Filed under: Cellphones

Well hot damn, looks like Motorola went and sprung their smokin', linux-based ROKR E6 upon China today. Better yet, we now know that this 14.5-mm thinster delivers the much appreciated GSM 900/1800 bands in addition to the 1900 band we saw tested and approved in the FCC filing. That makes it of limited use (but use nonetheless) here in the US as long as you stay within the T-Mobile network. The phone delivers a 2.4-inch, 260k color QVGA touch-screen with stylus, a 2 megapixel camera and push-to-talk capabilities in addition to handwriting recognition, a QR code (barcode) scanner, business card reader, and document viewer for PDF and the most common MS Office apps. And unlike the first gen ROKR, this pup drops iTunes in favor of RealPlayer which means support for MP3, MPEG4, AAC+, WAV, and RealAudio formats -- fine and all, but most importantly, no artificial song cap -- so load up that 2GB SD card to your heart's content kid. Rounding things out on th...

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Portable Video, Storage

Looking every bit the competitor to Epson's P-5000 or Canon's M80 portable storage solutions for photogs, is this, Aigo's UH-P706. Instead of maxing out at 80GB like the others, Aigo slams up to 160GB of disk in their version of the video / picture viewer. They do however, skimp on the screen a bit at just 3.6-inches and 16 millions colors but then make a mends with support for RAW and TIFF, AVI and MPEG4, and slots for SD, MMC, Memory Stick, and CF card formats. Oddly, no audio codecs are listed in the press release, not even the ubiquitous MP3. For the moment, these are only available in Aigo's home country of China for about 9,977 Chinese yuan or a whopping $1,248.

[Via c|net Asia, thanks Imish] 
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Plat...

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Household, Portable Audio

Japan's E-revolution wants you to stay home, brother, and chill with these new Motion Speakers and mood lights. The company claims to have achieved a clean, 10-inch tall design through the use of motion sensors instead of the usual array of knobs, buttons, or switches. Just bring your hand into the vicinity of the appropriate sensor and you can either adjust the volume or tune the integrated FM radio without the overwhelming burden of having to actually touch the device. The 2x 0.7W speakers are powered off regular batteries, AC, or USB and include a mini-jack for the audio feed. The revolution will not be televised, the revolution will be live however, come December 2 in Japan for ¥7,980 or about $69. Blue, green, and red "mood" lighting -- that's free.

[Via Impress] 
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transform...

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio, Portable Video
AnythingButiPod took a look at the Zune's AV Cable and surprise, surprise... found it to use yet another unique pinout configuration for pumping audio and video out to the TeeVee. However, this time you don't have to get locked into the vendor-specific accessory game since the Zune AV cable shares the same ground location of both the iPod (video) AV Cable and better yet, those off-the-shelf camcorder cables you probably have sitting around the house. As a result, you can use the other cables as long as you route the cable colors correctly for AV-hookup to your TV: iPod AV cable, swap left and right audio; el cheapo camcorder cable, swap video and right-audio. Unfortunately, in yet another drubbing for PlaysForSure devices, the AV cable which works interchangeably between Archos devices, the Zen Vision Series, Cowon iAudio, and even Toshiba's other DAP -- the Gigabeat -- won't work with the Zune. Not without the help of...

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio

Check it vacuum tube buffs, Rockridge Sound has a new iPod speaker dock boasting a trio of vacuum tubes per stereo channel. As a result the VTS-384 delivers "full analog" sound out a pair of 2x2W (8ohm) speakers. The kit ships with a remote for controlling the iPod, wire protectors for those precious tubes, and RCA and USB jacks for sourcing non-iPod music or connecting USB speakers. Now, we're not so delusional as to consider ourselves audiophiles, but any benefit achieved by that single-ended triode vs. digital amp will likely be nullified by its compressed audio, iPod source, dontchathink? Still, sometimes it's not how the gear sounds, it's all about the looks. But for an expected MSRP of between ¥70-80,000 (about $604-$777) when these hit in February, you might rightly wonder if she's really all that.

[Via Impress] 
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD ...

