Anyone know what this thing is?

Here is KityKity’s description:

This is not a mouse. But sometimes I forget and grab it.

I have no idea what this thing is and I’m intrigued. Anyone out there have an idea?

Tags: gaming, computers, digital, Ogg

Merium Home Theater PC creator Christoffer Nøkleby has boldly and proudly proclaimed that his creation comes with a “sky high wife approval factor.” I won’t take him at his word, since looking good isn’t the only criteria for the de facto home minister - one will still need to tiptoe around potential landmines like its cost and usefulness at time of purchase. This Windows Home Premium-powered PC is bundled with the following for every $1,561 purchase. (Read the full post about ‘Merium Home Theater PC’…)

Asus has announced the successor to that geek-favorite, the Eee PC. The 8.9 inch mini notebooks will have touch screens and possibly also include GPS. Asus VP Kevin Lin also said that the base model will ship with a gig of RAM as standard, double that of today’s model, and the SSD will also be beefed up, with 8GB and 12GB available.

Asus is storming ahead in this sector, and the addition of a touch screen makes the diminutive notebook even more attractive.

(Read the full post about ‘Official: Touchscreen Eee Coming This Spring’…)

The d20 is possibly the ultimate symbol of nerd-dom. And of course, you’d expect MIT students to fully embrace the joys of Dungeons and Dragons. So it’s entirely appropriate to find this giant 20-sided dice at MIT’s Killan Court.

The frame-and-fabric sculpture is, of a course, a tribute to the late Gary Gygax. What the D&D inventor really needs, though, is a permanent granite d20 tomb. Much better than those lame old Pharaohs, who could only manage to build their mausoleums in the shape of a d4.

The Tech [MIT via Laughing Squid]

Picture: Eric Schmiedl

Tags: CD, laptops, mobile devices, consumer technology

We hate the idea of Miami spying on its citizens with flying autonomous drones, but as you can see in the photograph, these things have a totally cool Judge Dredd look to them. The16lb drone, called the Honeywell MAV (Micro Air Vehicle), is a pilotless flying vehicle loaded with infra red and optical sensors. Juan Villalba of the Miami Dade Police Department told Reuters that “Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes” – a kind of snake-o-scope to help SWAT teams see around corners. We doubt it. The drone is set to go live in the Everglades, which makes us think that these things will be buzzing around searching for drug smugglers and other ne’er-do-wells. (Read the full post about ‘Miami Device: Police To Use Hovering Spy Drones’…)

Looks like Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader may be facing a good rival soon courtesy of a company named Ectaco. The newly released Ectaco jetBook reader is lightweight and portable and is capable of storing thousands of e-books. The jetBook reader looks trendy, as exemplified by the red external design with some rugged edges on its side that mimics a traditional notebook spring binders. It was made this to probably attract traditional book readers who just won’t part ways with printed books. Weighing only 7.5 ounces, the jetBook reader would fit perfectly into the palm of the hand. The jetBook reader supports an easy-to-scan high-resolution 5-inch display with a viewing angle close to 180 degrees that is fully customizable to suit a user’s needs. (Read the full post about ‘Ectaco jetBook reader could have been the Kindle killer’…)

Posted Mar 25th 2008 8:02PM by Nilay PatelFiled under: Misc. gadgetsAlthough both Microsoft and Intel’s R&D departments have been responsible for some nifty futuristic tech, the two companies got together last week and announced a $20M grant to two universities to “start over” and develop next-gen computing systems based around parallel processing. The grant will fund Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers at UC -Berkeley, which is kicking in another $7M, and the University of Illinois at Champaign / Urbana, which is donating $8M of its own. (Read the full post about ‘Intel and Microsoft fund $20M grant to reinvent computing: where do you want to go tomorrow?’…)

Onda has made another portable media player called the VX767. It has a 4.3″ 16:9 true (480 × 272 resolution) widescreen display, 400MHZ processor, support for RM, RMVB, FLV, AVI, MOV, ASF, MP4, WMV, 3GP and MPEG video format, an integrated FM radio and a microSDHC memory card slot along with a battery life of 40 hours for audio and 10 hours for video. [ Source ] Tags: technology, amps, cool gear, computers (Read the full post about ‘Onda VX767 Portable Media Player’…)

This gadget is simple but purely brilliant. The Sunlight Calculator measures sunlight conditions where you want to plant to enable you to pick the correct plants at your local Home Depot or nursery. The SunCalc measures the sunlight and after 12 hours an LED lights letting you know how much sun a plant would receive. The LED lights one of four options including “Full Sun”, “Partial Sun”, “Partial Shade” and “Full Shade”. Armed with that knowledge you will be able to grow happier and healthier plants. Gimmie! (Read the full post about ‘Sunlight Calculator’…)

Just a quick note for you all your hardcore Wii gamers–Nintendo released WiiWare in Japan today. In case you are not hip to all the Wii news, WiiWare is a downloadable content service, similiar to Virtual Console, but features software specific to the Wii. Up until this point only simple tools were available, like the Wii Internet Channel, but today WiiWare received games.

We don’t have anyone covering it Japan, but there are a lot of great posts around the web where you can catch up on the news.

(Read the full post about ‘WiiWare launches in Japan’…)