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Guitar with built-in amp lets you rock on

Now you can rock on without lugging a Peavey amp. Guitar maker First Act is at the Consumer Electronics Show demonstrating a guitar with a built-in pre-amp. All you need to do is plug it into some speakers.

Guitarist Scotty Alexander is pictured here playing the familiar chords to "Smoke on the Water" with the Volkswagen Garagemaster from First Act. The guitar comes free when you buy particular models of cars from Volkswagen, as Crave noted back in November. First Act, however, also sells the guitar as the Vex for $600. (Alexander's day job, or rather night … Read more

Fast Video Converter

Yeah, there's still no video standard among portable devices. But ADS Tech is trying to help us all out with the Instant Video To-Go ($79.95), the first "self-contained, hardware-based video-content conversion solution for consumers." In English, that translates to a small device that converts video content for your iPod, PSP, and so on. It connects to any PC via the integrated USB 2.0 plug and can crush a 100-minute (roughly 2GB) MPEG-2 or VOB file down into a manageable QVGA H.264 video in a mere 20 minutes. Eliminate overnight encoding jobs for less than … Read more

Creative to fight the scourge of blurry Web video

Do you have trouble sitting still? Or perhaps you host an overly active Webcam show. If so, Creative's Live! Cam Optia AF might give your Webcam broadcasts a bit more clarity and focus. Creative is calling it the world's first plug-and-play autofocus Webcam. Creative gave us a quick demo at CES. The autofocus feature worked quickly and quietly, and the bundled software includes your typical face-tracking video effects (look, I'm wearing a funny hat!), plus some really fun audio effects. You can enable the voice effects on the fly and make the person on the other end … Read more

iTunes makes a new movie partner

Along with the perhaps more exciting announcement of the iPhone (with an integrated wide-screen iPod...who'd have thunk it?), Steve Jobs announced today in his Macworld keynote that iTunes has gained another movie studio partnership for its store. Paramount movies are now available. This is happy news indeed, as the studio is responsible for such favorites as The Italian Job and Zoolander (pictured at right).

Shure's new 'buds

Shure dropped some new sound-isolating earphones, dubbed the SE line, onto the masses. The company redesigned its popular E series and gave the models spiffy new looks as well as new, more confusing names. The SE210 ($149.99), the SE310 ($249.99), the SE420 ($349.99), and the SE530 ($449.99) all offer far better sound than those garbage earbuds that came with your MP3 player.

The SE210 and SE310 are both single-driver models and come with deluxe fit kits that include sets of replaceable tips, so you get that all-important ear canal seal (and so you don't gross … Read more

Dell announces a new 27-inch LCD monitor--and we've already tested it

This morning at CES, Dell announced its new 27-inch LCD monitor, the Dell UltraSharp 2707WFP. We were lucky to get our hands on an early review sample, and Matthew Wood from CNET Labs has already been able to do a lot of hands-on testing. We'll be following up with a full review of the 2707WFP--with a more rigorous performance analysis--after CES, but we've done enough testing to give some substantial first impressions. The Dell 2707WFP is available immediately with a hefty price tag of $1,400.

Design

We've liked a lot of Dell monitors in the past, … Read more

Sennheiser cancels the noise

Sennheiser is clearly gunning for number one with its latest noise-canceling headphones. The PXC-450 is a set of full-size closed-back cans that make use of Sennheiser's brand-new NoiseGard 2.0 technology to make mincemeat out of ambient noise. But unlike a certain other brand (ahem, Bose), these will still work when the battery is drained. Another nice touch is a "TalkThrough" button on the right earcup, which lets you hear what's going on around you without removing the headphones. There are also volume and on/off buttons right on the headphones, and the detachable cable is … Read more

Wall Street Journal predicts iPhone will run on Cingular

We're moments away from finding out if all those Apple "iPhone" rumors are true but more details on the mystery device are emerging even in the homestretch. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that the phone will operate on Cingular's GSM network.

The specualtion is nothing new, indeed the Cingular tidbit emerged as early as last September, but with the Wall Street Journal onboard we tend to believe it. We'll know soon though so stay tuned. And in the meantime, enjoy our slide show of the Apple iPhone concepts that popped up on the … Read more

Dell overclocks, flexes its volume muscle

The Dell XPS 710 H2C, to be officially announced at CES tomorrow, isn't fundamentally that different from the old, vanilla XPS 710, but two important factors make it stand out. Thanks in part to an internally developed, hybrid liquid-cooling rig, the XPS 710 H2C will be the first desktop ever from Dell to ship with a factory-overclocked, fully warrantied CPU. The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700's stock 2.6GHz will ship to customers at 3.2GHz.

The XPS 710 H2C is also notable for its price. At $5,200 for the core configuration, it's roughly $1,500 … Read more