Just in time to snag some of that cash you're sure to have showing up right about now via greeting cards from around the world, Verismo Networks is officially launching its diminutive
VuNow PoD. We've seen the device
evolve quite a bit since June, but with a smorgasbord of
competitors already
grabbing market share
left and right, we're
left to wonder if this one won't be sitting on the outside looking in. The internet TV streamer hooks directly to one's TV and internet connection in order to deliver web content (YouTube, of note) to the tele. While specifics are conveniently omitted, we're told that users will have access to "a broad choice of online video content -- from movies, global Live TV channels, to user-generated content and viral videos." It's available now for $99, but can you stand
yet another set-top-box beneath your flat-panel?
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Verismo officially launches $99 VuNow PoD with YouTube support originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments The colleague: one of the more difficult people in your life to buy a present for come holiday season. You might not know them as well as your family, but you likely spend an inordinate amount of time with them. Luckily that means you're more familiar with their work habits than most, so you're in a unique position to nab them a gift that not only expresses how you feel about your friendship, but is also something they can actually use. And that -- of course -- is where we come in. The Engadget Holiday Gift Guide is here to quell your fears of office discomfort, and lead you to the promised land of co-worker gift satisfaction. Read on for the full rundown, and don't forget to check out our other guides
right here!
Continue reading Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide: for colleague
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide: for colleague originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments At
long last, iPhone users who have
grown increasingly frustrated by
using Google Maps as their primary navigational tool can find relief... sort of. Available right now in the App Store, XRoad's G-Map application requires no internet connection whatsoever in order to function; rather, it packs oodles of maps into a 932MB package that covers most of western America and a few sporadic locales on the east. We're a bit baffled (and angered) by the not-at-all-comprehensive coverage, but we suppose we can expect updates to patch the gaps in the near future. It provides most of the same amenities you're used to seeing on real-deal GPS units, including POI editing, memo capabilities, location searching, etc. A word of caution, though: early reviews don't seem too stoked about it, so you may want to gloss it over good before hitting your card for $19.99.
[Thanks, Karel]
Filed under: Cellphones, GPS
XRoad G-Map app brings bona fide navigation to the iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments If you thought the original
XPS 730 H2C was boss, get a load of this. The incredibly diligent benchmarkers over at
HotHardware have taken the Core i7-powered
XPS 730x H2C under their wings for a fortnight of testing, and they've got a baker's dozen worth of review pages to display their findings. We can't even begin to cover the array of graphs, bar charts and triple-digit FPS numbers here, but we can tell you that critics were duly impressed with how well the Core i7 performance compared to older Core 2-based offerings. Gaming performance was predictably "fantastic," and even the single GeForce GTX 280 that it was packin' held its own under pressure. All in all, this fanciful machine was deemed "a worthy update to what [reviewers] thought was the best XPS 700 series system to date," and if you've got the coin, you'll probably be incredibly pleased with what it delivers. Dive deep (and we mean
deep) in the read link below.
Filed under: Desktops
Dell's XPS 730x H2C Core i7 gaming PC benchmarked and tested exhaustively originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments No, we're not talking about Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition or iPhone firmware 2.0, we're talking moderately more diabolical stuff here: explosions, international intrigue, fancy casinos where everyone wears suits and plays baccarat, the whole nine yards.
Echelon Conspiracy is a movie about... well, who cares, really? Point is, there's an all-knowing phone that tells you what to do and brings you both great fortune and great tragedy, making for a modern King Midas tale that has Critic's Choice Award nomination written all over it. The flick probably would've made more sense back when phones
actually looked evil, but yeah, sure, we'll add it to our Netflix queue in a few years -- somewhere between
Death Race and
The Transporter 3. Catch the spellbinding trailer after the break.
[Thanks, A. Razaq]
Continue reading Star of new movie is the cellphone equivalent of a psychotic K.I.T.T.
