Cool, Quirky Eco Gadget Site

A follow on to the Nanotech site. This has some cool, and sometimes silly (wooden TV?) eco inventions. I like the ultrasound mosquito repellent.

Volkswagen to produce 1-Liter car in 2010, should get over 200 MPG

More from Engadget. According to Motor Authority, the automaker will be producing said vehicle and pushing it to market as early as 2010, and while the minuscule engine will only take you to 75MPH, it will still seat two people -- one in front of the other, though -- and get around 235MPG. No word on a price.

Cool Looking Wii Knock off

Meet the Vii. It is a cheap knock off from Communist China (remember when they advertised themselves as that?) that claims to have games that are "similar to those on the Wii, but more cheaper".

Wii's success fills coffers of Japan's richest man

A report out from Forbes magazine indicates that the tremendous popularity of Nintendo's Wii video game console has filled the coffers of the company's former chairman, Hiroshi Yamauchi and made him Japan's richest man.


On Thursday, Reuters cited the Forbes study, and said that Yamauchi's wealth had increased $3 billion in the last year, making his current net worth $7.8 billion. That meant he had passed real estate baron Akira Mori for the country's top wealth slot.

According to Reuters, Yamauchi owns 10 percent of Nintendo, which has seen its market capitalization rise to about $79 billion on the strength of the Wii's performance.

Why Megapixels don't matter

Just in time for Christmas, here is an article that explains why bigger isn't always better. Apparently, regular people can't tell the difference between rated megapixel ranges.
Tech writer David Pogue took photos with 5, 8 and 13 megapixel digital cameras, had them printed and blown up to 16 x 24 inches poster size, and asked passersby to pick out which ones came from the higher res camera:

Dozens of people stopped to take the test; a little crowd gathered. About 95 percent of the volunteers gave up, announcing that there was no possible way to tell the difference, even when mashing their faces right up against the prints. A handful of them attempted guesses--but were wrong. Only one person correctly ranked the prints in megapixel order, although (a) she was a photography professor, and (b) I believe she just got lucky

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/21pogues-posts-2/

Wave of the future

Here is another wave of the future technology. Sony is working on a process to stream real time tv through a cellular connection to the hand held PSP. Now you might ask why I would want to watch tv on such a little device? Simple. Complete portability.

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/50562993/

Cool New Toy

GM introduces a new high-end key fob, just packed with features you didn't even know you were missing. Examples include tire pressure display and the amount of fuel left in the tank. Neat.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/15/gm-announces-feature-packed-key-fob/

Crokinole

In keeping with holiday traditions, we brought out our crokinole board. It is a checkers flicking game, played on a special wooden board. Simple to learn, it provides hours of fun for everyone in the family, from my eight year old niece to my 85+ aunt. While looking around the web, I found a couple of sites worth looking at.

The first, as always, is the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crokinole

The second is the official site of Crokinole from Mr. Crokinole himself, Wayne Kelly:

http://www.crokinole.com/index.asp

Third is a pretty affordable version of the game available from Amazon. Most copies of the board are $100 and up. These are meant to be heirlooms, handed down to generations. The version at Amazon is quite a bit less.

http://www.amazon.com/Mad-Hatter-Blue-Multi-Crokinole/dp/B00001ZUKL/sr=8-4/qid=1163510929/ref=sr_1_4/002-4717702-8097654?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games

As finally, would you believe a movie about the sport of kings? It is an actual documentary of the World Crokinole Championships. "The one flick you must see". You have to understand the game to get the joke. Somebody better get this for me for Christmas!

http://www.crokinolemovie.com/

ThisNext

This is yet another gadget site with cool stuff. It also allows users to make recommendations of their own. Lots of fun stuff on here, like the Airzooka. It's a gun that shoots a blast of air at your unsuspecting victim. Harmless, annoying, and fun.

http://www.thisnext.com/

Buddy, can you spare a Terabyte?

At the recent Gartner IT Symposium I heard someone ask, "How long will it be before we start seeing people with 1 Terabyte of storage in their home? 1 Tb is 1,000 Gigabytes or 1 Million Megabytes. If I add up all of the machines we use at home, I get something like 650 Gigabytes. Here is an ad for a sweet little unit that has 1 Tb. It comes in just over $500. It wasn't that long ago that I was paying $100,000 for the same storage. Granted, that was enterprise class hardware, but is still an enormous decrease in cost per Gb.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2484230&Sku=I21-6102

5 mistakes made when buying HDTV

Did you know that Digital TV or DTV has 18 different sub-sets of specifications including SDTV, EDTV and HDTV? I didn't know that. I don't have one (yet), but I really want to understand it before I buy into it. Just for the record, HDTV is 720p or better

http://www.engadgethd.com/2005/11/08/dont-make-these-hdtv-mistakes/

Build your own DVR

For the Do-It-Yourselfer, a homebrewed Digital Video Recorder (DVR) that will work "just like Tivo, only better" whatever that means. You definitely need to be a geek to want to do this yourself, but it looks like an interesting project.

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/dvr/hack-attack-build-your-own-dvr-165963.php

Meet The Tesla Roadster

Here is a hot new car for 2009. It is an all electric hot rod two seater, capable of pulling 0 - 60 in about 4 seconds (that's really fast). It gets about 250 miles per charge. It starts with a price tag north of $100K, but comstantly improving technology and mass production could lower the price substantially.

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1

http://www.slate.com/id/2152255/?GT1=8702