Gadgets Device

Thai Sila Sutharat is one happy roadside food vendor, as he saves on electricity by depending on the sun. He sells roasted rotisserie chicken on the streets, but uses a solar powered chicken roaster which was built by scratch all by himself. The inspiration behind this green idea? Fond memories of his childhood that involved playing outdoors with a magnifying glass. According to Sutharat, his roaster is able to cook a 1.6 kg chicken in just 10 minutes on a sunny day, taking double the time when skies are overcast. Guess rainy days will rule this roaster out. Hopefully the Japanese research team who discovered Sila Sutharat’s roadside roaster will give him some sort of compensation once they come up with a working commercial version. (Read the full post about ‘Solar-Powered Chicken Roaster’…)

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When you get a flat tire you have a couple of options… you can tackle it like a man and just jack up the car like you should, or you can be a wimp and call recovery to do it for you. For those of you who hate getting on your knees, putting the jack in place and flexing your muscles there is now an alternative option named the Exhaust air jack. The exhaust air jack is a bright orange bag which you throw under the side of your car. Once there, you hook up the pipe to your exhaust and switch on your engine. The exhaust fumes that are pumped out go in to the bag and will jack up the car within 30 seconds. The bag can lift the car 17 inches off the ground which is plenty of space to allow you to get the wheel off. (Read the full post about ‘Exhaust Air Jack’…)

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What you see here is an ultra-rugged AM/FM Construction Radio, featuring hard side framing and not only allows you to rock to your favorite radio station, it also doubles up as an ipod docking station as well! It looks as though it is begging to be trashed just to see how far it can go, but I don’t think you would treat any device worth over $100 harshly just for the sake of it, right? The $130 ultra-rugged AM/FM Construction Radio comes complete with a couple of DC power ports, a USB charger for cell phones as well as two AC outlets that enable folks to plug power tools right into their portable entertainment center. Neat! (Read the full post about ‘Ultra-rugged AM/FM Construction Radio’…)

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While Xohm, Sprint’s oft-delayed WiMax service, still hasn’t graduated from trials here in the U.S., a few details are starting to emerge about how the company might sell individual WiMax-enabled devices. During a news conference in Taipei on Monday, Acer said its new WiMax-equipped Aspire 5920 notebook will be sold through various providers (including Sprint) wrapped up in nice little service bundles, similar to the way mobile phones are sold. Here’s where it gets interesting, though. According to a report from IDG News Service, pricing for the Aspire 5920 will vary, depending on the individual service plan a customer selects. Whether this means you’ll technically be getting a subsidized WiMax notebook from Sprint remains unclear. (Read the full post about ‘Will Sprint Sell Subsidized, WiMax-Enabled Notebooks?’…)

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by Thomas Ricker, posted Apr 21st 2008 at 5:08AMJerry Shen, ASUS CEO, is casually twisting Eee PC fans into a tizzy this morning. At the launch of the 8.9-inch Eee PC 900 in Taiwan, he uttered the magical phrase “10-inch Eee PC” for the first time. Expected sometime later this year, Shen said that the 10-inch screen will be the biggest allowed on the Eee PC. Good for you Jerry, but we’ve got the feeling that you’ve completely forgotten about the original promise of a $200, 7-inch laptop. Surely we’re due for a price drop now that the 900 is out, right?Update: Asus also confirmed that an Atom-based Eee PC will launch at the Computex show just like we heard. (Read the full post about ‘ASUS: 10-inch Eee PC coming this year, Atom in June’…)

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The Italy iPhone launch might signal a change in policy at Apple. As of now, Apple chose one carrier per country to which it gave exclusive rights to commercialize the iphone. The idea is that carriers enter a bidding process during which they bid more royalties to Apple to get the coveted contract. Of course, there are many variables like the customer base and so on. So far AT&T has been fairly happy with the deal. The Italian “La Repubblica” believes that this will come to an end soon and that Apple will switch to a more open model that involves several (or all) carriers. We can only speculate on this and our opinion is that the exclusivity tactic is a powerful demonstration for all carriers: they can make more money, even after sharing the subscription fees with Apple. (Read the full post about ‘iPhone Without Exclusive Deal in Italy, Exception or Policy Change?’…)

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The Vigor Evo HD from NextComputing has been specially optimized to provide advanced computing power in rugged environments such as military field operations or oil and gas research sites. The Vigor Evo HD is a “flextop,” a high-performance mobile system incorporating the company’s privately designed FleXtreme architecture. This architecture features open standards components, support for COTS software and hardware, best-in-breed multi-core processors, high-capacity storage, support for multiple operating systems, and multiple I/O functionality including PCI Express x16 slots. The Vigor Evo HD is a ruggedized version of NextComputing’s most powerful “flextop,” the NextDimension Evo HD. (Read the full post about ‘NextComputing introduces Vigor Evo HD’…)

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It has been a long time since we mentioned the Sony Ericsson BeiBei, but seeing live pictures is an interesting development. It looks like the mock-up that we featured back in February but it will feature the UIQ 3.3 user interface instead of the 3.2. Note that Sony Ericsson owns a share of Symbian, which makes the OS for the phone. There are still no official specifications, but it was rumored that this phone would have FM Radio, Music Player and a 5 Megapixel camera. Camera. To be continued… Tags: AAC, high definition TV, consumer technology, gps (Read the full post about ‘Sony Ericsson BeiBei, First Pictures’…)

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Instead of getting yourself at the end of a long queue for an air ticket, you have an option that can make traveling on a business trip more than luxurious. The biggies in the Market are gearing up with the idea of super luxury liners that can be adopted by those who can afford them. To start off with we have the 160,000 tonne liner called the Independence of the Seas. It will be arriving in Southampton at the end of this month. There’s also the ever luxurious Royal Caribbean liner that is in line with the biggest liners in the world. And this claim is justified since the crew on the ship serves a total of 100,000 meals a week to a total of 3,600 passengers. (Read the full post about ‘Let’s take to the sea for $1 billion’…)

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It seems that the world is obsessed with crazy clocks. You’ve got your alarm clocks that make sure you have to get out of bed in the morning, clocks made from old computer parts, and crazy clocks that are almost useless for telling time, but are still awesome. This one would fall into the latter category. You’ll note that in the mess of tiny little sticks you can make out the word “four,” that would be the hour. Where are the minutes displayed? Well, unfortunately they aren’t, and that’s what makes this clock all but useless for actually telling time. Every hour the little sticks will rearrange themselves to spell out the current hour. (Read the full post about ‘Crazy clock tells time with tiny sticks’…)

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