Electrolux just announced the winner of their Design Lab 2008 challenge. The best design this year? A refrigerator that stacks. Really? This is the best they could find. Must have been a slow competition year. And look at these innovative color matches - green, yellow and white? According to the press release:

College students, grad students and young professionals often share living spaces…and kitchens. With Flatshare, never again will they have to endure another person’s moldy cheese or old leftovers.

“I got the idea to create the Flatshare fridge because in many shared flats there is a problem with the refrigerator,” says Buchberger. “It gets filthy because no one person feels responsible for cleaning it.

Psst - hey - - Mr Buchbergger - while I would love not having to clean my dirty 1 square foot stackable refrigerator - what about a lock? The #1 problem in college is that people steal borrow food and beverages. Next year this contest should restrict entries to only people who have actually lived in a college dorm. At least this fridge has some use - unlike the iBasket that won second place and seems like it maybe would wash one pair of my jeans.

“Flatshare” Refridgerator Concept Wins 2008 International Electrolux Design Lab Student Competition

Radio Shack online (Note: Online deal only) has this Sandisk 8GB Cruzer for a total of $19.99 shipped. Although the description lists compatibility with Windows/Vista - that’s only for the Ready Boost crapware that installed on the disk. You can use this in any machine you please.

Supercharge your PC’s performance with SanDisk USB flash. This 8GB Cruzer is enhanced for ReadyBoost. When you plug in the drive a simple menu entry will allow you to use the drive for storage or to boost your system performance. Its also U3 smart enabled and it works with Mac OS X v10.1.2.

* Compatible with Windows 2000, SP4, XP and Vista, Certified Windows 2000 and XP
* U3 smart enabled on Windows 2000 (SP4 and later) & XP
* Enhanced for ReadyBoost to boost system performance with Vista
* 8GB capacity, backward compatible with USB 1.1, retractable USB connector

Sandisk 8GB Cruzer - $19.99 via: SD

It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by.  A lot has happened in the Linux world.  While the economy is in the crapper, Linux is growing in both the easy of use and the strength of it’s community.

Ubuntu was at the show this year and had machines from System 76 showing off Hardy and giving out CD’s.  There were at least 5-6 different CD’s they were handing out in this booth alone.  This includes, Ubuntu Desktop and Server in 32 and 64 bit versions.  They also had Kubuntu in both 32 and 64 bit versions as well as a remix of Kubuntu with the shiney KDE 4 Desktop.  That doesn’t cover the myriad of other Ubuntu based remixes out there.  Ubuntu has firmly entrenched itself as THE Linux distro that is in everyone’s bag. Continue Reading

I have spent a considerable amount of time here at JAMM, and also at Gear Diary, reviewing portable media players.  One thing I have noticed is that a stand-alone review is really not the best format to help users answer the real question on everyone’s mind: which one should I buy?  While a review is nice, it looks at a particular media player in a vacuum.  The missing piece in the review is how this one compares to the others.  And that is what I want to try to accomplish through this series.

So, in addition to the Sandisk Sansa View, which I already own, I went on eBay and gobbled up a  Microsoft Zune, Samsung YP-P2, and Creative Zen X-Fi.  Heck, I even got the Sony Walkman A828 back on an extended loan.  After considerable thought, I also replaced my iPod Touch with the new fourth generation iPod Nano for this series.

Has this been done before? Doug Goldring has just begun a series pitting not two, not four, but six portable media players against each other! Be sure to keep your eye on JAMM, where he will be focusing “on a specific feature in each article, and compar[ing] the six major portable media players to determine which ones rise to the top, and which ones scrape off the bottom of the barrel.  If it can be measured and compared, then [he plans] to do so. ”

Doug’s daily portable media player is an iPod touch, so it will be interesting to see if he can’t help but slip in a few random references back to it.

In his series, Doug will be comparing the Creative Zen X-fi (8 GB), the Microsoft Zune Slim (16 GB), the iPod Nano 4Gen. (8 GB), the Samsung YP-P2 (4 GB), the Sandisk Sansa View (16 GB), and the Sony Walkman Video NWZ-A828 (8 GB). Be sure to keep your eye on JAMM to see how each contender fares!

