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Sainsbury's puts Argos on its shopping list
For big-name supermarkets and high-street stores, business has been tough as of late. Sainsbury's has seen its UK market share decline following the rise of discount grocery chains like Aldi and Lidl, while Argos has been squeezed by online competitors like Amazon. With profits falling, Sainsbury's has been seeking ways to reverse its fortunes, with Home Retail Group potentially offering one avenue of opportunity. The supermarket giant confirmed today that it tabled a £1 billion bid for the group -- which owns Argos, Homebase and Habitat -- back in November, but was subsequently turned down.
Belkin Home Base brings wireless printing and file sharing to any PC
You've been looking for it, we've been looking for it -- heck, displaced Martians have been looking for it. We're talking about that mythical, magical box that adds all sorts of connectivity to any networked PC, and rather than making consumers purchase separate devices to add NAS capabilities and wireless print sharing to one's home, Belkin's Home Base does it all. This sleek little box includes four USB 2.0 sockets and an Ethernet jack, and when connected to one's home router, a printer and at least one external hard drive, any machine on the network instantly gains wireless printing abilities as well as network access to your USB HDD(s). Furthermore, Home Base can wirelessly backup your connected PCs behind your back, and with the automatic sharing feature, your most intimate photos can be whisked away to Flickr-land without you having to know. Are you as giddy as we are? Pull out $130 and get to shoppin' -- it should be available today.Update: This thing is sicker than we thought. It actually has a wireless module built-in, so even if your hard drives and printer(s) are in a different room than the one your WLAN router is in, you can simply connect it to the peripherals and let it communicate with the router (and thus, your computers) from another location.%Gallery-72939%
Audiovox finally ships Homebase Digital Message Center
Remember those way swank Digital Message Centers we peeked at CES this year? At long last, Audiovox has begun shipping the audio-only DPF710K ($149.99), which sticks upside your fridge and provides a 7-inch display, a dry erase board, digital clock, Post-it pad and a LED message indicator for good measure. If you haven't pieced it together, this thing seeks to simplify your family's lives by providing a base for leaving photos and messages, and we'll admit, it does have a smidgen of a Jetsons vibe to it. Those holding out for the video-capable DPF711K can lay down their $199.99 later this month. Nice hair, kiddo. %Gallery-32119%
Audiovox reveals Digital Message Centers: perfect for refrigerators
Yeah, it's true -- we've got a soft spot for quirky refrigerator magnets, so we're inclined to take favor with Audiovox's Digital Message Centers. As you can see above, the fridge-mountable units enable users to display photos for family to see, and folks can even record audio or video messages (on the DPF711K only) for others via the integrated camera / microphone. As if that wasn't snazzy enough, you can even tag messages to a calender for playback on specific dates, and we'd imagine the content would look fairly decent on the 7-inch 480 x 234 display. Think your kitchen's ready for it? You can grab the video-capable DPF711K for $199.99 or the audio-only DPF710K for $40 less.
