By David Ponce

In a move that should have happened ages ago, a call center in the basement of the county jail in Waterloo, Iowa, became the first in the country to accept text messages sent to 911, starting last Wednesday. This is great for a range of people, not the least of which are the hard of hearing or the speaking impaired. We’re also thinking of teens who are unaware that their phones are also capable of taking voice calls.

Even though 911 callers can usually be located, texting technology does not allow this,

“That means i wireless subscribers who text 911 will get a reply asking them for the city or ZIP code they’re in. If the response corresponds to the Black Hawk County call center’s area, the text messages goes through to an operator. Otherwise the texter is told to call 911.

The call center’s operators are able to text back from their computers to conduct a conversation with the texter.

[ AP Article ] VIA [ Engadget ]

By David Ponce

It’ll never cease to amaze us how crafty some people are at separating others from their money. In this particular case, Gaiser High End PCs seems to make a line of computers that don’t do much more than cover themselves up in precious or semi precious materials to better justify your spending obscene amounts of money. While adorning themselves in anything from 24 carat gold leaf to what looks like Swarovski crystals, these PCs can fetch up to $32,300. At that price, those crystals very well may be actual diamonds… though one has to ask how necessary it really is to put diamonds on a PC case. Our understanding is these items exist for the sole purpose of showing to your other rich friends just how much wealthier than them you are. Then again (and not to get too philosophical), isn’t this the very definition of luxury?

Hit the jump for a gallery and a few links.

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By Andrew Liszewski

The Cheetah GPSmirror is a replacement rear-view mirror for your vehicle that uses GPS and a built-in database of speed traps and red light cameras (covering the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia) to apparently let you know when it’s ‘safe’ to speed or run a red light. Voice, tone and visual alerts let you know when you’re approaching a camera, or even when you’ve gone over the speed limit, though something tells me anyone buying one of these is probably going to ignore those. ~$250 from Buy.com.

[ Cheetah GPSMirror Speed & Red Light Camera Detector ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Oh the mighty cassette tape, how do you continue to be relevant in this digital age? Back in the 90′s I had a decent little collection of cassettes, most of which were mixes recorded either from other people’s tapes or off the radio. For those too young to have done it, trying to record songs off the radio was a huge pain, and usually resulted in the first few seconds of the songs getting cut off. Thankfully we don’t have to mess with such things these days thanks to our iPods and such. If you’re still partial to the retro look of an old cassette tape, why not stuff your iPod into one and use it as a protective case?

While that might seem like too much effort than it’s worth, the people at Contexture Design have already done it for you. They’ve taken a bunch of old cassettes and gutted, routered and otherwise rebuilt them to house your 4th generation iPod nano. It looks as though you’ll still be able to access all of the controls, just like any other good case. One of these is going to set you back around $40, so unless you really miss the 80′s/90′s, this is probably more expensive than it’s worth.

[ Contexture ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I’m pretty confident when I make the generalization that most people probably have a case for their iPhones. I don’t blame them, since if you’re going to drop a couple hundred bucks on something that can be easily damaged, it’s only smart to try and protect it. I never said that I was a genius, so don’t be surprised when I don’t lump myself in with the other iPhone users. I don’t really like dealing with cases, as I prefer my nice slim phone. Those that do have some of the bulkier cases might have found issues when trying to use their phone on certain docks. If you’re one of those people, then you might want to check this out.

The Cable Jive Dock Extender is basically a cord with a male and female iPhone dock connector. One end goes into the phone, the other connects to your dock. Sure, setting your phone next to your speakers (or whatever your particular dock does) isn’t as sleek as setting it in there, but it’s probably easier than removing your case every single time. You can pick one up for about $26. Or you can just find a new case that works with your dock. Personally, I’d go with the latter.

[ CableJive ] VIA [ GearFuse ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Designed by Sang-hoon Lee and Yong-bum Lim, the Braun Bell Mug is a pretty clever concept designed to help the visually impaired pour a beverage without overspill or having to use their finger to monitor how full the mug is. Inside the mug are three sensors that can detect how far it’s been filled, and the user simply has to press one of three buttons on the handle to choose what level they’d like. When the desired amount of liquid in the mug has been reached, an audible alert will sound letting them know they can stop pouring.

[ Yanko Design - No More Overspills Even If You Are Blind ] VIA [ Cribcandy ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While the term ‘Exmor R’ is nothing more than a new PR catchphrase for Sony to toss around, the technology behind the sensors in their new Cybershot DSC-TX1 and DSC-WX1 is kind of interesting. Traditionally, compact P&S digital cameras are not known for their fantastic low-light performance. The smaller optics means there’s less light hitting the larger and larger sensors, which leads to noisy photos. I mean there’s a reason professional photographers will drop thousands of dollars on a gigantic ‘fast’ lens. But the ‘Exmor R’ technology supposedly results in a sensor with twice the light sensitivity of a traditional sensor since the various elements like wires and circuitry which usually hinder the photo-diodes from gathering light have been effectively moved out of the way.

And further improving the camera’s low-light performance are the hand-held twilight and anti-motion blur multishot modes which basically use exposure bracketing and in-camera HDRI techniques to automatically combine multiple shots with varying exposures to produce a final result with more detail and less noise. As for other specs, both cameras feature a 10.2 mega-pixel sensor and while the thinner TX-1 includes a 3-inch touch screen LCD on the back, the larger WX-1 benefits from a wider angle Sony G lens instead. $380 for the DSC-TX1 and $350 for the DSC-WX1 and both should be available come October.

[ PR - SONY DEBUTS WORLD’S FIRST DIGITAL STILL CAMERAS WITH BACK-ILLUMINATED “EXMOR R” CMOS SENSOR TECHNOLOGY ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I can’t honestly count the number of mice I’ve gone through in the last 5 years or so. Sometimes I get new ones to review, other times I just buy one because I think it’ll end up being better than whatever I’m currently using. However, I still usually end up coming back to the same old Logitech wireless mouse that I’ve had for 5 years. The reason? It’s just more comfortable than the rest. Comfort should be the most important factor in a mouse, which is exactly why I would never dream of buying this MouseBlister.

These strange-looking rubber bits you see attached to that perfectly good mouse are what make up the MouseBlister. They are apparently crafted from motorcycle grips to be the most comfortable things out there. The company claims that it will reduce CTS symptoms and minimize the long-term wear and tear on a person’s hand. For $9 you get 25 of those little pads. Or you could just buy a mouse that’s comfortable to use instead of padding a crappy one.

[ MouseBlister ] VIA [ UberReview ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Here at OhGizmo! we’re fans of any device that includes the terms ‘breakfast’ and ‘automatic’ as part of its feature set, but I don’t think any of us would have ever believed our dreams and childish crayon sketches of an automatic pancake machine would ever come true. But here we are! The ChefStack is only as big as a microwave oven but is able to autonomously cook up and spit out up to 200 pancakes every hour. That’s like 0.05 pancakes every second!

It does use its own proprietary pancake batter though that comes in special nozzled bags which makes the whole automatic pancake dream possible, but hey, we’ve brought you similar pancake innovations before that turned out to be not so bad. In fact the only downsides I can see to the ChefStack is the $3,500 price tag (plus the cost of batter) and the lack of an accompanying automatic syrup making machine.

[ ChefStack ] VIA [ Uncrate ]