Scientists discover tree fungus that could provide green fuel for transport
A tree fungus could provide green fuel that can be pumped directly into tanks, scientists say. The organism, found in the Patagonian rainforest, naturally produces...
2008-11-05 01:45:30Scientists discover Patagonian diesel that grows on trees
A tree fungus could provide green fuel that can be pumped directly into vehicle tanks, US scientists say. The organism, found in the Patagonian rainforest, naturally produces...
2008-11-05 01:36:30Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work
<!--pageType= magazinesmallslug= ff_openmanufacturingsection= techbizsubsection= startupsheadline= Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware WorkauthorName= Clive ThompsoncreditType= photocredit= James Daycaption= A circuit board for the masses: the Arduino microcontroller.-->Check this out," Massimo Banzi says. The burly, bearded engineer wanders over to inspect a chipmaking robot&mdash;a "pick and place" machine the size of a pizza oven. It hums with activity, grabbing teensy electronic parts and stabbing them into position on a circuit board like a hyperactive chicken pecking for seeds. We're standing in a one-room fabrication factory used by Arduino, the Italian firm that makes this circuit board, a hot commodity among DIY gadget-builders. The electronics factory is one of the most picturesque in existence, nestled in the medieval foothills of Milan, with birdsong floating in through the open doors and plenty of coffee breaks for the white-coated staff. But today Banzi is all business. He's showing off his operation to a group of potential customers from Arizona. Banzi scoops up one of the boards and points to the tiny map of Italy emblazoned on it. "See Italian manufacturing quality!" he says, laughing. "That's why everyone likes us!" Indeed, 50,000 Arduino units have been sold worldwide since mass production began two years ago. Those are small numbers by Intel standards but large for a startup outfit in a highly specialized market. What's really remarkable, though, is Arduino's business model: The team has created a company based on giving everything away. On its Web site, it posts all its trade secrets for anyone to take&mdash;all the schematics, design files, and software for the Arduino board. Download them and you can manufacture an Arduino yourself; there are no patents. You can send the plans off to a Chinese factory, mass-produce the circuit boards, and sell them yourself &mdash; pocketing the profit without paying Banzi a penny in royalties. He won't sue you. Actually, he's sort of hoping you'll do it.That's because the Arduino board is a piece of open source hardware, free for anyone to use, modify, or sell. Banzi and his team have spent precious billable hours making the thing, and they sell it themselves for a small profit &mdash; while allowing anyone else to do the same. They're not alone in this experiment. In a loosely coordinated movement, dozens of hardware inventors around the world have begun to freely publish their specs. There are open source synthesizers, MP3 players, guitar amplifiers, and even high-end voice-over-IP phone routers. You can buy an open source mobile phone to talk on, and a chip company called VIA has just released an open source laptop: Anyone can take its design, fabricate it, and start selling the notebooks.Banzi admits that the concept does sound insane. After all, Arduino assumes a lot of risk; the group spends thousands of dollars to make a batch of boards. "If you publish all your files, in one sense, you're inviting the competition to come and kill you," he says, shrugging.Then again, Linux sounded pretty insane, too, back in 1991, when Linus Torvalds announced it. Nobody believed a bunch of part-time volunteers could create something as complex as an operating system, or that it would be more stable than Windows. Nobody believed Fortune 500 companies would trust software that couldn't be "owned." Yet 17 years later, the open source software movement has been crucial to the Cambrian explosion of the Web economy. Linux enabled Google to build dirt-cheap servers; Java and Perl and Ruby have become the lingua franca for building Web 2.0 applications; and the free Web-server software Apache powers nearly half of all Web sites in the world. Open source software gave birth to the Internet age, making everyone&mdash;even those who donated their labor&mdash;better off.Can open source hardware do the same thingEvery open source project begins with an itch that needs scratching. Linux was launched when Torvalds decided he didn't like the operating systems available to him. The top three&mdash;Microsoft's DOS, Apple's operating system, and Unix&mdash;were all expensive and they were closed; Torvalds wanted a system he could tinker with. As it happened, a lot of other geeks wanted the same thing. So when Torvalds began working on Linux and sharing his code, other hackers were willing to pitch in and help improve it for free&mdash;creating a virtual workforce that was infinitely bigger and smarter than Torvalds himself. That is the central benefit of open source projects: They're like a barn raising in which everyone gets to use the barn. Somebody has a problem and creates a tool to solve it. And once the tool is created, hey&mdash;why not share it The hard work has already been done. Might as well let others benefit.Photo: James DayArduino began the same way. Banzi was a teacher at a high tech design school in Ivrea, Italy, and his students often complained they couldn't find an inexpensive, powerful microcontroller to drive their arty robotic projects. In winter 2005, Banzi was discussing the problem with David Cuartielles, a Spanish microchip engineer who was a visiting researcher at the school. The two decided to design their own board and enlisted one of Banzi's students&mdash;David Mellis&mdash;to write the programming language for it. In two days, Mellis banged out the code; three days more and the board was complete. They called it the Arduino, after a nearby pub, and it was an instant hit with the students. Almost anyone, even if they didn't know anything about computer programming, could use an Arduino to do something cool, like respond to sensors, make lights blink, or control motors. Then Banzi, Cuartielles, and Mellis put the schematics online and spent 3,000 euros to make the first batch of boards.So the Arduino inventors decided to start a business, but with a twist: The designs would stay open source. Because copyright law&mdash;which governs open source software&mdash;doesn't apply to hardware, they decided to use a Creative Commons license called Attribution-Share Alike. It governs the "reference designs" for the Arduino board, the files you'd send to a fabrication plant to have the boards made.Under the Creative Commons license, anyone is allowed to produce copies of the board, to redesign it, or even to sell boards that copy the design. You don't need to pay a license fee to the Arduino team or even ask permission. However, if you republish the reference design, you have to credit the original Arduino group. And if you tweak or change the board, your new design must use the same or a similar Creative Commons license to ensure that new versions of the Arduino board will be equally free and open.The only piece of intellectual property the team reserved was the name Arduino, which it trademarked. If anyone wants to sell boards using that name, they have to pay a small fee to Arduino. This, Cuartielles and Banzi say, is to make sure their brand name isn't hurt by low-quality copies.Members of the team had slightly different motives for opening the design of their device. Cuartielles&mdash;who sports a mass of wiry, curly hair and a Che Guevara beard&mdash;describes himself as a left-leaning academic who's less interested in making money than in inspiring creativity and having his invention used widely. If other people make copies of it, all the better; it will gain more renown. "When I spoke in Taiwan recently, I told them, 'Please copy this!'" Cuartielles says with a grin. Banzi, by contrast, is more of a canny businessman; he has mostly retired from teaching and runs a high tech design firm. But he suspected that if Arduino were open, it would inspire more interest and more free publicity than a piece of proprietary, closed hardware. What's more, excited geeks would hack it and&mdash;like Linux