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Do you understand your smartphone. really understand it? Know its moods, its wants, its desires? A survey hosted by Best Buy Mobile shows that half of people don't, with 47 percent saying the things confuse the heck out of them, while 60 percent of those aged 35 - 49 feel that people with smartphones spend too much time working and not enough time playing Wii Sports Bowling . Those feelings of confusion and ire doesn't stop a "sizable segment" of the rest of the 1,000 people surveyed from wanting a handset with brains, with most desiring access to the sort of apps you can't get on dumbphones, and 14 percent of women saying that playing games was "very important" -- only nine percent of men said the same. Sadly, there was no figure indicating how many people enjoy paying too much for text messages and signing their lives away on lengthy contracts. Filed under: Cellphones . Best Buy-sponsored survey shows that Americans want smartphones even though they don't understand them originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Here's what you get when a manufacturer tries to justify a $199 price tag on its newest headsets. The Jabra Go 6400 (pictured above) and Pro 9400 look to be standard noise-cancelling Bluetooth and DECT headsets, respectively, with a multifunction button to answer/reject/redial/mute calls and adjust the volume. However, these headsets are paired with an industry first touch-screen base for call management. The 2. 4-inch capacitive LCD displays caller ID, call records, and lets users switch between their mobile, desk, and corporate softphones via a spin of the carousel. Fun sure, and exceedingly geeky, but hardly worth the $199 to duplicate functions already built-in to the headsets or accessible via the displays on the devices it connects to. Then again, these are aimed at office professionals (read: corporations) when they launch in September and $199 is nothing when you're spending someone else's money. DECT configuration pictured after the break. [Via SlashGear ]. Continue reading Jabro Go 6400 and Pro 9400 with capacitive touchscreen base redefines overkill, want . Filed under: Portable Audio . Jabro Go 6400 and Pro 9400 with capacitive touchscreen base redefines overkill, want originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Now fully finished, the amazing full-scale Gundam is now an unofficial Tokyo landmark. The robot is so impressive that photographers are populating Flickr with beautiful photos showing every single little detail. [ Flickr Search ].

What do you get when you mix a Fiat 500 —a popular and tiny 50s car in Italy—with a bulldozer and a crazy Japanese ironsmith? A Fiat 500 bulldozer with crazy—and very happy—Japanese ironsmith inside, as the video shows. Kogoro Kurata's invention only runs at 3 kilometers per hour, but who cares. It's red, it has treads, it can destroy stuff. That's all that matters to me. Better than Transformers 2 for sure. [ Ironwork via Pink Tentacle ].

LONDON/SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp's new Bing search engine gained U. S. market share in its first month in operation but still trails dominant rival Google Inc, according to data released on Wednesday.

It might look like your run-of-the-mill car seat, but Dorel's Air Protect comes with an extra dose of parental paranoia, or as they call it, side impact protection. Sure, you could protect your child by not driving like a reckless maniac, but where's the techno-loving fun in that? You're far better off strapping junior into a pre-inflated airbag, while disregarding the fact your giant SUV is killing the world he is supposed to grow, live and love in. Now that we've guilt-tripped you into recycling your soda cans, how about a self-serving video of the crash test after the break?. Continue reading Video: Dorel Air Protect keeps your blow-up children safe . Filed under: Transportation . Video: Dorel Air Protect keeps your blow-up children safe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

To celebrate Steve Jobs' official return to Apple ( AAPL ) this week, Kobi Shely has posted a YouTube clip from MacHEADS , his 54-minute "fanboy documentary" on the cult surrounding the company and its charismatic CEO. Shely wrote, directed, co-produced and edited the film. The 2-minute 22-second segment he selected is centered around the return of Jobs to Apple in Dec. 1996 after he was ousted in a boardroom coup nearly a dozen years earlier. The clip includes rare footage from the July 1998 keynote in which a younger, chubbier Jobs announces Apple's return to profitability and introduces the first iMac. It's worth a look, if you can ignore the first 15 seconds of computer-generated weirdness, the bizarre Church of Mac segment in the middle and the young woman stroking and kissing her computer at the end. The clip is pasted below. The full movie is available on iTunes and Amazon Video on Demand. Or you can order a DVD here . Below the fold, a two-minute trailer for MacHEADS that includes sex columnist Violet Blue's priceless line: "First of all, I've never knowingly slept with a Windows user. Ever. ". See also:. Top 10 moments in Steve Jobs' career . Film: Inside the cult of Mac .

If you still have the Windows 7 Beta installed, today is the day when it starts shutting down every two hours. You know, to annoy the hell out of you. So go and get the Windows 7 Release Candidate. That one will start shutting down every two hours in about a year .

