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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

According to a recent article in Variety, Apple is in early talks with Wal-Mart over a way to get iTunes downloads to finally play nice with the commercial giant. Apple wants to team up with Wal-Mart to get access to the retailer’s massive title selection, while Wal-Mart is attempting to gain a foothold (or at least a revenue stream) in the downloadable movie sector; at this point, though, it’s unclear how these tense negotiations will affect Wal-Mart’s plans to roll its own digital video options. The Hollywood publication also reported that 40 percent of studio DVD sales go through Wal-Mart, which means that both movie studios and the gargantuan retailer need to quickly figure out how to adapt to this whole internet thing (we hear it’s getting big nowadays).

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Portable Audio

We’ve gotta give props to Creative here. Not only are they gutsy enough to release such a minimal update to a fairly ancient form factor, but they’re even taking their product numbering “backwards” with the new MuVo V100, a followup to the V200. The biggest improvements are the size gains, the player now comes in 1GB and 2GB capacities, compared to the max 512MB in the V200. The player also has gotten a hefty price slash (S$149 for 2GB, which is roughly $88 US) and a slightly shaved down size (3.5mm off the length, 1.5 off the width, and 1mm thinner). Creative also bumped the battery life by 3 hours, for a whoppin’ 18 hours off of a single AAA battery, but the tiny monochrome display remains the same, and the player is still pretty clunky compared to a lot of similar players on the market. However, the MuVo still remains one of the best mini-players around with a full-sized USB port, and the improvements here, while minimal, are all plenty welcome.

[Via CNET; thanks Pimpy]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

You know what they always say: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Apparently Yahoo is applying this mantra quite liberally, as just a fortnight after signing a deal with Acer to make Yahoo the default search engine on all of its future notebooks, the distantly-second place search giant is teaming up with HP. Yahoo has been on a tirade of sorts in its attempt to partner with as many other firms as possible, but landing a deal with the world’s second largest PC maker just might provide the usage boost its been after. North American HP PCs will sport an Internet Explorer 7 toolbar that automatically channels any search requests to Yahoo’s servers, while European PCs will be greeted with a Yahoo home page each time they launch their browser (until they change the default setting, that is). Also noteworthy is the newfound partnership between HP and Vonage, which will toss in advertising brochures and an offer for “unlimited premium residential broadband telephone service,” thoroughly showering your fresh HP box with “pre-selected offerings.” Whether or not this turns out to be a two-fer-one (or are we up to three now?) deal for Yahoo, considering HP just acquired VoodooPC and all, remains to be seen — but we can’t imagine Voodoo customers warming up to an advertisement-laden OS anytime soon.

Read - Yahoo teams with HP
Read - Vonage connects with HP

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops

It took them long enough, but it looks like Sony is really coming clean on this battery issue, and urging all affected manufacturers to get on the recall bandwagon. Toshiba is recalling 840,000 batteries across a wide swath of their laptop lines, in addition to the 340,000 they recalled a couple of weeks ago for an unrelated power-loss issue. Fujitsu is recalling Sony-made batteries from 19 of its laptop models, but no word on exact quantity of laptops. Dell is also expanding their own recall, with 100,000 more batteries due to “additional information” they’ve recently received about the batteries from Sony. Oddly enough, while Sony seems to be encouraging all OEMs to get going on a recall, we still haven’t seen a recall for Sony’s own laptops — which seem to be just as defective as the rest of them, peep that picture above — but hopefully Sony will be fessing up to those soon so we can all be one big, happy screwed-by-Sony family.

Read - More headaches for Sony over batteries
Read - Dell recalls 100,000 more battery packs

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

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Menu -> Toys Gadgets

Kids and adults alike have always been fascinated with building things. As a kid my brother had tons of Legos and we would spend hours trying to out-do each other’s creations. Now you can out-do anyone’s Lego creation with the [more…]

Menu -> Kitchen Gadgets

When I get ready for work in the morning, I really don’t have time to sit and cook a complete breakfast sandwich. Using the toaster and the stove takes too long and dirties too many dishes. This scenario isn’t the [more…]

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Filed under: Storage

You won’t find this on Western Digital’s site yet, but eagle-eyed tipster Scott, came across this unannounced 1TB My Book Pro II Edition external storage solution while shopping Provantage. This is a dual-drive system so we’re looking at a couple of 500GB drives spinning at 7200RPM packed in a bulls-eye tome with Firewire 400 / 800 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Features include RAID 0/1, backup and recovery software, and 3 year warranty for $513.49, exactly. Sorry, no product image, but other than a color change, the Pro II isn’t likely to differ from the existing My Book lineup pictured. No reason to doubt this is coming, it’s gonna happen sooner or later.

