GadgetReview

If you happen to own one of five kinds of Nokia phone–an E72, E71x, 5800, N97, and N97 mini phones–and you’re fond of Netflix, then I’ve got some great news for you.

Netflix, just two days ago, launched a new kind of app exclusively for those five phones, that will allow you to remotely modify your queue, browse their library for possible additions to that queue, and even watch previews of upcoming releases.

It’s available on the Ovi Store, under entertainment.

About the only people saddened by this news is everybody at Blockbuster Online, who doesn’t have anything even remotely like this and is still jumping for joy over their new “download movies to SD card” system.  This would admittedly be awesome except the downloaded movies will only play on a television, but that’s beside the point.

If you’ve got Netflix and Nokia, folks, you might as well get the app.

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First responders, pay attention, because you might be able to save some MORE lives with what I’m about to hit you with next.  Some engineer managed to take ten dollars worth of electronic parts–available off the shelf pretty much anywhere–and modify his mobile phone into a cell phone that does double duty as a microscope.

This is no ordinary engineer; he’s an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, and he’s actually started up his own company to market the cell phone microscopes.

Not that this is just great for the medical and scientific communities–now any putz can check a blood sample for signs of tuberculosis, malaria, or anemia!

It’s conceivable that, from here, the phone would then be able to remotely send the images back to actual medical professionals for diagnosis before the patient was even put on an ambulance.

No idea when they’ll be available, but they really should do a whole lot of good when they’re done.

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In an interesting move, now retailer Orange is getting into the cash for old gadgets game with its Recycle and Reward program. While they don’t have the awesome automated kiosks of other vendors, Orange will give you a quote and a check within a week when you take whatever it is you’d like to get rid of–old mobile phones, laptops, and music players (bigger stuff that the automated kiosks can’t handle) and offers up cash for them.

It IS somewhat limited–no bringing in your old furnace, water heater or what have you; it’s pretty much exclusively a consumer electronics setup–but hey, free cash for stuff you weren’t using anyway?  That’s no small treat.

Also, Orange is also launching its Copy and Keep program, where they’ll charge you a whopping twelve bucks or so to transfer all your media, addresses and contacts from your old mobile phone to your new one.  Pretty useful if you’ve forgotten how or just plain old can’t be bothered.

So if you’re needing a new phone, and want to get rid of the old one, then it’s a great time to think Orange.

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It’s…um…about ten thirty AM.  Do you know where your children are?

If you can’t answer yes to that, and even if you can, you may still want to get your hands on a Little Buddy Child Tracker from Insignia.

The Little Buddy Child Tracker does pretty much what it says on the box, and it tracks your children.  Relentlessly.  Like non stop.  You can get the location of the unit at pretty much any time from your cell phone.

Yes, it’s a homing device.  For children.  Now, you may want to start getting cranked up about how children aren’t branded cattle to be tracked relentlessly, though you’d probably love to have this on hand if something happened to Junior.  My concern, however, comes into play in the “misuse” category.  Like instead of, say, tracking Junior someone decides to track Tammy Stalkerbait down the street by slipping it in her car.

Are we as a society ready for tracking devices?  I’m not sure.  But we’ll find out if you can shell out a hundred bucks for your very own Little Buddy Child Tracker.

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Just in time for Halloween comes this funny BananaPhone BlueTooth Headset that will allow people around you to view you as you’ve always wanted to be viewed.  Absolutely crazy.  With an undisclosed amount of awesome scenarios you could use this in, it’s actually cheap enough ($18) to warrant a purchase.  Now all you need is a headband to keep it stuck to your head.  Just imagine the possibilities.

[via NerdApproved]

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Well folks, a new bit of data has emerged about the idea of cell phones and brain tumors.

