Retrode 2 Retro Gaming Adapter Brings SNES / Genesis Support to your PC for $85

As the story goes, the product shown above is the result of some three years of toiling, with the second iteration handling cartridges for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. In fact, there's a pair of ports on here, enabling one cart from each console to be loaded up and carried around. Users need only to find and install an emulator on their machine, plug a cartridge and / or an associated controller into the device and then connect the Retrode 2 to one's computer via USB. Once you've loaded a ROM into your emulator, configured your controller and canceled every appointment on your calendar for the next 48 hours... well, you're in for quite a weekend of retro gaming nirvana. Get it here for $84.99, with shipments expected to begin on January 23rd.

Internet Explorer Holds Onto top Browser Crown While Chrome and Firefox Tussle Over Second Place

Both Net Applications and StatCounter have released their figures for browser market share for 2011 and it makes for largely unsurprising reading. Internet Explorer's full share has dropped but it still maintains the top spot -- a 52 percent share according to Net Applications and 39 percent according to StatCounter. Meanwhile, second place remains tantalizingly within reach for Chrome, which has made headway catching up with Firefox, whose growth had apparently stalled during 2011.

According to Net Applications, Firefox held a 21.8 percent share of browser users this month, while Chrome reached 19.1 percent, up just under 8 percent and capping off a second year of impressive growth. Meanwhile, StatCounter pegs Google's browser at second place for the end of the year, claiming 27.3 percent versus the 25.3 percent share grabbed by its vulpine rival. Unsurprisingly, the Windows Team Blog takes a different slant on recent browsing trends, trumpeting that its latest version, Internet Explorer 9, continues to grow on Windows 7. This is, however, balanced out by a corresponding drop in the users of its predecessor, IE 8. Better luck next year, eh, Microsoft?

This Is One Ridiculously Over-The-Top iPhone Camera Case

Made from 32 individual polycarbonate parts, the case includes an optical viewfinder, a shutter button that presses on the iPhone's volume button, a mock-lens with a mirror in the center for taking easy self-shots, a tripod mount, and even a non-functioning micro hot shoe. All so it looks the part. You can even swap out the included faux lens for some flat pancake glass, if you've got photographer friends to impress.

The case also provides a mount allowing you to use a miniature fisheye or macro lens with the iPhone's camera, so there's at least some level of added functionality when using it. But enough to justify the $65 price tag, plus $30 for a neck strap and $45 for the extra lenses?

Genius Scale Only Shows You How Much You’ve Gained Or Lost

When you're battling the bulge, your bathroom scale can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. So instead of displaying your actual weight, which can be discouraging, this scale only tells you how much you've lost or gained.

The first time you step on the $78 Quantum scale it registers your weight, but still keeps it a secret from you. And after that it simply gives you a plus or minus reading depending on if you've gained weight since your last reading, or lost some.

Admittedly it's not the easiest way to tell if you're making weight loss progress unless you're keeping tabs on your up and down measurements on a daily basis. But if you're dedicated to the cause, it should make the morning routine of weighing yourself a bit less dreadful. Get it here.

 

 

These Unwearable Specs Poorly Hide a Digital Camera

If you fancy yourself an amateur Bond, there are plenty of high-tech glasses available that discreetly hide a compact camera. This isn't one of them. In fact, these Fuuvi Megane glasses aren't going to fool anyone.

But I guess they're not supposed to either. It looks like novelty is the name of the game here, with the $60 red, black, blue, or white glasses hanging from your neck with an included obnoxious gold chain.

They're a stylish fashion accessory more than anything. Albeit, a stylish fashion accessory capable of shooting 2048x1536 pixel stills and NTSC quality video. A microSD/SDHC card provides up to 16GB of storage, while a USB charged battery lets you capture up to an hour of video before it conks out. More here.

 

 

Skype’s Giving Manhattan Free Wi-Fi For New Year’s

If you live in NYC, or are headed there for the massive clusternut of cold and pain that is the Times Square ball drop, you can officially leave your data plan behind. Skype's flooding the island with free, fast Wi-Fi from noon tomorrow until noon on January 1.

