Dealzmodo: $50 Off New Xbox 360, Free Shipping [Deals]

If you’ve been looking to pick up a new Xbox 360 for the price of a Wii, this deal over at Dell is the way to go. Normally $300, put in promo code ‘7V2DJL$PD6NGWZ’ at checkout and score a 60GB Xbox 360 Pro for $250. Put in promo code ‘NP?CKPRH$KTWLL’ and you will score a 120GB Xbox 360 Elite for $350. Both offers include free shipping and are good through October 6th. So cough up the cash and just buy one already, Mr. Cheapo. [Dell via Xbox360Fanboy]

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Dragonflies to Explore Mars, Titan, Spook Out Aliens [Space]

A new robot called ExoFly could be exploring the surface of Mars, guiding rovers through the surface of the Red Planet. Developed by scientists at the Technical University Delft, Wageningen University, and TNO in Netherlands, the ExoFly is designed to imitate the flight patterns of dragonflies. Dragonflies from 300 million years ago, because these things are huge.

Wingspan: 350mm
Length: 400mm
Mass: 17g
Flying speed: 1.8 ms-1
Flapping frequency: 6 Hz
Flying Time: 12 min
Wing Material: Mylar foil
Structure: balsawood
Motor: 2g pager motor
Camera: 1.2g pinhole camera
Energy storage: 3g Li Polymer cell
Actuators: shape memory alloy wires
Base station: 3GHz PC
Sensors: pinhole camera

Based on the DelFly, an Earth-based robot capable of autonomous flight, with hovering, take-off and landing capabilities. Scientists say the ExoFly can be adapted to fly in the more dense atmosphere of Titan too, so expect a black monolith to appear on the Moon anytime now. [New Scientist]

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Baseball Bat Can Break Lego Minifig Legs [Minifig Contest Reminder]

Believe it or not, there are no baseball bats in the Lego universe. Why? Probably because a minifig could use one to break another minifig’s plastic cranium. And we all know that you can’t use weapons in Lego’s universe, much less break minifig craniums. This is why Brickarms, the dealer of All Things Violent for Lego minifigs, has released the baseball bat weapon, including a psychopath minifig posing with it for their publicity shots:

Maybe this baseball bat is what you needed to complete your video entry for the Go Miniman Go contest? Then get one as soon as possible because the end of the month deadline is quickly approaching. If you want to participate, check the contest rules here and send your video now. [Brothers Brick via Brickarms]

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Filed under: Robots

You know those insect-like micro air vehicles (MAV) we’ve been seeing? Well, the ExoFly aerobot is based on that camera-equipped DelFly design, only this time it’s gearing up for a trip to Mars — maybe even Titan or Venus. Turns out flapping-wing flight is perfect for the low-density Martian atmosphere. The current prototype — weighing 17g with a wingspan of 350mm and flight time of twelve minutes — is being tweaked for use in future missions to Mars. The folks at Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University, who’ve teamed up with Ursa Minor Space & Navigation, plan on increasing the weight to 20g and adding an on-board solar cell, which they reckon should extend the flight distance to 15km. There’s also talk of using the digital terrain and image data gathered to simulate a 3D immersive environment for detailed analysis of extraterrestrial destinations — hopefully viewable by those of us who don’t have the billions to drop on a flight to Mars.

[Via New Scientist Space]

Continue reading ExoFly: Mars’ first tourguide

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Via [Engadget]

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Acer Aspire One hacked into a UMPC for reasons unknown

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

We know that there are those of you who have been asking — quite insistently — “What does it take to get an Acer Aspire One UMPC around here?” Apparently, it doesn’t take much: pop out the screen, replace it with an 8.9-inch touchscreen kit, flip the lid ’round so the display sits on top, toss out the keyboard and screw it all back together again. The specimen pictured above is running Ubuntu on top of the Aspire’s 1.6GHz Atom CPU with 1.5GB RAM and an 8GB SSD (and quite happily, we might add). Hit that read link for details and plenty of pictures.

[Via SlashGear]

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More Info on the Asus S101, The MacBook Air that You Can Actually Afford [Laptops]

It’s been a while since an Asus product has rocked our world—we think the last time must have been the Eee—but the Atom-powered SSD-based Asus S101 looks amazing for its price—even better than we thought before. Just 2.2lbs and a tapering .7 inches thin (a bit thicker than the Air), its 10.2″ LED screen runs at WSVGA (1024×600) resolution. And with 802.11n, ethernet port, Bluetooth, multitouch trackpad, 4-in-1 card reader, 20GB of free online storage and high quality speakers, the S101 packs plenty of useful features—though it only has 1GB of RAM and appears to have the same fatal flaw as the MacBook Air. Yes, the S101 uses a non-replaceable, 5-hour polymer battery.

OK, now that we’re done with the specs, how much does the thing cost? It’s just cheap enough to be exciting, but not quite as impulse-buyable as the original Eee.

16GB SSD, 16GB SD, Windows XP
$699

32GB, Linux
$699

64GB, Linux
$799

The only catch is obviously that XP is not included in the better configurations. But still, if this rendering is in any way accurate, it looks like Asus may have knocked one out of the park, again.
[HardwareZone]

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Apple Fixes iTunes HDTV, Genius Problems With 8.0.1 Release [ITunes]

In case you haven’t opened up your iTunes in the last few hours, Apple’s released v.8.0.1 to fix several 8.0.0 issues with HDTV episodes, the Genius auto-playlist feature and software update checks. For instance, iTunes will no longer accidentally overwrite HD versions of your TV episodes with their standard definition copies. Performance and stability have also supposedly been improved. Check it out and tell us what you think. [Apple Insider]

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9-Cell MSI Wind battery turns up in pictures, dreams

Filed under: Laptops

It looks like those DIY 9-cell Wind batteries could soon be a thing of the past, as some seemingly legit pictures of a supposedly official 9-cell battery for the netbook have now turned up on the Eee PC News website. Apparently, the pictures (more of which are available at the link below) came straight from an unnamed battery manufacturer and, yes, it’s still in prototype form, which hopefully means there’s still some refining to be done. There’s no indication of a release date, unfortunately, but Eee PC News seems confident, for one reason or another, that the batteries could find their way into Winds as soon as November.

[Via Laptop, thanks Kevin]

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Filed under: Robots

You know those insect-like micro air vehicles (MAV) we’ve been seeing? Well, the ExoFly aerobot is based on that camera-equipped DelFly design, only this time it’s gearing up for a trip to Mars — maybe even Titan or Venus. Turns out flapping-wing flight is perfect for the low-density Martian atmosphere. The current prototype — weighing 17g with a wingspan of 350mm and flight time of twelve minutes — is being tweaked for use in future missions to Mars. The folks at Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University, who’ve teamed up with Ursa Minor Space & Navigation, plan on increasing the weight to 20g and adding an on-board solar cell, which they reckon should extend the flight distance to 15km. There’s also talk of using the digital terrain and image data gathered to simulate a 3D immersive environment for detailed analysis of extraterrestrial destinations — hopefully viewable by those of us who don’t have the billions to drop on a flight to Mars.

[Via New Scientist Space]

Continue reading ExoFly: Mars’ first tourguide

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Via [Engadget]

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