Gadgets Connect

Most of the pitches that end up in my inbox are either for products completely unsuited to the Gadget Lab (”Dear Sir, We think your readers may enjoy our online collaboration suite”) or utter junk. I feel a pang of guilt before I write these up, but we British hacks are a cynical bunch and the twinge soon passes.

Today we have the TVLightbox Party Mojo DVD. Tagline: “Why leave your TV blank while having a party?”

A true throwback to the 1990s, the DVD turns your big-screen telly “into a virtual party”, with swirling, garish motion graphics featuring spinning soda cans, cassette tapes and CG smilies.

(Read the full post about ‘Party Mojo DVD Is Retro. The Bad Kind Of Retro’…)

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Light sabers just made their way into the best edge-weapon fighting game around: Soul-Calibur IV. As you can see, Darth Vader is providing some serious stabbing in this image, but he’s not the only one, Yoda is also in the game, and although the doesn’t turn in to an over-energetic chipmunk like in the movie, it’s cool. Warning: I’m a fan of the franchise since the playstation 1 version, so I might be slightly biased. (Read the full post about ‘Darth Vader and Yoda in Soul Calibur IV’…)

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You might have heard the news that the Microsoft Surface table has hit five select AT&T stores across the country, and are now available for you to try out for yourself. In case you haven’t had the chance to drop by any of these stores yet and seen the Microsoft Surface in action, we have here a video showing just how it can complement your AT&T experience by adding multi-touch and satellite mapping technology.

(Read the full post about ‘Watch the Microsoft Surface in action!’…)

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Forget quad-core, AMD is preparing a dodeca-core chip. If you didn’t stay in boarding school if you need refreshing with your greek vocabulary, dodeca means 12, and that’s 12 cores for you right there. Imagine, a dozen times faster than a normal chip. But how fast does one’s computer ever really need to be? AMD doesn’t seem to care if there’s an answer to that question or not (just as its closest competitor Intel doesn’t), and moves on with their plan to produce a 12-core processor to be released by late 2008. It will reportedly be called the Shanghai, and will be a 45nm successor to their not-so-successful Barcelona chip. (Read the full post about ‘AMD readying 12-core 45nm processors for late 2008′…)

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Transcend Information has a new MP3 player in our midst, the T.sonic 615. This mp3 player takes after the ipod in terms of color, coming in a glossy white casing complete with a dual-color OLED display and features an integrated FM radio, A-B repeat, and variable playback speed functions. You also get seven built-in equalizer modes to help you achieve the best listening experience possible (as far as something as tiny as this goes anyway) and Lyrics Sync. With a 13-language support and Transcend’s T.sonic Utility that allows users to add password protection to files, the T.sonic 615 will come in 2GB and 4GB capacities. (Read the full post about ‘Transcend Information T.sonic 615′…)

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Holy Toast - Set of 2 If like us, you suffer from the almost constant disappointment of holy effigies failing to miraculously appear to you during breakfast, well fret no more, because help is at hand. You can have this for ?5.95 Tags: toys, video, dap, DVD (Read the full post about ‘Holy Toast - Set of 2′…)

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by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 5:47PM BenQ has been showing off its first stab at an MID since the Intel Developer Forum last fall, but it hasn’t exactly been all that forthcoming about the full specs of the device. That situation seems to have changed at the more recent IDF in Shanghai, however, although those details seem to just now be making their way across the Internet. As we knew before, the device will pack an Intel Atom processor (the base 800MHz model), which will apparently be backed up by 512MB of RAM, a 4GB SSD hard drive, and HSPDA support in addition to some integrated WiFi and Bluetooth. (Read the full post about ‘BenQ’s Atom-based MID gets detailed’…)

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Head-worn camera for special eventsApr 20, 2008 Recording our lives has become wide-spread all over the world. But the technologies are being perfected all the time. Microsoft is working out in order to supply our society with wearable camera technology that will have a lot of features. Actually, now it is just a concept. But there is a gadget that is worth its price, is advanced and is a really great high-resolution head-worn camera. Let’s see what functions it has and if they are useful for you. The newest UKP300 (US5) head-worn device is already used by UK police. It is very handy for operations that need supervision. The gadget is qualitative and records all the necessary details. (Read the full post about ‘Head-worn camera for special events’…)

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by Ryan Block, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 4:24PM It’s time to pull out your pocketbooks because the charity auction you’ve been waiting for is going down right now. Up for grabs: the absurdly rare, one of a kind, hand-made PS3 Laptop, built by Ben Heckendorn for Engadget. 100% of the proceeds of this auction will go to National Cancer Coalition, most or all of which should be tax-deductible by the winner. And to sweeten the deal that much more, we’ll even pay shipping, and have Ben Heck himself autograph the thing (if you want). The rules are below, read them carefully. Real bids only people, this is for charity! Let us repeat that: only leave a bid if you’re prepared to pony up that amount of money. (Read the full post about ‘PS3 Laptop charity auction — bid here!’…)

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by Paul Miller, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 5:12PM If your interest in processor speeds doesn’t extend much beyond “is it fast?” then these juicy tidbits likely aren’t for you. That said, AMD is certainly getting excited about its upcoming Barcelona successor: the 45nm Shanghai. The main points of interest out of the gate are HyperTransport 3.0, which was nixed late in the game on Barcelona, and six cores, which are meant to pit the chip up against Intel’s upcoming six-core Dunnington chip. Where things get really exciting is a few months after Shanghai’s late 2008 debut, when AMD plans do release a twin-die version, with 12 cores of happiness connected by HyperTransport 3.0. What does all that mean? (Read the full post about ‘AMD’s Shanghai proffers 12 cores, HyperTransport 3.0′…)

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