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Wired Senior Editor Nick Thompson sent us a line about his demo on the Today show this morning:

Whoops! I dropped a RAZR2 on the floor of the Today show this morning, trying to demonstrate durability, and the battery popped out. Highly embarrassing.

That phone still works after I popped the battery back in, and I’d still enter it in a bash-off with pride. It had survived countless thwackings and poundings—and even a few practice drops on the Today floor.

(Read the full post about ‘Wired Editor on Today Show Phone Drop’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted May 30th 2008 at 11:24AM
In case you’re not swimming in Apple gear just yet (wait ’til the kids come…), Griffin Technology has just released a more modest solution to charging “just” a pair of iPhones / iPods or one of each. The two-port PowerDock 2 features a pair of universal docks and a collection of dock inserts to ensure that almost every ipod (and the iphone) can get a seat at the table. (Read the full post about ‘Griffin PowerDock 2 charges iPhones and iPods two-at-a-time’…)

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by Donald Melanson, posted May 30th 2008 at 4:41PMIt’s not confirmed by Sony just yet, but Videogaming247 says it has it on “good authority” that the upcoming version 2.40 firmware update for the PS3 will at long last bring with it in-game XMB, as well as the slightly less-anticipated trophy support. If those sources are to be believed, the update will be dropping sometime in June, with some speculation further pointing to a release in advance of Metal Gear Solid 4’s June 12th launch. (Read the full post about ‘PS3 firmware 2.40 said to be bringing in-game XMB, trophies’…)

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With gas prices climbing even mowing the lawn has started to break the bank. So unless you have the world’s smallest lawn getting an electric mower is kind of obnoxious. Besides that, if you have a solar lawn mower you can seem eco-friendly and much more cool than your neighbors. Hopefully you’re good at small DIY projects though, because that is exactly what this is. That or you could slide this website under the nose of someone that is and try to con them into giving it a try. If I actually had a lawn to mow I’m sure I’d consider trying to coerce someone else into doing this for me.

(Read the full post about ‘Three different DIY solar mowers to save you cash’…)

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Guess here’s more nitty gritty on the Philips X800 after receiving the nod of approval from the almighty FCC. Guess several things are confirmed now, including Chinese character input as well as an English-Chinese dictionary. It does come with EDGE connectivity, but that’s as far as it goes since 3G and Wi-Fi have been ruled out. A 2 megapixel camera, a microSD memory card slot and a 240 x 400 resolution touch screen display rounds off the list of features. If anything, this will probably confirm initial reports of it being released just for the China market. Ah well, all we need to do now is wait for an official announcement. (Read the full post about ‘FCC approves Philips X800′…)

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For fans of all things robotic, you’re probably no stranger to the name WowWee. Those of you who have been reading CG for a while might remember WowWee’s name mentioned numerous times in our Robot Toys Gift Guide from last year’s holiday season. If you couldn’t get enough of the WowWee Robosapien, Roboreptile, or Flytech Dragonfly, they’ve got a whole new bot coming out this summer. And lucky for you, we’re giving you an early look at what to expect from WowWee during the dog days of the sunshine season. The summer of 2008 might very well be the summer of Tri-Bot. WowWee’s Tri-Bot is an interactive companion which is programmed full of personality. (Read the full post about ‘WowWee’s New Tri-Bot’…)

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On Wednesday, we argued that Amazon’s Kindle, and ebook readers in general, are still not as good as real books. They bring a lot of great extras, but the core function — reading — is still better on the dead tree equivalent. Now another poor imitation of an age-old tool has come to our attention. The portable video magnifier.

These things hope to replace the time-proven magnifying glass with a considerably more expensive high-tech alternative. Hovering at around $1000, they are essentially boxes with a high contrast screen on one side and a camera on the other. You know, like nearly every cellphone and digicam you can buy.

Like the Kindle, these magnifiers add a few digital-only extras: storage of images (a whole twenty in the case of the pictured SenseView).

(Read the full post about ‘Electronic Eyes Magnify Costs by 200x’…)

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The original release date of Saints Row 2 on August 24 has been pushed back to October 14. Publisher THQ has confirmed this and sighted product quality as the main reason for the 2 month delay alongside issues with marketing.

It’s unfortunate for THQ and developer Volition that they couldn’t get the game out before GTAIV. Rockstar’s latest just sets the bar very high and any game in a similar vein, as Saints Row 2 clearly is, will have its faults dragged out in all the reviews during a comparison with GTAIV.

The delay may indeed be for quality reasons, but any delay to let the dust of GTAIV settle is going to be helpful.

(Read the full post about ‘Saints Row 2 delay announced’…)

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The first line of the email read:

Hi Charlie,

Are you looking for a safe place to store your adult DVD collection?

How could I resist? (And how did this get through my spam filter?) The Disc Manager 100 is a carousel storage device for optical media of all kinds (despite the tagline “Finally a safe way to store, and a convenient way to access your adult DVDs”, it will actually handle any CD or DVD). Search software keeps a database so you can find files. The “secure” part just means that you can passwoord protect this directory.

The USB bus-powered box doesn’t actually play the disc, it only stores and ejects them.

(Read the full post about ‘Mechanized Secrecy Hides Your Adult Movie Collection’…)

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by Nilay Patel, posted May 30th 2008 at 4:53AM
ASUS seems to be bringing a lot of new toys out to play at Computex, but we’re suddenly most intrigued by the Eee Stick, a pair of motion-sensing game controllers that looks like nothing more than a pair of Wii nunchuks. We’re hearing that the left nunchuck can also work as a 3D mouse, but it’ll be interesting to see if ASUS plans to actually pitch the $70 set to game developers, or if it’s just another gimmicky controller that’ll inevitably get dumped for the comforts of WASD. (Read the full post about ‘ASUS Eee Stick motion controller brings Wii to the Eee’…)

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