Gadgets Connect

This 20 foot long, eight foot wide Batmobile is one of five original props used in Tim Burton’s first Batman movie. Of course, it’s utterly impractical. You have to enter through the roof, the eight cylinder Chevrolet 350 engine won’t be giving you Prius-like fuel economy, and finding spares might be a problem. But who cares? It’s the Batmobile. Here’s the seller’s description: Na na na na na na na na na na BATMAN. That is what your neighbors will say when you pull into the driveway. How many people do you know that have a Ferrari, a Mercedes, a Lamborghini, or a Corvette? My guess would be there is at least one of these in your neighborhood. Now how many Batmobiles are in your neighborhood. (Read the full post about ‘Tim Burton Batmobile On Ebay For $500,000′…)

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by Joshua Topolsky, posted May 5th 2008 at 9:45PM Do you absolutely love Gateway desktops? If you said yes, prepare to be seriously stoked. The company is releasing a slew of new systems this week, ranging from cheapo starters to pretty heavily equipped gaming / multimedia models. We’ve got all the info that’s fit to print (and frankly, some that isn’t), and we’ve rounded up the basic specs and features after the break. (Read the full post about ‘Gateway releases slew of new desktops, offers something for everyone’…)

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Maker Faire wasn’t all exploding battlebots and 300,000-volt giraffes. There were food hackers at work, too, like Michael Zbyszynksi, who explains how to make carrot caviar in this video.

He starts with a beaker of ordinary carrot juice mixed with sodium alginate — a derivative of seaweed — at a ratio of 2 grams of sodium alginate to 250 grams of carrot juice (a 0.8 percent solution).

He then uses a syringe to drop small beads of the solution into a bath of water with a couple grams of calcium chloride dissolved in it. The calcium chloride hardens the sodium alginate from the outside in, giving it a "skin" that holds the carrot juice inside.

After rinsing in plain water, the caviar-like beads are ready to be used as a surprising garnish.

(Read the full post about ‘Video: How to Make Carrot Juice ‘Caviar’’…)

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The Blu-Jacket you see here is designed by Lunar and uses flexible organic e-paper to show passers-by your current mood (that is, if they’re not too hot when it comes to reading facial expressions), a choice of subway maps (as shown) or even play back advertisements. I wonder how sustainable this is - after all, it would give plenty of ‘wolves’ out there an excuse to stare at an ample chest, claiming that they’re trying to trace their train route from home to the workplace. Anyways, this will probably be out of reach for most people as electronic fabric isn’t exactly the cheapest in the whole world and chances are it will cost many thousands of dollars. (Read the full post about ‘Blu-Jacket Design Concept’…)

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I’m hopeful, but with a healthy amount of cynicism. Intellectually, I like to keep things sweet and sour. So, while I loved and devoured and praised Clay Shirky’s newest book, “Here Comes Everybody,” it was important to couch that experience with a dose of anxiety over the current and future states of the Internet with Johnathan Zittrain’s “The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It.” Web 2.0 is (to me) more of a social phenomenon than a technical feat. Living in New York there are social mixers around the Web 2.0 hype nearly nightly, and I guess because I’ve always been a happy malcontent, I’m more critical of what we’re all really accomplishing tossing back cheap chardonnay and exchanging business cards. (Read the full post about ‘The Future of the Internet by Jonathan Zittrain’…)

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LG’s VX9100 has just been announced officially be US operator Verizon, complete with the customary bevy of beauties surrounding it in order to persuade you to part with your hard earned cash. As we mentioned before, the VX9100 will feature a QVGA display with a full QWERTY keyboard to get all your typing done as quickly and efficiently as possible. It has a thickness of 16.5mm and will feature a 2 megapixel camera and 8GB of storage space. No idea on how much it will cost though. Tags: home theater, home cinema, Hi-fi, games (Read the full post about ‘LG VX9100 Officially Announced’…)

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Fantastic. Now you can not only have an Internet connection by way of your cell phone’s data connection (tethered to your laptop), but you can also share it to create your very own WiFi hotspot! The Cradlepoint Personal Hotspot 300 is a fully featured WiFi router that uses your mobile phone’s data connection as its conn to the Net. While it includes an AC adapter, its internal battery can be charged up for full portability. Wherever you want to work, now you can. No longer do you have to find some coffee shop and pay them $10 to get online. The PHS300 support 802.11b/g computers, and its WiFi router includes a full set of the security and access controls that you’ve come to expect in popular home-based broadband routers. (Read the full post about ‘Cradlepoint PHS300: Portable WiFi Router connects via Cell Phone conn’…)

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Book Stool Tags: dvr, mobile phone, AAC, lcd (Read the full post about ‘Book Stool’…)

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With a smart 49.9” diagonal widescreen, Panasonic VIERA TH-50PZ85U Television is the latest sensation in the television world. Offering you 1080p HDTV with increased Native Contrast Ratio, this plasma television comes equipped with many advanced features. Get to enjoy digital cinema reality with motion pattern noise reduction only on Panasonic VIERA TH-50PZ85U Television. Features Built-in SD Card Slot. New Anti-Reflective Filter. Deep Color Technology. 3 HDMI Inputs. VIERA Link HDAVI Control. Panasonic VIERA TH-50PZ85U Television comes fitted with two high-performance speakers that provide you surround sound experience. This new television from Panasonic also features an integrated ATSC and built-in closed caption decoder. (Read the full post about ‘Panasonic VIERA TH-50PZ85U Television’…)

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We heard stories of T-Mobile rolling out its 3G network last week in NYC sans data, but now T-Mobile has officially come forward with news that it has launched a voice and data UMTS/HSDPA network in New York City.

If you don’t live in NYC, the company plans to continue to rollout its 3G network across “major metropolitan markets” through the year. According to the company, by year’s end the high-speed data network will be available in “those cities where a majority of its subscribers currently use data services”.

T-Mobile also announced that it will soon be offering its first HSDPA device, and new data-centric all in-one devices.

My favorite part of the press release is the non-commital “those cities where a majority of its subscribers current use data services”.

(Read the full post about ‘T-Mobile’s 3G is officially rolling out–very slowly’…)

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