By David Ponce

One reviewer’s verdict on the Dell Vostro 3550 reads as such: “It’s hard not to like the Vostro 3550. It looks good and feels comfortable to use. We like its backlit keyboard and huge touchpad, and it has a useful array of ports along its edges.” Indeed on the side you get “two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, eSATA, 8-in-1 Card Reader, ExpressCard/34″, while on the inside there are Core i3, i5 and i7 configurations that can make this machine as fast or as fastest as you’d like. Today’s deal on the Core i5-2410M 2.3GHz processor also comes with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB 7200RPM HDD. Normally selling at $899, $250 in rebates will take that down to $649.

[ Core i5 Dell Vostro 3550 Starting At $649 ] VIA [ LogicBuy ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Do a quick search on Flickr for “light drawing” and you’ll discover tens of thousands of long exposure photos where people ‘draw’ images and patterns using a moving light source. And as many as I’ve seen over the years, none are as impressively detailed as these Formula 1 car photos created by Mark Brown and Marc Cameron at the British Grand Prix. If you’re a fan of their skills you can actually buy prints of their previous work, which also consists of mostly high-performance sports cars.

[ Jalopnik - Formula 1 cars made entirely out of light ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Kotaku has a great post this morning about the CVC, or Control Video Corporation’s GameLine Atari 2600 cart which let you download games over a phone connection, way back in 1983. The $60 cartridge was both a storage unit and modem in one, and rolled into the cost was a year’s subscription to the GameLine service which was the only way you could download titles. At launch there were about 75 games available, and the idea seemed very promising, even given what we would consider pretty dated technology at this point.

Unfortunately you’ve probably never heard of the GameLine cart because it wasn’t exactly a runaway success. The company was never able to sign any of the big game publishers of the time, and there was an additional $1 fee to download a game. A game that would actually ‘expire’ after a week’s time, requiring you to buy it again if you wanted to keep playing. (So in fact it was more like a rental service.) The crash of the video game market in the mid ’80s took the GameLine with it, but apparently many of the people behind CVC went on to form a new company called Quantum Computer Services, which also dabbled in online gaming. Never heard of them either? That’s because in 1991 they changed their name to America Online, and eventually, AOL…

[ Kotaku - You Could Actually Download Atari 2600 Games (on an Atari 2600!) ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Any and all media filled plastic discs I’ve acquired over the years now sit in a couple of large binders, protected from the dust they’d inevitably collect on a shelf. It’s not that I don’t want to watch them, it’s just that the hassle of hooking up a DVD player to my TV again just isn’t worth the effort. And while ripping them to my PC is certainly an option, it’s just not as easy as Kaleidescape’s M700 appears to be. Sadly, that ease of use also comes with an almost $6,000 price tag.

You start with the M700 Disc Vault pictured above, which is capable of housing up to 320 CD, DVD or Blu-ray discs, which will probably be the source of some confusion given the numbers don’t match up. (Calling it the M320 makes more sense to me.) It will then automatically rip, or make a digital copy of the discs, at speeds of up to 15 CDs/hour, 3 DVDs/hour or 2 Blu-ray discs/hour. From what I can tell the M700 comes with its own on-board storage for the ripped copies, which can all be played with the discs removed, except for heavily protected Blu-rays which require the media to physically remain inside the vault. But if that’s not enough to house your entire disc collection, the company also sells a rackmount 1U Server which expand the M700′s storage capabilities to 150 Blu-ray discs, or 900 DVDs.

The M700 by itself comes with a price tag of $5,995, while the addition of the 1U Server brings the total cost up to around $16,000. And from what I can tell that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Kaleidescape’s complete offerings.

*Update: It turns out the M700 doesn’t include any storage of its own, but requires one of the Kaleidescape servers to store the digital copies of your media.

