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Ristretto coffee mouse brings the beans and the ugly
Thankfully for us, the world's ugliest phone has already been faced and dealt with, and while we've seen quite a few unique mice in our day, this one practically roasts the compoetition for the most unsightly. The Ristretto coffee mouse is a minature critter designed for -- c'mon, you got this -- mousing about in your favorite beanery or java shop, and while we suppose you could view this as a symbol of your unwavering love for entirely overpriced cups of caffine and sugar, we doubt it'll score you any solid conversations outside of awkward Amway plugs. Still, these devices appear to be at least somewhat hand-crafted, as the designer has a bevy of custom desgined models for show, and while we've no idea where you could spend your hard-earned dough on this thing, this looks like a private DIY project at its finest at best.
From Russia, with love: the "Silver Mustang"
Turns out Gresso isn't the only way for Russian millionaires to get their mobile kicks, nor do they need to go the cryptographic route. Carrier Skylink has thrown together a one-of-a-kind designer example of the otherwise plain looking Ubiquam C300 clamshell, studding it with 29 gemstones and a horsey crafted from 7.2 grams of silver -- not the least bit gaudy. The "Silver Mustang" isn't for sale at the moment (though, let's be honest, everything's for sale at the right price) and if it garners sufficient interest, we can expect to be graced with more works of EV-DO art in the future.[Thanks, Staska]
Inventor crafts inexpensive gesture-based 3D touchpad
While there's been boasting galore about gesture-based keyboards, scanners, phones, and more keyboards, it looks like an elusive inventor has crafted yet another "3D touchpad" which can be moved around and placed on (or under) nearly any keyboard that you'd like to implement gesture-based technology on. As with similar renditions, the pad can detect movements of your hand floating above it, and can create inputs not always possible on a typical keyboard. Interestingly, this flavor can purportedly work on standard boards, underneath laptop boards, and even under the "screen of a PDA or cellphone." While our skeptic gear is still zipped on tight, it's said that a few working examples are already out of the lab, and that the special antennas capable of picking up hand movements wouldn't cost much more than it did to insert "scroll wheels into mice." We'll let the peculiar analogy slide if this thing hits the market for a competitive price, deal?[Thanks, Kerunt]
Voxtel shows W740 Pocket PC phone
What happens when you introduce a nifty looking Windows Mobile 5-based Pocket PC Phone Edition device with a bizarre mix of hot (4 megapixel autofocus cam) and cold (GPRS data) specs? Voxtel is about to find out, showing off its W740, a 15 millimeter thick Pocket PC with what appears to be an etched metal keypad, a la RAZR and company. Other details include Bluetooth 1.2, 64MB of RAM, 128MB of ROM, and a 900 / 1800 / 1900 GSM radio, all sitting atop a 200MHz OMAP730 from the good folks at TI. A slide-out QWERTY keyboard is absent, but we suspect that's just how some folks like it. Now, who's making the trek to Russia to pick up a couple for us?[Via AVING]
IBM's Moscow offices raided in embezzlement investigation
On Wednesday, a team of Russian investigators and a squad of masked, rifle-toting police raided IBM's Moscow offices. Big Blue is currently under investigation in the Russian Federation for allegedly having stolen money from the country's $57 billion pension fund. The Russian Interior Ministry accused IBM and two local software companies of committing conspiracy "to rig auctions and embezzle some of the 1 billion rubles ($38 million) of budget money allocated to the funds for new computers," reports Bloomberg. The spokeswoman of one of the other companies under investigation, R-Style Softlab, said that riot police were deployed at the company's offices for 10 hours yesterday, and "made copies of some documents, took the list of our contacts and copied some electronic mail." This reminds us an awful lot of that Siemens raid that took place last month -- is there some crazy European embezzlement epidemic going on that we should know about?[Via The Register]Read - BloombergRead - IDG News ServiceRead - The Associated Press
IGN's weeklong MGS feature highlights [Update 1]
