By Evan Ackerman

Woot.com normally sells one heavily discounted gadgety item every 24 hours, but during a Woot-Off, a new item appears as soon as the current item sells out (sometimes after mere seconds). Nobody knows what’s coming up next, but whatever it is, it’s dirt cheap (with flat rate $5 shipping). Among the items you’ve missed so far have been a Philips 1000 watt home theater system for $80, HDTV USB stick for $25, an Asus EEE 900 netbook for $140, and an 18 watt solar charger and charge controller for $80. And, of course, a whole bunch of random weird crap.

If you’re too lazy to refresh the page to see when the item changes, here’s a list of automatic Woot-Off checkers.

[ Woot! ]

By Evan Ackerman

You don’t generally expect much from a cell phone that costs less than sixty bucks, and with the Samsung E1107, you don’t get much. It’s got a 128 x 128 display, an FM radio, and a built-in flashlight. The reason that you’d buy it is the solar panel the takes up the entire back of the phone, promising up to 10 minutes of call time per hour in the sun. While not the most efficient way of charging your phone, it’s a million times better than an iPhone 3GS at out of power performance, and at least gives you an option for mobile charging.

The other reason to get this phone is that it’s good for the Earth: it helps reduce global warming. Not in the way you’re thinking, that would be too obvious. No, I’m talking about how having a solar panel out in the sun absorbs photons, preventing them from imparting their horrible energy into the ground and making everything just a little bit cooler. If everybody was using solar powered cell phones, not only would we be saving energy charging them, but charging them would actually cool the planet by some fraction of a degree that I’m just going to go ahead and call significant and important! Yay solar power!

So far, the E1107 is available pretty much everywhere except the US. Why must they taunt us so?

[ Newswire ] VIA [ Samsung Hub ]

By Andrew Liszewski

We’ve already brought you a t-shirt featuring a playable electronic drum kit on the front, but what if snares, high hats and cymbals aren’t your thing? Well there’s now an alternative for you hippy-types with this electronic bongo t-shirt.

Each of the 4 touch-sensitive bongos on the front of the shirt produces a different sound when tapped thanks to a battery-powered speaker hidden inside the tee. The speaker and other electronic components are also easily removed, allowing the 100% cotton shirt to be washed, which is important because at $59.99 from Latest Buy you’ll be wanting to wear this thing as much as possible to get your money’s worth.

[ Electronic Bongo Drum T-Shirt ]

By Andrew Liszewski

On one hand it’s nice that this funky looking CD player is completely solar powered, but on the other hand, who really uses a CD player any more? The base of the player hides its rechargeable battery, and after leaving the included solar panel out in the sun for about 4 to 5 hours you can expect to get about 10 hours of playtime. And in addition to traditional CDs it will also play MP3 files burned to a data disc, so it’s not completely outdated, but with a price tag of about $137, it’s still a tough sell.

[ Solar CD/MP3 Player ] VIA [ Apartment Therapy Unplugged ]

By Evan Ackerman

Last weekend BotJunkie was at RoboGames, so we owe you a couple weeks worth of robot awesomeness. Of course, we know you’re reading BotJunkie every day anyway, but still, we wouldn’t want you to miss an opportunity to relive it all.

We started off optimistically with a presentation from Rodney Brooks (of MIT and iRobot) about the forthcoming robotics revolution, got introduced to the cutest little robotic rat with an unpronounceable name, were overjoyed to find out that Pleo will be making a comeback, watched Nexi and pals rescue humans from a burning Navy destroyer, learned why exactly Pleo went extinct in the first place from one of the founders of Ugobe, watched PackBots doing awesome stuff (like parachute drops) in an iRobot promo video, found out what the problem is with android girlfriends, got scared by an exploding suicide snake robot being developed by the Israelis, watched robots preparing food and feeding people in Toyko, counted our change after seeing an $18 cardboard walking robot, wondered whether a snail robot that cleans buildings leaves a slime trail at the same time, watched R2-D2 and C3PO on Sesame Street, were tempted to turn vegetarian by a high speed cucumber slicing humanoid, learned how to turn your netbook into a robot, met a new Buzz Lightyear robot toy (since Toy Story 3 is only like a year away), were happy to see that the DEKA “Luke” robotic arm got 3 more years of funding, found out about a military project to create a wireless network with chirping cyborg insects, watched Psikharpax the robotic rat scuttle around, saw some kind of Mortal Kombat / Mario Kart deathmatch with LEGOs and balloons, and ended up marveling at a life-sized Gundam from Japan.

So far this week, we’ve already posted about a humanoid robot that makes coffee from scratch, a robot octopus posse t-shirt, the 2011 release of a movie version of the first play about robots, and some terrifyingly plausible micro air vehicles. All this robot stuff just keeps getting better and better, so make sure you don’t get left in the biological dust… BotJunkie: all the cool robots are doing it, you should too!

[ BotJunkie ]

By Shane McGlaun

I like digital photo frames and each time someone comes to my house that doesn’t own a digital frame, they leave wanting one. With digital frames, I can display images of the kids and other events without having to print off gobs of pictures and find a place to put the pictures on my wall.

Kodak has announced a new digital photo frame called the Easyshare S730, but has left out some important details about the device. The import bits missing are exactly how large the screen of the frame is and what the frame looks like. Pricing for the frame will be $139 and it will ship in September.

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By Shane McGlaun

Live traffic services have been available on a variety of different portable navigation devices for a while. Using these services drivers can find where traffic jams are happening and get alternate routes to avoid the jams.

Tele Atlas has announced its new HD Traffic service that uses new methods of gathering real time traffic information for subscribers. Traffic data provided by the service uses information from GPS measurements submitted anonymously from other user’s navigation devices and mobile phones, road sensors, and journalistic data.

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By Shane McGlaun

I am still rocking the original iPhone so I don’t get that snazzy GPS location feature. Sure, I can find my general location with the phone using cellular towers, but have often wished for a full GPS device when I was on the road.

Navigon has announced a new application coming to America for the iPhone 3G and 3G S soon called MobileNavigator. The app is only compatible with devices running the 3.0 OS update. The app stores a full map database on the iPhone and offers turn-by-turn routing.

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By Andrew Liszewski

We originally brought you the Phantom Keystroker back in March of 2008, and at that time it was a rather homebrew-looking device that even my grandmother would find suspicious if she found it attached to the back of a computer. Well ThinkGeek’s now selling the Phantom Keystroker V2, and while the latest model actually looks like a professional product, it’s still far from what I’d consider ‘phantom.’

Like the original, the Keystroker V2 will emulate a keyboard and mouse attached to the victim’s computer, and will periodically make random mouse movements, toggle the caps-lock and throw out random bits of text. The new version’s also got a set of switches on the side allowing you to choose what events will actually plague the PC it’s attached to, as well as how often they occur. Convenient, but once again they make the device look rather suspicious were someone to discover it. $12.99 from ThinkGeek.

[ Phantom Keystroker V2 ] VIA [ bookofjoe ]