It's not often that a remote control becomes the centerpiece of a product launch, but man, would you look at that. That's the remote for Sony's NAS-Z200iR, a WiFi-enabled shelf audio system with slot-loading CD and iPod dock. The Z200iR is DLNA-certified so it works with any DLNA device in your home including NAS boxes and of course, your PC or Mac. The re-chargeable remote features a 3. 5-inch LCD display that gives you full control over sourced media including Internet radio, integrated AM/FM tuner, or devices connected via the Z200iR's USB or audio-in ports. The sound comes courtesy of a pair of independent, 20-watt speaker enclosures with double neodymium magnets used to drive the bass. A simpler, WiFi-less CMT-Z100iR system will launch first in July with the Z200iR headed to Europe in mid September. Sorry, no prices announced so no joy. Gallery: Sony's newest remote control ships with a Z200iR compact music system . Filed under: Home Entertainment . Sony's newest remote control ships with a Z200iR compact music system originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Nazis or aliens or Nazi aliens are back and they have invaded Northrop Grumman's top secret grounds in California, where engineers have been testing the surprising anti-radar capabilities of the Horten 2-29 . The results: It could have changed everything. Germany lost the Battle of Britain partly thanks to the British radar. The fat baton-bearing lunatic and chief of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring turned to the Horten brothers to develop something that would give the German air force superiority. They came up with the most advanced plane of the war, one that surpassed everything else out there by three decades but fortunately never had the time to be produced in any kind of significant numbers: The Horten 2-29, a plane unlike anything else out there, which—as this reconstruction shows—looks alien in its design. Northrop Grumman's black-op engineers—who usually work in top secret USAF projects like the B-2 Stealth Bomber, Ho 2-29's design heir —analyzed (again?) the remains of the only surviving plane, reconstructed it, and tested its stealth capabilities. It's probably not the first time they have done that, but this time they did it for a National Geographic TV documentary. As it turns out, Hitler had an stealth fighter in the Ho 2-29. Thanks to the use of wood and carbon—which increased its radar absortion—jet engines integrated into the fuselage, and its blended surfaces, the plane could have been in London eight minutes after the British radar system detected it. In comparison, other planes took 19 minutes since detection to target, which gave the RAF fighter enough time to scramble and hunt down the bastards. The Ho 2-29 would have made the interception almost impossible, if at all. The bad news is that this plane could have completely changed the course of the war if Germany only had one or two extra years of lead time. Not only in the fight against Britain, but also against the US and the Soviet Union. The Horten brothers had another design based on the Ho 2-29. A design for a intercontinental strategic bomber, the Ho 18. The 142-foot wingspan bomber was submitted for approval in 1944, and it would have been able to fly from Berlin to NYC and back without refueling, thanks to the same blended wing design and six BMW 003A or eight Junker Jumo 004B turbojets. As the documentary shows, had the Nazis extended the war in 1946 and developed the atomic bomb as planned, the Ho 18 could have been their Enola Gay. The good news: That's a lot of ifs, the Allies decided to invade Normandy soon enough, and we are all here without wearing stupid outfits, swastikas, and funny moustaches. Life is good, people, life is good. [ Fight Global ].

Most of the news about USB 3. 0 —the finalization of the spec , the first drivers , the first controller —doesn't tell us much about when we'll actually get to see a product hit stores. The answer? According to Nikkei, before 2010. Their contacts in the Tawianese PC industry predict the first machines to include the hardware will start rolling off the line by the end of the year, citing rapid development in integrated circuits and the shipment of compliant controllers to PC manufacturers. The date is a bit earlier than the "early 2010" prediction that's been bandied around recently, but not by much. A quick reminder of what this means :. With transfer speeds of 4. 8Gbps, it'll dump a 25GB HD file in about 70 seconds, and the architecture has been beefed up with extra data lanes to make for more sustained, rather than bursty transfer speeds, making it better for camcorders and the like. Even though it delivers more power than USB 2. 0 to charge gadgets faster (and it'll revive a completely dead one too), its new polling architecture makes it more efficient. Unfortunately, full 5Gbps speeds won't be reached for some time . [ Tech-on ].

You're not still running Windows 7 Beta are you? Tsk tsk, better get your RC build before your system starts spontaneously shutting down every 2 hours. As Microsoft has warned repeatedly, Windows 7 Beta builds will begin bi-hourly shutdowns starting on July 1st in a bid to move you over to the latest release candidate. RC user will suffer the same treatment starting March 1st, 2010 on the way to a June 1st expiration -- well after the October 22nd launch date of Windows 7 to retail. This concludes this Engadget public service announcement, your regularly scheduled snarkiness will return in a moment. [Thanks, Kyle]. Filed under: Desktops , Laptops , Tablet PCs . Windows 7 Beta automatic shutdowns begin today, RC users safe until March 1st originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

It's one thing to bury something like developer mode -- a mode that the average Pre user will never need -- behind a cute-but-exhausting throwback Konami code , but it's quite another to hide useful stuff that way. A PreCentral tipster discovered that entering "RocknRollHax" on the keyboard (and yes, capitalization is important here) while in the email app enables the previously missing capability to use it in landscape mode; presumably Palm hid it from end users because they thought it was too buggy or weird for mainstream use, but it certainly works alright for us. Worst part is that the code needs to be re-entered each and every time the email app starts, so you'd better really want it -- but at least you don't have to root to get it. Filed under: Cellphones , Handhelds . Frustratingly long secret code enables totally useful landscape email on Pre originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Having already given you the AT&T spec sheet and images on this new Nokia, the only things missing are launch date, price, and a bit of video. Well, a janky QIK video just made its way to YouTube claiming that Nokia's Mako is coming to AT&T in mid-July as the 6790 Surge. It should be "priced pretty well" but those details haven't been finalized. So if a quick messaging device running S60 beneath a 2. 4-inch 240x320 pixel display with HSDPA data and 2 megapixel camera is enough motivation to prompt another mouse-click then by all means, click through for the video overview provided after the break. Stay cool, bye. Continue reading Video: Nokia 6790 Surge / Mako gets a QIK onto the small screen . Filed under: Cellphones . Video: Nokia 6790 Surge / Mako gets a QIK onto the small screen originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Review: The Elektron Machinedrum . Paper Speaker: Japanese company sells DIY cardboard speakers . Video: Classic video games done up LEGO-style . Doug goes on TechVi, hilarity ensues .

. Starcraft is practically an institution in South Korea and Mr. ByunTae, a "100% full-blooded Korean" in his own words is offering Starcraft training for those who are willing to spare anything from $20 to $35 each hour. Some of the topics he'll cover include :- . Muta stacking. Lurker stop and stacking. Cloacked zergling. Learn Korean lango, like “chobo” “gosu” “ww” etc. Advanced micro/macro management (able to stand off 12 zerglings with just 3 zealots or fend off 18 zealots with just 4 cannons) Starcraft Lessons For Sale from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing .

