Gizmodo

Toys 'R' Us Leaks Black Friday Deals [Black Friday]

Sean Fallon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:20:00 EST

Toys 'R' Us a is building up the hype about their upcoming Black Friday event by giving us a taste of the deals they have in store. Apparently, this year will boast 50% more Doorbusters than last year—a total of 150 from 5am to 1pm on November 28th. Toys 'R' Us will be unveiling 100 of these doorbusters on their website starting on midnight November 26th/27th and in a 24-page circular that will appear in newspapers on Thanksgiving day. An additional 50 "mystery deals" will be unveiled in stores only on Black Friday. However, a sample of the deals shoppers can expect on Black Friday and over the course of their 2-day sales event can be found right now—after the break.

Doorbusters:

* FREE Play Station 2 Deal – 6 FREE Games, FREE “21” DVD and FREE Play Station 2 DVD Remote with the purchase of the Play Station 2 System
* FREE $50 Toys“R”Us Gift Card with the purchase of a Black 16GB iPod nano®
* FREE Nintendo® DS™ accessory with the purchase of Nintendo® DS™ Brain Age Bundle or Nintendo® DS™ Super Mario Bros. Bundle
* More than 80% off Xbox 360 Wired Guitar Hero Game Controller
* 60% off TOYMAX EyeClops® from JAKKS Pacific®
* 60% off Disney® High School Musical 2 Figures 3-Pack
* More than 50% off Littlest Pet Shop VIP Plush Pets from Hasbro®
* Up to 50% off Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle for Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360
* 50% off Little Tikes® Diggers
* 50% off Jumbo Talking Elmo from Fisher-Price®
* 50% off Huffy® Scooters (Power Rangers and Cinderella, sold separately)
* 33% off V-Tech® Learning Laptop
* More than 30% off Thomas & Friends® Train Sets (Thomas & Percy Wooden Starter Set and Great Race Take Along Set, sold separately)
* $60 off iHome® Portable iPod® Docking Station (iPod® sold separately)
* $50 off Sony® 7.2MP Pink Cybershot Digital Camera

Deals for 2-day sales event (Friday, November 28, and Saturday, November 29):

* FREE Smart Animals 2-Pack with the purchase of Smart Animals Scanopedia from Discovery Kids®
* FREE Spiral Train Set with the purchase of Arch Train Table from Imaginarium®
* More than 70% off Nick® Scene It? and Pirates of the Caribbean Scene It?
* More than 65% off Dance Dance Revolution DVD Game and Twister® DVD Game
* Up to 55% off Select Hasbro® Games
* 50% off Star Wars 10” Transformers Millennium Falcon from Hasbro®
* 50% off Barbie® Princess 2-Pack Dolls from Mattel®
* 50% off Infrared Mini R/C Helicopter from Fast Lane
* 50% off iPod® Dock & Clock Radio (iPod® sold separately)
* $9.99 Sale on ALL Skateboards, Helmet & Pads from Channel One®
* $20 off Disney® High School Musical Alarm Clock with iPod® Dock (iPod® sold separately)
* More than $40 off Electric Guitar Pack from First Act®
* $70 off Woodland Climber from Step 2®
* $80 off Picnic on the Patio Playhouse from Little Tikes®
* $500 off Easton 7-foot 2-in-1 Swivel Combo Table

[Businesswire via I4U News]

Question of the Day: Do You Leave Your Game Console Running? [Question Of The Day]

Sean Fallon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:02:00 EST

A recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has revealed that video game console usage across America stands at approximately 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year—which is roughly the amount consumed by the entire city of San Diego. In other words, we are looking at some serious dollars going down the drain when we leave our consoles running for hours on end (not to mention the environmental impact). Even Energy Star has recognized the problem and begun setting standards on energy consumption for these devices. Obviously, the short-term solution to the problem would be to save your game and shut off the system when you are done—but it's a bad habit that is hard to break. So, my question is: do you leave your game console running when you are not playing?

Results from "Do You Plan to Gadget Shop on Black Friday?"