fans&mdash;contact the Arduino team to offer improvements. They would capitalize on this free work, and every generation of the board would get better.Sure enough, that's what happened. Within months, geeks suggested wiring changes and improvements to the programming language. One distributor offered to sell the boards. By 2006, Arduino had sold 5,000 units; the next year, it sold 30,000. Hobbyists used them to create robots, to fine-tune their car engines for ultrahigh mileage, and to build unmanned model airplanes. Several quirky companies emerged. A firm called Botanicalls developed an Arduino-powered device that monitors house plants and phones you when they need to be watered.In one sense, Arduino's timing was perfect. There's a resurgence of DIY among geeks interested in hacking and improving hardware, fueled by ever-cheaper electronics they can buy online, build-it-yourself publications like Make magazine, and Web sites like Instructables. In recent years, hackers have been aggressively cracking consumer devices to improve them&mdash;adding battery life to iPhones, installing bigger hard drives on TiVos, and ripping apart Furby toys and reprogramming them to function as motion-sensing alarm bots. Inexpensive chip-reading tools make it possible to reverse-engineer almost anything. That's how Chinese hardware copycats rip off products so quickly.Want to join the world of Arduino developers Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson already has, designing two Arduino-based autopilots for unmanned model aircraft: ArduPilot and BlimpDuino you can find them at diydrones.com. Here's his formula for getting your creation out and into the world.1 Download the Arduino schematic and circuit board files from arduino .cc. Use the free version of CadSoft Eagle from cadsoft.de to modify them for your particular creation.2 Upload your files to a board fabricator like BatchPCB. Your boards will be manufactured in Chinese robotic-electronics factories and sent to your house. Typical cost is $10 each.3 Order bulk electronic parts from digikey .com and solder the components onto the board to make a prototype. Test the board and your code. You're ready to distribute your gizmo to the masses!4 If you want to produce and sell the product yourself, use a manufacturing service like Screaming Circuits to assemble the boards on robotic pick-and-place soldering machines.5 Alternately, an open source hardware specialist like SparkFun or Adafruit can make and sell the product for you. They'll add a profit margin and pay you a license fee .6 Publish your revised schematics and circuit board files so that others can modify them. The cycle begins again.This is the unacknowledged fact underpinning the open hardware movement: Hardware is already open. Even when inventors try to keep the guts of their gadgets secret, they can't. So why not actively open those designs and try to profit from the inevitableLimor Fried, founder of Adafruit Industries, a Manhattan company that makes and sells open source hardware ranging from the Arduino board to devices Fried designs herself. "It doesn't matter anymore whether your product is open source. Someone in another country is going to open it up and reverse-engineer it anyway."The open source Arduino circuit board is cheaper than non-open source microcontrollers.Like the Arduino team, Fried has found that when people have access to the plans of her inventions, they suggest improvements; they almost can't help themselves. In 2006, when Fried released the design for MintyBoost&mdash;an Altoids tin crammed with AA batteries you can use to recharge your MP3 player or phone&mdash;some users complained on her forum that it wouldn't charge their devices. Other posters jumped in to analyze the problems and devise fixes; some even sketched out replacement circuitry. MintyBoost is now Fried's most popular invention; she has sold 8,000 of the gadgets for about $20 each. In essence, her customers are also her tech support&mdash;available 24/7, at no cost to her.Right now, open design pioneers tend to follow one of two economic models. The first is not to worry about selling much hardware but instead to sell your expertise as the inventor. If anyone can manufacture a device, then the most efficient manufacturer will do so at the best price. Fine, let them. It'll ensure your contraption is widely distributed. Because you're the inventor, though, the community of users will inevitably congregate around you, much as Torvalds was the hub for Linux. You will always be the first to hear about cool improvements or innovative uses for your device. That knowledge becomes your most valuable asset, which you can sell to anyone.This is precisely how the Arduino team works. It makes little off the sale of each board&mdash;only a few dollars of the $35 price, which gets rolled into the next production cycle. But the serious income comes from clients who want to build devices based on the board and who hire the founders as consultants.Tom Igoe, an associate professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, who joined Arduino in 2005. "And brand matters."What's more, the growing Arduino community performs free labor for the consultants. Clients of Banzi's design firm often want him to create Arduino-powered products. For example, one client wanted to control LED arrays. Poking around online, Banzi found that someone in France had already published Arduino code that did the job. Banzi took the code and was done.Then there's the second model for making money off open source hardware: Sell your device but try to keep ahead of the competition. This isn't as hard as it seems. Last year, Arduino noticed that copycat versions of its board made in China and Taiwan were being sold online. Yet sales through the main Arduino store were still increasing dramatically. WhyPhotos: James DayPartly because many Asian knockoffs were poor quality, rife with soldering errors and flimsy pin connections. The competition created a larger market but also ensured that the original makers stayed a generation ahead of the cheap imitations. Merely having the specs for a product doesn't mean a copycat will make a quality item. That takes skill, and the Arduino team understood its device better than just about anyone else. "So the copycats can actually turn out to be good for our business," Igoe says.NYC Resistor,, a cofounder of the group. Abrams, 33, is well known in open source hardware circles for developing the Daisy, an open MP3 player. It earned him so much acclaim that he now works more or less full-time designing open projects and customizing audio hardware for other businesses, including hunting companies that hire him to develop duck and deer calls. "I'm the go-to guy for digital animal-caller designs," he says. "It's the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me."Abrams is deep in conversation with Alicia Gibb, a grad student who hacks hardware in her spare time. She's talking about a matchbox-sized widget that museums use to monitor humidity and temperature in their galleries. It's made by Masterpak and retails for $115 similar devices can cost $400. A single institution might need hundreds of them, so it's a lucrative little market.But as Abrams and Gibb pick apart the gadget, they realize that the price carries a huge markup.Gibb gets a playful look in her eye. "I'm gonna do an open source version of this thing," she says. "Wait a minute," I say. "That means any museum will be able to take your free design and fabricate copies itself Or someone who isn't even an inventor&mdash;like me&mdash;could send your design to a Chinese factory, produce a couple of thousand devices for $20 apiece, and sell them to museums for $50"I hear the sound of a thousand business models crumbling.If Gibb actually pulls this off without violating any patents, the company that makes the overpriced widget is in for a shock. No more easy profits based on the obscurity of its intellectual property. It will immediately have to offer a better product or improved service&mdash;or risk going out of business.This may be destruction&mdash;but it's creative destruction. Business models will crumble, sure, but others will be born. Open source methods illustrate a hard, cold fact about hardware: It's increasingly becoming a commodity. It is not merely that China has massively decreased the price of producing goods. It's that the price of designing goods is dropping