Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wireless

Caring for those with Alzheimer’s could be getting a whole lot less stressful, as VeriChip has reportedly doled out 25 VeriMed RFID implantable microchips at the Alzheimer’s Community Care 2007 Alzheimer’s Educational Conference. Of course, these aren’t the first invasive chips that the company has crammed under folks’ skin for one reason or another, but these data packin’ devices are aiming to provide medical personnel “quick access to identification and medical records information in an emergency situation.” Interestingly, not much else was said about future rollouts beyond this small sample trial, but we can’t imagine these not showing up en masse (and in humans) once it gets the green light from regulators.

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

Filed under: GPS

As they are wont to do, the folks at GPS Lodge have gotten their hands on yet another GPS device for a looksee, with TomTom’s new ONE XL getting the review treatment this time ’round. The device itself is a follow-up to TomTom’s previous ONE GPS unit, boasting a 4.3-inch widescreen display among other revisions. On the whole, GPS Lodge seems to have been fairly impressed by the unit, saying that it “earns a spot on the top shelf with the better GPS units,” and finding that it performed well with the all-important task of not getting them lost. On the downside, they found that the larger screen came at the expense of battery life, and they were somewhat disappointed with the less-than-intuitive methods of entering addresses and selecting POIs. Still, they don’t seem to have much trouble recommending the unit, especially considering its $400 price tag.

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

Filed under: Cellphones

Catching a collective “Ugh!” from tech media everywhere (except maybe David Pogue), the inimitable Walt Mossberg already has his review iPhone as of this morning, which he apparently wasn’t under embargo to discuss since he blurted as much out during The Chronicle‘s Presidents Forum. Apparently Walt “[doesn’t] know whether [he’ll] give it a good review or not,” but is rarin’ to go in testing its touchscreen keyboard, stating, “I can tell you that in the first hour it works a little better than I thought, but I’m still not sure it works as well as a regular keyboard — and the first hour is not a very fair test, so I’m going to keep going at it.” Ok Walt, you keep on keepin’ on with that device; you know how to reach your less privileged pals at Engadget if you want to let us hold the mythic machine for a moment, yeah?

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The AP reports that China has flipped the switch on the first of 12 turbine generators on the right side of the ginormous Three Gorges Dam, with it apparently already pumping electricity to the national power grid after a 72-hour test run. The dam itself, as you’re no doubt aware, is the world’s biggest hydropower project evar, totaling up to some $22.5 billion. In addition to giving it something to brag about, China is hoping that the dam will let it cut its dependence on coal, as well as control flooding on the Yangtze river. This latest development follows the activation of 14 turbines on the left bank of the dam, which began operating in September of 2005.

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

Filed under: Portable Audio, Wireless

Eleksen‘s newest “Common Interface” technology doesn’t do you much good without modules to interact with it, so the company has introduced a bevy of accessories that play nice with the next-generation embeddable ElekTex sensor. Up first is an FM radio add-on, which offers consumers access to FM broadcasts either from a commercial radio station or FM transmitter, and is fully controlled by an ElekTex fabric sensor integrated into any garment or knapsack. Next up, we’ve got “updated electronics modules for iPod and iPod+Bluetooth devices,” and while details are certainly slimmer on this one, we do know that the sensor is “programmable and compatible with a range of electronics including iPods, smartphones and other personal digital devices.” Now, let’s see some end products with this stuff in it, capiche?

Read – Eleksen’s FM Radio module
Read – Eleksen’s iPod, Bluetooth modules

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