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Microsoft sidewinder

Gaming on the Death Star: Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Keyboard With Switchable Keypad and X5 Mouse

I don't know who's designing Microsoft's gaming hardware after their brief hiatus from the market, but they're insane, in the best possible way—they've actually got some inspired, unique form factors, besides a huge Vader hard-on. The first Sidewinder keyboard ever, the X6, has a macro/numberpad that'll dock on either side and takes the number of macros up to 90, plus it has gaming usuals like adjustable backlighting. The X5 mouse is a slightly less swank version of the previous Sidewinder. More »

3:00 AM on Wed Aug 20 2008
By matt buchanan
433 views, 4 comments

Art laptops

Dell Now Selling Mike Ming Customized Studio Series Laptops For Urban Hipsters

Perhaps in an attempt to shrug off its stodgy, all-business image, Dell has launched a handful of "Special Art Edition" Studio-series laptops with graphics by artist Mike Ming. Ming has worked with Dell on laptops before, notably with the Inspirion 1525 a few months ago. This is the first time Ming's urban art has been brought to the consumer-focused Studio line, but we're guessing it won't be the last. [Dell]

2:40 AM on Wed Aug 20 2008
By Matt Hickey
180 views, 1 comment

green power

Student Develops Cheap Power Turbine For Developing Nations

It's one thing to tinker in your garage to restore that old gas-guzzling muscle car that you think will get you some action. It's something entirely different to invent an electricity-generating wind turbine out of scrap parts that could revolutionize personal power in developing nations, especially if you're in college. Max Robinson has done just that, designing a turbine out of spare parts that costs less than $40 to build out of readily available parts and can power a home's lighting for up to two and a half days or a radio for over a day. No word on how long an OLPC would last. [Daily Mail]

12:20 AM on Wed Aug 20 2008
By Matt Hickey
3,279 views, 15 comments

iphone gaming

Exit's Neutron Multiplayer Gaming Platform Coming To iPhone

Exit Games has a multiplayer gaming platform, called Neutron, on PCs, mobile devices, game consoles, and BREW phones. It works across devices and hardware, so you can play someone on their PC via your handset. And now it's ready for the iPhone. Today it was announced that the Neutron system of social network-like gaming now has iPhone support, or will as soon as developers code for it. The iPhone, with its svelte shape and always-on connectivity, makes for a lust-worthy multiplayer gaming device, so this is really just the next logical step in being able to play games with your friend on the train from across the world. [Exit Games via Kotaku via BBG]

11:40 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Matt Hickey
652 views, 6 comments

Console Wars

Xbox 360 Outsells PS3 In Japan, Totally Sold Out

We just got word from Microsoft that the Xbox 360 is totally sold out in Japan, and that's just how they like it. Microsoft's console has been outselling Sony's Playstation 3 lately at a rate of almost 3 to 1, with the Xbox selling 28,116 last at the start of August while Sony sold only 10,705 PS3s. Nintendo beat both with over 41,000 Wiis, yet still has stock available. So we have to question, did Microsoft short Japanese stock on purpose just to claim "sold out" status? [Translation at Kotaku]

11:20 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Matt Hickey
2,067 views, 22 comments

Rockets

Giant Cold-War Era Russian Proton Rocket Successfully Launches Giant Satellite Into Space

The Inmarsat-4, or I4-F3 broadband satellite to its friends, is a big satellite. Almost as big as a double decker bus and with an unfurled solar wingspan as wide as a football field, it needed an appropriately big ride into space. And so it hitched onto a Proton Rocket, a 58m-high, 700-ton monster used for sat positioning since 1996, but before that, used in the 1960's to visit planets for scientific research and deliver parts of the International Space Station and Mir Space Station. The flight was perfect. [Baikonur Campaigns via BBC via io9]

10:07 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Brian Lam
2,769 views, 16 comments

Windows Mobile

Motorola's Q Going Windows Mobile 6.1 Through AT&T

The Motorola Q is finally getting the Windows Mobile 6.1 treatment through AT&T, who's stores are said to be taking in shipments of a new silver version of the handset. This is good news for enterprise customers who are tied into the WinMo world. No word yet on when these will hit the shelves, or if there will be an upgrade available for current AT&T Q9h owners, but it's likely we'll hear something soon. [BGR]

10:00 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Matt Hickey
934 views, 6 comments

iPhone 3G

Steve Jobs: Apple Aware of iPhone 2.0 App Fails, Will Fix In September

It seems a random app crash bug plaguing the iPhone 2.0 software has concerned El Jobso enough to make him personally reply to a user email. According to AppleInsider one of their readers received an email from Jobs that read "this is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September." More »

9:55 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Adrian Covert
6,710 views, 37 comments

windows 7

Windows 7 Engineering Squad Has 1000 Developers Spread Over 25 Teams

Steven Sinofsky, Senior VP in charge of Windows 7 development, has just posted some details on the Microsoft's Windows 7 Engineering blog on what the internal structure looks like for the upcoming OS. It sounds (at least to us) equal parts logistical nightmare and brute force "1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters", with 25 teams divided up to an average of 40 developers per team. More »

9:40 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Jason Chen
4,199 views, 37 comments

Xbox Live

Microsoft Says All Xbox Live iPhone Apps Gotta Be Free

Microsoft hasn't released its own Xbox Live iPhone app (and we're kinda thinking they won't), but it's definitely cool letting developers fill the gap, on one condition: They can't charge for the app. Of the three Live apps in the App Store, two are free right now, though iLive still charges $1.99, even though it has the worst interface of the three. Microsoft can boss them around 'cause they're all getting Live info through the Xbox Community Developer Program. Either way, that works for us. [Joystiq]

