GadgetReview

Coming to you today from the folks at fu-bi is the Retro Cube Mini Speaker With MP3 Player.

Basically, it’s pretty much what it says on the box.  It’s a speaker that hooks to your iPod or your PC, with either a headphone jack or a USB cable, and will give you about three hours of music for roughly every hour spent charging the battery.  You can also fill up a USB stick, MMC card or SD / SDHC card with music and play them directly from the speaker itself.

It looks like nothing so much as a old fashioned guitar amp, and this is probably where the “Retro” part comes into play.  They sell for about fifty bucks each, but only can be had in Japan for right now.  It’s kind of a nifty idea, but it’s a little bit short on execution.  I mean, great, congratulations. It’s a speaker.  I’ve got several.  But I like that it can be taken anywhere and will play music from outside media, turning it into a pocket stereo.  It’s the kind of thing I could’ve used back when I was in high school.

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So I was digging around when I found DARPArama, kind of a clearinghouse of prototypes and ideas and whatnot out of DARPA, or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

And I started reading about the Phraselator…and frankly, you’re not going to believe this.

The Phraselator is a voice recognition based translator device.  Basically, you speak it at the Phraselator and it tells you the equivalent of what you want to say in another language, much like the Universal Translator devices of Star Trek fame.  The Phraselator starts out with an onboard six languages, but this is only a starting point as the Phraselator can be taught many more.  In fact, the Los Angeles Police Department, which bought several of them, taught their Phraselators a whopping 224 languages.

It may well be only a matter of time before we can slip on a Bluetooth-style headset, go anywhere in the world, and be absolutely certain we speak the native language no matter what language we actually speak.

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If you’ve got any kind of interest in e-readers, then you know they can be a bit pricey.  But the jetBook-Lite from ECTACO is looking to change all that by selling for $149.95.

The jetBook-Lite is officially, as of this writing, the cheapest e-reader device on the market.

Now, when you get a low-cost device like this, naturally you give up a few things.  Tops on the list is 3G wireless connectivity and color secondary screens.

However, what you DO get is support for pretty much any ebook format on the face of the earth, including eReader DRM from Barnes and Noble.  Plus, you also get support for multiple languages and a built-in dictionary, a rotating screen that can handle portrait or landscape mode, and last but not least, and incredible twenty three hours of run time on the strength of four AA batteries.

It’s a pretty good value for a cheap e-reader.

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Well, folks, it’s true.  An era has ended.  One of the greatest early guardians of Internet content just got wiped off the face of the web about ten hours ago.

I’m talking about Geocities, folks, the place where everybody who was anybody who knew HTML went for free web hosting.  They too could make a web page about their cat or their dog (Foofie, even–if you saw the White and Nerdy video that makes a lot of sense) or anything like that.

Back in the early days of the Internet, long before blogging and SEO and any modem speed much faster than 14.4 kbps (yeah, K.  As in Kilobyte.), Geocities was the place to go to get a chunk of the world wide web for yourself.  And Yahoo realized this, inevitably buying it for a whopping $3.5 billion bucks.

Of course, these days, Geocities wasn’t as widely used as the blogs and social media of today, so that spelled the end for Geocities.

So long, old friend.  We’ll miss this simple relic of a bygone era, back when the Internet seemed new and potential seemed limitless.

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I have to admit I’m somewhat happy about this development and at the same time somewhat unnerved by it.  After the incredible success of Fallout 3, and what will likely be the success of Fallout 3: Game of the Year edition and its numerous attendant DLC titles, it’s not too surprising to see that more and more games are saying “me, too!” and taking a run at post-Apocalyptia.

First we got Borderlands, which is clearly trying its heart out to be the next Fallout 3.  But now, recent announcements have been made about another such title, Metro 2033 from THQ.

Set in the sprawling Moscow subway system, you play a man out to warn the survivors of apocalyptic near-annihilation about a new threat, one that’s even worse than rival subway stations vying against each other for the last scraps of scraps and the nightmares roaming the surface of Moscow itself.

This is slated for release in “early 2010″, which will completely miss the Christmas shopping season, but may get a sliver of that sweet crack known as gift card season.  You’ll be able to get it for PC and Xbox 360, and if standards hold, will run about $60 for console and $50 for PC.

I find myself of mixed emotions about this–while I personally loved Fallout 3, I’m hopeful that its imitators will be at least passably good.  But last time someone promised me something like that–”Oblivion-killer”, anyone?–I got stuck with TWO WORLDS.

And no one needs more of that.

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Strap in and brace yourselves all over, kids, because I got a HOT list of deals here for the upcoming Black Friday sales!  Seems that Office Max dropped the dime a bit early on what they’ll be offering up for cheap the day after Thanksgiving (early?? It’s not even HALLOWEEN and they’re talking Black Friday!), but their incredibly gauche behavior brings you a whole lot of deals.  Check THIS out!

How about an Acer netbook for $150?  I know, you’re probably blinking rapidly and reading that again, but it’s true.  And it’s not where the deals end…but where they BEGIN, my friends. How about a Compaq Presario AMD Athlon II dual-core CPU for $240?  Maybe you like the DVDs…well, you can get a Memorex portable DVD player with seven-inch screen for $30.  Start hunting for couch change now and by Thanksgiving you should have enough for even a Magellan RoadMate 1440 GPS.  Just $70!

It’s enough to make even the most hesitant shopper think twice about clutching the wallet in a death grip.

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Nowadays, saving energy is quickly becoming common sense as opposed to forward thinking.  More and more tech consumers are aware of vampire power and and there are plenty of products out there to combat this unnecessary use of energy.

Having recently been introduced to the TrickleStar products, I have found them to be easy to use as well as being relatively easy on the wallet.  What I can say right away is that you are not going to see a noticeable difference in your electric bill.  Not unless you are using a ton of them.  You’d really have to have your whole residence outfitted in order to see your bill go down. …Continue reading: TrickleStar PC TrickleSaver And PC TrickleSwitch Review

Anytime the Apple page goes down it’s always a nice feeling knowing that new products will soon be displayed.  On sale now are fresh new 21.5″ and 27″ iMacs of various specifications and ranging in price from $1200-$2000 depending on what your needs are.

Now included with these new iMacs are wireless keyboards and the new wireless “Magic Mouse”.

Also new to the Apple website are new MacBooks and Mac Mini’s.  Buy on.

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So the early word is that, finally, we may have a Kindle killer on our hands, and it’s from a little known outfit called Plastic Logic.

The Que, as it’s called, will see the light of day for the first time ever at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (booth 11840, in case you want to know exactly where to go) on January 7th.

What’s interesting about the Que is that it’s less than a third of an inch thick, yet is WiFi enabled and can handle PDFs, Word documents, and Excel documents.  Plus, the battery life, according to reports, will be measurable in days, as opposed to hours.

The early reports that call this a Kindle killer have one significant hurdle in front of them–namely, answering questions about the price of the device.  The Kindle runs $279, and Sony’s model runs $199…but how much does the Que sell for?  No one knows yet, and we likely won’t know until we can hit booth 11840 for ourselves.

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Most digital MP3 converters we’ve seen so far have been bulky and expensive.  It’s about time we get one that is compact and more affordable.  Looking to be that remedy is the Ion Mix Meister.  Easy as Sunday morning (see the pic below), this USB music converter will effectively help newbies get all their old records and cassette tapes transformed into MP3’s.

Priced at $82, it’s great to finally see a product that cuts out the middle man as we’ve seen the pricey record player and cassette deck that will do it for you even though you already are sitting on an old one.  On sale now.

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