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Gadget Lab reader Michael Lowdermilk writes: Hi Charlie, Since you’re a power junkie I wanted to get your feedback on what you think about adding USB ports to power outlets. By “power junkie”, Michael isn’t referring to my constant attempts to wrest control of the Gadget Lab from its esteemed editor (damn your physical fitness and level-headed approach, Tweney — I’ll get you one day). Instead, Michael is talking about my weakness for cleverly designed wall-warts, of which his is one

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Clever Power Outlet Incorporates Dual USB Chargers

Call me dorky, but for me the perfect game is one where you also learn something. It may have something to do with the Great British Pub Quiz, which long ago replaced the formal academic examination in UK schools and universities because a) attendance runs to almost 100% and b) you get to drink beer. So if you, too, prefer to read a how-to article on the web than kill five minutes on yet another tower-defense game, try out Stuff to Rattle Your Brain , a trivia quiz game from the good folks at How Stuff Works .

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Brain Drain: ‘How Stuff Works’ Trivia Game for iPhone

‘Tis the season for building systems — well, ’tis always that season, but right now you’ve got a pretty nice spread of components to pick from, whether you’re into the AMD or Intel flavor of things. Of course, if you’re feeling really spendy, or just want to have a different top-end processor from the guy next to you at the LAN party, then sometimes you have to get creative. eBay, as always, is the place for semi-shady transactions like that

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Core i7 not hot enough for you? Pick up your prototype Core i9 on eBay

Devin recently reviewed the ContourHD 1080p , a wearable HD camcorder designed to be worn during activities that would cause other camcorders to self-destruct. One thing it couldn’t do, however, was go into the water (though it resisted some splashing). It’s not designed to be waterproof out of the box, which definitely could be a problem for divers, rafters, or other water-sport enthusiasts.

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Wearable ContourHD cam gets lens kit and waterproof housing accessories

Not a day goes by without coming across one or more stories related to The Pirate Bay . Today is no different, with OpenBitTorrent (a tracker that Hollywood has accused of being The Pirate Bay’s spiritual successor, serving some 550,000 “works”) being given a new lease on life by a Swedish court. The gist is, Hollywood wanted the tracker shut down, but said Swedish court denied the action

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Targeted by Hollywood, OpenBitTorrent lives to fight another day

There’s a bit of a tizzy this week about Sprint allowing police officials to read up to 8 million “pings” on its network in order to track felons. Sprint made it considerably easier for police to do this by adding a special “portal,” probably a phone number-based dump of GPS data for phones over time, to the service they offer upon receiving a court order or a subpoena. I wonder, however, if this 8 million number isn’t far too high to be within the realm of sanity and/or if this number should make us concerned.

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Is Sprint letting the police follow us around?

Tokyo-based Kenko-Tokina , normally known for its camera accessories, has announced a cute Disney-themed digital camera [JP] for the Japanese market today. Spec-wise, this 8MP point-and-shoot camera isn’t anything special, but that’s what you’d expect from a camera whose case shows Mickey Mouse giving Minnie a bucket of hearts. You’ll get a 1/2.5 CMOS sensor, 4x digital zoom, 16MB of internal memory, an SDHC/SD memory card slot (up to 8GB), a USB 2.0 port and a 2.36-inch TFT screen.

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Kenko-Tokina’s super-cute Mickey Mouse camera

A friend of mine just asked me a few minutes ago whether she should spring for an SSD in her new laptop. No way, I told her — SSDs are improving far too quickly for a consumer to invest hundreds of dollars in something guaranteed to be superseded almost instantly. And lo and behold, almost as I was texting her, I noticed this post over at Giz about the newest Microns breaking speed records that were probably set within the last couple months

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New Micron SSDs fastest in the world – but for how long?

After watching Generation Kill , my anxiety for our troops went up quite a bit. War is an ugly business to begin with, but when you’re driving around a battlefield in an unarmored Humvee with electrical problems, it tends to look even uglier. Afghanistan is still an extremely hairy theater, and the vehicles they’ve had over there over the years ( years , people) just weren’t cutting it

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New off-road military vehicle for Afghanistan looks solid as hell

AT&T is just plan awful in parts of NYC, but yet Tyler, from the ABC show V , managed to get reception on his iPhone high above NYC in a gigantic spaceship. How is that possible when I know for a fact that the iPhone is basically useless in most parts of the city? Rubbish.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find out in a later episode that each V spaceship is actually part of an evil AT&T plan, but a side effect is that each ship actually improves cellular reception. Most iPhone owners would probably welcome alien overlords if they could actually use their phones around New York, San Fran, LA, Boston, and the rest of the major US cities

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Apparently the writers of V have never used an iPhone in NYC

More Psystar news for you. We now know that the Florida-based company will have to pay Apple $2.68 million in damages over its little Hackintosh business. (That’s a partial settlement, not court-mandated or anything.) Go ahead and go to its Web site : everything is out of stock! Of course, Psystar said it will appeal the decision handed to it that said it violated the DMCA when it installed Mac OS X on PCs.