Skype says 16 neighborhoods are covered in all, including Times Square, Union Square, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and most of the places where you can buy a $5 street pashmina. Just find a Skype Wifi hotspot on your mobile device, connect, and browse. Or at least, that seems to be the case; you may need to go through Skype on your desktop or iOS device. In either event, the service will be provided by Towerstream, which has hopefully girded its access points for the coming onslaught.

It's the second time in the last few weeks that Skype has played Wi-Fi Claus; its free airport Wi-Fi offer expired just a few days ago. And while there's no guarantee that the network can handle the crush of millions of New Yorkers and/or tourists googling Snooki's weight loss secrets, it's certainly a nice gesture.

 

 

Girl With a Funny Talent

Ed Hardy Headphones Hope to Ink up Your Ears

Celebrity headphone endorsements are very à la mode right now, and we've seen Ed Hardy's trademark tattoo stylings defacing gadgetry before, so, if you were the one lamenting the glaring omission that was Hardy-branded cans, then he obviously got your letter. The new "Stereo" range evidently refers to the two designs available thus far: Skull and Bones for the over-ears ($66), while your in-ears get some Tiger power ($29). The in-ears also feature a microphone, presumably so you can call for help from the fashion police. Both are available now here.

1 Million Galaxy Notes Shipped Worldwide

The Galaxy Note, Samsung's unconventional powerhouse, has managed to ship 1 million units in under two months. While eager US customers still wait for the 5.3-inch tabletphone hybrid to arrive on their shores, the Galaxy Note has apparently struck a chord in Europe and Asia.

The number of units shipped is always more substantial than the number devices out there in end-users' (preferably large) hands, but it bodes well for the device's eventual reception in the US. Now, whether it will include an LTE radio, we'll have to wait and see.

 

 

MIT Scholar Builds a Self-balancing Unicycle to Roll Fast and Furious Around Campus

MIT student Stephan Boyer has built his own electrical uni-ride, which he's dubbing the "Bullet." The single-wheel transporter packs a custom MIG-welded steel body, two 7Ah 12-volt batteries, an ATmega328 chip and a 450-watt electric motor. While the Bullet isn't the speediest of solowheel demons (15mph max), it's on par with its $25,000 Ryno Motors counterpart. As far as power efficiency, the Bullet can go up to five miles on a single charge -- more than enough juice to hit a few classroom round-trips.

Volkswagen Is Forcing Employees to Turn Off Their BlackBerrys So They’ll Stop Working All the Time

BlackBerrys are still the de facto standard in the work force and represent a sort of leash an employer has on an employee. If you see that indicator light blink, you better get to work. The problem with that is that no employee ever stops thinking about work! VW wants to change that. They're turning off employee BlackBerrys after work.

It's an impressive and progressive idea that's sure to improve the quality of life of their employees. According to the Financial Times, VW's e-mail server will stop sending messages to an employee's BlackBerry 30 minutes after their shift is over and only start up again 30 minutes before their shift starts. That way, VW employees can really get away from their work and not feel weighed down by after hour messages. Live life! No stress! Save time for yourself.

Plus, the employees are probably thinking any reason to use a BlackBerry less is a good reason in itself.

 

 

Untethered Jailbreak now Available for pre-A5 iPhones, iPads and Touches

It's just a few weeks since pod2g revealed his untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 and -- boom -- all of a sudden it's up for the DL. The exploit has been incorporated into redsn0w 0.9.10, the Pwnage Tool and Chronic Devteam's Cydia package, and it works on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (including the CDMA version), iPad 1, iPod Touch 3G and iPod Touch 4G, so long as they've been updated to iOS 5.0.1. Meanwhile, pod2g is reportedly now looking for a way to snap the shackles on A5-based devices too, but hopefully only after he's taken some rest -- a burned-out jailbreaker is no good to anybody. Full instructions here.

 

 

Where Christmas Lights Go to Die

Welcome to Shijiao. It's a bustling town in China that just so happens to be the unofficial capital of dead and unwanted Christmas lights. According to The Atlantic, 20 million pounds of old Christmas lights make it through Shijao every year. What  for?

The answer: slippers. The plastic and rubber that is used in Christmas lights wiring can also be re-purposed into slippers and other materials in China. Hence, the demand. Basically, China has figured out how to capitalize and find new life in our seasonal decorations. People who recycle the Christmas lights, separate the plastic wrap that insulates the copper wire and sells it independently from each other. On one end you have copper (which is plenty valuable) and on the other side you have the re-usable plastic. The process of getting there is not unlike panning for gold in the modern age.

