Nintendo announces DS Lite

Nintendo announces DS Lite [Update 3] - Engadget: "Nintendo just emailed us the following announcement of the redesign of the Nintendo DS (dual screen) handheld.

'Nintendo President Satoru Iwata today announced Nintendo DS Lite, a slimmer version of the best-selling Nintendo DS?. Also featuring brighter screens, Nintendo DS Lite will launch in Japan in March. Nintendo DS Lite will be less than two-thirds the size of the original Nintendo DS and more than 20 percent lighter.

Nintendo DS has enjoyed extremely strong sales in Japan and around the world, selling more than 14.4 million units worldwide. The Japanese sell-through of the existing Nintendo DS hardware exceeded 5 million within 13 months, which made Nintendo DS the fastest-selling video game system there.

Nintendo will announce more information about the availability of Nintendo DS Lite in North America and other territories in the future.'

Additional details can be found on Nintendo's Japanese site.

Japanese release date: March 2, 2006

Weight: 218g (compare to 275g for the current Nintendo DS)

Dimensions: 133mm x 73.9mm x 21.5mm"

Axbo alarm clock wakes you when you're ready

Axbo alarm clock wakes you when you're ready - Engadget: "Remember the Sleeptracker, the digital watch that could purportedly track your sleep rhythms and wake you only when you're likely to be optimally refreshed (i.e., not when you're in the middle of a deep sleep or heavy-duty REM cycle)? Well, it's got a stylish big brother now, in the form of the aXbo, a sleek alarm clock that communicates wirelessly with a wristband that does basically the same thing as the Sleeptracker: it keeps track of your movements throughout the night, gauging how deeply you're sleeping by how much you're thrashing. You set a window during which it can wake you, and it waits for the right moment within that space. Of course, the aXbo won't help you sleep better, but it could help you wake up feeling a little more refreshed -- if you don't mind shelling out ?200 ($241) for the privilege."

TV's sleep' button stands accused

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | TV's 'sleep' button stands accused: "Britons waste the equivalent of around two power stations worth of electricity each year by leaving TV sets and other gadgets on standby.

Last June Environment Minister Elliot Morley, responding to an MP's question, revealed that electrical equipment in sleep mode used roughly 7TWh of power and emitted around 800,000 tonnes of carbon.

The government is currently reviewing the options of how to keep the UK's lights on in the future, at the same time as reducing the amount of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.

Energy efficiency groups are urging people to carry out their own personal energy review because homes are set to place an ever increasing demand on power supplies.

The number of TVs in the UK is estimated to reach 74 million by 2020, meaning that there will be more televisions than people to watch them."

StarCity, Birmingham

FF:"Went to StarCity with 10 people and played arcade yesterday, include OutRun2 SP, i really had fun, they are pro, looking forward to go there again, Thanks for Lan inviting me, drove me there and the birthday girl is really cute"

Wake up and smell the coffee with Aroma Waker clock

Wake up and smell the coffee with Aroma Waker clock - Engadget: "Personally, we need something a little more aggressive to get us out of the bed each morning, but if soothing scents are enough to get you going, AbioGenesis' Aroma Waker may just do it for you (and it could do it for us as well, if they included some really foul smells to make us flee the bedroom in horror). Looks like just a concept design for now, but we look forward to seeing someone come up with a homebrew version using a coffee pot with a built-in timer (hey, can we patent that?).
"

PlayStation 3, conceptual design?

PlayStation 3, conceptual design? - Engadget: "We're still digging through gigs of CES photographs when we happened upon one rather juicy bit we thought we might share. We found this little number over at the Blu-ray booth -- which, given the circumstances, we can only assume was paid for and set up at least in large part by Sony. Yes, you're reading that placard right (we had to zoom in from another angle since the lighting made it hard to catch a decent shot). Is it true? Is the Sony PlayStation 3 that we've all now come to know and love (or not) merely a 'conceptual design?' Because if it is they must be further behind than we originally anticipated.

P.S. -As our boy Vlad pointed out over at Joystiq, this is apparently the same sign posted on the PS3 at the Tokyo Game Show in September. Curiouser and curiouser."

Nintendo says no DS redesign for you!

