Hi-tech Frontier

Mouse Cursors Shape USB Mouse -- USB Arrow Mouse Features: Retractable USB cable design Fits in both hands Easy web navigation and scrolling wheel 2 buttons and scroll wheel Optical sensor stays precise on the most surface without mouse pad Compatible with Windows Vista/XP/2000/ME, Mac OS 800 dpi resolution, definition and reliability Dimension: 140 x 72 x 39mm Weight: 60g Price: US$ 12.00

Penguin Fighter USB Drive Features: High-Speed USB 2.0 certified Durable solid rubber casing Hot Plug and Play; Functions like another hard drive No driver needed for most operating systems Support: Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and Mac OS Dimension: 47.5 x 28 x 13mm Weight: 15g Capacity: 2GB Price: US$ 15.00

IPEVO Kaleido R7 wireless digital photo frame IPEVO's Kaleido R7 wireless digital photo frame -- which we first caught sight of at CES -- is now officially available, for all those out there who were waiting expectantly. If you've already forgotten, the 7-inch frames (800 x 480 resolution) has 512MB of memory plus an SD card slot, and it's just dying to sync up with your PC, Mac, or your cell phone to obtain your precious, precious memories for display. It can be yours this instant for $199.

HP Mini 1000 netbook HP's Mini 1000 certainly hasn't had much difficultly attracting its share of fans, but it looks like those wanting to hook the netbook up to an external monitor have been having their patience tested considerably as of late. According to reports on the HP Support Forums, the promised VGA adapter for the netbook has been nigh impossible to come by and, for the time being at least, HP doesn't seem to be getting any more specific than "early 2009" about widespread availability. The headaches might not end then, however, as some folks have been reporting problems with the VGA out for the very similar Mini 2140 netbook, and with a USB-to-VGA adapter used with the Mini 1000. In both cases, the Mini 1000 is apparently unable to automatically detect the external monitor's native resolution, so it simply pumps out a standard 1024 x 768 resolution no matter what size monitor is hooked up. Looking for more tales of woe? Then dive into thread linked ...

Musical bra The fine folks over at Instructables have posted some wild mods in their time, but the musical bra you see above inhabits its own realm in terms of weirdness and lack of usefulness... unless you really want a bra that makes music of course. The speaker is on the front, with a battery pack between the shoulder blades at the back, and each cup is equipped with eight different "sounds" culled from a small keyboard, which are triggered by custom-made buttons sewn into the bra. Fair warning: you're going to have to be pretty adept with needle and thread to get this project done, but the final result should be fairly priceless. After all, who doesn't want a clunky, hideous sports bra that makes noise? Exactly.

Sony's CMT-LX30iR USB micro system loves on Apple devices Sony caved long ago and began producing sound systems for devices Designed in California™, so it's no real shock to see it delivering yet another variant that handles iPods and iPhones. The CMT-LX30iR, which has yet to be certified as real by Sony in North America, will purportedly aim at lower-end consumers by giving 'em just ten total watts of oomph, a slot-loading CD player, FM / AM radio, line-in and a headphone jack. There's also a remarkably basic 1-line LCD and a few equalizer presets, and the one-touch CD-to-USB Sync Recording is a fine touch. The unit has surfaced over on Amazon's German portal for €161 ($202), though we've no idea how pricey it'll be (or what it'll be called, for that matter) whenever Sony decides to take a hint and ship it stateside.

Nurian X40Kris e-dictionary On one hand, we're pretty impressed that someone would actually bother to produce an e-dictionary this fancy. On the other, we're disheartened that those very "someones" didn't just throw a real-deal OS on here and call it a UMPC. Hannuri Biz's newest premium pocket dictionary goes by Nurian X40Kris and features a 4.3-inch LCD, QWERTY keyboard, 4GB of internal storage, 79 different dictionaries (saywha?) and support for XviD, PDF, Flash, JPEG and MP3 files. We're told that it'll be offered up in South Korea for ₩379,000 ($253), and we're giving it around a fortnight before someone shoves a TV tuner and their favorite flavor of Linux on here and calls it a day.

Electric TH!NK FROST concept vehicle Look, we love taking off through the snow-covered trails of Grand Teton National Park as much as anyone, but we can't say with a straight face that we'd rather take a snowmobile through there than one of these critters. Designed by Anders Gloslie, the TH!NK FROST is an electric vehicle crafted specifically to operate in arctic environments. Based on current drawings, the all-wheel drive contraption can lug two Eskimos around at a time, though there's no mention of a hybrid version for those looking to take long range excursions. Commercialization, please?

Samsung P3 PMP Oh jealousy, you are a vile beast. While the Korean market has had access to the spicy P3 touchscreen PMP for months now, long enough for Samsung to release a complete revision of the firmware, we're still stuck waiting for the ambiguous "first half of this year." The impatient can always import, exactly what Pocketables has done, giving its gray-market gadget the full review treatment. Its design is found to be similar yet much more attractive than the earlier P2, size comparable to Cowan's S9, 480 x 272 touchscreen brilliant, and the UI snappy and intuitive. Negatives? Sound quality was found to be good, but not great out of the box (able to be fixed with a suite of tuning options) and the lack of video output is a slight handicap. Overall, the P3 sounds like the perfect competition for the S9 and just the PMP for our envious hearts -- if only it came in green.

Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet Eager to pick up a $2,000 laptop for $649? What if we told you that said computer was a sturdy, reliable ThinkPad X61 Tablet that you can even doodle on when the workday's done? For a limited window of time, you can toss in a sweet little $150-off coupon in order to bring the bottom line down to $649 on a new tablet PC, and that pittance will buy you a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo L7500 CPU, Vista Home Premium, a 12.1-inch XGA display, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 160GB hard drive, WiFi and an eight-cell battery. So, hot or not?

