Vacuum tubes powered a whole bunch of gadgets in the past. They even continue to show up in or on our gadgets today. So what could be cooler than a Vacuum tube flash drive? Thanks to the folks at CF14 Industries we now have real Vacuum Tube Flash Drives.

It took some trial and error, but at last they got the interior of a 512MB thumb drive inside of a vacuum tube. The end result looks pretty awesome and should make your laptop look a bit more steampunk. Hit the link and see if you’d like to try it yourself.

We have some more specs for the Samsung Comeback, like this quality image with official specifications. As you can see, the Comeback looks a lot like a Sidekick. The features are pretty vanilla, but this might be an affordable texting/email phone. It sports a 2MP camera, microSDHC slot (up to 16 GB), Bluetooth and WQVGA resolution on the main display.

Can your fingers handle the navigation on the right and a QWERTY keyboard? Rumor was that it may launch today, but we haven’t heard anything yet.

Your eyes will never be the same after taking in this abomination. Someone should put it out of it’s misery, but since it is fueled by the souls of all your past dead Mario lives, it remains undead. You can’t kill it, you can’t reason with it and it’s ugliness can not be stopped.

At night this thing even glows in the dark, looking spooky as hell, where it comes from. It’s still fully functional. It’s appropriately called the Game Over SNES.

Intel is the biggest CPU maker in the world and is routinely far ahead of AMD, its closest rival, in sales. The poor global economy has meant that PC sales are down and that means that Intel’s CPU sales are down as well.

Intel announced the financials for Q2 2009 and reported a net loss of $398. The quarter also reports the $1.45 billion fine by the European Commission. Intel has revenue in the quarter of $8 billion and without counting the EC fine. The company had an operating income of $1.4 billion and a net income of $1 billion.

I am a big fan of online multiplayer shooters. I have spent many an hour fragging happily with Battlefield games and the Call of Duty franchise. Both of those franchises have games that cost around $50 to buy, not cheap but at least there are no fees for online play.

EA has announced that its free to download and play Battlefield Heroes game has now attracted a million players to sign up. The game generates revenue for EA with in-game ads and when players buy in game credits to upgrade their character.

Mogo makes some interesting peripherals for notebook computers like a mouse that stores and charges inside the express card slot of the notebook. The company has announced a new product today called the Mogo Talk that is designed for Voip communications with notebook computers.

The device is designed to be the most comfortable Bluetooth headset on the market with a rubber ear tip that conforms to the ear and eliminates the need for an ear loop to keep the headset in place. The device stores and charges inside the laptop express card slot.

I am a fan of music games and have spent lots of time with Rock Band. It continues to bum me out that Logitech doesn’t offer any controllers for Rock Band even though it does make some of the coolest controllers for Guitar Hero.

Logitech announced its latest Guitar Hero controller for the PS3 today called the Logitech Wireless Drum Controller. The device connects to the PS3 via a 2.4GHz USB receiver and can last for up to 50 hours on a single pair of AA batteries.

Samsung has unveiled their latest camcorder and the HMX-U10 is all about casual point-and-shoot. It measures a compact 56 x 103 x 15.5mm with a design to better fit your hand. The upright camera has both 10-megapixel stills capture and 1920 x 1080 Full HD video.

Samsung wants some of the Flip UltraHD market with this one. The HMX-U10 records to an SDHC card and uses the H.264 video codec. In the back there’s a 2-inch LCD for framing and previewing, together with basic controls. The 1/2.3-inch CMOS lens is fixed focus and apparently lacks zoom.

Samsung announced that they will be releasing two new SyncMaster 80 Series LCD monitors in Korea. The F2080 and F2380, a 20-incher and a 23-incher. According to the company, these monitors feature the highest contrast ratios available for displays that are standardly lit. The contrast ratio is a whopping 150,000:1. Both monitors feature a 178-degree viewing angle and full sRGB coverage.

Each are set on a 5.1-inch stand and will be released in Korea soon. We just don’t have a date. Pricing is expected to be around $293 for the F2080 model and $354 for the F2380 model.

Here’s a radio we can love. Hammacher and Schlemmer has comes up with a table radio that will eliminate commercials and annoying disc jockey banter for uninterrupted music playback at home or using the detachable MP3 player. Just select your favorite FM station and the radio will learn the commercial patterns over two to three days.

When the learning period is over, it automatically records songs and uploads them to the included portable MP3 player. The MP3 player allows you to play, pause, skip, fast forward, and rewind songs and comes with a AUX cable for connection to a car or home stereo.

Hitachi is looking to take advantage of the education market, so the company has developed some new electronic blackboards. New and improved versions of the transformed PX-DUO-50 electronic blackboards will be resurrected in each of the elementary and junior high schools in Japan. Costing about ¥700,000, the electronic blackboards have a PC built-in and use a detection device consisting of two infrared cameras, with the lens having a field angle of 170°.

Measuring 50-inches, the blackboards support all of the character input and character recognition that teachers need and come with a terrestrial digital TV tuner.

For a price of $399, you can expect to find all of the usual hardware that is already used in countless Intel Atom powered PCs: 1.6Ghz Atom, Windows XP Home, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD, DVD writer, WIFI+Ethernet, 5xUSB.

What sets this one apart from stand-alone “Atom boxes” is the 18.5″ (1366×768) display that also contains the computer. You’ll want to upgrade that 1GB to at least 2GB though. You’ll be happy you did.

The SMX-K45 and SMX-K40 are both standard definition (SD, 720×480) camcorders with a 52x optical zoom and optical image stabilization. Sounds like the recording quality may be decent enough on both devices to do web videos. Then again youtube quality has gone up.

The SMX-K40 records only on removable flash cards, while the SMX-K45 has a 32GB SSD. The smx-k40 will cost you $329, while the smx-k45 will cost you $499. 16 Gb is probably all most casual users will need.

Peter Bale, executive producer of MSN recently spoke to the Telegraph and announced that Microsoft will launch a streaming music service “imminently”, by the end of July. Bale said the service will be similar to Spotify, a streaming music service that offers both an ad-supported listening option as well as a premium subscription service with no ads. Bale also added that Microsoft is considering extending the service to the Xbox 360, but he didn’t give any other details.

They are still examining a business model. Apparently the service would let users stream tunes for free as long as they listen to ads every half hour or so. It will be interesting to see how this initiative will tie-in with the company’s Xbox 360 and Zune.

If you love music but can’t afford that OLED walkman, this new device might be for you. The Walkman E-Series Video MP3 players have just been announced for Europe. They come in either Black or Red, with a five band EQ, support for rights-managed WMA and WMV files, and an FM radio tuner with one-touch recording.

It will be available overseas from the end July. Nothing on price or when we might see this one stateside. It has an interesting look even if it doesn’t sport OLED. Not sure I like those Mickey Mouse ear buttons though.