We're not saying it can't be done, but you should have some considerable trouble managing to run out of room for your expertly-shot, highly-narrative vacation antics with Hitachi's new DZ-BD10H camcorder, which records 1080p HD video to Blu-ray discs or to its built-in 30GB hard drive. There's even an SD slot, which we aren't positive you can record video to, but it's a fair guess. Other specs include a 2.7-inch LCD and a 10x optical zoom. Price should be around $1,500 when it hits Japan on August 9, but no solid word on a US berth just yet.

While Sony's Reader has never received the enormous press or enjoyed the supposed whirlwind sales of Amazon's Kindle e-book, and is certainly lacking in, erm, EV-DOness, the Reader is about to get one trick the Kindle doesn't have yet: openness. Sony will be shooting out an update on Thursday to allow the Reader to use purchased books in the protected EPUB format from whoever is peddling them, instead of being tied to the Sony's e-book store, or just DRM-free text and PDF documents. That openness should help Sony beef up its selection -- which is lagging behind Amazon's -- and will hopefully mark a bit of a turning point in the e-book market to more standards and, more importantly, more books.

We got a gander at Samsung's fancy new tellervisions and other stuff, and while the basic design language hasn't changed a whole ton in recent years, there's always something new going on. We're particularly enthusiastic about the new Series 8 LCDs, which manage a standard complement of ports in 2-inch thick form factors -- none of that ports-in-the-base nonsense. The cute little InfoLink RSS widgets (pictured) are also quite the welcome addition to Samsung's lineup, since these days we really can't be bothered to lift our phone up to eye level and check the weather on there. We bet you think we're kidding. Samsung is always droning on about the "Touch of Color" design, which is present in all its new televisions, along with its new computer monitor / TV hybrid displays. The flavor of the month is a new honeycomb pattern worked in with the color, but we really couldn't care less -- we'd rather watch TV. Elsewhere in the event we got to handle Samsung's new cameras and camcorders. The new TL34HD is a particular stunner, though we do prefer the older black / blue color scheme. Nothing could have prepared us, however, for the SC-MX20. While in press photos it appears to be just another cheap-ass YouTube camcorder (which it is), in person the build quality and amazing color choices really blew us away -- and trust us, no one is more surprised than we are by this fact. Most everything on display will be available next month.

Freshfaced AMD CEO Dirk Meyer hyped the firm's upcoming Atom-challenging processor the other day, calling it "Bobcat," and promising a November reveal. We'd think he'd be the guy to know, but now we're hearing seemingly conflicting words from AMD's Chief Marketing Officer, Nigel Dessau. Dessau says AMD is "watching... rather than playing" to see what becomes of the netbook segment. As Ars Technica points out, Dirk Meyer was only promising to announce a chip in November, not release one, so perhaps both of these statements are in step with each other, or maybe they're just thinking of different processor applications altogether, but for a company that's lacked a clear focus and a true Intel killer for the past couple of years, this sort of potential doublethink isn't helping anything.

PSP hacker "FreePlay" has turned his gaze to the PS3, and come up with a method for the first PS3 homebrew outside of Linux and that little "hello world" proof of concept a few months back. The minimal devkit doesn't seem built to take advantage of the PS3's wiles, however, and is instead working with the Java prowess built into the Blu-ray playback end of the PS3. Who knows how much power that'll lend to homebrew developers, but it's Java, so we're not expecting great things either way. Wake us when we can play PS2 games, would you?

We don't suppose there's any friendlier way to put this: Open Tech Inc. is setting itself up for an Apple lawsuit, without any of the nice "product people will want to buy" stuff to balance out the equation. See, Open Tech thinks you're an idiot, and that you'll buy one of their "open computers" that can run (gasp!) OS X, XP, Vista or Ubuntu -- just like almost every other PC on the market today. We're guessing they figure that as long as they aren't loading OS X onto the computer themselves, they won't have any trouble from Apple, but that's where they go wrong. In addition to the EULA and copyright allegations, Apple's complaint against Psystar has claims for inducing copyright infringement and infringing on Apple trademarks by advertising non-Apple machines as compatible with OS X which is exactly Open Tech's ploy here. Mix that in with some crappy specs, an August-ish launch timeframe and no pricepoints to speak of, and you have one of the least desirable computers known to man. And hopefully a fun lawsuit for us to enjoy.

Sensing your deep down desire for more OLED keys, Art Lebedev is busting out the new Optimus Pultius, which adds 15 keys to the mayhem. Sure you could use it all by its lonesome, sans Maximus, but that's just not as fun. The keys are just like the ones on the Maximus, and there's even an extra USB port in the back. And you know what that's for... daisy chaining these suckers. No word on price or release date just yet, other than the vague 2008 / early 2009 timeframe.