Yes 18%
Yes, but I'm sticking with online stores. 17%
Yes, I will try online and brick and mortar stores. 11%
No 37%
Maybe 17%

[NRDC via Ars Technica via DVICE]

GameStop's Black Friday Ad Leaked [Black Friday]

Sean Fallon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:55:00 EST

Our friends at Kotaku managed to get their hands on the GameStop Black Friday circular and, not surprisingly, bundles are the major theme here. Some of the better deals include a .99 cent price tag for Rock Band Track Pack Vol. 2 (after purchase of Rock Band game or bundle over $50), Madden PSP Entertainment Pack or Ratchet and Clank Pack for $200, several Xbox 360 bundles (Arcade, Pro and Elite), the World of Warcraft Battle Chest for $20 and a host of discounts on games. [Kotaku]

X Prize's Call for Votes in Next Big Crazy Green Idea Challenge [Environment]

Jesus Diaz — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:40:00 EST

The X Prize Foundation is looking for a new challenge for their next Energy and Environment prize, and they want Gizmodo readers to vote on it. The X Prize is an educational nonprofit prize institute dedicated to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity, like when Burt Rutan built and flew the world’s first private spaceship to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. To propose the challenge for the next big crazy green idea, they have selected the best three from 133 videos:

The Capacitor Challenge

The Energy Independence X PRIZE

Energy X-Prize: Reduce Home Energy Usage

[Vote now]

A Look at the Nokia Damage Test Labs [Destruction]

Adrian Covert — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST

I've long suspected that the best job ever would be to work in product stress testing—because you basically get paid to break shit all day. Nokia sent over a bunch of info detailing how their test centers operate, leaving me fully convinced this would indeed be my dream gig. Not only do they run over 200 mechanical tests on these things, but where else could you play with a bunch of machines that bend, bake, humidify, spray, poke and drop phones? (And yeah, that phone in the picture above just got poked a million times...literally.)

Here's a look at a handful of different tests and what each one tries to accomplish.

Liquids

Nokia places a phone under a bunch of needle-sized water dispensers and then lets it drip all over the phone, which tests for resistance in situations like rain, or splashing from a pool.

The humidity simulation, which tests the durability of phones in up to 95% humidity, is helpful in determining if a phone will hold up in particularly damp areas like South and Central America, where gadgets don't have the longest lifespan.

Nokia also tests how the phone reacts to various liquids, creams and gels (lotions, hand sanitizers, etc...), since stuff like that tends to accidentally spill while sitting in a purse or backpack with the phone.

Sturdiness

Tests for bending and twisting are pretty straight forward and self explanatory. Still, you can't help but cringe to see a phone placed in such an unnatural position. Nokia says when you have your phone in your back pocket and you sit on it, it's susceptible to bending.

One of the cooler stress tests that exists is the Drop test—not only because it uses a giant friggin' machine, but also because they record the drops using a camera that can record 100,000 frames per second, which is 3,000 times faster than the normal video camera. The videos are then analyzed frame by frame, determining the degree to which a device becomes distorted upon impact. Check it out.

When Nokia drops a phone, they drop it from about the height of a shirt pocket onto concrete, since that's a likely scenario for dropped phones. They also attatch a phone under a steel device that pushes down 100 newtons of force.

Wear and Tear

Nokia has a series of wear and tear stress tests, when gauge the phone's ability to take bumps, scratches from daily use. Dust testing involves throwing a handful of phones in a dust filled box and letting everything co-mingle. How much dust gets inside? And do buttons stop working when foreign substances get under the surface? This is where you find out.

They also let phones roll around in a bunch of pieces of hard, pointy plastic to see where it might scratch, scuff or crack under duress. These pieces are like plastic chocolate chips and bite-sized pyramids, and they're pretty sharp. This phone met an unfortunate demise in the name of quality control.

***

Other weird tests include rubbing a piece of denim up against a phone to test the effect of friction when the phone rubs up against your clothes and subjection the phone to temperatures ranging between -40 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit; this determines whether or not the phone can survive in the most extreme conditions on earth.

When testing is finished, they have a battery of analytic procedures to determine how well or how poorly a phone held up. This includes analyzing a phone under electron microscopes, 3D X-rays and X-ray Spectroscopes to check for any related damage; possible micron-sized soldering cracks, component failure or any breakdowns in the materials.

As you can see, these tests aren't lightweight by any means, and most of my Nokia phones over the years have been pretty durable. What about yours? [Nokia on Giz]

Re-cycle Laundry Center: 'Spin Cycle' Taken Literally [Concepts]

Mark Wilson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:40:00 EST

According to its designers, this is the washing machine that you'll use in...well, sometime in the future. Called the Re-cycle Laundry Center, one pod washes, one pod dries and a third pod filters all the water to be reused for another load. Meanwhile, to eliminate the need for a pump, the user spins the rig like a big wheel to redistribute the water. We're not so sure that extraneous manual labor is in our vision of the future, but we do appreciate the concept's Triple-Xbox-Jet-Engine design. [Yanko Design]

Help Needed: Giz Looking For a Display Case Rental in NYC [Help Needed]

Christopher Mascari — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:30:00 EST

Hey all, we really need your help in finding some display cases in NYC that are available for rent during the first week of December. We'd prefer to have something similar to what's in the above image. Doesn't matter if it's a vertical stand or horizontal, we just need any jewelry or showcase type display case. This is basically the final item we need in our planning for the Gizmodo Gallery and we're having some trouble finding a good case to rent. We've got sooooo many amazing little gadgets for you to see but without a proper display case we can't show them off. We'd like to find something ASAP, so if you know of something or somewhere to rent such an item please shoot me an email at chris@gizmodo.com. Thanks!

