This interactive work of art uses 20 individual iPod Touches, tied together to produce synchronized visuals across all of the displays.

Created by Japan’s PROTOTYPE design team, iPod Cluster Media is an early proof-of-concept that stitches multiple independent iPod Touches into a hive-mind display wall. Each iPod Touch knows what the other one is up to, letting touch signals on one display influence all of the others. There’s even a remote-control iPod that can be used to send information to the display wall. Check out the video below to see some of the cool multi-multi-touch action:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The system can even send control information to an external interface (notice the synchronized LED base in the video). PROTOTYPE envisions that their creation will one day be used for interactive digital signage for tradeshows and other exhibitions. While the first version of the iPod Cluster display is formed from a grid of 20 individual iPod Touches, but from the looks of this image, these guys have much, much bigger plans up their sleeves:

I really hope there’s an App for that some day real soon.

[via Mongoose Studios]

The rumors were right – Nintendo officially unveiled the DSi LL, which is basically a Nintendo DSi but with much larger 4.2-inch screens, a 93% increase over the 3.2-inch screens on the DSi. The DSi LL also has 2 pens, a relatively jumbo sized 5-inch pen and a smaller pen that’s still slightly larger than the touch pen on the DSi. The big N says that customers have long wished for a DS with a bigger screen. Did customers also wish for a five-letter product name that is not a word and has to be said letter by letter?

The larger screen makes the portable system more suited for  ”for internet and as a music player as the larger screen is able to display letters and characters in a bigger font.” I don’t have a DS so I don’t know if the browser and the speed of browsing are okay or not. Whatever the case it’ll still be the same because the DSi LL’s innards are pretty much the same as the DSi’s. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the DSi and the DSi LL, as seen on Nintendo’s website.

The Nintendo DSi LL will come in three colors: Wine Red, Natural White and Dark Brown, and will go on sale in Japan starting November 21 for ¥20,000 (appx. $220 USD). No release dates have been announced for other markets. So DS fans, are you happy with what Nintendo gave you?

[via Exophase & Kotaku]

Immortalize your mixtapes with the Ion Tape Express, an easy to use device that converts your favorite songs to mp3 files. Just pop in a tape, connect it to your computer via USB, and let the bundled EZ Tape Converter Software work its magic.

As you may have guessed from its looks, the Tape Express is also a portable cassette tape player. So if you just can’t let go of your tapes even after recording their contents, you can still use them with the Tape Express. Pop in a couple of AA batteries and take it with you wherever you go, just like old times.

You can get the Ion Tape Express at Firebox for £50 (approx. $80 USD). Nostalgia guaranteed.

[via popgadget]

HP’s new DreamScreen devices straddle the fine line between computer and digital picture frame. Like other digi-frames, you can view pictures without a computer. But with the DreamScreen, you can also wirelessly stream music, videos and photos from your PC or the Internet.

Each DreamScreen features a bright, high-resolution LCD color screen, and has built in speakers so it’s a completely self-contained media playback device. And if you don’t want to bother streaming media from your PC, the DreamScreen has a built in 6-in-2 media card reader and a pair of USB ports too. Video formats supported include MPEG 1, 2, 4 and H.264, while you can listen to audio in MP3, AAC, WMA and WAV formats.

In addition to media playback, you can access Facebook and view updates without getting up from your chair. There’s also a slideshow integration with Snapfish, so you can upload photos to their site and view them on the DreamScreen. HP has also been kind enough to provide access to streaming digital music via Pandora, and HP’s own “SmartRadio” which aggregates Internet radio from around the globe. There’s also a built in calendar and alarm clock, so you might want one of these on your bedside table instead of a traditional alarm. There’s no word on future plans to roll out additional Internet services, but I’m hopeful HP will release more integrations in future.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The only major downside I can see to the DreamScreen is that it’s crying out for a touchscreen surface. For now, you have to navigate using the buttons along the sides of the screen, or using the included wireless remote. Hopefully, HP will make a touch-enabled version in the future. I also wish there were an open standard for widgets like there is with the Chumby.

