My Shopzer

Motorola's Aura Celestial Edition soon taking "giant leaps" for "mankind"

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:35:18 PDT

Here's a fact: the world really doesn't need another mildly tweaked Aura. Sorry, it just doesn't. That being true and all, we're still pretty jazzed to see Motorola giving the ultra-luxurious handset another go with the moon-themed Celestial Edition. Word on the street has it that this here handset won't deviate much from the predecessor, but it will come pre-loaded with multimedia from the original moon landing mission, a laser etched quote honoring the 40th anniversary of the journey and a price tag that's far, far beyond stratospheric. We're told that it's all set to go on sale next month, but good luck finding one.

Toshiba's TG01 outed on Orange UK

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:34:49 PDT

Well, well, there it is. The world's first and only Snapdragon phone available for retail, Toshiba's TG01, is up and dancing on Orange's UK site with a "coming soon" badge. Soon meaning the July 9th London press event, presumably, where this 9.9-mm slate running WinMo on a 4.1-inch 800x480 pixel display should get a shove out the retail door. Yes, Windows Mobile 6.1, why do you ask?

Solid Alliance's $10,000 Mnemosyne USB drive is built for style, not convenience

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:35:56 PDT

The Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, would surely be proud of this product bearing her name. For starters, it comes at a price few mere mortals can afford and is couched within an extravagant all-aluminum body. The puzzle cube certainly provides a ceremonial feel to accessing the data within, and makers Solid Alliance are pitching it as a luxurious receptacle for your most treasured memories. Yes, under all the sheen, you are still looking at 16GB of standard issue flash memory, but can we really put a price on mythology-infused style?

Sonos CR200 remote control has a touchscreen, at last

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:36:12 PDT

And here it is. After we unearthed the Sonos CR200 in a FCC filing, out comes the first pic. As we expected, it's a portrait controller and is said to include a touch-screen which makes an on-screen QWERTY keyboard a lock for searching by artist, album, or song titles. Goodbye scroll-wheel! If you own a Sonos, then you know this is the best thing to happen since, well, buying your Sonos... just so long as it's not priced for $399 like the CR100 it replaces.

Thanko's Spy Button video camera, because you've already failed

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:36:38 PDT

So what if Thanko's ¥5,980 (about $62) Spy Button Camera doesn't look exactly like the other buttons on your shirt. Anyone inclined to wear such a device to covertly record VGA video at 15fps (or 1280x1024 stills) to 4GB of internal memory isn't likely to get noticed in a crowd anyway. At least the magnetic on/off switch gives renewed purpose to your wedding ring while offering evidence of your continued poor decision making skills. Just be sure to bring your inhaler to keep your breathless excitement in check.

Samsung's SCH-W760 with infrared video conferencing is ready for your parole hearing

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:36:57 PDT

We get it. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes when you're staring into the sad abyss of an empty Tennessee fifth, the idea of initiating an impromptu video conference in total darkness seems mighty compelling. That's where Samsung's SCH-W760 with 7.2Mbps HSDPA and front-facing infrared camera can help. It's available now in Korea and could be the difference between making a solo bed-spin performance or 3- to 6-months served at county for violating your restraining order. The choice is yours for KRW580,000 or about 445 of the green stuff.

T3 Motion goes third wheelin' with its CT3 personal commuter EV

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:37:34 PDT

Don't get too excited, the above picture's only a render, but T3 Motion -- the company that brought you the security-focused electric stand-up vehicle -- is planning to bring this whip to life as the CT3 personal commuter / EV. As Autoblog points out, the lack of a fourth wheel should help this get classified as a motorcycle, meaning it won't be relegated to zipping around the neighborhood but still will be kept to a 45MPH top speed. However, a 80MPH CT-S version is in the works and will be entered into the Auto X Prize that'll get an envious 100 miles per gallon. Hit up the read link for the full presser.

Pool-Mate watch packs built-in accelerometer to track laps

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:37:51 PDT

It may not monitor your heart rate or double as a media player like some other devices for swimmers, but this new Pool-Mate watch from Swimovate looks like it should appeal to quite a few folks nonetheless, with it packing a built-in accelerometer to help you keep track of lap counts. That's apparently done by detecting the glide portion of your swim after each turn, which Swmovate says it's able to do with 99.75 percent accuracy in all pools longer than 10 meters. You'll also be able to use it to keep track of your overall time, average strokes per lap, speed, distance, and calories burned. Somewhat strangely, however, Swimovate says that the watch will only last for about twelve months, after which you'll actually have to send it back to the company to get the battery replaced. A bit of a drawback, to be sure, but the $114 price tag isn't too out of line, and you won't have to wait long to get your hands on one, with it set to ship later this month. Head on past the break for a quick video overview.

