch behemoth is bound to bring back talk of Sidetalkin'. Naturally, Ice Cream Sandwich is onboard, with Google finally revealing the version number as 4.0. Other specs include an HD Super AMOLED display (1,280 x 720), a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 5 megapixel rear camera (with LED flash), a 1.3 megapixel front-facing cam, 1080p video recording and playback, a newfangled panorama mode, a 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth 3.0. You'll also find USB 2.0, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, an embedded NFC module, accelerometer, compass, gyro, proximity sensor and even a barometer -- yeah, a barometer. Finishing things out, there's 1GB of RAM, 16 or 32GB of internal storage space and a 1,750mAh battery. As for radios? There's an HSPA+ model on tap, while an LTE version will "be available depending on region."
Focusing on Ice Cream Sandwich for a tick, Android 4.0 will bring "an entirely new look and feel to Android," boasting a redesigned user interface, bolstered multitasking / notifications, full-on NFC support and a new People app, which enables users to browse friends, family and coworkers' photos whilst peeking their status updates from Google+. ICS also introduces Face Unlock, which taps into facial recognition protocols in order to unlock your handset. And then there's Android Beam, an NFC-based technology that allows you to "quickly share webpages, apps and YouTube videos by simply tapping two phones together." According to Goog, the "lock screen, home screen, phone app and everything in between has been rethought and redesigned," and this is quite the beastly phone to launch with.
Not sure why, but the thought of gooping out all the slimy mess from inside a pumpkin makes me a bit queasy. This Halloween, I'm going to keep my hands clean and give this power-drill-propelled Pumpkin Gutter a shot.
The Pumpkin Gutter by Dakota Products looks and works much like the beater wand from a hand mixer, except this is designed to fit into a standard drill chuck. Its fast-spinning steel blade quickly and cleanly tears out all the stringy material and slime without damaging the seeds. It can even thin the pumpkin's walls for more elaborate Jack-O-Lanterns. Get it for $12 here.
Sometimes you just want to make notes on your forearm. Put that permanent marker down though, because PhD student Chris Harrison at Microsoft Research have created a new system that allows touchscreen interaction on hairy and uneven surfaces. It uses a short-range depth camera instead of the infrared sensor we've seen on similar devices, which allows it to gauge the viewing angle and other characteristics of surfaces being used -- and it can even handle pinch-to-zoom.
That is the Logitech M525 wireless mouse, a rather unassuming hunk of plastic and rubber with a scroll wheel that also tilts for navigating pages both horizontally and vertically. Sure, you get your choice of white or black, for what that's worth, but probably the most distinguishing feature is the battery life. This £35 ($40) pointer gets up to three years on a single pair of AAs. In the states you get a few more color options, including green and blue, and all versions use Logitech's proprietary wireless connection, which lets you connect up to six devices to a single tiny dongle. The M525 is available now in the US and should be available in the UK before the month is out.
How did you spend your weekend? If you're Apple, the answer is simple, really: selling a whole lot of iPhones. Cupertino this morning announced that iPhone 4S sales have reached four million -- quite an impressive number compared to what its predecessor was capable of, a fact no doubt helped by the addition of some carriers, like Verizon and Sprint here in the States. The handset is currently available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK, with plenty more countries coming by the end of the year.
Where have all the split-keyboard phones gone? It's been roughly seven years since the days of the Nokia 6820, a messaging device with an innovative form factor, but handsets with a similar mold have become extreme rarities in the market -- if they even make it to the market at all (remember the MotoSplit?). LG's hoping to gain some ground in this area by officially announcing the DoublePlay, a unique Android 2.3 handset with dual touchscreens and split QWERTY. Here's the scoop: the DoublePlay's powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and offers a 5MP rear-facing camera capable of capturing 720p HD video.
Where it gets interesting, however, is in the DoublePlay's design -- it uses a 3.5-inch display on top, sliding out to reveal a 2-inch internal screen sandwiched in between both halves of the keyboard. As it turns out, both screens can be used separately or in tandem with each other, depending on your needs. No pricing or availability was specifically announced, but the presser appears to coincide with the 2011 National Texting Championship beginning October 26th, so the phone will likely launch around the same time. Perhaps we have a device here that'll be a legend in another seven years?
