ASUS Eee PC 900 gets unboxed

Filed under: Laptops

Yeah, you already knew what this 9-incher looked like from our time spent with it over in Germany, but there’s just nothing like seeing a spotless machine escape from its factory packaging and delight its new owner for the first time. Hit the read link below for more shots, and do your best to withhold that growing pang of jealously, will ya?

[Via jkkmobile, thanks Brad]

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The Last, Best and Bloodiest Reason to Have a Landline Phone [Phone Fight]

After a long week, there’s nothing like dipping our toes in the schadenfreude of watching people beat the shit out of each other with an obsolete gadget. What old and busted gadget would you use to go all American Gladiator on your office? [College Humor]

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The Last, Best and Bloodiest Reason to Have a Landline Phone [Phone Fight]

After a long week, there’s nothing like dipping our toes in the schadenfreude of watching people beat the shit out of each other with an obsolete gadget. What old and busted gadget would you use to go all American Gladiator on your office? [College Humor]

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Pwnage New Version Imminent via Automatic Update [Breaking]

With Apple allegedly gearing up to battle the iPhone Dev Team in the incoming iPhone 1.2.0 firmware, the other side keeps refining and updating their iPhone firmware unlocking and hacking tool, Pwnage. According to the usual suspects, the new version pictured in this screenshot will be hitting your computers soon via automatic update. [Pwnage Page and iPhone Dev Team in Gizmodo]

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Filed under: Robots, Wearables

We were sold on (and slightly terrified of) the Sarcos XOS exoskeleton from the moment we first saw it show off its superhuman capabilities on video late last year, but if you just can’t get enough of it you’ll definitely want to hit up the ever-dependable Popular Science, which has now totally blown things out with the full story behind the suit, complete with some great new pics of it. As if that wasn’t enough, the piece also includes some tidbits about some of Sarcos’ future plans, including word that the Army plans to begin field-testing the XOS by 2009, and that the company intends to kick off a new research program this summer tasked with developing a new generator that’ll be capable of powering the suit for “hours at a time.” Of course, there’s plenty more in the six-page feature that we’re unable to sum up here, so be sure to hit up the link below for the full story.

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Via [Engadget]

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Van Der Led’s WM2 cellphone is Slayer approved

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables

Can it be? Why… why yes, a watch with integrated cellphone we might (might!) actually wear. The Van Der Led WM2 is a quad-band GSM watch with itty bitty 1.3-inch, 260k color touchscreen display, stereo Bluetooth, up to 240-hours of standby or 300-minutes talk, and 1GB of storage for a few of your MP3 or MP4 files. Better yet, from a distance, those uber geeky keys on the numeric pad look just like the glittering wrist studs capable of mesmerizing Death Metal, she-groupies backstage. Yours for €300 (about $471 US Rubles) starting Monday. Actual product pressed to flesh in the gallery below.
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[Thanks, Gydo W.]

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Aliph Jawbone 2 exposed

Filed under: Cellphones

So there are a couple of big complaints about Aliph’s otherwise-lauded Jawbone noise canceling Bluetooth headset: one, it’s rather porky, and two, the charge connector is about as reliable as a Comcast installation appointment. Hang tight, though, because help is on the way — help in the form of the Jawbone 2. The new model just broke through the FCC’s surly bonds in full visual glory, showing a headset that maintains the distinctive industrial design of the original while getting just a bit smaller and adopting a new connector that looks moderately less sketchy. The last thing we all want to do is blow another hundred on the next best headset, but if this means we can run a teleconference standing next to a freight train traveling 40 miles per hour and do it in style, count us in.

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Fraunhofer takes a stab at non-exploding lithium-ion batteries

Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops

It’s hardly the only one working on making lithium-ion batteries a little less likely to blow up in your face, but the prolific folks at Fraunhofer Institute seem to think that they’ve come up with a solid contender for your future laptop or cellphone, and they’re now set to take the wraps off it at the Hannover Messe conference later this month. The key to their solution, it seems, is the use of a non-flammable polymer electrolyte instead of the liquid electrolyte now commonly used in lithium-ion batteries. While that switch cuts down on the explosiveness, it also introduced a fair number of challenges, not the least of which is the fact that polymer becomes less conductive as it gets more solid. Fraunhofer’s apparently made some significant progress on that front, however, and while they’re still not completely satisfied with the conductivity, they say the batteries could be ready for commercial use in three to five years. They also, not surprisingly, see no end to the uses for ‘em, saying that they could not only wind up in laptops and cellphones, but power tools, lawnmowers, and potentially even cars.

[Thanks, Mademoiselle Y]

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IBM Racetrack Memory To Boost Storage By 100x [Data]

We have good news and bad news. The good news is that IBM is exploiting electrons to create memory with 100x the data density we see today. In terms of iPod, that’s 500,000 songs. The bad news is that the technology won’t be ready for 7+ years. Here’s how it works:

In a crude analogy, think of staggered nanowires as roads that, through simple urban planning, create magnetic alleys to store data. Cars/information can race around throughout the entire grid, but it can only park in the alleys. That information can then be read by exploiting the magnetic fields generated by electron spin. Essentially, the entire system is tiny, but there’s a viable magnetic signature to track it all.

Also, because we’re dealing with such minute forces and measurements, hardware should run quite cool.

The racetrack research team is prepared to build the prototype, which they consider a 3 to 4 year process. Commercial products are then another few years away from that. [bbc]

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Even Gigantic Celestial Bodies Prefer Firefox to IE [Space]

Apparently there are nerds in space, too. This was spotted in variable star V838 Monocerotis of the constellation Monoceros and, holy moley, it looks like the Firefox logo! Whatever. I’ll be impressed when we see a celestial body that looks like an iPod. [EE Times via CrunchGear via New Launches]

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