The DreamScreen 100 features a 13.3″ display, while the DreamScreen 130 has a 10.2″ screen. Both devices have 800×480 screen resolution, so the smaller display just has smaller pixels. The DreamScreen 100 lists for $249.99 (USD) and the DreamScreen 130 is $299.99, but you can find both models over at Amazon for a few dollars less.

Touch DJ is a soon-to-be-released iPhone app that lets you mix music in real time, just like you would with professional DJ equipment.

Created by Amidio – the same folks who brought us the amazing noise.io iphone synth. According to the Amidio guys, Touch DJ is a serious live performance tool, and not just an audio toy like many other iPhone apps.

The app not only can mix two MP3 tracks, it lets you apply audio effects, pitch-bending, equalization and looping without ever leaving the intuitive visual interface. Each track is automatically color coded to correspond to its frequencies to make it even easier to match beats. Check out the video clips below to see (and hear) a sneak preview of Touch DJ in action.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Once released, Touch DJ will ship with 25 dance tracks from DanceMusicHub that you can immediately create music with, and I assume that additional tracks will be available for download in the future. Amidio also plans on releasing a Touch DJ sync application that lets you send your own MP3s to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Keep in mind that the audio processing is very processor intensive so Amidio recommends using Touch DJ only on the iPhone 3GS or newer iPod Touch models with faster CPUs. There’s no word yet on when Touch DJ will hit the app store. All Amidio says on their site is “ESTIMATED AVAILABILITY DATE: ??? (ASK APPLE!)”. Hopefully, that means soon. For now, follow them over on Twitter to be notified when Touch DJ is released.

Sony Ericcson today announced their new Satio line of mobile phones, loaded up with a ton of promising media features.

The Satio has a gorgeous widescreen (16:9) 3.5-inch touchscreen interface, with a super-sharp, auto-rotating 640×360 display. It also runs on the Symbian OS platform, which means there are tons of applications you can download and run on the handset. And if you’re into mobile photography, you’ll really love this. The Satio has an astounding 12.1-megapixel digital camera with 12x digital zoom. The camera offers face and smile recognition (I want a camera with frown recognition!), touch-screen focus capability, and a bright Xenon flash. It even can Geo-tag your photos and upload them directly to Picasa. This is definitely way more camera than you’re used to finding in a phone.

Did I happen to mention that the Satio is a full 3G phone, with support for GSM GPRS/EDGE and UMTS HSDPA networks? Plus it’s got built-in WiFi, Bluetooth and a GPS too. Yep, just like the iPhone, the Satio comes with Google Maps – connected to the phone’s A-GPS module. Oh yea, there’s also an FM Radio with RDS track information. This jack-of-all-trades can even play Java games and ships with mobile versions of Facebook and YouTube too. Sweet.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Satio comes silver and “bordeaux” case colors, and will start to ship on October 13 in the UK. No word yet on a North American release. UK readers can order the Saito from the Sony Ericsson Store.

[Full Satio Specifications]

The first time I saw an NES gaming system built into an NES cartridge, I thought it was pretty sweet. Until I saw this one, which totally outdoes the original.

Inspired by an earlier NESp (Ninendo Entertainment System portable) mod by darkeru, modder airz managed to put a completely playable game system, including a 2.8-inch LCD screen and original NES controller buttons into an old Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cartridge. The broken off cartridge connector board at the bottom is nice touch, too.

Now, you may ask how he fit an entire NES inside a cartridge – the answer is simple – airz’ NESp isn’t a real Nintendo console. It’s actually one of those cheap Chinese PMPs that happens to be able to emulate NES games. But that doesn’t make it any less cool in my book. The way I figure it, that just means that he doesn’t need to carry around a bunch of other cartridges to play games. It can also play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games as an added bonus. And movies, MP3s and even receives FM radio to boot. Airz even preserved the portable’s video-out port so he can play games on a television too.

Here’s a vid clip of the Airz’ NESp in action:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

From the looks of the video, though, it sounds like someone needs to increase the framerate skip on their NES emulator. Mario seems to be playing just a wee bit faster than the original.

[via Ben Heck Forums]

Sure, headphone splitters are nothing new, but how many toy keychain headphone splitter robots that you decapitate and stab in the eyes to use have you seen? Did you even understand that previous sentence? I didn’t.