A news item is circulating the internet reportedly from German business weekly Wirtschaftswoche claiming Amazon is facing a major hurdle in trying to bring its Kindle to Deutschlan. The problem at hand? The two big wireless providers in the country, Vodafone and T-Mobile, are both saying "nein" to providing Whispernet service, and apparently the issue has to do with how much money Amazon was willing to give -- unsurprising, if true. Another, very likely reason for T-Mobile's unwillingness is that parent company Deutsche Telekom is rumored to be working on its own e-book reader , and we gotta believe those company picnics would be mighty awkward if a large subsidiary was given the competition a major boost. We can't imagine this stopping Amazon for long, and we'd be very surprised if the Kindle didn't find some way to sneak itself into the region sooner or later. Filed under: Handhelds , Wireless . Kindle's German launch stalled by T-Mobile and Vodafone? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A viral video billed as "Breckin Meyer Responds to Perez Hilton" plays like a parody of Hilton's video statement about his recent run-in with the Black Eyed Peas in Toronto. But in fact it's a stealth promo for an upcoming "Robot Chicken" DVD release.

This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here . "It ain't over till the fat lady sings" means that nothing happens until you get the signature on the contract. That is when the money gets wired. Deals often get derailed. They drift, and then nothing happens. Or a competitor comes in and snatches the prize from you. That is why a "closer," someone who can seal the deal, is so prized. Sponsor . For enterprise systems, closing is a core competency. For Web ventures, you may need the skill less. But when you do need it (to raise money or win over a big strategic partner), you really need it. And you cannot delegate negotiating and closing. You can get advisors, but as the entrepreneur/CEO, you have to make the big calls. So, in this chapter we aim to distill a few libraries' worth of books on negotiating and closing into a few points for the busy entrepreneur. Four Points on Negotiation and Closing. Two ears, one mouth,. Wait until you hear them scream,. Use tension to your advantage,. Imagine the press conference. Deals are deals. The deal could be securing an enterprise-wide contract for your software, raising a Series A VC round, selling your venture, or doing a big partnership deal. We tend to use the language of "buyer" and "seller" when discussing these four points, but they can apply to any kind of deal. Two Ears, One Mouth. This is the simplest and most important sales lesson: listen. It also means keep quiet. No golden oratory, no gift of the gab, no persuasive speeches. Just listen to what the customer wants and let them reveal their needs and negotiating position. Then work out how to present what you have to meet those needs. Or decide that they are not the one to focus on and move on to a better a prospect. Silence is very awkward socially. We are all brought up to fill these awkward moments with some type of conversation. Good negotiators use silence to great advantage. Let's say you have just proposed a valuation to your investor. The investor looks at you with a blank stare. Time ticks by and you think the deal has gone south. You start to think, "Oh no, we blew it and started too high. " More time ticks by. You could stammer something about it "all being negotiable, of course" or just keep silent and wait for him to say something. It is, after all, his turn to speak, and he will probably say something. When someone agrees with you, shut up. When the contract is about to be signed, shut up, or talk about the weather. You can derail a good deal by raising more issues than need to be raised. It is a simple mantra: you have two ears and only one mouth. Use them accordingly. If in doubt, shut up!. Wait Until You Hear Them Scream. When I managed a six-person sales team selling financial trading systems on Wall Street, there was one guy who was consistently the best performer. He was also, by all other visible metrics, the worst salesperson. His presentations were rambling and verged on incoherent. His writing style would have given my old English teacher apoplexy. He was consistently abrupt, almost rude, to all concerned. He came in late, left early, and took long, expensive lunches. I was really interested to find out what he was doing right. I do not believe that luck is a consistent reason for success. He must have been doing something really, really well, because everything visible he was doing was being done very badly. I discovered that the thing he was doing right was qualifying his prospects with great care and discipline. We all know we should do that, but very few salespeople do it well at all. We think sales is all about hard work, persistence, determination, and all those other good Protestant work ethics. So, we drive relentlessly on, calling each prospect for the umpteenth time. This guy on my team waited until he could see that a customer's need was real and urgent. He waited till he could hear them scream. He then looked for an indicator that we had an edge in the deal, some unfair advantage. His laziness was a bit of an act. In reality, he was a tireless networker. That is what all those long, expensive lunches were about. However, he worked to create a sense of equality among, and respect for, his customers. Salespeople are usually all too ready to get on their knees for that all-powerful buyer or investor with the big budget or fund. The buyer won't respect that salesperson and will ignore five of their calls, assured he will find another seller. Yes, it is a bit of a power game. The game is easy to play if you work for its most powerful player. But it is hardest to play when times are tough and you are behind in your revenue targets, or when your venture is running out of cash. One way of checking for urgency is to see how much effort the prospect is putting into your relationship. You have to be able to see some equality of effort. Calling five times before the prospect returns your call is not equality. If you send reams of information and give multiple presentations, but the prospect won't fill in a detailed requirements questionnaire, that is not equality of effort. With every call, you want the prospect to do something. If this does not happen, then they are not screaming loud enough, and you should move on to your next opportunity. Make sure you have a live one by waiting for them to scream. Make your prospect do some work before you get too excited. Using Tension to Your Advantage. If you sell big-ticket deals, you don't need that many to reach your revenue targets. If you are getting venture capital to power your dreams, you may need to close only one deal for your venture to succeed. But these deals take a long time to close, almost never less than three months and often twelve months or more. By the time you enter the "closing zone," you and your teammates have expended a lot of time and energy, your company is relying on you to close the deal, and you are starting to think about what you will do once the deal closes. This is an exhilarating, scary, dangerous time. Exhilarating because you are so close to a big "high five" success. Scary because if you lose now when you can almost taste success, the disappointment will be bitter. Dangerous because a smart buyer could easily exploit your intense desire to close the deal and force major concessions out of you. Donald Trump (the real-estate developer), in his book "The Art of the Deal," talks about guiding the other side to the point that they really want the deal and think it is in the bag. Then he backs off and demands major concessions. Smart buyers everywhere have learned some variation of this tactic. This is when you get a knot in your stomach and may witness table-banging and raised voices. All of this unpleasant stuff is good news. Experienced deal closers recognize these as signs that a deal is closing. The absence of these signs is actually a cause for concern!. One thread running through all good negotiations is some sign of real pain from the buyer that leaves you confident you are not leaving too much money on the table. Of course, the buyer knows you will be looking for this and will send signals that you have reached their limit. The skill comes in differentiating between fake pain, as in "This is well above our budget, and my boss will kill me if I agree," and the real thing. The buyer will also be looking for the same signs from you. Losing your temper is usually not good. It implies a lack of control and usually signals fear and weakness rather than strength. However, sometimes it can be very effective. Negotiators use many tactics to simulate table-banging without killing the deal. You can use the old good cop/bad cop routine, or the "My intransigent boss will never agree to this" line, or you could use a stalking horse to lay down a negotiating line. Your tactic will depend on the specifics of the sale, but the one constant is that when your stomach gets in a knot, you have probably entered the closing zone, and that is good. We were engineered for fight or flight for a reason!. Imagine the Press Conference. Early on in a big complex sale, take time for a bit of day-dreaming. Imagine the press conference in which the CEO or partner of the company you are selling to announces the project to the press. Perhaps you think day-dreaming is rather self-indulgent. Perhaps this is some variant of the old "think positive" reinforcement. Actually, this is a very practical, strategic selling tool. Complex sales are. well, complex. As if you were in the middle of a chess game, your brain can hurt and you may not see the forest for the trees. You are probably juggling internal politics, resource constraints, pressure from partners, competitive moves, and customer politics. and that's before you've had lunch!. You need a way to stay focused on what really matters. You need to know the single over-riding motivation of your decision-maker. This is the story your decision-maker will tell at the press conference when the deal is done. He will say why his great initiative will have a big effect on one of his company's key strategic objectives and why he was smart enough to select the one vendor that was ideal for the project. Unless you know this story, you will be shooting in the dark. To cut your way through the complexity of enterprise sales, you need to simplify. Select the person who is the key decision-maker. Understand what is important to him. Find the one big reason why he wants to do this project. Select the one reason why he will announce that your company is the right vendor. In long sales cycles, take time to imagine the press conference. Use this to get clarity on the key "ones": one decision-maker, one business driver, and one vendor selection driver. Discuss .