Filed under: Cellphones
Star of new movie is the cellphone equivalent of a psychotic K.I.T.T. originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments The cats at iGo are making their first-ever CES appearance next month, and they're bringing a suitcase of new gadgets with them, including three devices -- a laptop charger, a surge protector, and a wall outlet -- they say will reduce the power used when attached devices are in standby or off mode with automatic shut-off and recovery. Additionally, iGo will introduce a not-as-green netbook charger that, like its
wallMAX predecessor, lets you simultaneously charge your phone, PMP, camera or other device. Rounding out the showcase are various assorted accessories like a card reader, laptop cleaning kit, and international travel adapter. We know you're simply
dying to check out that triumvirate of awesome.
Filed under: Household
iGo unveils green power supplies, drives stake through vampire power originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Nintendo's Wii has been
maiming careless gamers since the day it was launched, but an inexplicable uptick in Britain has professionals scratching their heads. According to Dr. Dev Mukerjee of Broomfield Hospital: "There has been a 100 percent increase in patients complaining of Wii-itis." Turns out, Wii-itis is their word for playing so much Wii that you
injure yourself. Astonishingly, up to ten people per week are being "hospitalized with injuries caused by playing Nintendo Wii games," which has forced medical personnel to "issue warnings of the dangers associated with the video game system." Some of the most common injuries are Wii-knee (seriously) and tendon stretching / tearing, both of which could likely be avoided if gamers would bother to stretch before breaking a sweat. Sheesh -- what do folks even learn in Physical Education these days?
Filed under: Gaming
Wii blamed for ridiculous increase in British hospital visits originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments We always loved us that Voodoo-designed
HP Blackbird 002, but it was certainly a behemoth. Now it looks like the duo are going for a more realistic size -- and hopefully pricepoint -- with the all-new HP Firebird PC 803 that just fell in our lap, a gaming tower which flips the disc drive and most other components on their sides to save on space. The resulting kit seems to have more in common with gaming consoles than desktop PCs in terms of design, with very little configurability or expansion available, but the leaked specs are still quite palatable to the modern PC gamer:
- NVIDIA nForce 760i SLI chipset
- Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz processor
- 4GB of RAM
- Dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S cards
- Two 320GB SATA drives
- Blu-ray
- 5-in-1 card reader
- 6 USB, 1 FireWire, 2 eSATA, 1 S/PDIF and 1 DVI dual-link
- Bluetooth
- 802.11n WiFi
To save on space (and heat), the Firebird actually uses an external power supply, but we suppose the included wireless keyboard and mouse should help to make up for that clutter. As you've probably gleaned from the specs, those small form factor 9800S cards aren't going to be putting away the frame rates quite like the cutting edge cards from NVIDIA and AMD, and the seeming lack of expandability makes the (theoretical) up-front cost savings seem a bit less exciting, but for a certain type of gamer the Firebird could be a welcome respite from
monstrous, unrealistic and just-as-quickly-outmoded performance towers.
P.S.: Rahul's dubious rant about the boutique gaming industry -- which Voodoo still serves -- makes a lot more sense in this light. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming
HP Firebird 803 tower with VoodooDNA leaked! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments 
After it
went on sale in Europe yesterday, we figured that it could only be a matter of minutes before someone got their hands on one of HP's Compaq
Mini 700s.
Netbook News has gotten the job done and they've kindly filmed the proceedings. In case you've forgotten, the £399 ($594) netbook is the same as the Mini 1000 sold Stateside, boasting 1.6GHz Atom CPU and a 10.2-inch 1024 x 600 panel. Take a peek at the exciting video after the break and hit the read links for further impressions and photos.
[Via
Engadget Spanish]
Read - Compac Mini 700 video unboxing
Read - Compaq Mini 700 review
Continue reading Video: HP Compaq Mini 700 unboxed
Filed under: Laptops
Video: HP Compaq Mini 700 unboxed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Viliv got us salivating when it introduced the
S5 MID and S7 UMPC back at IDF, and now we've got a few tasty updates on both. Starting with the former, we've learned via an interview with parent company Yukyung that the S5 MID will come packing a 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 1.8-inch hard drive (1.3-inch when paired with a WiBro module in South Korea), a 4.8-inch 800 x 480 resolution touchscreen, integrated GPS / DMB and a primary battery good for up to six hours of use. The OS will be a home cooked system that's fairly attractive, though the outfit has made clear that WinXP versions will be available in the future. Speaking of the future, the currently unpriced S5 is expected to ship in South Korea this coming January or February, while the S7 is still on track for release sometime after that.
