NASA investigates problems with Mars Spirit rover

They’ve manged to make it to the five-year mark despite a few considerable bumps in the road, but it looks like one of the Mars rovers has once again hit a snag, and NASA is now furiously trying to sort out the problem. Apparently, the issue first arose earlier this week when Spirit reported that [...]

No Comments

India’s $10 laptop coming February 3rd, take that Negroponte

Get ready, India’s $10 laptop is set for its first unveiling on February 3rd. Ok, so it’s not quite $10… $20 actually, but that’s far better than the $100 some were estimating. It’s also much better than the $200 per OLPC XO deal that Negroponte wanted to reportedly charge the Indian government more than 2 [...]

No Comments

Nissan turns to technology to keep folks from driving the wrong way

As is becoming increasingly clear, Nissan seems to be intent on having cars do everything short of drive themselves, and it’s now taking yet another step in that direction with a proposed system that would prevent drivers from going the wrong way. While it’s all still in the planning stages at the moment, the system [...]

No Comments

WiFi Rail finalizes 20 year deal to bring internet to BART trains

Nearly a year to the day after we heard that WiFi trials were beginning on some of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit trains, WiFi Rail has announced a deal that’ll last a score and provide high-speed WiFi “throughout the BART transit system and on all BART commuter trains.” Reportedly, the network has successfully [...]

No Comments

Colorsonic concept MP3 player turns your tunes into groovy colors, man

MP3 players with screens that show pretty colors are certainly nothing new, but Rhea Jeong’s Colorsonic concept is something rather different. It’s a little donut-shaped device that lacks a proper display, instead lighting its sections up to represent different types of music tagged using software at home — think Shuffle meets mood ring. You could [...]

No Comments

Kyocera consolidates handset businesses, cuts 360 jobs in the process

It’s only been a year since Kyocera snapped up Sanyo’s cellphone business in a bid to expand its mobile empire, but it looks like the company is already being forced to reorganize its handset businesses into something leaner and, it hopes, meaner. The biggest shake-up comes in the company’s U.S. offices, which will now be [...]

No Comments

How would you change Nikon’s D3x DSLR?

Look, we fully understand that only a handful of you were willing to force your kid to pay for their own education while you spent that eight grand in savings on the D3x, but for those hardcore enough to do just that, here’s your venting post. This beast of a DSLR has been rumored, teased [...]

No Comments

Gridplane releases hazy NXE mockup that never was

Design / animation studio Gridplane’s recently unloaded photos of a mockup it contributed to the Microsoft Xbox team in charge of revamping the Xbox user interface, which eventually became the New Xbox Experience, AKA NXE. There are a few things here we like — the design has a clean, other-worldly feel to it that’s semi-appealing. [...]

No Comments

Motorola ZN300 looks possibly okay, sort of

We knew the name, but when it comes to phones, it’s not really the name we care about, now is it? (Is it?) Looks like we now have the first totally unofficial shot of Motorola’s upcoming ZN300 slider, said to feature a QVGA display and 3 megapixel cam around back. Unless this puppy runs Android [...]

No Comments

Philips’ 56-inch Cinema 21:9 HDTV: not for Americans

Oh, bollocks! If one particular spokesman who opened up to ZDnet today is accurate, Philips’ totally sweet 56-inch Cinema 21:9 HDTV won’t ever be sold on American soil. Quite frankly, we’re wondering what’s up with Philips and its apparent disdain for the US market. It farmed out its Blu-ray / DVD and TV operations in [...]

No Comments

Nikon D700 gets tweaked to shoot video via live-view

Some Canon die-hards have already managed to coax their DSLRs to record video via live-view, and it looks like Nikon aficionados are now able to do the same, albeit not quite as easily just yet. That’s because the mod requires both access to Nikon’s SDK for the D700 and the necessary skills to actually do [...]

No Comments

Windows Vista SP2 RC may be in the hands of testers as we speak

Sure, the big hubbub’s been Windows 7 (give us some time and we’ll figure out how to install it on a toaster!) but Microsoft is betting that quite a few folks will be stranded in Vistaland (Vista Town? Vista Village? The dreaded Vista Flats?) for some time to come, and they’ll need provisions — like [...]

No Comments

Windows 7 gets installed on Amtek U560 UMPC, what’s next?

It may not be quite the all purpose OS that Windows XP has become, but Windows 7 is certainly proving to at least be a good deal more versatile than its immediate predecessor, and folks just can’t seem to stop testing its limits. One of the latest to be put through the wringer is the [...]

No Comments

Maingear intros Remix workstation for the creative professional

We tell ya, Maingear doesn’t get a lot of play amongst the big timers like Dell and HP, but it sure knows how to crank out machines that are just different enough to be worth examining. Enter the Remix workstation, a desktop designed for creative professionals who dabble in graphic design, video production and pro [...]

No Comments

Speech bubble-shaped Speak-er on sale this year

Pardon us while we gush profusely, but this is easily one of the most amazing audio products we’ve ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on. The Speak-er, which honestly looks like something straight from the labs of Art Lebedev Studios, is quite simply a speech bubble-shaped speaker. It measures in at 4- x 6- [...]

No Comments