The iPhone syncs great with one computer, but what if you use two? Say you listen to music and watch movies on a home computer while managing all of your important business contacts on your work computer? If you’re willing to get your hands dirty with a hex editor and a few lines of simple code, you can sync your iPhone to multiple systems. Does that sound hard? It’s really not, promise. The tutorial is quite specific. [Shiny Things (how to) via Lifehacker]

Not up to the messier parts of building a Hackintosh? EFiX is a USB dongle that promises to take care of all of that for you, automagically on any PC. Pop it into the port and you can install OS X straight from the DVD “without having to worry about patches, replacing files and anything like that.” Update: There’s a video demo of this black magic here.

If you’re thinking it sounds too good to be true and that the site looks a little scuammy, you should know that it took a lot of time to craft this voodoo stick and required the developers to thwart “various problems, including sabotage.” After six months of testing, it’s due on June 23. Our advice? Let someone else be the guinea pig. Hey guinea pigs, if you buy this, let us know how it goes! [EFiX via Insanely Mac via Hack a Day]

Today, a startup called ZeeVee is launching the ZvBox, a three-part plan for getting all the good HD video content from your PC out to all the TVs in the house:
• The box itself converts the video from the PC's VGA port into a high-def channel and sends it out to your home's coax cable network.
• A PC app acts as a launcher for all the good PC-based internet video clients, like Hulu, Joost and even Microsoft's own Media Center.
• The remote controls not just your TV, but the app on the PC too, giving you decent control over the otherwise PC-locked experience.

No, you don’t have deja vu: Two companies you never heard of launched similar-sounding interactive TV boxes within a few hours of each other. But this one is quite different: It doesn't mess with antennae or try to get in bed with cable or DSL providers. It's just a nice tidy box that sends all the world's content to all TVs in your house—without set-top boxes in each room. There are some catches, of course.

The first catch is that the box-and-remote combo costs $500. Sure, you only need one kit for the whole house (unless you want additional remotes, but every TV would get the same experience anyhow, so there’s no point). But $500 is pretty steep.

Another catch is that the content itself is a little up in the air. Yes, there are plenty of services that let you buy or rent movies on a PC, and many more coming along that give you piecemeal content for free. But everyone does it differently, and you will have to become master of many interfaces with that one remote.

The launcher app, called Zviewer (what else?), is useful to aggregate all the different programs you’ll want supplying you with video, and it also lists all of the BitTorrent and other video on your hard drive, not to mention photos and music. But there’s no way to bring all web video into one seamless interface, and though ZeeVee will try to do just that, they admit that the beginnings will be a tad humbler.

I do like this concept. As soon as you connect your VGA out to the ZvBox and connect that to the coax network in your house, it scopes out the channels occupied by your cable box, and picks one that’s not. Any TV with an ATSC tuner will see the ZeeVee stream as a high-def channel, and display it as such via the coax input most cable and satellite customers have generally forgotten about. You put the ATSC tuner to use, your coax cable gets new life, and you get an easy way to toggle from your other cable content to your PC’s video bidness.

At this point, it’s still a work in progress. Though the company promises a June ship date, the hardware shots are just renderings. The software, barely in beta, will only run on Windows XP and Vista, though ZeeVee assures us a Mac version will be out this year. I am a little leery of trying to use PC apps while sitting at my couch, so hopefully the software itself will handle most of my needs.

Promotional screenshots shown below depict some pretty nice media management, but the company admits that these are more aspirational, and will not represent the initial user experience:
If you think about it, the PC is kind of arbitrary here. I asked Brian Mahoney, ZeeVee director of marketing, if the company couldn’t all the same turn this into a whole-house extender for my TiVo HD, or maybe a video iPod, and he said, “We can indeed take the video inputs from any device. That is a path we’re looking at in the future.”

My question for you, dear Giz readers, is this: Remote and PC software aside, how easy is it to build the box ZeeVee is talking about? And is it worth $200 to $250? Maybe it is. If you’re really eager, it’s going on pre-order at Amazon today, with plans to ship in June. If I were you, I’d wait until your friends at Gizmodo at least saw the thing in person before shelling out five bills. [ZeeVee]

The crackers at Dreamlab have busted open the wireless encryption on Microsoft’s Optical Desktops 1000 and 2000, as well as any others using the same simplistic scheme: There’s only about 256 possible encryption keys, making it like pie to crack after sniffing a few tens of keystrokes. So easy, in their demo they nail three keyboards at once.

If you don’t wanna deal with the hack-speak, the bottom line is that a remotely enterprising and nosy co-worker could whip up a wireless keylogger to spy on the whole office. Then again, what office springs for wireless keyboards for everybody? [Remote-Exploit.org via Hackaday]

Word of warning if you have an Apple-shaped twinkle in your eye: Lo-jacking the Asus Eee PC with OS X is legally dubious (like a lot of worthwhile tech endeavors tend to be) thanks to licensing restrictions and whatnot. Dan’s method more or less follows Adam Pash’s awesome Hackintosh tutorial over at Lifehacker, but an already PC-patched copy of OS X floating around on BitTorrent mercifully lets you skirt a lot of the hack and slashage for a moderately easy install.

