Tech Newz

It’s going to take $40,000 worth of diamonds to get me to buy an iPad. So nice try, Mervis Diamond Importers. They’ve taken an ordinary iPad—not sure which model, I’m afraid—and added 11.43 karats worth of diamonds. Yup.

This particular iPad goes on sale on June 1 for the low, low price of $19,999.

Rumor has it that if Manchester City gets that fourth place spot, all the players will be getting one of them.

And to break the fourth wall: this is ..read more

Using a foam packing peanut to hold a nail or screw in place is brilliant. I like to think of myself as a pretty mild-tempered person but any time anybody’s asked my wife about the most angry she’s ever seen me, she always tells the story of when we first moved into our apartment here in Boston and I went around the house hanging our window blinds. Shoulda used peanuts.

The universe was angry that day, my friends. Forces everywhere were ..read more

Look at this little guy. It’s just a $20 camcorder that promises to shoot 640×480 video at 30 frames per second. Will you get awesome looking footage out of it? Probably not. Probably absolutely not. Maybe. Probably not, though.

But you could conceal it somewhere to catch nefarious activities taking place. It has a belt clip! Too bad the actual camera would be facing the wrong way. You could turn it around and take your chances with your stomach hitting the ..read more

TiVo can’t catch a break. The company just rolled out its next-gen platform and then finally ended a long court battle with Dish Network, causing its stock to surge to new heights. This all happened within the last two weeks. But then last night the company announced its sad Q4 2009 financials.

You already know the problem. TiVo is having a real tough time signing up new customers and retaining current ones as content providers keep pushing their low-price DVR options. The ..read more

What’s least energy efficient part of your laptop? The LCD, correct. What are your options? Stop using computers? I would if I could, believe me. Or, you could be a little adventurous and try to swap out the LCD with another, more energy efficient one. Sort of like hammering a nail with a sledgehammer, yes.

The company that makes the replacement LCDs is called Pixel Qi, and it claims that its LCDs are anywhere between one-quarter to one-half as power-hungry as ..read more

So we finally have the official press release from Panasonic, we of course got a glimpse of the G2 and G10 the other day, but now we know all the news that’s fit to share. Both look like some decent kit, and a definite step up from most of the P&S cameras out there.

Just to recap, the G2 and G10 are the latest from Panasonic using the Micro Four Thirds format. They both sport a 12.1 megapixel sensor and ..read more

Stage aesthetics all contain a common trend. Generally, the equipment should be seen as little as possible, leading to pretty much every guitar amplifier in existence being black. Orange Amplifiers said, “To hell with all that nonsense” and proceeded to create some of the most visually offensive and sonically powerful amps on the market. Their latest release, the Thunder 30, should start coming out into the wild sometime this spring.

What you get are four EL84 class A power valves pumping ..read more

So this is odd. In reading up on Final Fantasy XIII, I decided to see how much it would cost to buy a PS3 and the game. The system is all but sold out all over the Internet! It’s backordered on Newegg, GameStop, and Best Buy (partially), and can be found on Amazon for quite the mark-up—there’s no way I’m paying $370 for the 120GB SKU. Did the Sony factory lose power or something, or is Final Fantasy XIII that ..read more

Last night, I spent a truly obscene amount of time reading through Action Button’s incredibly good reviews of games, old-school and new. The Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros 3 reviews in particular struck me in particular, because it was clear that the reviewers love these games even more than I do, which didn’t think was possible. These are deep waters indeed, I reflected — love of games can be far more intense and complex than I thought. And here ..read more

This is definitely the greatest coffee thermos out there — or at the very least the best I’ve seen today. Apparently they were giving these out at the Olympics press center (or likely “centre” — those clowns), and Microsoftie Josh Weisberg was the only person there to think of putting it on the internet. A room full of photographers and no one took its picture? Give me a break!

Unfortunately I doubt they’ll be available for us plebes to buy. As ..read more