through the floor. As Eric von Hippel, an MIT professor of entrepreneurship, points out, that drop is the result of the emergence of cheap or free tools for chipmaking, 3-D modeling, and online collaboration.To thrive in this next wave, hardware manufacturers will have to switch their thinking. Their job is no longer just to dream up ideas&mdash;it's equally important, maybe even more vital, to seek out innovations from users. Manufacturers used to have to guess what their customers want, but the customers already know what they want, so it's more efficient to have them design it. The value of manufacturers isn't in cool designs but in economies of scale: They produce high-quality objects cheaply or offer superb shopping and support experience.I can't help but think there are limits to this. Passionate amateurs can create an MP3 player or a synthesizer. But what about a jet engine Or a car To pass regulatory tests, these products require expensive laboratory equipment, like wind tunnels for car shapes and airplane parts, or crash labs. That can't be accomplished by a bunch of loosely connected designers surfing on their laptops in a Starbucks.Yochai Benkler isn't so sure. The Harvard professor and author of The Wealth of Networks predicts that smart commercial firms will share resources with open source communities. "If you want to design a car in an open source way, maybe you'll work with a corporation that has access to an expensive wind tunnel," he says. This sort of cooperation has become common for open source software. IBM and Sun Microsystems pay staff members to contribute to Linux because it's in the companies' interest to have the software grow more powerful, even if competitors benefit.Consider the WRT54G wireless router made by Linksys. It was released in 2002 as a simple $150 router for home use. But hobbyists quickly discovered that its firmware&mdash;the software that determines the device's abilities&mdash;was based on Linux and thus legally open source. Within months, hackers had written new code that gave the device radically new features: They boosted the antenna power, turned it into a signal repeater, and constructed self-healing neighborhood mesh networks. Most of these capabilities are normally found only in devices that cost 10 times as much. Suddenly, the WRT54G market expanded. Based on the free work of amateurs, the router is now one of Linksys' all-time best-selling products.Mani Dhillon, director of product marketing for Linksys, says the hacking has boosted the router's sales by opening up new uses. "It's a pretty strong and vocal community," he says. "We definitely credit a certain amount of the success to them."Still, while open source hardware may be exciting, it's also confusing&mdash;even terrifying. Pioneers in the field admit they have no idea how to make the jump from small boutique hardware to mass-market devices. Banzi occasionally wonders whether he is simply being a fool by giving away some of his best work on the Arduino.It's possible that open source hardware buffs will ultimately focus not on competing with the for-profit world but in filling niches otherwise ignored.That's what David Rowe did. Rowe is an Australian engineer who founded and then sold an Internet telephone business. He decided he wanted to help the developing world produce low-cost, high-quality telephone routers. He wanted something that would allow a company to plug in cheap, old-fashioned analog phones and place calls on inexpensive voice-over-IP networks.Rowe didn't think he could do it alone, so he organized it as an open source project. In 2005, he found a cheap chip that managed voice and data, and he wrote software for it. Sure enough, once he put the schematics online, word spread and interested hackers in Canada and Bulgaria began offering improvements. Some optimized the software; others figured out how to tweak the hardware to handle extra phone lines or how to collapse the box into a single super-powered phone line.When the time came to manufacture the device, Rowe didn't know how to find a factory. But it turns out he didn't need to. Early last year, he received a message from a Chinese firm saying it had read about the project and was interested in producing it for him. A few weeks later, the routers arrived in the mail and worked practically perfectly. Rowe commissioned the plant to begin making batches of 50. He was able to keep the unit price down to $450 and still turn a small profit on each one. By summer 2008, he had sold a few hundred of them.As you'd expect, Chinese competitors have already begun to manufacture routers that compete with Rowe's. He doesn't care; on the contrary, he's happy about it, because his primary goal for the devices is for them to be as cheap as possible, and fierce competition will accomplish this faster. He and his competitors also share advice on how to improve the hardware. A group of high tech consultants have begun selling support services to anyone who buys the router. Ideally, Rowe would like to see factories in African countries manufacture the routers, since this would bypass the punishing tariffs that make importing hardware so expensive for Africans.Meanwhile, Rowe has become a star in high tech international-development circles, getting flown around to speak at conferences. "There's no way I would have gotten this far&mdash;and so quickly&mdash;had it been closed," he says. "This would have been a typical $4 million or $5 million startup if we had done it the usual way." Rowe isn't sure how the project will evolve. Will he wind up getting outcompeted, pushed out of business Will some major hardware company offer to make the product on a massive scaleHis answer: "I'm not sure."Contributing editor Clive Thompson clive@clivethompson.net wrote about the making of Halo 3 in issue 15.09.
2008-10-28 19:51:17Stem cell therapy may restore hearing to the totally deaf in 50 years
Melbourne, September 22 ANI: A leading researcher at the Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne says that she is working on a technique that can restore hearing to the totally deaf in 50 years. Researcher Bryony Coleman has revealed that she is carrying out the world's first research into the potential of stem cells to regrow the nerves that connect the ear to the brain.She says that the technique may help improve the quality of hearing in people with cochlear implants, and even restore hearing to those who are totally deaf, if her research turns out to be successful. "Fifty years down the track this might be one of many techniques - we might not even need a cochlear implant," theage.com.au quoted her as saying. When some of the tiny, vibrating hairs in the inner ear get damaged, each hair cell's destruction leads to the death of up to 10 nerves that carry sound information into the brain.The cochlear implant can replace some of the work of the hair, but it cannot regrow the nerves.Coleman believes that "precursor" cells that can grow into replacement nerve cells can offer a solution. "The theory is that the bigger and healthier the nerves, the better the cochlear implant will work. We are using stem cells to make that bigger and healthier," she said.She, however, admits that the procedure is more complicated than sticking a bunch of cells in your ear, for it would require growing the cells in the right place so that they connect the hair cell to the brain. "We have transplanted stem cells into the inner ear and they survive, but we need to know if they work," she said.Scientists have already achieved success in regrowing the delicate hair cells of the inner ear of mice using gene therapy. Coleman says that her work may supplement that breakthrough. ANI
2008-09-22 04:00:07Audio-Enhancing Mini-Amp, New Palm Treo Pro and More
