Gadgets Base

by Nilay Patel, posted Jul 15th 2008 at 2:01PM
The last Wii keyboard we saw was pretty hellaciously ugly, but Logitech’s take on the much-needed peripheral is actually fairly sleek. The all-white keyboard doesn’t quite have the flair of the diNovo Mini, but it does have full-size keys, and for $50 it isn’t bad — and it’s officially licensed by Ninty, so there are dedicated zoom, quit, forward / back, and OK buttons. Sadly, however, it’s not Bluetooth — there’s a proprietary 2.4GHz USB receiver — but you can’t win ‘em all. Should be available in August.

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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Humans are instinctively dynamic. While we might fear some changes, there are plenty of the small things in life that we just get sick of seeing in the same place all of the time. For instance, say you have a chandelier, or any hanging light for that matter, in your dining room or kitchen. Can you honestly say you’ve never been pissed off about its location?

There are just times where you wish you could move that damn thing up a few inches or maybe slide it lower towards the ground by a foot or so. If you’ve ever yanked on those chintzy chains which hold hanging lights, you know that their strength is sometimes unforgiving. Napastyle offers an excellent retractable light, made just for those moments of indecisiveness.

The Allume Retractable Light features a cord which offers adjustable height. Ranging from a height of 20″-57″, the Allume is ultimately the most customizable retracting hanger that we’ve seen. You can use the Allume for up to a 40W lightbulb glow.

If you’re like the rest of us and just have those moments where the location of your light just won’t do, the Allume Retractable Light is a cool little find for $43.99. If you want a duo, you can snag two of these bad boys for $79.99.

Product Page via SlashGear

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I’m truly sorry all of your glorious epileptic readers. It might not be very far to tout a gadget that might throw you into a fit, but we’ve gotta do it anyway. Flashing lights have been known to trigger seizures in some people. I’ve personally never had a problem, but for some it might be a bad idea.

With that said, adding a personal lightshow to your music sounds like a pretty cool idea, am I right? The LED Lightshow Speaker is a customizable light effect speaker which comes with an assortment of different patters for creating your own lightshow matrix.

Shipped with 48 colored cubes and 4 separate pattern modes, the LED Lightshow Speaker connects right into your stereo, portable media player, including the ipod, or other media device that can handle a 3.5mm plug. The continually changing color patters are offered in 3 different speed options, which which be a seizure deterrent to some effect.

If you feel the urge to pimp up your music listening experience with a little dynamic showmanship, the LED Lightshow Speaker seems like a pretty cool option for doing so on the cheap. For only $49.95, don’t expect professional DJ quality equipment, but you can plan on integrating a jazzier zest to your tunes.

Product Page via Zedomax

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FROM GAMERTELL - Bookmark this page and plan to press REFRESH a lot. We’re Live Bloggin’ Nintendo’s E3 press conference. It starts at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time (Noon Eastern time), Tuesday, July 15, 2008. While you are waiting, make sure you check out the rest of our E3 2008 coverage. 8:55 am (PT)… MORE »

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Looking for a simple way to run the Ubuntu Eee OS on your Eee PC? Then this may possibly be the answer for you, the team behind the Ubuntu Eee project have announced that they will be offering a limited edition 4GB SD card with the OS pre-installed.

Users would have to just insert the SD card into their Eee PC and then select to boot from the SD card. Nothing really special to do, nothing to install, just insert the card and start up your computer.

The cards are currently available for order, but are a little pricey at $50. With the low price of 4GB Class 6 SD cards nowadays you can certainly accomplish this for less, but then you would not have the convenience, or satisfaction of donating to a good open source cause.

However if this is something you are looking for you may not want to wait to long because according to the developer Jon Ramvi, he has only purchased 10 blank cards to date.

Of course for your $50 what you do get, aside from the warm fuzzy feeling that donating to a cause will give you, is a shiny new 4GB Class 6 SD card that has the Ubuntu Eee OS installed and is branded with the Ubuntu Eee logo.