Python skin-covered HOON headphones likely to get PETA in an uproar

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:38:34 PDT

French accessories company HOON has teamed up with audio company The Perfect Unison for a line of python skin skinned headphones. The cans are made of nine layers of birch wood, lined with goat skin, and finally covered in the skin of a mighty snake for the ultimate, luxurious audiophile experience. The ear pieces are made of hand-varnished carbon fibers, presumably because the beaks of dodo birds were unavailable. These high-tech, beastly beauties will run you €1,160.00 (roughly $1,650) should you choose to make them yours.

Taiwan 'orders' Dell to honor $15 monitor mishap (updated)

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:38:53 PDT

It's not exactly all that uncommon for Dell to misprice an item on its website and, if you're lucky, it might even honor it. But it looks like the stakes have just been raised considerably in Taiwan, where the company recently listed a 19-inch monitor for NT$500 (or about $15US) and promptly received more than 26,000 orders for close to 140,000 of the monitors. Now, ordinarily, Dell would simply send out a polite email explaining their mistake and call it a day, but Taiwanese regulators have now stepped in and ~~ordered~~ suggested that Dell honors the misprice after receiving a couple of hundred complaints. For its part, Dell simply says that it plans to "compensate the buyers for the mistake," although it's not clear if that means it'll actually be sending out the monitors -- which, incidentally, would add up to more than $20 million at their full list price.

Update: Engadget Chinese tells us that the Taiwanese government has suggested to Dell that it compensates consumers fairly and will assist in legal action against Dell if they don't. Also, the $15 price applies only to the first monitor purchased with discounts applied to subsequent units for those who made multiple-monitor purchases.

Update 2: Dell has agreed to issue a NT$1000 (about $30) coupon for every monitor purchased including those made through multiple purchase orders. That sound more than reasonable to us.

iBUYPOWER launches Core i7-packin' Paladin XLC desktops

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:39:10 PDT

Nearly a month to the day after iBUYPOWER launched its gamer-centric M865TU gaming laptop, the outfit has now given the desktop gamers in attendance something to consider. The liquid cooled Paladin XLC series is comprised of three well appointed models, the XLC V1, XLC V2 and XLC V3. All three of 'em are stored in the monstrous Coolermaster HAF 922 (the V3 gets a HAF 932), while even the lowest end model gets a Core i7-920 processor. Other specs include up to 12GB of DDR3 RAM, as many as three NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 GPUs, upwards of 1TB of HDD space, optional Blu-ray support and Windows Vista Home Premium. The trifecta can be ordered now for $1,399, $2,159 or $4,299 in order of mention.

GSM Pre to launch on O2 in UK

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:39:32 PDT

We heard earlier this morning that the GSM Pre was set for a UK launch, and now it sounds like things are coming together: The Guardian says the Palm's baby will launch on O2. That makes perfect sense, O2 owner Telefonica reportedly secured broad global rights to the Pre back in March. Of course, this is all yet to be official, but with actual GSM handsets floating around out there and an announcement expected next week, we're guessing we don't have too much longer to wait.

NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:40:01 PDT

NVIDIA obviously isn't doing much talking about it itself just yet, but Fudzilla apparently has it on good authority that the company is indeed already hard at work on Ion 2, which promises to bring with it plenty of improvements over the already impressive Ion chipset. Chief among those is a decreased die size, "much faster graphics," and more than twice the shaders of the original Geforce 9400M /MCP79 chipset that the current Ion is based on (which uses 16 shaders). Not many more details than that, unfortunately, but NVIDIA is supposedly looking to launch Ion 2 by the end of this year -- although not before it sells plenty more Ion 1s, of course.

Microsoft's "Pink" smartphone to be Microsoft-branded?