Link: Listen To This! The Great JAMM Portable Media Player Showdown. Part 1: Introduction

If you have young kids and you’ve never heard of Geocaching , this is a family friendly activity you should check out. To participate, you’ll use a web site to locate GPS coordinates that lead you to hidden packages (called geocaches) in your local area. These are placed all over the world by volunteers participating in the sport. Take these coordinates with you - and your GPS - and off you go into the woods to find treasures. Kids love this and because GPS coordinates in the woods are a bit unreliable, finding the treasures is a lot harder than you’d think. Until now.

Continue Reading

You might remember that when I attended the Seattle Mobius in May, I was given the European version of the HTC Touch Diamond, which for network reasons I opted to have sent to Mitchell in Australia. The Diamond version he received and reviewed was at first glance nearly identical to the Sprint version I’ll be covering today, with the exception of their back sides.

During his testing period, Mitchell found that he liked the small size of the device, the multitude of radios packed in that small package (HSDPA, WiFi, BT, GPS and FM), the sharpness of the 2.8″ VGA screen, and the 3.2 megapixel camera. Qualities which he found disappointing were the radio strength, the device’s sluggish response time when using the TouchFlo 3D interface, the battery life, the auto-screen rotation, and the faceted back which didn’t allow the device to lay flat.

Mitchell’s verdict was a reluctant Fail, and as he summarized, “I had very high hopes for the Diamond; I wanted it to wipe the smile off Apple’s face, and be a proper competitor to the unstoppable iPhone. But alas it isn’t. It has too many flaws to be a competitor, and to be honest it has too many flaws full stop.”

Can you blame me for not being too excited when it was later announced that Sprint would carry the US version?

However, with memories of the faster processor and updated ROM introduced by HTC when they released the US version of their Touch (versus its European cousin), I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit this particular device, to see if Mitchell’s complaints were still warranted.

Let’s see how the US version fared…

Continue Reading

Stuck for a gift for your ex-wife? Divorce is tough enough without having to struggle with helping the kids pick out something “special” for your ex’s birthday or holiday gift list. After all - you probably already are providing enough money so she can buy her own gifts. Instead, why not focus on something memorable yet not too expensive. This is possibly the world’s most perfect “The Kids Picked It Out” gift which while not totally useless will be fun to imagine her using with the kids around (to show them how much mommy loved their gift).

Slim-leg Slippers - $20

Pandora radio is a streaming music service that’s widely available for free via the Internet. There’s also a very well received free iPhone and iPod Touch application. As you listen to Pandora and rate songs it learns your preferences and plays similar sounding songs. Recently they’ve started to display advertising on the iPhone/Touch as a way to recoup some of their costs. What’s amazing is that this service remains completely free to AT&T iPhone users while users of other types of phones pay a monthly subscription fee. Now it’s available for Samsung Instinct users on Sprint. This application is going to set Instinct users back $2.99 per month billed through Sprint. To download Pandora Instinct owners should navigate to their Digital Lounge and open their wallets.

Pandora via Sprintusers

In his career Michael Jackson reportedly earned over half a billion dollars. He’s one of the few artists to be indicted inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, won 13 Grammy Awards and captured 13 number one singles. Now you can have a piece of the record that arguably started it all. Michael Jackson’s Thriller album is on sale for $2.99 in DRM free MP3 format. Please ignore the fact that Michael no longer looks anything like the album cover and is apparently in a fortune-pissing-away contest with Mike Tyson.

Michael Jackson Thriller - $ 2.99

Newegg has this Crucial brand 8 GB SD Flash card for $9.99 with free shipping. The sale starts tomorrow (10/10/08) at 8:00am PDT and lasts until the item is sold out. The price of $9.99 is 50% off Newegg’s regular price and lower than any I could spot on Amazon. Set your alarm for tomorrow’s sale because I’m sure these will sell out quickly.

Newegg - Crucial 8GB SD - $ 9.99 shipped