Need to juice up your desktop music scene Nuforce has just the thing. Its new Icon is a miniature, multithreat amplifier that can be used to pump music from a computer or audio player to your speakers and headphones. Although it's only 12 watts per channel, the Icon is powerful enough to act as a pre-amp to full-fledged stereos and on its own can drive most bookshelf speakers, producing a wide, spacious sound stage. The sound quality from the headphone jack on my laptop is thin and distorted, but when I hooked up the Icon via the USB port and patched in my Grado SR80 cans, it was a revelation. The Icon uses a high-quality digital-to-analog converter to convert the computer's digital signal to sweet-sounding analog, and all of a sudden the music was crystal clear, the bass cleaner and deeper, and the overall sound infinitely better. The only downside here may be that you'll realize how crummy some of those downloaded MP3s actually sound. In the end, the beauty of the Icon is that it can be used in so many different ways. I've got it powering some outdoor speakers on my patio -- and it excels wherever you rig it.WIRED: Sturdy silicon-like stand holds it vertically. Rad design and color choices: red, black, blue, silver. Small enough to take on vacation. TIRED: Ethernet speaker cables are cutting-edge, but standard banana plugs would be better. Bass can be a touch thin in heavier rock, hip-hop music. Price/maker: $250, Nuforce Photo: Christopher Jones/Wired.comRead our full Nuforce Icon Desktop Amplifier review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.The Treo Pro sports a shiny, rounded, tuxedo-black exterior and a handful of practical OS "shortcuts." Aside from the industrial iPhone-like design lines, those shortcuts are enough to make even the most die-hard Machead grin and bear Windows Mobile almost. At the top of our shortcut list are the dedicated WiFi button on the right side and customizable button on the left ours was set for camera. Circumventing the main menu and tiresome nav made the phone a joy to use. The touchscreen, on the other hand, was far from blissful. Laggy and unresponsive, we found ourselves double- and sometimes triple-tapping -– even with the stylus. Palm is definitely flexing its once-mighty muscle and trying to say it can build a stylish multimedia device with a touchscreen. But for $550, a touch interface should have more precision than this. We can only hope Palm continues to fine-tune the screen and ditch that archaic stylus permanently.WIRED: Trim, light and pocketable. Shortcuts prove beyond useful. Decent 2-megapixel pics. MicroUSB Battery lasts almost two full days. 3.5mm headphone jack. PPT/Excel/Word and PDF-reading, of course. Google Maps and TeleNav GPS, which offers turn-by-turn directions plus target searches; e.g., gas stations by price. Ships unlocked. TIRED: Menu scrolling is about as fluid as a piece of dolomite. Slippery "obsidian" plastic casing retains more fingerprints than the NSA. Noticeable screen glare. Curved design comprised by bottom-side USB/headphone jack that should be recessed more. Bluetooth not included in image send options. Only way to access microSD Remove battery cover. Price/maker: $550, Palm Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comRead our full Palm Treo Pro review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Look! Hardware that breaks –- on purpose! The Z10's apparent bendy kick-slide design may be flashy, but turning out an innovative design is about the only thing this phone has going for it. Though it's billed as a "pocket-sized mobile studio," this 4-ounce, platinum-trimmed phone is certainly no substitute for even a mediocre minicamcorder Exhibit A: the Flip Mino. So why drop $500 on the Z10 when you can get a 5-megapixel camphone Exhibit B: the Nokia N82 that shoots crisper stills and comparable vids Beats us. Maybe it's the intuitive editing suite: The Z10's storyboard feature let us cut together a montage of clips and pics with cinematic fades, circle dissolves, music and title cards in less than 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the OS wasn't nearly as user-friendly. We literally had to break out the instruction manual just to send a Bluetooth pic no joke. Had Motorola spent even half as much time making the software as innovative as its breakaway hardware, the Z10 would have wowed us. But with its lacking OS and underwhelming camera, the phone didn't feel ready for prime time.WIRED: 30-fps vid clips don’t look too shabby. Quick, easy uploading to YouTube and Shozu. Storyboarding was a cinch. Camera shortcut button, plus autofocus, great for snapping pics on the fly. Easy-to-access external microSD card slot is ready for 32 GB. TIRED: 2.2-inch screen isn't ideal for peeping videos. Only 3.2-megapixel cam Tarantino wouldn’t settle for less than 5 megapixels. Only a measly 1-GB microSD included. Nav and Symbian UIQ more difficult to penetrate than Fort Knox. Curved slider makes lower keypad buttons harder to press. Price/maker: $500 unlocked, Motorola Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.comRead our full Motorola Z10 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.The Sylvania G Netbook is a fairly direct response to the Asus Eee PC 900 series, with an 8.9-inch screen, Linux OS and chicklet keys that make touch typing a fever dream fantasy. And while some of Sylvania's choices here are merely dreadful the arrow keys are a mere 12mm wide — thinner than my pinky, it's actually the OS that royally blows it for the Netbook.Ubuntu is known for being one of the most stable and simple versions of Linux on the market, but Sylvania somehow turns it into a nightmare on this system. For a computer ostensibly designed for inexperienced users, it's a disaster. I had trouble with the Ubuntu installation on the Netbook from the start: Blank screens on bootup. MPEGs wouldn't play and codec installations repeatedly failed or even crashed the machine. Help files weren't installed. And most annoying of all, the battery meter couldn't decide whether the computer was plugged in, and pegged battery life remaining at 0 or 2 percent no matter how long we charged it. The Netbook abruptly shut itself off on at least one occasion, possibly convinced that it was out of juice.WIRED: Has a real hard drive 80 GB instead of flash storage. Includes three USB ports and an SD card reader. Comes in colors. Bright screen for this category.TIRED: Slower than a sedated slug at just about every app despite 1.6-GHz Atom chip and 1-GB RAM standard $399 model includes just 512-MB RAM. Cartoonish styling. Considerably heavier than advertised and the Eee PC 900 at 2.6 pounds. Far too buggy to be taken seriously.Price/maker: $450 as tested, SylvaniaPhoto courtesy SylvaniaRead our full Sylvania G Netbook review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Think of this 26-inch TV from Samsung as any one of last year's larger models, shrunk down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's only 720p, but its bright, detailed picture is impressive and its vivid color is surprisingly accurate for a set this small. It scores surprisingly well in our video-processing tests, even besting many of this year's small models. Sure, this model is a bit challenged in the areas of de-interlacing 24-fps film-based HD sources and removing jaggies from diagonal lines, but then so are many of the 32-inch and smaller TVs we've tested this year. And who really worries about 24 FPS film sources on a 26-incher besides geeks like us Unlike many small sets, though, the Samsung's noise reduction performs beautifully. We saw good results leaving it in "auto" for all but the crappiest video, and only had to really adjust for our truly hideous NR test clip. Hardcore testing aside, the Samsung's good NR combined with its great picture and color delivered where it matters the most: Our HD and SD test movies looked awesome, as did satellite HDTV and output from our 360. WIRED: Attractive, simple remote-control. Side ports HDMI, S-Video and composite make hooking up a 360 or camcorder a breeze. Optical digital audio out -- perfect for tying into that massive dorm-theater sound system.TIRED: Some video-processing issues. 