We told you IGN was going to make their Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops coverage a week-long event. However, some of you may have forgotten. Here are a few highlights from the week so far: As you may already know, the story begins with Snake thrown into a South American jail six years after the events of Snake Eater. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Russia abandoned many of its soldiers, leaving one military commander named Gene very sour. He plans on sabotaging the negotiations between Russia and the US by using nuclear technology stolen from both countries. Obviously, Snake will be in the middle of all of this. The character-generation system uses data from both the access point and PSP system information. You'll want to rotate characters in your party, as they'll suffer from exhaustion, and in the worst case scenario, fall unconscious during a mission. Let them heal their wounds. There's a lot to manage: "During your mission briefings, you'll be overseeing seven separate units for your army: Sneaking, Spy, Technical, Medical, Independent, Rookies and Prisoners." You can enter a unique Sleep mode which will transfer character data to any nearby PSP that's also in Portable Ops sleep mode. There's a mode called "Cyber-Survival," which is turn-based and similar to the Metal Gear Acid series. "Real Combat" is high stakes: if a character dies in multiplayer, they're dead in singleplayer as well. For obvious reasons, Snake can't partake in this mode. Is this too much info for you? Well, don't forget that these are just highlights. The real meat of the stories can be found on IGN. Prepare to never have a life again starting December 5th.[Update 1: MGS. Yes. That's what happens when Andrew-bot writes stories. Bad, evil things. Typo corrected!]
The mouse for the modern caveman
Not everyone feels comfortable using a mouse made out of modern materials like plastic or, y'know, mammoth skin. Fortunately for office cavemen everywhere, a Russian designer called Neko has filled this market niche by making a mouse out of stone -- or, more likely, made a plastic mouse with polished stones stuck on top. The beige scroll wheel and cable ruin the appeal slightly, although that wouldn't stop us from freaking out the Engadget interns by turning up to work with what appears to be a hunk of rock.[Via MAKE]
Soviet-era computer mice were plain, functional
You know, there was a time when the Soviet Union produced some of the greatest technology on Earth. Only problem was that was around 1957 -- and the USSR took another 30+ years to die a slow, painful death. Sometime during the Gorbachev era, scientists discovered "personal computers," and thus began a long tradition of making high-quality computer mice. In fact, the Russians were so good at making mice that they decided to write the word "mouse" on them in Cyrillic and include a little picture so that people wouldn't forget what it was. Perhaps there's a market for this type of antique obsolete computer hardware? Or maybe Logitech's next mouse will be inspired by this classic showing of Russian functionality -- surely that would be better than its sleek designs of today.[Via digg]
Insider and official shots of ORSiO's n725 Pocket PC phone
Not too long ago we were intrigued by some mysterious and confidential shots of a Pocket PC phone from a Russian company called ORSiO. Well, now the site that originally brought the phone to our attention has received some more detailed macro shots of the handset, presumably from the same pesky insider -- at least from the company's point of view. The device has been named as the n725 and packs 802.11b Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0, along with a slightly less exciting FM Radio tuner and IR port, which is more or less in line with the other relatively uninspiring specs that we already knew about: quad-band GSM and EDGE, 2.7-inch QVGA display, 2-megapixel cam, 192MB internal flash, and a 524MHz XScale running on Windows Mobile 5.0. Unfortunately we have no idea about the phone's availability or the price, so for now you'll have to settle for the cheap, temporary satisfaction that staring at the new shots will give you.
Pentax releases new Optio L20
Pentax has just released the new Optio L20, the "man's version" (according to the translated Russian press release) of the Optio S7. The new L20 is packed with 7.0 megapixels, and a blur reduction mode (not quite the same as the new flutter shutter research), but that gives priority to faster shutter speeds and higher ISO settings. This new camera also has face recogition technology, to be able to focus better on human faces and make them brighter accordingly. There's no mention of how much this new number will cost, nor of when we'll get it out of Mother Russia, which is the only place it seems to be available for now. [Via LetsGoDigital]
