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Japan gets "champagne gold" PSP, U.S. gets jealous
Just when we thought they couldn't top pink, Sony Japan announced today that a "champagne gold" PSP will be available in the country on Feb. 22 for ¥20,790 (about $175). The system will also be sold in a limited edition (22,222 unit) bundle with Monster Hunter: 2nd Edition for ¥27,300 (about $230). A hilarious Google translation of the announcement highlights how the system "has the noble shining" and lets users "adjusting to your own baggage and fashion... in accessory feeling." It also stresses that this new PSP color will be "promoting the further enlargement [of the PSP] platform powerfully in the future in the Japanese country." So take from that what you will. [Via IGN, thanks Febry]
Gamer fashion goes too far
If it were only a joke, we could laugh and move on -- but it's not a joke. It's time to rethink how far the kitsch fun-factor of gaming fashion can actually go. J!NX is cool, Hot Topic gets a little more commercial and the belt-buckle idea was kinda neat a year ago. But now we've been slapped with Dolce and Gabbana's atrocious $175 Mario shirt and spanked with the unbelievably awful NES Advantage belt buckle. Gamers already have a lot of stigma to overcome as is, this isn't ironic fashion, it's ugly. On the other hand, if fashion is cyclical, then we passed way beyond bad and are on the breakthrough of respectable gaming fashion. No idea what that will look like.
Get your gift on: Holiday gamer shirts
Check out all of the different Way of the Rodent t-shirt designs while you're searching for stocking stuffers. Sure, they aren't all holiday themed, but this Katamari t-shirt where the Prince is rolling up a snowman is the bomb. Although the Q*bert Christmas tree trumps them all in terms of nostalgia, and that Pac-Man Christmas Carol shirt, "Tonight you will be visited by three ghosts ..." is priceless. Well, priceless to the tune of $22 plus shipping and handling. But don't let that turn you into a Scrooge, share some holiday gaming love this season.[Thanks, Trina]
Get your gift on: game scarves
Bits to die for wants all your holiday money to belong to them. Check out their series of scarves featuring old school game images in knitted Italian wool. Swanky game gear that'll keep out the chill and still let people know you're a gamer.Our favorite is the pong scarf, but these are also perfect for the sidescrollers. We'd like to see one complete with tips and secret areas. Whip it off to get past a boss, and then wrap yourself back up.Black Friday is approaching quickly, check out Joystiq for more gift ideas as we march towards shopper meltdown.
Samsung's tiny X830 now shipping
It's not every day that a global release from Samsung gets as many oohs and aahs as one of their domestic pieces, but the SGH-X830 is a notable exception. The curious lil' spinner gets by with just two columns on its keypad (a rather low number, we reckon), brazenly sacrificing usability for fashion and the cool factor. Then again, for a phone of this shape and size, we could be going completely keypadless -- so we'll stop our bellyaching right here. Look for the "Flick & Swing" X830 to drop in a rainbow of six colors when it shows up in your friendly local importer's inventory.
Hyper Space Couture Design Contest features "spacewear" outfits
We're not really sure which is worse, that the future has already reached Japan, or that Japan has already out-designed everyone. Apparently yesterday there was a "spacewear fashion show" at the University of Tokyo's Hongo campus. A joint venture between Rocketplane Kistler, an American space tour company, and a group of Japanese fashion designers came together to create the "Hyper Space Couture Design Contest." The clothes selected will be used for Rocketplane's flights, which are slated to begin in 2008. While we don't exactly know what "spacewear" means, apparently one of the requirements is to be able to pack form and function into a zero-g outfit, "such as ruffles that expand under weightless conditions or small air-jet propulsions systems in the sleeves to help you change direction while floating." We still think that any of these outfits could be improved with a little Engadget logo stitched somewhere on there, but hey, we'll still take some small air-jet propulsion systems on our terrestrial outfits.[Via Pink Tentacle]
Samsung's stylish 19-incher: the CX931B LCD
Joining the staggering array of 19-inchers out there (and ones soon to come) vying for your hard-earned dollars is a trendy new model from Samsung, dubbed the CX931B. While we don't have a lot of hard deets at the moment, the curvalicious display is apparently targeting "design-conscious" young consumers (or their oh-so-generous parents, that is) by sporting a futuristic design as well as coming in black or the ever-popular white color schemes. AVing has it that the svelte display boasts a 700:1 contrast ratio, 300cd/m2 brightness, gamer-friendly 5-milliseconds response time, and an 18-degree tilting stand, but there's no word on the native resolution or selection of inputs just yet. The CX931B can probably be found infiltrating college dorm rooms soon for 360,000 KRW ($382).