Read [Jon Ramvi] Via [Liliputing]

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Here’s another announcement of new PC’s loaded with Intel’s Centrino 2 processor, this time its from Fujitsu with their new LifeBook tablet pc’s, the LifeBook T5010 and LifeBook T1010. Both models have 13.3-inch widescreen displays and are said to be the lightest convertibles in the market sporting the that size display. The LifeBook T5010 weighs only 4.5 pounds while the LifeBook T1010 weighs 5.3-pounds.

Both of these Tablet PCs have a bi-directional display hinge that would let you turn the screen in both directions for added flexibility. In addition, these notebooks feature the next-generation Intel wireless draft-N or Atheros N which are touted as three times faster than the usual 802.11n-based wireless connectivity. Both notebooks also come with an option to have a Bluetooth v2.1 and optional wireless WAN for additional wireless connectivity features.The T5010 and T1010 both come with spill-resistant keyboards and are equipped with the Fujitsu Shock Sensor for protecting their hard drives from damage due to sudden jolt or drop.

For their other features, the silver-gloss covered LifeBook T1010 boasts of a built-in dual-layer multi-format DVD writer and webcam. While the black covered LifeBook T5010 features a stylus for pen-driven navigation, 6-cell battery plus an additional modular bay that can accommodate an additional battery, and either a second hard drive or optical drive and a slew of security features.

Both the T5010 (base configuration) and T1010 are available now and retail for $1,769 and $1,299 respectively.

Read [Market Wire]

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Hrmph. Looking at these Office Fairy Lights ($12.95) from Baron Bob, I can’t help but feel a little annoyed.

No, I don’t mind that the stars attached to the 36″ string of lights are actually made of plastic. I’m reasonable enough to understand that the fairies can’t deprive the night sky of real stars just to dress up the earthlings’ computer monitors and laptop screens. But to power the lights via USB when there are endless supplies of pixie dust available in Fairy Land? Well, that’s just insulting.

Via Nerd Approved.

Yogurt Ice Blended from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is cold, refreshing, NON-FAT, contains 4 active cultures, and is packed with protein. Like the Coffee Bean’s brew, it’s not too sweet. It has a tangy bite and comes in 3 tasty flavors - Strawberry, Mango and Original (my personal favorite). My grilfriend - and guinea pig - prefers the mango for the citrus boost.

A relatively guilt-free treat, it’s made with non-fat yogurt with four very lively cultures, with 25% to 50% of the total recommended daily calcium intake and between 9 to 18 grams of protein per serving.

But don’t take our word for it. We’ll be giving away free coupons to Popgadget Drop email subscribers. Sign up here for our free emails.

After 5 days now with the new iphone 3G my feeling is, “well done, Apple”. Well done on the hype, the expectations, the ability to get people to line up day after day for fear that iPhones will soon become extinct, even though more and more get “unexpectedly shipped” each day. Do I sound bitter? Actually, I did very little waiting in line, although I gawked a lot, because it was a hot, hot weekend and I saw people looking near death as they waited for hours in the sun.

The lines were spectacular, and all made possible by the in-store activation that was required for each iPhone sold, a procedure made interminable by the overload on the iTunes servers. Last year, when the iPhone came out, I decided to wait until the fanatics all had theirs and there was no wait, and that turned out to be about 2 hours after they went on sale. Well this year, there are lots of people still pining for an iPhone, and many red “sold-out” notices on the iPhone availability site. If you’re planning on stopping by the Apple store for your iPhone, thinking the craze has died down, I’d strongly advise you check the site to make sure your store has stock first. The list is only live while the store is closed so you have to check the night before.

On to the phone itself…

If you’ve never tried screaming to your lungs’ full capacity, you really don’t know what you’re missing. But what if you don’t live in the woods, away from all other humans? What if you have neighbors who aren’t supportive of your efforts to rid your body of primal pain. Screaming into a pillow just doesn’t cut it when you really want to scream from the depths of your soul.

Japan Trend Shop sells this shouting vase for $79. It’s a plastic thingy that goes over your mouth and converts your explosive, pained, angry, gut-wrenching cries into little whispers that come out at the other end. Hmm, I don’t know. How much of the release you feel after screaming comes from merely letting it out? Without hearing your screams pierce through your brain, do you get the full therapeutic value? Will this vase merely mock your pain by turning your torrents into insignificant droplets?

Via Random Good Stuff.