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Ryan Block Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 8:08PM Source Site:engadget
Its a little early for us to celebrate Oktoberfest (ah, who are we kidding, every Friday is Oktoberfest at Engadget HQ), but Grolsch totally hit us hard up with their new blikbeugel: all the fun of the old-school Dutch bottleneck beerseals, but without the daunting possibility of messy broken-glass bar fight stabs to the abdomen. But our favorite thing about the blikbeugel is perhaps its anti-competitive fit, a rather nice touch which makes it incompatible with cans of Heineken. Way to go guys, now how about some wearable-display beer goggles, or at least an attachment for a 40?
[Thanks, Dexter]
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Peter Rojas Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
Alright, youre finally getting the Mac mini hub (some of you) have been asking for. Micronet just busted out the miniMate, a hub that looks like a slightly thinner version of the Mac mini and that combines a 160GB 7200rpm hard drive with a 4-port USB 2.0 and 3-port FireWire hub.
[Thanks, TK101]
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Peter Rojas Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
They have a fairly mixed track record when it comes to predicting these things, but but Banc of America Securities think that Apple could drop a new iPod on us as early as June in order to keep sales from flagging over the summer months. Of course they dont say anything about what kind of new iPod it might be.
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Donald Melanson Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
A joint venture between Canon and Toshiba called SED Inc. has unveiled an SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) panel with a 100,000:1 contrast ratio which is, well, pretty damn impressive (feel lucky if your current LCD rocks 1000:1). The companys first SED panel, by comparison, had a contrast ratio of just 8,600:1. Apparently, the key to such a large jump in contrast ratio was a broad reduction in black luminance, from 0.04 cd/m2 to 0.003 cd/m2, which they achieved by improving the electron-emitting source property. Or, in plain english, blacks look blacker, which is always a good thing. No word yet on when youll be able empty your bank account and hang one of these things on your wall.
[Via Akihabara News]
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Peter Rojas Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
Giving us slightly more hope that were actually going to pull back from the abyss that would be a next-gen DVD format war, more manufacturers are joining Sony and Toshibas peace talks over how to fuse Blu-ray and HD-DVD into a single standard. Now that fellow heavyweights Matsushita and Philips are in there it sounds like Sony and Toshiba are finally getting past all the fronting and posturing and starting to hammer out the serious details of a unified format, and are even beginning to brief the big movie studios about the details of a possible new format. There are a lot of reasons why things might not work (besides all the ego stuff, there are technical reasons for why combining Blu-ray and HD-DVD would prove difficult), but we cant help but be optimistic, you know? Everyone forgets t...
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Ryan Block Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
May not be the case in America where 2D-code technology is, er, drastically archaic, but the rest of the world seems to be appropriately enthusiastic about fitting lots of data into printable code. QR code (top right) is the current Big Deal with up to 7,000 encodable characters in one block. But ColorZip wants their ColorCode technology to unseat new 800lb 2D-code gorilla; unlike barcodes and QR codes, which are inherantly offline technologies, ColorCode merely encodes URL-like data locators (think tinyurl), which means to interpret the code you have to retrieve its corresponding data online. Of course, this alleviates the problem of an encoded character limit, but also has the unfortunate side-effect of requiring a net connection. Fortunately for the Japanese, thats something theyve g...
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Ryan Block Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
If you couldnt already tell, were the worlds premier source for the latest on yo-yo technologywhich is why were so frustrated the Magic YOYO MP3 player isnt even a yo-yo at all, let alone one whose teather is also its headphone cord. Are you hearing this Panram? Solid gold idea, guys! Way better than another generic 256MB, USB 1.1 MP3 player, integrated battery or no. And yes, were aware it takes some time for such obscure Taiwanese gadgets to surface on this side of the world.
[Via TRFJ]
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Ryan Block Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
The western world already had a robotic golf trainer (right), but the Japanese totally had to go and one up us at our own game, apparently: a firm called Nirvana Technology (who also developed a tai chi-performing robot) has supposedly developed a robo-caddy, which cruises around the course with you automatically and can even hit the ball towards the green (on an apparently limited basis). The first gen doesnt particularly sound so fab, but were fairly sure Nirvana Technology wont rest until theyve got a machine that purposefully hits balls into sand-traps just to t-off other players and makes putting balls in with that Tiger-Woods-stopping-ball trick totally old hat.
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Peter Rojas Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
Yep, weve seen that close up pic of what is supposedly the Xbox 360 that is going around, and no, we dont know exactly what it is either. The source of the pic is Microsofts online teaser game for the new console (found at ourcolony.net), which means that technically its not a fake, though whether its a ruse or a decoy console is another matter entirely (Microsoft isnt above trying to fake us out a little). So what are we looking at? A power button? A removable hard drive? A slideout tray for the optical drive? The only thing we know for certain is that weve all fallen into Microsofts viral marketing trap, thats for damn sure.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
UPDATE: Weve just heard from a trusted source that this is indeed the Xbox 360! Heres what they had to say:
That i...
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Ryan Block Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
Got to give Siemens props for their latest femme phone, if for no other reason than the fact that they claim its the first phone designed by women for women (yeah, yeahcant a metrosexual get a break?). Whether or not you believe no man had a part in its making, the device, equipped with a 262k color display, camera, 11MB memory, Push-to-Talk, IM, has another interesting feature: Siemens got Roja Dove, a rather famous perfumer, to create a themed fragrance in support of the device. Were not sure how the carriers are going to subsidize that.
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Ryan Block Year:by , posted Apr 22nd 2005 at 12:40PM Source Site:engadget
We hope youre not sick of hearing about Hello Kitty, because were certainly not sick of giving you the biz regarding her latest goings on in her gadget industry takeover. The latest are two NHJ-cobranded v@mp players, the VP-525D, which features 256MB integrated memory, an SD reader, FM tuner, line-in, and a hella sweet old-school Walkman aesthetic; they also whipped up a Kitty version of their VP-415 player, a 128MB flash device with an SD reader, an FM tuner, voice recording, and an integrated speaker and two headphone jacks for sharing the tunes.
[Via Akihabara News]
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