Filed under: Cellphones

Although no records were broken, this year’s Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships went off successfully, with one 38 year old engineer and former potato thrower called Tommi Huotari causing a buzz for throwing a cell only meters short of the recently attained 95 meter record setting throw: “surprisingly, a potato flies further,” he said. Tommi should know better than to compare a cellphone to a spud. For a fair comparison, he should at least try flinging a bar of Chocolate.

[Via textually]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Jackie may be the first name of the greatest comedic martial artist/actor ever, but it is now also the name of the best basketball-playing robot too.

Meet Jackie, by day he is an articulated robot palletizer manufactured by Columbia Okura in Vancouver, but by night he becomes a kick-ass, hoop throwing superhero. The robot is a member of the Beck’s Hybrid team, (specialists in hybrid crops), and was recently on display during their “Becknology Days” event.

Jackie is usually used to collect skids of corn, but Bob Stuart an on site engineer, managed to tinker with the mechanized star. He loaded up a program that allowed Jackiel O’Neil, (sorry), to shoot baskets like a pro. In fact, he is even better than a pro—Jackie has not missed a shot to date!

The robot itself is fairly small but it is set atop a loading crane. The engineer attached the arms to the budding NBA hopeful’s sides and added circular discs acting as an alternative to hands. A ball is retrieved from a tube that is attached and then fired towards the 7-foot basket by means of a catapult motion. Jackie completes one successful shot every five seconds.

Big things are in store for this OP wannabe, next year Stuart says, “[sic] We’re going to try and see if we can get it (the robot) to continually shoot basketballs or maybe we’ll even play catch.” Even play catch! We cannot wait.[Indystar].

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Welcome to your latest installment of “Basic Gadgets Decked out in Precious Materials.” Today’s contender is a 2GB flash drive by S.T. Dupont, retailing at a cool $700.

The materials of choice are Lacquer and Palladium. Though the metal maybe reason enough to relieve you of your bills, S.T. Dupont has also gone the great length of fashioning the flash drive’s surface with its trademark diamond-head pattern. If that shall not convince you to blow your pocket money, perhaps the choice of three colours; turquoise, pink and black shall have you queuing up? No? We didn’t think so. [Slashgear].

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HDTVs are designed for HD playback, but there are often problems in picture reproduction when playing back media in standard definition (SD), such as from traditional DVDs. HDTVs usually display in either 720p, 768p or 1080p. DVDs, TVs and VCRs usually come in at 480i. The image would thus need to be converted to be represented accurately and this is the primary reason for poor SD reproduction on HDTVs. The video processor, or scaler, is responsible for converting the images. A poor scaler will lead to flicker and rough edges. Hit the link to see which HDTVs the guys at Exteme Tech declared to be kings of SD reproduction.

The Pioneer Elite PRO-940HD plasma television took home the best rating in the test with 9/10. The HDTV was the best in its class with regards to overall picture display in SD, but comes at a price of $1475 - $1974 depending on the retailer.

The Vizio VP42 gained an 8/10 rating. The wide viewing angle, excellent colour and contrast production as well as the cheaper price point of $900, secured this set as a favourite.

Finally, in joint second place was the Sony KDS-55A2020. Also scoring 8/10, the UI and picture quality were both note worthy. This RPTV was considered to be comparable to higher end 1080p plasmas and crystal flat panels. For the performance, the $1799 price tag was considered very reasonable.

Hit the link to get more information on SD playback, including how you can set your own HDTV to better display standard definition content. [Extreme Tech]

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Dcube have hit the block with the snazzy looking D5 PMP. The specifications includes; either 1/2/4/8GB flavours, 2″ (176×220) 260K colour display, MP3/WMA/OGG/AVI support, integrated FM tuner, either 40hours audio or 7.5hours video playback and all of this comes in at only 42g. So why tell you guys about another generic PMP?

The note worthy feature is the inclusion of Klisten’s Wiseaudio technology. This ensures an automatic tuning process to reproduce the best possible sound. Basically, that means no messing with your equalizer. It may be just a gimmick, as sound reproduction is surly a matter of personal preference, but nonetheless it is an interesting addition and one we would be keen to try. State side price and launch details are not available at present. (Those Koreans may just keep the goodies for themselves). [The MP3 Players].

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Dear Trekstor

Your PR division sucks/may never have learnt how to read aloud. Given both of those possibilities are not mutually exclusive, we have a strong inclination to believe both statements are true. You are doing a great job at proving us right, all thanks to your new iBeat blaxx MP3 player. Do not get us wrong the little fascist, music playing device looks quite the accomplished gadget. We are confident it plays just as well as you promise, but we have a little problem with the name. We are guessing, (not being complete morons), that anything named “iBeat blaxx,” is probably not going to go down well with anyone who is not an absolute jerk-off. What do we know? Still, if you see the light and would like to apologise to all those many, many individuals you have offended, please feel free to drop us a line at tips@gizmodo.com. Further, as your publicity department could apparently not organise a piss up in a brewery with due competence, perhaps our trusted readership could assist you in the naming process? If you would like to take us up on our offer, please see below for suggestions.

Kind Regards

Gizmodo
[Product Page via Shiny Shiny]

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There is so much wind knocking around on our planet it would be a shame not to use any of it. Tamiya & Loopwing’s wind power generator supplies enough energy to drive a small toy car, for some serious, environmentally friendly fun.

The kit supplied is flat packed, so you will have to get your DIY skills on. The pack of fun consists of two gears, a capacitor that will not take you back to 1985, a small steering module for your diminutive vehicle and a wind powered charging station. Exposing the assembled kit to 5miles/s winds for 5minutes will give you, a massive, 3.5hours of drive time. We are not sure if $30 could be spent any wiser.

A word of warning: Make sure your partner is not present for this assembly process or you may start arguing about where part 3B goes; a fight shall develop and before you know it, your Essential X-Men comic, edition number one, shall be no more. (That hurt so bad—damn Ikea bed frame). [TOKYOMANGO].

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Filed under: Gaming

It’s amazing what homebrew coders for the PSP are able to come up with, especially when you consider that the “solutions” don’t really solve anything. If you’ve ever hankered for a heartbeat recognition ability for your portable gaming machine, then here it is. One guy called Art simply soldered a coiled copper wire across the microphone input, which allows it to pick up the signal from a wireless heartbeat sensor. The result isn’t visually impressive — he hasn’t coded a graphical readout yet — but it should definitely inspire confidence in the homebrew community’s ingenuity. PSP pull-ups anyone?

[Thanks, Wraggster]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Gaming

Despite the launch of the Wii in the US occurring months and months ago, there is still a perceivable shortage of the little white console. Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter made his own analysis of the recent upturn in US Wii console sales by predicting that Nintendo filled the gap by diverting manufacturing in Japan to feed the US stores. It’s almost beyond belief that Nintendo still hasn’t been able to get a grasp on its manufacturing process, over nine months since the Wii was released. Wasn’t half the point of focusing on casual gaming — and therefore lower specs — that the console would be easy to manufacture in vast quantities?

[Via Joystiq]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Gaming

So perhaps your PC isn’t quite up to snuff for playing Bioshock, or maybe you just don’t want to get any nasty Sony rootkits in the process. That’s OK, the 360 version runs just peachy, and we’re giving away a copy of Bioshock and an Xbox 360 Premium to play it on. The contest ends tomorrow, so check out the read link for instructions on how to enter, and while you’re at it you might as well start pondering that Little Sister moral conundrum while you’ve got some time for introspection.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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