View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
October 22nd, 2009 — mac
Not content with waging a crazy legal battle with Apple based on just selling hardware with Snow Leopard on it, Psystar is now selling software that lets you put OS X on any new PC.
You can actually download a trial version yourself before you hand over your $50. Keep in mind that you’ll need to have a machine with one of these processors in order for this to work: Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 or Xeon Nehalem. We haven’t tested Rebel EFI, so we can’t say how well it works. Let us know if you’ve had luck with it. [Psystar via LoopInSight]


View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
August 11th, 2009 — gear
The Logitech Harmony 900 is the updated Logitech Harmony One, which marries a traditional button remote with a capacitive touchscreen for expanded functionality. What makes this better are the charging dock and the RF to IR control adapters.
The Price: $400
The Verdict: This form factor, plus the included charging dock and the RF to IR blasters make this the best remote package Logitech has right now. We’ve been fans of their standard remotes for a while, but combining the keep-your-eyes-on-your-tv ability of those with the extendability of their full touchscreen units makes for a winner.
If you've played with the Harmony One you should know what this remote feels like. The number keys are on the bottom, the navigation keys are in the middle and the activity keys are near the top. The touchscreen is responsive enough, and can scroll through pages of various commands for different media console items—just like their previous remotes.
The charging dock is contoured exactly like the back of the remote, taking it in lovingly into its electric arms. Imagine getting into bathtub shaped exactly like your body—this is that, except without the water or the urge to pee.
Syncing with your computer works the same way as before, but Logitech STILL hasn’t managed to enable consolidating profiles so that you can have more than one remote on an account, and hasn’t come up with a way to export remote profiles to other accounts. That’s a huge pain in the ass if you have multiple Logitechs, and is probably our biggest gripe with their setup.
There is one included central RF to IR blaster, with two other IR blasters that can hook up to it for a total of three IR blasters. They're meant to be used in cabinets where the door is closed, or somehow out of IR line of sight, so you can literally point your remote at nothing (it's using RF) and it'll still propagate the command through to the IR blaster. This is pretty easy to set up—there's a wizard right on the remote—and you should be up and running in a few minutes. And there's very little RF delay, so you won't have to worry about that.
The upside is that this is probably our favorite universal remote package that Logitech has made, figuring in the charging dock and the RF to IR blasters. The downside is that the whole setup costs $400. If you’re shopping for your first universal remote, this will probably be your last. if you already own a cheaper Logitech in the sub $100 range, find a way to sell it and pick this up. [Logitech]
Best universal remote by Logitech yet
Allows extendability with touchscreen without sacrificing the usability of buttons
Price is a little high, but less than full touchscreen remotes

View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
March 24th, 2009 — iPhone
Ripdev’s InstallerApp makes installing third-party jailbreak applications on your iPhone slightly easier, by eliminating the need to jailbreak your iPhone at all. You just need to pay $7 for the privilege.
The process works by installing an app onto your iPhone that's not quite jailbreaking, but is enough to allow those not-quite-official applications to get on there. If you gave us the choice of paying $7 or running jailbreak on our phones—which is fairly easy as long as you have some tech knowledge—we'd choose real jailbreak. [Ripdev via 9 to 5 Mac]

View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
March 2nd, 2009 — camera, fun
Someone sent a video camera on a seven-and-a-half minute ride on a sushi conveyer belt, capturing amused and surprised eaters as they discover that they’re the subject of someone’s weird tentacle-eating video.
The fun almost stops when some lady in the kitchen gets uppity, but luckily enough the sushi chefs put it back on track and back to its owner. Is a sushi place the only place with a conveyer belt? I can’t think of any other restaurant type that does this. I would like to see more, though.
If you’re looking for a more surreal trip around a sushi belt, here you go. [Boing Boing]

View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
September 13th, 2008 — iPhone
Just released yesterday, iPhone Modem for the Cydia jailbreak application repository promises tethering your laptop to your iPhone in just 10 seconds. We haven’t gotten around to jailbreaking our own yet, but this one is supposedly even easier than the official NetShare tethering app in the official App Store. ModMyiPhone forum says it works just fine on both the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Careful using this on AT&T, since too much tethering data usage you're not actively "paying" for will get you neutered. [modmyiphone]




