Computer Gadgets New

There are some gadgets that just “work” without having a real purpose other than looking cool. The Cybertek Wings are one of those gadgets. They won’t gift you with the power of flight and they won’t give you angelic powers, but they sure as hell make you look really, really cool.

Built out of carbon fiber and extruded aluminum, the pneumatic powered Cybertek Wings just look crazy cool. The images speak for themselves. You can even add a custom twist to your wings buy ordering your choice of colored wingtips, which activate when the wings expand.

The Cybertek Wings will actually extend and retract like a bird’s wings, and will do so about 7 times before they have to be recharged with air pressure for about 5-10 minutes. All Cybertek sets are made to order, so the whole order to shipping process might take between 1-5 months, depending on how busy the engineers are.

While owning a pair of Cybertek Wings would set your back $1,000, the wings are also available for rent for photoshoots and events. So you don’t necessarily need to break the bank if you only want to use a pair of these awesome wings for a weekend event or some sort of model gig.

Product Page via LikeCool

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These days, it seems that MP3 players have to do more than just play audio files.  No, they have to be portable media players capable of playing video files, photo viewing, audio recording, as well as ebook readers.  Now, someone has decided to put another feature on the traditional mp3 player: scent. 

That’s right, someone has finally made an MP3 Player that smells.  Yes, this Strawberry Shortcake technology has been placed on the iCool MP3 Player, so that you can get a whiff of chocolate, rose, lemon, and even marijuana while you listen to your favorite tunes. 

Don’t ask me too much about the Mary Jane scent.  I’m guessing that it is an artificial odor, or a lot of people are going to be subject to search and seizure.  All of these scented MP3 players (including the pot-scented one) come with a replaceable embossed faceplate, and a 3D holographic lens. 

The MP3 players have very little memory, at only about 256MB, however they come with expansionary memory slot that is compatible with SD/MMC memory card reader.  They play multiple formats including MP3, WAV, and WMA. 

I believe that these are available on the Audiotronic website, but I don’t see a price.  In other words, I see a lot of evidence showing that these scented MP3 Players exist, but not enough info to purchase one.  I’m beginning to think that someone is bamboozling us, and the marijuana flavor is enough to convince me. 

Via [Gadget Miss]

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I detest ipod and iphone docks but I am often charmed by overwhelmingly incongruous depictions of pigs. So the new iPig speakers from Speakal present a dilemma.

The little iPig offers four speakers, a 4-inch subwoofer, a HiFi amp, plus a promising adjustable bass control with reflex and sound stabilizers. This means it should probably draw out a good high-to-low range of music styles.

According to the designers, the pig chassis was not only chosen because of its nice and fatty aerodynamism, but because the dome-like structure creates an acoustic 360-degree distribution that fills up a room warmly. That’s a big promise from a tiny pig, but it’s a claim that remains to be seen. We know enough about wide-eyed pigs and piglets to not trust them at first glance (this iPig had been promised for awhile, since we first saw it at CES). We’ll give it a chance, though.

The iPig is available for $140 and comes in three colors.

The 12.1.2 update for Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac includes a patch for a critical Excel 2008 security problem. The download weighed in at 491MB for me so depending on your downstream speed, it may take a while to get the file.

Of the Excel 2008 issue, Microsoft says this: This security update resolves four privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. So, you might want to force an update if you, like me, have your Office 2008 update check set to weekly.

For more information read TUAW’s item: Microsoft Office 2008 updated to version 12.1.2

Nokia’s email service is finally available for the masses, albeit in an early release form via Nokia Beta Labs. This application aims to make portable email management a snap, supporting a wide range of the most popular email services such as GMail, Yahoo! Mail and “thousands of personal email accounts offered by other ISPs.” Interestingly enough, both corporate email as well as MSN Hotmail are not listed, but there are plans to include those sometime down the road. Nokia Email is compatible with the Nokia E51, E61, E61i, E65, E66, E71, N73, N80, N81, N81 8GB and N95 handsets. Don’t worry about file attachments - it is able to handle all that and more, although the virus problem might just escalate if one is not careful.

