Evan Blass   Year:by , posted Mar 7th 2006 at 11:51AM   Source Site:engadget

Features Its our 2nd birthday and were giving you the presents! News Intel Mac mini: disassembled PointyRemote, like VNC for your DS Samsungs SGH-i310 8GB Windows Mobile 5.0 musicphone Sony NAS-M7HDS: 80GB NETJUKE Sony expands Bravia S, V, X series LCD HDTVs The post-PMA camera (p)review roundup Higher capacity 50GB EVD / VMD at CeBIT HP adds nx9420, nx6310, nc6320 to Core Duo lineup Citizen rolls out (literally) Eco-Be mini-bot LG to expand DVR-equipped TV line with 42PC1RR Sanyos weather-resistant LCD TV The PlayStation 3 delay meme, part VI: Variety sez holidays 06 iubis blue media player with Bluetooth Solar USB drive and MP3 player to rise at CeBIT Jet-powered VW bug takes to the street JIRIS JPC1000 brings iris scanning home IOGear MiniView KVM lets Mac...

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Evan Blass   Year:by , posted Mar 7th 2006 at 11:51AM   Source Site:engadget

Sirshannon over at the website of the same name has had some success playing "guess the slug" with the UMPC sites URL (we know youre familiar with this game- many of you play daily over at Engadget Mobile trying to enter the contest early), discovering that UMPC.com is actually an upcoming community forum for Origami-like tablet devices. Both a "usage" and a "FAQ" section are available to the public, with the former being of more interest as it has pictures of people using an as-yet-unseen UMPC with a slide-out keyboard. The rest of the material is basically generic marketing and n00b information regarding UMPCs and the purpose of the site, but a few of the folks in the photos look like theyre having an awfully good time with their mini PCs, which has gotten us just that much more ex...

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Evan Blass   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

Folks, the future of self-portraiture is here, and its not a tripod, a monopod, or even a handy hovering robot --no, its the MonsterPod, a device that definitely does not work via suction cups, glue, bean bags, or magic (as the website helpfully points out) and sticks to "1,000 objects and counting." The $30 MonsterPod lets your point-n-shoot seemingly defy gravity thanks to a patent-pending elastic solid known as Viscoelastic Morphing Polymer which forms a temporary bond (anywhere from a minute to an hour) with almost any surface that it comes in contact with after a little pressure is applied. While this is certainly a much more versatile and portable option than traditional tripods (if not more available: the MonsterPod is scheduled to be released "two weeks" from an unspecified d...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

We tried. Really we did. We wanted to limit todays Origami posts to the one we ran this morning. But we cant resist the lure of Robert Scoble, whose haiku-like pronouncements on what Origami isnt graced our newsreader a little while ago. According to Scoble (whose sources at Microsoft are, of course, impeccable), Origami isnt an iPod killer, portable Xbox, OQO killer or PSP killer. So, what exactly is it? Coy boy Scoble isnt telling, though he says hes seen it, and that hell buy one with his own money. We assume he wont be forced to do that. Hes more than earning his keep by feeding us these infuriating snippets. [Thanks, Kyle]...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

While TiVo has bundled its services with set-top boxes provided by other companies -- at one point DirecTV was said to account for nearly 70% of TiVos customers -- the company has long promoted itself as being a hardware provider as well as a service. Now there are signs that the company may be moving away from that model and shifting to an all-service future. In recent comments to analysts, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said that he envisions much of the companys future growth as coming from partnerships with cable operators. "Were a total software upgrade when you think of the cable side of our business. The more that are out there, the more we have an opportunity to roll out to, the more we have the ability for cable subscribers to become TiVo subscribers." While risky, the strategy might be TiV...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

As Steve Jobs is fond of saying, the Mac mini is a BYOKDM computer. And, assuming youve got a KDM (or KVM, as these peripherals are known outside of Jobs-land), chances are theyre already hooked up to another computer. Thats why a good KVM switch ends up being the first peripheral a lot of mini-buyers pick up. The MiniView from IOGear does everything youd expect a KVM to do, and doubles it. Instead of sharing keyboard, video and mouse (and speakers) among two computers, the MiniView lets you share the peripherals among four boxes, and works with computers running Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Unix. And for the mini buyer who wants to preserve those clean lines and that compact footprint, the MiniView is designed to fit neatly underneath your mini -- as long as you havent already reserved t...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

Adding biometric security to your home or office PC is no big deal anymore -- if, that is, youre content with a fingerprint reader. But if you want to go all out and add, say, an iris scanner, your options have been pretty limited. A Korean company called JIRIS is hoping to change that with the JPC1000, which the company is billing as the first consumer-level iris scanner. The device snaps onto the top of your PC, webcam-like, and can then be used for a range of authentication functions, including banking transactions (weve never been asked to get our eye scanned by our online bank, but thats what JIRIS is telling us). A future model will include webcam functions, which we assume will make it handy for those video conference calls where you need to have your eyeball scanned to prove ...

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Ryan Block   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

Ah, its ok, you can admit that you forgot our birthday. We guess its not too late to send us gift basket or anything, but you know how we roll here at Engadget, and so to celebrate our 2nd anniversary weve been blowing it out with seven days of giveaways. Today were giving away a Squeezebox Wireless. Winning this fine prize is easy: just tell us one of your favorite Engadget posts of the past year. It can be anything (except this post): a regular post, an interview, a how-to, a review, or whatever, just post a comment below with a link to it along with a couple of lines about why its your fave and well pick a winner at random. Three runners-up will each win an Engadget t-shirt. A couple of things: You can only enter each days contest once. If you post more than once youll b...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

Ron Patrick wanted a VW Beetle with a jet engine (hey, who doesnt?). But he also wanted to be able to drive it on the open road, rather than just on a closed airport runway surrounded by fire engines and EMT crews. His solution? A dual-engine vehicle, with a normal VW motor for day-to-day transportation, and a GE T58-8F helicopter turboshaft engine converted to run as a jet, to get through rush-hour traffic. All we know is we dont want to be caught behind Patrick when he flips the switch on this one. That, and how much will he charge to add this little trick to our ride? (Click through for more pics.) [Via Engadget Japanese]...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

Taiwanese manufacturers A-Data and MSI plan to unveil solar-powered flash devices at CeBIT, though were not quite sure either one is a shining example of bright new ways to harness the suns power. A-Datas offering, the Solar Disk USB drive, is a fairly generic thumb drive with a solar-powered LCD that displays its available capacity. Given that USB flash drives with LCD displays are becoming fairly common, and that the use of a solar cell to power such a display isnt exactly earth-shattering (we seem to remember picking up our first solar calculator about 20 years ago), we cant exactly see this feature commanding a premium. Meanwhile, MSI plans to demo a solar-cell MP3 player. While that sounds like it could be promising, the solar cell wont be the sole source of juice for the prototype p...

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Ryan Block   Year:by , posted Mar 6th 2006 at 6:30PM   Source Site:engadget

We cant confirm the name is actually "blue," but from the looks of it iubis got a new portable media device in the pipeline with Bluetooth (we hope for A2DP), a 4.3-inch display with optional T-DMB receiver. We should probably see this thing debuted later this week at CeBIT, just dont get your hopes up about this thing seeing a US launch (at least not any time soon) -- you all know the drill by now....

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