Electronic Toy World

Posted Jan 27th 2008 5:24PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Transportation
We don’t know about you, but we were doing far, far less productive things than Andrew Angelloti when we were 16. The green-minded youth — a forum member over at Ecomodder — has taken his 1988 Mazda pickup truck and converted it to run solely on electricity using $6,000 he’d earned as a part-time lifeguard. According to Andrew, the truck reaches a top speed of 55 MPH, sports a range of 40 miles per charge, and has acceleration that’s, “Not that bad.” The mod uses 20 flooded lead-acid batteries (for 120 volts), and a 60 HP, 9-inch electric motor. For most of us, that one major conversion would be enough, but Andrew is cracking away on his second EV mod, working his magic on a 1992 Toyota Tercel and gunning for more speed and a larger motor. Who said kids were lazy these days?

[Via Digg]

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Who said you can’t reinvent the wheel? The omni directional wheels featured in the video below would make parallel parking a breeze.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXdvLGTW2nQ

Posted Jan 27th 2008 6:09PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Laptops
Just in case you were really, really anxious to get your hands on the MacBook Air, word on the street is that the little slivers are already in stores, and you’ll actually be able to stroll up into the place and nab them this Tuesday. Of course, old Jobsy has already said as much (”two weeks”), but the Boy Genius is making extra-dextra sure that everyone knows they really will be on the floor come next week. If you’re lucky enough to be employed by Apple as a “Genius,” then you’ll be getting some Air training tomorrow. Hey, it’s never too late to sign up and instantly be accepted for a job… oh, wait, it probably is.

Verizon Wireless is now the proud carrier of the new purple Samsung Gleam! This new phone is more than just a new color scheme. It has a living wallpaper capability, which allows Verizon Wireless users to view the phone’s status with either an urban or a country view that changes with the time of day. It also features popular multimedia and messaging features including, V Cast Music and Video, Instant Messaging using AIM, MSN and Yahoo and text, picture and video messaging. These are the same features offered on the popular, original bronze Samsung Gleam, which may have proved to be too neutral for the more colorful among us.

The Purple Gleam also has limited Bluetooth technology for certain profiles as well as headset, hands-free, serial port stereo support for music and certain dial-up networking profiles. Some of the Purple Gleam’s other specs include a bilingual interface (English and Spanish) and a personal organizer with calendar, calculator, alarm clock and stopwatch.

The purple Samsung Gleam just launched a few days ago and it sells for $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service agreement.

Via [Mobile Mag] Via [SlashPhone]

Posted Jan 27th 2008 3:28PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Are you a CEO hoping to “step it up,” “knock it out of the park,” and generally “take it to the bridge” — old-school style — but you can’t seem to work the magic? Well, BusinessWeek has got just the thing for you: a ten-point plan on how to deliver a presentation like our main man, Steve Jobs. Breaking it down from “set a theme” all the way to “rehearse, rehearse, rehearse,” the cats at BW lay out everything you need to know to shatter sales records, hike your stock, and innovate the hell out of a keynote. Of course, they don’t advise you on choice of outfits (we suggest jeans, sneakers, and a turtleneck), products to launch (how does iPhone 2 sound to you?), or how to properly execute a “Boom!” (”Boom!”) — but we’re pretty sure you can suss those details out on your own. If you want the full breakdown of tips and tricks, including how to properly appear excited about your own products, hit the read link ASAP. To help you along, we’ve included a clip of Jobs doing his thing after the break. Boom!

If you haven’t subscribed to Popgadget Drop emails, here are a few good reasons to sign up now:

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The Samsung FlipShot was originally added to Verizon back in November, but was just available in a basic black. Now in that “what perfect timing for Valentines Day” thought, they have added the FlipShot in red.

The new red FlipShot will offer the same specs and include the ability to flip up and rotate the 240 x 320 pixel display, which will make it nicer to use the included 3-megapixel camera. Also featured is the support for V CAST Music and Video, VZ Navigator and Get It Now. The newly colored red FlipShot will be available for $149.99 after a $50 rebate and a 2-year agreement.

Read [Verizon]

Mozilla is working on a mobile version of Firefox. Unfortunately, it probably won’t see the light of day until end of this year. Well it’s about time. I was wondering why this was taking so long.

In case you don’t already run Firefox on your computer, get with it already. Just click the image link above and pull it down. You won’t regret it. The thing that really makes FF so much more than just a web browser and more like a platform are the slew of extensions available for it. I’ve got easily over a dozen extensions that improve my browsing experience, makes me more efficient and adds tools that I can’t live without now. After all, I blogged this entry directly in FF using an extension called ScribeFire, which rocks BTW.

It is soon to come to the Chinese New Year, which is the Year of Mouse. Hence, iRiver China introduces a limited edition of gold plated iRiver Mplayer, and only available at China. Each of these luxury mice comes with a lucky number, probably an alternative way to celebrate the Year of Mouse
[ via iRiverFans ]

iRiver, Mplayer, MP3 Players

While the Treo 600 or 650 may be just a memory (albeit good and bad) for a lot of the Palm users, a class action lawsuit that originally began in 2005 has just received a settlement offer. This lawsuit was dealing with the many issues that were experienced with those models and claimed that Palm “misrepresented claims regarding the phones in advertising” and in turn delivered phones that “were “inherently defective” and “failed at unacceptably high rates.”

“Palm is entering into this settlement to avoid burdensome and costly litigation. The settlement is not an admission of wrong-doing or an indication that any law was violated,” the company said in its summary of the settlement.

The offer is simple, Palm will give a $75 cash rebate that you can use to replace a Treo 600 and $50 cash rebate that you can use to replace a Treo 650. The cash rebates are assuming that you had to replace your phone two or more times after your purchase. In addition to the cash rebate Palm is also offering a “right of repair” form that can be used by customers who had trouble but never had to replace their phone.

Via [SlashPhone]