[Thanks, Scott]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Scientists at the University of Alabama have just developed a “self-healing material,” that releases a “syrupy epoxy” stored inside an outer polymer paneling when the exterior is breached. The epoxy flows into cracks or damaged areas and sets when exposed to UV light, reports NewScientist. In addition, embedded circuitry alerts technicians armed with a special wand to damaged areas. As the website reports further: “This is because the wand induces a current in the embedded circuit when it is intact. When the circuit is damaged this cannot happen and the wand sounds an alarm.” We hope that these eggheads plan on collaborating with the University of Michigan’s self-healing chip project so that both universities can create the ultimate in self-sustaining electronics.

[Photo: University of Alabama]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Toshiba’s introduced a pair of new VARDIA digital video recorders for the Japanese market today, the RD-E300 and RD-W300. Each box packs a fairly substantial 300GB hard drive, DVD burner, digital TV tuner, and HDMI output, with the RD-W300 throwing some VHS action into the mix — cause nothing shows your rebellious side better than digital content stored on an analog medium. Toshiba’s also seen fit to include not one but two remotes with each unit (a full-featured one and a simplified one), no doubt a well-intentioned move on Toshiba’s part, but one that’s also likely to cause a few bouts of dueling remotes. No word on pricing for either of ‘em, but it looks like they should both be available in November.

[Via Akihabara News]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

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Menu -> Electronics Gadgets

If you’re anything like me, and lots of others, when you go to the store you like to find a bargain. The "Clearance" racks and the "65% off or more" racks seem to be the places you gravitate towards no [more…]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Laptops

We’ve been overdue for a lithium-ion successor since forever, and we can’t deny the urgency has been bumped a notch by the recent spat of battery explosions. Of course, many have pretended to the throne, but newcomer Zinc Matrix Power thinks their new silver-zinc battery packs really have a shot. They just unveiled the tech at the Intel Developers Forum, and they claim their batteries are safer, longer lasting and more environmentally friendly than those lithium-ion clunkers. As much as we treasure our lap in an intact form — which silver-zinc provides for due to a safer “inherent chemistry” of silver, zinc and water — we’re especially happy to hear of the “significant” performance gains over lithium-ion, because if there’s anything we hate worse than shrapnel in the upper thigh, it’s running out of battery mid-way through a high-scoring game of Snood on a cross-country flight. We suppose easy recycling wouldn’t suck either. Zinc Matrix says they’ll have the new power cells in the hands of device manufacturers for evaluation in early ‘07, so hopefully we won’t have too long of a wait.

[Via Tech Digest]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Find today’s latest gadgets below:

Menu -> Kitchen Gadgets

When I get ready for work in the morning, I really don’t have time to sit and cook a complete breakfast sandwich. Using the toaster and the stove takes too long and dirties too many dishes. This scenario isn’t the [more…]

Filed under: Laptops, Media PCs

Looks like the bevy of holiday updates are getting a bit of a headstart this year, as HP is already hoping its revamped Pavilion dv900t will be the prized jewel under a few lucky trees. Raising the already heightened bar, the flagship unit in the dv9000 series is receiving an oh-so-coveted HD DVD drive that doubles as a dual-layer DVD burner. It also packs a 17-inch 1,440 x 900 resolution LCD, 2.16GHz T7400 Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, dual 100GB SATA drives, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 graphics, 1.3 megapixel webcam, HDMI, 7.1 audio out, ExpressCard slot, twin headphone ports, the usual complement of connectivity options, and battery life stretching just over 2.5 hours. For those of you who rushed out to pick up last month’s flavor and just can’t get that craving for HD DVD to subside, HP’s also bringing the High Definition DVD-ROM drive (that’s an external HD DVD drive, folks) to the table. Both items should be hitting shelves (and shopping lists) soon, and while the dv9000t will set you back a respectable $2,395, pricing for the standalone HD DVD unit remains up in the air.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

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Filed under: Laptops

Hooray, Lenovo has joined the battery recall party! For those of you keeping score at home, that brings the number of manufacturers to five, including Apple, Panasonic, Toshiba and Dell. The recall, anounced today, affects nearly 170,000 batteries in the US, and over 350,000 additionally worldwide, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. The USCPSC also says that the recall was triggered by Lenovo’s confirmation of the battery that exploded at LAX a few weeks ago and that this latest battery recall affects the following ThinkPad notebook computers “sold between February 2005 and September 2006: T Series (T43, T43p, T60); R Series (R51e, R52, R60, R60e); and X Series (X60, X60s).” Furthermore, Lenovo has put out a press release stating: “Additionally, since these batteries can also be used with ThinkPad T4x Series or ThinkPad R5x Series systems, customers who ordered an extra battery or received a replacement battery for any ThinkPad T4x or ThinkPad R5x Series notebook PC between February 2005 and September 2006 may also have a battery subject to recall.” Now, Alan Cox’s exploded ThinkPad 600 isn’t part of the list, which leads us to believe that this isn’t the last we’ve heard about Sony’s exploding battery fiasco.

