Have you ever been at the airport and seen a parade of dazed and elderly Asians, trailing bags that could easily have held a couple of large humans? You were witnessing an immigration, and those bags held every single earthly possession of those people. Seeing one of those sarcophagus-shaped bags always chokes me up because they become a bit of a legacy- those bags live in the homes of immigrant families forevermore. Most often, they’re used to pack several tons of blue jeans and Maybelline makeup, treasures from America, to take back to the homeland for a visit.

Of course, these days, it would be really hard to pack up one of those giant bags without incurring baggage overage fees that exceed the price of a trans-pacific flight. These days my family members use regular luggage and struggle to weigh the unwieldy suitcases on bathroom scales. I want to get everyone a Balanzza luggage scale, so they can use those body bags again without fearing the baggage counter. The Balanzza is a small, 10 oz. device that you simply hook to the handle of the bag, then lift. You hear a beep and then you can read the weight. That’s it. The Balanzza is accurate up to 100 lbs., which is a whole lot of mascara and Jordache.

The Balanzza luggage scale is $25, or you can get a 12-pack for $250.

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by Darren Murph, posted Jun 5th 2008 at 9:47AM
Okay, so it’s one thing to copy Microsoft on its Xbox 360 design — and yes, Amigo did so shamelessly with its R622AG WLAN router that we peeked about this time last year — but it takes some serious cohones to copy a copycat. Nevertheless, Sapido has done just that with its latest NAS. Yeah, we could tell you all about its SAMBA / FTP / BT compatibility, but we’d rather point out that for all intents and purposes, this enclosure is the exact same one Amigo used when showcasing its own device last year. So apparently there’s a universally accepted method for ripping off Redmond’s console — who knew?

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Filed under: Gaming, Storage

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by Thomas Ricker, posted Jun 5th 2008 at 7:20AM
It’s been a few years since we checked in on Navirobo. The iXs developed bot is now fully grown and fettered to Fujitsu and Kawasaki on a Japanese press tour. The bot features an impressive bag of tricks including an accelerometer (”ooo, it’s bumpy”), light sensor (”don’t forget to turn on the lights”), and voice guided navigation with the ability to point the way and describe nearby points of interest (read: honey pots). It’ll even detect alcohol on your breath and presumably take a swipe at your jugular in just retribution. See for yourself in the videos over at Impress or check the few posted after the break.

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Thanko has a new waterproof mp3 player for you to rock on while you’re busy flapping those fins, er, limbs of yours in the water. I suppose for those who do not indulge in any underwater exercise, this is good enough to use while you’re taking a shower. It is waterproof up to depths of 10 meters, featuring 1GB (bah!) of internal memory and a couple of buttons that are used to adjust the volume as well as change tracks. An hour’s charge over USB will result in 7 hours of non-stop playback. Will you fork out $100 for this, or prefer a waterproof ipod case instead?

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Those who have been waiting anxiously for the Tony Hawk Sidekick LX will soon see their patience pay off, as the device will hit retail stores sometime in the middle of next month onwards with an aggressive ad campaign to commence from tomorrow. The phone will apparently have a “skateboard look and feel with a grip-tape-texture and his well known hawk graphic.” The device has confirmed video recording capability, stereo Bluetooth connectivity, a plethora of themes and background personalization options. Are you saving up for one already?

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Alltel has gained some great market share due in large part to a clever marketing campaign which featured Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T as three nerdy cell phone salesmen who try to outdo the cool Alltel guy. Naturally, in every commercial the Alltel guy won out. Well, it looks like in real life the nerdy Verizon Wireless will really win out in the end.

Verizon Wireless has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Alltel in a transaction valued at US$28.1 billion. This includes the purchase of Alltel’s equity in the amount of US$5.9 billion and the acquisition of US$22.2 billion of Alltel’s debt. The cash merger is targeted to be completed by the end of the year.

