This thing has me drooling already. Proton Electronic Industrial will be introduce some very high-end LCDs at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES), including a 55 inch LCD TV. It will support 1080p and 1080i resolutions, along with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2006. Only one question remains: who is going to buy me one? No word yet on price.
Proton to debut 55-inch HD LCD TV at CES

This thing has me drooling already. Proton Electronic Industrial will be introduce some very high-end LCDs at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES), including a 55 inch LCD TV. It will support 1080p and 1080i resolutions, along with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2006. Only one question remains: who is going to buy me one? No word yet on price.
Proton to debut 55-inch HD LCD TV at CES

This thing has me drooling already. Proton Electronic Industrial will be introduce some very high-end LCDs at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES), including a 55 inch LCD TV. It will support 1080p and 1080i resolutions, along with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2006. Only one question remains: who is going to buy me one? No word yet on price.
Proton to debut 55-inch HD LCD TV at CES

Has anyone out there been able to find a 4GB iPod Nano for sale recently? I've been hearing reports that there is a problem with the manufacturing process, and it seems that all the big stores are sold out of them, and haven't been restocked in a long time. Meanwhile, they are swimming in the 2Gb Nanos. So what's the deal? Are we ever going to see the 4GB Nano again?
Apple - iPod nano

Leica, a company that has been around for decades and is credited with making some of the highest quality cameras in the world, will be making their first digital camera. The Leica Digital M will not be the first digital camera with the Leica label on it, but they farmed out production of previous digital cameras to companies like Epson. The Leica Digital M will take pictures with over 10 megapixels of quality in the RAW or JPEG format, plus it will be compatible with lenses made for previous Leica film cameras, giving the user many different zoom and picture type options.
Leica Digital M | Digital Camera Review

Forbes magazine, the perennial list-maker, has come up with a slideshow (yeah, i hate them too) of the coolest gadgets of the past year. Top items on the list include the Sony PSP and dual core processors. I'm not sure how processors count as gadgets, but Forbes seems to think they do, so I'll take their word for it.
Coolest Gadgets Of 2005 - Forbes.com

A few months ago, a Microsoft executive said the Xbox 360 would be unhackable. It was a stupid statement, from an apparently ignorant man. No video game system to date has been hack proof, and the Xbox 360 will be no exception. A mod chip maker has announced that they will be released a chip for the Xbox 360 within the next month, allowing gamers to play backup copies of their games. This could be a big problem for Microsoft, which made their system with a format (HD-DVD) that will be easily copied in the future, which could lead to major piracy problems. Sony is less likely to face this scenario, as the format used on their upcoming Playstation 3 is Blu-Ray, which is unavailable to the public at this time and will be very difficult to copy without a very expensive, industrial-use-only machine.
Engadget

Seagate Technology bought rival hard drive maker Maxtor Corp. for about $1.9 billion in stock. This could mean changes to future Maxtor hard drives, so consumers should be aware of different hard drive technologies before making a purchase. For instance, be aware of the size of a hard drive's cache. Most newer hard drives have at least an 8MB cache, but there are also some with 16MB, which offer considerably better performance. The disk speed is also very important. 7200 RPM is the standard for most newer internal PC drives, but there are also some 10,000 RPM drives that are usually much more expensive. If you see one of these on sale, I suggest you buy it. Many laptop hard drives are 5400 RPM, which is much slower than standard, and performance will be noticeably lackluster.
News Story - NCBuy

The Japanese launch of the XBox 360 was last week, and sales were not great. Many stores did not sell out of their stock, even though supplies were limited. This is likely an indication that the Japanese are waiting for the release of the Nintendo Revolution and Sony PS3 next year. Microsoft did not produce many titles for the original XBox that appealed to Japanese gamers, so there was no reason to expect that the Japanese would buy their new console. I remember reading a report at one point last year that said the total sale of XBox consoles during one week in November was 70. That's 70 consoles for the entire country of Japan! That makes the XBox about as popular as the Atari Jaguar and the Sega CD. I think Microsoft really believed that they could ignore the Japanese market and still succeed in the video game industry. Nintendo believed the same thing when they came out with the Nintendo 64, which featured very few games geared toward the Japanese consumer. The Sony Playstation featured a ton of games for many different markets, including Japan, and in a matter of 18 months they toppled the company that had been king of the video game mountain for over 10 years. Microsoft has yet to learn that lesson.
Microsoft unleashes new Xbox in Japan to lukewarm reaction - Yahoo! News

