Posted Feb 28th 2008 10:54AM by Richard LawlerFiled under: Home Entertainment, Media PCs Asus continues to crank up its media PC related offerings, its latest are two HDMI equipped sound cards aimed at HTPC users or prosumers. Next week at CeBIT expect to see the Xonar DX sound card, a slimmed-down edition of its Xonar D2X card made to fit any PCI-E x1 equipped computer. Dolby Digital Live and DTS connect support is still part of the package, plus EAX 5.0 compatibility. Next up is the Xonar AV1, complete with three HDMI jacks and Asus’ Splendid HD chip to assist audio and video mastering. (Read the full post about ‘Asus shows off HDMI-equipped Xonar DX and Xonar AV1 sound cards’…)

There is no doubt that everybody who earns a reasonable living pays attention to the way things look. Moreover at present people try to buy something original and different. That’s why all designers and producers do their best in order to make something peculiar. The given gadget represents absolutely unusual and very original bed. In fact it doesn’t look like a bed at all. It’s more like a caterpillar. Such a strange bed was designed by a promising young Mexican designer Victor Aleman. The name that was given to this furniture novelty is Loope Lupita. One side of the gadget is made of Red Oak, another one - of white leatherette and its interior is filled with high-density polyurethane foam. (Read the full post about ‘An original bed - Loope Lupita’…)

We’ve written about Virgin Galactic before and it does sound sound jolly cool to be able to fly up to space and experience zero gravity, however it comes at something of a price, £100,000 (~$200,000 or near as damn it), ouch. However we’ve received an email from Virgin telling us that you can now put your Virgin air miles towards the cost of the flight, cool! Virgin Galactic is delighted to announce a new destination…space. Climb to 360,000ft. at a cruising speed of almost three times the speed of sound, in unprecedented levels of safety and comfort. See our beautiful planet from 63 miles up and experience the magic of weightlessness. (Read the full post about ‘Use your air miles to fly to space with Virgin Atlantic’…)

It’s quite an obvious fact that our mood can be significantly changed because of bad weather. So, people always want to know “what is waiting for them outside”. A lot of different devices were designed in order to solve this problem. One of the solutions was proposed by Oregon Scientific Company which designed a clock that besides time shows state of weather and outside temperature. The synchronization of data occurs by means of built-in radio receiver and then 3D model is painted on the display. A significant advantage of this gadget consists in the fact that it’s very easy-to-handle. For example, just a simple hand gesture is enough to switch the indications on display to time or temperature. (Read the full post about ‘The clock to forecast weather’…)

Samsung has hopped onto the 3D bandwagon with a couple of new PAVV TVs that will come in 42″ and 50″ sizes. These plasma displays are 3D Ready, which means they have been tailored to provide the best gaming experience possible after teaming up with Electronic Arts, tweaking the 3D display rendering to offer gamers nothing but the best. Interestingly enough, these TVs are equipped with the DNIe+ (Digital Natural Image engine+) feature normally found on Samsung monitors. Other features include USB 2.0 connectivity, HDMI 1.3 and full HD resolution. According to Samsung’s press release, these two additions to the family also boast a crazt 1,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio - one can feverishly hope that is NOT a typo. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung 3D Plasma TVs’…)

Those saddened by the demise of the Polaroid instant film cameras might invest some hope in this concept digital equivalent. It’s nothing more than a normal LCD photo frame, but the styling is distinctly Polaroid.The bottom panel is a dry-erase board, so you can annotate and title the pictures, and the imagined specifications include a memory card slot and multi-mode slide shows, including “Classic Mode”, where the photo slowly fades into view, just like the real thing: In Classic mode, you can try shaking the frame to make the photo fade into view more quickly, but it won’t really do anything.The kick-stand will rotate to let you pin the frame to a wall or cork board. (Read the full post about ‘Concept Digital Polaroid Frame Is Beautifully Retro’…)

Posted Feb 28th 2008 9:05AM by Paul MillerFiled under: Handhelds If you’ve already dropped $299 on a second-gen mylo COM-2 unit, then Sony has a little treat for you — while all of you early adopters still poking around on an original mylo probably feel pretty silly right now. Sony is launching the “mylo labs” site for nabbing mylo widgets, and while right now there are just a few Sony-built widgets, Sony will open up the site to developers in March to add their own. Widgets seem to be a natural fit for a device like this, and hey, they’re free, so there’s really no reason not to love. (Read the full post about ‘Sony’s launching mylo labs to keep your COM-2 in the widgets’…)

Posted Feb 28th 2008 9:12AM by Paul MillerFiled under: cellphones We’re not sure what took them so long, but Sprint finally has joined its fellow major carriers in offering an unlimited plan for a flat rate — the now industry standard $99 — only this time it’s for all the marbles. Instead of just the unlimited voice offered by AT&T and Verizon, or the voice + SMS that T-Mobile has on offer, Sprint is undercutting the competition with a $99 plan that includes voice, data, text, Sprint TV, GPS and more. “Simply Everything” is available today to both CDMA and iDEN customers, and is open to existing and new subscribers. If you’ve got a family plan, it’s $5 less for every line you add ($99 + $94 + $89 and so on). (Read the full post about ‘Sprint debuts “Simply Everything” plan for $99 a month’…)

The digital world has truly advanced by leaps and bounds, and here we have the UCCTOP XENO Internet Broadcasting Station which allows you to travel along with your camera crew, beaming the latest happenings around the world no matter where you are. It looks like a pretty mean beast, and should be a pain to lug around. Features include :- * 4-channel video and 6-channel audio input * Selected video channel switching and 6-channel audio mixing * Real-time insertion of subtitles and company logo during live broadcasting * Converts input video sources into a WMV file for Internet broadcasting * Remote controlling of pan, tilt and zoom on the camera * Movie Maker function for editing filmed videos * Automatic scheduled broadcasting No idea how much this puppy costs though. (Read the full post about ‘UCCTOP XENO Internet Broadcasting Station’…)

Camels are not only known for their macho image in the past, but those are some real man’s cigarettes if its advertisements are to be believed. The Cigarette phone hides an actual handset within the ordinary looking box of a Camel pack. It slides open just like how a standard cigarette packet does, and retails for $49 from Custom Phones. Bear in mind this is but a house phone so don’t expect it to perform wonders like send text messages or capture pictures of your hubby having a romp with the maid in bed while you’re at work. Tags: digital, game, Ogg Vorbis, pvp (Read the full post about ‘Cigarette Phone’…)