. The classic Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin is back this time round where it offers iPhone 3GS support just to keep up with the times. It will still maintain its iconic shape that has led to its name, although you will have to fork out top dollar for it - to the tune of $600 , to be exact. Permalink: iPhone 3GS Supported In Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing .

. Respirator masks that we see on airplanes and in hospitals won't hold a candle to anything where design is concerned, but Elijah Stillson has made an art form out of it with the Respirator Mask Design. This design will take into account the contours around the human head, where it is inspired by natural forms such as fish gills (minus the slime, of course). Filters have been cleverly repositioned to make sure they do not get in the way of the user's field of vision, while safety levels have been improved by playing around and re-balancing the weights. The mask itself comes with an integrated filter cartridge which is closed whenever the respirator is not being worn to further extend the filter's life. Permalink: Respirator Mask Concept from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing .

. Cree has unveiled the first commercially available water-resistant, surface-mount, high-brightness LEDs for outdoor video screens in the world. Boasting an IPx5 rating, the LEDs on this puppy are able to handle low-pressure jets of water from all directions. It comes with a black face that helps improve contrast in full-color video screens, decorative lighting and amusement applications. Another interesting aspect of this would be the special unique encapsulation resin with UV-inhibitors that help minimize the effects of long-term exposure to direct sunlight, in turn improving the stability of the light-output over the life of the LED. Available commercially at this moment, you can request for samples from a Cree representative. Permalink: Cree LED Outdoor Display from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing .

. Samsung recently announced a brand new 3G full touchscreen cellphone known as Haptic AMOLED, carrying the new high resolution 800 x 480 pixel AMOLED display that measures 3. 5" diagonally across. Power consumption has been further reduced by another 66%, boasting a 180-degree viewing angle (although possible, it is not recommended as your eyes will probably protest shortly after). Available in Korea via SK Telecom, KT and LG Telecom, it will retail for approximately $700. Features include DivX, H. 264, MPEG4 and AC-3 support, version 2. 0 of the Haptic UI, T-DMB compatibility, a 5-megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity and navigation support among others. Permalink: Samsung Announced Haptic AMOLED Phone from Ubergizmo | Hot: Wii, PS3 and Natal Motion Sensing .

We've been nothing if not comprehensive in our coverage of this new Pentax shooter, and early reviews are showing why. Photography Blog praised the K-7 for its weatherproofing and for having "one of the best LCD screens" they've ever seen on a DSLR, while ePHOTOzine were impressed by the image quality and Wired found the package of features and specs exceedingly robust given the $1,300 asking price. Some shortcomings were found, such as the slightly unintuitive interface and noise levels at higher ISO settings, but impressions were overwhelmingly positive. If you've been looking for a solid alternative to Canon's 50D or Nikon's D300 , check out all the thoroughly detailed analysis in the read links below. Read - Photography Blog. Read - Wired. Read - ePHOTOzine. Filed under: Digital Cameras . Pentax K-7 review roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Are you rich and short about 16GB of storage? Buddy, have I got a product for you. The SolidAlliance Mnemosyne USB drive is a beautifully designed little object that not only looks money, but stores your deepest, chromiest secrets (or mp3s). What's the catch, you ask? No catch! Unless you consider a price tag of $10,000 a catch. Yes, like many pieces of excellent design (and, of course, many pieces of terrible design), the Mnemosyne is so overpriced as to be relegated to the position of status symbol. Aside from its colossal MSRP, there are some other problems. It will, of course, be a fingerprint magnet if you use it at all. And honestly, 16GB is a little skimpy for ten grand. I'm sure they could contact Guinness if they wanted to and get the record for most expensive USB drive, but the peasants who that record would impress aren't exactly their target demographic! HA HA HA! (rich guy laugh). Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go sail around on my solid gold schooner, the "Galleon. " Get it — galleon ? HA HA HA! Collar up!. [via Akihabara News ].