Seems that Environmental Working Group released data just recently that detailed just how much radiation you’re sucking up when you’re on the phone.  And then the Los Angeles Times followed that up with a strange study.  Check this out:  when the data from 23 studies was pooled together, there was no conclusive link between brain tumors and cell phone use.  This by itself would be interesting if not necessarily newsworthy, but when the Times jiggered the evidence a bit, comparing data from the “eight strongest studies”, they found out that cell phone users had between a 10 and 30 percent higher chance of getting tumors, with the more time spent on the phone being higher risk than those who spent less.

And then, here’s the weirdest point: seven out of eight of those “strongest studies” were all conducted by the SAME GUY IN SWEDEN.

So it’s not really time to freak out yet, but it’s probably a good idea to get that hands-free gear out, just in case.

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If you’re anything like me, you’ve got an old cell phone or two laying around the house and you’re about dying to get rid of it.  But you’ve got no idea where or how to dump it.  We all know there are loads of hazardous material laws to grapple with, and those collection drives expect you to pay to dump your hardware.

Enter the EcoATM, a device the size of an actual ATM that’ll let you dump your hardware quick, easy, and sometimes, profitably.  Simply drop your old phone or other device into the EcoATM’s slot, and the machine will determine if it has any value.  The machine will then make you an offer for the device, which it will pay off from a separate slot, usually in the form of a gift card.

What if your device is worthless, you say?  Not a problem–there’s no such thing as a worthless device to the EcoATM.  Even if it has no residual value, you’ll still be able to leave the device with the EcoATM, but you’ll also get a “freebie item”, plus EcoATM will arrange for a tree to be planted in your honor somewhere, which still beats having to pay off the collection people all hollow.

EcoATM is actually doing pretty well so far–its first day in operation netted 23 phones and passed out a full hundred bucks in gift cards.  Word is it got a BlackBerry Curve in prime condition.  So chances are, this prototype will likely be coming to an electronics store near you.

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All right, folks, if you’ve been waiting anxiously to get your hands on the Motorola Cliq, you should be happy to know that they’re looking to start taking orders October 19th.

Seems the company actually released this date in a brochure, which was then photographed and began making the rounds.  This handset will feature a touchscreen, and assures connectivity with your devices by both GPS and WiFi radio, and rumors suggest that Android 2.0 will come with the Cliq, so if you weren’t interested before, you might be now.

T-Mobile further threw some confirmation in by saying that they would start delivering product to their stores starting November 2nd.  Add this all up and it means, chances are, you’ll be able to get a Cliq right soon.

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Considering that NASA’s been whining about not having enough budget for the last couple years, it really makes them look bad to discover what a couple kids from MIT did the other day.

While NASA’s assembling teams have needed millions of dollars to launch one satellite, two guys from MIT put together a satellite of their own and launched it into low Earth orbit.  Here’s how they did it:

First, they took a styrofoam beer cooler and filled it with chemical hand warmers (to keep the thing from freezing in space), a cheap camera, and a prepaid phone with GPS so they could find the thing when it was all over.  They then inflated a weather balloon with helium and launched their “satellite”.  It got so far up that it managed to take a picture of the curvature of the earth.

Talk about your fantastic homemade gadgets–kudos to two schmoes from MIT for making NASA look like a bunch of whiny embezzlers.

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You’ve got to hand it to Elijah Wood for just plain old dramatic tension, folks–the man’s convinced that, someday, our gadgets will destroy humanity.

Here’s what he had to say about the Blackberry Uprising:

‘It’s madness. If it gets out of control and if it’s used for the wrong reasons or if it takes us away from our own humanity, then maybe that will be our downfall.”

Okay, so you’d think that a guy who genuinely believed this might well choose to set an example for the rest of us and toss out his own hardware first, right?  Well, sadly, you’d be very muchly wrong.  The hobbit’s got a cell phone and a Blackberry, which he keeps on him at all times.  He even cites his iPod as the reason he got into DJing.  Though give him credit, he does keep them out of sight and out of use during restaurant meals and at movie theatres.

So maybe it’s not quite as dire as he predicted.  But I guess if your iPod ever announces it wants to take over the world, maybe you’d better take it seriously…

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