Dealzmodo: Samsung 67" DLP (LED) HDTV for $1800 This Sunday [Dealzmodo]

Sean Fallon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:20:00 EST

The folks at HD Guru are reporting that Samsung will be deeply slashing prices on their 2008 line big-screen DLP HDTVs starting this Sunday. We're talking discounts of up to $600 (maybe even more if purchased with an online discount). That puts the 67" (HL67A750) 1080p LED-lit DLP at $1800 after the $600 price cut. Obviously, there are compromises with rear projection, but personally I would rather have both good picture quality and the wads of cash I would blow on a thinner LCD.

A list of old and new MAP prices on Samsung DLPs:

•HL61A650/61” (Lamp) $1299.99 ($300 savings)
•HL61A750/61” (LED) $1699.99 ($200 savings)
•HL67A750/67” (LED) $1799.99 ($600 savings)
•HL72A650/72” (Lamp) $2199.99 ($600 savings)

[HD Guru]

Caption Contest: Wishful Thinking [Apple]

Mark Wilson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:00:00 EST

"If you think my one-of-a-kind MacBook Mini is great, then you should really see my custom Porsche. It's really just a wheelbarrow, but I've got like four or five Apple stickers on that puppy." [Thanks OMG Ponies!]

Giz Explains: Every Video Format You Need to Know [Giz Explains]

matt buchanan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:15:00 EST

Once upon time, video codecs and formats were really only the concern of AV nerds, anime freaks and hardcore not-so-legal movie downloaders. Now, even the most part-time of geeks has to deal with them, whether they're trying to stream a flick across their house with an Apple TV, dump some video onto their phone or just trying to grab last night's episode of Dexter because they, uh, forgot to renew their Showtime subscription. It's messy and annoying, but we're here to clean it up. Take a deep breath.

You might recall our discussion about video bitrates earlier, or how much data is packed into a file. As a general rule, more bits per second translates into more betterer quality audio and video. The variable in that—the other part of the equation—is how the content is compressed and de-compressed. Better compression techniques—the zen of knowing what bits of data to pull out to make big data chunks smaller—make for better quality video while taking up less space on your hard drive. Basically, the part you need to know is that codecs are the software that make that magic happen.

Standard Standards
• H.261 is not a term you have to worry about, but it's the technology that most video standards and codecs were originally based on. Originating in 1990, it's the first major digital video compression standard, and like other "H" standards, it was developed by the International Telecommunication Union. This one was primarily for teleconferencing over ISDN lines, and as such, it looks like ass.

• MPEG-1 Part 2 is another oldie, developed by the Movie Picture Experts Group and approved in 1991. (BTW, the whole "part" thing is because video is just one "part" of each MPEG standard.) Based quite a bit on H.261, MPEG-1 was designed to take VHS quality video and squeeze it down to a bit rate of about 1.5Mbps, optimized for CD transfers. No surprise, it's the standard used for all VCDs (which can play in most DVD players), but not a standard you would see hanging around today.

• With MPEG-2 Part 2, approved in 1994, we're finally talking decent vid. Also known as H.262, since it was developed jointly by the ITU-T and ISO, MPEG-2 is an extension of MPEG-1 that delivers better resolution and higher bit rates (3-15Mbps for standard def and 15-30Mbps for HD). It's the video codec used by DVD and digital television, though now it's slowly being replaced by the more efficient MPEG-4, except on DVDs, where it'll ride out that disc format's lifetime.

• H.263 is designed for sending video over crappy connections. So it's used to encode most Flash video and to send video over mobile networks.

• MPEG-4 is where we really stand right now. It has a much broader scope than past MPEG standards, aiming to tackle both the low end (crappy cellphones on a crappy network) and the high end (Blu-ray). It's still developing, so it's not-so-coincidentally where this whole story gets messier. There are two relevant parts of the MPEG-4 standard for our myopic video purposes: Part 2 and Part 10—which is also known as H.264 or Advanced Video Coding (AVC). To be clear though, even though they're both part of the MPEG-4 standard, they're totally different formats. Nevertheless, both are more efficient at compression than past MPEG codecs, delivering better quality using less space.

