Myvu's Shades 301 iPod Edition gets hands-on treatment

Surely you remember that Solo Plus HMD that Myvu aimed at iPod owners late last year? Wait, what? You purged that from your memory as soon as you saw it? Ah well, looks like you'll be on yet another blotting mission after peeking this, as the aforesaid outfit has delivered yet another option for those looking to check out iPod clips on their own personal theater and destroy any chance at garnering friends. The Shades 301 iPod Edition, which is set to cost two Benjamins, actually looks quite different (and dare we say, a smidgen better) than the Solo Plus, and reportedly comes bundled with a pair of Ultimate Ears earbuds, detachable Dock Connector cable, remote, integrated battery and a two-piece cable manager for its neck cabling. If you're inexplicably overcome with an urge to see more, you can check out a brief hands-on by following the read link below.

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Gateway Budget Gaming Desktop Gets 45nm Quad-Core Refresh

It's been a few months since CES, so Gateway is rightly updating its FX budget gaming desktops with some fresher chips. Most notably, the FX7026 (more budget-y) and FX541 (more performance-y) are picking up Intel's mid-range Q9300 Core 2 Quad processor (which beat down AMD's top of the line Phenom X4 9850 quad in benchmarks). They both start at a little over a grand, so not bad deals—check the release for more details.

• More via Gizmodo »

Yahoo willing to reopen talks, was just kidding around about $37

After the beating the company is taking in the stock market, and with several prominent investors stepping forward to express disatisfaction with how things were handled, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang says he was willing to discuss things further if Microsoft hadn't turned its back on the offer. "We did not say it was a take-it-or-leave-it number in the sense that we would never negotiate any more," he said, referring to the $37 figure. "We were totally willing to do a transaction, and they walked away." Deep down we know he's just miffed to be missing out on sleeping bag to sleeping bag discussions with Ballmer about adding an exclamation mark to Microsoft. Dream on, Yang.

• [Via Silicon Valley Insider]
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BlackBerry 9000 Reviewed Early (Verdict: Fantastic)

Crackberry, the BlackBerry fan site, bought a BlackBerry 9000 off of eBay for $828 and reviewed it. Why's this notable? Because the phone doesn't go on sale until July or August. This fact doesn't stop them from throwing lots of praise on the phone now, however, saying that the "9000 will leaves [sic] every other BlackBerry made to date in the dust."

The 9000 still takes a long time to start up—Crackberry says the software should be updated before launch and that might speed it up a bit—but the keyboard is nice and OS 4.6 is also "smooth", "fast" and "pretty." The display is "bright and crisp", and 3G is definitely welcome. If you even have the smallest interest in BlackBerry, this is a phone to consider.

• Full review via Crackberry

HTC Touch Diamond all gussied up and official

via Engadget:

We've got some hands-on shots and impressions with the newly announced HTC Touch Diamond that we'll be sharing with you shortly, but here are some official press shots to whet your appetite. Tell it to us one more time, HTC. VGA? You really do love us.

And if you'd like more, up next the Gallery: HTC Touch Diamond all gussied up and official

Engadget Mobile, LG, and Stark Industries want you to have a $1,500 Iron Man phone

So... this just in, Engadget Mobile, LG and Stark Industries are just giving away twenty of these gorgeous phones, limited edition LG Shine Slide phones.Unlike the garden-variety Shine, the Iron Man edition trades up to a deep red case with gold plated highlights and a solid 18K gold battery cover to commemorate the launch of the film in style.

And to be eligible to win one of these beauties you just have to send a mail to contests [at] engadget [dawt] com with the subject "I am Iron Man!".

For more details on entering the competitions and other rules and facts visit EngadgetMobile

p.s. US only

DViCO launches PCIe-based FusionHDTV7 dual HDTV tuner card

Heads-up, OTA lovers. DViCO has just announced the formal launch of its FusionHDTV7 PCI-Express card, which claims to be the "world's first dual HD (digital or QAM) tuner PCIe card." The device is designed to pick up digital (ATSC) / analog (NTSC) terrestrial signals, and the twin silicon tuners also provide picture-in-picture support as well as the ability to watch and / or record two high-definition broadcasts simultaneously. And at just $140 (available now), we have a feeling this one's going to be a fan favorite.

