All together now.

AHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…………how cute!?!

Sega Toys will start selling this range of robotic hamsters from August 8th.

The company plans to produce no less than 100,000 units per year and shockingly their main target group is not the kids, but females between 20 and 40 years old.

Named Yume Hamusutaa (Dream Hamster), the robot will start moving when you take it into the palm of your hand.

Three versions of the little critter will be available: A Roborovski hamster, the Winter White Russian Dwarf hamster and Golden Hamster - Click the pic to see all three together, cute overload!!!

The 3.5-inch hamster will cost $11 each and is Japan-only at this point and will only require 4 batteries for food and will not soil its cage.

See - a whole article about hamsters and no actor innuendo……..

The LG DP391B truly is a portable DVD player that looks great!

LG have approached this well played out scene and come up with something original and pretty hot-looking.

Instead of having a screen concealed, the LCD on the DP391 is on the top of the unit.

If you flip up this great 800×480 pixel screen you find the disc tray. Neat huh?

Behind the disc tray, there’s a little kickstand that keeps the screen at the optimum viewing angle.

As well as being a portable DVD and media player it’s also a photo frame.

So, when you’re home just set it up to show pics using mains power but then when you go out, unplug it and use the built-in battery to watch video.

You can also use USB memory sticks to view photos or video.

There’s a SD/MMC/MS card reader, so you can take a card out of a digital camera and view your images instantly. You also get an AV line-in and not 1 but 2 headphone sockets for all you couples out there!

Better still, its available to buy and you can grab one for around £180 online.

As we here already new a week or so ago, the rest of the interblog community are catching up.

So to join in with the mob - yup; Nokia’s N96 will indeed be released on October 1st 2008.

Feels good to be a step ahead doesn’t it ;0,

For a full run down of specs, etc go here.

Here’s a phone for you outdoorsy, living life to the max, extreme adrenaline junky types!

Alternatively it would suit those that buy diver’s watches and never go swimming or own 4×4’s and think off-roading is parking half on the pavement.

The G’zOne Boulder clamshell cell phone from Verizon Wireless will take pretty much everything you throw at it, or drop it in to.

It has been built to military specifications to 810F standards for water, shock and dust resistance; immersion, vibration, salt fog, humidity, solar radiation, altitude and extremes of low and high temperature storage.

In addition, the G’zOne Boulder enables customers to access Verizon Wireless’ Push to Talk service via Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) Revision A (Rev. A) network…….nope, me niether………

You will be able to choose from black and silver or orange colours.  No, there’s no plans for a pink one! :p

Here’s the specs on parade:

• Flashlight
• Electronic compass
• VZ Navigator-capable - audible maps, turn-by-turn directions and location information to more than 14 million points of interest that customers can share with others
• Field Force Manager-capable - a resource management tool that provides businesses with the ability to locate, monitor and communicate with their mobile field workers
• 1.3 megapixel camera
• V CAST Music with Rhapsody-capable
• Built-in music player
• microSDHC memory card slot
• Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity
• Advanced speech recognition with dedicated voice dial key
• Alarm clock, calculator, calendar, stop watch, countdown, timer, world clock
• Voice commands
• Speakerphone with dedicated speakerphone key
• Bilingual interface - English and Spanish language
• Phonebook with up to 500 entries with multiple contacts
• Hearing aid compatibility = M4/T4
• Internal 2″ 240 x 320 65k color TFT display
• External 1.2″ 96 x 96 Mono STN display

All present and correct methinks.

Tomy have released a transparent radio-controlled R2-D2.

The mini light saber, which is also transparent, doubles as a remote control.

As well as contolling R2D2 around the place the remote also lets you rotate his dome as he rolls, beep and whistle, and illuminate his photoreceptor “eye”.

The transparent plastic lets you see the inner working of the R2D2 - not for squeamish droids!

This new Transparent R/C R2-D2 by Tomy is available from the Star Wars Shop for $24.99 - this is the droid you are looking for!

Via Geek Alerts

Apparently the MobileMe email issue has finally been resolved.

1% of MobileMe users where without email for several days and the service only got restored after the non-customercentric period of 11 days! 