• Okay, so if you've ever frequented a Torrent site, you've actually watched tons of videos that use MPEG-4 Part 2, though it's not like they would've had a flashing sign telling you so. MPEG-4 Part 2 actually has different "profiles"—the two that matter being Simple Profile, for low bitrate, low-res stuff, and Advanced Simple Profile. The latter profile is what's used by movies you would download in formats like DivX or XviD or 3ivx—which are all codecs that are essentially just differing implementations of the MPEG-4 Part 2 standard.

• MPEG-4 Part 10, the other part, was actually co-devopled by MPEG and the ITU-T, so it's also known—in fact, more commonly known—as H.264. It's more efficient than MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Part 2, delivering the same quality video in as little as half the space, making it suitable for the low and high-end. Because of this, it's quickly becoming the standardest standard. It's part of the HD DVD and Blu-ray spec, replacing MPEG-2 in digital TV (like with satellite services and AT&T's U-Verse IPTV) and supported by pretty much every portable video player on the planet from the iPod to the PSP. Apple has a decent, if Kool-Aid flavored, FAQ about H.264.

• VC-1 is essentially a Microsoft developed alternative video codec to H.264 released as a standard by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, though it descends from the same H.26X/MPEG family. (It essentially started life as WMV9, but then Microsoft shopped it to the SMPTE to make it an industry standard, and now it is.) It too, is part of the mandatory Blu-ray and HD DVD spec, and is the official video codec of the Xbox 360. It's pitch is the same as H.264's—trying to deliver better quality using less space, like HD video in 6-8Mbps.

Free-Floating Codecs
Okay, so all that stuff up there are industry-wide standard video codecs. On top of all of those, various entities love putting out their own spin on those standards. As we mentioned before, DivX (proprietary) and XviD (open source), for instance, use MPEG-4 Part 2 (more specifically, MPEG-4 ASP) compression, meaning stuff that'll natively play back MPEG-4 ASP will also play back DivX. Like the Xbox 360, for instance. There are a ton of MPEG-4 ASP-based codecs, actually, like FFmpeg, 3ivx and others, but DivX and XviD are the most common. Same deal with H.264: Some well known codecs that use it are Apple's Quicktime H.264, x264 and Nero Digital. You've also got Windows Media Video (WMV) codecs, which are Microsoft's proprietary twists on industry standards.

Containers aka Wrappers
Alright, well you've probably noticed that none of your video files have the extension .h264 or .vc1 or the like. That's because videos are packaged in containers or wrappers that stuff things like the audio, navigational info, etc. along with the video in a single pretty file. Naturally, there are about as many of them as there are codecs. To be clear, you would take a video encoded with, say, H.264, and wrap it up as a .mp4 or .avi file.

The majors ones are:
• AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is Windows' standard multimedia container
• MPEG-4 Part 14 (known to you as .mp4) is the standardized container for MPEG-4
• FLV (Flash Video) is the format used to deliver MPEG video through Flash Player
• MOV is Apple's QuickTime container format
• OGG, OGM and OGV are open-standard containers
• MKV (Mastroska) is another open-specification container that you've seen if you've ever downloaded anime
• VOB means DVD Video Object. Guess what? It's DVD's standard container, and what you get when you rip a DVD.
• ASF is a Microsoft format designed for WMV and WMA—files can end in .wmv or .asf

So, in order to play a video file, your setup has to be able to handle both the actual video codec and the container. It's why you can try to play an AVI file and Windows Media Player laughs at you, even though it totally played one a minute ago— the container was no problem, but it didn't have the right codec. Or conversely, even though an iPod could play back an H.264 encoded video, if it was wrapped up in MKV, it won't be able to read it.

Okay, my brain hurts. Hopefully this will make yours hurt less when it comes to dealing with pesky videos. If you'd like to do even more homework, Wikipedia, as always, has a more in-depth discussion. And Doom9 is always an amazing resource for all things digital video.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about codecs, kitties or pad thai (but not RealMedia) to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

[Image: ME@Flickr]

Create Honest Black Friday Ads to Reflect the Economic Climate [Photoshop Contest]

Adam Frucci — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:54:40 EST

Things are bad out there, people. We're going to see a pretty sad holiday shopping season from retailers perspectives. Yet these Black Friday ads we're seeing, they look just like they do every year. I don't think they adequately reflect just how badly they want, nay, they need your money. Let's add a bit of that desperation into their advertising, shall we?

For this week's Photoshop Contest, I want you to make some brutally honest Black Friday ads. Work your magic up and then send the results along to me at contests@gizmodo.com with "Honest Black Friday" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs, GIFs or PNGs with the filename FirstnameLastname.jpg. Get your entries in by next Tuesday, then look for the top three winners as well as the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!

I Bet You've Never Seen Water Bounce Before [Science]

Adam Frucci — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:20:00 EST

Here's something you don't see every day: water bouncing. GE has developed some pretty incredible superhydrophobic surfaces in it's Global Research Nanotechnology lab, and they've captured the results with super-high speed cameras.

