By Andrew Liszewski

The cold temperatures and dry air has made static electricity the bane of my existence these days, but that doesn’t mean that everyone has to suffer from easy science at work. This small neon light features a couple of wire leads you hold in your hands, and as you walk across the floor shuffling your feet, the static charge that builds is discharged through the bulb causing it to glow. Now I don’t envision it gives off enough light or is reliable enough to be considered an eco-friendly alternative to a flashlight, but I’m sure it will serve to impress any simple-minded revelers at your New Year’s Eve party tonight. $4.95 from X-tremeGeek.

[ Human-Powered Light Bulb ] VIA [ Random Good Stuff ]

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By Chris Scott Barr

In my grandpa’s attic you will find, among other things, 40 years worth of National Geographic Magazine. Let me tell you, that takes up a lot of room. If you’re looking for something very specific in one of the issues, you can bet that it’s going to take a little while to find (mostly because they’re all stored in boxes). Of course if you want the information from every single issue right at your fingertips, there is a much superior way to do it.

National Geographic has decided to release the content from each single issue (starting way back in 1888) in a convenient digital format. Each map, photo and article is contained on a special 160GB hard drive. Surprisingly, it only takes up 60GB, so they’ve setup the drive to have an extra 100GB partition to store your own personal files. There’s also a bonus DVD which contains tips on taking superior photographs and a behind-the-scenes look at how National Geographic is put together. At $200, this is no doubt worth each penny.

[ National Geographic ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

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By Andrew Liszewski

It’s claimed that drinking a warm glass of milk will help you fall asleep at night, and now it can help keep the boogie man at bay while you sleep too! These acrylic glasses look like they’re filled with milk, but it’s actually opaque plastic that glows thanks to a white LED and a set of 3xAAA batteries. There’s a dedicated on/off switch on the bottom of the glass for killing the light altogether, but it can also be switched off by either turning it upside down or simply knocking it over. $11.50 each available from Amazon.

[ Milk Glass Cup LED Night Light Lamp ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]

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Should you be the sort of person who doesn’t mind fiddling around with alpha level software, you’ll definitely want to know about the BlueMaemo Bluetooth emulator. Available via the Extras-Devel repository on your N900, this app grants the device to mimic other Bluetooth gadgets, such as keyboards, mice, and yes indeedy, gaming controllers. Its developer Val

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Sure, OnLive has already done live demos of its “cloud gaming” service, but it never hurts to get another comprehensive 48-minute video on the subject. In a presentation at Columbia University, CEO Steve Perlman goes over the nitty gritty of how game streaming works, the OnLive user interface (11:53), an inevitable Crysis Wars demo (16:35), Brag Clips (17:49), and of course the iPhone app (19:31). Though cellphone integration is still limited to primarily spectating and social networking functions, Personal computers and Macs can get gaming via a 1MB browser plugin, or you can grab the microconsole streaming box for your Television, which Steve recommends might be given away for free with OnLive subscriptions. If you’ve any more unanswered questions, check out the audience Q&A at 33:14, and the full vid awaits after the break.

Continue reading OnLive shows off UI and iPhone use in marathon tech demo (video)

OnLive shows off UI and iPhone use in marathon tech demo (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Evan Ackerman

24 USB 2.0 ports, you say? Some people might call that excessive. I’m not one of those people, because 24 USB ports isn’t enough for me. I mean, after I’ve plugged in my volcano, Christmas tree, lunchbox, chameleon, missile launcher, microwave, light bulb, mouse wheel, chainsaw, ethernet hub, sunglasses, wireless HDMI adapter, cat ears, slouch meter, transfer cable, foot switch, spoonful of cereal, digital microscope, race car email notifier, am/fm radio, travel mug, micro display, shortwave radio, and Whack-A-Mole, that doesn’t leave any room for other things that might come in handy in for some specific tasks… Like, a mouse. Or a keyboard.

So obviously, it’s necessary to get more than one of these. How many, you ask? Well, if you go back to the early days when we were just a wee tiny blog (and for the record, at that point, I personally didn’t even know what a blog was), it turn out that OhGizmo has a total of 1,073 posts about USB stuff of varying degrees of usefulness.

Make that 1,074.

So if you want to plug all of the USB stuff that we’ve written about in at once, you’ll need 45 of these 24 port USB hubs. At $70 each, that’s $3,145. Superior begin saving; you can find them at USB Fever.

[ USB Fever ] VIA [ RFJ ]

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By Andrew Liszewski

Jealous of all those new-fangled cellphones that come with built-in projectors these days? Well the HypnosEye will level the playing field. It seems to work like an overhead projector, using a mirror and lens to magnify and project the display from your cellphone onto a wall, ceiling or other surface. There’s no light source of its own, so you’ll need to set the brightness on your phone’s display as high as it can go for best results, which also means it will probably work better with devices with massive LCDs like the iPhone, iPod Touch, Zune etc. Unfortunately though the $117 price tag from the Japan Trend Shop pushes this well out of the novelty purchase price range, particularly when the results as seen in the video I’ve included after the jump aren’t great.

[ HypnosEye Projector and Screen Set ]

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Sure, this ain’t the first time that Seagate’s allegedly run afoul of the law, but this tale will definitely have you breathlessly demanding more (you know, if patent infringement is exciting to you — which would actually be pretty weird). Way back in July 2000, Convolve (an M.I.T. spin-off formed to market the school’s hard drive noise reduction research) sued Seagate for using patented tech in its Sound Barrier Technology — with the end result being that Seagate drives no longer support automatic acoustic management. But that isn’t the exciting part. In a dramatic turn reported by The New York Times, a former Seagate employee named Paul A. Galloway has apparently provided “an eyewitness account” of what went down, including the theft of info obtained in a meeting between the two companies held in 1998 and 1999 and the destruction of blueprints relating to Convolve’s technology. As for the whistleblower, he claims that he was kept in the dark about the nature of the research he was working on, with Seagate even going so far as to take his personal with notes pertinent to the trial. All of this (and more) are detailed in an affidavit that is available (in PDF form) by hitting that source link — and, man, is it a page-turner!

Ex-Seagate employee claims the company stole MIT research, tried to cover up its tracks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like Nokia’s pulling all the stops in its patent fight with Apple: in addition to the already-filed lawsuit, the Finnish company has now filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission, alleging that “virtually all” of Apple’s products infringe one of seven patents covering user interfaces, cameras, antennas, and power management. Ouch. Of course, this is a pretty standard tactic as far as major patent disputes go — this is just a second front of the same war, and we’d expect Apple to lodge an ITC complaint of its own in due time. What could make this interesting is the ITC’s power to ban imports of infringing products in relatively short order, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.

Nokia brings Apple patent fight to the ITC, says most Apple products infringe originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve always wanted a really solid humanoid robot of our very own. Remo, a hobby bot recently released in Japan — who boasts two arms and legs and seems to be about the size of a Good Guy doll — could perfectly fit that bill. He’s got pressure sensors in his feet to help out his balance, two sensors in his “eye” section (with two color CCD cameras for image processing), and Bluetooth connectivity for communication with your Computer. He also comes with the expressive faceplate you see in the pic — which should definitely keep your nieces and nephews from trying to touch him, anyway. Remo is available in Japan now, but something of this quality is, as you may have guessed, not cheap: he’ll run you

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