Girls Love Gadgets

gooman writes “The LA Times reports on a proposal to secretly scan suspects’ hard drives which is causing unease in a nation with a history of official surveillance. Along with several other European countries, Germany is seeking authority to plant secret Trojan viruses into the computers of suspects that could scan files, photos, diagrams and voice recordings, record every keystroke typed and possibly even turn on webcams and microphones in an attempt to gain knowledge of attacks before they happen.”

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

Buffalo’s out tooting its own horn today, as the AirStation Wireless-G MIMO Performance Router claims to be the “first commercial wireless router to come with DD-WRT firmware pre-installed.” Aimed squarely at the SMB and SOHO market, the WHR-HP-G54DD (WHR-HP-G54 pictured) is the first device to emerge from the firm’s partnership with NewMedia-NET. Of note, this device features five QoS levels to prioritize traffic, optimized link state routing (OLSR), a data transfer application with VPN functionality, PPTP protocol support, WMM and DDNS, and a bevy of management applications including remote network status logging, remote web management via HTTPS and web-based backup / restore. If all this sounds like your cup of tea, you can pick one up now for £41.70 ($86), and you can check out the full (and we mean full) list of specifications right there in the read link.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

BaCa writes with a link indicating that a survey of white collar US workers shows that something like a third of all employees break IT policies. Of those, almost a sixth actually used P2P technologies from their work PCs. Overall, the survey indicates workers aren’t overly concerned about any kind of security: “The telephone survey found that 65% of white-collar professionals are either not very concerned or not concerned at all about their privacy when using a workplace computer. A surprising 63% are not very concerned or are not concerned at all about the security of their information while at work. Additionally, most employees have the misconception that these behaviors pose little to no risk to their companies.”

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An anonymous reader writes “Intel’s Skulltrail dual-socket enthusiast platform has been making the rounds on the web for half a year or so, but we haven’t seen many details yet. TG Daily got a close look at an almost complete prototype, which surely sounds almost like a production ready version, judging from the article. Everything that TG Daily describes sounds like Skulltrail PCs will be very limited in availability and insanely expensive. Intel also has said it has developed ’special’ Xeon processors with desktop processor attributes just for Skulltrail. These chips are currently running at a stable 5 GHz.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: GPS

Ingram Micro’s V7 subsidiary looks to have recently kicked out another pair of budget-priced GPS units, with its new NAV730 and NAV740 model each keeping things under $300 while still maintaining some fairly decent specs. On the slightly higher-end, the $299 NAV740 boasts a 4.3-inch WQVGA touchscreen, along with text-to-speech capabilities, the usual range of PMP functions, and maps of the US with 11 million POIs pre-loaded on the included 2GB SD cards (other maps are also available depending on where you buy it). If that’s more than you need, the $199 NAV730 will still get the basic job done with a 3.5-inch QVGA touchscreen, those same PMP features, and some maps without any POIs on the bundled 1GB SD card. If that’ll do, you can grab either one right from all the usual sources right now.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals

We had a hunch that this spat between HP and Acer wouldn’t just fade away into the sunset, and sure enough, HP is on the receiving end of the latest scuffle. Most recently, Acer has filed patent counterclaims against HP in the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin and with the US International Trade Commission, alleging that HP “infringed on patents related to personal computers, servers and peripheral devices.” Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of it, but Acer did go on to state that it would “take all necessary steps to protect and enforce its patented technologies.” If the gloves weren’t already off, we’d say they are now.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We haven’t heard of Dutch design outfit Crealev before, but the company says it’s developed a “new levitation concept which is able to produce a very high levitation height combined with a low power dissipation and excellent stability” — and apparently the best way to show that off is this series of levitating lamps. Unveiled at last week’s Dutch Design Week event, the lamps are the product of designer Angela Jansen. We’re assuming they’re magnetic in some way, but Crealev’s website is pretty cagey with the details, only saying that it’s a “proprietary technology.” Either way, we want one.

Read — Crealev webiste
Read — Video of the lamps in action

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Craig Maloney writes “Over the long history of Linux, there have been many different distributions. One of the most famous distributions, love it or hate it, is the Ubuntu distribution. Ubuntu has come quickly from being the new kid on the block with the Warty Warthog release (4.10) to the most recent release Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). In that three year span, Ubuntu has grown from a handful of enthusiasts and developers to a thriving worldwide community. The Official Ubuntu Book is the official book from Canonical, which describes not only the Ubuntu distributions, but also the community from which Ubuntu is derived.” Read below for the rest of Craig’s review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: Announcements

You’ve already heard our impassioned plea; we won’t go over that again. You know all the details of the challenge; we’re not going to rehash them here. This is just a quick heads up that today is your last chance to contribute to the Engadget Energizes Education charity drive on DonorsChoose.org, as well as a gentle reminder that we’re still far from our goal. Forty-nine generous souls have banded together to donate almost $6,800 as of this writing, funding a variety of projects that will impact over one thousand disadvantaged public school children. But our goal is $25,000, meaning that as it stands, thousands of additional students will go without the critical technology they need to start life on an even playing field. Please, do whatever you can to help this worthy cause reach as many young lives as possible. Thanks for your time, and your selflessness.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Those waiting in tense anticipation for any of HP’s iPAQs could be twiddling their thumbs even longer. Amidst the recent delays (and subsequent clarifications) of the 110 and 210 comes news that a whole slew of the devices will not be shipping on time. Reportedly, HP Austria has confirmed to TamsPPC that the 110 won’t arrive until early next month, while the 200 series won’t land until January of next year. It gets worse — the 614 / 614c Business Navigator is purportedly delayed until next February, and the 914 / 914c isn’t set to arrive until the cows come home May of 2008. As for the 314, you can still expect it by the end of next month. Granted, we can’t confirm that Austria-based delays will necessarily affect America and the rest of the globe, but it certainly isn’t confidence instilling news, regardless.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!