Man Stuff - The Best of Uncrate [Roundups]

This week at Uncrate: We hit the slopes centerfold-style on Burton Love Snowboards, add a touch of class to our drinking with a Silver Plated Beverage Holder, and learn to fly in the Eclipse 400. We also track our steps with the Fitbit, take our ‘tending skills on the road with the Evolution Mobile Bar, and downsize our transportation bills with the Yamaha Zuma 125. Finally, we kick back with a snifter full of The Glenlivet XXV, manage our subscriptions with Maghound, and keep nasty chafing at bay with DZ-NUTS cream.

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News Flash: Moto R&D Working On Prototypes Other Than RAZR 3! [Motorola]

In a panel at GigaOm’s Mobilize conference today, Motorola VP of Applied Technology Fred Kitson revealed some prototype display technologies they have in the works, confirming the company has more on the mind than the damn RAZR. One phone prototype Kitson described involves an embedded projector that made use of 3 lasers that project on a wall, while another makes use of a headset display. He also made mention of home displays that could automatically detect your phone as you move into a target range, and dedicate a portion of that screen to your cellphone.

Kitson expounded upon the Laser projector, saying that it could be used for collaborative teleconferencing, and “social TV,” where someone can insert themselves in a friend’s video feed. Other prototypes include foldable, multi-part displays, as well as lego-style modular displays that are scalable in size and shape. E-paper was another technology Kitson admitted to working with, which seems odd for a cellphone in my opinion. Asked about when we might see some of this technology, all Kitson would say is that it’s working in the lab now, and some of these will hopefully surface in the future. But hey, I’m just glad the StarTac 2 isn’t their “next big thing” in the lab.

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Palin Email “Hack” Was Hardly a Hack at All [P053ur5]

The screamingly obvious trail of evidence left behind by the person who broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo mail yesterday should have been the tip-off—this was not an elite job. According to postings on the troll-hive forum 4chan dug up by Threat Level, all the perp did was guess her password-resest security question correctly after a few seconds of Googling.

The question was: Where did you meet your spouse? A fact that is readily available in the now flooded stream of Palin info on the web—they met in high school, and that’s all it took to start the shitstorm. The 4chan post also further illustrates that the whole thing was done by someone well over their head:

yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state

Read the complete post over at Wired, and pick up an excellent primer to making sure your email and other online accounts are as secure as possible with this great guide by our friends at Lifehacker. [Threat Level, Lifehacker]

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HP’s Wireless Comfort Keyboard Has Emergency CTRL-ALT-DEL Key [Ctrl-alt-del]

HP’s Wireless Comfort keyboard and mouse combo has a number of other things going for it, apart from being wireless: the mouse has an ergonomic design, four-way tilt wheel and programmable buttons, and the keyboard’s got a cushioned wrist-rest, a rotary selector control and 31 programmable function keys. Including a dedicated CTRL-ALT-DEL. Ohoho yes…everyone’s favorite Windows uncrash key combo has its own button. Is HP saying Windows is unreliable? Kinda. Available now for $80. [Laptopmag]

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Microsoft’s new ads: Seinfeld and Gates out, Hodgman lookalike in

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

According to a report from in the New York Times, the next phase of Microsoft’s latest ad campaign is set to begin — sans Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. Apparently, the new ads do away with the unusual (and somewhat ill-received) banter and “real life” experiences of the two celebrities, and trade them for an earnest embrace of… Apple’s “PC” character. Apparently, one of the new ads even begins with a John Hodgman lookalike stating, “Hello, I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype.” Beyond the flip on a rival’s depiction of its brand, the campaign will feature cameos from Eva Longoria, Deepak Chopra, Pharrell Williams, and even Gates — though Seinfeld doesn’t make the cut. While we’re curious to see what the company cooks up in the new ads, it does strike us as somewhat odd that the supposed narrative Microsoft was establishing with Gates and Seinfeld has abruptly been abandoned in favor of these new spots. Is this a decision which was made long ago, or did the largely negative / confused reaction to the last set of ads force the company’s hand? We only have its official statement to go on: “We will be executing the second phase of our advertising campaign tomorrow, as planned from the start.”

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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ASUS N10 hands-on confirms Eee-free status

Filed under: Laptops

It’s confusing, and sometimes we cry ourselves to sleep at night, but the new ASUS N10 is hardly a netbook, and has earned the right to shed that completely confusing Eee moniker to try and be something more. We got to handle the ultraportable today, and while it’s no match for the sexy produced by Lenovo or Sony on this front, it just “feels” like a real laptop… and there’s plenty else to love. The LED-backlit 10.2-inch screen is a stunner, even at the paltry 1024 x 600 resolution, and the keyboard is solid and quite usable — if a little shallow on the action. Otherwise you’re looking at just about every spec you could want in a laptop this size, including switchable discrete graphics (a restart is required), nearly 6 hours of battery off of a 6-cell, HDMI out, media card reader, insta-boot Express Gate, and that handy-dandy Atom N270 CPU. Best of all, ASUS is going to be way more aggressive with these prices than previously believed, at $599 for the N10E, which will sport integrated graphics only and a smaller hard drive, and $699 for the full-fledged N10J. They’re still working out which version of Windows Vista to ship with, but that J&R pre-order page (currently at $799) is indeed legit. No built-in 3G just yet.

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Secret Guitar Hero 4 “Instrument” Revealed [Guitar Hero: World Tour]

Rumors have been swirling about what the mystery instrument would be in the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour. Our money was on accordion, but the truth is that the “instrument” isn’t really an instrument at all. It’s actually MIDI tracks on your PC. In other words, users will be able to import their own songs into the game. The catch is that the feature will only work with all instruments if you are using a PS3. Xbox 360 owners will have to settle for drum tracks only because of “unspecified hardware issues”—which kind of makes it all but useless really. [Shacknews via Kotaku]

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Raon Everun Note, A Beefy Tiny Laptop for Under $900 [Mini-notebooks]

Mini-notes like the MSI Wind are nice and everything, but for the really good stuff, sometimes you still need to import. The Raon Everun Note looks like a fantastic little machine, weighing a scant 1.63 pounds but featuring a full-out AMD Turion 64×2 Dual Core 1.2GHz procesor, 128MB of ATI discrete graphics power, 7″ 1024×600 touchscreen, 85% full size keyboard, 60GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, XP, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SD storage and dual monitor support (up to 1920×1200!). Running for a little over 2 hours per charge, the Raon Everun starts at a reasonable $879.00 and ships this month. [Dynamism]

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