1366 x 728 native resolution makes it a not-so-great computer monitor unless you're over 40 and want to read without your glasses.Price/maker: $550, SamsungRead our full Samsung LN26A450C1 LCD TV review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.The HP TouchSmart IQ506 is an update to last year's all-in-one touchscreen, the TouchSmart IQ770. This year, HP went for a countertop-friendly design by packing all the components into the IQ506's brilliant 22-inch, touch-sensitive display. As a whole, this makes for a much more streamlined and clutter-free presentation compared to its predecessor. In terms of general ease and responsiveness, the IQ506's touchscreen does a marginally good job. Common maneuvers like double taps and click-and-drag highlighting can be pulled off with minimal hassle. Even problem areas like corners were accessible with relatively effortless finger pokes.Save for a pinch/zoom gesture, however, all the image-rotating fun we were expecting was largely nonexistent. In its defense, leaving notes, creating calendar reminders and a host of other "bulletin board" tasks were a cinch using the TouchSmart dashboard. But even though you can incorporate non-dashboard programs like Firefox into the interface, opening these applications kicks you back out to the Vista desktop. On one hand, the system is a great value when one compares the sticker price to the components, but it's disconcerting that a $1,500 computer lacks the flair and usability of a relatively inexpensive device like the iPhone. We've got our fingers crossed for next year's model.WIRED: Elegant space-saving design. Speaker bar produces booming lows and clear highs. Bright 22-inch screen hides smudges and fingerprints. Integrated TV tuner adds living room chops. Blazing connectivity via gigabit Ethernet and integrated 802.11b/g/n. 500-GB hard drive offers plenty of room for media storage. Whisper-quiet operation.TIRED: Not the smoothest touch-based interface. Handoffs between TouchSmart/Vista programs are slow and awkward. Very limited upgrade options. Midrange GPU puts a damper on hardcore gaming. Retractable bezel feels cheap and rickety. Sluggish processor given its all-in-one class. What No Blu-rayPrice/maker: $1,500 as tested, hp.comRead our full HP TouchSmart IQ506 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Dubbed the "Boulder," this angular, candy-colored handset is the offspring of the Gadget Lab's crumpled Type-V, Type-S and Type-SL review units. The Boulder isn't another rugged rehash, though. In fact, Casio finally threw a curve by including some fairly useful multimedia features. Welcome additions like music playback, a more powerful but still lacking camera, and zippy EV-DO connectivity fatten up this phone's already rock-solid resume. But let's face it -- Casio is extremely late to the party with these commonplace features. Previous pratfalls like the laughably low-res external LCD, and an annoying light show for incoming calls have returned too. Foibles aside, a lot of the "new" features were actually well integrated into this otherwise hard-knock handset. Tasks like downloading and playing music, mobile messaging and accessing webmail were brisk and painless due to a sensible layout and speedy EV-DO network. Little usability improvements and smart additions like a waterproof cover for the microSD port reinforced Casio's obvious commitment to achieving a rugged/user-friendly balance. Casio definitely gets kudos for bringing a tank like the G'zOne into the multimedia era. However, the Boulder is more a patchwork of desirable features, rather than a cohesive marriage of entertainment and durability.WIRED: Armored cross section where mud meets multimedia. External LCD doubles as wanderlust-friendly e-compass. Awesome camera flash/flashlight combo. Expanded memory via microSD card slot. Solid call quality -- even after 12 rounds of tough love. Included cradle doubles as a travel charger. Also comes in "less-flamboyant" black.TIRED: Terrible speakerphone quality for both voice and music. Far too expensive. Annoying multicolored lights show signals incoming calls. No file sharing via Bluetooth. Lackluster 1.3-MP camera sucks for both stills and video. Sweet angles still can't hide a brick-ish profile.Price/maker: $130 after $50 rebate, Verizon Read our full Casio G'zOne Boulder review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Out of the box and straight up to the eye you'll immediately enjoy the D3's spacious and bright viewfinder. The noticeably improved 51-point auto focus system is whip-fast and works in concert with an outstanding 1005-pixel metering sensor that gets it right in the most challenging lighting. Images are beautifully consistent with a wide dynamic range and improved noise-reduction settings that give the pictures a more natural look. To achieve that end, Nikon pulled back on the sharpening levels, leaving the choice of added "crunchiness" to a photographer's post-production predilections.Nikon's new three-inch high-res LCD is a revelation. If you do take the plunge, be ready to spend a good chunk of time learning the feature set to exploit the D3's capabilities. From resolution to speed, color control, bit-depth and so much more, the D3 is incredibly customizable. Dial it in for lightning-quick 11-fps sports action, superlow-light shooting ISO up to 25600, handheld or tripod-mounted live view -- you name it, whatever and however you want to shoot, the D3 does it exceptionally well.WIRED: High ISO shooting is fantastic with relatively low noise at settings up to ISO 3200 and beyond. Live view function the best of the top-end DSLRs. Dual CF card capability.TIRED: So many functions it could take a lifetime to learn them all. No in-camera dust-reduction system.Price/maker: $5,000 body only, Nikon Read our full Nikon D3 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.The U110 ultralight we received looks striking, with a scarlet paisley-etched aluminum lid paired with a shiny jet-black keyboard area. As soon as you open it up and power it on, you come face to face with one of the U110's most interesting yet unsettling features: VeriFace recognition. After booting up, the webcam embedded in the bezel starts scanning the room. When it finds you, it superimposes disturbing cross hairs on your eyes in an attempt to recognize you and unlock the PC. If you haven't registered your peepers, the system will hang, so you have to shut it down, turn the notebook away and open it up again to get it to boot. The 11.1-inch display is bright and sharp, though it can look a bit iridescent at close range. The glossy black keys are big and square but the thin membrane beneath the keys is flimsy and deforms as you type. There is a decent set of ports, but the designers couldn't find room for an optical drive. Seriously, we're pretty disappointed. The included external DVD drive looks cool, but you know what would be even cooler Not needing an external drive at all. For work purposes, the Lenovo is a capable little machine. The U110 excelled in our PCMark tests, far outdistancing most other ultralights. Overall this is a good PC; it just has a few annoyances. WIRED: Charming good looks will attract the Lenovo faithful who are sick of looking funerary. Excellent business performance will silence office critics of your "red PC Harumph!." Delightfully light and slim.TIRED: The keyboard, though pretty, is pretty flimsy. Terminator-style face recognition will give you the heebie-jeebies and make you torch all your Schwarzenegger flicks Especially Batman and Robin. External DVD means one more gadget to tote.Price/maker: $1,800 as tested, Lenovo Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comRead our full Lenovo IdeaPad U110 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Dishing out a hefty helping of HD, the SR12 is a lot of camera, both in your hand and under the hood with its 120-GB hard drive. The upgraded CMOS sensor and Bionz image processor have significantly improved image quality and stomped out even more noise. Sony’s face-detection system, which works snappily for video and the 10.2-megapixel stills, is very effective both up close and at long range. OK, so it makes great video, but what about the controls For those who fly on manual, the Cam Control Dial is like piloting an F22. Neatly nestled next to the lens, the silver nubbin is a twisty-twirly festival of videographic functionality, providing quick access to manual adjustments of exposure, focus, white balance and aperture.There’s also an “easy†button on board. A quick tap on the little blue button and all you’ve got to do is point the camera in the right direction to get the good stuff. In spite of all this Sony video goodness, the SR12 has one glaring flaw — terribly difficult Mac integration. To get it working you’ve got to have iMovie '08. Previous versions of iMovie don’t have the capability to natively read the AVCHD codec meaning that you had to convert the video to other formats in order to do any post-production.WIRED: Excellent AVCHD video quality got better this time around. Extra-wide 3.2-inch touchscreen LCD is a big bonus. Outstanding sound quality. TIRED: Massive internal hard drive makes it somewhat chunky and a bit of a load to carry. The “easy†button should be bigger and easier to find. And it should be red. Yeah