The Eee's pint-sized specs make Tiger a better choice than Leopard for your $399 ultraportable Mac. If only Apple pumped these out themselves—a low-cost ultraportable Mac would sell so well they'd have to hire people just to count the money. [UNEASYsilence via TUAW]

Normally I don’t get this jazzed about desktop PCs, but the Gateway One is special. From the sleek yet substantial design to the quiet, powerful core, it’s a real statement, especially from the cow-pocked South Dakota underdog.
Let me take you on a guided tour:

Setup is as easy as a laptop. Connect the power adapter to the main unit, and you’re rollin’. The wireless keyboard and seamless “river rock” mouse are pre-paired. The main unit has everything you need and nothing you don’t. Its beautiful 19″ widescreen LCD has a resolution of 1440×900. Beneath the screen are speakers hidden under the glossy plastic face. They are NXTs, but they sound better than any NXTs I’ve ever heard.

To the left side is a panel with three USB ports, a FireWire port, a 5-in-1 memory card reader, audio output for speakers and microphone in.
There’s a USB camera that sits on top, nestled into a mini USB port. It’s got a built-in microphone. (I guess I lied. Gateway could have gone even more minimalist: you really don’t need the speaker or mic jacks at all!) The camera makes the box look a tad dorky, but you only need it when you’re Skyping, so who cares?
On the right-hand side is a disc slot. The drive is what you'd expect on the premium end, a super multi DVD burner with double-layer capability—not that you'll ever use it to its full extent. Blu-ray and HD DVD read and write are not yet available.
The power brick serves a very cool function as outboard media hub. It’s got four USB ports of its own, plus SPDIF and optical audio outputs to connect to an A/V receiver (for up to 7.1 surround sound), plus an IR blaster jack and an Ethernet port. In other words, Gateway has smartly hidden all those ugly but essential wires at your feet, instead of letting them stick out of your computer. The One has but one cable, sticking out of its chrome-plated rear end.
Ethernet is optional. Gateway pulled an Apple and integrated serious Wi-Fi in there. It’s got MIMO, 802.11a/b/g and even N Dual Band, if you are so equipped. Good future-proofing. Another example of future proofing is the second SATA II drive slot, right next to the first slot, which houses a 500GB 7200rpm drive. (RAM access is just as easy.)
There’s more in the box if you want it, including a analog/digital TV tuner and a USB fax/modem. I skipped them for now, but you never know.

The remote reminds you that this, like every other Vista Home Premium or Ultimate system, is also a Windows Media Center Edition PC. So the tuner might come in handy, though I’d prefer CableCard.

For having a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and an ATI HD 2600XT video processor, it even runs fairly quiet. Gateway says under 30dB. It also uses a third less power than traditional desktops.

The premium Gateway One will be sold at Best Buy exclusively for $1,799. Two other lower-powered editions will be sold at gateway.com for $1,299 and $1,599. All of them will feature all of the pieces I’ve shown in this demo.

I may have some negative things to say later but for now, I am a true fan. It’s the thoughtful design elements make the Gateway One unique, and uniquely enjoyable, and I’ll leave you with three examples:
• You use the touch-scroll mouse intuitively, without thinking, even though it's not the typical mouse interaction.
• The Media Center remote's d-pad is all one piece, built for full-tilt thumb action.
• In the rear, a chrome hinge rests on a broad wheel. Not only does this allow you to tilt the seemingly immobile body, but it acts to brace the One in the event it gets jarred.
[Gateway One]

Fuze Media Systems unveiled their full home media system, which has several advantages over the pretty and fully competent Microsoft Windows Media Center. In a nutshell, it’s designed to be used throughout the entire house, with multiroom streaming. There are extenders called the Fuzemini that have HDMI out, DVD/CD drives, CableCARD. There’s even a touchscreen control panel, on top of the regular remote. But hold on: This Media Center PC isn’t actually a PC.

It’s built on an Intel platform. But you never have access to the desktop, for reliability reasons. (No internet access?) It does whole house audio, synced. And the UI in those screenshots have blue backgrounds, and familiar MCE menus, but they’re not.

Media can be sent to the rest of the house using Ethernet and the Fuzemini boxes. But using CAT-5 cables (via USB adapter) audio can also be sent to powered amp’d wall switches, complete with track controls (but no actual TCP-IP). And there are even powerline versions of this panel.

Hmm. Interesting. We’ll see how it plays, and how much it costs.[Fuze via CEPro]

If you’re somehow stuck with a notebook that doesn’t sport a video or a D-Sub output but are feeling that multiple-monitor itch (for “productivity,” right?) as long as you’ve got a USB port, you’re in luck. The USB-RGB is a dongle that lets you add an extra monitor to your system via USB. The $87 price tag strikes me as a bit high, but I'm kind of a cheapskate—I'm good with one monitor per computer. – Matt Buchanan

Product Page [I-O Data via Akihabara News]

Green PCs don’t come very often, so it’s no surprise enano’s new e2 caught our eye. Enano claims their new Ecossential PCs are 95% quieter, 80% more energy efficient, and 65% cooler than your typical desktop.

That doesn’t mean they’re wimpy, though. The e2s can still run with the big dogs, packing up to 4GB of RAM, a TV tuner and built-in wireless. If you want something with a little more oomph (meaning something with one of the new Core 2 Duo chips) you’re better off waiting for this bad boy. Otherwise, treehuggers can start lining up for the e2s now. Just don’t forget your plastic. They range from $1,100 to $1,800. – Louis Ramirez

Product Page