Crave- Page 4237

Monitors fit for a museum

Monitors have something in common with keyboards--and no, Sparky, it's not just that they're both connected to your computer. Where design is concerned, both are often neglected stepchildren toiling in the shadow of their showy sibling, the the mouse.

BenQ, however, is one manufacturer that sees monitors as objects of beauty, and it partnered with Taiwan's National Palace Museum to prove it. Chip Chick, in fact, calls their new "Art Museum" line "the most beautifully designed monitors we've ever come across."

The 17-inch LCD screens, which have built-in speakers, are adorned with … Read more

A new how-do-you-do from BenQ

BenQ has just announced a new big-screen, high-ISO, compact snapshot camera, just in time for holiday shoppers to ask why the company is announcing a new product in mid-December. The X710 is a slim, 7.2-megapixel shooter with a big 3-inch LCD screen and a 30fps VGA movie mode that can hit ISO 4000 sensitivity for filming in low light. Of course, that setting will probably mean incredibly noisy, grainy movies that look like they come out of 1970s-era video tapes. Still shots can only go up to ISO 1200, which will still probably be pretty darn noisy. The … Read more

The Krzr fires it up

When Bono and his buddies came up with the Red campaign a while back to promote AIDS awareness in Africa, I was delighted--not only because of the charity involved, but also because red is my favorite color. I wish more gadgets came in red. It does appear that the savvy folks over at Motorola have answered my call, with a brand-new crimson edition of the Motorola Krzr that they have dubbed the Krzr Fire. It is sadly available only in Korea for now, but it would be quite lovely if it were available here too.

Cell phone holders for runners

Everyone has seen those arm straps to hold your iPod, but a company called JAMinnovations also makes arm/wrist straps to hold your cell phone or smart phone. The straps will hold handsets of all different designs, from tiny flip phones to clunky candy-bar models. They even have a strap for Treos and other smart phones.

No doubt, having a cell phone on your morning jog would be convenient in an emergency, but otherwise the straps border on the land of "things you don't need" (at least in my opinion). And what's more, they just seem … Read more

JVC's stalker cam

I have to admit, Engadget's comment on the 34x zoom JVC GR-D750 camcorder is the best thing about it: "For moms and creepy men." With a 1,496mm-equivalent maximum zoom lens, you have to wonder where the specsmanship will end. I mean, to take a close-up shot of the moon, you really need only an 800mm lens. And image-stabilization technologies in consumer camcorders can usually handle up to only about 20x zoom, so clearly you'd need a tripod to get decent video. So we're talking about a camcorder optimized for shooting from a fixed position … Read more

Do you have the Urge to discover new music?

This week, MTV quietly launched a new feature within Urge, dubbed My Auto-Mix. I had a chance to sit down with MTV reps last week to preview the tool, and I was pretty impressed with what I saw. Yesterday, I finally had a chance to start playing with My Auto-Mix, and now I'm hooked. This handy music discovery tool provides you with custom playlists based on several factors that you can adjust. My personal favorite is the Mood Selector, which can be seen in the screenshot below. The experience is entirely visual, with different emoticons representing all 179 moods … Read more

Forget the chairs--get a massage bed

Anyone who's been to a mall in the last decade or so knows that massage chairs are a dime a dozen (well, maybe a few grand a dozen). But what about a massage bed? Now we're talking.

The "Heated Shiatsu MassageBed" from Relax The Back isn't just one of those vibrating quarter-operated motel beds, as its $1,995 price tag indicates. Not only does it have all the features of a fully loaded massage chair, but it also has 14 rollers made of jade. That's right, as in the jewelry.

"Since jade is … Read more

'Friendspotting' on MIT's campus

Do you remember the old-fashioned college days when a friend would call you by cell phone to let you know when "he" turned up at the library? Or maybe you figured out someone's class schedule, so you could just happen to be walking by when "she" got out. Technology, once again, is changing the game.

The Senseable City Lab at MIT released a free desktop application on Wednesday with real-time mapping and instant-messaging features. iFind, as it's called, works by detecting which Wi-Fi access point a person is near. Because MIT has over 2,… Read more

More iPhone rumors, Crave bangs head on desk

As far as we're concerned, the new year can't come too quickly. Not only does it mean some time off, but it also puts us closer to Macworld, where hopefully all the iPhone speculation will be put to rest. After months of gossip and a gallery of iPhone "photos" ranging from the silly to the just plain ugly, we're getting the tiniest bit sick of it all. Unfortunately, the Steve Jobs love-fest is at the same time as CES, but if we see something substantial next month, we'll be ecstatic. Of course there's … Read more