This is the perfect product for people who are really insecure and think they need to flaunt their wealth for people to think they are cool. It's a gold Motorola RAZR, sold through Dolce & Gabbana in limited edition, 1000 phones to be exact. No word on the price, but needless to say this thing is going to be way more expensive than it needs to be, and they'll sell out anyway. Hooray for taking advantage of stupid rich consumers.
The NewsMarket: Motorola Unveils Limited Edition Liquid Gold RAZR V3i

Think you've got the coolest accessories for your XBox 360. I think your pitiful little machine is a piece of junk, because it's missing the coolest accessory of all: a solid gold face plate. This baby weighs over 900 grams, and the gold in it is worth well over $15,000. Of course, the seller wants people to pay twice that amount, but who cares, it'll make you the coolest kid on your block, or least in your basement.
eBay: Poor Man's Microsoft Xbox 360 SOLID Gold Face Plate 999 (item 8240583453 end time Dec-15-05 19:00:01 PST)

I just can't get enough of these old pictures (which I assume were used in ephemeral advertising) of computers, and the people that used them. I especially love the two redheaded siblings. I can tell they're siblings, because they both have hideously deformed flat faces. For some reason they are staring into each other's eyes, instead of the screen at the video game they are playing on the computer they got for Christmas. The machine probably cost $5,000 or more back then, and look what it leads to: a brother and sister with an abnormal relationship. Also check out the picture of the college guy trying to pick up a girl while holding his "portable" computer. The thing is seriously about the size of his torso, and probably weighs even more. The girl seems really impressed, especially since all she has is an old cassette recorder.
YUMLUM.COM [Computer Vintage (Computer Insesters) ]

You've probably been spammed by offers of a free ipod. They claim all you have to do is sign up for their site, then sign up for one of their offers, and then refer friends who do the same. I've linked to one of these sites below, and they do give out free ipods to people that complete the requirements. Here's the strategy that you should use:
1) Sign up for the service using an email address that you don't use often. This account will very likely become the target of spam. They have to pay for all those free ipods they give away somehow.
2) Get a group of 24 or more friends together. This is very easy if you are in college, but it may require some time to form a crew with instant messenger.
3) Select 4 accounts to become the "winning accounts." Split your group of 24 into 4 groups. Each member of a group signs up using the same referral website address. The member with the winning account just gives out his referral code to his group members.
4) Everyone completes an offer. Select the offer that is least expensive (sometimes free) and can be canceled quickly. Sometimes there are some pretty decent deals, just as long as you cancel as soon as you are allowed to. Many of these offers are something like "try this magazine for 1 month for $1," so nobody in your group can claim they can't afford it.
5) You should now be eligible for 4 free ipods. Splitting them up is up to you. You can do a lottery, or do some sort of tournament (I've done a Texas Hold Em tournament and a Madden 2006 Tournament). Alternatively, you can sell all the ipods on ebay (where they sell for close to retail, and split the proceeds among all members.
6) Find another site, do the same thing with an even bigger group of friends.
ipods.freepay.com - Get a FREE iPod!

Here's a nice little page put together by the infamous empty box seller. He recently sold and empty box on eBay, noting in several places that he was not selling an XBox 360. He even pictured the empty box in the listing. A bidding war drove the price up over $500 anyways. Then people got angry, sending him loads of emails calling him a fraud. My favorite is the person who sent an email stating that "at no point in your listing did you mention that you were selling an empty box." If this was true, then how did the writer know that he was selling an empty box? The writer must have seen the part of the listing that said "this is just an empty box," but for some reason it only registered enough for him to send an angry email, but not enough for him to realize that it was stated right there, AND HE ACTUALLY READ IT. I've got plenty of empty boxes sitting around and a free night, time to stop blogging and make some easy dough.
A fool and his money are soon parted

Just a follow-up to my previous post about Siemens coming out with a RAZR cell phone, I also found out that Verizon will be carrying the RAZR V3c at some point soon. How soon? Who knows, Verizon likes to hype products way ahead of time, sometimes as much as 6 months. By thend the RAZR fad will be long gone, and Verizon execs will be left wondering what happened.
Motorola RAZR V3c Coming Soon - Verizon Wireless eStore

The Motorola RAZR cell phone was once among the most expensive cell phones on the market. Only the rich could afford a RAZR, so naturally it became a big hit, because if the rich have it, it must be cool, right? Now the RAZR is getting branded by every other company on the planet. You're going to be unwrapping presents in front of grandma's tree this Christmas when she's going to get that annual call from your Great Uncle Bud. Nothing so strange about that, until grandma whips out her RAZR playing the latest mix of "where da hood at." Seriously, these things are losing their cool very quickly. I sense a RAZR backlash coming very quickly, and all owners will be banished to the same abandoned coal mines where we stuffed all those pink polo shirt collar-poppers last month.
motoRAZR - Motorola Community