Whoever designed Splitterbot has some wicked, Brando-style imagination.

Ouch. You can get your own Splitterbot for only $8 (USD) at ThinkGeek.com. But know this: our actions won’t go unpunished.

[via Notcot]

Nope, this portable gaming system is most definitely not a PSP Go. What you’re looking at here is a cheap Chinese handheld known as the PXP-2000.

While the PXP-2000 won’t play any of your PSP games, it will play classic games from the NES, Famicom, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Super Famicom/SNES, and SEGA Megadrive/Genesis consoles. It features a nice oversize 4.3″ LCD screen and a slide-out controller just like the PSP Go that it mimics.

In addition to playing all of those retro 8-, 16- and 32-bit games from your childhood, the PXP-2000 is a media player that can crank out your music and videos too. It can play MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC, RM-Audio, AMR, AAC+ audio formats. For video, it can handle AVI videos, but comes with transcoding software for RM, RMVB, AVI, WMV, ASF, MPG, MPEG, MPE, MP4, DAT, MOV, DAT, and even the elusive, but non-existent MP5 format (it’s really just Real Media Variable Bitrate format).

The PXP is your standard jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none media player, complete with an low resolution digital video camera, FM radio, a calculator, notepad, e-book reader and English-to-Chinese dictionary.

If you’re too cheap to drop $249 on a proper PSP Go, and you really just want to play retro games anyhow, head on over to Chinagrabber and plunk down your $83.99 (USD).

I need to start out by saying that I will resist every juvenile urge in my body that tells me to make fun of this app’s name. That’s because I think it’s too cool to make fun of its somewhat unfortunate moniker…

Every day that I use my iPhone, I discover yet another cool trick that I never knew I could do the day before. This time, it comes in the form of a little app called Snatch, which lets you turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a completely programmable remote for interacting with applications on your Mac or PC. Just install the included server software on your computer, make sure that your iPhone and computer can see each other over the same Wi-Fi network, and you’re all set.

For starters, Snatch provides you with a wireless trackpad and scrollpad interface for working with just about any program on your computer. The trackpad even supports multitouch actions like a two-finger scroll or two-finger tap. But the real power of Snatch is hidden beneath the surface in its robust remote editor, which lets you create custom graphical buttons and assign them to any key, button or mouse action on your computer. The app can store up to 8 screens of remote control buttons, and provides an easy-to-use graphical editing screen for creating new layouts.

In addition to being able to build your own interfaces, Snatch offers a library of over 20 remote templates including Adobe CS3 palettes, a Hulu remote control or a PowerPoint slideshow controller among others.

You can get your hands on Snatch over at the iTunes App Store for $3.99 (USD).

One of the reasons why Nokia’s cellphones became so popular here in the Philippines was the fact that most of their earlier models had cases that were easy to remove and swap, providing a bit of customization. Now gadgets mostly come in black, gray or white, and even if there are still devices that have a variety of colors or designs like the PSP, their cases aren’t easy to remove.  Hence the popularity of skins. MusicSkins is one of the myriad of brands of gadget skins out there, and as their name implies, it mostly features artists and album art.

MusicSkins doesn’t have that many designs, and some of them don’t look so hot – to me at least – but the good thing about MusicSkin is that they don’t just make skins for laptops, gaming devices and iPods. The Interpol skin featured above for example  - $30 (USD) for the 17″ laptop version – has a ton of other versions, like for Sansa Disks, Blackberries and even Seagate’s FreeAgent Go external hard drive.

As I said, the selection isn’t that varied; I’m also curious as to how the company decides which artists to feature, because their selection is a bit odd. But there are gems in there, like the Sex Pistols skin featured above ($20 USD for the Nintendo DS lite version), as well as non-music related – but still decent – designs, like the explodingdog design you see below ($20 for the PSP Slim version).

And if you think that all of MusicSkins’ offerings suck, you can upload your own images and design your own skin. I think I’ll make me a Three Wolf Moon skin for my Macbook.

[via Chip Chick]

Audiophiles listen up: pimp up and pamper your headphones with these leather covers from Berlin-based design agency BLESS. The covers come in black or anthracite – that’s gray for us common folk.

