Month: December 2005

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The Atari 360?

Oh those loveable mods. No, not the U.K. scooter-riding hipsters from the ’60s, the geeks and the computer and gadget cases that they hack for the transplantion of other computers and gadgets. The latest Frankenhack making the rounds is a new Xbox 360 crammed (with some unfortunate overflow) into an Atari 2600 case. Why, you might ask? The proverbial “Because we can” or “Because it’s there” are the only possible answers (and, of course, because the builder knows we’re going to be blogging about it).

[Via Gear Factor]

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Baby Gap Meets Engadget

We bring you the latest entry in the popular Net game of: think of every possible subject and product category on God’s green earth and devote a blog to it:

Babygadget covers the latest electronic geegaws for crumbsnatchers and the yuppie parents dumb enough to blow money on such battery-powered snakeoil as the WhyCry, a baby cry analyzer. Maybe because they’ve been born to parents who’d shell out $100 for such nonsense?
(In all fairness to the Babygadget editors, they smirk at this one, too. In fact, they possess a healthy skepticism for a lot of this stuff, so we’re only halfway making fun at their expense.)

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Whacky USB Drive Roundup

Giggling and head-waving over the latest USB-powered silliness has become something of an Internet pastime. Fosfor Gadgets cast their vote for the 10 Weirdest USB Drives Ever. They’re all here: Headless Barbie USB, the iDuck, the Sake drive. What… no PEZ drives?Maybe they’re for a different list: coolest USB drives.

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Another Awesome Free Game


I saw this game, Samorost 2, mentioned on Attack of the Show a few days ago and checked it out last night. Man is it cool. I was up until the wee hours playing it. Gee, I hope none of my editors are reading this. It was research, surely — so that I can more deftly understand the online milieu. Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, if you’re a fan of Myst-like narrative puzzle games, you’ll get a kick out of this Flash-based wonder. Beautiful look, awesomely outside soundtrack, great sense of humor, and some maddeningly hard puzzles. The first few levels are free, access to the full game is under ten bucks.

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SimCity for Free

For you tightwads in the house (Craniac, is that you?), heads up on the free, online release of the original SimCity game. To play it, you need to register with Maxis, and you’ll need to run ActiveX control in Internet Deplorer, but if that doesn’t scare you off, have fun. It’s free! The link makes a great gift.

[Via TechBlog]

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Here Comes My Robo-Roach

It looks sort of like a high-tech Roach Motel on wheels, but it means roaches no harm. In fact, it wants to hang out, to be an accepted member of the pest community.

These sweet-looking bots are part of a project at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne to study roach behavior up close and personal. The site has all sorts of detailed information on the project and the bots’ construction.

[Via Make]

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ISO: Tremendous Dork

C’mon, Street Techies, represent! Gizmodo is running a contest to find the biggest dork photo amongst their readership. We know you got the pictures to prove your pownage!

I wish I had the pic of my son Blake, at 3 or 4, sitting at a Unix dumb terminal at his grandmother’s “Deathstar village” home (one of the neighborhoods around Bell Labs in NJ, where she worked). He’s in one of those za-zen sitting chairs, holding onto a humongous 3-button mouse, working in a drawing program. He was destined to be a geek. Sorry to out you, son.

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IZ: the iDog from Outer Space

Sega, the engineering masterminds that brought you the impressively silly iDog, have outdone themselves with the introduction of IZ, a wacky alien dude that lights up, moves various bulbous things, and makes an obnoxious racket when it’s feed MP3s.

C’mon, think about it. Would even a child pay attention to this silly widget for more than a few days? This is the kind of thing you get for the children of people you don’t like.

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NetFlix Model for other Products?

Taking a cue from NetFlix, an Internet-based handbag company called Frombagstoriches is offering a similar type of borrowing service for handbags. Now fashionistas on a budget can kick it like Paris Hilton, never being seen with the same handbag twice.

We’d love to see this model catch on in other product areas. Personally, I’d love to subscribe to a boardgame service or a robot rental. Luckily, many of the robots and robot building sets I own, I didn’t pay for (review units), but honestly, most of them only hold my attention for a few solid days and then I’m done. I’d love to be able to mess with a Robosapien or a nuvo or whatever for a few weeks and then send it back so that another bot can show up on my doorstep.

[Via Gizmag]