Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Rabid seems to be the norm today, not the exception. Funny, considering the fact that not too many groundbreaking announcements are expected for today’s Steve Jobs keynote, just a general re-commitment to the Mac platform and a few Leopard and iPhone surprises. Maybe a couple new iMacs and some Google / .Mac love, but even that’s stretching it. So what’s a fanboy to do with such paltry news? Make some up, of course! Recently “leaked” through some German sources, a keynote “transcript” has already made it out onto the internets, promising the aforementioned announcements, along with an iPhone “secret feature” of iWork, iLife and .Mac integration. The real kicker, and the near certain clincher of this report’s fallacy, is the “one more thing” announcement. As if that line wasn’t played enough as it is, the transcript unveils the iPhone@home, which features a 10-inch multitouch screen, 30GB of flash memory (?!?), 8 hours of battery, “no connections except dock connector,” integrated iSight, iChat… you know, every fanboy’s dream in a nutshell. Yeah, we’re not holding our breath.

[Via TUAW]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Laptops

No real surprises at this point, but here’s skinny on Sony’s “worst kept secret” Santa Rosa-based Vaio CR series of 14.1-inch laptops. Sony is going the multi-color route with these, hoping to attract the fashionistas in the room with sangria, cosmopolitan, dove, indigo and black color options. Sony also packed in some fun keyboard-bordering LED action and even an option for a color-coordinated bag and mouse. Prices start at $1,350 and Sony will start shipments at the end of this month. Processors are all Core 2 Duo T7100, graphics do the Intel GMA X3100 thing, the display manages a 1280 x 800 resolution, and 2GB of RAM comes standard. Hit up the gallery for more pics.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Now this is more like it. Sure, we’ve seen the prices of HD DVD players slowly but surely sinking over time, and while there’s been more than a few inconvenient rebate offers of late, it looks like a new precedent has been set. Crutchfield is now offering up Toshiba’s HD-A2 HD DVD player for a mere $199 after a $100 instant rebate, but we wouldn’t count on this thing showing up anytime soon. According to the site, not only is inventory sitting at zero, but it also admits that the ship date is unfortunately “uncertain.” Still, $199 for a second-generation HD DVD player ain’t too shabby (have you seen one for less?), so be sure to check out the previous impressions before grabbing your place in the ever-growing line of customers trying to take advantage.

[Thanks, Andrew]

UPDATE: Too bad — looks like Crutchfield was forced to jack the price up by a Benjamin or face an order backlog beyond belief.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Exclusive video: We go indoor skydiving to test two all action head cams.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

The same folks bringing us the ultra sensitive Bluetooth / GPS hybrid chip are also looking to improve voice quality on vanilla Bluetooth headsets, and the firm has now collaborated with Dynamic Hearing to offer up a multi-microphone configuration. Available on the company’s BlueCore-Multimedia platform, this VoiceField technology “uses two microphones to capture the speech of the headset user before it is lost amongst competing noise sources.” Additionally, it was designed to suck down very little power and sport uber-low signal latency, and also includes acoustic echo suppression, automatic handsfree volume control, and programmable equalization in 33 frequency bands.” Now, how’s about making us look a bit less freakish while donning these things on our ear?

[Via Inquirer]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!