By Andrew Liszewski

Designed by Thomas De Santis and available on Threadless for just $18, the ‘As Fast As I Can’ tee finally sets the record straight when it comes to just how fast a human can move. Apparently we can totally outrun trees, snails, turtles, baby pigs and turkeys, but we’re as good as dead if we ever had to outrun a gazelle, ostrich, kangaroo or a greyhound, which collectively are mankind’s greatest threat. Good to know!

[ As Fast As I Can Tee ] VIA [ UberReview & Fashionably Geek ]

This post is syndicated with permission from GamerFront.net

For those that are attempting to get the perfect bod from the Wii Fit, here’s an attachment to raise the Wii Fit Balance Board.  It goes underneath your Balance Board for when you’re doing aerobic steps.  It raises up the Balance Board a whopping four inches to make it a bit more challenging.  They claim that particular height is the same size as the average height of a stepper you’d find at a real live gym.  I have a couple of issues with this item, first of all I’m skeptical as to how well this would actually support the Balance Board.  With that in mind, the price tag is far too high on this one.  It will cost you $39.99 for this flimsy attachment.

[ Zoozen ] VIA [ GamerFront ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Are you one of the people that was convinced that HD-DVD was going to win in the epic HD format war? I really thought that it had a chance there for a while, but alas, Blu-ray won out. Sure, you can still watch those movies in all of their HD glory, but you still need to keep around an HD-DVD player for it. Well thanks to a new initiative by Warner Bros. you can trade in a few of those obsolete discs for shiny new Blu-ray versions.

That’s right, gather up all of those Warner Bros. HD-DVDs and head over to the Red2Blu site and get yourself all set up. They’re going to ask for shipping and handling, as well as a small fee of $4.95 per disc. I really have to commend Warner Bros. on this. They don’t have any obligation whatsoever to provide an exchange program, but for the sake of their customers they are doing it anyway. I’d definitely get on this while it lasts. That reminds me, I need to hit up the cheap HD-DVD bin at Fry’s next time I’m out that way.

[ Red2Blu ] VIA [ Gearlog ]

By Chris Scott Barr

If you live in a small apartment or even a dorm, you know just how valuable every square inch of space can be. If you’re also a musician, you might have a hard time finding room for all of your equipment. Well here is a simple device that will give you somewhere to keep your guitar that’s out of the way.

Guitars can be a bit awkward to store since they are bulky, and even in a case they make it hard to store other items around them. Well if you’ve got a little space free on your coat rack, then you might check out this Guitar Hanger. Now your guitar takes up little more room than a winter coat. Of course you’ll need to make sure that the bar is sturdy before you go dropping a Les Paul or two on there. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a price for one of these. Surely we’re not talking more than $20 or so.

[ TheGuitarHanger ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

By Evan Ackerman

You may not realize it, but here in the US, our internet kinda sucks. We pay more money for less speed than just about everyone else in Europe and Asia. The town of Wilson, in North Carolina, got fed up with this and decided to form their own community ISP, called Greenlight, which was unsurprisingly able to compete so effectively with more traditional companies like Time Warner that you can’t even really call it competition:

For example, the city offers an expanded basic cable (81 channels), 10 Mbps (download and upload), and a digital phone plan with unlimited long distance to the U.S. and Canada, all for $99.95. A comparable plan from Time Warner Inc., with six fewer channels (no Cartoon Network, Disney, The Science Channel, ESPNU, ESPN News, or ESPN Classic) and lower upload speeds costs $137.95, for an introductory rate, which lasts a few months and then will likely be ratcheted up.

Greenlight also offers every single cable channel plus premium channels, unlimited phone service, and 20mbps internet for $170 (Time Warner’s fastest available service is 15mbps). And as if that wasn’t enough, Greenlight even has a 100 mbps service. Oh, and you know what else? They have 24/7 local phone support and actually respond to feedback from their community. See? It’s so much better, it’s not even funny. So, you’d think that in light of this, Time Warner would realize that their overpriced and underperforming services would need an overhaul to remain competitive in a world that depends so heavily on internet.

Instead, Time Warner is lobbying the North Carolina senate to pass legislation outlawing community ISPs. And it’s apparently working, too, which I can’t figure out because what could possibly be wrong with providing a better service to people at a cheaper price? Time Warner’s argument is that they can’t compete against a community-owned ISP that’s able to provide services at cost, but it seems to me that the real issue is that Time Warner’s services cost a lot, and they suck, and that’s why there’s no competition. If Time Warner wants to complain about competition, maybe they should first try to get competitive, instead of attempting to outlaw anyone who does things better than they do.

[ DailyTech ] VIA [ Engadget ]

By Shane McGlaun

I have seen some strange notebooks and netbooks before, but adding a second screen to a 10-inch netbook is one of the strangest things I have seen. Sharp has introduced the new Mebius netbook for the Japanese market.

The machine has a second 4-inch LCD where the track pad would normally be. The small screen has a resolution of 854 x 480 and can show video and other content on its little screen. The screen also doubles as the track pad and can be used to input handwriting into the computer.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Shane McGlaun

With the sales of laptops down significantly you might think that computer makers like Dell would holding off on introducing new notebooks. Dell is still coming up with new gear for those with the money to buy and the latest new notebook is the Studio 15.

As the name implies the Studio 15 has a 15.6-inch LCD supporting 720p and full 1080p resolution. The machine can be optioned with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 discrete graphics card with 256MB of 512MB of RAM.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

Ok, forget what I said the other day about the virtues of practicing your putting on a real green. That was before I learned about the Putt Up or Shut Up Rug Kit that uses a combination of different carpet types to create a miniature golf course in your living room. Each rug is composed of 8 modular tiles that can be combined to create different putting challenges ranging from a par 3 configuration up to a par 5. A 3-foot by 6-foot tile area will set you back just $139.99, and if you’re like me and blow tens of thousands of dollars on mini golf every year, having this installed wall-to-wall is a far more economical solution.

[ Putt Up or Shut Up Rug Kit ] VIA [ Luxury Housing Trends ]

By Andrew Liszewski

This week marks the 20th anniversary of what I consider to be one of the greatest gaming consoles of all time, Nintendo’s Game Boy. Besides the fact that it was the only console you could stash in your school bag and play almost anywhere, the limitations of the Game Boy’s Z80 processor and dot matrix LCD display meant that developers really couldn’t rely on fancy graphics, cut scenes or other gimmicks to sell titles. They basically had to focus on gameplay. And arguably the poster child for simple but addictive gameplay on the Game Boy was the title that Nintendo decided to include at launch, Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris.

Like Windows’ Solitaire, Tetris is the kind of game that you can enjoy for 5 minutes or 5 hours, which made it the perfect title to include with the Game Boy which could be used for killing 5 minutes in the dentist’s waiting room, or a 5-hour car ride. In addition, the basic gameplay mechanics and easy-to-learn controls meant that everyone could play Tetris, so suddenly those ‘new-fangled’ video games weren’t just for kids anymore.

And I won’t even get into Tetris’s ridiculously repetitive but surprisingly catchy soundtrack, lest I get it stuck in my head again… Damn!… Too late.

[ MobyGames - Tetris ]