You know what's cool, right? Big, luxurious, fast cars. Those are cool. And then, you know, when you put a car logo on a laptop, and maybe a bit of leather upholstery? You're bordering on seriously cool levels, people. Take it from us, we know. Ego's been making luxury laptops of questionable taste and shape for a couple years now, and seems to have finally met the "alright, I guess" mark with its Bentley laptops. Complete with cross-over hand-stitching, a seemingly transplanted car door handle, and a few crappy specs, the laptop is most certainly not worth the £10,000 ($19,943 US) asking price. They go on sale this summer.

We've gotta admire the functional naming here. "World's Cheapest Laptop." Hard to get that one confused with the world's almost-cheapest laptop, or similar pretenders. From what we can glean from this laptop's Alibaba page, it's built by Impulse, sports an NPX-9000 model number, and gives new meaning to the term craptop when it comes to specs. The 7-inch screen is accompanied by a 400MHz, MIPS processor, 128MB of RAM, 1GB of flash storage, and a few USB ports and an SD card slot. You'll be filling up one of those ports with a WiFi dongle, and we're guessing that SD card slot will be your lifeline for storing just about everything that isn't the Linux operating system. The wholesale price is $130 US, with a 50 unit minimum purchase. $6,500 for a laptop for you and 49 of your closest frenemies? We're sold.

[Thanks, Seema R.]

There's just one problem with this, the way we see it: most folks with $3000 earmarked for a gaming laptop probably already own an Xbox 360. Just a thought. Other than that we see little to dislike about this little promotion. Dell is offering up its top-of-the-line XPS M1730 system with an Xbox 360 Elite bundle tossed in for good measure. The bundle includes, a pair of faceplates, two game and of course the Xbox itself, and while it's not exactly "free" -- you're looking at a couple hundred dollar premium over a similarly specced M1730 -- it's still a savings of over $300, and should be eBayable, if nothing else. Offer expires July 24th.

[Thanks, Cezar]

Sort of. Pwnage Tool 2.0 can't handle 3G iPhone SIM unlocks just yet, though jailbreaking should work just fine, and we're also faced with the teensy little problem of the Dev Team's server being totally destroyed by downloads already -- mirror please? -- but the friendly little jailbreak app has finally been unleashed upon the earth. We'd never suggest trying out software like this right out of the gate, but, um, let us know how it goes, yeah?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: We're seeing mixed results so far in the comments, but no bricked phones to speak of. Always a good thing. Oh, and plenty of mirrors to be found in the comments, thanks guys!

Update 2: Looks like 2.0.1 is already out with a few fixes!

Happy 40th birthday, Intel! Now that you're over the hill, we'd suggest buying a Porsche, building completely custom one-off chips for Apple, or in some other way jeopardizing your financial well being in order to actualize pent-up childhood dreams, but we'd say AMD's recent struggles are just about the best present you could've asked for. Sure, the EU is trying its best to put a damper on things, but don't let that get you down, your best years are still to come. Maybe.

[Thanks, Kevin]

Oh man, remember that one time we tried to balance the teams in your favor, so there were like eight guys on your side, and just two of us? And then we still kicked your ass at CTF? Yeah, well XIM is gonna get you nowhere. Sure, the newly refined mod can hijack the Xbox 360 controller input and allow you to use just about any USB input device with the console -- for instance, a keyboard and mouse -- but we're still gonna shoot you in the face while you're trying to remember where that shotgun spawns, steal your flag right out from under you, and then snipe your base's spawn points. Get used to it. Simulated video of us owning you is after the break.

[Via Xbox-Scene]

Despite AT&T's best attempts at completely failing its free WiFi promises eternally, iPhone owners can finally fire up Mobile Safari in their local Starbucks, or, um, that one other place we heard about with AT&T WiFi, and get browsing. Of course, that's not to say the service won't crash horribly in the next 10 minutes, but at least AT&T stuck by its word, and can now move on to more pressing issues.

Update: Yeah, turns out this isn't true, and AT&T has pulled the page. Free WiFi? That's just silly.

Who needs to be "green" when you can go really, really fast? Well, Shelby Supercars figures it can have it both ways, with an all-electric version of the Ultimate Aero, the Ultimate Aero EV. Seeing how the Ultimate Aero is already the world's faster production car (at least officially, sorry Buggati), they don't see it as much of a leap of faith for this new version to carry that mantle into the electric space: "I think we can do it faster, leaner and cleaner than any other manufacturer," says the ever-modest SSC founder Jerod Shelby. The new car will be powered by a single 373kW electric motor, with a dual-motor "high performance" version being considered, which should give its gas guzzling sibling some serious competition around the track. Testing will begin in February next year, with full production supposed to commence in Q4 2009.

[Thanks, Yossi]