Hello everyone, I have some exciting videos that I want to share with you! Using a high-speed camera setup in the lab, we can finally capture the details of the water dancing on these amazing superhydrophobic surfaces. We discovered that even when the surfaces had the same contact angle for stationary water droplets, their ability to resist the wetting of impacting droplets could be totally different. In the following three videos, the contact angles of a stationary droplet on all three surfaces are ~150 degree. When an impacting droplet (with the same impact speed) hits on the surfaces, the droplet can either stay on the surface.

Look at the way the water droplet spreads, recoils, breaks into satellite droplets, and completely lifts off... that's what we really want for an impacting-droplet resistant surface! You might wonder what we can do with a cool thing like this? Imagine applications that involve high speed water droplets, such as wind turbine blade, airplane wing, or even just your car in motion. These are just a couple of the exciting possibilities that we are looking at.

[Make]

Badass Oakley Roddler Stroller Gives Your Kid an Early Chip on His Shoulder [Kids]

Adam Frucci — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

If you're looking to start your kid off with both a tough-guy attitude as well as an air of entitlement, you can't go wrong with the ludicrous Oakley Roddler stroller. While it's a concept that's apparently "inspired" by Oakley, it looks more inspired by a combo of overpriced strollers and military aircraft.

[Serious Wheels via NotCot.org]

Why You Probably Won't Find Amazing Sony Deals for Christmas [Sony]

matt buchanan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:59:00 EST

In the midst of the financiapocalypse, with consumers stuffing money in mattresses and sprinkling themselves with holy water to avoid the layoff plague, you might think companies like Sony would slash and burn their typically premium prices to move whatever HDTVs and Blu-ray players and cameras they could. Nope. We talked to Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow this morning about why Sony is holding steady on prices and staying out of the low end, even as consumers are obviously looking spend less. He also dished about Circuit City's fairly grim prospects, Blu-ray sales not meeting expectations and why Sony knew the economy was going deep into the crapper in February, before Alan Greenspan.

Blu-ray
Glasgow didn't drop specific numbers, but he did mention that Blu-ray sales weren't meeting their original expectations, thanks to the economy. So you might expect Sony to cut the price on its entry level BDP-S350 below its current $299 MSRP. But they're not—Glasgow says they're holding firm on that price as their low-end through the holiday season, though he said you can expect $249 before too long, which jibes with what he told me in the Spring. I couldn't get him to commit to $199 next year. (BTW, You actually can pick up the S350 for $249 right now at Amazon, but going below $299 is entirely a retailer's prerogative.) All that said, Sony is optimistic for Blu-ray overall because it's the kind of "family gift" people buy in a recession when they're staying home more—besides, they fully expect (as we've seen) players below $200, even under $150 from lower end manufacturers. They don't see the adoption timeline slowed down either, as long as prices fall with their projections.

Why Sony Won't Go Cheap
President of Sony Electronics Consumer Sales Jay Vandenbree said that Sony has never really played in the low end (in HDTVs or otherwise), and they won't now. Why? Because, he says, during a recession, people stay home and actually trade up to better quality stuff since they're holed up, which Sony thinks puts them in a great spot. Question for you guys: Is this true? Are you skipping vacation and getting a TV instead? To that end, Sony's actually enforcing prices on some of its premium products like XBR7 and XBR8 HDTVs and its Alpha DSLRs, so that they're same price at every single retailer—it's not just a minimum advertised price, retailers cannot actually sell these items for cheaper than Sony says. It's an interesting bit of psychology to maintain the premiumness of the brand during the recession, to say the least.

Circuit City
How bad is the Circuit City situation? Glasgow put it this way: No one in their industry has ever survived a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, especially not on that scale. He's hopeful they'll bounce back, and thinks they could, but it's going to be "hard."

Sony Knows
Lastly, an interesting bit of trivia: Sony knew the economy was going to hell back in February. How? Camcorder sales fell like a rock. Camcorders are the proverbial canary in the coal mine, plunging before everything else. (All of their vast historical data over the last few recessions back this up.) It's because, Vandenbree says, there's "nothing more discretionary than camcorders," so it's the first to go when consumers feel a crunch, making it an early warning sign.

Unfortunately, there's nothing that'll ring the opposite direction, when everything's about to get better. Everything gets better at once. So we'll know life's good again when it actually it is.

