Gadgets Base

Posted Mar 19th 2008 6:33PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Misc. gadgetsThe RFID hacks keep coming fast and furious — hot the heels of that Mifare / Oyster Card exploit, the crew at BoingBoing TV has posted up a little demo of how easy cracking the RFID encryption on an American Express card can be. All it takes is an $8 dollar reader easily available on eBay, some software, and the courage to walk around with a laptop waving plastic boxes at people’s butt pockets, but developer Pablos Holman says he’s hoping to develop a newer version that will allow him to be a little more discreet. The root of the problem is apparently the fact that the system uses local decryption rather than sending card info to a secure data center, but either way we’ve been worried about this for a long time — we’re sticking to loose change and the barter system from now on. Video after the break.

So you don’t have an iphone, and neither have you made provisions in your monthly expenses to save up for one. What happens if you’re envious of your friends’ iPhones, and want a somewhat similar input system on your regular handset? This is where Dasur’s touch screen text input software for cell phones and PDAs come in.

Whereas in a standard reduced size keyboard, the user must be very accurate in touching a specific micro-area representing the key, with ThumbKey the user simply presses in the vicinity of the required key and need not be concerned if the thumb touches other keys simultaneously. Due to its unique algorithms, ThumbKey is able to identify the intended keys through a combination of characteristics of the keystroke (size and position of the finger). The algorithm processes the typed letters and its disambiguation feature suggests the intended word and additional candidate words, conveniently displayed next to the keyboard. Powerful word recognition enables you to enter only the first few letters of a word and then to make your choice from options conveniently offered on screen.

Every war has an aftermath. In the case of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format wars, HD-DVD users are now at the first phase of reconstruction. Like the South after the Civil War, it is going to be an uphill climb.

Best Buy, the nation’s largest customer electronics retailer, is trying to ease the transition by offering $50 gift cards to customers who purchased an HD-DVD player or HD-DVD attachment from United States stores before February 23, 2008. They have budgeted $10 million for this endeavor.

In fact, Best Buy plans to mail cards to all customers that the company can positively identify as having purchased an HD-DVD player. That means that many of the grieving will receive a little windfall that will be a breath of fresh air to their normal bills. Of course, some customers will be missed, which is why Best Buy also offers a (888) BEST BUY hotline. All an HD-DVD purchaser has to do is call up and give them their proof of purchase.

The best part about it is that the customer can keep his or her HD-DVD player. However, Best Buy is offering a service for those to get rid of their HD-DVD players with www.bestbuytradein.com. This service will start on March 21, and will provide instant estimates on the value of HD-DVD players, as well as HD-DVD movies.

It’s nice to know that the end of the format war was not the end of hope. By the way, Best Buy isn’t the only one offering this service, as Future Shop, Circuit City, and other stores have similar campaigns. If only stores had done this when Betamax died.

Source

Doesn’t this Dubble Bubble gumball machine phone look like something that the kid from The Toy would have had in his bedroom? You know he would’ve made Richard Pryor call him again and again so that he could hear the circus music, see the flashing lights, and eat the gumball every time the phone rang.

$139 a pop from Custom Phones. I hope they have a Wonder Wheel phone too.

Via Shiny Shiny.

This air freshener isn’t that innocent after all, considering the fact that it comes with a camera and microphone to capture all those illicit moments under the guise of suspicion.

A covert 3G colour camera and microphone are discretely built into this common domestic air freshener, allowing the user to receive both crisp picture, and excellent sound from anywhere in the world where there is 3G service. Gone are the days where range is important and you can only see images within a 100m radius, on a good day, now you can see and hear not only from another town or Country but also from another Continent. This is a very special piece of equipment, modified by our own engineers and is ideal for security-related situations where clear, and reliable images and sound are essential without the problems of being in range and maybe spotted by the target.

You get approximately 300 hours of battery life in standby, but recording action is limited to just 1.7 hours with fully charged batteries. This spy Air Freshener doesn’t come cheap though, retailing for £1,380.63 after taxes.

