Suzuki Stratosphere concept
MacMini Portable: the next generation
 Instead of folding up his computer and going home like the negative comments had suggested, inventor, composer Peter Green to do when he first released his MMPrev.1, he has been hard at work on the second version of his MacMini Portable.
As you'll recall, MMP rev. 1 was basically Apple's diminutive PC stuffed inside a custom enclosure, attached to an LCD, battery pack, trackpad, and thumb board, and occupying a footprint smaller than even the most compact laptop. Green is back to silence the critics who questioned the utility of his first project with the MacMini Portable MkII, which makes numerous improvements upon its predecessor such as mounting the thumb board flush with the case, significantly reducing the overall size of the device, and generally making it look more like something you'd want to take out in public. So Mr. Green, we encourage you to continue ignoring the haters (and refine your creation to the point that they're forced to come around). Read more..!
iRiver Japan announces 2GB T10
 iRiver Japan's got a 2GB version of their lime green T10 due out there for ¥19,980 (about $170 US). Doesn't look to different than the MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF playing, FM tuning, voice recording device, but it's still got that same single-cell AAA battery. Expect them to start selling the 26th of this month over yonder in the land of the rising sun. Read more..!
How to hack your OS X login box
 Apple Matter's Chris Seibold, has written a fun how-to on tweaking the Mac OS X login window to display whatever image you want in place of the Apple logo and whatever text you want below. It's kind of an involved process, but doesn't look too tough if you follow the instructions. Read more..!
300 freeware utilities for any task
 Burn a CD, manage your wallpapers, undelete a file, and keep a to-do list all found in this list. A big list of freeware apps for Windows that will help you do those things and about 300 other tasks. It's a pretty nice list hand-selected by humans. I've got it bookmarked for the next time I need an app for some one-off task but don't want to spend an hour browsing shareware sites. Read more..!
Cindy & Mel Sushi Pillows
 These sushi pillows by Cindy & Mel have particular appeal, probably because they look almost edible. They also have the added bonus of being far more comfortable than non-pillow sushi, not to mention that they last longer. The pillows are painstakingly made out of high-quality fabrics, with hand-painted designs. They make great housewarming gifts for sushi-loving friends. Ebi Nigiri (shrimp) pillow: $58. Other pillows: $48. Read more..!
Oliver Peoples Harlot Sunglasses
 Oliver Peoples' Harlot sunglasses, with oversized plastic frames scream 70's glam while keeping a modern line. Oliver Peoples makes all sorts of glasses available at many retailers worldwide. I found this particular pair at Saks.com for $340. Read more..!
 Shlomo Cohen, creator of the 1982 Princess Cut diamond, has created a new cut known as the Vinci Diamond. Based on the "divine proportion," a golden ratio that was studied intensely by Leonardo da Vinci, who inspired the diamond's name, the diamond features a 62-facet pentacle cut. By contrast, a standard round-cut diamond has 57-facets. The perfect proportions of the diamond include three pentacle stars and give a stone with this cut unprecedented brilliance. The design is patented in Japan, Israel, Belgium, and the United States, and Cohen already has marketing plans in place. Read more..!
Bridesmaid Gift: Pink Flask
 'In the season for brides--and bridesmaids' gifts. Here's an alternative: go unconventional and pick out something like this pink flask. Even if some of your bridesmaids aren't the kind of girls to be knocking back shots, at least it's original. And with the monogram, personal. At TheKnot.com; $19.95 (add $4.75 for monogram). Read more..!
Kickin' back in the Chrysler 300 LWB
Maingear's Prysma does Viiv Egyptian-style
 The new pyramid-shaped Prysma Media Center PC from game PC manufacturer Maingear has support for the ViiV spec, and though the $1752 base configuration has a mere 512MB of RAM, 80GB HDD, and integrated graphics, there's plenty of room to grow. Of course, in keeping with the Viiv spec, there is gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 Intel HD Audio, and a Pentium D 920 Dual Core 2.8Ghz processor, so the PC should at least be able to push around a bit of HD content if you can manage to find some. Maingear rounds out the Prysma with dual NTSC tuners and some pricey ($299) custom color options. Read more..!
Gitaroo-Man set to rock the PSP
 Listings on Sony Japan's retail site has noted the rhythm-based title, called Gitaroo-Man Live!, will be released on the 25th of May. There is still no official word from the title's developer, Koei. There's also no news if the game will ever be released outside of Japan. However, if Gitaroo-Man on the PS2 was any indication, there's always a chance it could see some action on US soil. Strange as the game may be, it does have its share of fans, all of whom we're guessing are already drooling at the thought of taking their Gitaroo on the road. Read more..!
 The crown for largest pixel array goes to a man known only as Crazy Jon (trust us, that's no misnomer). Dude cobbled six NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB video cards and three 1,000-watt power supplies to take on a wall o' what appears to be Dell 30-inch 3007WFPs. Twelve, to be exact. By our math that's 49,152,000 pixels -- and about $26,400 just for the displays alone. Oh, and did we mention that Crazy Jon already had five Apple 30-inchers on his desk! We love you, Jon. Seriously though, can we come over sometime?! Read more..!
Zagato Ferrari 575GTZ preview
 Zagato has released a preview photo of one-of-a-kind Ferrari 575GTZ. The new Ferrari GTZ was commissioned by Japanese car collector Yoshiyuki Hayashi (pictured), who specifically requested that Zagato make a unique 575 in the style of the famous 250 GTZ berlinetta. The aluminum-bodied car incorporates a host of styling cues from Zagato's classic custom sports cars of the '50s, including the two-tone color scheme of the 250GTZ. Read more..!