Dealzmodo Hack: Accessorize Your iPod/iPhone Like MacGyver [Dealzmodo Hack]

John Herrman — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:40:00 EST

The ubiquity of iPods has led to a ridiculous glut of accessories, some useful, most not. The best of them have essentially become a seamless part of the iPod experience, but they'll all cost you — and it really starts to add up. The expansion of the iPod universe, however, is twofold; more official products are followed closely by nearly as many unofficial ones. In other words, you can fully accessorize your iPod or iPhone, old or new, pretty much for free.

Cases
A case will usually be the first thing people buy for their pods, and the first thing they'll lose. Luckily, they're just about the easiest thing to replace yourself. The most obvious solution is a custom-tailored sock, chosen to suit your taste in color and aroma and fitted to suit your choice in iPod. For a more refined look, sewing together some inner tube and suede will make for a stylish pouch, while utilitarians can opt for the quick, versatile rubber-only approach. If you're just too quirky for a regular case, the venerable Altoid Nano case might get the attention you crave, while the legitimately natty cut-up record sleeve case will do the job just as well, if not better.

Speakers
If you're handy with a soldering iron and have some old audio equipment lying around, there's no reason to dump dollars on a full-fledged iPod speaker dock when you can just build one yourself. Construction homemade unamplified speakers — which sound surprisingly good — is much less of an ordeal. Disposable cups and sheets of printer paper make great little megaphones for your earbuds, and lend themselves well to mounting as a part of a kid-friendly makeshift home stereo.

Docks and Stands
Apple gives iPod/iPhone buyers just about everything they need to throw together a huge variety of charging and sync docks — even the commercial ones are pretty much just the sync wire with some plastic trim. This hack starts small: fantastic iPhone and iPod Touch docks can be made with nothing but a binder clip. The possibilities for LEGO docks are limitless, but generally end up looking like an iThrone. This paperclip box dock provides a good template for chopping an iPod cable into just about anything of a similar shape. The paper clips themselves can be twisted into a 20-second stand, just as a business card can be origamically (?) reshaped into the same.

Other
In the commercial world, this space is inhabited by the shrouded likes of Brando. But who doesn't love that stuff? If you're looking for a jury-rigged AA iPod charging solutions, there's no reason to surrender your credit card number to an iffy Chinese e-commerce site. The same goes for the iPhone 3D image viewing apparatus, though I'm not even sure there's buyable analog for that, Chinese or not. iPhone macro lenses are cool, but almost certainly not worth paying for. Last, and probably least, even though you can't put a price on security, you can reduce the cost of paranoia.

Hat tip to Lifehacker, MAKE and Instructables.

Dealzmodo Hacks are intended to help you sustain your crippling gadget addiction through tighter times. If you come across any on your own that are particularly useful, send it to our tips line (Subject: Dealzmodo Hack). Check back every Thursday for free DIY tricks to breathe new life into hardware that you already own.

10 Takes on the Blackberry Storm [Frankenreview]

Mark Wilson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:20:00 EST

While most smartphone manufacturers have released at least one fancy touchscreen model, RIM has pretty much stuck with their Blackberry's standard businessman-pleasing form, a squat candybar design with QWERTY and a tiny screen. That was, until they announced the BlackBerry Storm, the first full touchscreen Blackberry on the market—and also the first smartphone to transform a normally cold, lifeless touchscreen into one big clickable button.

So what did the press think? They loved it...and they hated it...depending who you talk to.

CNET
...its 3.25-inch VGA glass display also demands attention for its sharpness and brightness, showing 65,000 colors at a crisp 480x360-pixel resolution. We weren't as impressed with the Storm's screen as the BlackBerry Bold, but it's still beautiful.

PCMag
A solid voice phone, the Storm has fine reception, and earpiece and speakerphone volume are both very loud. There's also some pleasing in-ear feedback of your own voice. Transmissions sounded steady on the other end, with just a little background noise coming through, thanks to the phone's dual-mic noise cancellation.

Laptop
One thing’s for sure: The Storm puts the iPhone 3G’s speaker to shame. When playing Keane’s "Perfect Symmetry," the sound was quite loud even at medium volume, and the music application displays large album art that nicely takes up most of the screen.

Wired
When you want to select anything, be it a multimedia app or the number five, you have to press the screen down a millimeter, it's roughly the same sensation you get when clicking a mouse. But that small press makes a huge difference. Text messaging is amazing — pounding out a long-winded SMS (with a lot of compound words and no abbreviations) is just as easy as typing one out on a MacBook's keyboard. This is the single killer feature of the Storm and if not for a few glaring flaws a good reason to go out and buy one right now.

PCWorld
The decision by Research in Motion to differentiate the Storm by giving its capacitive touch screen a mechanical component (the entire screen functions as a button for confirming selections or initiating actions) turns out to be more confusing than helpful. Ultimately, the Storm's touch interface feels like a failed experiment.
Popular Mechanics
With a little practice, we were able to get used to [the virtual keypad] and speed the typing along, but it was never quite as fast as typing with a real mobile keypad, or even with the iPhone's virtual keypad.