Animatronic fashion is here
Whenever fashion and technology meet, the end result is usually a bit absurd, a bit playful: take fashion phones for instance. This time round, the fusion has been approached from the perspective of a fashion designer called Hussein Chalayan with the result being a mesmerizing collection of clothes that elegantly redesign themselves thanks to complex, hidden animatronics. In one design, hundreds of concealed swarovski crystals appear from nowhere to completely change the image of a dress; another shows a dress turn smoothly into a frilly hat. Practicality certainly isn't the appeal here -- the dress / hat combo leaves the wearer completely nekkid -- but surely this is the first step towards clothes that adapt to our environment, and look good doing it too.[Via BoingBoing]
Day-for-Night solar-powered geek dress
It may not have quite the instant geek-appeal of the pong dress, or the pain-inflicting potential of the self-defense dress, but the Day-for-Night solar-powered dress designed by Despina Papadopoulos should turn a few heads nonetheless. Made up of over 444 white circuit boards (depending on how long the dress is), the garment charges itself while in daylight, with RGB LEDs on each tile set to change color when the wearer's in low lit conditions. What's more, the dress also packs a 2.4GHz RF link, which can be used to receive commands from a computer to program how the tiles behave. Future plans for the dress include adding additional components like a GPS, accelerometer, and OLED displays, as well as publishing the complete source code and schematics so you put on your own geek couture hat. The dress was first unveiled at the recent SIGGRAPH conference but if you missed it there you can currently catch it on display at Chicago's A + D Gallery until October 21st.[Via We Make Money Not Art]
Motorola i835 gets fancy, purple for Boost
Where we come from, you can add colors, pinstripes, and all manner of designs to a boring phone -- at the end of the day, it's still the same boring phone. On the other hand, if we were to allow our eyes to gloss over the spec sheet, the dismal internal and external displays, and the fact that this still isn't an iDEN / CDMA hybrid, we can understand how we might manage to get excited about Boost dressing up its workhorse model. Besides the obvious alterations to its appearance, the i835g variant features a redesigned speakerphone mesh (of all things) and matching wallpapers and screensavers. It's available immediately for the same price as the basic i835 on which it's based.[Via SlashGear]
The iPod suit, for slacking off at work
We've seen endless varieties of clothing designed to integrate with your iPod, and most of them do appear to offer either added functionality (see: all the jackets for gloved-hand control) or some modicum of security (see: Thomas Pink's shirt and tie). But a new set of duds from men's clothier Bagir -- appropriately named the iPod suit -- however, seems to be more of a solution that's looking for a problem. What make this suit so special are the soft, integrated buttons from Eleksen (creators of those fabric keyboards), which allow you to stealthily control your 'Pod from the inner lining -- because, you know, actually pulling out your DAP to change tracks during a board meeting is like totally gauche. Seriously, though, if you're really in a situation where you absolutely can't extract your iPod from its confines, it would seem that an in-line remote would work just as well -- and if you snatch up Apple's version, you even get an FM tuner to boot. Plus, if you're picking out your suits based on how high-tech they are and not how good they look, well, you've probably got more problems than the iPod suit can solve, anyway.
Sony unveils new Vaio N series of fashion laptops
With a variety of coloring known as "Wenge brown -- a creamy, coffee-color made to resemble wood furniture," and claims that "these new notebooks are designed to accent your interior design, as well as your life," you know it's going to be good. Sony is aiming their new Vaio N Series line of mid-tier laptops at the fashionista set, and while they aren't incredibly forthcoming on specs, we're sure these laptops will look good doing whatever they've got the juice to do. Starting at $1,000, the N Series models feature 15.4-inch displays, Core Duo processors (in the top-end at least) and a dual-layer DVD burner, along with the usual Sony frills like a Memory Stick reader, i.LINK port and ExpressCard slot. There's also 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and while we're not so sure about graphics options, Sony does claim that select models are Vista Premium ready, so we've got that going for us. The N Series ships next month, and Sony should be taking pre-orders starting today.
Nokia's L'Amour Collection adds three, sort of
True, the new 7390 is the first 3G capable phone to grace Nokia's L'Amour series of fashion phones, but other than that, we're not too sure what the fuss is about. The 7360 is being re-announced here, perhaps on account of its new color and design options, and the 7373 seems to be a dead ringer for its older sibling, the 7370, with the exception of a upgraded camera. Nokia is calling "tribal art and ethnic decoration" the inspiration for their latest designs, which will be offered in several colors (for those looking for something slightly, shall we say, less pink) when shipments begin this fall.
