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I just posted my last post over on the Sidekick Grammy Tour blog. It was a ton of fun and I got to meet all sorts of great people as well as the musicians. My photos and bog entries are all over on the site, so I won’t bother reposting them here. If you’re bored, go check it out.

There are still two concerts left, Dallas and L.A. If you’re in either of these cities (or near by) I highly recommend hitting up these concerts. If nothing else, once you’re in and you show your Sidekick, it’s free food and drinks! Plus Kid Rock, Seal, and Sean Kingston are totally worth seeing for free!

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Uniross are ahead of the current “Green” game with the long established rechargeable battery business. Now you can push that a little further by reducing the amount of electricity you use to recharge your batteries.

The blister packaging was easy to remove, and involved no hacking with scissors like usual.

The Uniross Fast Charger comes packaged with 4 x 2700mAh AA batteries, great for high drain applications like digital cameras and flashes, remote control toys etc. As an added bonus to the 3 pin mains supply, you also get a 12 volt car lighter socket adapter for on the more “power ups” .

The base charger supports both AA and AAA batteries, in pairs of two. I found the AAA flip down spacer built in to the charger was a little loose and often meant the batteries didn’t make decent contact - preventing them from charge.

Two LED indicators are mounted to the side of each pair of batteries, flashing green indicating charge complete, whilst solid red letting you now they batteries are being re-charged. Or at least that’s what I assume; even though the packaging states you should read the instructions — none appeared to be contained in the box nor printed on the reverse of the inlay card.

Due to the interchangeable power supply facility, it does mean the charger comes in two parts, which feels a little messy in comparison to the all-in-one Uniross units such as the RC101129. It also means you need to keep tabs on two things when storing the charger.

I’ve been using a USB battery charger recently, hooked up to the Nintendo Wii USB port to charge batteries whilst playing on the console. The Nintendo Wii remotes (and XBox 360 controllers too) are well known for their battery consumption due to the Bluetooth wireless technology. The problem with USB battery chargers is the charge time. Due to the drip charge nature of the power provided by the USB connection it can take a long time, as much as 8 hours.

The Uniross Fast Charge’s claim of a 1 hour turn around for 4 x AA batteries is too much of a good claim to not test.

I found that, the supplied new batteries re-charged in around the 1 hour quoted, by my older batteries took a lot longer to recharge.

So over all - faster than the usual charger, but you’ll not get 1 hour charging forever. But with everybody wanting to appear to be more environmentally friendly this year, a quicker battery charger is a small step in the righ direction for everyone.

The Uniross Fast Charge is available now in all good battery retailers!

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by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 5:47PM BenQ has been showing off its first stab at an MID since the Intel Developer Forum last fall, but it hasn’t exactly been all that forthcoming about the full specs of the device. That situation seems to have changed at the more recent IDF in Shanghai, however, although those details seem to just now be making their way across the Internet. As we knew before, the device will pack an Intel Atom processor (the base 800MHz model), which will apparently be backed up by 512MB of RAM, a 4GB SSD hard drive, and HSPDA support in addition to some integrated WiFi and Bluetooth. The device will also apparently pack a so-called “G-Senser” for “direct touch and free movement to surf on internet,” along with voice activation, and optional GPS. Still no word on the all important pricing or release details, unfortunately, although we hope BenQ will save itself some embarrassment but getting the thing out the door before the next Intel Developer Forum.

[Via Slash Gear]

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The future is interconnected, and that’s where the Papyrus e-book reader concept gets all its strength. Designed to be a low-cost and better alternative to current generation e-book readers, the Papyrus will be a student-oriented e-book reader that will take advantage of collaboration and connectivity. It’ll have a stylus-based touchscreen where contents on the current page can be tagged, to be gone back to at a later time or answered, just like discussion threads in a forum. The designers hope to put its price at lower than $100 in order to hit a far larger market than today’s e-readers can, and can last for up to 30 hours, which seems reasonable since most people can only really keep reading for a few hours a day. We’re convinced that the Papyrus certainly looks good on paper (pun intended), but the question is, who will have the will to realize such a concept? That’s right, unfortunately, this is only a concept. For now at least. I guess I’ll have to stick with my good old paperbacks, then.

Read [The Greener Grass] Via [Engadget]

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Ever since YouTube became really popular, lots of people have posted videos of whatever they wanted on it. Whether it was music videos, commercials, or their homemade videos. YouTube is a great source of entertainment and laughs, and many people try to post videos that get a lot of views. Two teens who live in Peoria, Arizona decided to try and post a video that would become very popular, but their plan backfired and had serious consequences.

Their plan was to use a Mitsubishi Eclipse to fly in the air across an intersection. They managed to get in the air but as soon as they hit the ground the driver, a 16 year old, lost control and the car crashed through trees and rolled over. In the passenger seat was his friend, a 17 year old. Both of these teens had been hospitalized but the 17 year old has already been treated and the 16 year old is still in critical condition. On top of all this, their friends forgot to record the video! Every time people want to post a video on YouTube, they should think of the consequences if something goes wrong, this is a perfect example, and I’m sure there are other similar stories.

Via [Switched]

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Wise men say, “The world is your technological oyster.” Or not, but do you know what that means? Us neither. We’re just so digging this new pair of unconventional wedding rings designed for geeks to the bone who might want to get hitched. The female ring, the one on the left, will be available in four colors: turquoise, white, orange and black. While the male ring comes in only one version, transparent. Standing tall and probably prepared to strike anywhere with an Ethernet port. The maker Jana Brevick would be glad to ship an order of these to you for $7 a piece (only $5 when ordered with a separate item). What better item to promote the way of the geek?

Product [Etsy] Via [Geek Sugar]

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I love gadgets that are for the betterment of mankind and this is certainly one of those, ExacTap, a new kind of beer disperser that can pour the perfect pint in under 3 seconds.

ExacTap works with lager, cider, stout and Guinness. Though whether a pint of Guinness poured in 3 seconds tastes nicer than the more traditional 10 minute multi stage Guinness pouring ceromony is up for debate.

The ExacTap is currently by used at Chelsea footie club, Twickenham and the Odyssey arena in Belfast. For further info and videos check out the official product page.

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Locklite Mini Key Torch

You can have this for ?3.99

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by Paul Miller, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 2:34PM
You knew this day would come: Intel positioned Atom perfectly to compete with VIA’s low-power offerings, and VIA is trying to stay one step ahead in the low power game with its Isaiah processor. Who will be the winner? Well, we’d say it’s still a little early to call it, but German site Eee PC News did some quick and dirty benchmarks that show Isaiah on top by a decent margin. At this point the numbers are just in “ALU” and “FPU,” but hopefully some real world benchmarks from some retail products can clear this up before long.

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by Darren Murph, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 3:41PM
Yeah, we’ve seen other mad scientists take way more antiquated chips to higher figures on the GHz scale, but can that cryogenically cooled P4 handle all those SSE4.1 instructions? The latest feat of overclocking prowess comes to us courtesy of K|ngp|n, who has apparently taken Skulltrail beyond the 6GHz mark. You’ll also notice the 1,716MHz FSB (!!!) and the fact that it’s sizzling along at 1.953-volts — but hey, no one said running Crysis would be easy, right?

[Via The Inquirer]

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Filed under: Desktops