Disney's 20-inch LCD TV gets mauled by Stitch Somehow or another, Lilo was completely left out of this arrangement, but as you can tell, there's no room beside Stitch anyway. Disney's latest 20-inch LCD TV has been decidedly commandeered by one of its (er, only?) most popular blue alien characters, and if you can look past that gaping mouth up top, you'll notice a 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, HDMI and VGA inputs, a built-in TV tuner, dual five watt speakers and a bundled remote. Oddly, we're told that this royalty-laced set will be priced at an amazing ¥100,000 ($1,015), so you best be sure 1) your kid is a true, hardcore fan and 2) money ain't a thang.

LG Rumor 2 Tough luck, guys -- the secret's out. LG's long rumored Rumor 2 has finally launched exclusively on Sprint, bringing with it a slide-out QWERTY keypad, QVGA display, 1.3 megapixel camera, a removable backplate and your choice of Black Titanium and Vibrant Blue shells. As for availability, you can find the Black Titanium at Sprint's website on March 15th, while the Vibrant Blue edition won't hit until March 29th. If you're web-averse, you'll have to wait until April 19th for it to filter out to all Sprint retail channels before dropping your $49.99 (on contract).

Sirius XM developing iPhone / iPod touch streaming radio app My, my -- now isn't this something? Shortly after narrowly avoiding a dastardly collision with bankruptcy, Sirius XM is looking to connect itself with profitable enterprises in an attempt to build market share and regain interest from budget-conscience consumers. Just weeks after hearing that the sat radio company could be preparing a few Sirius / DirecTV bundles, CFO David Frear has now confirmed on a recent earnings call that the outfit is indeed developing an iPhone / iPod touch app. It's interesting to think that a satellite radio firm could be warming to delivering more content via the internet, but it's the apparent diversion from being a standalone offering that has us even more intrigued. It should be interesting to see how the pricing model works with this forthcoming app -- will users be able to get an iPhone subscription only? Will it be tossed in gratis with traditional subscriptions? So many questions...

Samsung MBP200 pico PJ, i7410 projector phone Two of Samsung's smallest beamers just got prices and release dates, but sadly, neither are in US dollars. The MBP200 pico projector will reportedly ship this May across the pond for €499 ($637), while the i7410 (more commonly referred to as the Show) will hit during the summertime for a price still to be determined. We know, it's not the bucketful of information you wanted, but it's something to whet your appetite until the suits at Sammy give us the dirty details we're really after.

Sony Ericsson Idou and the associated stylus We've already investigated every single nook and crannie involved in Sony Ericsson's 12 megapixel Idou, but here's something we haven't seen: an associated stylus. It's difficult to tell at the moment if SE plans to toss this in with the Idou (or whatever it ends being called) like Nokia did when it threw in a guitar pick with the 5800 XpressMusic, but either way, you can consider our interest piqued. Not that we're fans of using a stylus over our own digits, mind you, but we are fond of random, if not unnecessary accessories. Save the lecture, we realize that's odd.

Alltel LG Banter Turns out Sprint's not the only carrier launching a low-cost texter from LG this week. In fact, it's archrival Verizon that's getting in the game, too -- sorta -- by proxy, anyway, through the boys and girls at Alltel. The Banter becomes yet another in a long line of questionably-named models (think Rant, Propel, Behold... we could go on for a while here), but once you get past the name, you find that you've got a solid low-end landscape QWERTY slider with a 1.3 megapixel cam, microSD slot, Bluetooth, and changeable front and backplates. Sounds like a dead ringer for the Rumor 2, doesn't it? The Banter should be in stores now; we don't have pricing info handy, but we're thinking it's going to be mighty cheap on contract.

Onkyo TX-SR607 receiver Sure, your 7.1-channel setup does a great job of swarming Maverick, Iceman and Jester's jets all around you, but imagine how much better it would be to get vertical surround effects as well. Pick up an Onkyo TX-SR607 receiver (available next month for $599) and you can find out, thanks to its Dolby ProLogic IIz (DPL IIz) processing. Just put a couple more speakers high and tight above your front channels, hook them up and enjoy. Onkyo is kicking off the DPL IIz craze with the midrange TX-SR607, and will be rolling the feature out across its higher-spec models over the summer. If you're not so interested in more channels, even the more modest TX-SR507 ($399) and TX-SR307 ($299) models have been refreshed with a sprinkling of more HDMI inputs and support for HD audio codecs.

Samsung HMX-R10 HD camcorder Samsung's devilishly cute HMX-R10 camcorder stole the hearts of many at CES, but ever since, we've been aimlessly wandering about Sammy's website attempting to locate clues on pricing and availability. Thankfully, it seems some answers are starting to surface, and we've only got a month or so before we discover whether these whispers were laced in truth. Reportedly, this pocket-friendly high-def camcorder will be hitting UK streets next month, with early estimates pegging the price at $550. We're told that Americans may have to wait until sometime this summer before they too can indulge, but at least the Britons will be able to test it out beforehand and give you a little heart-to-heart buying advice.

Panasonic ultra-thin 54Z1 plasma Now that it's official and priced, Panasonic seems much happier to show off its wireless HD-sporting, ultra-thin Z1 series, and it's quite the sight to behold. The 54Z1 we got to look at was very strikingly clad in brushed metal gray -- compared to the regular black of most of Panasonic's TV lineup -- and of course incredibly thin. The wireless HD receiver box was across the room and working flawlessly, and it was nice to see that the included remote is an RF unit, capable of non-line-of-sight channel changing -- it's starting to feel like the 21st century around here! The plasma picture was of course very good, and we're really feeling those Viera Tools icons across the bottom. $6,000 though? That's your call.