We’ve always got time for thoroughly pointless USB gadgets and they don’t come much more pointless than the Cube Collection’s USB Engine Hub.
Designed for people dissatisfied with the aesthetic experience of plugging in USB peripherals, the USB Engine Hub turns the everyday act of plugging in a printer or a scanner into a piece of high octane motorcycle performance art, complete with sound effects, a working kickstart and gears.
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We loved the Sony DSC-V3 camera released back in late 2004, and had hopes that the new H3 would be an upgrade to this fine camera, noting the increased zoom range (up to a whopping 10x) and a pixel count nudged slightly up to eight megapixel resolutions.
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We thought our office was looking pretty hi-tech with the Oregon Scientific Wireless Easy Weather System Pro we reviewed last year, but its science-spoddy good looks have been comprehensively pwned by the company’s new BA900 Crystal Weather Station which – to paraphrase His Purpleness, Prince – has most certainly Got The Look.
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Retail titans Wal-Mart have started offering digital music downloads on its Web site free of the copy-protection technology inflicted on most MP3 web sites.
Boasting thousands of albums and songs from major record labels like Universal and EMI Group, Wal-Mart’s service will let users download tracks free of any digital rights management.
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Japanese experts have warned that the fundamental technology behind lithium-ion cells – the batteries that currently power most laptops and mobile phones – is inherently iffy and the design must be changed toot de suite for the safety of consumers.
Professor Masataka Wakihara of the Tokyo Institute of Technology – who has the unusual job of advising the Japanese Government about battery safety – has said that changes must be made to the manufacturing process to ensure that they are robust enough for everyday use.
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Movie big boys Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation have announced that their next-generation DVDs will exclusively be in the HD DVD format, as both companies dump support for Sony’s rival format Blu-ray format.
Mad for it photographers will be looking to put their grannies on eBay come October when Canon’s high end EOS-1DS Mark III full-frame digital SLR hits UK stores.
With a sensor capable of producing files that convert to uncompressed 16-bit TIFFs over 100MB in size, this camera doesn’t just raise the bar for photo professionals – it gives it an almighty boot skywards.
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With shoppers driven indoors and online by the miserable weather, UK online sales soared past £4bn in a month for the first time ever, according to latest figures from IMRG.
The online retail body reported that Internet sales have exploded over the last year, with this July’s figure of £4.2bn up a hefty 80 per cent from £2.34bn in July 2006.
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Some Skype users faced a frustrating weekend after a software bug left many unable to log in to the Internet phone service.
The sign on problem surfaced early Thursday afternoon (August 16th), with the company’s blog reporting a software issue. At the same time, Skype temporarily disabled all downloads of Skype.
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With the folks at Skype continuing to ignore the loud pleas from Palm OS users, German firm Shape Services have created a Palm Skype compatible client, IM+ for Skype, which is also available for BlackBerry, Symbian S60 v3, Java powered phones and Windows Mobile Pocket PC platforms, with an iPhone version in beta (see below).
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