By Andrew Liszewski

Esquire was the first to improve magazines with their limited edition issue featuring an e-ink cover, which I missed out on, but it looks like Entertainment Weekly is one-upping them, and then some, with a CBS & Pepsi sponsored video ad that will appear in their September 18 issue. Now there’s no way the insert will be as thin as a magazine page, given the electronics and batteries required to run even a tiny LCD screen, but it looks like the player will allow readers/viewers to use a set of 5 buttons to choose what content they’d like to see.

When Entertainment Weekly readers open the magazine to the ad pages, they will see a small screen flicker on and start to load a video. A brief segment featuring actors from “The Big Bang Theory” will explain how to use the player, while talking about features from Entertainment Weekly and the different video selections a reader can choose. By pressing one of five different buttons, readers can watch a video montage from “How I Met Your Mother,” a montage from “Two and a Half Men,” a humorous ad for Pepsi Max, a sneak preview of “Accidentally on Purpose” or a preview of new CBS dramas “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “The Good Wife” and “Three Rivers.”

Unfortunately the enhanced magazines will only be sent to EW subscribers in Los Angeles and New York, which means I will miss out yet again, but I’m sure outrageously overpriced copies will pop-up on eBay as soon as the issue is released.

Thanks Meg!

[ Advertising Age - CBS, Pepsi Create Video Ad to Run in Print ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Last week we showed you one of our first SSD’s that we’ve had a chance to review here at OhGizmo. It performed very well, but it was also had a small capacity and a large price tag. If you’re not looking to spend quite that much, but still want to upgrade from that old spinning drive, then you might try more of an entry-level drive. Kingston was kind enough to send over one of their V Series drives, which I’ve spent some time testing.

We were able to test out the SSDNow V Series 128GB Desktop Bundle. 128GB should be plenty of space for most users, though some may still want a secondary drive if they tend to have a lot of larger files that they need. You won’t have to be nearly as careful with space as you would on say the 64GB drive we tested last week.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

Building blocks are the perfect toy for stimulating a child’s imagination, but I’m not sure what aspirations you have for your kid if you were to get them this particular set of blocks. Ratata, designed by Tomm Velthuis, looks like a rather innocent box of handcrafted wooden shapes, but when properly assembled they actually create a full size machine gun. So while your kid won’t be building castles with them, they will be developing important skills for infiltrating them. Available soon from Tomm’s website.

[ Ratata ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Congratulations to Sharp for combining two devices that most tech-savvy consumers have no use for. Their JD-7C1CL/CW cordless landline phone includes a generous 7-inch LCD touch screen (800×480 resolution) that can be used for general phone functions like checking voicemail, accessing your phone book etc. and when not in use it doubles as a digital photo frame. The 128MB of storage on board isn’t exactly generous, and while you can wirelessly send photos from a cellphone to the frame, it only supports IR so be prepared to wait a while if your phone ‘s camera is of the many megapixel variety.

VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I’m sure that everyone remembers when optical mice first broke onto the scene. Finally the days of cleaning those stupid ball mice were over. Of course there is one place that those old mice can go that no optical or laser mouse can work. That would be reflective surfaces. Even the most high-tech laser mouse is defeated by the surface of a glass desk. At least that was the case until Logitech announced their new Darkfield technology.

You have to admit, Darkfield technology sounds like something really awesome, especially when you note that it works with lasers. Well this isn’t some strange weapon developed by a secret government group. Rather, it allows Logitech’s new mice to work properly on any reflective surface (minimum 4mm thick). Finally, those using a glass desk can ditch their mouse pad. The technology will first be seen in their Performance Mouse MX, and its smaller brother the Anywhere Mouse MX. Look for reviews of both in the very near future right here on OhGizmo.

[ BLogitech ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Hmmm… I’m still trying to decide if this USB hub/world time travel clock is useful or not. It’s your basic compact alarm clock (with an eye-catching inverted LCD display) that’s also world time-friendly thanks to presets for 25 different cities. But it’s also got a series of 4 USB ports up front, though as far as I can tell it’s only designed to be used as a hub when connected to a PC or laptop, so I’m kind of ‘meh’ about the whole thing. Now if it plugged into the wall and let you charge 4 different devices off of those USB ports I’d have already placed an order, but sadly that doesn’t appear to be the case. $29.99 from the Oregon Scientific website.

[ Oregon Scientific USB Hub and World Travel Clock ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Hot on the heels of the retro-themed Mighty Mini Speakers we brought you on Monday comes this slightly larger, though still miniature, boombox speaker dock for your iPods. And let me emphasize the ‘s’ on iPods since this thing supports almost every iPod released in the past 5 years like the Mini, all iterations of the Nano and every version of the Touch and iPhone including the 3GS.

The speaker doesn’t require any batteries, which is nice, though that also means it will be draining power from your player, reducing your playtime. And since it also uses the iPod’s dock connector, you won’t be plugging in and recharging while it’s playing either.

$31.99 from USBFever.com (in your color choice of black, black or black) which doesn’t include a miniature square of cardboard so you can rekindle your fresh breakdancing moves.

[ Retro Cassette Stereo Mini Speaker for iPod / iPhone ] VIA [ Fosfor Gadgets ]

By David Ponce

Well, you know, it’s not like everyone is running out of cash. Right? So there very may well be some of you out there interested in these handmade iPhone cases from a company called Sofbank.

The lacquer cases feature five different designs that pay aesthetic homage to the days of samurais and shoguns and come with elegant presentation cases with details regarding the crafting of the cases.

Yeah, and they also cost 99,800 yen or about $1,057. Pretty much everything from the links below is in Japanese, the kind that Google can’t handle since it’s an image, so maybe you can help out with details. Like, whether they’re available now, or whether they’ll even ship outside Japan.

In any case, hit the jump for another picture and links.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Evan Ackerman

Most of the UAVs we saw at AUVSI last week were expensive. Really expensive. Like, if you have to ask, don’t ask. This sucks, because UAVs aren’t just useful for people with a defense budget… There’s a sizable civilian market as well, for everything from security to aerial photography to flying around and freaking people out with a little round robot.

The HALO micro air vehicle promises to be simple, reliable, and above all, inexpensive. If it makes it into production in volume, by 2011 you (yes, you) could go by one for somewhere around…

Read More at BotJunkie…