The Wall Street Journal
The Storm also has a keyboard oddity that I found annoying, and that may put off others. It presents you with a full virtual keyboard only when you are holding it horizontally. When you hold the Storm vertically, you get a mashed-up keyboard, like the one on the narrower BlackBerry Pearl, which has multiple letters on each key.

DVICE
Why would BlackBerry addicts want to give up buttons for a touchscreen typing system that is almost, but not quite as good? The trade-off is for the big, beautiful screen that you get when you're not using the keypad. It's far better for reading emails, using GPS or playing BrickBreaker than any BlackBerry that's come before.

JKOnTheRun
...the web browser on the Storm, new to OS 4.7, is very good. I wouldn't say it's as good as the browsing experience on the iPhone but it's pretty darn close, certainly close enough. Web pages are rendered quickly in full page mode and when you double tap on the screen the browser zooms in to column mode...Simply hit the Back hardware button and you instantly zoom back out.
InfoSync
The camera on the BlackBerry Storm should have been much better. After all, with auto focus, a 3.2-megapixel sensor and plenty of advanced settings for shooter, you might expect the camera will take decent photos...[yet] colors seemed sapped out of even the most exciting scenes, as Times Square and our little hot pink action figure were both rendered drab. Noise was somewhat of a problem, though there was a nice amount of detail in pics when the auto focus was doing its job correctly.

Bonus Take: Gizmodo
I think that the Storm falls short of what RIM was aiming for, and ultimately what all the hype is driving people to expect. Some of this is fixable: The damn thing needs to crash less often. But SurePress is not the end-all, be-all of touchscreen technologies—it's not really an evolutionary step forward, even.
The Storm will be available tomorrow (November 21) for $200 after Verizon rebate.

Future iPhones May Have Always-On Display [Apple Patent]

Jesus Diaz — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST

Apple has patented a new display technology that will allow their iPhones to have always-on displays with almost no battery cost whatsoever. This doesn't mean the whole display would be lit at all times. In reality, only part of it would be activated using a secondary backlight system located under the main one. According to Apple, the objective is to give feedback to the user at all times, even when the main display is turned off:

The primary backlight system may block light from the secondary backlight system except for those one or more regions. Thus, the size and shape of the status indicator may be set by sizing and shaping the transparent or semitransparent regions of the primary backlight system. In addition to setting the size and shape of the icon, the color of the icon may also be set by adjusting the color of the light provided by the secondary backlight system.

For example, each indicator may have a particular color, blinking speed, or light intensity. These properties may be programmed into the electronic device by the user, or may be hard-coded or hard-wired into the system. Thus, when the secondary backlight is turned on, the properties of the light provided by the secondary backlight system may depend on the status of the device. Also, if the status of the electronic device changes while the secondary backlight is on, the properties of the light provided by the secondary backlight system may change to reflect the new status.

To avoid depleting the battery, these icons' backlight system will be low-power. Don't get your expectations too high, however. The patent doesn't clearly explains how the icons themselves may be displayed. By the look of the diagrams included, they may not even be actual pixel-based icons, but cut-outs illuminated by individual LED lights shining through the main display.

But of course, you know that this may be something completely different from what the diagram shows, since the drawings included in patents always seem to be drawn by a monkey on drugs. At least, I want to believe this thing is more like the illustration I did, because if it's just little icons—like every other single cheap clamshell cellphone out there—I won't be very excited. [Apple Insider]

RIM Already Says BlackBerry Storm Bug Fixes Are Coming Soon [Blackberry Storm]

matt buchanan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:59:00 EST

Why do companies ship products they know are mad buggy? Apple did it with the iPhone, RIM did it with the BlackBerry Storm, which locked up and crashed on me plenty during the review period, even after it was delayed precisely to make it less buggy. RIM, however, is at least admitting they screwed up off the bat (before it lands in most consumers' hands, even), promising a software update "within weeks." I hope that besides plugging holes and squashing bugs, they also shake off the lag and sluggishness I experienced to make the Storm feel a bit springier. (Kill the fade transitions!) Guess we'll see. [Gearlog]

Everlast Wii Boxing Gloves Will Knock You Out [Wii]

Sean Fallon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:40:00 EST

Indeed, Nintendo and Everlast have tag-teamed in the retail ring to knock you out with these new boxing glove accessories. And while you're down they plan to steal your wallet—because this is an obvious attempt to milk gamers for every last cent. The gloves are available for $30, but I think I'll be saving my pennies for the return of the Power Glove. [NYT via Kotaku]