The acquisition of Alltel will add an additional 13 million customers in 34 states to Verizon Wireless’ subscriber rolls. The company will also be able to add 57 primary rural markets it currently does not serve. Verizon Wireless currently has 67.2 million customers and has annual revenue of US$43.9 billion. Upon the completion of the merger, Verizon Wireless could have the largest number of wireless subscribers for a U.S. wireless company, which would take the title away from AT&T, who currently serves 71.4 million wireless subscribers.

Read more from the Verizon Wireless press release.

Brian’s Opinion

Wow, I didn’t see this coming, but now that Verizon Wireless has announced it, I suppose it makes perfect sense. This is a quick way for Verizon Wireless to add 13 million subscribers to its bottom line and become the largest wireless company in the U.S., based on subscriber totals.

I must admit, I am a little sad to hear about this merger. I was a huge fan of the Alltel commercials which had nerdy kids fighting the cool Alltel guy. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how Verizon Wireless could have the nerdy Verizon Wireless kid become friends with the cool Alltel guy. Also, since the Alltel commercials put Verizon Wireless in a bad light, we could be seeing a close to a great run of Alltel commericials.

I suppose Sprint and AT&T will try to take advantage of the Alltel acquisition by getting Alltel subscribers coming near the end of their contracts to switch to one of their services. You can expect a huge effort from Verizon Wireless to prevent that from happening. Verizon Wireless will attempt to retain Alltel customers by “pumping up” the Verizon Wireless services they will gain access to. There may also be some Alltel services that are introduced to current Verizon Wireless customers to give those subscribers another reason to stick around.

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As we expected Mozilla has made the next early-adopter release of Firefox 3 available for download. The latest is Firefox 3 RC2 and although the release notes are a little light on the exact updates, its safe to say they have taken care of the issues that were found during the testing of Firefox 3 RC1. This latest download of RC2 is expected to be the last early release and the full, final Firefox 3 is still on track for a June availability.

I have been using RC2 since last night, and was able to update from RC1 without any issues, similar to the last few versions of FF3 it has been stable so far. However, a little friendly warning, as always take caution with any beta or pre-release software.

Download [Mozilla]

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Basically, there hasn’t been a lot of information known about the Samsung i900, just spy shots and some other uninformative pics. However, recently a Chinese website has released some better looking pictures and some more information regarding the Samsung i900.

So far, it is set to come with a 3.5-inch touchscreen display with a 240 x 400 WQVGA resolution, a 5-megapixel camera, quadband GSM, 3G HSDPA with speeds measuring up to 7.2 Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 16GB of internal hard disk space. All of these specs seem to be really nice and high end, you can’t really find similar specs in normal, average GPS. Additionally, it comes with a 1500mAh battery, microSD expansion, FM radio, runs on Windows Mobile Professional 6.1, 256 MB of RAM, miniUSB 2.0 connection, TV out, and measures out at 4.40 x 2.20 x 0.51-inches.

Overall, it seems like it is going to be a really nice GPS, and as long as the price remains relatively inexpensive, it should sell pretty well. If companies want to compete with GPS giants such as Garmin and TomTom, they are going to have to do something out of the blue. No word on exact shipping or pricing at this time.

Read [PCOnline] Via [NaviGadget]

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Word has it that the Dell Mini Inspiron (no official name yet) will be released when August rolls around, adding another candidate to the already crowded mini notebook market. Apparently Dell is trying to make the keys on this laptop larger and more user friendly, ditching the Fn keys in the process. I guess this is no biggie, although there will be those around who find shortcuts to Wi-Fi connectivity and screen brightness missing a hassle. Instead, Dell will relocate those function keys into various buttons located around the notebook. Other confirmed features include a VGA port, a trio of USB 2.0 ports and a memory card reader. How much do you think this will be priced?

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Shiny Shiny wants to know if I would geek out with binary nail polish.

• Shiny Shiny: Would you geek out with binary nail varnish?

To quote James Joyce’s Molly Bloom:

“…and [my] heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Via: ZADI DIAZ

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