Christian Louboutin Suede Cork-Heel Slings
 These understated sling-back pumps from Christian Louboutin are Suede Cork-Heel Slings made of soft suede in a warm, earthy tobacco brown. The base and heel of the shoe, but not the soles, are made of cork. These pumps don't have the same punch as, say, the black Balenciaga platform pumps, but the sky high heels will still ensure that all eyes are on you - not just on your shoes. Price $670. Read more..!
Averatec's AHI UMPC concept device
 Mix one part OQO, one part Sidekick, and a touch of UMPC, you get Averatec's new AHI concept device. Expected to be launched this fall for as little as €500 or €900 ($600 or $1,090 US) depending on options including: windows XP, a touchscreen (which we assume will take advantage of Microsoft's Touch Pack UMPC suite), WiFi, GPS, 3G data, and a six hour battery life in a 7.3 x 3.5 x 1.3-inch 24 ounce package. So yeah, basically this device might single-handedly solve just about every complaint the UMPC community (and we) have: price, battery life, keyboard, and wireless data. So keep your eyes out for Averatec this fall. Read more..!
Onkyo unveils HDC-7 Viiv media PC
 The Onkyo media PC now known as the HDC-7, is now ready for its close up, and comes packed with lots of goodies, including a Pentium D820 at 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM, 400GB drive, DVD burner and all the inputs and outputs you'd expect, including DVI, component, VGA, dual Firewire and dual USB. It's due out in Japan in late May, with pricing expected to run about ¥300,000 (about $2,500). Read more..!
 The Clio NXT was (is?) the successor to the cult 1998-released WinCE laptop/tablet which is said to feature Windows CE.NET 5.0 (yes, CE), a 10.4-inch, 800 x 600 touchscreen LCD with 180-degree pivot, WiFi, 64MB SDRAM and 64MB Flash memory, a near full-size QWERTY keyboard, and a smattering of connectivity and expansion options including SD card slots, PCMCIA, USB, a headphone jack, mic, and video out. Out of the blue a press release stating that Duke University's Fuqua School of Business is to serve as the "beta site" for the NXT and Data Evolution's other CE computing device, the Cathena ultra-light laptop. That's it -- no price (although we last heard $999 for the NXT), no expected start date for this beta program, let alone a revised ship date... nothin'. Read more..!
AjaxAMP: Slick web-based Winamp control and streaming
 AjaxAMP is a Web-based interfaces for Winamp. It's a plugin that lets you control Winamp via a web browser with an Ajaxy interface. It features drag-and-drop playlists and a rearrangeable (though not skinnable) interface, and it can stream music over the web to any computer. It's also free and, at 445kb, a nice and small download. Read more..!
Free screencast creator Wink 2.0 released
 Wink lets you make software tutorial or demonstration movies by recording whatever's happening on your screen, adding text boxes, buttons,and saves it as a Flash file. The new version features unlimited text boxes and buttons, image and shape objects, audio recording and editing, undo and redo, improved Flash output, and more available languages. No word on when the Linux version will be available. Read more..!
 With JotSpot Family Site, a private wiki service is geared specifically toward extended families. JotSpot Family Site provides birthday and event calendars, Google-powered maps, family trees, polls, and a family blog. As someone who has a large extended family, it sounds like a great idea if they can make it easy enough for everyone to use. JotSpot Family Site is in beta and most appealing of all, free. Read more..!
Japan launches effort to colonize moon with robots
 Reported by the Asahi Shimbun the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are taking action on their earlier intentions to build lunar and inter-planetary exploration and colonization robots. Meaning they've gathered their team to develop robots with artificial intelligence to land on and explore the moon within 10 years, and independently colonize the joint within 20. Read more..!
Intellitabs: Tabs for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
 Intellitabs is an addon for Microsoft Office putting a seamlessly integrated set of tabs to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for fast switching between documents. With Intellitabs you can customize what data is shown on the tabs and in their tooltips (e.g. author, word count, file size, etc.), and you can save a group of tabs as a "session" so all of the documents can be opened at once. Intellitabs isn't free--it will cost you $19 for the Standard edition of each flavor (Word/Excel/PowerPoint) or $29 for Professional, or you can get all three Pro addons in a $49 bundle. Read more..!
Use up ink cartridges until they're (really) empty
 Here's some tips for Epson and HP owners: SSC Service Utility is a free Windows app for Epson printers that lets you freeze or reset your printer's internal ink counters to fool your printer into thinking the cartridge is full again. For HP owners things aren't so simple. Methods vary by printer and cartridge type and many of them require rolling up your sleeves and fiddling with the cartridge itself, but Mr. Ink Jet (an ink refill kit vendor) has some tips. Read more..!
Put your screensavers on shuffle
 ScreenSaver Commander(is free) handles the task of randomizing your Windows screensavers, and its other distinguishing feature is that you can configure it to prevent the screensaver from running when certain applications are open. It does other things like letting you manually set your screensaver. Its makers, Badevlav Software, also sell a shareware app called System ScreenSaver that lets you run ordinary programs as screensavers (and minimize all other apps, if you want), but the full version will cost you $10. Read more..!
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-Lytir1
