Gadgets, Gizmos, and Games for Geeks

Fans of the UbiSoft game Rayman Raving Rabbids, rejoice! Now you can have your own little zoo of the cute, cuddly, insane bunnies on your desktop. This series of collectible figurines from the UBI|art store features of several of the crazy critters from the game including the Raving Cook, Rabbmoo, Rabbinho, and Rabbmaid .

Renowned design shop LEXON has introduced their latest radio design, featuring looks inspired by the Apollo space capsule. The appropriately named Apollo 2 digital AM/FM radio comes in a retro-modern package that would make NASA proud.

For anyone who’s played the game Saints Row for the Xbox 360, you know it’s riddled with graphical glitches and hiccups. Now some dude by the name of Cabel has put together a fun little musical ditty that mashes up these glitches with an off-off-off-Broadway musical.

Looks like Microsoft has finally solved the issue with the awfully loud DVD drives in their Xbox 360 consoles. According to this post over at Xbox Scene, some consoles manufactured after November 2006 appear to be getting a new BenQ DVD Drive (the VAD6038), which is supposedly much quieter than earlier drives.

This cool phone from Asus channels many of its good looks from Apple’s iPhone. The Asus Aura has a 3.9-inch touchscreen LCD, a 2 megapixel digital camera and a slim 6.9mm thick case design. The Aura does one up the iPhone in a few significant ways by offering UMTS and HSDPA (3G) high-speed connectivity, expandable storage via an SD slot and a slide-out keyboard.

Sure, there are countless “home theater in a box” systems out there, but most of them are generic, cheap looking silver boxes that look like something that only belongs on a shelf at your local Best Buy.

While LCD and DLP sets continue to move towards LEDs as their light source, high quality Liquid Crystal on Silicon LCOS (a.k.a. Sony’s SXRD and JVC’s HD-ILA) displays have so far been left out in the cold.

LCD sets just keep getting better and better these days. LG upped the ante today by showing off a new 47-inch screen loaded with features that could put LCD ahead of plasma in picture quality once and for all.

Every time I’ve ever sold a used game to EB Games, I usually get about 20% to 30% of the retail price for it, then it shows up in the store for 80% to 90% of the retail price, which gives them a pretty decent profit margin already.

Robotic technology has been used for the betterment of mankind once more. This time, we’ve got a pair of robots spinning some tunes and scratching some records. These two Kuka industrial robots have been programmed to maneuver through a series of LPs, grab them one at a time, then place them on a turntable for playback.

It’s nice to see the occasional digital camera that’s firmly grounded in it’s traditional photographic roots. The Leica D-Lux 3 features styling that harkens back to the clean lines and simplicity of their earlier film-based cameras, but is updated with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a modern shooter.

If you’re into platformers and you think you can beat them all, you’ve gotta check out this Flash-based game from Japan, Jineseiowata no Daibouken. This game will kick you in the ass (twice), then serve it to you for dinner.

Runco, know for producing high-end home theater gear has announced that they have started shipping the first ever projectors to pass THX certification. The Runco VX (Video Extreme) series of DLP front projectors come in a number of models designed to handle a variety of different installation needs, but all require a sizeable investment: VX-2000d: Single Chip DLP / 1280×1080 /220W UHP Lamp ($16,995) VX-6000d: Single Chip DLP / 1920×1080 / 220W UHP Lamp ($35,995) VX-22d: Three Chip DLP / 1920×1080 /300W Lamp ($44,995) VX-44d: Three Chip DLP / 1920×1080 /1000W Xenon Lamp ($79,995) VX-55d: Three Chip DLP / 1920×1080 /1200W Xenon Lamp ($114,995) All of the VX projectors come with Runco’s DHD controller, which now offers HDMI input capability.

Now that you’ve picked up your brightly colored new iPod Shuffle, maybe you’d like a way to keep it charged when you’re not near your computer. The DLO Powerbug is a compact wall charger that connects to your iPod Shuffle and provides charging any place you have an outlet.

Some guy with too much time on his hands developed this painstakingly accurate menu system based on the Wii interface, coined “WiiOS.” The menu system is a very faithful reproduction of the Wii menu system, and he’s got it all tied together with his Wii-mote to let him control some emulated console games on his PC.

Developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany, this tiny little camera can capture full HDTV 1920×1080 resolution video at up to 60 frames per second. The MicroHDTV camera measures just about 1.5″ x 1.5″ x 3″ and can easily fit in confined spaces like the inside of a race car or even on a helmet.