Read - Lenovo press release
Read - US Consumer Product Safety Commission

[Thanks, JJL]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Announcements

Tonight’s the night, Boston! We’re having an Engadget Reader Meetup this evening, and if you’re anywhere in the area you should come. We’ll have product demos, awesome prizes from Sonos, Slim Devices, Sling Media, Nintendo, Samsung, LG, Motorola, PowerSquid, and HP, free Engadget t-shirts for the first 100 people who show up, and a Q&A with the editors of Engadget.

Details:

Thursday, September 28th
7pm - 9:30pm

Jillian’s
145 Ipswich Street
Boston, MA 02215

And yes, the event is all-ages!

Click on for directions and a map.

FROM THE NORTH
Take 93 South towards Boston
Exit at Storrow Drive, Follow Storrow Drive until the Fenway Exit
Stay left and take this exit
Once on ramp get into the right lane
You will see signs for Boylston Outbound, bear right at the light
Go through another set of lights you will see a Shell Station
Make a right onto Ipswich Street
Stay to the right and you will see Jillian’s on the left

FROM THE SOUTH
Take 93 North towards Boston to Storrow Drive and Exit at Fenway
Follow the directions above

FROM THE WEST
Take the Mass. Pike East until the Allston / Cambridge Exit
Go through toll booth and stay right to exit
The Double Tree Hotel will be on your right
Make this right onto Storrow Drive
Take the Fenway Exit off Storrow Drive then get into the right lane
You will see signs for Boylston Outbound, bear right at this light
Go through another set of lights
At the next set of lights you will see a Shell Station
Make a right onto Ipswich Street
Stay to the right and you will see Jillian’s on the left

MBTA
Take the Green line to Kenmore Square
Bear left onto Brookline Avenue
Take the second left onto Lansdowne Street
At the end of the street make a left onto Ipswich Street
You will see our entrance on the left hand side

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Just yesterday we hit you with Seagate’s Pink Pocket hard drive, and now Polaroid is jumping on the (admittedly awesome) anti-breast cancer bandwagon and throwing down four new digicams in support of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. All four P&S models are available in pink, light pink, and magenta (similar to the trio of RAZR hues), house 16MB of internal memory, and support SD cards of all sizes. The a520M gets it started with a 5.1 megapixel sensor, 2-inch LCD, hardly useful 4x digital zoom, and an AVI movie mode, while the i533P steps it up by including a 2.5-inch display, much more worthwhile 3x optical zoom, AVI / MPEG-4 video capability, and video / audio outs. The i639M rocks 6 megapixels, a 2.4-inch screen, 3x optical zoom, video out, and an MPEG-4 movie (with voice recording) mode, while the top-end i733LP boasts 7.1 megapixels, a 2.5-inch TFT LCD, 3x optical zoom, movie mode with audio, and A / V outs. While pricing deets are currently MIA, these will only be available until next March, so you can pick up a delightfully colored digicam for that oh-so-special lady in your life (or one for yourself, ladies), and help out an excellent cause in the process.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

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Filed under: Transportation

If you’re trying to get away from that gas guzzling wheelchair, but feel a bit awkward rolling in the less-than-glamorous solar-powered edition, Suzuki Motors has got your back. Taking a leap forward from its previous lead-acid battery-powered electric wheelchair, the MIO is a motor-driven cart that gets its juice from an ultra-green fuel cell. The cell works in conjunction with a “large capacity Li-ion secondary battery,” and while we aren’t certain of how quickly this bad boy can streak down the quarter mile, it can supposedly cruise for 25 miles on a single fill up (four liters) of methanol solution. Aside from the power source, the MIO sports armrests that serve double duty as safety barriers, ergonomic handlebars, a comfortable mesh seating surface, and even an LCD panel that shows such useful data as fuel level and power status. While Suzuki insists the unit is simply a prototype, and refuses to hand out pricing details while it “judges consumer interest,” the MIO should still be a bit easier to acquire than the sold out Tesla should it ever hit stores.

