Filed under: Transportation
Remember Space Exploration Technologies Corp, otherwise known as SpaceX? You know, the private space transport company started by PayPal founder Elon Musk that won the NASA Commercial Comercial Orbital Transportation Services competition for its Falcon rocket? Last we heard from SpaceX it had lost Falcon 1 during a test launch, but this week its Falcon 9 launch vehicle was successfully fired up. While it didn’t go anywhere, the successful static launch was good news for the company, and the test run was even two months ahead of schedule, which could mean good things for the rockets’ ultimate place in runs to the International Space Station once the Space Shuttle goes out of service in 2010.
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Filed under: Cellphones
Well it seems
OQO is
lowering raising the bar from the handset it appears to be aping by packing more goodies into its decidedly Centro-inspired set. The G900 features a 624MHz CPU, 128MB memory, quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE, a 2 megapixel camera, Windows Mobile 6.1, Bluetooth, and raises the bar with a dash of WiFi. Of course, this set may not find its way to a provider’s shelves near you, but it’s refreshing to see KIRF done right, and perhaps even done better for a change. Come on, sing it with us, Go OQO Go!
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Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment
Tired of all that GSM buzz coming from your cellphone when all you wan to do is listen to music? The guys at MacLife have re-uncovered a simple fix that involves parts that you probably have laying around in your spaghetti drawer. Just grab some ferrite beads — the same ones that often ship with TVs and USB cables — and attach them to your speaker cables near the speakers. This is probably not a shock to those of you who already know a thing or two about magnetic interference, but for the rest of you, get scouting and grab some tape.
[Via Make]
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Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio
Surely you feel like buying an all new TuneCast Auto just months after picking up the original, right? Trust us, we can hear the groans from here. For the scads of iPhone 3G owners who are downright perturbed by the inability to charge the thing with some older accessories, you’ll be none too pleased when handing over $79.99 for this. But unless you flex your DIY muscle and come up with some other solution (please share, will you?), buying an iPhone 3G-friendly alternative looks to be the only solution. This FM transmitter boasts ClearScan technology in order to hunt down and lock into the best FM frequency (good luck with that), but as we’ve already pointed out, the biggest boon is the iPhone 3G charging ability. Hey Apple, Belkin says “thanks.” Whatever that means.
[Via I4U News]
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Filed under: Cellphones
Don’t rule out the possibility that this is a complete and utterly disgusting fib, but a recent writeup in The China Post about HTC’s financial situation very clearly states when the hotly-anticipated Touch Diamond is coming to Sprint: this month. If you’re looking for the play-by-play, the article proclaims that the “company released its Diamond phone in Asia in June and will begin selling the handset through Sprint Nextel Corp. in August.” Look, we’ve seen a CDMA version of this thing donning Sprint garb, we’ve watched it fall into the capable hands of the FCC and we know it has to arrive sometime. If all of this doesn’t add up to Sprint getting the Touch Diamond in August, well, we’ll let you do the math.
[Thanks, Sumit]
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Filed under: Robots
We can’t fully express the awesomeness of RoboStool with mere words, but we’ll try. A product of Norris Labs, this robotic foot stool can be navigated in a trio of ways: by using a remote control, by actually tapping into a satnav or by utilizing a thermal sensing system to make it follow its master around. We don’t suppose you need more than one guess to pick which of the three is our favorite, and there’s a nice demonstration video of said choice waiting after the jump. IKEA, you on this or what?
Continue reading Video: RoboStool follows you around, never leaves you sans a seat
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Filed under: Laptops
If you’ve been waiting for Gateway’s P-7811 FX gaming laptop, the wait is almost over: it will begin shipping August 14, that is, if an open-lipped Best Buy is to be believed. As for specifications, you’re looking at an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (2.26GHz, 3MB L2 cache with 1066MHz FSB), PM45 Express chipset, 15-inch WUXGA display at 1920 x 1200, Nvidia GeForce 9800M-GTS with 512MB GDDR3, 200GB 7200RPM spinner, 8x DVD burner, HDMI 1.2, eSATA, a 5-in-1 media card reader, 1.3MP camera, and a 9-cell Li-ion battery. The $1,499 machine weighs in at 9.2-lbs and will be ready for your Crysis, Spore, etc. in a couple weeks.
[Via NotebookReview]
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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
We already had a glance at NVIDIA’s newest low-ender, the GeForce 9500 GT, but the outfit clearly wasn’t done. In case the previously mentioned card was just a tad too weak for your needs, you can also check out the GeForce 9800 GT and / or 9800 GTX+, which feature 112 / 128 stream processors and support for HybridPower and PhysX. Both cards can be found just about everywhere right now for $149.99 and $199.99, respectively, with 512MB of RAM on board.
[Via Hardware Revolution]
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Filed under: Robots
We can appreciate the fact that BeRobot is supposedly going to be the smallest functional commercially available humanoid robot when it’s released this September. Really, we can, even despite the fact that each successive machine brings us one step closer to to the day the robots have mastered humanity, and our lowly race of meatbags lives on only as the amusing anachronisms kept alive to opulently feed them oil-covered grapes at laser-gunpoint. But BeRobot’s creator GeStream — and the rest of Japan, for that matter — really have to really put the pedal to the metal if we’re going to miniaturize these suckers small enough for gray goo in this lifetime. We’re waiting!
[Thanks, Frankie, via Hobby Media]
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Filed under: Digital Cameras
Tired of the fuzz body-checking you right off your bike during Critical Mass rides? Well lucky you, New York Police Commish Ray Kelly is responding by flipping the switch on user-generated crime reports, enabling ordinary citizens to submit photos and video as evidence of criminal activity. Granted, we think it’s always been the case that people could dial-a-detective if they’ve got a hot lead on a crime, but here Kelly specifically referred to the “fact of life” that nowadays “everybody has a camera in their telephones. When people can record an event taking place that helps us during an investigation, it’s helpful.” Details are not yet clear, like how much manpower it’s going to take to weed through the billions of tattle-tale clips that will inevitably be sent in of Sbux line-cutters, or what codecs the NYPD will support (fingers crossed for motion-JPEG and 3GPP).
[Via The Raw Feed]
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