Crave

Maybe it's our midlife crisis taking over again, but we have a serious crush on Amadana, the Japanese company that created the bamboo-clad DVD player and other gorgeous products that reflect its zen-like design philosophy. If Amadana had a retail outlet, we imagine it would look like a cross between an Apple store and a Buddhist monastery. (We just wish the company would change its logo, which looks way to much like Amana's.)

Amadana's all-in-one audio system is a perfect example of the company's devotion to clean lines. Krunker.com says its 7-inch-sided cube has touch-sensitive … Read more

Loath as we are to post anything involving the evil Hello Kitty, we are compelled to issue an alert anytime it sets paw close to home--as in the desktop. So we are depressed to report that it's has been conjured in the form of a pink wireless mouse, which Chip Chick says is available for $25 at Best Buy. (We've heard of "CatDog, but a cat mouse?) It's almost creepier that the image doesn't have eyes, making it seem all the more like Big Brother.

We were let loose today in the hills outside of Los Angeles behind the wheel of Mazda's new CX-9 midsize crossover SUV. The CX-9, which is the biggest vehicle ever to come out of Mazda's Hiroshima plant, follows Mazda's CX-7 into the crowded crossover market, and is designed to appeal to that growing segment of customers in need of seven seats (how did we ever manage with just five?). Unlike many other seven-seaters we've seen, the CX-9's third row of seats will be standard on all models, and will not be removable.

If the CX-9 … Read more

Most mobile phones are not BlackBerrys. Or Treos. If you have a "dumb" phone, you can go a long way toward making it a better e-mail appliance by "flipping" it at Teleflip.com (starting in March). The free service uses SMS to make any phone into a nice e-mail-reading machine.

Sending e-mails to phones via SMS is not a new idea. Teleflip's pitch is its ease of setup: go to the site, enter your phone number, e-mail address, and password, and from then on you'll be able to see your e-mails on your phone. … Read more

Total Immersion, which wowed the Demo crowd two years ago, has technology that lets you merge computer-generated objects into live video. At Demo 07, the company showed off how a small PC with a camera could add a little dancing cartoon character to a live video of a newspaper. In other words: the newspaper was flat, but the live video of it on the PC's screen had real-time characters dancing around on it. And when the camera moved, they moved, so they almost appeared to be connected to the paper.

This technology will be great for navigation apps, and … Read more

Sony Ericsson has always blazed its own path when it comes to cell phone design, but now it appears the company finally is joining the slim-phone party. Gizmodo posted images of the new Sony Ericsson W880 Ai, a razor-thin (pun intended) candy bar model that should have its formal debut this month. Expected features on the triband (GSM 900/1800/1900) phone include a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, 3G (UMTS) support, and a digital music player. Of course, our friends in Europe will be the first to get the W880 Ai, and we have no idea if it will skip across … Read more

Looking for a reason to make the leap to Windows Vista? If you spend your days sipping lattes while surfing the Net, this deal may push you toward early adoption. T-Mobile is offering three free months of Wi-Fi access for Vista users at any of its HotSpot locations. (Hot spot operator The Cloud is running a similar promotion in the U.K.) If you are paying month to month for Wi-Fi at your local Starbucks or Borders, it amounts to a savings of $120 over the three months (the offer ends April 30). That's half the sticker price of … Read more

There's another blogger here on Crave who is trying to convince all our readers that I am unhealthily obsessed with penguins. Not true. Yes, I think they're cute. Yes, I think the occasional penguin gadget is kind of cool. But come on, Mike. First, it's not an obsession. And second, the market has become so saturated with the penguin motif that I'm ready to say: I'm over it.

I mean, check out this penguin humidifier that's available in Japan. Way overkill, even though it would probably be easy to mod into a nice device … Read more

Someone tipped Gizmodo off to the possibility of a new Samsung clamshell making its way to the T-Mobile lineup in the near future. Dubbed the Samsung Stripe for the vertical gray stripe down the middle, it will sport a low-end set of features such as a speakerphone, instant messaging, a VGA camera, Bluetooth, and T-Mobile's MyFaves support. Actual pricing is still unknown to us, but we're guessing it won't be terribly costly.