Teenie-boppers aside, I don’t know anyone who would sacrifice utility for aesthetic gimmicks. I suppose there are people who want a wine bottle shaped thumbdrive, or a Darth Vader shaped flashlight but I don’t know these people and I’m very glad I don’t. But that won’t stop companies from coming out with cheap devices, the sole selling point of which is a gimmick like the following Lipstick shaped MP3 player I have to dub the most ridiculous item of the day.

Mobile devices equipped with touch screens, such as the iPhone, are without a doubt a stellar forward progression in device interface that is very intuitive to users, but still have their faults. The technology behind the screens fault due to occlusion and the way in which the touch is mapped to cursor position making it sometimes difficult to make a selection, especially if you have large fingers. Enter LucidTouch, a technology in the works from Microsoft and Mitsubishi Electric lab research.

LucidTouch employs a pseudo transparency that displays the fingers as shadows from behind the screen but not other objects behind it. The shadow effect is essentially a feature designed to make the user experience more natural than simply displaying touch points coming from the back of the screen which might confuse a user as to which finger is associated with which dot, with the shadow transparency the user needn’t think making the UX more intuitive. A passive touch feature allows the user to utilize their thumbs in making direct touch selections from the front of the device which may be used simultaneously with other fingers at the back using the multi-touch ability of the device.

What’s in your gig bag? A common frustration for guitarists is not being able to work with an amp when they really want to. An idea pops in your head or you are thinking about the lick that isn’t as tight as it should be but its too late to turn on the amp or simply too inconvenient to bring an amp with. The Pignose and other small amp variants help with that but sometimes you only have what fits snugly in your gig bag and if you have a hard case like I do fitting that Pignose and a cable in just doesn’t work. Enter the Vox amPlug which not only does not require a cable but also does not vie for space with your spare strings, tuner and other misc. we keep in our cases.

The amPlug plugs straight into your guitar and comes in three amp styles: VOX AC30, Classic Rock, and Metal. An AUX jack lets you play along with your CDs or MP3s and gives up to 15 hours of use with just two AAA batteries. The 100% analog circuitry faithfully recreates the sounds of the original amps the amPlug units were modeled after and special attention was given to the gain circuits of each variation to not only recreate the original sounds, but also keep the high frequency and gain sounding good when the volume is turned down.

The concept of the RAM disk has been around for a while but due to expense and limitations are virtually unheard of in practical use. FusionIo, with its revolutionary ioMemory technology, intends to change all this and bridge the gap of limitations between current storage and memory technologies with the innovative new ioDrive.

The ioDrive, with a catch phrase “The power of a SAN in the palm of your hand”, operates on the PCI-Express x4 bus with access rates approaching DRAM with a sustained 600 and 800 MBytes/s write and read operations respectively. Aside from the high speed, small packet transfer feature of the drive, ioDrives require no RAID controller to provide redundancy between drives, there are no moving parts and they use industry standard form factor and interface.

The MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) robot is a 350 lb murder machine with upgraded weapon systems over its predecessor which was a modified anti-bomb robot retooled to carry armaments. Foster-Miller is the company responsible for the early system and the armament upgrades and their armed robot is the only one of its kind in Iraq, but its not firing a shot.

Safety concerns have prevented the killbots from being deployed in live combat, which prompted the development of this new death machine designed from the ground up as a combat robot and including several precautionary software implementations. The controller is now able to select fire and no fire zones, and a mechanical range fan is responsible for keeping the weapon aimed away from friendly positions. GPS programs installed in tanks and Humvees using battlefield mapping technology have proven successful in reducing friendly fire in Iraq, prompting the same technology for use with the new MAARS robot. Additionally a final precaution has been implemented to prevent the unit from being able to fire upon its controller’s location.

Two new PMPs by Energy Sistem are now available in Europe. Meet the the Inngenio 4000 DUET HDP M-EX and the Inngenio 5000 HDP M-EX right and bottom respectively. The 4000 model has a smaller 2.8-inch QVGA TFT LCD display compared to the 5000’s 3.5 inch, but exceeds the storage capacity of the 5000 with a whopping 6GB via miniSD in contrast to 2GB SD capacity of its counterpart.

The units understand many common formats including MPEG4, MP3, WMA, WAV and views JPG, BMP, TXT and in addition the Inngenio 4000 plays XVid and posesses an FM Tuner making it seem to be a higher end model except for screen size. The 4000 will fetch about $220 USD while the other is priced at $170 USD.

Shinoda Plasma Corp recently unveiled a prototype plasma screen at CEATEC in Japan that threatens to make existing plasma screen technologies obsolete within 5 to 10 years. Tsutae Shinoda formerly of Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. and inventor of the PDP technology, and with his venture capital company Shinoda Plasma Corp, developed a new type of plasma screen at a near ethereal thickness of 1mm.