red and all glowy. Sony Read our full Sony HDR-SR12 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.With Kensington's Wireless USB Docking Station, the moment you open your Wireless USB WUSB-enabled notebook, all your desktop devices are ready to go. We were amazed at how seamless the process is: The station recognized our 20-inch monitor, wireless USB mouse, keyboard and printer. It was as if they were always connected to the notebook. Of course, there are a few gotchas. WUSB is a new standard and some notebooks can't hook up with this docking station. Dell and Lenovo offer a few models, and other companies should be out the gate by this fall. With its plain, geeky looks, the 11.4-ounce antenna-topped station could get lost in a field of wireless routers. But that's not quite enough to put our Battlestar boxers in a knot: The Kensington Wireless Docking Station is a snap to set up and makes mobile computing, well, mobile and hassle-free. You know, the way it's supposed to be. WIRED: Drop-dead, simple setup and instant wireless connection of all desktop peripherals makes moving a notebook to and from the desk a hassle-free, nothing-to-plug-in experience. Small footprint means no great loss of desktop real estate.TIRED: Still few WUSB-enabled notebooks on the market. Audio handling could be smoother; default requires USB-powered speakers. First generation device is still pricey.Kensington Read our full Kensington Wireless USB Docking Station review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.This standard-definition lightweight shoots better video and has a much smarter feature set than most of its competitors. In fact, JVC knows that YouTubers can't bear missing the latest police beating or Matthew McConaughey shirtless in the grocery store, so the MS100 is lightning-quick on start up. The 35x optical zoom allows you to capture the crushing blows and bothersome blemishes while keeping a safe distance. Plus, the nifty laser-touch LCD makes you feel like a real cinematographer with speedy access to manual features.While it's nicely appointed, you've got to bridle at a couple things. First, there's no optical image stabilization. But shaky image stabilization aside, the very nature of this camcorder calls into question its usefulness. While neither big nor expensive, there are other, better, ultrasimple run-and-gun camcorders out there. Most are smaller and cheaper, too. With this form factor at this price, the MS100 is kind of stuck in the middle between the svelte flash-based AVCHD camcorders and the shirt-pocket shooters from Flip, Kodak and Creative.WIRED: 35x optical zoom brings the action right to your doorstep. Superb video quality. Formula 1 start-up speed. Easy to use laser-touch LCD.TIRED: No optical image stabilization. Lack of Mac compatibility is inexcusable and utterly perplexing. Three hundred and fifty bones for a camera that's made to record for YouTube The Flip Mino does the same thing for about half the cost. JVC Read our full JVC Everio GZ-MS100 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Through some loophole, wormhole or deal with the devil, Gateway has produced a massive desktop replacement that's fast, good and cheap. How fast, you ask Fast enough to go toe-to-toe with -- and school -- a And that brings us to the cheap part. The Gateway is just $1,400 -- more than three times less than the Alienware and hundreds and more hundreds less than most other desktop replacement machines. Sure, it lacks the latest processor it's got a 2.27-GHz Core Duo, but it has a whopping 4 GB of RAM to help it attack processing tasks and a spacious 200 GB of drive space for your stuff. The big bummer here is the missing Blu-ray drive, which is what is likely keeping this thing so affordable. WIRED: Some of the best gaming performance ever recorded on a PC. Long battery life for a desktop replacement. Comfy and solid keyboard withstands heavy hands. Multimedia controls and slide volume look cool without glowing too brightly.TIRED: No Blu-ray is a letdown for HD-heads, and you can't configure your PC to include the drive. The battery sticks out a bit in the back, and the power brick is monstrous. Power lights on the front, unlike the multimedia controls, are too bright.Price/maker: $1,400 as tested, Gateway Read our full Gateway P-7811FX Notebook review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Alienware prides itself on its tower rigs and desktop replacements, but several of its earlier forays in to the mid-size laptops were disastrous; the branding was intact but the performance wasn't. Not so with the m15x. This 15.4-incher is plenty portable, yet it has all the gaming trappings and the performance to back it up.From the unboxing onward, you can tell that you are paying for the experience as well as the hardware. A baseball cap with an alien head on it, an extra battery, VGA-to-DVI adapter, FireWire adapter and entertainment remote show that Alienware will risk no dissatisfied customers due to lackluster goodies. With specs that include a 2.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme processor, 3 GB of RAM, and a 512-MB nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX, the m15x performs impressively, but not out of this world. It all comes down to the loot; this is a luxury item and there are far more affordable PCs with comparable performance. WIRED: Tip-top business and gaming performance. Lots of included extras for gaming elitists. The solid and handsome design will please gamers, and cool lighting effects will titillate geeks.TIRED: Exorbitant price that only a space tourist could pay without wincing. For all the expense, it's not the very best gaming PC. Dual batteries take a long time to charge up. The Blu-ray drive must be removed to accommodate the secondary battery.Price/maker: $4,880 as tested, Alienware Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comRead our full Alienware Area-51 m15x review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.The Archos 605 WiFi is a damn fine portable media player. Now it’s slightly mo' better due to this new GPS accessory, which for $130 adds full-bore street navigation that's on par with a Garmin or TomTom system. Well, a low-end Garmin or TomTom from a few years ago, anyway: This lackluster accessory does not have many of the bells and whistles of modern nav systems, and the one it does have -- real-time traffic updates -- works only in Europe.On the plus side, the software locks in satellite signals faster than NORAD. However, it navigates like a base commander heading home from the officer's club. On several occasions the GPS tried to route us totally out of the way instead of continuing on the road right in front of us. To make matters worse, the software doesn't announce street names, only directions. The GPS Car Holder would look pretty good if this were, say, 2003. And it does get you where you're going, if not always by the fastest or most logical route. At $130, it's a decent deal for current owners, but definitely behind the GPS times. WIRED: Cheaper than a standalone GPS, at least if you already own an Archos 605. High-resolution screen makes maps look mighty purty. Lightning-fast satellite lock.TIRED: The 605 can’t navigate without the car holder, so you can’t go on walkabout. Doesn’t say street names. Requires you to move to Europe if you want traffic features. You have to manually restart the GPS app every time you power on the 605.Price/maker: $130, Archos Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comRead our full Archos 605 WiFi GPS Car Holder review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.As one of six new Fujitsu offerings equipped with Intel's Centrino 2, the Lifebook A6120 more than makes up for its dull exterior with features that will have prettier laptops quaking in their neoprene sleeves. Opposite its no frills glossy shell resides a gorgeous 15.4-inch LCD capable of brightening even the darkest depths of Mordor. Battery life and performance are equally impressive. The new 2.26-GHz CPU more than did the job when it came to photo editing, gaming and pretty much every other benchmark we threw at it. What's more, we squeezed a respectable four and a half hours of battery life under normal usage out of A6120. In fact, after playing with the Lifebook for a week, we were hard pressed to find anything significant to complain about. Would Fujitsu be well served by spending a