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:40:05 PDT

Ready for even more rumors about Windows Mobile 7 and Microsoft's mysterious "Pink" smartphone project? Good, cause we've got a few -- and the first is potentially huge. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley says her best understanding of "Pink" is now that it's a Microsoft-branded phone running a custom UI on top of Windows Mobile 7, developed by what's left of the Danger team and targeted at the Sidekick market. Yep, Microsoft-branded -- as in, the exact thing Microsoft has been denying for ages now. What's more, Redmond wouldn't be letting third parties use this new UI -- Pink would be manufactured only by Sharp or Motorola, who've made Sidekicks in the past. It all makes sense, even if it does feel a bit like MS is knifing its partners in the back -- companies like HTC and Samsung have been equally aggressive in layering their own UIs like TouchFLO 3D and TouchWiz on top of WinMo, but it's another thing entirely to compete against Microsoft itself, especially now that AdWeek says Microsoft's selected an agency to develop a Pink ad campaign. Yeah, things are starting to get a little wild -- we haven't even mentioned the open questions of whether the Zune HD is running Tegra because it's based on Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1, or whether Pink will launch on Verizon, or whether Zune will appear on other phones, or... you get the idea. Hey Microsoft -- you want to clear any of this up by shipping some products?

Sprint matches Verizon's pace, launching BlackBerry Tour on July 12

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:40:37 PDT

So much for exclusivity, eh? Sprint is staying toe-to-toe with Verizon in the race to get the BlackBerry Tour to market, launching the consensus hottest RIM device to date on July 12 for $199.99 on contract after rebates. It's awfully refreshing to see an ominous statement like "later this summer" morph into "early summer" instead of slipping into the "dead of winter" as is all too often the case with hotly-anticipated phones, and we have a sneaking suspicion the Tour's gonna sell like a remastered Bonnie Tyler live album (that's a good thing, by the way). Who's in?

Elonex launches £189 6-inch eBook reader through Borders UK

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:40:56 PDT

Elonex has been dabbling in small screen wares for quite some time now, so it's not a huge surprise to finally see it join the likes of BeBook, Sony and Amazon by introducing its very own eBook reader. Design wise, the 6-inch reader looks an awful lot like that played-out OEM model that everyone seems to start with, but hey, you won't find us kvetching about competition. The device is launching exclusively at Borders UK, and with that comes the new Borders eBook Download Store. With a 4GB expansion card, there's room for some 8,000 ebooks, and the 9 millimeter-thin frame ensures that this one won't bog you down too much. Interested consumers over in the UK can snap this one up right now for £189 ($311), and that price nets you 100 free ebooks, a charger, data cable and a great sense of pride.

Engadget's recession antidote: win a VTech IS9181 WiFi radio

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:41:28 PDT

This whole global economic crisis, and its resulting massive loss of jobs got us thinking. We here at Engadget didn't want to stand helplessly by, announcing every new round of misery without giving anything back -- so we decided to take the opportunity to spread a little positivity. We'll be handing out a new gadget every day (except for weekends) to lucky readers until we run out of stuff / companies stop sending things. Today we've got a boomin' VTech IS9181 internet radio on offer, ready to stream jams from the world wide web when not playing back your MP3 collection. Read the rules below (no skimming -- we're omniscient and can tell when you've skimmed) and get commenting! Check after the break for some photos of the prize!

Special thanks to VTech for providing the gear!

The rules:

Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but if you want to share your proposal for "fixing" the world economy, that'd be sweet too.
You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you'll be fine.
Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
Winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) VTech IS9181 WiFi radio. Approximate retail value is $199.99.
If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
Entries can be submitted until Wednesday, July 1st, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!

Star Wars flash drives' giant heads seep into our teensy hearts

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:01:31 PDT

We see so many flash drives around these parts, it is truly, truly hard for any to distinguish themselves in our eyes. These ones? Well, we'll admit it: we have a giant soft spot for their massive noggins. Not the first Star Wars flash drives we've seen -- this newest set store up to 2GB per drive -- which isn't anything to throw a party over, but they're really cute, right? The set, which includes Darth Vader, Yoda (look at his toes!), a Stormtrooper and Boba Fett, will be available starting in October for $25 each.

