By Andrew Liszewski

If you’ve ever looked down at your keyboard and wondered what parasites, bacteria and other forms of unclassified life were crawling all over it, imagine what the keyboards at a hospital must be like. That thought alone is probably what inspired a company called Esterline to create their Medigenic Infection-Control Keyboard. Instead of raised keys, which provides endless places for crud to get trapped, the Medigenic features a flat keyboard design (with fake 3D key graphics) that can be quickly wiped clean with hospital-grade disinfectants.

Supposedly the flat design can still be used by touch typists with “conventional keyboard-like performance” and there’s a dedicated disable button which prevents accidental key presses while the Medigenic is being wiped down. There’s even a backlight allowing the keyboard to be used in low-light environments without disturbing a patient, and a warning light that will flash at user-defined intervals reminding you it’s time for a cleaning.

The Medigenic keyboard runs about $140, while the mouse, which is just as easy to keep clean, is about $80.

[ Medigenic Infection-Control Keyboard ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It might have brought you years of frustration as a child, but as a grown-up you can now use the power of the Rubik’s Cube for good. Or at least good taste. This set of salt and pepper mills are made to look like the iconic twisting puzzle cubes from the 80′s, but instead of messing up the colored grid pattern, the twisting motion is actually used to grind out your choice of salt or pepper.

They’re available from I Want One Of Those for about $16.55 each. Yeah, you have to buy them separately.

[ Rubik's Salt and Pepper Mills ] VIA [ Toyology ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Having used a DSLR for many years now, I much prefer looking through a viewfinder to compose a shot than starting at an LCD. But with more and more people making the upgrade from a P&S to a DSLR these days, it makes sense that Nikon would introduce a model like the D5000 which is their first to include a “Vari-angle” or flip-out LCD display.

The D5000 features the same 12.3-megapixel CMOS sensor as the D90, and is also able to capture HD video in 720P at 24fps. The LCD display is a bit smaller at 2.7 inches, but it’s not that much of a trade-off if you’ve been really hoping for a swivel LCD on a DSLR. Personally, I’ve still got my sights on the D90 because it features a larger viewfinder and a bit more flexibility when it comes to custom settings, but the D5000 kit which includes the AF-S NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR lens should be available in late April for about $850, making it an excellent choice if you’re looking to replace your P&S.

[ Nikon D5000 ]

This post is syndicated with permission from GamerFront.net

One of the things I love about my 360 is that it can stream Netflix movies to my TV. Sure, I have to pay a few bucks a month for my Netflix subscription, and a few more for a gold Live account, but it’s worth the convenience. Plus I’m too lazy to go to the video store, and I pay for a gold account anyway. Unfortunately for those with one of the other current-gen consoles, this service is exclusive to the 360. For now.

A job listing on the Netflix site hints at the possibility of streaming their movies onto other consoles. The position of “Engineering Leader – Gaming Platforms” lists one of the responsibilities as “help build a small technology team to rapidly prototype and iterate on a variety of platforms.” Now unless I’m mistaken, you’d have to have more than one or two platforms to justify the word “variety.” Perhaps we can look forward to streaming movies on the Wii and PS3 sometime in the future.

[ Netflix ] VIA [ GamerFront ]

By Chris Scott Barr

A few days ago I gave you my full review of the iPanda, and hinted that I had another similar device to check out. The other iPod dock that I was referring to was the iBoo, which is also from Speakal. This time around they have slimmed down a few of the features into a less-expensive ghostly shape. The main question is whether or not the lower price means lower quality.

So what are the main differences between the iBoo and iPanda? Well if you’ll recall the iPanda had 5 individual speakers (1 bass, 2 mids and 2 tweeters). In order to trim down the price the iBoo has only three speakers. The mids have been removed, while the tweeters are now picking up the slack. Another change is that the sub only puts out 9W, bringing the grand total to only 15 Watts of output.

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By Chris Scott Barr

Last week I brought you the news of Time Warner’s outrageous price gouging with metered bandwidth. Well it seems that there has been a bit of an update to the situation. No, they haven’t backed down, but rather given us some details on precisely how they are planning to screw their customers out of money.

Apparently the COO over at Time Warner has been listening to the outcry from the vast internet community, and decided to respond to our concerns. First, they know that some users out there spend only a few measly minutes a day checking their email, so there is now a plan for such people. They’ve also decided that they will be kindly putting a cap on overage charges. If you’re really worried about that bill at the end of the month, rest easy that you won’t see more than $75 in overage fees. Hit the jump for the full breakdown from COO Landel Hobbs.

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By Evan Ackerman

Back in March, we wrote about a service called OnLive, which outsources gaming hardware to “the cloud,” i.e. makes it someone else’s problem. G.ho.st (which I will herein refer to as Ghost) does sort of the same thing, except with an entire operating system.

‘Ghost’ is an acronym for Global Hosted Operating SysTem, and it’s a sort of virtual computer that lives somewhere out there in the intertubercloud. You access it, in its entirety, via nothing more than a web browser. When you do, Ghost gives you a virtual desktop, complete with programs, file storage, and yes, even the internet (inside the internet). The programs available on Ghost are all open source, but you should be able to mess around with most types of files, including MS Office files. You get 5 gigs of file storage on your virtual computer, along with an email address and the capability to aggregate your other email accounts via POP3. You can keep the rest of your files synced between Ghost and other computers with a small desktop application.

Ghost is a completely free service, and they aim to stay that way. They make their money through affiliate advertising; when you click (say) a Google ad link while using the Ghost browser, Ghost gets paid. The upsides to a cloud desktop like this are many, the chief one being that you can have “your” computer available anywhere with little more than a web browser. Files, email, bookmarks, even cookies… Ghost keeps it all in one place for you. All you need is internet and you’re good to go.

[ g.ho.st ]

By Shane McGlaun

There are all sorts of geeks in the world from the computer geek to the plain ol’ geek. Perhaps the worst type of geek, a geek even the computer geek laughs at, are comic book geeks. You know the type, 35 years old and they own every Spiderman toy ever made and are proud of it. I know one dude that qualifies for the comic book geek of legend award, he combs his hair like Wolverine. I won’t name names, you know who you are.

Dream Cheeky has a new product that will let the computer/comic book geek meld their two sources of geekiness — the Spiderman USB Spider Webcam. The webcam looks like the old film camera Peter Parker used to take snaps of Spiderman complete with film containing action shots of the web-slinger in action sticking out the side of the camera.

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By Shane McGlaun

I have been feeding on a steady stream of HD TV and movies for years now and I can’t stand to watch SD programs. It would really suck to have to go back to SD programs and thankfully, DirecTV has all the channels I like to watch in HD.

The HD lineup was the reason I chose DirecTV over Dish Network for my new house. Dish Network is trying to improve its HD offerings though and has just introduced seven new national HD channels. I wonder if that means they got that satellite that failed to reach orbit correctly last year repaired.

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