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Psystar settles with Apple to the tune of $2.7 million (but won’t pay up just yet)

Every now and then tech companies will launch a product that’ll make you think, “Wait, why weren’t we doing this all along?” Universal Studio’s new “Flipper” disc is one of those: a two-in-one disc that’s Blu-ray on one side and DVD on the other. Universal is rolling out the dual-format disc beginning with the Bourne trilogy ( Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum ). Each Flipper disc will cost about $30 — about the same as most Blu-ray titles cost brand new

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Dual-Format Blu-Ray/DVD ‘Flipper’ Discs Landing in Stores

There’s almost a comedy about this next story: Australia has banned another video game because it’s too violent. (What is it with Australia and banning violent video games?) The game is CrimeCraft , and it has been refused classification by the ratings board down there. The game was refused classification because “there is insufficient delineation between the ‘fictional drugs’ available in game and real-world proscribed drugs.” In other words, the in-game drugs aren’t “fake enough” for the Australian Classification Board

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Yet another game, CrimeCraft, refused classification in Australia

Does anyone remember the Japanese anti-burglar mat for stores and restaurants I blogged a few months ago? Well, there’s another security system from Japan and it clearly raises the bar: It’s a new mechanism, dubbed Capture, for these places and it sprays stinky agent on thieves who won’t be able to get rid of the stench for a week.

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It’ll linger for a week: Japanese security system sprays stinky smell on thieves

Some more Psystar news for y’all. You’ll recall that the renegade company was more or less shut down last week, slapped with an injunction and expected to pay Apple an awful lot of money. Put all of that aside for a minute, for there’s new news: Apple and Psystar have struck a deal ! The deal, which ends a 17-month-long legal battle, means Psystar will stop selling computers pre-loaded with Mac OS X.

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Psystar, Apple reach settlement: No more PCs pre-loaded with Mac OS X (but Rebel EFI may be safe)

Woho makes a range of small bike bags which are most likely to be used for tool kits, but could also be great for carrying cellphones, iPods and cash. The lineup consists of handlebar and saddlebags, but here we’re looking at the Classic Roll, partly because it sounds so tasty, and partly because you can hang it just about anywhere. The classic roll is made from a translucent vinyl-like material which keeps the water out (the zipper is also weatherproof) and because it is see-through, you can throw a light inside and have the whole sack glow

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Saddle-Bag Glows in the Dark, Swallows Tools

The Pro-View wireless camera display squints its eye up to the viewfinder so you don’t have to. The two-part gizmo uses a video camera to peek into the optical viewfinder of a DSLR and beams the image up to 500 feet where it can be viewed on a 640 x 480 LCD screen, similar to the resolution on the last generation of DSLR cameras (around 3K pixels). The transmitter comes in a variety of fits designed to work with most DSLRs from Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Sony, and you can use up to four of these with one screen/receiver unit, flipping between them or showing all four on screen at once

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Remote Display Lets You Use Camera from 500 Feet

The Amazon Kindle has many problems: inconsistent international support for both features and availability of titles, a rather too-dark gray screen, no touch and the inability to display any EPUB-format titles bought elsewhere. Once you start reading, though, the Kindle manages to do what Amazon promises: It disappears in your hand. Apart from the odd bright light reflecting in the screen, you almost forget you’re not reading a paper book.

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Amazon Promises Kindle Update for Better Content Organization

As you likely know, Tiger Woods was in an accident under apparently mysterious circumstances early Friday morning. Predictably, the reports and reactions thereto pertaining varied somewhat in quality and timeliness, and predictably, this has led to paroxysms of futurist glee in some and sullen condemnation by others. Now that the smoke has cleared, we can examine the event, which is certainly worth a little inspection despite its obvious triviality, with a little perspective.

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Real time, real discussion, real reporting: choose two

USB 3.0 is just around the corner (kind of), and the first computer hardware manufacturers are getting ready to deliver products supporting the new standard (even though there were some backlashes along the way). Last month, Asus announced the world’s first USB 3.0 + SATA 6.0 PCI-E card . In May, NEC said they’re going to release the first USB 3.0 host controller

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Buffalo announces world’s first 12x Blu-ray burner (and it’s USB 3.0, too)

Apple has trained iPhone owners to enjoy paying for digital content more than the general online population, a survey suggests. Media law firm Olswang on Wednesday published its 2009 Convergence Survey , which analyzed e-shopping trends among iPhone owners and general online consumers. Apple enthusiast blog 9to5Mac summarizes the findings regarding the iPhone demographic: 73 percent would pay to access online a film just released in cinemas; 67 percent would pay for access to a film that will not be on DVD for at least two months; 54 percent would pay to access a film which is already on DVD or pay-TV; 41 percent of iPhone users would already be willing to take out subscriptions to access their favorite TV shows; 42 percent would pay for an online book.

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iPhone Owners More Likely to Pony Up for Digital Content

My first thought on seeing the rather raggedy Multi-Format LED Display Watch was “that thing looks hand made”. Not hand made in the sense of a Vertu phone, put together by craftsmen one precision engineered bearing at a time, but home made as in “A bit of gaffer tape should hold that together OK.” Reading further I discovered that the watch is in fact “hand assembled”, put together from aluminum and acrylic (not two materials usually associated with scratch-free durability). But what this $150 special-edition lacks in looks and materials choice, it makes up for in geek-awesomeness, or geeksomeness

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LED Nerd Watch Tells Time in Hex, Binary, Octal