Gadgets Base

Is this ever a funky piece of transportation - the Motorized Monocycle from Hammacher.

Drawing upon a robust history of development that began with an original design conceived in Marseilles, France in 1869, this is the motorized monocycle made in the Netherlands that propels a single rider up to 25 MPH. Powered by a 31cc, four-stroke 1 1/2-hp engine, the wheel operates by using a centrifugal clutch on its inner steel frame to engage the larger 67″ diam. outer flywheel that actually makes contact with the ground with a rubber tire. The ingenious device is steered by leaning to one side or the other, and it can safely negotiate any dense surface such as pavement or grass. A fiberglass frame encloses the engine, drive train, and fuel tank, and provides a cushioned seat and convenient footrests for riders up to 6′ 3″ high when i n a sitting position. The hand-holds have a finger throttle that provides progressive acceleration and a brake that provides confident stops for riders up to 275 lbs. (minimum weight of 110 lbs. suggested for proper counterbalance during acceleration and braking). It can run for up to two hours on less than a 1/2-gallon of gasoline.

No point in picking one of these up if it isn’t a street legal vehicle. Well, unless you want to drive the Joneses up the wall as they try to keep up with your lavish $12,999.95 purchase.

Posted Mar 29th 2008 7:44AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Media PCs
Those on the hunt for a pre-fabricated HTPC can’t complain about a lack of choices these days, but if you’ve yet to be taken aback by anything out there, why not give Mesiro’s Merium a glance? The standout feature here isn’t the 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5500 processor, 250GB internal HDD, dual-layer DVD burner, GMA950 graphics accelerator, WiFi, 5-in-1 multicard reader or the bundled MCE remote — oh no, it’s the interchangeable chassis covers (weird, right?). Yep, you can swap out the covers on this rig whenever you feel the urge, ensuring that there’s a case for every occasion. Unfortunately, those in America who’d like to get in on this won’t appreciate the €999 ($1,578) price tag, and those €55 ($87) faceplates aren’t any easier to swallow.

[Via MoCo Loco]

Sakar has a couple of new MP3 players that seemingly target the pre-teen segment of the market. These won’t be able to save you from bankruptcy should you default on your loans for a few months in a row, and even pawn shops won’t want to take this in. Covered in fake jewels, you can choose from pink or purple colors. These Sakar MP3 players will carry just 512MB worth of songs inside, which is paltry considering today’s storage standards. Pricing details are conspicuously missing as well, but it shouldn’t hit your wallet for too much damage anyways.

Product Page via Chip Chick

Samsung and AT&T are finally bringing the Samsung Access (aka SGH-827) to the US market in May 2008. Access is the first mobile phone from Samsung that fully supports AT&T Mobile TV.

AT&T’s Mobile TV is a high-quality programming mobile television service that features direct access to full-length television content, sporting events from top US networks. Currently, AT&T Mobile TV offers programming from top entertainment brands such as CBS Mobile, Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile TV, FOX Mobile, MTV, NBC 2GO, NBC News2Go and Nickelodeon.

Giving justice to the high-quality programming offered by AT&T Mobile TV is the Samsung Access’ 2.5-inch LCD display which can be set in landscape mode for widescreen viewing. Samsung and AT&T also tout the Access as a multimedia device featuring VideoShare, AT&T Mobile Music, stereo Bluetooth, external stereo speakers, external memory microSD card slot for story expansion and a 1.3-megapixel camera with video recording functionality.

Complementing these multimedia functions, are Samsung’s network support for dual-band 3G connectivity as well as the quad-band GSM technology. These two features will enable AT&T users to make international calls to more than 200 countries and download data from another 145 countries. Topping the list of these Access’ goodies are its various messaging options that include MMS, IM, SMS, and email.

I know that watching TV programs from your mobile phone can be pretty exciting. What more if that mobile phone was specifically designed to bring you that experience. Just another month of waiting and you can all access the features of the Samsung Access.

Read [Business Wire] Via [Gizmodo]

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Posted Mar 29th 2008 2:18AM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: cellphones
At this point the Treo 800w has been outed by Bill Gates himself, so while the suspense factor is pretty low, it’s nice to know that it’ll finally be getting here in June. That’s the word according to this purloined Sprint roadmap, which also indicates the newest Treo will have GPS and EV-DO rev. A — but still run WinMo 6.0, which is pretty sad, especially if that revised version of 6.1 launches at CTIA next week as expected. Oh well, at least it’s a new Treo — let’s just hope they can shake some more ugly off this thing before it hits the street.