[Via TVSquad]

Lenovo IdeaPad U110 unboxing and hands-on

Though our pals over at Switched managed to snag some hands-on video with a red pre-production unit, we figured we'd grab hold of the classic black edition of the IdeaPad U110 and give you a closer look. Made available for order just this week, Lenovo's latest ultraportable is high on style (and way high on gloss) and possesses the price tag to prove it. Meander on into the gallery below for a veritable plethora of unboxing and hands-on shots -- and rest assured, impressions are on the way.

Click for a full gallery.

The Alphagrip Handheld PC is Ergonomically Insane

You may recognize Alphagrip from their bizarre line of handheld keyboard trackball mouse hybrid controllers—but by the looks of their entry into Microsoft's Next Gen PC design competition, it appears that they are planning on taking things a step further by integrating a computer screen. The controller itself is basically a beefed-up version of their previous product—a design intended to maximize typing speed, conveniences and comfort.

• More @ Gizmodo»
  

Acer's 18.4-inch Aspire 8920G laptop gets reviewed

First things first: just in case that headline didn't really sink in, this is an 18.4-inch laptop. In other words, those of you with even the slightest of back problems should probably just pass this one right on by. If you're still with us, however, you'll likely be totally engrossed by Laptop Mag's review of the Acer Aspire 8920G. The larger of the two second-gen Gemstones was said to feature a "gorgeous" Full HD display, impressive audio output, a respectable webcam and plenty of power under the hood. They also found the unique CineDash Media Console to be quite effective, save for accidentally activating the multimedia hub on occasion. Overall, critics deemed the lappie a "stellar" machine, but we'd certainly recommend browsing through the review just to make sure you're really interested in picking up a slab this gigantic.

• Up next, Read the full Review!
  

BlackBerry Kickstart flip gets more details, T-Mobile branding included

by Chris Ziegler
If it weren't for RIM's "help, we're stuck in 2006 and can't get out!" approach of topping this thing out with EDGE data, we'd be all over its warm embrace of an all-new form factor -- but yeah, seriously RIM, what's up with that? Boy Genius Report has outed a few more alleged specs of Waterloo's first foray into the clamshell market, the Kickstart -- and it looks like we can expect a 2 megapixel cam, SureType (as though we couldn't have figured that out ourselves), internal QVGA and external 160 x 128 displays, WiFi, and a true 3.5mm headphone jack. We're also seeing some new shots with T-Mobile branding, which makes sense considering the carrier's longstanding efforts to be on RIM's bleeding edge. Oh, and just for the humor factor, RIM appears to be drawing parallels between the Kickstart and a few... uh, "objects," such as the "anodized color" similar to that found on an "urban nomad tool." So this is how product development goes down -- explains a lot!

[Via phoneArena]

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• via Engadget
  

8GB Nokia N95 lands on Rogers, sticks tongue out at AT&T

Get this: the first North American carrier to offer up Nokia's 8GB N95 isn't AT&T. Heck, it's not even a US-based operator. No friends, it's Canada's own Rogers Wireless. Just as we had heard late last month, the N95 8GB has officially landed in the Great North, and starting on May 6th, consumers up that way will be able to secure one for a hefty $399.99 with a three-year activation on the Rogers Vision Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan. Don't weep too heavily, AT&T users -- your time should be coming soon.

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First Look: Asus m70 1TB Laptop

By Danny Dumas

Well looky looky what we have here. Some say storage = snore-age. Know what? Those people are mostly right. Except when you get in the world's first notebook that contains a grand freaking total of one terabyte (!) of hard disk space .

First impressions? The m70 comes with Vista Home Premium (Meh.) and weighs a bone crushing 9-pounds. Seriously, it's pushing the limits of portability. Asus still hasn't gotten back to us yet about how much the unit's price. Our IT guru said it'll probably cost about $2500-$3000 considering the specs.

To give you an idea of what it would take to fill up the hard drive, hit the jump to see the breakdown on how much porn, MP3s, DVDs, games, and pictures would be needed to fill the roomy storage.

read more @ WiredBlogs

Dell's XPS 730 H2C Tower Can Run Crysis at Full Specs Starting at a Mere $4,000

Dell just announced its new high-end XPS 730 H2C gaming desktop, and get this — they claim it can run Crysis at 1920 x 1200 resolution at 30fps. Now that is a figure more impressive than any stats about the guts of the tower, right? OK, OK, those are interesting too.

