The Yamagiwa Moonbird is a beautiful LED light designed by Yukio Hashimoto. Hand-carved from beech plywood, it shines down on your desk with 28 quarter-watt LEDs. It’s beautiful and eco-friendly, but chances are good that it’s ludicrously expensive. After all, you need to inquire with the designer to get a price, and that’s never a good sign for bargain hunters.

Yamagiwa Lighting via Book of Joe

Continue reading...

Today at Verizon’s New York City headquarters the company showed off some upgrades to FiOS TV that are coming in September. One of the most noticeable upgrades in the new FiOS, version 1.7, is that premium channels like HBO and Showtime will now be able to promote specific shows when non-subscribers tune to those channels.

So if you don’t have Showtime, instead of seeing a regular to-subscribe-fork-over-another-$9.99-a-month message when you flip to that channel, you’ll see something like the screen above. FiOS already lets you subscribe to individual premium channels via your remote control (as opposed to a phone call), which has led to a huge spike in impulse-buying those channels, company reps said. Now they’re taking it a step further with channels promoting shows and offering sample episodes for free.

Also coming up with version 1.7 is bidirectional side-loading of devices. What the frak is that? Verizon FiOS already lets you browse media (videos, music and photos) from computers on your home network; now you’ll be able to browse media on devices attached to those computers via USB — portable media players, cameras, phones or whatever. There’s no software to install, no delay; just plug them in and they’ll show up in your FiOS Media Manager menu. Nice.

Lastly, look for major enhancements to FiOS’s app store, the Widget Bazaar, next month as well.

While we’re on the topic, anyone else disappointed with how slowly FiOS TV is spreading to new areas? And are you few lucky subscribers looking forward to these upgrades?

Continue reading...

Ben is a friendly laid-back boy, but he has a heart condition which isn’t being helped by kennel life. He needs a forever or foster home urgently. He’s good with other dogs and loves people, so please give this lad a chance.

Continue reading...

Are you a Street Fighter addict? If so, this keychain is for you. It looks like a mini video game controller, but it’ll really help you practice your moves. Every time you accurately enter a combo move for Ryu, Ken, Dhalsim or Chun-Li, it’ll make the corresponding sound.

So instead of doing whatever it is you do when you have a free minute on the subway or in a doctor’s office waiting room, you can practice your moves. How awesome is this thing?

Strap-ya via TokyoMango

Continue reading...

If large and lovely is how you prefer your dogs, then Bruno could be just the boy for you. He enjoys the company of other dogs and at the moment even lives with a parrot who doesn’t bother him in the slightest! It is going to be lucky people who get to take Bruno home.

Continue reading...

This beautiful piece of design is called the Good Afternoon clock, designed by Japan’s Mile Project. Narrow slits in the bezel let a bit of light through, which spreads out on the glass surface. These rays of light act as the hour, minute and second hands. It’s both simple and innovative at the same time, a combo that results in truly elegant design. I want it.

Mile Project via Moco Loco

Continue reading...

Cocoa is an affectionate girl who just wants to find her new family to curl up with and share a bedtime drink. She could live with older children, but would prefer to be the only pet. She is longing to find her new home asap so that she can live a proper doggy life…

Continue reading...

Canon rolled out way too many digital cameras today, but we’ll spare you the brand spamming and cut to the best one, the Digital ELPH SD980 IS. We’ve been big fans of these puny ELPH powerhouses (ELVES?) for nearly a decade now, and the SD980 doesn’t disappoint with its 12.1-megapixel sensor, the first 3-inch touchscreen on a Digital ELPH, a 5X optical zoom that’s a panoramic 24mm at its widest, and then our favorite, 720p HD video with HDMI output.

Unless you want to go for a digital SLR, this is your best bet for a camera that fits easily in your shirt pocket. Its smaller form factor makes it significantly more useful, because the more portable a camera is, the more likely you are to carry it with you. As we’ve mentioned before, a camera left in a drawer at home isn’t going to take very good pictures.

Indeed, Canon offers a squadron of bigger, clunkier PowerShot cameras with a bewildering array of features and prices, but for our money, the $330 necessary to procure this SD980 is definitely your best bet. Check out the gallery to pick out your favorite color; we’re digging that gold one. Interested in one of those newly-released Canon cameras we didn’t mention? Go ahead, read the press release.