View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
August 7th, 2008 — iPhone
The Gadget: Brando’s Power Station, a portable battery pack for your iPhone that slides easily into your dock connection for charging away from a socket or a USB connection. The Power Station, in turn, is charged from ITS dock connection, so you can use the same charger for both devices. Comes in white and black.
The Price: $25
The Verdict: Works as advertised. In our tests, it charged our iPhone 3G from 10% to 60% in about an hour, after which charging stopped altogether because the pack was out of juice. We then used another pack to take our iPhone from 60% to 100% in about another hour. Great for emergency days when you’re low on power from a frantic 3G browsing session earlier that morning.
The only complaint we’d have is that unlike other chargers that wrap around the iPhone to secure itself in place, the Power Station only connects via the dock. This results in a flimsy connection that might snap off if you’re not careful. So be careful and don’t stick the phone in your pocket when this is docked.
At a price of $25, it’s the cheapest iPhone battery pack that we’ve seen. Despite its drawbacks (only charges about half the phone’s battery and is sort of flimsy when connected), we’d still recommend it as a backup battery for emergencies. [Brando]
Side note: The original unit Brando sent us was defective and would alternate between charging state and plugged-in state, eventually going to DRAINING state. If you get one of these, call them up and get a replacement as it’s obviously not supposed to drain your phone.




View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
July 30th, 2008 — gear
The Gadget: The ViDock Gfx, a box with an ATI 2600XT inside that allows you to add two DVI displays to your ExpressCard Laptop (e.g. MacBook Pro). It doesn’t affect your current display setup, which might already have an external monitor being driven by the on-board DVI port, which means you can have a total of three external displays plus your MacBook Pro’s going at the same time. Mac and Windows versions are available in both 128MB and 256MB flavors, running at up to 2560×1600 resolution.
The Price: Still TBD
The Verdict: Multitasking bliss. We were able to add two 19-inch, 1280×1024 monitors to our 15-inch MacBook Pro without breaking a sweat. The two extra monitors (we were already running a 30-inch Dell off the internal DVI port) had very little slowdown while being powered through our ExpressCard port, and handled HD video like the Watchmen trailer without any signs of tears or imminent exploding.
What we did notice was that the unit was LOUD. In our pre-production unit, the fan ran started quietly on boot, but ramped up to 100% after a minute or two. It was loud enough to give us AND our unborn children a migraine. The people at Villagetronic said their release units would be softer, but note that the ATI 2600XT throws out a lot of heat. To us this means that you probably shouldn’t expect this to be too much softer. Just something to watch out for if you need to use this in a quiet production environment. The other annoyance we’ve found is that the ExpressCard connection can’t be hot-plugged on OS X, so you have to shut down your machine every time you want to swap in or out of the multi-monitor setup or else you’ll get that curtain of death. Villagetronic tells us that it’s a bug that Apple will fix in the future.
Is this great for multitasking? Oh sweet jeebus yes. You can have all your applications open at the same time, spread eagled across your four displays like Stalin planning to push the Nazis back into Germany (apologies for that undoubtedly historically inaccurate statement). Is it worth the as-of-yet-undetermined cost? Hard to say. Something like this won’t be cheap, but if you’re like us and value every pixel of your screen as if it’s the last chopper out of Saigon (sorry again!), you’ll look long and hard at the ViDock Gfx. [Villagetronic]




View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
June 26th, 2008 — xbox360
You know that problem of having to be signed into Xbox Live after you transferred your content from your old, broken Xbox 360 to your new, slightly less broken Xbox 360? The one where you can’t play your old stuff on your new machine without having an active connection? They’ve got a fix out now called the DRM Transfer Tool that solves just this issue. The whole thing takes “less than a minute,” and transfers your license for the content between machines so you can watch/play it without being signed on. Hit up the link to do it to yours. [Xbox via Gamer Score Blog]




View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
April 22nd, 2008 — mac, xbox360
Connect 360’s been out for a good long while, allowing you to stream music, movies and photos from your Mac to your Xbox 360. Why would you go with Rivet, an app that does just about the same thing but only costs $1 less? Mostly for its folder organization, which allows you to browse your files as it exists on your Mac, instead of in one gigantic list you need to scroll through. Other than this, there’s not a whole lot of huge difference between the two programs, but sometimes $1 is the difference between not having some Pocky and having some Pocky. [Cynical Peak]




View original post found on Gizmodo authored by Jason Chen
April 10th, 2008 — iPhone
Twitter Fans: an iPhone client called Twinkle was just released on Installer.app. What’s the difference between Twinkle and other apps? It’s true that you can let the world know that you’re getting a haircut or some taxi zoomed past you without stopping on any client, but Twinkle lets you use the iPhone’s location feature to add location data to your tweets. Not only that, there’s a “near me” feature that can show you tweets from people within X miles of you, which is good for organizing a meetup or party. Location information is only visible from Twinkle and not on the Twitter website, unfortunately. Hit the link to see how you install it on your jailbroken iPhone, then follow me (diskopo) for some good times. [Just Another iPhone Blog via Tech Digest]
Note: It looks like Twinkle automatically adds “Twinkleking” (their official user) to your followed list, which isn’t cool. Remember to remove this if you don’t want to follow them.



