Gadgets Connect

by Darren Murph, posted Apr 25th 2008 at 10:40AM Remember when you discovered that you could check out your Xbox 360’s heatsink without voiding the warranty? Yeah, fun times. Now, we’re getting a closer look at the third-generation playstation 3 heatsink — and this time, you won’t be required to perform any strange feats of inverted photography in order to take a peek. Furukawa Electric recently showed off the next-gen sink at Techno-Frontier 2008 in Japan, and aside from ditching the copper pipes used in the first two iterations, this one has also split in two in order to cool the Cell and RSX processors separately. (Read the full post about ‘Furukawa Electric shows off third-generation PS3 heatsink’…)

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The Philips M600 is specially made for music lovers. Measuring 105mm x 44mm x 15.3 mm, the GSM phone utilities the SRS WOW technology to enhance the sound quality and add a surround sound capability. The candy bar phone also allows users to use T9 text input in Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, English, French, Russian or Turkish. Other features include 2-inch 256k colors TFT (176 x 220 pixels), equalizer, 1.3MP camera, GPRS, MicroSD card slot, Bluetooth with A2DP, and a 3.5 mm Headset jack connector. This music phone sports Midi, MP3, WMA, AMR file formats. (Read the full post about ‘Philips M600 Phone For The Chinese Market’…)

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China has moved past the U.S. to become the world’s largest group of Internet users. Over 221 million Chinese currently use the Internet, which is up over 10 million from last year. “Despite a rapidly increasing Internet population, the proportion of Internet users among the total population was still lower than the global average level.” said the Chinese Information Ministry” As a whole 16-percent of China’s population are Internet users, compared to an average of 19.1-percent for the world’s total population. All things considers that is a lot of users especially considering the Chinese government heavily censors the net, using a complex system of filters as well as human monitors. (Read the full post about ‘China tops the world for most Internet users’…)

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Just when you thought you had enough Star Wars paraphernalia, R2-D2 got together with R2-D1 to make sweet music as a speaker set. You get a two-droid set, R2-D2 and his red doppleganger R2-D1. Each features a flip-up head to reveal a speaker. Plug the stereo headphone style plug into your PC, ipod or spare Wookie for some droid-based sound. We won’t kid you, these speakers are not powered so their volume is limited by whatever audio input you give them. But don’t you want to help out a droid who’s down on his luck? Gimmie! (Read the full post about ‘Star Wars R2-D2 Speaker Set’…)

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Sanrio is back and this time with a new Hello Kitty laptop the Epson Endeavor NJ2100. The pearl white laptop offers two designs for young fans one has the Kitty flying an airplane and other features Hello Kitty surrounded by flowers. The lappie is powered by Intel Celeron 540 at 1.86GHz, 1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive, DVD drive, Firewire, 3 in 1 memory card slot and a 15.4 inch WXGA screen (1280 x 800). It is preloaded with exclusive Hello Kitty wallpapers, screensavers and sounds. The battery offers a disappointing 60 minutes of running time. The Hello Kitty laptop measures 365×264×41mm and weighs 2.6kg.

(Read the full post about ‘Epson Endeavor NJ2100 the Hello Kitty laptop’…)

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Remember back in February, when we told you that AT&T and Starbucks struck a deal for free Wi-Fi in Starbucks stores, effectively leaving T-Mobile out to dry? Today, we have learned, that the telecom and coffee giant are determined to put that deal into effect. Starting May 1, qualifying AT&T customers will be able to get free Wi-Fi in 7,000 Starbucks shops around the United States. What does “qualifying” mean, you ask? It means the free Wi-Fi is available for anybody who is paying for any one of AT&T’s three broadband internet packages, any of the small business packages AT&T offers, or any U-verse package. (Read the full post about ‘AT&T begins providing Starbucks Wi-Fi for select customers’…)

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The TomTom 2nd Edition Rider is a GPS for people who mostly use a motorcycle as their means of transportation. TomTom did not add a lot of key features present in their normal, automobile GPS models, and so, with this update comes many features missing in the 2nd Edition Rider. Some of the main features included in this update are Map Share, the Help Me! menu, which is a safety feature to try and help when needed, map guarantees, and Tele Atlas maps which cover Western and Eastern Europe, and they come pre-installed. Another cool update is that you can find out the stats of your trip, such as average and max speeds, total distance traveled, as well as the distance from the starting point. (Read the full post about ‘TomTom updates 2nd edition Rider with essential components’…)

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As we previously reported, video rental giant Blockbuster has been looking to acquire electronics giant Circuit City. Blockbuster has already offered a whopping $1 billion, but reports are flying in, saying that they cannot fund such a hefty offer. In an official statement from the company, Circuit City said: “Circuit City awaits a viable financing structure that is predictably executable by Blockbuster given its current constraints of size and capital structure before it would be appropriate to allow further due diligence.” While this may be just another attempt to stop the merger in its tracks, Blockbuster has no resistance to going hostile in the bid. More on this as it happens. (Read the full post about ‘Merger setback? Blockbuster cannot finance Circuit City acquistion’…)

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Apple 3G iPhone If analyst reports are to be believed, the 3G iphone will be announced on June 9, the anticipated date of the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference). Apart from the much-awaited 3G version of the phone, analysts predict a slew of updates to the Mac and ipod line-ups.

It appears that Apple iPhone inventories are not keepking up with demand which is still strong - and the company could easily reach the 10 million mark. I’ll be honest for a bit here: I am not a huge fan of the iPhone, and I believe 10 million is a pretty low number. Reason?

(Read the full post about ‘3G iPhone in June 2008: It’s almost here, folks!’…)

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Oregon Scientific managed to pique our interest with its proximity-sensing Weather In Motion clock, and it now looks like it’s got the solution for anyone that wishes they could take it with ‘em wherever they go, with the company set to release its new Meteo weather forecasting watch. While the need for a proximity sensor is obviously eliminated this time around, the watch apparently boasts the same weather information in icon-form as its desk-based companion, along with your usual time-telling, stop watch and alarm features. Look for this one to set you back £40 (or about $80) when it’s released next month. (Read the full post about ‘Oregon Scientific intros weather-forecasting Meteo watch’…)

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