 

 

Spire Installer Brings Siri to any Jailbroken iOS 5 Device, Legally -- Proxy Still Required

A few months of work by iOS hackers Grant Paul (aka chpwn), Steven Troughton-Smith and Ryan Petrich has culminated in the release of Spire, a new installer that will easily set up Siri on your jailbroken iOS 5 device. While Apple has kept its little helper exclusively constrained to the iPhone 4S, it now runs on iPads, iPhone 4, iPod touches and the iPhone 3GS, and while that's been done before they claim the other new trick is that it's legal, avoiding the copyright infringement inherent in previous hacks. 

When installed it will initiate a 100MB download of Siri directly from Apple so watch your bandwidth limits, and also be prepared to set up your own proxy server with donated info from an iPhone 4S to hold the line between Apple's backend and yourself. It's available on Cydia now so if you've been waiting for a way to get this feature for yourself it's not far away, however Troughton-Smith tells9to5 Mac that the next major step may not come until the iPhone 4S is jailbroken and they can avoid the proxy server issues altogether. More here.

 

 

An iPhone Case That Poops Flash Drives

The second addition to Hybrid Series line of iPhone cases is the aptly named USB. Because besides providing a protective plastic outer shell, the case also stores a thin flash drive in its—umm—posterior.

Pricing and availability have yet to be announced, but the USB case will come in your choice of five different colors that can be mix and matched with the accompanying flash drives. Which themselves come in five different varieties, ranging in capacity from 2GB to 32GB. Probably dependent on how much data it consumed the night before.

 

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Yeah, it's pretty unfortunate that you've got to work tomorrow (well, unless you're down with Boxing Day), but let's take it one 24-hour window at a time, shall we? It's not as if you've had any shortage of gizmos to choose from this year, and while you aren't likely to get a Transformer Prime, there's plenty of other stocking stuffers to look forward to. Speaking of which, what'd you find under your tree this morning? A Kindle Fire? That new laptop you've been longing for? A few new cables to do... cable-y things with?

 

 

Use Siri on Your Mac (Sort Of)

Air Dictate is a clever little app that ports the power of Siri over to the Mac. Kind of. It doesn't have any of the bells and whistles of Siri (don't go starting conversations!) but rather, uses the extremely accurate speech recognition engine in Siri to dictate text to your Mac.

Basically, you talk into your iPhone 4S and words pop up on the Mac. You have to download a companion app on your Mac and make sure both the iPhone and Mac are on the same Wi-Fi network. After that, speak away and you'll see your Mac log down every word you say. Definitely worth the buck if you prefer talking to typing.

 

 

Screenshots of Windows 8 Build 8172 Emerge, Looks a lot Like Windows 8

Hope you weren't expecting anything groundbreaking from the latest leaks of Windows 8, because so far as we can tell, build 8172 looks just about like the build 8102. That said, thesedo look a wee bit more polished than earlier betas, and there are a few appreciated shots of the store and a new look for settings. If that kind of nerd-speak gets you all hot and bothered, head on here with your eyes peeled.

It Scoops, Measures, and Spreads—Is This the World’s Greatest Spoon?

Quirky's latest creation is a flat spreader with a set of "living hinges" that allow it to fold up into a measuring spoon, so you can dole out the exact amount of peanut butter, cream cheese, or mayo. A set of labeled lines marks off teaspoon and tablespoon measurements, and thin grip strips on either side ensures it's not going to fall out of your hand while scooping or spreading like you're playing the inept user in an infomercial.

Pricing is to be determined once the Scoop goes into production, but it's safe to assume it will be on the reasonable side. After all, it's still just a spoon. More here.

 

 

Future MacBooks Could Be Powered by Fuel Cells

The latest patent application to come out of Cupertino could allow for new Macbooks that are slimmer, lighter, greener and couldprovide power for days without a charge. What's the magic ingredient? Fuel cells!

Dredged up by Apple Insider, Apple's patent indicates that hydrogen fuel cells would be used to send and receive power from a battery. But they also admit that developing a product which is small enough and cheap enough to be placed in one of their laptops will be a challenge.