PS3 Tech Demo Runs Gran Turismo 5 in 2160p or 240 FPS [Gran Turismo]

Jason Chen — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:20:00 EST

What's the team a Polyphony Digital doing besides finishing their upcoming Gran Turismo 5 racing simulator? Making some crazy ass tech demos with four PlayStation 3s hooked together to share rendering time. Not only can four PS3s create a 2160p image (that's four 1080p images for a resolution of 3840x2160 blasted on Sony's 4K projector), they can create one single 1080p image that runs at 240 FPS. 240! That's faster than the human eye can see; and so fast, we imagine, that you can actually see into the future. The audience reception was described thusly:

It is as though you are following a real world event happening right in front of your face with your own eyes. Any and all flickering in the movement of the vehicle, in the smoke from the tires, etc. are completely gone, and you are almost tricked into believing you are watching something in real life. The guests at the event were baffled by the quality of the image, and stared in amazement at the screen.

Head on over to the Gran Turismo site to see the tech details of how they did this. [Gran Turismo via PS3 Fanboy]

Man Stuff - The Best of Uncrate [Roundups]

Mark Wilson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:19:00 EST

This week at Uncrate: We get away from it all in our very own Tepee, make bath time fun with the Hover Q Tiny R/C Hovercraft, and invite our conspiracy theorists over for a viewing of JFK - Ultimate Collector's Edition. We also entertain our guests with our own Muppet Whatnot Puppet, store our goodies away in Pandora containers, and prepare for snow with the Artic Cat Z1 Turbo Sno Pro. Finally, we get rustic with Paul Frank Lumberjack Underwear, hit the trails in the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, and go vintage with the Jansport Heritage Collection.

Contest: Design The Gaming Laptop of the Future and Win a Toshiba X305 [Contests]

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:00:00 EST

You know what is better than getting a brand new Toshiba Qosmio X305 gaming laptop this holiday? How about getting one for free? Yes, that definitely would be the way to go—but there is one small catch. You have to earn it by designing your vision of the ultimate gaming laptop of the future. Just send a presentable looking mockup of your design with specs and other info to contests@gizmodo.com with the subject "X305 Contest." Hurry though, all entries must be received by December 1st to be considered.

Sponsored by: Bring the battle with you. The X305 from Toshiba, the Laptop Expert.

How Frozen Pizzas Are Made (Singularity and One Badass Sauce Gun) [Factory Tour]

Mark Wilson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:40:00 EST

The BBC has a fantastic, 3-minute clip touring a frozen pizza factory that manufactures 2 million pizzas a week. There's something about precision, large-scale automation, even when the technology isn't necessary cutting edge, that's even more telling of our technological place in the world than sleek touchscreen phones and GPS navigators. Notice the eerie lack of humans, the cold airshot of sauce onto crust and the phallic towers of pepperoni being diced to scraps by machines. Has Man sold his soul to the robots so soon? And just for some crappy frozen pizzas? [BBC via MAKE]

Guess How Many Wiimotes the Nyko Charge Station Quad Charges [Wiimote Chargers]

Mark Wilson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:20:00 EST

Nyko didn't like seeing fellow third party manufacturer Penguin create a 4x Wiimote charger first, so Nyko fired back with the Charge Station Quad for Wii. Priced at $50, the Nyko Quad includes four NiMH rechargeable battery packs, four rubber Wii Remote battery covers and, of course, a four-port Wiimote battery charger that's loaded to the brim with LEDs. Shipments start in December, but it doesn't look like Nyko is taking orders just yet. [Nyko]

Harsh Reality Behind the Gizmodo/Reader Symbiosis Revealed by Dilbert [Truth]

Adam Frucci — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST

It's not often that a simple three-pane comic strip says something meaningful and true about your life, but I think it's safe to say that today's Dilbert strip essentially sums up what this here website and its readers are all about. We post about gadgets, sometimes cool, sometimes not, and you read about them either way. Not because you want to, but because you need to. We understand. We're all in this together, friends. Now just set up a webcam of your cubicle so we have something to distract us from our jobs with. Then, the cycle will be complete. [Dilbert]

Apple DisplayPort to Dual Link DVI Adapter Delayed to Dec. 23 [Apple]

Mark Wilson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:40:00 EST

While we liked the shiny unibody MacBooks, their new miniDisplay Port requires the use of a dual link DVI adapter to drive the 30" CinemaDisplay. Not only is the adapter $100; it's a custom cord that can't exactly be spotted between the batteries and singing cards at the drug store. Now Apple has informed preorderers to expect their shipments no sooner than December 23rd—which just goes to show that in a fight between Steve Jobs and Santa Claus, Steve Jobs would win...or something like that. [9to5mac]