The MobileMe problems were very bad for Apple - where they should’ve been basking in the iPhone afterglow they were being hit at every turn:

Headlines such as ”Has Apple bitten off more than it can chew?” (The Guardian), “Apple Slammed for Ongoing MobileMe Crisis” (Wired News), “Apple’s MobileMess” (NY Times).

More details on the Apple MobileMe Status page

This has just been mailed to me and I felt that I should really share this brilliant classic coin-op clone.

As you can tell by the screen-shot and the title it is of course, Defender!

It’s got everything going for it - it’s free, online and classic!!!

Go to Stupey.com and have some retro fun!

Thanks Dean buddy!

Righty - I’m back up to protect the land from alien invasion!!!

Pew, pew…….!

This patch is no ordinary patch.

It is a patch for the more, can I say, Geeky of us

The makers bill it as something akin to ‘a TinyURL you can wear’, allowing people to scan the QRCode using a phone and be pointed to any web page you define - I think that is truly fab!

I am considering some for this site as well as possibly putting one in the release pack of one of my bands new album………..

This is the tech bit:

The QRCode is permanently set to a Swiss URL - p8t.ch/somekindofuniqueidentifier.

You have control over this URL, and can change it to redirect to a site of your choice as often as you like.

So, people can use a QRcode reader (available for the iPhone, Nokia N series phones and the like), scan it and be sent to anything you choose - your blog, your YouTube channel, you get the idea.

$20 From P8TCH

via ShinyShiny

Remember when we first saw the pic of Dell’s Studio Hybrid in June?

Well, it is finally being released with a starting price of $499 and features interchangeable sleeves of real Bamboo and plastic in the colours of Emerald, Quartz, Ruby, Sapphire, Slate and Topaz.

The specs aren’t too bad and it looks like Dell wants us to place the puter (horizontally or vertically) in your main room.

There’s an HDMI port as standard and options for WiFi, a wireless keyboard and mouse, Blu-ray and a TV tuner.

Dell’s eco-quest with this line continues with the included system recycling kit and the reduction in packing and manufacturing materials.

The Studio Hybrid should be available today.

Updated bit:

Before you go sprinting off to buy one of these EeeBox/Mac Mini threatening machines go and Read what PC Magazine have to say!

They reckon it’s a great buy for style-conscience consumers, but it couldn’t help but mention that there “are more-powerful and more-expandable choices out there if you’re less concerned about design.”

Yup, the Spinn by iRiver actually has a haptic feedback touchscreen!

The official spec on iriver’s Korean site also says battery life will last 24-hours (not 27) and I can’t see evidence of the promised SD slot. It’s not even in the specs!

The clean (some say boring) lines of the 10.7-mm thick metal and plastic case that sports a 3.3-inch, 480 x 272 pixel AMOLED display, T-DMB TV, Bluetooth, and the new analog SPINN Wheel.

Its currently on pre-order for South Korea with the 4GB model fetching 259,000KRW (about $259) or 8GB for 299,000KRW (about $299).

It’s due for release in the UK next month - well, in a few days/weeks.

Apart from MMS the biggest gripe with the iPhone is the lack of Copy and Paste.

How can it be that this really gorgeous bit of tech is unable to do something so common in text editors since the 80’s?

MagicPad, a new application from Proximi is finally making copy and paste a reality on the iPhone - depending on the approval of Apple’s App Store.

The application is essentially an improved version of “Notes” and features rich text editing, allowing users to modify font type, size, and colour.

And best of all, it allows for copy and paste!!  ALRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!

Users need only drag their fingers over text to select it, and adjustments can then be made on a menubar that appears above the onscreen keyboard (see the video by clicking the link below).

Brilliant!

Unfortunately, MagicPad isn’t going to bring true Copy-and-Paste to the iPhone, as there will be no way to copy text between applications (say, from Safari to the Mail client).

DRAT!

You’ll be able to copy and paste between multiple notes in MagicPad, which will make it a step up from Notes, but in reality it serves as more of a proof of concept than a solution.

DOUBLE DRAT!!

So when will we finally get copy and paste for real?

Well, Apple’s Greg Joswiak has already said that it was on Apple’s to-do list but that it hasn’t been a priority.

Check it out in action - First Look - MagicPad

Well, it’s been days since the last Apple Rumour so let’s have another!