Microsoft’s Surface technology can now be found at five Sheraton Hotel and Resort locations, throughout New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco. These specific locations hope that the multi-touch Surface is able to offer a different experience to travelers as they go through itineraries of the day as well as musical entertainment from features Sony BMG artists. The Surface’s custom interface will be 30″ in size, which ought to be large enough for most people. I wonder whether the room prices at these selected Sheraton locations have been jacked up to accommodate the purchase of these new ‘toys’.

Curious folks who are wondering what the next version of the RAZR looks like can satisfy that desire by checking out the RAZR VE20. This will be a Sprint exclusive handset, and so far we do know it will come with a 2 megapixel camera, a primary QVGA display and a touch-sensitive strip located on the external display just like how the V9m does. This shiny handset will come with a mirrored front, perfect to make sure your mascara does not run just before that big business meeting, complete with scarlet accents all over. The Motorola RAZR VE20 is also compatible with Sprint’s upcoming NFL Mobile Live application that allows subscribers to tune in to live game audio while getting their football fix on a cell phone.

Good news, Memento Guy! Even though Polaroid announced that they were discontinuing instant film cameras last February, they are bringing it back, and making it even better!

That’s right, the big P announced that they intend to add instant printing to digital cameras. All I can say is: it is about time! I can’t stand going to my printer every time I want to print out a picture, and if I could do it from my camera, it would be excellent.

Of course, if I wanted to get a print out of a picture, I could just go to Kinkos or Wal-Mart, and probably get my prints from there. If Polaroid can offer this service with some convenient smaller gadget that is cheaper, then I believe they might be on the verge of some kind of photographic success.

Now all of those old nostalgic people who mourned the death of instant film at the beginning of this year will be appeased! I suppose this is what the marketing people at Polaroid would call a “target audience” for their new product.

These pictures have a size of 4×3, just like the old school photos. I don’t have the information on when this new instant film process will be available to the general public, but they had better keep the price low.

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Kohjinsha jumps straight into the netbook market with the W130 model that will be made available to Koreans. Features and specifications of the W130 include :-

• 8.9″ LCD touch screen display at 1,280 x 768 resolution
• Brightness of 280cd/?
• 500:1 contrast ratio.
• Intel Atom Z520 1.33GHz processor
• Windows Vista Home Basic OS
• 4-in-1 memory card slot
• ExpressCard slot
• DVD Super Multi Drive
• 2 megapixel and VGA cameras

Sounds like it packs in a whole lot more compared to other netbooks, including the swiveling display. Would be interesting to see just how this is priced.

Google has released a new open source tool this week aimed at taking the headache out of using cryptography for security purposes.

The tool is called keyCzar and has the following features:

• Simple API for application integration
• Key rotation and versioning
• Safe default algorithms, modes and key lengths
• Automated generation initialization vectors and ciphertext signatures
• Java and Python implementations with C++ to follow
• International support in Java with Python support to follow

Googe have decided to release such a tool because they realize how easy it is to get a cryptography implementation wrong, causing more security issues than not using it at all. In a posting on the Google Onlien Security Blog, Steve Weis wrote the following:

Cryptography is notoriously hard to get right and if improperly used, can create serious security holes. Common mistakes include using the wrong cipher modes or obsolete algorithms, composing primitives in an unsafe manner, hard-coding keys in source code, or failing to anticipate the need for future key rotation.

As keyCzar is an open source project Google are also encouraging developers to get involved through the Google Code project page.

Read more at the Google Online Security Blog, found viaVnunet.com

Matthew’s Opinion
This looks to be another useful tool from Google that makes it a simple operation to add an extra layer of security to software applications. Not only that, but Google seems to have simplified the process to the point where developers who have no knowledge of cryptography can use it straight away.

It is important to point out that keyCzar is not a complete solution, however, and Google points this out on their Non-Goals webpage. You will still have to make use of cyrpto libraries such as OpenSSL, PyCrypto and Jave JCE. Another thing to keep in mind is that the new tool is not currently backwards compatible for anyone thinking of using it, future re-implementation will be a factor to consider.