[Via
Slashgear]
Filed under: Handhelds
Viliv's Atom-powered S5 MID gets detailed and pictured originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments AMD, a company not exactly known for
meeting its own deadlines, seemed to be trying to avoid news of painful delays for the Phenom II by simply
not letting anyone say when the thing would be available. Now the chip is apparently in the hands of one lucky gamer at the
HardOCP forums, Table21, who was kind enough to run it through its paces. The Phenom II 940 running at 3GHz scored a 4,091 on 3DMark06 and, once OC'd up to 3.85GHz, delivered a score of 5,086. It's rather too early to draw any conclusions from these numbers, and we don't know what he paid for the thing, but that performance does fall well behind Intel's Core i7 Extreme that was
similarly benchmarked last month, scoring 6,608 at the same clock speed. That's quite a gap -- but nothing a little
liquid nitrogen won't fix.
[Via
PC Perspective]
Filed under: Desktops
AMD Phenom II processor bought, benchmarked, coveted originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Apple's claims that the
iPhone is a console might carry a bit more weight if the thing had, you know, some physical inputs. Touchscreens and tilt sensors are great, but without at least a couple of buttons and a D-pad it's kind of a hard sell to your average gamer. Inputs are exactly what the
iControlPad case for the iPhone adds, and we've got confirmation that the thing is at long last heading to production. The pic above is the final prototype, set to be colored black upon release -- and we presume those gaping holes will be filled with something other than air, too. No word on an anticipated ship date or price, but -- great as it may be -- without Apple support we don't expect it'll to do much to help the iPhone's gaming cred anyhow.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Peripherals
iControlPad gamepad heads to production, warms hearts originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments We know it's a touch late to be ordering up a gift for unwrapping on the 25th, but this one just might be worth the IOU you'll likely be forced to give. VUDU's
movie set-top-box, which typically
goes for $299, is now priced at just $99 for a limited time. Of course,
VUDU forces you to purchase $50 in movie credits along with it (thus the asterisk being applicable here), but it's not like you're just going to buy this and never watch anything, right? There's also a bundle that includes a Wireless Kit at 50% off (now just $49), making the grand total for a VUDU, $50 in movie credits and a
Wireless Kit only $198. Let's just say now is about the time to buy if you've been holding off on a VUDU -- we hear those
HDX titles are mighty tasty!
[Thanks, Rob]
Filed under: Home Entertainment
VUDU price dramatically slashed to $99* for the holidays originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments
We've seen small scale
liquid lenses progress from
concepts to
commerical applications, and now Joshua Silver, a retired physics professor at Oxford University, has perfected what he calls "adaptive glasses," applying similar tech in a singular and ingenious way. Aimed at helping developing nations where glasses are expensive and doctors are often in short supply, Silver's spectacles are made of tough plastic with with silicone liquid in the lenses. When purchased, each lense will have a syringe attached to it, and the wearer will be able to adjust the amount of liquid in the lenses -- which essentially changes the prescription -- without the need for an optician. About 10,000 pairs have been distributed in Ghana on a trial basis, with plans to distribute one million pairs in India in the next year -- the ultimate goal is one billion by 2020. And somewhere else in the world, a room full of opticians cry into their beer.
Filed under: Wearables
British physics professor perfects "tunable eyeglasses" -- no eye doctor required originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 07:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Man, that
PowerVR mobile graphics core must be some hot stuff -- hot on the heels of
Apple's $5M investment into developer Imagination Technologies, Intel's upped its own investment in the company to 3.04 percent. That's not quite as much as Apple's 3.6 percent stake, but Intel seems ready to commit -- it also filed a statement with the London Stock Exchange saying it might try and acquire all of Imagination if it thinks another company is on the prowl. Of course, Apple and Intel are like, besties, so maybe it'll all work out, but we'll see whose letter jacket Imagination shows up to homeroom in next week.