Most British readers will be familiar with entreprenuer Martha Lane Fox, or with her most famous invention at least: super successful holiday site LastMinute.com. Along with Lastminute business partner Brent Hoberman, Oxford-educated Lane Fox has launched a new interior design site called MyDeco (tagline: “Wipe your feet and come on in”) — and it looks like being just as big.

The site is beautifully designed (I literally said “Ohhh!” when I saw it) and like many homeware sites, showcases an exciting array of furniture from the unique to the practical. But the site offers something different, too: the chance to make changes to your home from the comfort of your chair.

Posted Mar 19th 2008 9:01AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Laptops
Still mourning the passing of the Foleo? You and the other couple of dozen people on earth that need something like that might find a winner in the REDFLY Mobile Companion unveiled at CES this year. The device offers external control of Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices over Bluetooth 2.0 or USB, with a full keyboard, 8-inch 800 x 480 LCD and some USB and VGA plugs for tapping into external drives and an external monitor. ZDNet’s Matthew Miller got an early beta version of the device to test out, and while he admits he’s in the minority of people willing to shell out $500 for something like this, he was fairly impressed by the build quality and usability of the device. The biggest drawback is that you can’t use the device on its own without a phone, but if you’re a heavy browser user or need to do some serious text input, but aren’t doing anything serious enough to demand a real laptop, the REDFLY might just hit some sort of sweetspot for heavy Windows Mobile users. Or it could sell 12 units, it could really go either way.

In a move to help those upset customers who purchased an HD DVD player, Best Buy has announced they will begin offering $50 gift cards for those who made their purchase before February 23, 2008. Considering the HD DVD players will still function and work fairly nice as an up-converting DVD player this $50 gift card offer sounds nice, but just in case you absolutely want it gone, there is also a trade-in program to consider.

The $50 gift card offer requires the HD DVD player have been purchased at Best Buy, however, and this is where some good news comes in. The Trade-In Center Program will allow anyone to trade in their ‘old’ hd dvd player and also their HD DVD movies whether purchased at Best Buy or not. This program will begin on March 21, 2008 and you can visit BestBuyTradeIn.com to get an “instant estimate of the value of your HD DVD player and movies.”

We have also seen a similar return policy from other big-box retailers Circuit City and Future Shop, I wonder who will be next.

Read [Best Buy]

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A bad office can slow you down mentally. All that grimy and sweaty air seriously cannot be that good for your body. If you find your self in this office type problem then grab yourself a Portable Oxygen bar. The oxygen bar from O2 Innovations provides you with cleaner air which helps you to clear your mind. In the box you get a headset, aromatherapy from Bee Happy, Nose Hoses, filters and relaxation CD’s. The instructions recommend you use the Oxygen bar for 30 minutes to get maximum effect.

Features

The O2-B delivers 40% oxygen at a rate of 3 litres per minute. It is capped at 40% due to restrictions of needing a licence to use anything higher.

If you really feel this device will do some good for you then you can pick it up over at Amazon for $659.

Source - Techchee

Guest post by Matthew of Gadget Venue.

Sanyo has released a new model for their Xacti handheld camcorder series, the Xacti CG9. Boasting of a 9.1-megapixel CMOS sensor, 40MB of internal memory, a 5x optical zoom and H.264 video codec. Sanyo is touting the Xacti CG9 as an entry level video camcorder. Hence the move from the usual Xacti CCD to CMOS, probably to enable Sanyo to put a competitive price to the Xacti CG9 since they are targeting the entry-level video camcorder users. But still, the CMOS sensor will produce decent quality videos and high quality still images as well. The Xacti CG9 also boast of 60/fps video recording capability.

Other features of the Xacti CG9 include, face detection technology, fast shutter speed for efficient continuous shooting, digital image stabilizer, wind noised reduction, 2.5-inch flip flip-out LCD and compatibility with PictBridge printing technology and various shooting modes. The Sanyo Xacti CG9 will be available in white, silver, black and pink colors in Japan sometime in April. The official U.S release (if any) has yet to be announced.

Via [Akibahara News]

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