Apparently Sony found out they just don't make 'em like they used to and whipped up a belt-driven USB turntable: the PS-LX300USB. It'll export your 33s and 45s through Sound Forge Audio Studio (bundled) and has its own pre-amp, but Sony, you're living in the past, man. It'll go for $150 next month -- just sell off a Northern soul single or two to cover costs.

Sure, there's a smorgasbord of products out there designed to transfer your precious vinyl recordings to a slightly more modern format, but few pack the cool factor that comes bundled in gratis with Numark's TTi. This newfangled turntable not only brings back not-so-fond memories of your second high school prom, but it also boasts an integrated iPod dock, USB interface, a metal platter and pitch control to boot. Besides ripping records directly to your 'Pod, the unit also features a line-level output and comes with versions of EZ Vinyl Converter software for the PC or Mac should you prefer vinyl-to-computer ripping. We know, it's tough to leave the 70s, but the TTi should make the transition somewhat less painstaking when it lands in Q2 for $449. One more angle's waiting after the break.

We know how annoying it is when you're trying to bounce all of your old Rush LPs to FLAC (you know, so you can jam to Moving Pictures on the go), and your files are filled with ugly surface noise. Well, ELP (the company, not Emerson, Lake, and Palmer) feels your pain -- and it wants to help. For the low, low price of $2500 you can supposedly rid your music of pops and clicks (but not hiss, strangely) with the turn of a knob. Of course, there are much cheaper software options for this sort of thing, and you can't use it on 78s, but you probably won't be worried about that once you hear how good Tom Sawyer sounds.

[Thanks, Matt]

We're pretty happy with just being able to get a clear cellular signal at our desk during the day, but a British mountain climber named Rod Bader seemingly won't be satisfied until he's able to gobble up some airtime minutes on top of the highest mountain on Earth. In a rather silly publicity stunt sponsored by Motorola, Bader will attempt to climb Mount Everest in late May, and, weather permitting, place a phone call from the summit through a tower located in China that has a clear line of sight to the north side of the peak. However, this means that world record holder Bader (he's climbed more of the world's highest points than anyone else, apparently) will need to follow a more difficult route to the top, and although he will have a support crew tagging along, the lack of Powersauce bars may prove to be his undoing. Oh, and if Bader emerges triumphant by asking someone "Can you hear me now?" for the record-breaking call, we've already hired some sherpas to ensure that he never makes it down from that mountain.

While having your entire catalog of medical issues on your person at all times would sure come in handy if your GPS leads you into a body of water or you get mangled by a Japanese Land Walker, implanting an RFID data chip underneath your skin could (understandably) sound a bit extreme. While digital medical records and emergency panic buttons are certainly swell, EMI's 911 rCard places every quirk and prior health issue you've ever had onto a single wallet-sized card, which can be viewed immediately by any medical personnel that would need pertinent information statinum. The "vivid, full color LCD" can display everything from medical charts to photos / text describing the patient's history, and sports a built-in battery that can handle "about two hours" of constant viewing before it needs recharging. Boasting USB connectivity, users can continually update and upload new information from their EMI web portal onto the rCard, including any mild injuries sustained during last week's campouts. The 911 rCard is available now for $79.95, which includes a USB cable / charger and the first year of website access, while additional years of data storage and interfacing will run you $20.

[Via EverythingUSB]

In a sure sign that they really will let just about anyone into the popular Guinness Book these days, an English gentleman named Edd China has just earned himself the coveted award for "world's fastest office" after pushing his Rover 100-powered desk-on-wheels to 87mph on a British racetrack. China -- who began building custom vehicles for a charity event and now designs them on commission with his company, Cummfy Banana -- has already assembled such masterpieces as a rolling sofa, mobile shed, drivable bed (what we call a "pickup truck" here in America), and most practical of all, a motorized bathroom. Although all of his creations are actually street-legal, China nonetheless gets pulled over on a regular basis -- though sometimes the cops just harass him for a photo op -- with his personal best being 12 traffic stops in one day. As the NASCAR-like decals indicate, the £45,000 ($85,700) mobile office (dubbed the "hot-desk") was originally built for a stationary firm, and comes complete with a keyboard steering wheel, mousepad horn, briefcase-based controls, and even a working computer and water cooler. Next up for China is a functional kitchen that he and a chef can roll around in, although for the kind of loot it takes to build these one-of-a-kind novelties, he might be better off just picking up a used RV and stuffing the luggage compartment full of caviar and filet mignon.

If you were wowed by those Japanese modders who overclocked their stock CPU to 7GHz, wait till you hear about IBM's latest foray into the world of ultra-fast computing: together with researchers from the digital camera-hating Georgia Institute of Technology, Big Blue has managed to overclock a chip to an unheard of 500GHz. Granted, the model they used already had a blistering native clock speed of 350GHz to begin with, but we're still floored that you could actually coax a small silicon wafer into operating at an incredible half-terahertz. As you probably suspected, there's no way to achieve speeds like this at room temperature, so the team froze their high-performance silicon-germanium chip to a super-chilly negative 451-degrees Fahrenheit, which is just eight degrees above absolute zero. Unfortunately, after learning about this breakthrough, electronics giant Sony apparently felt that consumers would no longer be impressed with their much-hyped Cell processor, so they've once again delayed the PS3 until IBM can make the liquid helium-cooled CPUs suitable for mass production . Expect the 500GHz PS3 to hit stores sometime in 2011.

[Thanks, bento-san]