Gadgets Base

Great - first we have air guitars, and now the company of air drums are here to break whatever remnants of silence and peace all around. The VBeat Air Drums from Silverlit is pretty much self-explanatory.

When human beatboxing just won’t cut it anymore, the V Beat Drum still lets frustrated drummers lay down some rhythms. With different sound styles and pre-programmed rhythms as well as an instructive guided learning feature, these slick sticks are an awesome way to make some noise! Motion sensors in the sticks detect the beats without any need for you to actually hit anything with them. So, they’re just the thing for anyone who wants to practice their drumming without the need to for an expensive and cumbersome set of drums.

The VBeat Air Drums retail for £29.99 a set.

Product Page

I’m not sure if these Light Bulb Phone Charms are really essential, since setting your phone to silent mode with vibrate turned on is often more than enough to catch your attention whenever there’s an incoming call - still, I guess you might want to distract the rest of the cinema by telling them just how busy you are with this Light Bulb Phone Charm.

We bet Edison didn’t think his bright idea would end up in everyone’s pocket, but now it can. These mini Light Bulb Phone Charms are the perfect accessory for today’s super stylish mobile phones. Simply put your phone on ’silent’ to save the world from some hideous ringtone, and every time you receive a call or text, instead of a polyphonic cacophony, the mini Light Bulb will flash at you and the world in general in a decidedly retro, cool way, letting you know that someone out there loves you, or is chasing an invoice

The Lightbulb phone charm can be yours today for £5.95, never mind if you’ve constantly churned out bright ideas or not.

Posted Mar 5th 2008 6:57AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Features
There it is, the world’s smallest DSLR — the Olympus E-420 (left) — snuggled up next to its slightly bigger E-410 bro. Note that the E-420 on display at CeBIT is a near-final, fully-functional engineering prototype. What more can we say, it feels great in hand and the space and weight savings are certainly welcome. However, without any images to compare the best we can do is ogle the gallery until the reviews roll in.

Gallery: Hands on with Olumpus E-420 — the world’s smallest DSLR

Posted Mar 5th 2008 12:56AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Robots
If Pleo’s holiday behavior mode left you thirsty for more, chances are the first bona fide update to its Life OS won’t disappoint. Version 1.0.2 enables your dino to explore its surroundings more, engage in fits of singing when encountering groups, and hear erratic noises when sleeping softly. Of note, UGOBE promises the update won’t change your Pleo’s existing personality, so apparently, there’s nothing to lose (but more spare time). Go on, hit up the read link and start that download — right after you tell Pleo to expect a treat, of course.

Posted Mar 5th 2008 2:04AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Digital Cameras
There’s certainly something to be said for the Olympus E-420, which only takes up 5.1 x 3.6 x 2.1-inches and 13.4 ounces in your bag — but that totally 80s body style is getting tired. Would it really have killed them to update the look from the E-410 and the rest of the line? Still, it’s not the most expensive DSLR you’ve ever met, and it does have a 10 megapixel sensor with live view, 2.7-inch display, and ISO up to 1600 (meh). Come April or May (depending on where you live) expect to drop $500 for the body, $600 with an ED 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Zuiko lens, and $700 with an ED 25mm f/2.8 Zuiko lens.

Posted Mar 5th 2008 2:44AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Laptops
Really, it’s ok, you can stop tipping us on the Golden Age / Bling My Thing macbook air. We know it’s all 24k gold and has 12,000 Swarovski crystals and crap, but we’ll be honest, this stuff kind of freaks us out. We don’t know, it’s just offensive in that way that only a triggered gag reflex can properly describe. Supposedly only twenty are being produced, and you know the story about price, and these things being out of your league if you even have to ask.

[Via Pocket-lint, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Posted Mar 5th 2008 3:16AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment
Ready to torture yourself even more? For folks not shacked up in Japan, there’s little good in spending precious moments of your life checking out screenshots of the recently launched TV Guide Channel. Still, that’s absolutely no reason to not check out the same on video, now is it? Oh, and for those curious, the Wiimote simply changes stations and volume levels like any other remote — ‘cept it’s 498.3-percent more likely to shatter your set. Check out the vid after the jump.

[Via NintendoWiiFanboy]

Posted Mar 4th 2008 9:29PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Gaming
After Nathaniel’s nostalgic Xbox 360 was quite literally wiped clean when sent in for repair, we had a sneaking suspicion the powers that be would make sure things were rectified. Thankfully, the bigwigs at Bungie are already conjuring up a solution that it hopes will “come very close” to acting as a replacement. According to Bungie community director Brian Jarrard, his team is “rallying to help fix this unfortunate situation,” and while no details beyond that have been divulged, we can’t help but suspect that the resolution to all of this will be more than satisfactory.

[Thanks, Steve]

Posted Mar 4th 2008 8:23PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Tablet PCs It may not look all that different from its previous xTablet T8600, but MobileDemand still seems to have found plenty to brag about its new xTablet T8700 rugged tablet pc, which it says offers the “industry’s highest performance” in addition to “superior ruggedness.” That performance is centered around a 1.2GHz Core Duo processor and a standard 2GB of RAM, which certainly isn’t much compared to consumer laptops and tablet PCs, but is pretty uncommon in a rugged tablet of this class, which are usually saddled with a Celeron or the like. On that other, even more important matter (at least for anyone in the market for one of these), you can expect an MIL-STD 810F rating for ruggedness and an IP 65 rating for sealing, which you can see put to the test in video form on MobileDemand’s website. Needless to say, none of this exactly comes cheap, with a hefty $3,795 required to call this one your own.

Posted Mar 4th 2008 11:55PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Storage
Not quite a year after Samsung joyfully brought the Spinpoint MP1 into the world, the MP2 has arrived to rightfully take the baton. According to Sammy, the 2.5-inch drive is best suited in desktop replacement lappies, workstations and blade servers, and it’s said to provide quicker read / write speeds than the 500GB M6 announced at CES. The 7,200 RPM drive is slated to land at $299, but an 80GB version will be available for a bit less cash, too. In less sluggish news, the firm has also restated its plans to deliver a 256GB SSD by 2009, and if you were looking for even more bulletin board material, Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor, proclaimed that it was “trying to double SSD capacity every 12 months.” Music to our ears? You bet.

Read - Spinpoint MP2
Read - Samsung’s SSD plans