It doesn't do 3D and it doesn't curve all around your periphery , but Alienware's OptX AW2210 does a decent number for its just barely sub-$300 price tag. The 21. 5-inch widescreen LCD panel boasts 1080p resolution, two millisecond response time, 16. 7 million colors, and an 80,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. Throw in two HDMI and four USB ports -- sorry, no VGA or DVI here -- and you've got yourself a pretty nice option. The screen's on sale now via Alienware direct. Gallery: Alienware's 1080p 21. 5-inch OptX AW2210 priced for maximum street fighting . Filed under: Displays . Alienware's 1080p 21. 5-inch OptX AW2210 priced for maximum street fighting originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Let's be clear: it was his prerogative to put his race in the advert. I'm just repeating what I heard. But let's also be honest. Say you wanted soccer (football) lessons. Given two identical ads on Craigslist, would you go with a guy born and raised in Brazil or some local yokel? I realize this is a sticky issue for potential Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, but for us it's less of a problem. The Brazil guy, am I right? Because he's more likely to have been immersed in soccer culture from birth and to have played since childhood, developing skills people like me think only exist in Shaolin Soccer. Thus, Mr. ByunTae's reasoning in including his genetic makeup and upbringing in an ad for training someone at a video game. Because Korea is the be-all and end-all of Starcraft . Sure, we've got our own, more official courses , but how can you resist one-on-one tutoring on such topics as:. Muta stacking. Lurker stop and stacking. Cloacked zergling. Learn Korean lango, like "chobo" "gosu" "ww" etc. Advanced micro/macro management (able to stand off 12 zerglings with just 3 zealots or fend off 18 zealots with just 4 cannons) . Sounds pretty serious, and for $20-$35/hour, you'd better be serious too. I think a lot of these skills will carry over to Starcraft II as well, so you're getting kind of a bargain here. Bay Area only, unfortunately. I'm especially intrigued by the promise that "Korean girls will be intrigued that you're such a good Starcraft player. " That'd be good, because my "blogger" lines are starting to wear thin on that variety.

Did you know you can switch tabs in Firefox by making a twisting motion with your fingers on a multi-touch surface? I did. Turns out I've been doing it for months — I thought I was late to the party and was too ashamed to mention it to anybody for fear of an epic internet ribbing ("What, you just figured that out?"). But no, apparently it was top secret and highly experimental. That was in the beta, though; it looks like the official version has reduced it to a hack. Fortunately, mastering this multi-touch-enabling technique will allow you to tweak your gestures, resulting in everlasting glory. Simply open a new tab (I'll wait) —. Put "about:config" in the address bar, no quotes. It'll ask you if you're sure. Yes, you are. You are okay. Ready? Okay, now type "twist" into the search box. Double-click on the twist right, and put "Browser:NextTab" into the box, without the quotes. Theeen, in twist left, put "Browser:PrevTab" without the quotes. You're done! Now, I found the gesture (it applies immediately, try putting one finger down and rotating another around it) to be a bit slow to respond, so I changed that other setting, the threshold one, from its default (25) to 10. You can mess around and figure out what's best for you. See, tweaking is easy! If you're afraid you've ruined something, just right-click (or "context menu click") on any box you've modified and hit reset. Curiosity piqued? Type "gesture" into the search box and try modifying a few of those settings. I don't particularly like the twist, so I'm about to set tab switching to three-fingered swipes. Aren't we just having so much fun?. [thanks to Rafael for the tip and original instructions ].

#saleschart { border: 0px solid #333; border-collapse: collapse; } #saleschart td { padding: 7px; border-bottom: 0px solid #ccc; vertical-align: top; margin: 0; line-height: 1. 3em; font-size: 100%;} #saleschart th. bottomrow { border-right: 1px solid #333; } #saleschart tr. features1 { border-top: 1px solid #333; } #saleschart td. bottomrow2 { border-right: 1px solid #333;} #saleschart th { font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; padding: 4px; background: #f3f3f3; border-top: 1px solid #333; } . Firefox 3. 5 arrives . Mozilla is saying its new browser is more than two times faster than Firefox 3, but what has us more excited is the support for plugin-free "open codec" video and audio playback. Wii MotionPlus impressions: it works, but so far the games aren't worth the fuss . At first glance it's a little difficult to understand the necessity of another motion-sensing add-on. Pirate Bay acquired by Global Gaming Factory, going legit like Napster . We'll have to wait and see how this pans out but it certainly smacks of a Napster v2 like situation at first blush. Other news of import. Verizon's BlackBerry Tour coming July 12th, pre-order page now live . Microsoft outs educational, inspirational Windows 7 tour videos . NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010? . Sony placing PS3 slim manufacturing orders for delivery in July? . Top ten rationales for illegally downloading HDTV shows . We're not saying we've ever downloaded anything off the internet that wasn't 100% on the up and up, or that we're here to judge those who have. Video: Palm Pre caught playing with GSM SIM in Vietnam . Having the Palm Pre on Sprint might be good for Americans driving their pick 'em up trucks down the CDMA data highway, but it doesn't do Europeans (or Palm's bottom line) any good over in the Old World. 2009 British Open broadcast confirmed in standard def on TNT & ABC . Oppo BDP-83 pre-orders now open for all (in North America) . Nokia N97 getting firmware 1. 1 on July 1 . BlackBerry Tour emerges in Alltel livery for those non-Sprint, non-Verizon types . The Daily Roundup: here's what you might've missed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Oh boy. I've found a reason to charge my Pre back from the dead. ZodTTD, purveyor of iPhone emulators galore, has struck again by installing psx4all on his Palm Pre. Surprisingly enough, Zod says the Pre's hardware runs the emulator way better than the iPhone 3GS. But it's not all peaches and cream.

