Gadget news

Skip the eye doctor and just play 'Call of Duty'

If the ever-increasing strength of my reading glasses is any indication, all this daily staring at a computer screen is taking an exacting toll on my eyes. However, help may be on the way in the form of Halo 2, if a new study from the University of Rochester is to be believed.

The research showed that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved their vision by about 20 percent. That would pretty much put me back where I was before I ditched the newspaper world to become … Read more

NY state senator pitches gadget ban for pedestrians

Barely a day goes by in the Big Apple when we don't see someone get almost hit by a car while mindlessly chatting on a cell phone or listening to an iPod. State Sen. Carl Kruger of Brooklyn thinks this is a big enough problem to propose new legislation aimed at protecting distracted pedestrians.

Kruger's bill, which has not yet been formally introduced, would ban the use of electronic gadgets--including MP3 players and cell phones--by pedestrians using a crosswalk in New York state. Violators would be subject to a $100 fine under the plan.

Kruger told WCBS, "… Read more

Expandable mobile display is on a roll

Telecom Italia and Philips Electronics spinoff Polymer Vision have announced plans to develop what they say is the first mobile device with a rollable display. Yes, the gadget clearly rolls, but we'll have to wait 'til launch later this year to see if it rocks.

While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device, dubbed the Cellular-book, has a display that extends up to 5 inches and can be folded and stored away when not in use. It features 16 gray levels combined with a high-contrast and high-reflectivity display to enable comfortable paperlike reading of newspapers and books, … Read more

The key to credit-card-thin cameras?

The biggest origami news of 2007 has nothing to do with Microsoft or ultramobile PCs.

Instead, thanks to centuries-old telescope technology reapplied to camera lenses by engineers at UC San Diego, the origami lens takes the cake.

At just one-seventh the thickness as a traditional lens, the origami system could significantly raise the resolution bar for camera phones. It might also make today's slimmest ultracompact cams seem like anvils.

The system borrows the folded optical system found in Cassegrain telescopes, but uses a single, diamond-cut optical crystal instead of a series of mirrors. The origami system bounces light through … Read more

A toilet for Inspector Gadget

Did you know the average person spends 11,862 hours out of his or her lifetime in the bathroom? That's equal to 1 year, 4 months and 5 days in what's usually a boring room, absent comforts like TiVo, video games and a stocked fridge.

Roto-Rooter is coming to the rescue! (Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing it out.) North America's largest provider of plumbing and drain-cleaning services is offering an online sweepstakes for its "Pimped Out John," a bathroom throne for the gadget junkie.

The fully loaded Kohler commode comes with a Philips 20-inch LCD … Read more

Nokia confirms N-Gage sequel

Nokia has confirmed that a successor to the N-Gage is due by early 2008. The company's FutureWatch blog indicates that developers EA and Gameloft are on board to develop for the updated N-Gage, and that other "leading publishers" will be making games as well.

Perhaps the bigger news is that the next N-Gage won't be a single device, but rather a gaming platform available on certain of its advanced Series 60 models. (Whether a future Series 60 phone will look like the Nokia concept pictured here, however, is anybody's guess.) Instead of buying games on … Read more

So much for those Beatles iPod rumors

By now you know it: one, Peyton Manning is pretty fantastic; and two, there was no big announcement from Apple last night involving the Beatles. No "Beatles Edition" widescreen iPod, no Fab Four tunes in the iTunes Music Store, nada. Guess we can file that one under "unsubstantiated Mac rumors."

The ad everyone's talking about, according to the similarly disappointed Cult of Mac, is the Coca-Cola spot that spoofed Grand Theft Auto. Kind of reminded me of that South Park episode where half the action took place in World of Warcraft. So, here it is; … Read more

Let Navy SEAL gear improve your golf game

The gnomes in the itty-bitty Swiss hamlet of Ibach have come up with yet another Swiss Army essential, the GolfTool. It features 10 tools, including a tee puncher ("for the frozen ground"), a groove cleaner and the perennial toothpick and tweezers. Of special interest is the accompanying range finder;good for up to 1000 meters.

Of course the Crave crew won't settle for that. So we asked ourselves, what would a US Navy SEAL use? Well, that would be the PLRF15C Pocket Laser Range Finder, also by Vectronix. This model, while lacking a toothpick and tweezers, will … Read more

Verizon PN-820 launches; first decent-looking clamshell smart phone

I like flip phones. I like smart phones. But I have yet to see a cell phone manufacturer successfully combine the two into a nice-looking package. Motorola came out with the i930, but there's no way I was going to carry that big honkin' phone around, and it was definitely catered toward the Nextel bunch. Then, HTC had a go at it with the Cingular 3125, but I don't know, I still find the design just ... weird. Now, Verizon Wireless has picked up the clamshell Pantech PN-820 (aka Verizon Wireless PN-820) smart phone, and it actually looks decent. … Read more