Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow announced that $200 Blu-Ray players will arrive by next year. We personally believe that this is when mass adoption will start. “I don’t think $200 is going to happen this year. Next year $200 could happen” (Stan Glasgow) However, this is not much of a news: most electronics stuff sees dramatic price decreases every year. In the chip industry, that’s about 50% less every year. Tags: high definition TV, laptops, game, video (Read the full post about ‘Duh: Sony Says That $200 Blu-Ray Player Are One Year Away, May Be’…)

Bring some joy into the world not by having a baby, but with the Joyrider. This device will create illuminated smiley faces along the spokes of rotating bicycle wheels, thanks to a couple of electronic devices which clip onto the wheel spokes. They will first size up the rotation speed, where the LED lights will then go to work in order to create an illusion of a stationary smiley face. No idea on how much these cost though, but they recently went for £2000 at a charity auction. Hopefully future iterations will see more designs other than smileys? Tags: pvr, PDA, digital, electronic toys (Read the full post about ‘Joyrider Smileys FTW!’…)

The fact that GPS are becoming more and more ubiquitous on cell phones does not seem to hinder companies like Garmin from churning out navigation units by the dozen. After all, there is a big difference between navigating on your cell phone versus a full-fledged GPS device, which not even the NuviFone can bridge just yet. Fresh off the block from Garmin are four new units in their Nuvi 200 lineup, the “2×5” series, to be specific. Along with MSN Direct for traffic info, these four devices now sport the “HotFix” feature, similar to TomTom’s offering of QuickFix, which enables faster satellite signal acquisition. (Read the full post about ‘Garmin Nuvi 2×5 Series: Adds traffic to the 200 series’…)

Gigabyte has unveiled their latest UMPC, the M700, at CeBIT 2008. While there is no shortage of available UMPC’s right now, there aren’t too many that can combine good looks with decent power. Packing specs that could make even the Cloudbook pale, the device manages to look pretty good in and out with a whopping 2GB of RAM along with a 1.2GHz C7M Via processor. It has a nice 7-inch touchscreen display that can put out resolutions of up to 1024×600 and 40-60GB of disk space, which is more than adequate for something that is supposed to be ultra-mobile. Other than these details and the little tidbit that it runs Vista Home Premium, not much else is known about the M700, but these things don’t usually stay under the wraps for too long, do they? (Read the full post about ‘Gigabyte announces the M700 UMPC’…)

Catch a glimpse of the Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 that was barred at Geneva 2008. The Gallardo LP560-4 is the successor of the most successful Lamborghini model of all time. With a suggestive name, the car delivers 560 horsepower at 8,000 rpm via a 5.2-liter V10 engine. No prize for guessing that 560 from the name stands for horsepower while 4 denotes all wheel drive. Powered with this, it can zoom at 62 mph in an amazing 3.7 seconds. Despite its clearly increased power, fuel consumption and CO 2 emissions have been reduced by a staggering 18 percent. An optional carbon-ceramic-disc braking system makes use of eight-piston Brembo calipers up front, and four-piston calipers at he rear. (Read the full post about ‘Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 at Geneva 2008′…)

Posted Mar 5th 2008 10:21PM by Nilay PatelFiled under: Misc. gadgets, Wireless We’re not sure why Mariah Carey keeps putting nerdy dudes in her videos — remember Jerry O’Connell showing up in Heartbreaker? (Don’t ask how we knew that.) — but her latest, Touch My Body, stars Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock fame, and takes it to the the next dorktastic level. Not only do the lyrics reference YouTube (and terrifyingly, hunting you down if you so much as think about putting a certain type of video on it), but the video features Guitar Hero, laser tag, and Mimi requesting — nay, demanding! — to be upgraded to 802.11n WiFi because “… the download speed was killing me.” We wish we were kidding. (Read the full post about ‘Mariah Carey demands 802.11n, Kenneth touch her body’…)

Posted Mar 5th 2008 6:22PM by Thomas RickerFiled under: LaptopsWe had the chance to corner Acer at CeBIT to ask them about their plans for that Eee PC killer. We received confirmation from Stefan Engel, Managing Director and Country Manager for Acer Germany, that they were on target for a Q2/Q3 release. Incidentally, they will continue to offer the 7-inch Packard Bell EasyNote XS (aka, Everex CloudBook, NanoBook, FIC CD260) along side the Acer branded 7- to 9-incher even though Packard Bell is all but officially an Acer subsidiary.Tags: consumer electronics, Ogg Vorbis, lcd, gizmos (Read the full post about ‘Acer: Eee PC killer on track for Q2/Q3′…)

Getting sick of playing chess against your friends? Want better competition? Maybe the Automated Electronic Chess Game can be a good challenge. As the name suggests, this isn’t your traditional chess game. It uses plenty of electronics, so you have 136 levels to play and analyze. Additionally, the “computer” has an auto-play function, that can play the game by itself. The pieces make use of a magnetic system in order to move, and in case you have to interrupt a game, just save it in the memory and continue playing afterwards. The Automated Electronic Chess Game costs $250. Automated chess pieces move effortly across the board as the computer analyzes, then counters your moves. (Read the full post about ‘Electronic Chess Game’…)

Posted Mar 6th 2008 12:09AM by Ryan BlockFiled under: Misc. gadgetsDamn, we don’t normally do too much media-on-media stuff, but reports are surfacing that tech mega-publisher Ziff Davis (owner of PC Mag, EGM, DigialLife, etc.) is fricking filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy as a shield from some $225m in debt. For those not in the know, chapter 11 just means they’re down, but not necessarily out — although we had no idea it was as dire for the media company as being $225m in the can (not that we’re really all that shocked). (Read the full post about ‘Ziff Davis files chapter 11 bankruptcy’…)

CeBIT ‘08 is the platform for Vodafone to show off its picture-driven search known as Otello, where users need not input a word but a photo instead to the search engine. In theory, that should make it a snap to find similar pictures in a snap, but I do have my reservations. Well, at least you can know whether your face looks like that of a porn star when the results start to filter in. Unfortunately, when German Chancellor Angel Merkel tried out the system, her mug was not recognized. Perhaps she has been so low profile thus far? Tags: speaker, Ogg, hdtv, buyers guides (Read the full post about ‘Vodafone Shows Off Otello’…)