The Martin Jetpack we showed you last week isn’t technically a jetpack, but Jetpack International has the real thing, and they’re confident enough with it to start trying to break airspeed records. This is not especially difficult to do, considering that jetpack airspeed records don’t really exist yet, but when you only have 30 or 40 seconds of fuel, you have to make sure and remember to leave yourself enough time to slow down. Having said that, 30 or 40 seconds worth of fuel is easily enough time to get me to the grocery store and back at 60 mph… I just have to root around under the couch cushions for a quarter million dollars.
If you’ve ever been in my house, you know that I’m still a kid at heart. After all, how many 24-year-olds have NERF guns and sets of Lazer Tag lying around? I figure what’s the fun in life if you can’t still act like a kid sometimes? Well over the years I’ve played with a lot of different Lazer Tag sets (and some knock-offs) and they all still had one thing in common, a gun. After all, what else would you shoot lasers out of, your hands?
If you get a set of these Spy Lazer Chase toys, you can indeed shoot lasers from your hands. All you need to do is raise our arms, make your hands into a fist and you’ll fire. I’m sure that kids everywhere will imagine themselves as something like Shocker (from Spiderman) with a pair of these. Unfortunately they’ll probably look more like Freakazoid. You can get your own set for around $16.
Back in March we showed you a different kind of Eee PC from Asus. The Eee Keyboard is basically your entire computer wrapped up into a nice neat keyboard package. It seems to be destined for the living room, what with it’s wireless HDMI and all. The 5-inch touchscreen is really what sells the device for me. Speaking of selling, when exactly can we expect to see these on the market?
If rumors are to be believed, we should be seeing it by the end of next month. We don’t yet know any pricing details, but that should be revealed at the upcoming Computex show. With Computex, Apple’s WWDC and E3 all next month, we can no doubt expect a lot of announcements and releases in the next month and a half.
If you’ve got an HP laptop that you purchased between August 2007 and March 2008, you might want to stop and pay attention for a minute. Yes, I know there’s plenty of other fun stuff to look at, but if you value your legs and the pants you’re wearing, stop for a moment. HP is recalling some 70,000 laptop batteries due to overheating issues. Apparently there have been incidents of property damage with some of these, so it would be worth checking into. The models affected are listed below, more info after the jump.
VTech is a company that is more closely associated with cordless phones and kids toys than streaming Internet radio devices. Any parent probably has a few of the company’s toys in their home; you would know them by the incessant noise they all seem to make.
VTech has announced that its new IS9181 wireless music hub is now available for purchase. The device connects to 802.11b/g wireless networks and offers access to thousands of streaming Internet radio stations. The device has a pair of front firing 3W speakers and a single 10W sub.
MSI was relatively unknown as a computer maker here in America until the netbook revolution and the firm unveiled the wind U100. The little U100 was one of the better netbooks on the market. MSI is now getting ready to launch its own MacBook Air competitors with two new X-Slim models called the X400 and X600 coming soon (we think).
The exact price and launch date for the X400 and X600 are unknown. What we do know is that the X400 will have a 14-inch screen and boast a super thin Li-poly battery with the entire notebook weighing 1.5kg. The X600 will offer a 15-inch screen with a total weight of only 2.1 kg. The X600 will also sport a discrete GPU.
A weight scale can only tell you so much when it comes to your general level of well-being, but the Body Check Ball can fill in the rest of the details. You just hold the ball in your hands, and a pair of electrodes will read your body fat, bone density and muscle ratio, displaying the good or bad news on a backlit LCD screen. The ball supports up to 10 different user profiles, and I assume it will keep track of past measurements for comparison. It also doubles as an alarm clock, and you can pick one up from the Japan Trend Shop for $39.
The name RedLaser might be a bit misleading since the app actually uses the iPhone’s camera instead of lasers like at a checkout, but the functionality is basically the same. You just snap a photo of any barcode from the appropriate distance (there’s a handy on-screen guide) and the application will automatically convert it to product info that can be used to search prices online, or just store the item in a shopping list for later reference. I’ve been using an app called SnapTell which provides similar functionality, but since it uses image recognition of the actual product (like the cover of a book or a DVD) the results aren’t always perfect. And I suspect that scanning barcodes instead would prove far more successful.
RedLaser is available on the App Store right now for just $1.99.
If your iPod Nano is too small for you, you should ask yourself why on Earth you bought an iPod Nano. You do know what “nano” means, right? It means “tiny,” except about a million times smaller. The iPod Nano Converter TV won’t solve your problem, but it will help mitigate it by enlarging the Nano’s screen up to 2.8 inches (after you shove it up inside) and playing audio through built in stereo speakers. As retro sexy as the TV/VCR combo styling is, its bulkiness does have the side effect of de-nanoing your Nano, and without any obvious Apple branding on the outside, you’ll probably start to ask yourself why you’re bothering to use this thing at all. It’s about $23, with free shipping.
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