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Torrent sharing group The Pirate Bay has asserted itself as “World’s Largest Tracker,” now claiming over 10 million peers sharing 1 million files. Not only is 10 million more than the population of New York City, it’s just about equal to the user numbers of the most successful MMO on the planet, World of Warcraft, which not so long ago announced the same user milestone…and may have a thing or two to say about The Pirate Bay’s title. Blizzard, like The Pirate Bay, implements a P2P system. Instead of avoiding issues of copyright, the developer utilizes P2P as an inexpensive way to distribute WoW updates and patches. And the last time we played WoW, which was admittedly some time ago, Blizzard’s P2P updater was pretty much mandatory to play the game. (Read the full post about ‘Like WoW, The Pirate Bay Has Reached 10 Million [Stats]’…)

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Mmm. Nothing says “Yum!” quite like the sight of a sweet confection in the shape of a beetle larva. Despite its unappetizing appearance (unless you’re Timon or Pumbaa), the candy is actually made from milk and white chocolate, cornflakes, orange peel, and . . . well, we’re back to unappetizing with this one . . . dried squid. Anyone with a Japanese address and a questionable sweet tooth can order these chocolates online for about $2 apiece, or head over to the Chocolate and Sweets Expo in Tokyo (going on now until March 9th) in hopes of snagging a sample. Via Pink Tentacle. (Read the full post about ‘Beetle larva chocolates’…)

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Podravka, a European food company, recently received their annual report from the folks at Bruketa & Zinic, but all the pages were blank—until the book was baked. Yes, those clever fellows at Bruketa & Zinić put together an annual report that was laced with thermo-reactive ink. The initially blank pages displayed text once the book had been covered in foil and baked for 25 minutes at 100°C. The report was titled, Well Done, and we could not have thought of a better pun if you held us upside down over an alligator pit and tickled us with a fluffy feather, but it wasn’t done for just humor’s sake.galleryPost(’weldonGI’, 3, ”); An included recipe sections received the same treatment. (Read the full post about ‘Bruketa & Zinic Pioneer Book Baking Market [Design]’…)

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I’m still hesitant to shell out $399 for an iPhone, but Case-Mate’s Diamond Case makes me appreciate my frugality even more. Because, how could I rationalize spending $399 on my iPhone and then not protect it with a $20,000 case? It’s handcrafted with 42 diamonds (3.5 carats) set in 18K gold; the diamonds are VVS1 clarity and H color. To protect the diamonds and gold is the Diamond Case, crafted of Carbon Fiber leather “previously available only in high end after-market cars (Techart Porsche) and very high end cell phones (Vertu).” As the site explains, quantities are “extremely limited.” My favorite part? - the link on the site for “Customer Testimonials.” Um, yeah, there are none to date. (Read the full post about ‘Case-Mate’s Diamond Case iPhone solution’…)

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If you have an office that’s as cluttered with gadgets as mine, you tend to appreciate convergence products. You have to be picky about which functions you want to have packed into a single device. For instance, a webcam built into your monitor might be cool, however, a mouse that’s also a label printer is not. (Yes, such a thing does exist). Here’s one that I’m pretty undecided on. It’s a Skype phone that’s built into your keyboard. I’ve never actually seen the point in having a Skype phone, as I’ve found using the same headset for making calls and chatting with guildmates online to be easiest. (Read the full post about ‘Buffalo announces a tiny Skype phone with attached keyboard’…)

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Do you want to be like everybody and have a boring, hum drum computer desk? If you are bored with your current desk then the Nex-Sys Corner V1 might interest you. Its Completely hand crafted has support for 2.1 speakers, height adjustable flat screen monitor and comes with a custom car seat and is available in a range of different specs. There’s not much room for papers or folders on this desk, but who uses paper anymore anyways? [Via] Tags: wi-fi, cellphone, gizmos, cable (Read the full post about ‘Nex-Sys V1 Corner Computer Desk’…)

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Amazon’s digital music catalogue is all set to go global, and although a launch date has not yet been settled, it shall hit sometime this year. Given Amazon MP3 offers DRM-free tracks, which are generally cheaper than iTunes limited, equivalent offerings, we cannot help but think an epic battle between the big As is all set to take off. Amazon MP3 has the only digital music catalogue that offers DRM-free tunes from all four major labels, with around 3.3 million tracks in the library, they are packing some weight. If that fact doesn’t have Apple quaking in their boots, the competitive pricing should. We couldn’t care less how Amazon and Apple get down and dirty, but as they are bound to be set for a fight, teeth gnashing and all, it can only mean good things for customers. (Read the full post about ‘Amazon MP3 Service Going Global; Epic iTunes Battle on the Horizon [Announcements]’…)

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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. (Read the full post about ‘Palm offering settlement for Treo 600, 650 owners’…)

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Posted Jan 27th 2008 6:14AM by Thomas RickerFiled under: Portable Audio var In perhaps the biggest threat to Apple’s global dominance of digital music, Amazon just announced the international rollout of Amazon MP3. Right, the on-line storefront offering DRM-free music from all four major labels. That’s 3.3 million songs (priced at $0.99 or less) from over 270k artists encoded in 256kbps MP3 files for playback on any PC, any Mac, and pretty much any portable device you might own. Sure, it’s beta but so is that gMail account you’ve been using for the past 4 years. (Read the full post about ‘Amazon MP3 store to spread DRM-free love global in 2008′…)

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Mathmos Thaw You can have this for ?24.95 Tags: speakers, tech, games, DVD (Read the full post about ‘Mathmos Thaw’…)

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