Dealzmodo: Buy One UMD, Get the Second Free [Umd]

There is an alternate universe where I just rented a Betamax (Casino Royale, of course) from Hollywood Video. On my way home, I pop in a MiniDisc (probably to listen to this year’s very successful, non-creepy Michael Jackson album which is, like, sooo good). But when I finally arrive at my place, I realize that I’d, of course, already bought Casino Royale on UMD. Hell, I could probably even dig up a copy recorded from TV on my 8mm Video Walkman, too. How silly!

Anyway, for those living in this reality, Amazon has a 2-for-1 UMD sale going on. When all is said and done, UMDs are going for about $6 a pop. [Amazon via PSPFanboy]

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Fantabulous Wood Sound Enhancer Specially Crafted for Rich Morons [Audiomorons]

At last, here is the answer for all your high fidelity problems: the Acoustic System Phase Corrector, a group of 11 maple wood blocks that corrects the blurring of phase coherency. You know, that sound problem caused by those pesky pockets of greater energy density happening between the loudspeakers, the floor, and the front wall. Come on. You know the ones. Listen, just spend $1,975 on this and you will get amazing sound, as their product description says:

The Acoustic System Phase Corrector may look like a simple instrument grade maple block but its inner workings are more complex. When you walk around your listening room you will notice pockets of greater energy density. One of these energy pockets occurs between the loudspeakers and is concentrated at the interface between the floor and the front wall. From the listening position the result is a blurring of the phase coherency. The phase corrector, as its name suggests, attempts to correct this phenomenon by disrupting the energy pocket near the floor/front wall interface through a combination of resonance and diffusion. The degree of resonance can be altered by varying the distance between the phase corrector and the front wall.

Obviously, the system doesn’t solve the blurry neuron connections of any moron with deep money pockets who actually tries to buy this—hopefully pranky—crap. [Pure Music Group via Boing Boing Gadgets]

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Lightning Review: Dr. Dre and Monster Headphones vs. a Jackhammer [Review]

The Gadget: Dr. Dre and Monster’s Beats headphones, which combines noise cancellation/isolation with an in-line microphone for cellphones. Plus, you have Dre’s expertise in knowing what sounds good, which makes for a good pair of cans.

The Price: $350

The Verdict: Strong. The sound quality is pretty great, with good bass reproduction without being too heavy handed, and decent mediums and highs. Not the best all-around headset compared to Sennheisers, but pretty darn good. The Beats also ship with two headphone cables, one of which has an on-board microphone/toggle switch for taking and making calls. It performs this job quite admirably as well.

On the other hand, it might be because my head is too big or my ears stick out too much, but the Beats just barely fit on my head and grip my ears at its most extended. People with heads larger than me—there shouldn’t be many of you out there—might want to try this on first before buying. The ear cups aren’t extraordinarily comfortable, but they’re wearable. Remember Dre’s appearance at the VMA’s last year? His head was pretty tiny on his buff body. Maybe that’s why these are small.

But the most interesting feature is the noise cancellation. You have to have a pair of AAA batteries loaded in at all times, but the resulting isolation is more than enough to drown out an insanely annoying jackhammer that’s been going at it outside my house for the past two weeks.

The Beats may not be the best at noise cancellation, the best at sound reproduction, or the best at making and taking calls, but it does all of the above well, and should be good enough for most people. [Beats]

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Windows XP tested on the OLPC XO, as slow as you’d expect

Filed under: Laptops

Here’s the surprise of the century: Windows XP runs excruciatingly slowly on the OLPC XO. We’re shocked, simply shocked. The folks at Laptop Mag got to kick the tires on this fruit of the XO and Microsoft partnership, and while to their credit they’ve manage to build a computer that works and runs real-world applications, it’s not a pretty sight. Sure, most of the hardware is (or will be) supported just fine, though Sugar’s mesh networking is absent, but boot time off of the 4GB SD card is 1 minute and 24 seconds, and once booted into XP you don’t have access to the data on the XO’s 1GB of internal storage. Internet Explorer 6 took a mere 5 seconds to start, but Word 2003 takes 42 seconds of thumb twiddling. Even more disconcerting is that the system is pretty much locked to running one app at a time, since things just get too sluggish after that. The upshot of this is that the OLPC folks are considering a new edition of the original machine with more RAM and a new processor, but we certainly feel sorry for kids to who this existing machine will be their first taste of computing. Well, only a little bit. Back in our day…

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Dealzmodo: Buy One UMD, Get the Second Free [Umd]

There is an alternate universe where I just rented a Betamax (Casino Royale, of course) from Hollywood Video. On my way home, I pop in a MiniDisc (probably to listen to this year’s very successful, non-creepy Michael Jackson album which is, like, sooo good). But when I finally arrive at my place, I realize that I’d, of course, already bought Casino Royale on UMD. Hell, I could probably even dig up a copy recorded from TV on my 8mm Video Walkman, too. How silly!

Anyway, for those living in this reality, Amazon has a 2-for-1 UMD sale going on. When all is said and done, UMDs are going for about $6 a pop. [Amazon via PSPFanboy]

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Keepin’ it real fake, part CXXVII: OQO G900 mimics Palm Centro

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!

Update: As some readers have pointed out, this handset actually appears to be an OQO clone knocking off a Palm Centro, so yeah, it’s just gotten better.

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Fujitsu’s Lifebook U2010 headed to the US as the U820

Filed under: Laptops

If you’ve been squirming around like you’ve got ants in your pants wondering if Fujitsu’s tiny Lifebook U2010 was going to make its way Stateside — feel free to relax. Word on the street — and from the FCC — is that the diminutive and convertible laptop will come to our fair shores as the U820. The device actually gets a bump in the screen department, featuring a 1280 x 800 display as opposed to the previous specs we had detailing a 1024 x 600 touchscreen. Hit the read link to learn pretty much everything you could ever hope to know about the laptop… and then some.

[Thanks, Will O.]

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Wired Previews Hackable Defcon 16 Badge [Hackers]

Wired got a sneak peek at one of the more fun aspects of this coming weekend’s Defcon, the hackable badge. Last year’s badge was hacked in just ten minutes, but it didn’t have an SD card slot at USB support. The new card has fewer features than last year’s but is more powerful. And it comes with a longer battery life, good news. But not everything is known, and that’s kind of the point to these fun trinkets. [Wired]

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Filed under: Robots

Not like this is a new concept or anything, but Zhelong Wang and Hong Gu of China’s Dalian University of Technology have created a “bristled pig” in order to clean the clogged pipes that traditional pigs simply can’t. In most scenarios, unclogging devices (or pigs, as it were) are pushed through pipelines by force, though certain bends and changes in size can hamper their effectiveness. These bottle-brush styled bots can climb through portals on their own power and adjust to changes in order to make “unpiggable” pipes clean again. It’s a dirty job, but something’s got to do it.

[Via CrunchGear]

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Via [Engadget]

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Filed under: Robots

Not like this is a new concept or anything, but Zhelong Wang and Hong Gu of China’s Dalian University of Technology have created a “bristled pig” in order to clean the clogged pipes that traditional pigs simply can’t. In most scenarios, unclogging devices (or pigs, as it were) are pushed through pipelines by force, though certain bends and changes in size can hamper their effectiveness. These bottle-brush styled bots can climb through portals on their own power and adjust to changes in order to make “unpiggable” pipes clean again. It’s a dirty job, but something’s got to do it.

[Via CrunchGear]

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Via [Engadget]

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