little more time and effort on design and shrinking down that plump chassis Sure. But this reviewer is more than happy to overlook a 1.7-inch waistline as long as it hides enough goodies.WIRED: Great bang/buck ratio. The A6120 starts at only $1,150 and jumps but $200 for a Radeon HD 3470 card and Blu-ray drive. Sharp, beautiful screen is one of the brightest we've seen on a laptop. Screw the chicklet-style keys found on other notebooks: Fujitsu's old school keyboard provides near perfect "clickiness" to borrow a term from designer Amar Sagoo.TIRED: Small trackpad makes for a less than thrilling multitouch experience. Runs consistently hot -- don't rest it on your lap for long or risk a scorched crotch. While certainly not ugly, design is blander than a plate of lima beans.Price/maker: $1,350 as tested, Fujitsu Read our full Fujitsu Lifebook A6120 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.GeTac clearly had utilitarian users in mind with the E-100, which makes for a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to function. On the bright side, this surprisingly light ultramobile PC is military certified to withstand splashes of water, dust, humidity, shock and even freezing temperatures. Even common vulnerabilities like exposed ethernet and USB ports have been sidestepped with a bevy of watertight rubber stoppers. In fact, my review unit was able to smoothly stream South Park episodes while taking repeated tumbles down a flight of stairs.But it was when I looked under the hood that I found kinks in the armor. Mission-critical applications like Office ran at a reasonable clip in a number of bumpy environments, but for the E-100's price I was expecting a little more "oomph." The 100-GB shock-resistant ATA hard drive and 1 GB of RAM tilt the balance a little bit, but honestly, even the unassuming Eee PC comes stock with Intel's newer Atom chips. Mediocre specs aside, this rough and tumble UMPC performs solidly in a number of harsh environments and boasts a host of connectivity options. WIRED: Rock-solid construction, ergonomics and field performance. Responsive 8.4-inch touchscreen looks phenomenal in direct sunlight. Web ready with 802.11b/g, gigabit ethernet and SIM card slot. Waterproof combination SmartCard/PCMCIA slot. Decent battery life at 3.5 hours WiFi on. 100-GB hard drive has its own heater for cycling up in freezing conditions.TIRED: Too little processing given the amount of buck. Near three grand price tag Seriously No option for a solid state drive! Recessed USB and headphone jacks are a hassle to plug into. Tinny speaker is more of an afterthought. Lose the stylus and you're S.O.L. Looks that only a FedEx driver could love.Price/maker: $2,880 as tested, GeTac Read our full GeTac E-100 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Most of the new mini-laptops look like toys, educational tools or lab experiments in miniaturization, but the MSI Wind is an actual PC. Packing the latest 1.6-GHz Atom processor and a roomy 80-GB drive, the Wind boasts some legit PC cred. Yes, your iPod probably has more drive space, but 80 gigs was plenty not so long ago, and it's not like you're going to be producing HD video on this thing; it's more of an internet lapdog than a laptop. WIRED: Grown-up looks as opposed to "I want to sit at the big kids' table" found in other netbooks. Full keyboard and the largest screen among mini-notes. Plenty of ports to plug away at. 2.3-pound weight and rounded edges make it simple to pack and lug.TIRED: Lack of a DVD is understandable, but it still makes us cry a little. Hard drive sometimes makes mysterious swallowing sounds. Two-hour battery life is OK, but three would be better.MSI Mobile Photo: Jon Snyder/ Wired.comRead our full MSI Wind U100 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Behold, the new Eee Box! Like the rest of the Eee bloodline, these varicolored desktop boxes are small, cheap and adorable think AppleTV or Mac Mini. Intel's 1.6-GHz Atom processor, up to 2 GBs of memory, four USB ports, an SD card slot, 802.11n and Bluetooth are plenty for the Eee Box to hit that elusive "good enough" mark with aplomb. Once again, you'll get your choice of running either Linux or Windows XP. Then there's the size. While it does have a slightly larger overall footprint, it's much trimmer than the Mac Mini. Not only will this elegant 8.5 x 7 x 1-inch box fit anywhere, but you also have the choice of mounting it directly to the back of any extra monitor you happen to have lying around. To be clear, the Eee Box is not for sweaty frag fests or heavy-duty HD video decoding. But if you have a hankering for a killer kitchen PC or just an über-cheap second or third home PC that runs Linux or XP, it simply can't be beat.WIRED: Small, lightweight and cuter than a bowlful of kittens. More than enough processing power for everyday computing. Cheaper than an ounce of Da Kine bud. The option of running Splashtop for preboot access to Skype, web browsing and IM clients.TIRED: Where's the optical drive No HDMI output, which actually doesn't matter much because there's also no hardware to decode acceleration. By itself, the Atom processor can barely handle 720p H.264 streams, dashing our hopes of this being the ultimate home-streaming box. Asus Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comRead our full Asus Eee Box review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Iomega's own $190 solution for a filled DVR is a 500-GB drive that plays nice with two DVRs in particular: Scientific Atlanta's 80-GB standard definition 8300 and the more recent 160-GB 8300-HD model. We tested the drive out on the latter model and found it more or less did what it promised. It even worked with a neighbor's Series 3 TiVo, which to its credit is known for being something of an eSATA slut. Setup in both instances was quick and painless, and involved simply turning off the DVR, plugging in the Iomega drive, and then turning everything back on again. Voila, no more having to choose between Emmanuelle: The Art of Love and the latest episode of Mad Men. WIRED: Reasonably priced. Your grandmother could probably set it up. Instantly adds an additional 300 hours of SD TV, or 60 hours of HD content.TIRED: Only one way to connect the drive to a DVR that would be eSATA. Limited compatibility, although Iomega claims the drive will work with future SA eSATA-enabled DVRs. No way of controlling what gets stored on the expander drive and what gets stored on the DVR. Transporting DVR'd content to your computer is verboten, and plugging the drive into a computer will automatically reformat it.Iomega Read our full Iomega DVR Expander Drive review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.The Samsung U900, aka Soul, aka Magical Touch, doesn't really have any supernatural abilities. What it does have is a tiny, touch-sensitive OLED nav-pad that is one of the coolest, most efficient touch interfaces we've seen on a handset. The small display situated below the main 2.2-inch QVGA screen features icons that morph based on whatever application is currently on the screen. Switch to camera mode and controls for snapping pictures. Toggle to the music player and buttons for fast-forward, rewind, pause and play pop up. The big selling point is the phone's pocketability. The picture quality and dynamic range could be better LED flash, we're talking about you, but at 0.5-inches thick and 7 ounces, this slider is more svelte than just about every 5-MP cam we've tested. Ultimately, our biggest complaint is that you cannot use the camera without sliding open the phone first. This design protects the lens from dust bunnies and pocket grime, yes, but shooting with a fully open device was a tad awkward at times. WIRED: External microSD slot makes it a cinch to swap cards on the fly. Bluetooth A2DP. Competent image-editing suite. Video editor allows you to layer additional audio tracks. Decent facial detection. Haptic feedback can be tweaked to three different levels of intensity or switched-off entirely. TIRED: Bundled proprietary ear buds sound duller than Ben Stein. No Xenon flash. No GPS. No WiFi. Lower-res video clips. Proprietary headphone jack positioned on the side = hard to pocket when phones are plugged in. Noticeable screen glare when outdoors. Samsung Photo: Issac Brekken/Wired.comRead our full Samsung SGH-U900 Soul "Magical Touch" review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.The biggest selling point of the new Sidekick is supposed to be the customizable "skins" you can order to replace the solid-color ones we opted for jet black. But apart from flashy aesthetics, the pocket-friendly 2008 is 0.4-inches shorter and 0.9-ounces lighter than the pricier LX. It also packs features that were sorely missed with the tragically minimalist iD. Most notably, a 2.0-megapixel camera that can also capture video clips albeit crappy ones. Though the 2.6-inch WQVGA swivel screen’s received a slight -- and necessary -- boost in pixels 400 x 240, the resolution’s still not fantastic. And neither is Bluetooth. We found data transfers not only paused the media player annoying, but afterward, we had to go back and manually un-pause whatever track was playing doubly annoying. For the price, though the 2008 is a solid option compared to the LX -- but only if you live and die by instant messaging and you don't mind being seen with Paris Hilton's device of choice in public.WIRED: Spacious, comfy QWERTY. 