Continue reading...

Scientists have produced a clever little device: a small handheld sensor that indicates what type of sweetener is in either a food or drink. The researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign believe this is yet another step towards creating an artificial tongue, complete with the sense of taste.

Similar to middle-school litmus paper tests, the sensor uses color-coded dots to show what sweeteners are used in a product. Until now, a similar test took about 30 minutes, and now is accomplished in two minutes. The sensor is being presented as a quality-control device for manufacturers to tell how sweet a product is, but they also mention developing sensors for the other basic tastes, such as sour and bitterness.

As someone who keeps an eye on caloric intake and also as the sibling of a Type-1 diabetic, a more practical use is to make sure that Diet Coke that my brother or I ordered wasn’t accidentally switched with a sugar-laden Coke. For one of us, it’s a very serious mistake.

Via CNN

Continue reading...

At this moment the only phone I would trade for my prized iPhone is the amazingly cool concept Window Phone from designer Seunghan Song. The phone would essentially be translucent, displaying information and images on a window-like surface in a form factor relatively similar to the iPhone’s.

The killer feature of this concept phone is its ability to change the look of the display glass to match the current weather conditions of your location (i.e. sunny day equals clear screen, rainy day equals virtual droplets on your screen). The weather screen functions would also be interactive, allowing you to draw a message during a snowy and have it instantly transformed into an SMS message. Of course there are some impractical aspects of such a design, but with the newfound success of smartphones it’s clear that some iteration of this kind of concept phone will likely see reality in the relatively near future.

Via Tuvie

Continue reading...

Alice is a calm and placid lady who loves people, though she is a little bit more choosy when it comes to other dogs. She wants all your attention for herself. Can you offer her a loving retirement home?

Continue reading...

You love your glass desk. Being able to see your shiny shoes while you work is a major plus, and wood is so overrated. One problem: You need to use an archaic throwback of technology — a mousepad — since your computer mouse won’t work on glass. Life really is a burden, isn’t it?

Well not anymore, my exquisitely modern friend. Logitech has just the mouse for you: Its Performance MX mouse is so sophisticated, it will work on that sexy glass desk of yours. Thanks to the company’s newly developed and scarily named Darkfield Laser Tracking technology, transparent surfaces work just as well as opaque ones. Magic? Not quite — Darkfield tracking works by reflecting the mouse’s laser off imperfections in the glass; it just needs to be at least 4 millimeters thick. The mouse also has Logitech’s new Unifying receiver tech, which controls your mouse and keyboard from the same wireless dongle.

The Performance Mouse MX sells for $100. Its little brother, the more portable Anywhere Mouse MX, does the same glass trick for $80. Both will be available this month.

We got a chance to try out one of the new Performance MX mice to see if this Darkfield tech really does what it says it does. Check out the video for our hands-on test.

Continue reading...

Dakota is a lovely little Jack Russell terrier who is a little shy and needs someone to fuss over her and encourage her to come out of her shell and let her sweet personality shine through. All she asks for is a nice comfy settee to curl up on and lots of attention and cuddles.

Continue reading...

Technicians carefully position an Orion flight test crew module to be airlifted from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center to the White Sands Missile Range…

Continue reading...

Sprint kicked off the beginning of its 4G network back in September of ’08 with a WiMax network in Baltimore, and now it’s expanding the network’s coverage to 17 cities in states such as Texas, Washington, Idaho and North Carlina — to name a few. The 4G service is promised to have downlink speeds topping out at 10Mbps and performing at 3Mbps to 6Mbps on average, which would make it up to five times faster than Sprint’s current 3G offering.

Sprint’s 4G network can already be accessed where available through USB modems and broadband routers, at $70 a month for unlimited 4G data. (About $10 more than 3G.)

Of course, with a network that extensive, it only makes sense to have phones that can handle it — which has eyes turning toward Sprint’s rumored dealings with Samsung on a new 4G phone. It’s really just a matter of when and not if, though whether or not Sprint is first off the blocks — which the company appears well positioned to be — is anyone’s guess.

Via Crave

Continue reading...