Michael Bay's Transformers 2 Sneak Peek. Kindle DX Pisses Off Blind Students. Sony Can Give All PS3s PS2 Emulation—But Probably Won't. Band Uses iPhone Gimmick to Get Attention (and Succeeds). Anyone who still hasn't seen the movie might want to skip this spoiler-riddled "preview" presented by the master of explosions, crashes, booms and more explosions himself, but it's a must see for everyone else. We didn't post it because we didn't want to give anything away. [ YouTube ]. Students at Arizona State University know that the college-bound Kindle DX can read texts aloud. Only trouble is, it won't read menus out loud. Good goin' there, Beez. Bottom line: Until the menus are covered by text-to-speech, the blind students are going to fight it. We'll cover it if it becomes a federal case, or if Amazon caves and hires some accessibility programmers. [ ASU - The State Press ]. A recently discovered Sony patent from late last year shows how the Cell processor found in all PS3s can fully emulate the Emotion Engine required to run PS2 games, so no matter what model you have, you'd be able to play any game you owned. But don't dust off your old God of War disc just yet—why would Sony wait this long to get you this particular feature, and to get you jazzed about games that by definition they can't profit from? Our verdict: Ain't gonna happen. [ Siliconera via CrunchGear ]. A band I've never heard of (The 88. anyone? anyone? Maybe I'm just old) decided to record an entire song using a $10 four-track iPhone recording app called Four Track. Although technically you could probably line in a decent mic, they even used the iPhone's microphone. Studio engineers will tell you that that's not the best way to get a top-40 sound. But hell, it got them a USA Today story with photo, so bully on studio engineers. The song isn't even that bad—course, I'm listening to it on laptop speakers. [ USA Today ; iTunes Store link ].

Allow me to admit something shocking right off the bat: I have not watched these ads. I am blogging in ignorance , because it seems pretty clear what's going on here. As was the case with the Seinfeld ads, it seems that once again, Microsoft is barking too hard, and up the wrong tree at that. Your browser is bad, it's been bad for years. Sure, IE8 is way better than its predecessors, but that's as close to polishing poop and calling it gold as anyone has ever come. But this isn't the way to make people try it. Another blast-from-the-past celebrity? Internet disorders? Even the most forgiving of watchers (a group that does not include me) must recognize this as a desperate and ham-fisted attempt at going viral. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Microsoft, you need to be honest and direct. Show your logo first, admit there are multiple browsers, then say why IE8 is good for people. Show the product and show it working. Seinfeld, S. H. Y. N. E. S. S. , and "Welcome to the Social" are pretentious and ineffective. "I'm a PC" was trying too hard, but it was on the right track. But try to remember, Microsoft: you're not selling people , you're selling software . Leave the highfalutin nonsense to Apple and perfume commercials. If I'm wrong please let me know, I don't want to give Microsoft any more of my eyeball time than I already have.

Jailbreaking emulation legend ZodTTD has started the ball rolling on Pre gaming by installing his PlayStation emulator, psx4all, on the smartphone—and while there are kinks to be worked out, he says it runs even faster than on iPhone. There's no denying the Pre has several huge advantages over the iPhone family when it comes to gaming, especially the hardware keyboard, and it looks like it won't be lacking in the graphical department, either. The emulation is still in the early stages; there's no sound and he hasn't figured out the screen scaling yet, but this little demo of Wipeout XL looks incredibly smooth. ZodTTD says a fuller, more polished version of psx4all for the Pre should be coming soon, and with any luck, this'll be the first hurdle on the way to a substantial gaming community for the Pre. [ ZodTTD via Engadget ].

If you're familiar with the emulation scene (and let's be honest, you are reading Engadget), then you know the name ZodTTD -- the brain behind some of the best jailbroken emus for the iPhone, including variations on the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and most importantly. the TurboGrafx-16. Now the master-hacker has brought his goods to the Pre, cooking up a version of psx4all on the Palm device, with the aforementioned GBA and TG16 ports on the way! Interestingly, he reports that the performance on the Pre is actually better than that of the iPhone 3GS, and of course he's hacked access to the keyboard, allowing for (more) proper control of games. There are still kinks that are being worked out (sound emulation, screen scaling, etc. ), but it looks like we can expect big things in the near future. We at Engadget know everyone will rest a bit easier tonight knowing that real gaming on the Pre is at hand. We'll hopefully be getting our hands on a version soon, but for now hit the read link for more info, and check out the full video after the break!. Continue reading The Pre gets PlayStation gaming and more thanks to ZodTTD (video) . Filed under: Cellphones , Gaming . The Pre gets PlayStation gaming and more thanks to ZodTTD (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Whether or not it's coming to T-Mobile (spoiler: all signs point to yes ), BlackBerry's Curve 8520 has now been ordained with FCC approval, clearing the hurdle for its sale stateside. Optical trackpad and EDGE connection your cup of tea? You know where to look, and for everyone else, there's always the Tour . [Via Boy Genius Report ]. Filed under: Cellphones . BlackBerry Curve 8520 is a go for US, says FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

This respirator mask design by Elijah Stillson is meant to have comfort AND function, ensuring that when a biological attack does hit, you won't even notice that you're wearing a mask. You will notice the dead bodies, however. [ Yanko Design ].