Nintendo says no DS redesign for you! - Engadget: "If you hadn't noticed by now, today is the 16th, and those rumors of an updated DS being announced today are looking pretty slim, what with there only being four or five hours left for Nintendo to make an announcement. Another factor in these increasingly slim odds might be the fact that Nintendo has straight out denied that a redesign might land this week. According to GamesIndustry.biz, Nintendo Europe calls the reports to the contrary to be 'pure rumour and speculation,' which really cuts us to the core, while at the same time being a completely accurate assessment of the situation. Oh well, we've still got around 49 weeks or so left in '06 for our dreams to come true."

No XP on Intel Macs, but Vista is good to go

No XP on Intel Macs, but Vista is good to go - Engadget: "If you've been counting on being able to run Windows on those new Intel-based Macs, Apple's not about to make it easy for you -- at least not if you're attached to Windows XP. According to Apple SVP Phil Schiller, the new Macs announced yesterday (those being the Intel iMac and MacBook Pro) may not be able to run current versions of Windows due to the fact that the computers will boot using the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), rather than a traditional BIOS (current Power PC Macs use Open Firmware). EFI was developed by Intel and allows a number of advanced features, including the ability to connect to the Internet from a command shell before the OS is loaded. Since EFI was developed after the rollout of Windows XP, it's not supported by the current or earlier version of Windows (it is, however, supported by 64-bit versions, but the new Macs are 32-bit, so it's back to square one). However, all is not lost: Windows Vista will support EFI, and Apple has said it has no plans to directly block Windows from working on the new boxes. So, if you're a Vista beta tester and have ordered a new iMac or MacBookPro, get those install CDs out; the rest of you will have to wait for the official Vista release, or find a way to hack XP to boot using EFI (which we're sure is about"

Video feature: Toshiba's Gigabeat S - Engadget

Video feature: Toshiba's Gigabeat S - Engadget: "One of the fav products around CES among the ranks of the Engadget Army has definetely been Toshiba's Gigabeat S-series. On Wednesday's podcast we aired the interview with John Starkweather of Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices; today you can peep the device for yourself.

Format
QT MPEG4, 1:28, 5.69 MB

[Download Here]"

FF Arrived Birmingham

FF arrived Birmingham, ho miss HK and you...

A-Data SD cards with capacity display

A-Data SD cards with capacity display - Engadget: "We're always wondering how much junk we have on our various SD cards; thanks to A-Data, we can tell at a glance. Similar to the JumpDrive with E Ink, A-Data added a tiny liquid crystal display on their BCD-SD cards. The LC display uses power from a host while inserted and indicates the remaining capacity on the card. Pop the card out and the display retains the information until you reinsert it, so you can manage your data needs. A-Data BCD-SD cards come in the typical SD flavors: 128, 256, 512MB as well as 1 and 2GB."

A New Year talk by FF

Happy New Year 2006 - A New Year talk by FF in Hong Kong 峰峰零六新年賀詞 ( Play now )

Gift Guide: Dell 2405FPW

Engadget: "Well, it's been a nice run everyone. For the last day of Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide we present the mother of all 2005 monitors, Dell's 2405FPW. Hopefully you've gotten all your holiday shopping done by now, because if you expect to make a run to pick one up today, you're probably gonna be sorely disappointed -- they're not sold in stores, of course. But the good news is the 2405's successor, the 3007WFP, is about to be launched in about two weeks, so if you're down with being the late gift-giver (or are just in the market for a new display), you'll probably be able to pick one of these up for a song in the very near future. Hey, it won't be anything to scoff at for some time; after all, it may not have the luster of one of those beautiful Apple Cinema displays, but outside matching its 1920 x 1200 resolution, the 2405FPW does have a leg up on the Apple 23-inch with an extra viewable inch of screen real estate, penty more inputs, a 1000:1 contrast ratio (over 400:1), brightness of 500 cd/m2 (over 270 cd/m2), and a 9-in-1 card reader."

'Modest' deal struck in Hong Kong

BBC NEWS | Business | 'Modest' deal struck in Hong Kong: "A limited trade deal has been reached in Hong Kong after developing countries approved a European Union offer to end farm export subsidies by 2013."

MAIN POINTS OF THE DEAL

Agricultural subsidies: Farm export subsidies will progressively be phased out by 2013. However, there has been no agreement on import tariffs

Cotton: Rich countries will phase out export subsidies for cotton but there is no agreement on a date for reducing domestic subsidies for US farmers

Development Aid: The poorest countries will get quota-free and duty-free access to global markets for 97% of their goods

There was a large police presence around the venue after clashes between police and demonstrators on Saturday, which left 70 people injured.