As you can see each headphone sock cover has an extra compartment, perfect for placing spare coins, or even an extra pair of earphones. Hell an iPod shuffle would fit in there. Stylish and functional. Sold yet? That’ll be € 475.00 please.

Yes, that’s no typo: almost $700 (USD) for a pair of leather coin purse/earmuff thingies. High quality leather coin purse/earmuff thingies, but still. Actually if you look at the product page, you’ll see… nothing. No relevant information aside from the designers’ names. Which means that there’s a good chance that the Sony headphones are included with the purchase, as absurd as that sounds. Or not. I’m not familiar with the value system of rich people. Is $700 to them like $100 is to me?

Lest you accuse me of ignoring the needs of a minority, moneyed peoples should tell their servants to hit up colette and snag the leather covers. Again it’s €475.00 ($693), VAT included. Thank goodness.

[via InventorSpot]

As if its throwback looks weren’t flashy enough, this boombox bag also has built-in speakers. Plug in your MP3 player and you’ll really grab everyone’s attention.

Unfortunately we don’t have specs on the speakers, but judging from the picture I don’t think we can expect top-quality audio from them. The yellow-green bag pictured above was already sold out as of this writing, but you can still score the classic black version.

You can get the bag at Kitsch-U-Like for £30 (approx. $50 USD). The shop also has other retro audio player-themed bags, but no cat hats, groovy glasses or violet tracksuits. Thank God. Actually I kinda like the cat hat.

[via 7Gadgets]

The iPhone app store is loaded up with tens of thousands of apps ranging from video games, to GPS software to fart apps. But here’s an application that can actually change lives. Proloquo2Go is an amazing iPhone and iPod Touch app that helps people with speech impairments communicate wherever they go.

Created by AssistiveWare, Proloquo2Go provides users who have difficulties speaking with a mobile text-to-speech system (known as an augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC solution) which allows individuals to quickly verbalize thoughts by pressing on icons on the iPhone’s touchscreen. The system is loaded with a vocabulary of over 7000 words and phrases, and provides an easy-to-use visual interface for finding words.

Proloquo2go features a human-sounding text-to-speech (TTS) engine which provides North American male, female, boy and girl voices. You can also download an update which allows these voices to be swapped out for British ones. There’s also a simple TTS typing interface if you want (and are able) to type words. You can even retrieve recently used phrases at any time and play them back without having to recreate them over and over again. This is a really thoughtful touch.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

While many of you might think $189.99 (USD) is a lot to pay for an app, I can only imagine what a bargain that might seem like if I had difficulty speaking. Especially knowing that traditional AAC devices cost thousands of dollars and are a huge pain to lug around. It’s nice to know that our fun and disposable gadgets can occasionally serve a meaningful purpose. Kudos to AssistiveWare for making a difference.

You can find Proloquo2Go on the iTunes App Store.

This odd little handheld gaming system may look a heckuva lot like a Nintendo Game Boy Advance, but it’s actually one of those multi-system emulators that can play games from a variety of retro consoles.

The mysteriously named SP2 handheld can play games from the original NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy Color, Neo Geo and yes, the Game Boy Advance. Just load your favorite ROMs (no where ever would you have gotten those from?) onto a MicroSD card, stick ‘em into the slot, and you’re all set to play all your retro classics on the SP2’s 2.4-inch LCD screen. It also claims to come with “hundred games built in”, for what that’s worth.

As an added bonus, the SP2 can play music in MP3 or WMA formats, as well as videos in RM/RMV and AVI formats. There’s also a built in voice recorder and microphone (which I’d love to see hacked to control gameplay at some point). In addition to the silver version pictured above, it’s available in both black and gold case designs, in case you’re into that sort of thing.

Of course those of you with a keen powers of observation will notice this emulator’s relative dearth of buttons. While you should be fine playing all those NES and Game Boy games, you might have trouble with SNES and Neo Geo games because those consoles had 4 buttons on the face of their controllers. That said, there are a couple of hidden shoulder buttons, but I’m not sure that will help.

Still, if you want to give one a whirl, you can grab the SP2 over on DealExtreme for $65.90(USD) each. Me, I’ll stick to playing with my Dingoo.