Dell's Mini 10 already offers GPS with an integrated 3G chip, but if you're not interested in mobile broadband, starting next week you can opt instead for a wireless 700 location solution, a hybrid of Broadcom's assisted GPS and Skyhook's WiFi positioning technologies. We had a chance to sit down with a few of the product managers working on the device, and even within a brick-laden office building it did a pretty fine job of finding us within 30 meters and integrating with Flickr, Loopt, and Yelp using the Loki plug-in for Internet Explorer / FireFox. Impact on battery life was said to be "immaterial" although a ballpark estimate was about a five percent hit when in use. For $70, it'll come bundled with CoPilot turn by turn navigation software. It requires the $30 HD display upgrade, but even then, an extra Benjamin total for a large-screen navigation device is hard to pass up if you're looking to get a netbook anyway. If you're still not sold, Dell promises it'll be available for other Mini options, with and without the HD upgrade, in the near future. Now how about a few words on the Mini 11 , eh Dell?. Filed under: GPS , Laptops . Dell's Mini 10 getting GPS / WiFi tracking upgrade next week originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

The two Jabra Go 6400 and Pro 9400 Bluetooth headsets are kinda neat, combining a charging dock for convenience with a touchcreen for showmanship. The 6400 has a standard Bluetooth range and looks exactly like a Bluetooth headset from Jabra, whereas the 9400 looks like a receptionist's headset that you can take around your house at up to a 450-foot range. They both have dual-microphones for noise cancelation and both have the touchscreen to quickly switch between a cellphone, VoIP or landline connections. Both will be available later in the year for $200 each. [ Slashgear ].

Drew Olanoff, the Twitter user who started the #blamedrewscancer campaign after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma earlier this year, made a successful proposal of marriage to his girlfriend Sarah Cooley on Twitter today ( here's her "yes" ). We later confirmed the story with Drew over IM. Of course, he "blamed Drew's cancer" for the proposal, as the Tweets below attest. #blamedrewscancer is a Twitter movement that aims to raise money for charity by adding the hashtag to your Tweets, as the site explains :. Blame Drew's Cancer for anything you want by tweeting with the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer and it'll come here. When Drew beats cancer we hope to have sponsors that will donate a dollar for every participant to our brand new partner, LIVESTRONG. Congratulations to Drew and Sarah on their engagement. See also: The 10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates , wherein we note three successful marriage proposals on Twitter. Reviews: Twitter . Tags: drew olanoff , twitter .

As you may have read earlier today, Digg introduced a new system to avoid the problem of two versions of the same story making it to the Digg homepage. Digg explains the technical solution in-depth on their blog , but we'd simply like to know this: if this system is so great, how did two stories about the new Digg duplicate detection make it to the Digg homepage, one on top of the other nonetheless, as you can see in the screenshot below:. There's a fairly good chance some mischievous Diggers did this on purpose, but nonetheless, it could go in the dictionary under the definition of "irony. ". Reviews: Digg . Tags: digg .

Your fancy new iPhone OS 3. 0 starting to look a bit long in the tooth? Heads up, Apple's now sending out the beta OS 3. 1 and its SDK to the developer community to finagle with. We're still looking to see what's been changed here, so for now, if you're someone who needs the Latest and Greatest and happens to have the right access, download away!. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]. Filed under: Cellphones . iPhone OS 3. 1 beta now available for developer community originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments .

Well, iPhone OS 3. 1 Beta just went live on Apple's developer center and, as usual, it's a quest to figure out what has changed. Our lovely developer friends have already started tearing it apart in search of that hidden gem detailing the iPhone 4GFP (The FP stands for "Face punch"), and we're keeping tabs on what they find. Let us know what you uncover, and we'll add it to the list.

The Pirate Bay: Holes in the sale? Our own Doug Aamoth and JG Mason from Gadgetell. com discuss the recent sale of The Pirate Bay.

Like solar-powered air conditioners, this solar hand fan makes a lot of sense. Well, save for the part where you have to fan yourself. But it is a night light, which goes great with your ensemble if you're a southern belle who's also a robot. [ Lost Values via Fashioning Tech via MAKE ].

Batman normally likes to stretch his legs and have trunkspace for a few accidental dead bodies. But he might pilot an ATV powered by a jet engine on a weekend at the links. John Carnett modded brand new Polaris RZR 2-seater ATV with a grey market, 40-year-old turbine. The result is a 114db joystick-driven vehicle that spews out 1300°F exhaust to achieve around 60MPH. And it sounds glorious. Our only regret is that Carnett was too sane to take his jet ATV over any sweet jumps. Give him time, though. A guy who builds stuff like this has to be slipping a bit. [ PopSci ].

The 3. 1 version of the iPhone SDK is available now, bringing a couple new fixes like having the OS simulator "more closely matching the device. " There are also new Interface Builder, XCode and Dashcode changes. [ iPhone Developer ].

