Gadgets Club Reviews and Info on Electronics

Technoporn Special: All the Lovely Contestants in Intel’s Core Processor Challenge, Each With Its Own Gorgeous Centerfold

Last month, Intel hosted a PC design challenge with 26 prototype entrants from all around the world. You may have heard about it, hell you may have voted for a machine, but now, for the first time, you get to see each of the contestants sprawled out and baring it all, lovingly photographed by Erin Lubin. Go ahead, sit back and leaf through all 38 shots. It might feel wrong—but it's perfectly natural. – Wilson Rothman

Intel Core Processor Challenge [Intel]

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Encyclopaedia Britannica sues TomTom, Magellan for alleged patent infringement

Filed under: GPS

TomTom has already tussled with Garmin over alleged patent infringement, but it looks like the company has now drawn some ire from a slightly more unexpected source, with Encyclopaedia Britannica now suing it, along with Magellan and, somewhat curiously, American TV & Appliance (a retailer based in Wisconsin). So far, about the only thing that's known about the lawsuit -- which was filed May 21 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin -- is that Encyclopaedia Britannica is claiming that the companies infringed on some of its patents for a "computerized map system." Exactly how that applies to these three particular companies and not everyone else, we're not sure, though we're sure we'll be hearing more about it soon enough.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Mamiya offers sub-$10,000 medium-format digicam

Mamiya, along with competitors such as Pentax and Hasselblad, is working to bring the digital revolution to the higher-end, medium-format camera industry. On Friday, the company plans to announce a $9,999 technology bundle for a 22-megapixel camera.

Mamiya's ZD Back and 645AFD II camera

(Credit: Mamiya)

The bundle ...

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Sirius / XM merger achieves dubious milestone

Filed under: Portable Audio, Wireless

Apart from a couple snarkyads from the NAB, the XM and Sirius merger hasn't exactly been a thrill ride, and now it looks like it's going to get even more boring. The two companies filed their initial merger application with the FCC some 70 days ago, and the agency hasn't even started the 180-day merger review period yet -- making this the longest application-to-review delay in FCC history. Industry insiders are saying this might mean that a final decision won't be reached until 2008, and that's not even counting in the time it'll take the Justice Department to do an antitrust review. No word on what the holdup is, but between that service outage and a loud customer backlash in the past two weeks, XM's got some housekeeping to do in the downtime before it really has to start pitching the merger to the government.

[Via OrbitCast]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Check out the Immersive Media street-scanning car

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Transportation

It looks like Immersive Media wanted to remove all doubt about what that street-traversing fleet of theirs really looks like. There's obviously more than one vehicle scanning in streets across the US, but now you know what to look out for -- and you little punks in the audience now realize just how tantalizing a target that little 11 camera orb on the roof really happens to be.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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iTunes Plus DRM-free, not free of annoying glitches

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

iTunes updates always seem to come with some growing pains, and yesterday's release of iTunes Plus and iTunes 7.2 doesn't look like it's any exception. We're hearing reports that the new iTunes Plus "Upgrade My Library" feature doesn't work as expected (when it works at all), that Plus downloads are incredibly slow and frequently time out, and that the preference to always see iTunes Plus tracks when they're available occasionally resets itself. On top of all that, the intrepid Apple sleuths over at TUAW have discovered that while iTunes Plus tracks might be DRM-free, they still contain your name and account information -- which seems like a fair piracy-prevention compromise to us, but has apparently rubbed a few people the wrong way. We're not sure if the various iTunes Plus problems are in iTunes 7.2 itself or just the result of pent-up demand for DRM-free EMI tracks overwhelming Apple's servers, but you can bet that Steve's minions are busy getting iTunes 7.2.1 ready as we speak.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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LaCie’s Ethernet Big Disk NAS hits 2TB

Filed under: Storage

Now that just about everyone else has went and upped their NAS capacity to two whole terabytes, LaCie is strutting in fashionably late with its forthcoming 2TB Ethernet Big Disk. The 2- x 7- x 11-inch enclosure sports the typical metallic LaCie design scheme, plays nice with Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems, and sports a web user interface that's apparently so easy a caveman (or your grandmother) could use it. The drive sports an Ethernet jack for connecting to a network, handles media streaming to UPnP-compatible devices, and packs a duo of USB ports that can be used to interface directly with a computer or for daisy-chaining another external HDD. Look for LaCie's 2TB NAS to land anytime for a stiff $1,099 here in the US.

[Via TGDaily]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Satmap’s Active 10 handheld GPS / mapping system

Filed under: GPS

If you're planning on roughing it out in the woods anytime soon, there's already a plethora of rugged GPS options to keep you (somewhat) on track, but Satmap Systems' Active 10 handheld puts a new spin on trekking. The device is being dubbed the "world's first to offer fully integrated digital maps and GPS hardware," meaning that users can purchase additional map cards that include detailed imagery of counties, regions, national trails, and national parks. Additionally, the unit sports a 3.5-inch backlit color display, integrated patch antenna, Windows CE operating system, a multitude of power options, USB 2.0 connectivity, an SD card reader, ARM 9 processor, 128MB of RAM, SiRF Star III receiver, integrated media player, and an impact resistant waterproof enclosure to boot. Initially, the company will be offering maps of popular UK locales, but additional maps (including "international" zones) will purportedly be available in SD cards or potentially as internet downloads in the not too distant future. Satmap is currently accepting pre-orders for the Active 10, and while the unit is set to ship sometime this month, you can get on the waiting list now for £299.99 ($594).

[Thanks, Simon]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Google “encourages” developers to use AdSense in their mashups in exchange of free tools/APIs

At Google's Developer Day held at the San Jose Convention Centre and attended by over 1,000 developers, our colleagues from UberPulse attended an impromptu round table with co-founder Sergey, product manager Sundar Pichai and Bret Taylor, the head of Google's developer program as well as other media colleagues from USA Today, InternetWeek and Cnet. To read UberPulse's coverage of the meeting, click here.

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DXG intros budget-priced 7.1-megapixel digicam

Filed under: Digital Cameras

After a slight detour with some PMPs, low-end manufacturer DXG is getting back to its regular game of cheap but wholly unremarkable digital cameras, upping things to a full 7.1 megapixels with its new DXG-711 digicam. Apart from that more than adequate (for most) resolution, the camera will give you a 3x optical zoom, a 2.5-inch LCD display, a built-in voice recorder, and 32MB of internal memory -- it's not clear what expansion options there are, although DXG's other cameras have all had SD card slots. As you can see, the company also keeps things about as basic as can be with the camera's design. If that suits you just fine, you'll only have to drop $150 to call this camera your own.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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