3.5-mm headphone jack. Surprisingly loud, radically clear music player. Wide screen excellent for web browsing. Solid battery life. Quick video recording/sharing. Comes with two skins we got black and iridescent lime. Bluetooth with A2DP great to have, even if it does disrupt tunes.TIRED: Screen retains more fingerprints than the Feds. No flash. No WiFi. Mike captures poor sound when recording video. Only 20-second video clips. Only 512-MB microSD card included. Apps are mostly in the $2.99 range except for the janky free Calculator. No 3-G.Price/maker: $150 with 2-year contract, T-Mobile Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comRead our full Sidekick review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.Cyclists know it's plum foolish to roll around on two wheels sans helmet, but it can be just as dangerous to bike about at night without a light. A good headlight affixed to your handlebars is just the thing to help cut through the murk and get you to your destination safely. Here we pit two of the top dogs on the market against each other and see which comes out on top. This one-watt LED cannon goes the extra mile, and we don't just mean it shoots light a ridiculous distance. Due in no small part to its particularly aggressive blinking mode, accurately called superflash, it didn’t just help us catch drivers' attentions; it had them anxiously craning their necks to check whether we were trying to pull them over. Drawing on only two AA batteries, this baby cuts down on weight but its CREE XR-E diode, coupled with a specially engineered Fraen lens, still pumps out the brightest light of all the lamps we tested -- enough to bounce off signs, license plates, and other reflective materials up to four blocks away, giving us plenty of time to make an impression. All we have to worry about now is whether some cop-hating, GTA IV-overdosing motorist trying to run us down.WIRED: Recessed switch only works if pressed firmly, which means it won’t turn on in your bag while you jostle your way to the bar, leaving you in the dark at closing time. Planet Bike spends 25 percent of its profits on bike advocacy.TIRED: The brightness and reduced weight come at a price: 20 hours of battery life in blinking mode, and only seven on high. Though it installs without the use of a tool, the handlebar bracket is tricky to tighten and slips easily.Planet Bike Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.While not the sharpest bulb on our handlebars, the WhiteLite HP AA is in it for the long haul. Don’t get us wrong -- just like other 1-watt LED headlamps, this portable, all-in one lamp is more than a glorified blinky. When engineering this light, Topeak got all snippy, cutting the cords to one of its external power-pack lights and reengineered it to accept three AA batteries. Its widely diffused beam covers plenty of surface area and earned our trust by helping us dodge nasty potholes and tree roots on unlit paths. But where this guy really shines is in perseverance, by lasting 30 hours on high and a whopping 120 on flash.WIRED: The mounting bracket screws tight with a finger knob and adjusts five degrees left and right to get a straight aim even on angled handlebars, although it does require an Allen key to tighten. Little red LED signals when batteries are low.TIRED: Blinks come slowly and lack urgency in flashing mode. Pushing the rear on/off push button can rotate the mount and mess up the light angle. Sound like a small problem It won't be when you look up just in time to face plant into the bumper of a lifted pickup. Topeak Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.The E71 looks more like a Blackberry Killer, but don’t be fooled: This great white hope gives the iPhone a run for its money in a lot of different areas yes, really. Despite its obvious lack of an oversize touchscreen interface, Nokia wins points for a remarkably trim profile 10mm vs. 12.3mm, decent 3.2-megapixel camera instead of 2.0, and the fact it's not tied to any carrier yet. Setting up Nokia's Mail for Exchange program required no IT help or time. QuickOffice let us create, edit and send Word/Excel/PowerPoint files on the fly while we browsed PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Reader. The E71 is stocked with enough apps and goodies to keep even the most overworked road warrior on the ball, but it didn't feel too "business" due to two separate customizable home screens. One is designed to house all of your work apps while the other is geared more toward entertainment with programs for audio, video and gaming. The phone's 2.36-inch, 320 x 240 QVGA display is only slightly smaller than the iPod classic's, and though the resolution can't top the iPhone's, with 15 fps, the E71 is still solid for YouTube clips. Oh, and did we mention the E71's got battery life for days Yes, literally, three of them.WIRED: Up to 8 GB in an easy-to-access, external microSD slot. Quick and seamless OS. GPS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth you name it, it's basically got it. Vivid screen even in direct sunlight. Textured stainless steel backing prevents slippage. Relatively lightweight 127 grams = six grams lighter than iPhone. Hit any letter on the QWERTY pad and predictive text calls up that section of your address book.TIRED: No standard 3.5-mm headphone jack. 3.2-megapixel camera's optics could be better. LED flash could be way better. N-Gage gaming platform not available. Screen's wide, but not wide enough to do a feature-length film justice. For $500, you could get two 8-GB, 3-G JesusPhones with $100 left over to put toward AT&T's data plan. Nokia Photo: Max Buck/Wired.comRead our full Nokia E71 review.Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
2008-09-03 21:35:13Living goddess criteria: Duck’s voice
<p><font size="2"><strong>Kathmandu, Aug. 16: Nepal is advertising for a new living goddess, and the key criterion for selection is to have a voice of a duck.<p>Despite being revered as a powerful Hindu divinity, the Himalayan state’s Royal Kumari has no option but to step down once she reaches puberty.<p>The current holder is Preeti Shakya, and she has reached her 11th birthday, the race is on to find a replacement before the end of the summer, the Times reports.<p>Preeti, who has been visited by a ceaseless throng of pilgrims since she became a goddess at the age of four, should retire during the annual Hindu festival of Dasain in October, according to temple officials in Kathmandu.<p>&quot;If we don’t change her now we’ll have to wait until next year, which could be late,&quot; said Deepak Bahadur Pandey of the Trust Corporation. Kumaris, who are typically selected as toddlers, must have a voice &quot;as soft and clear as a duck’s&quot;, &quot;the body of a Banyan tree&quot; and &quot;the chest of a lion&quot;. The 32 prerequisite physical perfections also include flawless skin, hair, eyes and teeth. A suitable horoscope is mandatory and being afraid of the dark is not allowed. A Kumari can eat whatever she likes and act with impunity — at least her parents, who receive a small cash stipend, are not allowed to tell her off.<p>For 240 years, before the abolition of Nepal’s monarchy in May after a Maoist uprising, the Royal Kumari was asked to approve the rule of the king. This year she was called to approve the Himalayan state’s interim Prime Minister.<p>—ANI<p>Â
2008-08-17 04:26:02
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