You know that the world has changed when Optimus Prime can transform into an iPod. While the movie took some artistic liberties with the design of Prime (hot rod flames?) Takara’s line of music Transformers pushes the envelope even further than that. Not only has Optimus lost all of his color but his trailer section now transforms into an iPod docking station. The tractor part of the Autobot still morphs into the same classic Prime we all remember so at least the old school fans won’t be completely aghast.

Takara is also offering an updated version of the Decepticon Soundwave except instead of transforming into a Walkman-style tape player he now can turn into a MP3 player. The tricky thing of the new Soundwave is that the player will dispense your tunes in either mode so you can transform the guy and listen to …

The first of the iPhone inspired competition has arrived but it looks like it will only be available in Japan. Dubbed the Nani by Sophia Mobile, the gizmo can offer video playback at 800 x 400 resolution, comes with Wi-Fi, two built-in cameras (VGA in the front, SVGA in the back), TV tuner and instead of pecking away at buttons you can control all of its features via its 4.3-inch touchscreen.

Inside it runs off of Windows CE OS and a RMI Alchemy Au150 chip that clocks in at 600MHz. Unfortunately it seems that the Nani doesn’t come with much in the way of internal memory; we have yet to find any mention of what size it does have but that’s probably why there’s microSD/USB slots.

The Nani rolls out in stores today in Japan.

Sanyo today dropped two new portable navigation systems into the U.S. market. The more interesting looking of these two is the feature-laden Sanyo Easy Street NVM-4070.

The Sanyo Easy Street NVM-4070, to start with, has a nice looking four-inch widescreen display which is touch-sensitive. You get text-to-speech, turn by turn navigation (including street names announced), pre-installed maps which include 1.8 million points of interest spread across all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Canada and the ability to get real time traffic updates that are graphically displayed as icons on the map.

Everex, a developer of personal computers, is getting ready to sell through Wal-Mart a new low cost Windows PC which runs open source productivity software and is targeted towards the back-to-school crowd. How low cost are we talking here? Try $298.

The eco-friendly Everex Impact GC3502 is powered by the VIA C7-D processor and uses Windows Vista Home Basic as its operating system. It has installed 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, DVD-ROM/CD-RW optical drive and integrated 10/100 Ethernet connectivity. It also has pre-installed OpenOffice.org 2.2, a well received open-source office suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.

How cruel the irony of being in an emergency situation only to be saved by a Hello Kitty gadget. For Hello Kitty fans it probably couldn’t be any better, but many of the rest of us would probably rather take our chances.

This Hello Kitty electronic emergency kit contains a number of features that might actually help you out of a jam. With an apparent internal battery the device has an adapter to power your cell phone, LED flashlight, AM/FM radio, a wind-up hazard siren and of course a compass. It also has a connection on the side where you can plug in a 9-volt battery to power it up.

I can just picture the headlines now: “Man survives disaster – saved by Hello Kitty”.

KittyHell via Engadget

Reports are in that Sony has sold just over 1 million Playstation 3 game consoles in Japan since its launch last November. According to a report from Reuters , publisher Enterbrain said that Sony had sold 1.01 million PS3 consoles as of the 15th of July.

This rate is still a little behind the Nintendo Wii which reached in the 1 million mark in one fourth the time and has sold 2.9 million consoles in Japan as of the 8th of July. The Wii launched in Japan almost a month after the PS3.

The Xbox 360 which is another of the big, current-generation game consoles launched towards the end of 2005 and has been trailing the Sony PS3 in sales in Japan having sold only 420,705 units.

Mobile Wi-Fi fans, here is your BlackBerry. Research In Motion (RIM) has now officially launched that new dual-mode smartphone we’ve all been waiting for. The Blackberry 8820 sports the desirable broad connectivity of working on global cellular networks (quad-band GSM/GPRS and EDGE) as well as 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi networks and it even has GPS built-in.

“The BlackBerry 8820 is an extraordinary business phone for people who really care about mobile communications and productivity. It features all the renowned power and usability of the BlackBerry platform with executive class styling and unprecedented connectivity features, including cellular, Wi-Fi and built-in GPS,” said Mike Lazaridis, RIM President and Co-CEO in the RIM press release.

The 8820 is RIM’s thinnest smartphone yet with a full QWERY keyboard, 320 x 240 display and it supports memory expansion through microSD / microSDHC. The Wi-Fi capabilities …

FairUse4WM has been fairly well known for its ability to the Windows Media DRM and with its latest version 1.3 it boasts to be able to completely remove the digital rights management restrictions from songs purchased from the Zune Marketplace; a feat to which it was previously unsuccessful.

