As bugs go, the CX-008 Spy Ear probably wouldn’t make it in the top divisions of international espionage.

About the size of a deck of cards, it wouldn’t hide well under the fronds of a lampshade or behind a headboard. Emblazoned with pictures of radio waves, its purpose isn’t exactly hard to discern. But it does have one thing going for it: just slap in a SIM card and you can listen into it from any cellphone.

The Spy Ear is, in fact, pretty much a cellphone itself, cleverly configured and loaded with more than two weeks of battery life. At $140, it isn’t too expensive, though the law might have a fine with your name on it should you choose to misuse one.

CX-008 GSM SIM Card Spy Ear – the secret listen box feeds audio to your mobile phone from anywhere [Red Ferret Journal]

Pay-as-you-goers already have iPhone SIM Free’s offering, but the iPhone Dev Team’s AnySIM just caught up. Version 1.1 of the iPhone-freeing app was announced yesterday and can be gotten at its website.

It unlocks iPhones running 1.0.2 and 1.1.1 free of charge, but doesn’t repair any unpleasantness left over from earlier hack jobs — it does not, in other words, repair the baseband firmware of previously upgraded-and-downgraded iPhones.

TUAW reports that it also switches off WiFi until the next reboot and that you shouldn't use it to unlock 1.0.2 iPhones if you then intend to upgrade them later. In their wonderful words, "Caveat hackteur!"

iPhone Dev Team announces free unlock [TUAW]

Sony’s PRS-505, the latest version of its e-book slab, will be offered imminently. The big upgrade is that it apparently uses the recently-improved display technology from e-Ink, but there’s more to the new Reader than faster refresh rates (from 1.2 seconds to 740ms), better contrast and more shades of grey: it’ll also have a redesigned case, double the memory and an optional blue paint job.

The new reader could be spotted at Abt Electronics’ online store for $300, but it’s since taken it down. Jumped the gun there, maybe? Wowio grabbed pics before it hit the floo network: top-left is the current PRS-500, with the refreshed lineup to the top-right.

New Sony Readers: Coming Soon! [Wowio]

The thin client. Not the sexiest computing application ever, is it? Nor is it art. Pano Logic’s Pano virtualization box, however, is both sex and art. All 9 cubic inches of it.

Keeping it simple by having its operating system served from afar, the box is basically a single, simple chipset that shuttles your mouse clicks and keyboard taps to the virtualizing machine, which spits back the updated desktop for display by your Pano box. Unlike other thin clients, there’s not even a byte of software running locally: the VMWare setup is burned into silicon. It outputs 1600×1200 through a VGA port, has 3 USB ports for keyboards and mice, and an ethernet jack to hook up to the real computing muscle.

Pricing starts at $20 a month per box. And when it’s old and dead, you have a nicest paperweight in the office.

Product Page [Pano Logic]

Pano Logic Unveils Virtual Desktop[InfoWorld]

In an ideal world, carmakers would already be offering more useful dash-mounted power outlets than a single glorified cigarette lighter. As it is, only luxury or fashionable autos typically do, often as part of expensive upgrade kits. Brando’s 3-in-1 ciggie lighter power hub makes for triple-play on mp3 players, PSPs, laptops and the like, and even throws in a USB port for good measure.

It’s cheap, too, at $20. Perfect for road trips, or sharing the outlets on jetliners with fellow passengers.

Product Page [Brando via Gizmodo]

Intel’s Mobile Metro mockup was the loveliest laptop this side of Sony’s old X505, blade-thin and beautiful as a brushed-magnesium, champage-tinted angel could be. The news? It looks like it’ll make the leap from lifestyle fantasy to manufactured product by the end of the year.

Created on a “price is no object” basis by Ziba Design, it’s .7″ thick and weighs 2.25 pounds, features WiFi, WiMax, Bluetooth 2.0, Core 2 Duo chipsets, and an external e-ink display hooked up for Vista’s SideShow functionality. Storage will be flash, making for a claimed battery life of 14 hours.

Naturally, with such a skinny frame, accessories are paramount, and the Mobile Metro will come with a special folder that recharges it inductively. Yes, yes, I think this might be expensive.

Finally, it’s clothed in what looks like a form-hugging leather case, which could be mildly kinky were it not a cuddly pastel green. I am, however, a little unnerved by the single USB port. It’ll need more.

The World’s Thinnest Notebook [Business Week via Gizmodo]

Apple Insider laments an impending doom to befall the Mac Mini, which it believes has no place in Cupertino’s future plans.

It’s a compelling hypothesis: the Mini hasn’t been a hit, some of its appeal was swiped by Apple TV, and the upgrades its received over the last couple of years have sent the price spiraling up without making the thing much more attractive.

Personally, it’s my nominal favorite among Apple’s lineup, and yet, somehow, I never got around to buying one. I have an iMac and a MacBook Pro, and keep telling myself that I’ll grab a Mini sooner or later. But it never quite happens.

I’m not saying it’s like the Cube, all “nice idea” and poor execution. On the contrary, the Mini is the smallest, most capable miniature PC money can buy, a better proposition than Aopen’s middling rival. So why hasn’t it seen the sucess it deserves?

Clsoing the Book on Mac Mini [Apple Insider]

Arriving quietly at the intersection of hygiene and horror is the Gasmask Showerhead, a truly unforgettable feature guaranteed to make any home on the planet impossible to sell.

The one-off creation of Chris Dimino, its aim is apparently to adapt the mask to fit into the aesthetic sensibility of modern life. The disturbing memetic cross-infection of “gas” and “shower” is, therefore, clearly unintentional.

Artist’s Site [Dimino via Oh Gizmo!]

Love e-books or hate them, there’s the faint aura of recovery in that particular DRM-ravaged sector of portable media. This comes thanks to less paranoid publishers and Sony’s excellent Reader, which offers sane Itunes-like DRM and the ability to view any old file format. In Jinke/HanLin’s new iBook eReader V3, it gets some serious competition.

Unfortunately, with that well-trademarked name, it won’t be seen here in the west without a rebranding, but here’s to hope: At $325, it’s a meal and bottle o’wine cheaper than Sony’s Reader, and adds touchscreen functionality to the same e-ink display that the competition uses. It also comes with a keypad (Sony’s Reader doesn’t have one, but the imported Sony Librie model from Japan does), plays all relevant formats, and keeps it light at 200g. It runs on Linux, too, for potential hackeration galore.

Available in the Ukraine(!) in July. U.S. release comes in the fall.

New E Ink reader hits the streets: lBook eReader V3 [Mobileread]

That’s not some fancy fractal or cellular automaton, but a shot of nearly half a million handsets. Artist Chris Jordan’s composite of 426,000 cell phones measures more than eight feet wide at 200 dpi, but represents only a single day’s worth of dead phones.

Jordan has many other such designs, including 65,000 cigarettes (the number of teens that light up a week) and 29,569 handguns (equivalent to the number of shooting deaths in 04).

Running the Numbers [Chris Jordan via Gizmodo]