Apparently, according to Seth Weintraub, the next generation of MacBooks are supposed to be thinner (no, really!?!) and feature a glass track-pad with multi-touch and gesture support.

Glass is nice to touch just have that Windolene ready folks!

The body of the new MacBooks would be made from a single piece of aluminium.

The new MacBooks will most likely run Intel’s Centrino 2 and are supposed to be out by September!

More details at ComputerWorld.

Are you a geek that’s also a petrol-head?

IWOOT have the perfect USB hub for you!

For the tiny sum of £29.99 you get a hub that shakes, revs and changes gear.

You know you want one!!

VRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!

A bunch of ex-Google engineers have got together and gone and built a new search engine which is touted to cover three times as many Web pages compared to the monster known as Google.

This is a big deal as Google recently announced that they index a trillion pages.

The new company is known as Cuil Inc. (pronounced Cool) will be launching it’s search engine today.

Apparently it searches across more Web pages and studies them more accurately - let’s go and find out :0)

Source: WSJ

I’ve received a few searches from people seeking Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK - I’m guessing quite a number a new iPhone owners :0)

So, for the free for iPhone users check out the O2 Hotspots directory.

A more general directory of UK hotspots can be found here at the cunningly titled Hotspot Locations.co.uk.

There’s also quite a handy listing of Free hotspots to be found Here!  It covers all of Europe so handy for those frequent travellers.

If anyone has other sites/ways of finding hotspots such as Wi-Fi sniffing luggage please drop me a line :0)

J

Have a gander at Fujitsu’s Lifebook U2010.

It’s been part of the rumour mill for quite a while but now the full specs and some decent pics have appeared on a Vietnamese forum.

The tiny laptop / tablet will feature an Intel Atom CPU (at 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz), a 5.6-inch 1024 x 768 display, an 80GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, a 3G radio, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and will weigh 680 grams (about 1.5 lbs).

There’s not so much as a hint of release date or where it will go on sale.

Pricing, however, is said to be in the region of $1300!

Read the original piece and more pics via Engadget

This striking gadget isn’t the future of inner-city transport (more’s the pity) it is, in fact, the aptly named “Alien Mouse” concept from the crazy designery head of Mizanur Rehman.

The brief was to design a mouse that would strictly adhere to the principles of ergonomics so that it would provide maximum comfort.

This is acheived by molding itself to the user’s hand as it has a body constructed from soft gel and cellulose. It’s even got a throbbing central core that vibrates through the frame to help relieve stress.

Now, the important bit of a controlling device is….well…..the controlly bit.

A central joystick is flanked by right and left click buttons, but the layout of the controls means that the mouse never needs to be physically moved.

The Alien Mouse is only in the concept stage at this point which is a shame as we might not even be using a mouse in 5 years.

Alien Mouse via The Design Blog

Another feather in the cap for Sony’s Reader.

An update will allow it to use EPUB books as well as the ones from the Sony e-Book Store. 

This is something that the Kindle can’t do and opens up a large range of books to the new reader which it was definetly lacking before.

Could this be the start of more open readers?

Yahoo News

Given that the Wii is stoopidly addictive all you eco-friendly Wii-fans will probably feel a little guilty at the amount of AA batteries you’ve thrown out.

Fear no-longer as Sanyo has come up with the Eneloop charging station.

It comes complete with a battery pack replacement for your Wiimote and a charging base that can support as many as four controllers at once.

I like the way it kinda looks like a rifle rack……..kinda……..a bit……perhaps…….?

Remotes take about 220 minutes to recharge and Eneloop will even charge sequentially so you don’t have to wait an extra couple hours for your next hit of Wii-action.

Its available for $73 to import but I think that it should go global - just like the warming.

Akihabara News

There has been a slew of Atom-based laptops but not so many desktops.

But here is the “Mini Chocolate” desktop from the Korean brand, Ripple.

Packing the 1.6GHz Atom processor into its Mini-ITX form it also sports up to 2GB of RAM, four USB ports, two SATA sockets, and a single IDE socket - it even has room for a slot-loading optical drive, which you’ll have to supply yourself (along with most of the other components).

You get a choice of three colours each setting you back 209,000 Korean won, or around the £100 mark.

Aving