by Darren Murph, posted Apr 25th 2008 at 12:56PM
Remember that WiFi pact brewed up between AT&T and Starbucks earlier this year? How could you forget, right? As if it wasn’t official enough already, the two have announced that the rollout has begun at company-operated Starbucks locations, and the nationwide effort will continue throughout 2008. Effective May 1st, qualifying AT&T high-speed internet / WiFi customers — that’s those who subscribe to one of the three higher-speed residential broadband packages, a small business broadband package or a U-verse offering with high-speed internet — will have free WiFi access at over 7,000 coffeehouses across the US. Unfortunately, we’re not given any real insight into what kinds of potential deals are in the works for AT&T wireless customers (if any at all), but here’s to hoping you all can get a little love, too.

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Jousting Knights

You can have this for ?24.95

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Silicon Alley Insider estimates that Google spends an average of over $7500 per employee per year on free food, assuming that each meal costs $30. That works out to over $72 million per year!

Is that worth it? Apart from considering how large their profit margins are and what a great perk does for employee morale, also consider this: given that a huge portion of Googlers make salaries north of $75k, a perk that costs 10% of that is easily worth it if those employees put in even 1 more hour of work per day.

Posted in Miscellaneous

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An acronym for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, ASIMO is improving its repertoire and is now dabbling in orchestral music.

ASIMO shows off its musical acuity by conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) on May 13, 2008. It will serve as the conductor to the opening piece “Impossible Dream.” Aside from ASIMO though, the concert will also feature renowned cellist, Yo-Yo Ma. While I maintain that anything metal could never (at least based on current standards) correctly picture the passion that goes with music, I tip my hat to ASIMO, as Honda is doing this to increase awareness of Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s projects meant for children. Honda is even donating $1 million to DSO for the creation of The Power of Dreams Music Education Fund.

Read the full press release.

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As we previously reported, video rental giant Blockbuster has been looking to acquire electronics giant Circuit City. Blockbuster has already offered a whopping $1 billion, but reports are flying in, saying that they cannot fund such a hefty offer.

In an official statement from the company, Circuit City said:

“Circuit City awaits a viable financing structure that is predictably executable by Blockbuster given its current constraints of size and capital structure before it would be appropriate to allow further due diligence.”

While this may be just another attempt to stop the merger in its tracks, Blockbuster has no resistance to going hostile in the bid. More on this as it happens.

Via [Crave]

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Iomega has announced the new ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive, a portable external data storage device touting a 500GB storage capacity provided by a 3.5 inch 7200rpm NTSF formated hard drive.

The ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive comes with a remote control to help you navigate through your collection of digital content and has support for various media formats including MP3, AC3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and JPEG. It also features both HDMI and component video outputs that you can use to display high-resolution digital photos and video on your display of choice. With these connections, you can choose your preferred video settings from either 480i, 480p, 720p or 1080i.

The ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is currently available in the US and retails for $209.95, and is expected to ship internationally sometime in May for around $282.

Via [Far East Gizmos]

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Apple 3G iPhone If analyst reports are to be believed, the 3G iPhone will be announced on June 9, the anticipated date of the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference). Apart from the much-awaited 3G version of the phone, analysts predict a slew of updates to the Mac and ipod line-ups.

It appears that Apple iphone inventories are not keepking up with demand which is still strong - and the company could easily reach the 10 million mark. I’ll be honest for a bit here: I am not a huge fan of the iPhone, and I believe 10 million is a pretty low number. Reason? The excessive price. Well, that might soon change, with analysts expecting the price to drop to US $299 or $349 (it is currently priced at $399).
[SOURCE]

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Just when you thought you had enough Star Wars paraphernalia, R2-D2 got together with R2-D1 to make sweet music as a speaker set.

You get a two-droid set, R2-D2 and his red doppleganger R2-D1. Each features a flip-up head to reveal a speaker. Plug the stereo headphone style plug into your PC, ipod or spare Wookie for some droid-based sound. We won’t kid you, these speakers are not powered so their volume is limited by whatever audio input you give them. But don’t you want to help out a droid who’s down on his luck?

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $39.99

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I honestly can’t say that I miss the cassette tape one bit. Sure, I didn’t have a ton of time to really enjoy the format before CDs took over, but anything that you have to rewind isn’t very much fun. Some people still have fond memories of those little plastic cassettes, and want to show off their love. This Cassette MP3 player is perfect for such people.

All you need to do is pop in an SD card loaded with your favorite tracks, and you’re ready to go. It may seem like just a novel case for an otherwise boring mp3 player, however, it does have one trick hidden up its sleeve. If your car still has an old tape deck in the dash, just pop this little device in and it will play music just like any other tape.  $39.99 might be just a little expensive for something like this, but it’s still pretty cool.

Source: Dvice

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The popular iriver PMP, the E100, is set to undergo a makeover and should return as a brand new player, either the E150 or the E200. One of the main differences that you will notice between the E100 and the new version, is the difference in the exterior. It will lose the plastic, and return with a nicer aluminum outside, something reminiscent of the silver ipod Nano.

Upon turning on the device, you will also notice the LCD screen to be much brighter and better than the original. Another notable difference, which you may like, or may not, is that the E100 is going to lose the two miniature speakers located on the back of the device. Now, I kind of like MP3 players with built-in speakers, I don’t always like having to use headphones whenever I want to listen to music. However, sometimes people blast their mini speakers and especially if it’s in public it gets annoying. So this goes both ways, depending on your personal preferences and how annoying this is for you.

So far, this is all that is known about the E150 or the E200, expect these to be available in the summer. Stay tuned to find out more when the news becomes available.

Via [Crave UK]

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