NEC’s N701i ECO corn-based phone >

Engadget - www.engadget.com: "NEC is busting out an edible environmentally friendly phone, the N701i ECO, to match their corn laptops. The phone body is made up of 75 percent plant materials, including corn and potatoes. Once disposed of (we hope not before) the phone eventually becomes water and carbon dioxide, leaving the earth free from housing another lame out-of-date phone. Seriously guys, not even mother nature wants to be caught toting that old black and white screened Nokia of yours, or this Bluetooth-less N701i. She’s gotta represent."

See you in Hong Kong this Sunday

FF: "I got the ticket through Airline Network, can't believe I still can get a cheap ticket in the last minutes

will arrive Hong Kong this Saturday, see u there"

Fuel depot blast sparks massive fire

icWales - Fuel depot blast sparks massive fire: "A huge fire raged after a series of explosions ripped through an oil storage depot in what is thought to be the largest incident of its kind in peacetime Europe."

Miraculously, only two people were seriously injured among 43 casualties, after flames shot hundreds of feet into the sky following the blasts at the Buncefield depot, near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, police said.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott tonight visited the scene of the blasts, the first of which happened just after 6am at the fuel terminal in Leverstock Green, close to junction 8 of the M1.

The force of the incident could be heard up to 100 miles away sparking fears of a terrorist attack or a plane crash.

But Hertfordshire Police Chief Constable Frank Whiteley said they were treating the incident as an accident.

GOLD V3i coming to Dolce & Gabbana

GOLD V3i coming to Dolce & Gabbana - Engadget - www.engadget.com: "Now that the RAZR has become the new StarTAC, fashionistas need a new way to make their uber-slim cellphone draw wows, so Dolce has teamed up with Moto to offer just the product. A few lucky people (1000, to be exact) will soon be able to pick up a special edition gold V3i from D&G boutiques worldwide, which is now a necessary component in completing the full magenta-silver- black-blue-gold RAZR rainbow. No word yet on the cost, but if you’re even considering buying such an unnecessary piece of showiness, it’s doubtful that price is of much concern."

IBM 5100 Portable Computer

Old Computers - rare, vintage and obsolete computers:"The Model 5100 is IBM's first microcomputer, i.e. not a mainframe, and is also considered the world's first portable computer. Although at 55-pounds, it might best be described as "self-contained" rather than "portable".

There were very few other computers available at the time, and nothing even close to the capabilities of the 5100. It is a very complete system - with a built-in monitor, keyboard, and data storage. It was also very expensive - up to US$20,000. It was specifically designed for professional and scientific problem-solvers, not business users or hobbyists. "

Model:	5100
Introduced:	September, 1975
Price:	US $19,975 w/ 64K RAM
Weight:	55 pounds
CPU:	IBM proprietary, 1.9MHz
RAM:	16K, 64K max
Display:	5" monochrome monitor
	64 X 16 text
Storage:	Internal 200K tape (DC300)
Ports:	tape/printer I/O port
OS:	APL and/or BASIC

Tesco music sandwich set to harrass Brits this week

Tesco music sandwich set to harrass Brits this week - Engadget - www.engadget.com: "Tesco, Britain’s largest retailer, is introducing the greeting card-inspired musical sandwich for the dreary lunch crowd this week. Now get this, according to a Tesco spokesman (who’ll remain anonymous to avoid your wrath) the music sandwich “is designed to provide busy office workers with relaxing music to make eating lunch at their desks more enjoyable than ever before.” Open the top of your prawn-and-mayo or perhaps, egg-and-pickle-bits sandwich and kick back to a soothing xmas medley dribbled over that piezoelectric tweeter. Is this a joke — are the four horsemen saddling up? Look, it’s bad enough that those one million desk-bound-lunching Brits are subjected to eating rubber-packed triangular sandwiches with salt-n-vinegar crisps every day until they die (or retire, whichever is first). But must they really be subjected to cheap tinny music to accompany those lonely culinary moments as well? That’s just mean. And certainly the only thing more annoying than listening to Jingle Bells is listening to it played from a nearby cubicle-monkey’s coffer. Please, we beg you, someone send us a video of this joyous experience…maybe we’ve got this all wrong."