eMachines intros ET1300-02, ET1810-01 and ET1810-03 desktop PCs

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:01:15 PDT

Just a few short weeks after eMachines outed its EL1300 line of SFF PCs, the company is hitting us up again with a new trio of full-size desktops. The ET1300-02, ET1810-01 and ET1810-03 are all encased within a luminous white mini-tower and ship with a matching LCD monitor, speakers and a keyboard. As for specs, the $449.99 ET1300-02 checks in with an AMD Athlon X2 4850e (2.5GHz) CPU, Vista Home Premium, NVIDIA's GeForce G100 (512MB), 3GB of DDR2 memory, a 160GB hard drive, 18x SuperMulti DVD burner, multicard reader, HDMI / DVI / VGA outputs and an 18-inch E182H display. The $369.99 ET1810-03 steps to a 2.2GHz Pentium E2210 CPU, GeForce 7500 integrated graphics and just a single VGA port, while the $299.99 ET1810-01 cranks it down to a 1.6GHz Celeron 420 and 2GB of DDR2 RAM. The trio should be filtering out to respected retailers as we speak.

LG introduces stylish, LED-backlit 22-inch W2286L LCD HDTV

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:00:59 PDT

By and large, there's nothing too incredible about LG's latest LCD HDTV. It's 22-inches, can double as a PC monitor, boasts a deceiving 2,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and consumes some 40 percent less power than the average Earth-hating 22-inch LCD. There's also a pair of HDMI sockets, a DVI port and a 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, not to mention an automatic brightness sensor that responds to ambient light. There's no word yet on how pricey the 20 millimeter-thick set will be nor when it'll ship stateside, but hopefully it -- along with its 24-inch Full HD sibling -- will make the trip in short order.

Grocery cart morphs into electric go-kart, insanity ensues

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:00:43 PDT

We won't bother detailing just how sophisticated the system is that's powering the wild whip you're peering at above. We won't bother mentioning just how many A123Systems batteries are installed, nor how intelligent the creator is. We won't bother wearing our jealously on our sleeves. What we will do, however, is point you after the break in order to have a look at just how exhilarating a ride in the LOLrio Cart (otherwise known as an electric go-kart) is. Harris Teeter, you getting all this?

Nokia N97 and Dell Vostro bundled for $730: make one mistake, get one free

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:56:56 PDT

The N97 might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're still tempted to pay the $700 entry fee, you could sweeten the deal by throwing in a free-ish laptop -- Dell's currently bundling the Vostro A860 with Nokia's latest for $730 after a discount coupon. Flip that sucker on eBay for anywhere close to its $379 list price plus some "handling fees" and you might just come close to paying a reasonable price for the N97. Well, sort of reasonable. Those still interested should hurry past the read link, as the full discount will only be available through tomorrow or until stocks last.

Marshal's DVD Power Up Dock includes room for HDD, Bugs Bunny jokes

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:56:33 PDT

If you're still waiting for NU's DVD/HDD docking station to make its appearance at your local purveyor of flimsy-feeling netbook accessories, perhaps you'd instead prefer to wait for this new, less wedge-shaped one from Marshal. Called the DVD Power Up Dock, it sports a DVD drive with the requisite plethora of reading and writing options plus a 2.5-inch SATA HDD and, finally, a USB hub with the least possible number of ports: two. It's listed as being compatible with Windows and naturally there's no mention of price or availability, but that would ruin the surprise.

Toshiba's TG01 stepping out in London on July 9th

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:56:03 PDT

It's already out in Japan and a few select countries in Europe, now Toshiba's skinny TG01 is hitting London on Thursday, July 9th. Presumably the invite will be met with an official UK launch of Tosh's deftly skinned Snapdragon handset with a Windows Mobile 6.1 core. Then again, it could be a lot of tech reporters eating mini triangular sandwiches slathered with pickle spread discussing the HTC Hero for four hours. We'll let you know next week.

Best Buy-sponsored survey shows that Americans want smartphones even though they don't understand them

noreply@blogger.com (Team) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:55:29 PDT

Do you understand your smartphone... really understand it? Know its moods, its wants, its desires? A survey hosted by Best Buy Mobile shows that half of people don't, with 47 percent saying the things confuse the heck out of them, while 60 percent of those aged 35 - 49 feel that people with smartphones spend too much time working and not enough time playing Wii Sports Bowling. Those feelings of confusion and ire doesn't stop a "sizable segment" of the rest of the 1,000 people surveyed from wanting a handset with brains, with most desiring access to the sort of apps you can't get on dumbphones, and 14 percent of women saying that playing games was "very important" -- only nine percent of men said the same. Sadly, there was no figure indicating how many people enjoy paying too much for text messages and signing their lives away on lengthy contracts.