Philips 588 music phone drops in Taiwan
Sorry, fellas, this one's for the ladies. Philips has officially launched its 588 model in Taiwan this week, a featherweight (78g) clamshell targeted at the fairer sex. Available only in purple and white, the feminine 588 sports triband GSM, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and -- as you may have guessed from the external controls -- a music player feeding off a little over 100MB of internal storage with no expansion slot. No word on pricing for the Asia-only flip, but with its lack of Bluetooth and external display, we're guessing the 588 is designed to be a fashion phone for the masses. At least the female masses, that is.[Via Slashphone]
LG preparing another Chocolate-like phone
LG is really running with the checkerboard keypad theme these days as details are beginning to emerge on the KG99, a candybar with fairly obvious Chocolate roots. No word on whether the phone falls into LG's Black Label category, but at 95 x 52 x 9.9mm, it seems chic enough for the task. Specs are unconfirmed at this point, but the phone is reported to sport triband GSM (sorry yanks, no 850), a 220 x 176 display, microSD slot, Bluetooth, and an FM radio. Now granted, as a fashion phone, we may not be the KG99's target demographic, but the specs still feel a bit weak to us -- we're going to wait a few weeks and see what else is in the checkerboard pipeline.[Via Slashphone]
Samsung's new NV line of fashionable cameras
It looks like the design department at Samsung has been working some overtime lately. Barely a week after they busted out that sexy line of Ultra Edition phonage, they're adding a new "NV" line of functional yet fashionable digital cameras to their portfolio. The three cameras, the NV3, NV7 and NV10 are looking sharp, sporting black aluminum and 2.5-inch LCDs, but there's plenty going on under the hood. The real headliner is the NV7 (pictured), with optical image stabilisation and a 7x optical zoom, yet measuring a mere 0.8-inches thick. We're guessing they didn't include the lens in the measurement, but it's slim all the same. Both the NV7 and NV10 have an interesting "touch pad" row of buttons along the sides of the LCD to provide quicker access to menu options. All three cameras feature Samsung's Advanced Shake Reduction feature, but the NV7 is the only one to augment that with optical. The NV10 takes the megapixel cake, at a cool 10, and it's tied with the NV3 for slimness at 0.7-inches, but its 5x optical zoom is a bit more mundane. For sheer pocketability and versatility, the NV3 features a 7 megapixel CCD, 3x zoom and PMP functions, much like its Digimax i6 predecessor. Sadly, Samsung isn't slashing prices with all those designers to feed, and the NV line retails at some fairly steep prices. The NV7 for $450, NV10 for $400 and the NV3 $350. All three should be available this Fall. Keep reading for pics of the NV3 and NV10.Read - Samsung NV3 Read - Samsung NV7 Read - Samsung NV10
Nexxion Curves: TVs in color
Mmmm, teevee. If we can't have 'em big, then please oh gods of the blessed manufacturing process, deliver them in a variety of fashionable colors. Rising from the offal of our sacrificial lamb come these new 15-inch neXXion CURVEs which feature a 4:3 aspect ratio, 1024x768 resolution, 500:1 contrast ratio, 160-degree visibility, 12-millisecond response, and slot loading DVD player. Can somebody, we said a-somebody, give us an "amen" brother!? Ok, then how about the $400 or so dollars these will pull when they hit Japan June 23rd? Yeah, didn't think so.[Via Impress]
E3 Fashion: Glowing red teeth
I found the man with the brightest smile at E3 roaming Kentia Hall in the closing hour of E3. "Mr. Silver" told me he sells patented mouth lights and bodypaint on his website, but I don't see a link, so you'll have to email him if you really want to show off your tartar control. He claims he can eat and drink without difficulty or risk of electrocution. Of course, there's also a medical model for serious dental applications.
Nokia's 8800 back in black
You know, we have to hand it to Nokia for keeping their luxury 8800 handset worthy since its launch over a year ago. Already available in original stainless steel, a limited Aston Martin Edition, with over-the-top gold plating, and even as a candybar-style knockoff -- she's now resurrected herself in Black stainless steel. And that £799/$1429 price tag makes this the most expensive version yet. You go old girl, you go. [Via CrowdedBrain]
Seamless Fashion Show 2006 features iPod-ready couture
Seamless V2, the second annual technology fashion event in Boston, included iPod fashion in its wild mix of wearables. Pictured above is iDo, a wedding dress concept by Shannon Okey and Alexandra Underhill. The veil included an iPod (update number two: yes, a shuffle, and the bodice a full-sized iPod) to immerse the bride in her own musical choices. The iDo description further describes the aims of the project:"...the iDo gown takes the so-called Bridezilla where she seemingly wants to go: her very own solitary walk down the aisle, with full control over music only she can hear accessed using touch-sensitive fabric technology ... and a tiara with built-in iPod."If you're less the Bridezilla and more the iPod-extrovert, you may appreciate designer David Lu's iPod Status. A scrolling display for your messenger bag strap, iPod Status shows the world your "Now Playing" status. I love messenger bag strap devices (I've done a few myself) and I think David Lu is onto something with this prototype device. Photo of iPod Status after the jump.