Filed under: Peripherals
We've seen some rather interesting mouse mods in our day, with some admittedly being more worthwhile than others, but an engineering mind over at LushProjects has definitely raised the bar quite a bit with his latest. Dubbed Three Blind Mice, the project consisted of two waves and more work than he ever expected, but yielded a very successful six axis (not that SIXAXIS) controller to use in 3D graphics applications such as VVVV. After realizing that panning and shuffling around camera angles with a 2D mouse / keyboard tandem was wasting entirely too much of his life, he embarked on a journey to "run three threads round three rollers from old mechanical mice." After realizing that Windows wasn't exactly keen on making things easy, he diverted his efforts into connecting the mice to the PC via an AVR microcontroller connected to the serial bus. By adding weights to an "opto-mechanical mouse with two horizontal rollers," as well as mounting a shaft and shaft...

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
If you ask a person on the street what they think about wind turbines in general terms then the reaction will in most cases be favorable. Ask what they think if someone was about to place wind turbines within direct sight of their home, and the response probably won't be one of glee. Common concerns often include the whooshing sound that regular turbines produce, as well as their divisive visual aesthetics -- some love it, some loath it. A new type of wind turbine intended to address both of these issues is Quiet Revolution's QR5 Vertical Axis Wind Turbine, or VAWT for shawt. The QR5 is smaller, quieter, and way better looking than your typical windmill, plus it should produce the equivalent of its £25,000 price tag in clean energy within 15 years or less. We're down with the futuristic design and the company's noble aims, but we feel that the QR guys should spice up the name of this particular turbine. Our suggestion? Pigeon Dicer, Mark 5....

Filed under: Gaming
PSP homebrewing by its very definition requires a moderate level of subversion. As Sony has shown time and time again, running unsigned code on the PSP is not the way that it wants its customers to use the PSP, simply because there's a lot more profit to be gained in selling games than there is in selling hardware. Hold that thought for a second as we bring you up to speed on the latest from the PSP homebrew scene: a developer by the name of Xart has created an encryption system for homebrew PSP code. Apparently, the problem of homebrew community members copying their fellow coder's work and re-releasing it with their name in the splash screen has become bad enough to warrant this encryption system. So lets get this straight: a coder has made an encryption system for a community that's based partly around bypassing Sony's own complex restrictions. What's next? DRM for freeware games?

[Via PSPFanboy] 
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Filed under: GPS
RoadRover, RoadRover -- send some GPS right over! This Chinese navigation company has just released the ENV1200, a new navigation device that comes in a sporty (and Commie) red color. It's got some pretty good hardware too, with a 400MHz processor, 128MB of NAND flash memory, and 64MB of RAM. Further, it'll keep you headed in the right direction with its P30 GPS receiver, which apparently is very similar to the SiRF Star III that we've come to know and love, says Navigadget. As you'd expect, the ENV1200 plays the normal host of media files, including AVI, MPEG, WMV, MPEG-1/2/4, WAV, MP3 and WMA as well as the standard still formats. However, a new feature that seems pretty simple to add, given that its running Windows CE 5.0, is the ability to display text files, PDFs, and even Microsoft Office documents. And finally, as expected, all the maps come loaded up on a 1GB SD card. Despite the fact that the specs appear to be more or less standard, there are a...

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Gaming
Joining the nearly endless amount of Nintendo DS hacks already in the wild is TobW's DS Sampling Keyboard, which "uses the DS's microphone and touchscreen" to interface with a software-based sampling keyboard. A close contender to join our Music Thing series, this wonderous hack takes advantage of the wee machine's excellent X / Y-axis controls as well as its built-in WiFi to beam the MIDI commands wirelessly. The program has been tested with Wifi, GBAMP, and M3, so "it should work on pretty much anything," and provides a much less expensive alternative to those dedicated offerings. While musical gizmos are always more effective when seen heard rather than just heard about, be sure to click on for a front row seat to the YouTube demonstration.

[Via MusicThing]Continue reading Nintendo DS doubles as wireless MIDI keyboard / controller
 
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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A ...