[ Kaleidescape M700 Disc Vault ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The only thing that a geek could like more than Star Wars or Space Invaders merchandise is a clever mashup of the two. And that’s exactly what this ‘Space Invaders Strike Back’ tee, designed by artist Steven Castaneda, does perfectly. At a quick glance it looks like a screenshot of classic Space Invaders, but upon closer examination you’ll discover your ship is actually the Millennium Falcon, while the invaders are TIE fighters, bombers and interceptors. Not to mention the Death Star hovering at the top for bonus points. It’s available from Tshirtbordello.com in any size you could need for just $14.99, but is limited to just Navy when it comes to color choice.

[ Space Invaders Strike Back Tee ] VIA [ ALBOTAS ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Now that there’s a unified standard, induction charging is going to start working its way into more and more devices as a built-in feature. But it’s not going to happen overnight, and there’s limited options when it comes to upgrading current technology to take advantage of wireless charging. One of the more common solutions, and the approach that The Joy Factory’s new Zip charging station take, is to serve as a sort of streamlined power bar. In that you still have to connect your devices with a cable, but the actual power connection is done via magnets and induction, instead of a pronged plug.

The Zip multi-charging station uses short ‘ZipTail’ cables that connect to the ports on a wide variety of devices, from smartphones to eReaders, and then easily connect to a charging pad. While the pad appears to have 16 available dimples for charging a multitude of devices, it in fact can only charge about 3 cellphones at once, give or take, depending on their power needs. So I guess the large assortment of dimples gives you flexibility on where to ‘plug’ each device in. For $79.95 you get the charging pad, a miniUSB cable and 2 x microUSB cables. Other cables, designed for devices with proprietary connectors, are also available but sold separately.

[ The Joy Factory - Zip Multi-Charging Station ]

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of uSell. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you’re reading OhGizmo! there’s a good chance you are an early adopter, a gadget fiend… one who goes through generation after generation of product and never gets tired of buying more.  Of course an unavoidable consequence of this is that you’ll end up with a growing pile of discarded consumer electronics, many of which might be in pristine shape.  Sell them and get Cash for Your Cell Phones and Electronics!  There’s good money to be made on them, and while there are tons of services out there to repurchase used electronics already, today’s sponsor is a little different.  uSell is an aggregator of sorts; enter your device’s information and it’ll search several different sites to give you the best offer on it.  The interface is slick and the results show up almost immediately. 

I was offered $96 on my old iPhone 3G, which has been sitting in the bag I was wearing the day I bought my iPhone 4.  $251 on my first generation iPad!  I’m already thinking of the stuff I could buy with this.  So check it out and find out how much your old things are worth.

By Andrew Liszewski

If your fashion sense changes on a week-to-week basis, and you feel a little guilty about your ever-growing pile of passé clothing and accessories you no longer wear, these Sprout watches will make you feel a little better about your style habits. They come in a huge variety of styles and color combinations, and when you tire of your current design you can simply throw it away since the watches are 80-93% biodegradable. (Though perhaps giving it away to a friend is probably a better alternative.)

The watches are made from materials like bamboo, organic cotton, mineral crystal lenses, corn resin instead of plastic and even feature mercury-free batteries. And they’re not terribly expensive either. On the low-end you can expect to pay about $30, even for the styles pictured above. While their most expensive design tops out around $75.

[ Sprout Biodegradable Watches ] VIA [ Coolest Gadgets ]

By Andrew Liszewski

At the moment the technology world is still all caught up in ‘touch’ functionality, but one day it could very well be replaced with even easier gestures, creating a planet inhabited by people constantly waving their arms and hands about in the air. And that would probably be ok with industrial designer J.C. Karich, who created this Soundsitive gesture-controlled speaker as part of the Designlab show in Paris last month.

As you move your hand closer or farther away from the top of the speaker, an outer wooden veneer sleeve raises and lowers, causing the volume to increase or decrease. Or more likely, just serves as a visual indicator that your gesture has been detected and adjustments are being made. And skipping tracks, forward or back, is controlled by simply swiping your hand over the top of the speaker in either direction, depending on whether you want the next or previous song. On one hand it’s nice not requiring a remote or buttons to control the speaker, but on the other hand, the invention of the remote control, and not having to get up to interact with something, is truly what separates us from other species.

[ Designlab - Soundsitive Gesture-Controlled Speaker ] VIA [ designboom ]