A 43 inch prototype screen was taken directly from the small laboratories at Shinoda Plasma Corp to the demonstration. Shinoda explained the new technology as a series of glass plasma tubes that contain RGB fluorescent materials, and demonstrated the flexibility of the new screen. Due to the screen’s flexibility, Shinoda anticipates using the display in places it has previously been difficult to house one suggesting ceiling mounted or even entire tunnel wall displays as examples.

Gibson has decided to employ the Tronical Powertune automatic tuning system in a new line of guitars. Although it isn’t the first, and maybe not the best, Powertune gives a guitar player some appealing options. Guitarists who’ve been playing for any length of time at all should be able to tune their own instrument, but consider the advantages of a self-tuning system.

In performance, any downtime can be bad. The audience isn’t particularly interested in hearing the band tune when they walk on stage, yet a lot of groups do that. Even using a digital tuner in your line will still take a bit of time that would better be filled with something else. Enter self-tuning. Pop the tuning knob and strum the guitar, wait until the light flashes blue and pop it back in. The audience missed it.

Music players are evolving slowly but surely adding features here or there, miniturizing etc. This particularly small MP3 player has a good feature set for what it is. For musicians, this device would work perfectly as a scratch pad during the writing process with its built in voice recorder to name just one of the interesting features.

The 2 tone LCD is adequate for its purpose and the navigation screen is simple. The player includes a built in speaker for when you’d rather not be wearing headphones, and hosts a 7 mode EQ to adjust the output of your WMA or MP3 files and the WAV files recorded via the built in voice recorder.

A mouse and numpad combo seems like a great idea for accounting work but from looking at the Sanwa NT-MA2 one question comes to mind: How careful would the user have to be to use the device as a mouse without hitting the keys? If you look at the mouse there is a “num” button and I’m making a leap here, but if that button doesn’t lock the pad from accidental triggering of the keys then this device gets an “F”.

So far I’ve not been able to confirm that there is a lock but I have to assume the designers would think to include one, so if they did this could be a very handy 2-in-1 device for people who deal with numbers a lot.The mouse is a simple style USB mouse with just the two buttons and scroll wheel. The 53mm x 108mm x 33mm mouse comes in silver or black and is priced at 40 Eur.

BenQ launches a sleek, stainless steel cased camera boasting the slimmest body in the world. The camera’s design is stylish with an air of sophistication and comes in vixen-red or midnight black to go with any attire for those who care about accessorizing with their cameras.

With the 2.5″ screen and resolution of 230,000 pixels, you’ll have a remarkable real-time evaluation of the image. Focus has been given to the interface to make it easy to pic from any of the 29 modes including beach, snow, web auction, museum, party, pet and more.

For $99 with a 2-year contract via T-Mobile, the Samsung Beat music phone seems like a pretty good thing. There’s a fairly loud green speaker on the front as seen in the photo to pump out your tunes, and the phone has a pretty decent set of features for the price.

At 1.8 x 3.5 x 0.7 inches and weighing just 2.72 ounces the flip-phone is a microsize, but has a quad band frequency set with a battery that lasts up to 6 hours and decent ingoing and outgoing signals. The phone supports a 2GB microSD and comes stock with a 1GB microSD card. Take snapshots with the 1.3 MP camera, and receive vibrating alerts with Photo caller ID. For those who use it, Stereo Bluetooth wireless technology is provided for your convenience.

Available Oct 19th, the new addition to the Gigabeat line is based on the Windows Mobile operating system and comes in three color styles: navy, gold and black. Toshiba is treading water with the functionality included in this 11.5×75×14.2mm / 168g package though.

The V41 boasts 4GB of internal memory and is expandable with SD or SDHC cards (up to 8GB) for storing up to 99 shows or 20 hours of streaming 1Seg TV. Based on Windows Mobile, the unit’s video playback is limited to WMV and JPEG images but plays MP3, WAV, and WMA/WMA-9 audio formats.

With the ConnectR virtual visiting robot as your proxy, you can now hear, see and interact with someone far away using internet connectivity. The device is easy to set up, use and maintain and provides Privacy and internet Safety features to restrict access or shut down audio, video or both when necessary. Up to ten PINs can be used to access the robot to facilitate multi-user one-at-a-time visiting privilages. iRobot has had some pretty trippy ideas, but this one is the trippiest yet.

The high quality two-way audio/video camera makes visiting easy providing wide angle and 16.7x zoom with 220 degrees of tilt for total control over video image. The robot can be controlled remotely from a computer connected to the internet or by remote control or joystick to allow the visitor to virtually participate in the activities of the host party.

Gateway is soon to release the Gateway One kept hush-hush until now. The One is 19 inches wide and 3.6 inches deep, wall mountable, and will be available in 3 models, one of which can only be purchased online. The unveiling of the One is set to take place tomorrow at Digital Life, but thanks to a teaser released on the net here are some of the known features of this sleek machine.