Gadgets, Gizmos, and Games for Geeks

With the very first U.S. Playstation 3 consoles going on sale in less than 15 minutes, we’d like to hear from anyone who stood in line, got a console, or didn’t and what your experiences have been, good, bad or ugly.

Market intelligence firm iSuppli has completed their preliminary analysis of the costs to manufacture Sony’s Playstation 3 consoles. It looks like the two PS3 models (20/60GB) will lose between $241 and $306 each, not including the cost of accessories such as cables, controllers, packaging or shipping.

Themeaddicts, a home automation company formed by a team of experienced theme park and movie special effects pros has made it possible for you to have your very own “magic mirror” on the wall. When dormant, the M30P Magic Mirror looks like a normal mirror, but reveals an interactive image when triggered into action.

In a world full of Google Maps mash-ups, it’s always fun to stumble across one that is truly different. The guys over at geogreeting.com have done just that. Geogreeting takes carefully selected Google satellite images of buildings and landmarks that happen to look like letters of the alphabet, and creates custom typography from them.

If you’re looking for a creative way to get rid of those military secrets your copied to CD-R, or just want to destroy your ex-girlfriend’s Justin Timberlake disc, you might want to check out Elecom’s SCR-CD001 portable CD/DVD killer.

Not that your screen really needs saving these days, but some cruel jokers over at Microsoft TechNet have released the Blue Screen of Death Screen Saver for those of you with a sadistic streak. The screen saver accurately emulates the dreaded OS hard crash that Windows is (in)famous for.

The guys over at Brick Flick have painstakingly built a series of LEGO vignettes based on classic video games. The scenes include Mortal Kombat, Castlevania, Shadow of the Colossus, Contra, Excitebike and my personal Favorite, Katamari (Block)acy – shown above.

Industrial designer Art Lebedev is known mostly for his Optimus Mini Three OLED keyboard and his nifty cursor shaped mouse. Now his clean, minimal designs will be showing up in a new desktop speaker system. Art’s new Sonicum speaker system is a 2.1 system featuring two satellite speakers and a powered subwoofer.

On November 22, the Xbox Live Marketplace will start offering movie and television downloads for the Xbox 360. Microsoft has announced agreements with CBS, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, TBS, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Warner Brothers to offer an initial lineup of over 1,000 hours of TV shows and movies on the Xbox Live marketplace.

In case you’re planning on picking up Microsoft’s new Zune player for the holidays, you might want to check out some of these new accessories being offered by Belkin: TuneBase FM Transmitter($79.99): Broadcast tunes to your car stereo; able to work in either portrait or landscape mode TunePower ($59.99): Special case which includes a battery for up to 6 hours of extra playtime and a “kickstand” for hands-free video viewing Acrylic Case ($29.99) Folio Leather Kickstand Case ($29.99) Microfiber Holster Case($29.99) Neoprene Sports Armband Case ($29.99) Sports Jacket Case with Armband ($19.99) ClearScreen Overlay ($14.99) All accessories should be released in North America by the end of November.

In this post by Shaheen Gandhi, an engineer on the Xbox 360 Platform Team, a massive amount of code went into the HD DVD playback system for the Xbox 360. As a result of the complexities of decoding HD DVD audio and video content, as well as providing a user interface and DRM, over 4.7 million lines of code went into the HD DVD software.

With a name like The VIBRO Sounder, I wasn’t sure if this was an audio device or a marital aid. It actually turns out to be a sonic transducer that turns any nearby surface into a loudspeaker.

Just in time for the holidays, The Onion – America’s Finest News Source, will offer the ideal holiday gifts for the guy or gal who has everything. Gotchabox is a set of three boxes from completely fake, yet surprisingly real sounding bad gift items, the USB toaster (are you sure this isn’t real?),

At this week’s Pinball Expo in Chicago, a little company called Global VR showed off their UltraPin pinball machine which brings back the feel of old pinball machines, but updates the concept for the 21st century.

Samsung’s latest mobile phone, the SGH-X830, features an innovative slim swing-open design and full media player capabilities. When closed, the phone measures just 3.3″ (h) x 1.18″ (w) x .78″(d), and weight just 75 grams (about 2.65 ounces).

Looking for a way to spiff up your iPod? iPod mod company, iPodMods has introduced their new iVue Crystal case mod which lets you see the inner guts of your iPod, while still offering protection from normal use.