This monster of a tower weighs nearly 50 pounds, stuffed as it is with goodies. It's based on Nvidia's nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset, and you can choose to load it with chips ranging from the Intel Core 2 Duo up to the 45nm Core 2 Extreme. You can also put in up to four 1TB hard drives for some ridiculous reason, a whopping 8GB of RAM and Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music.

• Dell
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Home of the Year 2008 winners

by Darren MurphHere it is: the hotly anticipated list of best homes as selected by Electronic House. Interestingly enough, this year's winners are quite different than the champs of 2007, and we suspect all that talk of green these days has something to do with it. Yep, for the first time ever, an "energy-efficient, sustainable" home snagged the highly-coveted gold, but make no mistake, this domicile is packed to the gills with electronic goodness (some of which actually helps keep energy waste down). Even if that doesn't pique your interest, EH has selected a plethora of other swank abodes to highlight, including the best home theater, a pimped out yacht and cribs with hidden treasures. Go on, get lost in the pages upon pages of snapshots and descriptions below -- and feel free to brag in comments if your pad wound up a winner.

• Read @ ElectronicHouse
  
• via Engadget
  

Dell launches the Vostro 1510 and 1310 laptops

by Joshua Topolsky

Just like we warned, Dell's new cheapo business laptops, the Vostro 1510 and Vostro 1310 have hit virtual shelves. The 15.4- and 13.3-inch models both feature Intel CPUs (up to Core 2 Duos), a maximum of 4GB of RAM, 80GB to 250GB hard drives, and a bunch of other features that should be totally adequate for your business affairs. The 1510 starts at $599, and the 1310 at $749; both are available now.

[Via Laptoping]

Robometer concept device promises to help you feel happy

by Donald Melanson

Detecting emotional cues is hardly a new endeavor, but this so-called Robometer concept device takes a slightly different (but not entirely unique) approach to things, with it actually promising to help you feel happy by prompting you when you stray too far into tediousness. To do that, the rig makes use of a GSR lead to detect your galvanic skin response, along with accelerometers that detect repetitive movement, and a voice sensor that promises to detect repetitive phrases. Those then get translated into various warning levels, with the device ultimately letting out a voice prompt when you're perilously close to becoming too tense or unhappy. Not surprisingly, there's no indication that the project will ever move beyond the concept stage, but you can get a glimpse at what we could be missing out on in the video available at the link below.

[Via Gizmo Watch]

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• @ Engadget
  

BlackBerry 9000 internal docs show off new UI

Someone, or something, has leaked a BlackBerry’s 9000 internal spec sheet to BGR . (These controlled “leaks” are part of how RIM does business, you know.) It’s more or less a complete overview of the newly designed user interface. Pictured here, a few shots of some of the new themes. Church.

The BlackBerry 9000 is supposed to be RIM’s “answer” to the iPhone, hence the new UI, much improved Web browser (consumers love the Web!), built-in Wi-Fi and camera, improved multimedia capabilities, etc. No touchscreen, but the keyboard is partly what makes a BlackBerry a BlackBerry.

via CrunchGear

Sharp AQUOS X TVs to Come With Wireless WHDI Connection

When we showed you those Sharp X-series ultra-thin LCD TVs recently, we mentioned how Sharp had achieved the slimming down: by putting most of the electronics in a separate box, connected by a single cable. Well, now there's news that Sharp has teamed up with AMIMON to do away with that cable and transmit the HDTV signal wirelessly to the display from the tuner box. The "WHDI" technology has a range of 100 feet, a latency of less than a millisecond and can transmit through multiple walls. So while the 37-, 42- and 46-inch TVs will now have an optional wireless video transmitter with AMIMON's tech inside, there's no info on the price yet. Read on for the full press release.
More @ Gizmodo»

SlingPlayer Mobile Gets Updated For Windows Mobile and Symbian

Sling's just rolled out new versions of their SlingPlayer Mobile for Windows Mobile (both versions) and Symbian S60. It's a free upgrade for current users and adds support for new handsets (Nokia N95, Samsung i760, Treo 500v, etc.) and improves streaming quality (Sprint Mogul) on others. We went to a car wash this weekend and had 10 minutes of downtime. TEN MINUTES! This should ensure that never happens again. [Sling]

via Gizmodo