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Filed under: Digital Cameras

Surely you remember Panny’s new duo of camcorders that featured the so-called 3MOS technology. No? At any rate, Panasonic’s HDC-SD100 has just been reviewed by the cool cats over at TrustedReviews, and while we’re not sure if all that MOS was the reason for its success, critics were generally pleased with the performance (at least in good lighting). They noted that point-and-shoot fans would likely be thrilled, but the professionals in the crowd will probably wish for a few more manual controls. Still, at the end of the day, reviewers proclaimed that if you’ve been “holding out for an AVCHD camcorder with the full gamut of professional features, this could be your dream come true at last.” You hear that? Dream come true, son.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Worried that retailers might be running out of utter crap to sell? Been looking for that perfect accessory to go with your “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps” sign? Enter the USB-powered, soda can-shaped anion humidifier. Not only will this magical and totally necessary device clean the air around you and re-energize your fat, lazy body, but it will look cool while doing it — you know, just sitting there being all soda-can-badass. When you absolutely, positively can’t find anything else to do with $24.99, the “Portable Can Shape USB Office Home Miniature Anion Humidifier” is there.

[Thanks, Simon]

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Filed under: Displays

Our friends at Engadget Spanish got a look at Texas Instruments’ DLP Pico projector, which both Optoma and Toshiba have expressed interest in. The little unit pumps out a WVGA (we think) 1000:1 image, which they found quite satisfactory, in addition to 0.5 watts of sound. The built-in battery should run the thing for a couple of hours. Action-packed video after the break, en español!

Continue reading Texas Instruments’ Pico projector prototype caught on tape

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Filed under: Cellphones

Sonim has chosen IFA this week to show off its latest hardcore G’zOne killer, the in-your-face, take-no-prisoners LM801 candybar. Highlights of the rugged set include an integrated flashlight, laser pointer (for those times when you’re stranded in the Rockies and you need to blind you some bears, we figure), magnetic compass, barometer / altimeter, FM radio, and thermometer, all bundled neatly into a yellow shell that repels all the water and dust you can toss at it. Most carriers aren’t terribly talented at offering a rugged lineup, so we can think of a few who’d be well-served to investigate adding something like this into the mix — and seriously, what’s with no other phone having a laser pointer?

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Filed under: GPS

TomTom is really pushing the connected capabilities of its navigation devices with this new x40 LIVE series, which hit IFA this year as rumored. The GO 940 LIVE, GO 740 LIVE and GO 540 LIVE include a “new and extended” version of IQ Routes, which can adjust your route for predicted and actual road conditions, based on historical data and TomTom’s HD Traffic feature. The units include Safety Alerts for alerting to speed cameras, Fuel Prices, and Local Search, which is powered by Google and allows you to plan a route to your search results. Also onboard is voice command and control, letting you plan routes and make phone calls using only your voice. The series will be available in the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands and Switzerland this fall, starting at £299 (about $544 US). LIVE services are £10 a month. Unfortunately, the versions we played with at IFA didn’t have a live connection, but software looks easy to access and easy to use. Too bad the actual hardware looks circa 2003.

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Filed under: Laptops

While MSI’s 8.9-inch Wind U90 first made an appearance in June at Computex, it took MSI this long to flesh out all details — which is actually a relief, given the ridiculous quantity of Eee PC SKUs ASUS has managed to pump out in the meantime. We just got to handle the new laptop, and we think MSI might have a winner here. The laptop is shipping with SUSE Linux exclusively to start, with an XP version in the works, and boots quite rapidly to the full OS. SUSE has never looked better, and we think these two might be quite the pair. MSI has kept the full keyboard of the 10-inch Wind, and merely bumped up the bezel while cutting the price; all the other specs are the same. MSI is planning on shipping this at the end of September or beginning of October for 339 Euro (no word on a US release), and is also working on a six cell battery to fix the paltry 2 hours of battery the Wind currently gets from the three cell.

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newVideoPlayer(”/gilliamiriver_gizmodo.flv”, 520, 410,”"); Apart from their Spinn 70s-retro analog goodness, iRiver had two beautiful concept products in their IFA 2008 stand which had a design that looked further into the past, as far as the beginning of the 20th century. As you can see in the video, both their Clix speaker—inspired by the shape of cathode ray tubes—and their pipe music player—which you can blow to mute (insert joke here), and connect it to a speaker resembling a phonograph horn—look both intriguing and beautiful. [More IFA 2008 Coverage]

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Handhelds

Toshiba is offering up a nice respite from the inane quantity of LCDs and, um, more LCDs at IFA this year. The SD Multi Tool and the SD Photo Editor are two touchable handhelds, offering up some beefy features where similar devices lack, and also skipping over some of the more traditional MID OS features that might put these over the top — a confusing mix, but again, not an LCD, so we’re hooked. The SD Multi Tool is the real wild one, offering dual 3.5-inch touchable (finger or stylus) LCDs, rated at 960 x 480 each if the spec sheet is telling the truth — that could be a combined resolution. The device offers wireless connectivity of some sort, and can handle web browsing, email, videos, photo editing and pretty much anything else that isn’t an actual phone call — though it can’t be tough to squeeze some VoIP in there. Meanwhile, the SD Photo Editor really earns its “SD” moniker with dual SD card slots, while the Multi Tool just has one microSD slot. The Photo Editor runs a similar OS, but seems distilled down to mainly the photo browsing and editing functions, with a bit of PMP functionality thrown in we hope. A 5-inch WVGA screen with 16 million colors should be plenty of room to work your magic. No word on what OS is under the hood, but it seems to be mostly homegrown Toshiba fare. We know the Multi Tool does HDMI out, and we’d hope the Photo Editor does as well, since they’re both supposed to hit in 2009 for a similar price point: around $300 US.

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Filed under: Transportation

Toyota hasn’t made a huge secret of its plans to develop and sell a plug-in version of the Prius, and it the wheels are turning a little faster than we’ve heard — fleet testing of plug-in models has been pushed up to early 2009, with the goal of having “several hundred” on the road by the end of the year. Still no timetable for actual retail sales, so you’ll have to be a wheelman for a government or commercial fleet to get your hands on one — good thing all those modders have the rest of us covered.

[Via Autoblog Green]

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Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, Household, Wireless

Alright, maybe “superflous” is a bit harsh, but we’re still a bit confused as to why LG stuck Bluetooth into its new 7000-series LCDs and plasmas. Sure, if they offered a Bluetooth remote we’d take it all back in a heartbeat, but the fact is that there are about four people on earth that own stereo Bluetooth headphones, and none of them have been watching TV on mute all this time — and the rest of us are too lazy to figure out how to beam pictures from our phone over Bluetooth, the other main function LG provides here. But would you look at that menu! It really makes it all worthwhile. Heck, LG could toss in some 802.11a, SCSI and a pinch of MIDI plugs if it meant more menus like this. Oh, and we suppose those purtiful icons will come in handy when browsing for photos off of the 7000’s USB port, so good on you, LG, good on you.

[Gadgie was the winner of our Engadget Mascot contest last year, he approves this message]

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