[Via PhoneArena]

It seems that Sling Media is planning to have a very busy year, with support coming to more and more devices. Dave Zatz has confirmed that they (Sling Media) have an iphone SDK, but where they decide to go with be another story and an actual player has not been confirmed to be in the works yet. According to Dave “we know it’s [iPhone] a hot platform and we’ll see what our options are.” Sounds like it would be a smart move.

In addition Sling Media, just yesterday confirmed the upcoming SlingPlayer support for the Symbian UIQ, Nokia N95 8GB and also confirmed they still have the previously announced blackberry player in the works. Assuming it all goes according to plan, it look like we geeks could have our choice of mobile phone and not have to worry about Sling Player support.

Via [CrunchGear]

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Posted Mar 29th 2008 2:54AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Desktops
We’ve all been waiting to see what ASUS’s Eee PC desktop would turn out to look like, and HotHardware is claiming these shots are the real deal. Yeah, we know, it’s a bit reminiscent of a certain motion-sensing game console, but besides these kind of grainy photos we’ve still got almost nothing to go by. Yet!

Just as soon as everyone begins to wonder where the previously announced black AT&T Centro is, we have what appears to be the first in-the-wild sighting.

At least one customer, Brian was able to walk into his local AT&T Store in Salt Lake City, Utah and was able to make a quick and easy exchange with his current white model and walked out with black Centro in hand. So AT&T users and Centro fans who were holding out for the black model may want to head on over or give a call to your local store, you may just get lucky. It could be that AT&T and Palm, having already announced the model, opted for a quite introduction into stores.

Via [Treo Central]

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Pantech presented five new concept phones for Korea.

Pantech (also known as Sky Premium) has recently partnered with various Korean universities for the creation of a phone to be launched in 2010. Below are the pictures of the concept phones created by the students. They all look different from what we usually see in the market, but there’s nothing like a sprinkle of oddity to spark creativity in sterile minds.

1. The Wavy Stream

2. The WaterFall Fish

3. The Simplice Section

4. The Cell Dot

5. The Lily Tower

via

Posted Mar 28th 2008 10:36PM by Ariel Waldman
Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets, RobotsAriel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

Last week on Movie Gadget Friday we kicked off our two-part series in honor of the late Arthur C. Clarke with 2001: A Space Odyssey. This week continues our tribute as we look into some of the support systems on board Discovery 1 and the Leonov in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. While we hear Dave Bowman proclaim “My God, it’s full of stars”, we can’t help but dig through this film full of gadgets.

HAL 9000 and SAL 9000
Designed as an artificial emotional intelligence machine, the HAL 9000 and SAL 9000 require human interaction for enhanced performance. Represented by a blue camera eye and female voice, SAL 9000 served as a guide to monitoring potential reactions by the previously disabled HAL 9000. Both machines incorporate keyboard and audio input to communicate with intelligent carbon-based lifeforms (read: us). The HAL 9000 is adept at facial, vocal, and vital sign recognition and makes decisions based on a strict understanding of logic. HAL maintains numerous responsibilities while acting as the brain and central nervous system of Discovery 1. Though HAL appears to be programmed to protect the crew, there are obvious and inherent flaws in his logic programming, resulting in — spoiler alert — in committing homicide to resolve conflicting commands. More after the jump.

Hibernation system
Similar to the pods seen on the vacant Discovery ship, the hibernation system on board the Alexei Leonov serves as a way to minimalize vital needs to the bare necessities. In fact, people in hibernation breathe on average of once per minute and are said to not experience any amount of REM. The system attaches a series of electrodes across various places of a person’s body to monitor EEG waves among other bodily functions. The cryogenic hibernation technology is fully operational and applicable to long-term missions that require the use for saving valuable resources along the way. The pods and people are hooked into a series of life support systems that are then able to be controlled by autonomous on board computers if need be.

Non-conducting blade and controller
Due to the potential for unstable, logic-based decisions resulting in the imminent situation of a machine like HAL 9000 murdering crew members, a non-conducting blade device was devised as a back-up plan to disconnect HAL before the crew found themselves, um, disabled. The device is hooked up to a remote controlled trigger disguised as a red calculator. Detonation is triggered by punching in nine nines, selecting the square root, and then the integer. Installed inside a critical location of HAL’s wires, the non-conducting blade is sure to not create any short circuits when triggered.

Ariel Waldman is a social media insights consultant based in San Francisco. Her blog can be found at http://arielwaldman.com.