This, like most of these situations, will likely be short lived. Microsoft is undoubtedly already well on there way with a new version of software for the Zune to combat the latest FairUse4WM version. But, until then you can use this to release your songs from the DRM clutches. If you’re too late for this version you’ll likely get another chance, that is until Microsoft figures out who the heck “viodentia”, (the FairUse4WM author) is.

via Electronista

Last year Google launched something called the Google Custom Search Engine, which is a tool that allows the addition of a custom-looking Google search box to just about any website. It met a lot of needs in providing a comprehensive search tool to the websites of many businesses, but it to the dismay of some it came with ads. The advertisements are how Google can afford to provide these tools without charge, but often the ads would take away from the professional branding of the site and even have the potential of showing advertisements from competitive products or services.

Tuesday Google launched a service that builds on the Custom Search called Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE). CBSE allows businesses to place the search tool on their site and customize the results, without the Google ads. Businesses can implement their own logo …

It sounds like some hackers have found a hole in the Nintendo Wii game console that will allow them the bring up their own home-style games to play on the Wii.

Reportedly the Flash Player running on the game console through the games Internet Channel is a relatively minor challenge to crack and it won’t be long before home made games will start taking the place of the ones available from Nintendo, but with these you won’t need to pay Nintendo any Wii points. We can’t imagine that Nintendo will be all-too happy with this one and will probably be following up in not too long with an update to the console, because Nintendo doesn’t have a problem with you putting your own games on the Wii, as long as you do it their way.

via T3

Here’s an iPod dock that took the design path a little less traveled and it appears the results have turned out nicely. The Shanling MC-30 iPod Music Center combines a CD player, AM/FM tuner, iPod dock and a tube power amp into a compact and sharp looking brushed aluminum frame.

The music center runs by an included remote control but also has volume and input selector knobs concealed in the top of the front leg columns. A blue LED light shows off the disc player and an LCD panel on the front displays current settings. The stereo includes quality components from the likes of Philips and Burr-Brown to put out 3 watts per channel from a tube power amplifier.

If you’re looking for a home stereo that centers on your iPod you’ll probably be the only one on the block with one of these, but …

HandHeld Entertainment, despite making portable media player after portable media player over the years, continues to not be a name rolling off the tongue when one thinks of PMPs. HandHeld looks to be at it again though, announcing the beginning of sales today for its new Zvue 260.

The Zvue 260, like many other Zvue players, lacks internal memory. It instead uses external SD memory cards for storage of media content. This particular player, priced at less than $100, comes with a 1GB SD card out of the box. This card is enough to hold up to six hours of video or 500 MP3 songs.

If the shared gym equipment at your local fitness center just isn’t cutting it for you anymore perhaps it’s time to move up to owning your own set of pipes. The Ferrari Unica gym will fulfill all of your fitness requirements as well as car fetish needs with its bright red finish, comfortable leather padded seat and durable design.

The gym is an idea between the car manufacturer and fitness equipment manufacturer Technogym offering 25 different exercise routines to get your body into top shape. It even has a key card where you can record your physical data and program your favorite training exercise routine. Of course such luxury doesn’t go for the low cost of a monthly gym membership at the Y; expect to buck up $20,290 for your own slice of staying in shape and style. Now that’s some expensive sweat.

Source: …

Sony’s hoping to hit up the wallets of social networkers and video bloggers everywhere with its unveiling today of a Web-focused, portable camcorder. The new Sony Net-sharing Cam is priced at around $200 and should be available in September.

The Sony Net-sharing Cam, which shoots video in the MPEG-4 recording format, can record about five hours of video onto a 2GB Memory Stick Pro Duo when default settings on the camcorder are enabled. It also can snap five-megapixel digital camera images and measures 1-3/16″ by 4-1/8″ by 2-1/4″.

Images of what appears to be a new design of Sony’s PlayStation 3 Sixaxis controller appears on Yahoo’s official site for “The Force Unleashed”, LucasArts upcoming next gen game that lets you kick much good guy ass as an apprentice of Darth Vader. The talkback sections on gaming sites exploded with readers commenting on what it could mean; did someone at LucasArts accidentally leak a forthcoming design for the PS3 controller? Further compounding the mystery the image of the strange PS3 controller then vanished from the original site. Did Sony ask LucasArts to remove the design?

It now looks like that the PS3 controller image was in fact a fan-made mock-up of a PS3 controller from a couple of years ago posted on a gaming forum. What may have happened was the web designer for the “Force Unleashed” page grabbed the bogus PS3 …