9:20 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By matt buchanan
2,161 views, 15 comments

Pc Gaming

HYDRA System Lets "Vastly Different" Video Cards Work, Play Together

Lucid's HYDRA GPU pairing technology could soon allow PC builders to incorporate multiple video cards that - hear this, ATI and Nvidia - don't have to be identical. What this potentially means, among other things, is that gamers could leverage old hardware instead of just sadly setting it aside, though paired cards must be of the same brand. HYDRA differs functionally from Nvidia's SLI and ATI's Crossfire solutions, which split rendering by sectioning off the screen and alternating frames between cards, respectively, by intelligently distributing highly specific rendering tasks between the GPUs. Instead of divvying up all the tasks equally, HYDRA will only send as many polygons or shader calls as each constituent card can handle (see right of the above pic for an example of what one of two cards might be rendering). More »

9:15 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By John Herrman
2,415 views, 11 comments

kinetic energy

M2E Developing Kinetic Cellphone Charger That is Up to 700 Percent More Effective

This isn't the first time we have seen a cellphone charger that is powered by kinetic energy, but the difference is that M2E is working on a charger that can produce 300 to 700% more juice than current technologies. They hope this will translate into a full-on replacement for cellphone batteries somewhere down the line. According to earth2tech, M2E's short term goal is to develop a charger that will produce an hour of talk time for around six hours of normal movement. Currently, M2E is in talks with major accessories manufacturers about bringing a device to market as early as 2009. [earth2tech via Inhabitat]

9:00 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Sean Fallon
734 views, 7 comments

Ie 8

IE 8 Could Get "Porn Mode": Would it Change Your Mind About IE?

What is the best way for IE to gain market share back from Firefox? Porn. That's right—when it comes to the internet, the answer is always porn. You know it, I know it, and apparently Microsoft knows it because there are rumors floating around that they may incorporate a private browsing feature, a.k.a "porn mode," similar to Safari (Firefox pulled the feature from 3.0) that would allow users to thoroughly cover up their smutty tracks from anyone who might be checking their browsing history. More »

8:40 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Sean Fallon
8,783 views, 47 comments

Alcohol power

Charge an iPod With Vodka? Sounds Educational, Incapacitating

Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies have launched the the Bio Energy Discovery Kit, a product that they are calling "the fuel cell industry’s first direct ethanol product." The kit directly converts alcohol into electricity and can run non-stop for days on end. The purpose of the kit is to introduce fuel cell technology to students, scientists, teachers and engineers using a simple gadget that is easy to understand. More »

8:20 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Sean Fallon
1,420 views, 10 comments

Classified intel

Mystery Tablet Shown at Intel Event, Either the Classmate 3 or a Quad Core Speak & Spell

At the end of an otherwise tepid presentation at the Intel Developer Forum today, Dadi Perimutter, head of Intel's Mobility Group, dropped a bomb (via PowerPoint) on his audience: a mysterious tablet device, which could well be the next generation of the Classmate OLPC competitor. If that is the case, the OLPC might really have something to worry about. Sugar, the "revolutionary" Linux-based OS originally developed for the OLPC, is already in development for the Classmate project, not to mention that fact that this new picture indicates that Intel may have taken a few of Nick Negroponte's visions for the OLPC XO-2 to heart, and possibly to production. More »

8:10 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By John Herrman
926 views, 4 comments

As Seen on TV

Kinoki Footpads Are Stained with Lies and Shame, Not Body Toxins

Sarah Varney of NPR's "All Things Considered" tested out the Kinoki body-detoxifying footpads currently making the rounds of late-night infomercials, to see if they really eliminate "heavy metals and metabolic waste." She and her husband used them for a night, and by the next morning the pads were covered in disgusting black gunk, as advertised. But then she took them to a lab for chemical analysis to learn exactly what was going on. The results? The Kinoki footpads are a dirty scam. More »

8:00 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Dan Nosowitz
11,030 views, 44 comments

Blu-Ray

Firefly Series Comes to Blu-ray November 11

Firefly might have been the best thing Joss Whedon has ever done in our opinion, but it's also one of the shortest things he's ever done. In just 14 episodes, the space western was able to surpass both Buffy and Angel (and all of his smaller creations) in our minds as his work, which is why we cannot wait to get this thing on Blu-ray. If you're rating this box set on an purely dollar-to-hour ratio, the $90 price tag ($62 on Amazon) would be absurd. But you know you're going to watch and re-watch this thing many times over, if only for the scenes with Inara and the other companion. We'll be in our bunk. [Amazon]

8:00 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Jason Chen
1,477 views, 26 comments

Magsafe replacement

Apple MagSafe Replacements Are Now Free

In our anecdotal experience, Apple has been pretty good about replacing clearly faulty MagSafe power adapters—the ones that split or fray from faulty manufacture. But now they are making their replacement policy official and offering free MagSafe replacements for the MacBook (13-inch Late 2006), MacBook (13-inch), MacBook Pro (15-inch Glossy), MacBook Pro (17-inch). (We read that as all models that use the MagSafe power adapter). Bring in your bad MagSafes to any Apple retailer and they'll take care of you. [Apple via Cult of Mac]

7:40 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Mark Wilson
3,300 views, 27 comments

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