Filed under: Portable Video
Intel buys a little more Imagination, says it might want it all originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Nextar has been
pretty steadily adding newcomers to its Q4 family of navigators, and it's not about to let up now with CES just around the corner. The latest member, the Q4-LT, touts a 4.3-inch touchscreen, built-in speaker / antenna, text-to-speech support, 2D / 3D NAVTEQ maps of the US and Canada, 1.6 million POIs, an MP3 / JPEG player, rechargeable battery and of course, free traffic updates for life. Hope you're not too fond of the feature set, though, 'cause it won't even be available for purchase until Q3 2009 for $249.99.
Filed under: GPS
Nextar throws in free traffic updates for life on Q4-LT navigator originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments We already gave VHS
a proper burial after JVC became the last firm to shut the door on VHS player production, but there was still one nail in the coffin that wasn't quite hammered shut. Today, it all ends. The last notable distributor of
VHS films -- Distribution Video Audio out of Palm Harbor, Florida -- has shipped its final truckload of tapes, probably to a small town library or a mom 'n pop shop in a place you'll never hear of. According to co-owner Ryan J. Kugler: "It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt." An unceremonious way to exit, sure, but we have a sneaking suspicion that it'll one day be able to say it
made it longer than practically every other physical film format that succeeded it. Here's one last tear for the format that was -- now, time to plan a trip to the local flea market.
[Via
CNET]
Filed under: Home Entertainment
VHS distribution grinds to a halt originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments It's official -- Psystar's
"hotshot law firm" of Carr and Ferrell is desperate. Their latest brief on behalf of the wannabe Mac clonemaker says that Apple's
copyright infringement and DMCA claims against Psystar are invalid because Steve and Co. improperly registered the copyright to OS X. Yes, that's right: Psystar's arguing that the most protective and litigious computer maker on the planet didn't take the time to properly register the copyright to its flagship product. If that sounds insane, it's because it is: we found registrations for every major version of OS X, dating from 2001, in about five seconds of searching. Seriously, if an argument this simple was a winner you'd think we'd have heard about it from the get-go, instead of Psystar's dubious,
immediately-dismissed antitrust claims. We have no idea who's approving or paying for these
flailing tactics, but firms like Carr and Ferrell don't risk their reputations on ridiculous arguments like this for free -- maybe there's something to that crazy
"secret backer" conspiracy theory after all.
[Via
AppleInsider]
Read - Psystar claims Apple didn't register the copyright in OS X
Read - Apple's OS X 10.5 copyright registration
Read - Apple's original OS X copyright registration
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Psystar's lawyers take another hit, say Apple didn't copyright OS X originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments You don't usually equate CES with big time
Energizer introductions, but this year is going to be different. While our fingers are still crossed that a 50-foot drum-toting bunny is seen storming around in the Vegas heat, we do know that said outfit will be bringing along its minty fresh
Zinc Air Prismatic batteries, not to mention the newly unveiled Rechargeable Solar Charger. The above pictured device will boast a USB port to power an assortment of devices, and it can also be charged from an AC outlet if you just can't seem to locate the sun. Better still, its weatherproof nature should make it suitable for argonauts, and it'll only run $49.99 with a pair of rechargeable cells when it lands next summer.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals
Energizer's Rechargeable Solar Charger gets detailed, pictured originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments 
The ad above
seems to be implying that we'll all soon be able to put our frequent flyer miles toward one of
Virgin Galactic's super-expensive space tourist flights. Of course, it's pretty vague, and we're not going to get overly excited about it since we've barely ever saved up enough miles to get to Pittsburgh, but hey -- anything that encourages us to believe we can achieve goals previously reserved for Moby and Sigourney Weaver is fine with us.
[Thanks, Brian]
Filed under: Transportation
Virgin really, really wants you to keep saving up those frequent flyer miles originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments 
Did we just blow your mind with this all-black
T-Mobile Dash? Besides sporting a new look, this furtively shot handset seems to confirm details we received from a tipster over the weekend. According to the source, the new phones have been seen in a few T-Mob stores across the country, and they're sporting Windows 6.1 and a camera upgrade of some sort. We're light on details, like whether or not this bad boy is 3G, but then again there's no telling whether or not any of this is even for reals. But that
is a picture, isn't it? We'll just have to wait and see.
[Thanks, Scott K]
Filed under: Cellphones
T-Mobile Dash may not be getting an overhaul, may not be in stores now originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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