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In Brief
Laptops / PCs
iPod Mini Everywhere
This interesting piece of patent marginalia shows a potential iPod Mini stuck inside a potential PowerBook. This is actually probably just Apple's way of covering its arse when someone comes out with a similar notion of an MP3 player built into a laptop, something about prior art or whatever, but the premise is compelling. The iPod acts as the laptop's touch pad and, like some other laptops we've seen, the screen supplies handy info like battery life, grayscale pr0n, and track listings. Will it ever be made? Naw. But it's nice to know someone is thinking out in Cupertino. More »
In Brief
Siemens SL75 and S75
Now, as far as I remember, Siemens, she go bye-bye. However, it seems like either they're not quite dead yet or these are the last throes. More »
In Brief
Creative Zen Sleek
I hate the word "sleek." Otters are sleek and snakes are sleek. Sleek describes something that has shiny, healthy, and slick fur. So unless this Creative Zen Sleek is hitting puberty, it ain't sleek. I know that there's another usage, but that applies more to cars and boats than every single electronics product on the market . More »
In Brief
Navicore Personal Reviewed (Verdict: Small GPS is Nice)
Well, I've trekked through the 12 stages of grief and come out a wiser man. I think I lost all my MySQL data unless someone knows of some way to mount a busted disk image. Oh well. More »
In Brief
Motorola and Nokia Summer Fun
Strangely, Phonescoop posted a look at the new Motorola E895 and the new Nokia GSM/CDMA line-up in one place, thereby either forcing us to link to them twice or be very lazy. We opted for the latter. More »
In Brief
Imation Micro Hard Drive
After giving myself sysadmin sinking feelings every few minutes, we need to look at something pretty. The Imation Micro Hard Drive is amazing in that it's a mini hard drive that looks like a padlock. This is very similar to the behavior of the great hooded skink which can, at will, appear as Marisa Tomei. More »
In Brief
RubberMaid Paint Buddy
We currently have about fifty cans of old paint in the basement, just waiting to rust, bust, and collect dust. This, therefore, is a clever little solution. The Paint Buddy can hold a small amount of paint is is useful for touching up messy spots where the dog began chewing on the wallboard to escape from the closet. These fellas won BusinessWeek's IDEA awards, and rightly so. More »
In Brief
SMARTHYDRO Intelligent Tub
This is what I need right now. I'm having trouble with POP and mod_perl and all sorts of messiness. And I think I'm destroying my dd images but fscking them. Sorry for harping. More »
Laptops / PCs
SilverStone LC18
Case designs have been leaning towards the "pimp-my-mobo" side of things recently and this is no exception. THe SilverStone LC18 has an external LCD monitor on the case and looks like the bastard spawn of a MacMini and ThermalTake death-beast. Featured at this year's C3, the LC18 is an interesting mix of elegance and over-the-topness that I can't quite get my head around. I wonder about heating issues with a phat LCD inside a tight overclocker's case. More »
In Brief
Spam Makes You Thinner
I'm looking at starting up my IMAP server again, so this is very apt. According to a study in Alberta, Canada—Oh CAN-A-DA!—readers of diet spam tend to worry more about their weight and maintain a lower BMI. More »
Laptops / PCs
Adventures in the Sysadmin Trade
John here. Got back from the NOC last night—the NOC is in DC and I'm in New York, so it was kind of like visiting the reclusive Uncle rather than a fun road trip—and I rebuilt MOST of the system. Now I need to get my MySQL DBs back out of an image of the disk that failed. I ran mke2fs -S on it, ran fsck, but now I have five million files in the lost+found. Anyone know any way to dig them out without ending up with a mess? More »
In Brief
Sony HDR-HC1 Camcorder Reviewed (Verdict: Fantastic)
CamcorderInfo got their hands on the Sony HDR-HC1, the first 'affordable' High-Definition Video camcorder available. For around two grand (or less, even), you can get a true HD camera with tons of features, including a touchscreen interface, decent (but slightly limiting) manual controls, and the ability to shoot still pictures, as well. It uses a CMOS sensor instead of the 3CCD setup of its older brother, the HDR-FX1, but according the review, it's really not that big of a deal. More »
In Brief
Northern Industrial Super SearchEye Spotlight
Ten million candlepower is a lot of photons, and for just $50, this Northern Industrial Super SearchEye Spotlight will give them to you—without cords. Using a rechargeable 12 volt battery and a Philips H4 halogen bulb, the beam is bright enough to reflect off the moon if you are on the surface of the moon. Otherwise, it's very bright. More »
In Brief
The Endo of Sendo
Sendo's major R&D assets have been purchased by Motorola, effectively singaling the end for the tiny GSM cell phone company. Sendo's first GSM had been highly looked forward to, but with a serious delay to market, it seems that even sales of 5 million or so handsets wasn't enough to keep the company out of debt. More »
In Brief
Solar Powered Flying Drones
DefenseTech talks about the development—somewhat inevitably, I would think—of solar-powered flying drones, able to stay in the sky and monitor enemy troop movements indefinitely. A test model from AC Propulsion [pictured] has gone up for 48 hours straight and was only landed because the human operators got tuckered out. More »
In Brief
Motorola iTunes Phone First Look Again Perhaps (Maybe)
From purportedly leaked internal documents, here's a first look at the Motorola iTunes phone. The most striking feature is clearly the scroll wheel, which could come into play for even non-music things like moving through stored phone numbers. There also appear to be dedicated buttons on the side—that's not quite as 'iPoddy' as one would hope. More »
In Brief