[Via Far East Gizmos]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Storage

Keeping things fresh in its TeraStation lineup, Buffalo is dropping three new NAS units touting up to two terabytes of capacity and faster access speeds than previous models. Besides sporting the obligatory RAID 0/1/5 functionality (and looking exactly like its predecessor), the TeraStation Pro TS-HTGL/R5 series holds four hard drives behind a lockable door, gigabit Ethernet, and a snazzy LCD panel to show internal temperature and worrisome alerts. Slated to be available in 1.0, 1.6, and 2.0TB flavors, the units will also support “ActiveDirectory domain,” which apparently pulls double duty as a security gate to ward off curious intruders and a data divisor based on group / role login preferences. Although pricing deets are currently unavailable, the trio will be getting NASty (read: shipping) in early December.

[Via Impress]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

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Filed under: Robots, Wearables

If tossing on a HAL cyborg suit and ascending a mountain seems a bit intimidating to you, Japanese firms Matsushita (producer of Panasonic) and Activelink have partnered with Kobe Gakuin University to develop a robotic jacket that helps rehabilitate paralyzed individuals with slightly less “lofty” goals. The vest, which slips over an individual’s upper body and arms (no leg support just yet), allows the person to move their unaffected arm as they please, while it mimics the muscles in the paralyzed area(s) to help the patient recall the feelings of maneuvering that limb. By teaching the person to take over for the motorized “stretching and bending compressors” within the device, the 1.8-pound suit can gradually help someone to regain stimulation in a previously motionless area of their upper body. Activelink reportedly plans to “start testing” the unit at a Hyogo hospital soon, and make it commercially available by March 2009. The only kicker is the price — at ¥2,000,000 ($17,159), customers best ensure their insurance plan is mighty stout before suiting up in this.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Desktops, Handhelds, Laptops

Today at the Intel Developer Forum, the company announced that the next generation of mobile processor chipset, known as “Santa Rosa,” will feature an integrated HSDPA radio from Nokia. (Oh, and it should bump the FSB to 800MHz and drop power consumption, as usual.) This follows a trend that we’ve been seeing over the last year with various laptops frontin’ 3G access so you can get your speedy internet on wherever life may find you, be it Northern California or elsewhere — though we’ve not necessarily seen it so deeply embedded. In other news expected to materialize in 2007, Intel says it will also offer a new ultra-mobile chip based on the Core 2 Duo design but with half the power draw and one-fourth the physical size. No word on if that HSDPA and low-power stuff will make it into that sexy sketch of a sports car we saw earlier, though.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Storage

We’re still waiting for Lite-On’s 20x DVD burner, but if you’re looking for speed and laser-etched disc labeling to boot, the company’s got just the fix for ya. Lite-On’s just-announced LH-18A1H Lightscribe drive will give you a still-respectable 18x burning speed for DVD+R and DVD-R discs, although it’ll still take decidedly longer to label the disc than it does to actually burn it. Other disc burning speeds are about what you’d expect, with 48x for CD-R, 32x for CD-RW, and between 6x and 12x for the remaining writable DVD formats. This one’s being offered to OEMs right now, with a Lite-On branded model set to go on sale in Taiwan for about $64. According to Lite-On, Lightscribe-enabled drives account for just 10% of the company’s optical disc drive business, something that HP (purveyor of all things Lightscribe) looks to be doing its best to increase, recently announcing that it’s lowering its royalty charge for manufactures by between 40 and 50%, depending on volume. Guess it takes some drastic measures when you’re taking on the powerhouse of the optical disc labeling industry: the Sharpie.

[Via TG Daily]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Find today’s latest gadgets below:

Menu -> Home Gadgets

Although my bed is extremely comfortable, I need something more during the late night hours. With the Total Body Support Pillow, I have found the additional comfort and support I need to get a great night’s sleep!When you use the [more…]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Sure, you might have an exorbitantly expensive DSLR, or maybe you’ve forked out for a digicam touting OIS, but even the most brilliant photographs can’t truly shine without a little TLC in the post-processing lab. While a bit of Photoshop or Aperture work can go a long way, the process itself can become a bit grueling, and Tribeca Labs is aiming to take time out of the equation and make touchups as good as automatic. Its PhotoBot software runs in the background of any Windows XP / 2000 PC (better fire up Boot Camp, dear Mac users) and automatically sniffs out freshly loaded pictures. Once located, the ‘Bot works its magic without so much as a confirmation click, and Tribeca claims the program will brighten dark images, reduce red-eye, enhance colors, and take the guesswork out of perfecting a photo. Additionally, it will upload your pics to a “Swiss Picture Bank” (for a $5 / month fee, of course), so you can presumably rest easy knowing your precious files are residing safely on redundant storage halfway across the world. While we can’t say for sure how well this contrivance actually works, nor how heavy it relies on system resources, you might as well give it a spin while it’s still in beta (read: free).

[Via CNET]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.