The Machinedrum is not something you can easily acquire. It's hard to find Elektron in your local drum machine shop - not that there are many drum machine shops out there but fortunately all their products can be ordered online - if the price isn't too steep for you. Anyway, I was eager to try this little beast out so let's see what it can do. The Machinedrum is a drum synthesizer with a small sample memory. It has 6 audio outputs and 2 inputs making it a device capable of serious routing and sound designing on stage or in studio. The heart of the machine is the 16 track sequencer which is very easy to use and unlike other devices out there it can in fact be used for live production. You get 64 step patterns out of the box - some are great, some are not - and 130 "machines" that are basically the sounds you can use and edit as you wish. Look and feel . It's a brick. I like the simple design and the square buttons although they are quite loud. The body is made of steel but the unit only weighs around 6 pounds. The screen could be bigger in my opinion. When you are performing live you often need to glance on the screen and it can be hard to read. In fact the black/white area around the screen could be used for a bigger screen making it easier to see things. Then again, you can read most of the stuff from the step sequencer and surely you wont be spending time editing sounds on stage. All the buttons and knobs are made of plastic and they react without latency. Control . Sound selection is done with the big black wheel. You can see which sound is selected on the nearby LED bar. Changing patterns is a piece of cake and I love how the Machinedrum handles that. By selecting a bank from A to H and pressing a number you can change the pattern on the next beat. Recording beats can be done in different ways. The original drum machine method is to select a sound and select when it should be played. The alternate method is live recording with quantize of course. It works like a charm. Effects are handled on the screen and it's easy to do some weird stuff with it. You can record the effect changes you made to your sound although it is hard to control them with a little knob. I love that the device responds immediately to everything. Sound . The Machinedrum sounds great. Superb quality kits can be achieved in a small amount of time (see video). Audio signals can be routed to any of the 6 outputs. A great thing to mess around is recording external audio and resample them. 2. 5 MB of sample memory however raises some questions. Why not include bigger memory or a CF card slot? Because of the lack of storage I'm refusing to call it a sampler. Resampling can be applied to the built in sounds as well opening a whole new world of sounds without limits. The sound is punchy, deep, delicate and very dynamic. Different kits will give you different styles from nu jazz to techno. Overall . The Machinedrum SPS-1 UW will cost you  $1790, shipping included. In the package Elektron's midi interface, a TM-1 is included. It might be a little too high for "just" a drum synthesizer. This device sounds great, it's easy to use and it's very compact. You can take it with you in your backpack and you can lay superb beats and patterns down in a minute. If you are looking for a sampler, I suggest you look somewhere else. However, to be honest the Machinedrum is the best drum machine out there. Period.

There's not exactly much more details than the headline on this one, but China's official Xinhua news agency is reporting that the country is delaying its plans that would require that the so-called "Green Dam Youth Escort" internet filtering software be installed on all PCs sold in China. That requirement was set to go into effect on Wednesday but, as we have seen, it's caused no shortage of controversy during the lead up -- both because of the general nature of the software, and because of some piracy and security issues that could leave PCs with the software vulnerable to an attack. No word on a new date just yet, but it seems unlikely that the delay will be an indefinite one. [Thanks, James]. Filed under: Desktops , Laptops . China delays plan for mandatory "Green Dam" internet filter originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments .

I'm no marketing wizard, but Guitar Hero Smash Hits could have been called Guitar Hero: Songs From The First Guitar Hero Games Before The Drums and Microphone Existed But Now You Can Play the Good Songs from Those Games on the Drums and Sing Too . Again, I'm no marketing wizard. And Guitar Hero Smash Hits isn't a bad game at all. It is what it is, though: a greatest hits game. If you've played all the Guitar Hero games before  World Tour and you're only interested in playing guitar, then you'll find little of value here. But if you liked all of the early songs and have always wished you could play the drumming and singing parts, then Smash Hits is worth a closer look. What's Inside? . Smash Hits features 48 songs from five earlier Guitar Hero games:  Guitar Hero ,  Guitar Hero II ,  Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s ,  Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and  Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. All the songs found on Smash Hits are the master tracks from the original bands, whereas some of them were professional recordings from studio bands in the earlier games. There's not a whole lot of difference other than that, though, except that you can now play the songs on the drums and you can sing using the microphone. Everything else is your standard Guitar Hero game: Career Mode with a loose storyline, multiplayer, or quick play, plus you can take advantage of the built-in GHTunes track editor now if you want to take a stab at making your own song. Why Not DLC? . Could all the tracks in the game have been made available as downloadable content and played on Guitar Hero: World Tour instead of inside of full retail packaging? Yes, absolutely. But Activision made an entire game out of it and you end up saving some money in the long run since you get 48 tracks for $60 — that's assuming you like all of the tracks, though. Who Would Like This Game? . This is a good game for people who loved the music from the first run of Guitar Hero games and want to be able to play the drum parts and/or sing the music parts. It's also a good game for someone looking to get into the whole Guitar Hero thing in the first place. I actually prefer the tracks in this game to the tracks in Guitar Hero World Tour. There's not as much fluff here — all the bands and songs are easily recognizable and more rock-ish, whereas Guitar Hero: World Tour contained a bit broader set list as far as genres are concerned. This one's got more pure rock and metal. Who Wouldn't Like This Game? . Anyone who just wants to play guitar and has already cruised through most or all of the Guitar Hero games before World Tour. You'd feel downright ripped off, as not a whole lot's changed on the guitar and bass end of things. However, you have access to all the songs without unlocking them first if you use the Quick Play mode and it's easier to progress in Career Mode because you just need a certain number of stars for new venues to open up — those stars can be attained through a pretty big selection of initial songs, so play your favorites to move ahead quickly. Finally, Guitar Hero Smash Hits doesn't feature downloadable content aside from fan-made GHTunes tracks. So if you own GHWT and you've downloaded new songs, you won't be able to play them in Smash Hits. That's a big omission, in my opinion. Activision could have potentially enticed a fair amount of early fans to pick up Smash Hits even though they've already played all the songs before had they been able to download new songs to the game. Conclusion . Guitar Hero Smash Hits is a standard Guitar Hero game through and through. There aren't a whole lot of surprises here but if it ain't broke, don't fix it (as they say). It takes the early music of the series and leverages some of the gameplay features from Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero Metallica to make for a solid game with an above-average setlist. If you like the series and you like the available songs, you won't be disappointed. I think it could have been priced at $40 or made available as downloadable content but at $60, it's still a good enough game to purchase if you're new to the series and want to get set up with a good track list or if you're a fan of the earlier games and want to play some of the earlier songs on drums or using the microphone. Complete Set List . Guitar Hero Smash Hits [Activision].

Earlier this month, Google attempted to make a shot across Microsoft's bow with an Apps Sync for Outlook . Unfortunately for them, it completely fizzled when Microsoft made clear that the plugin disabled key Outlook functionality. Google admitted as much at the time. But today, they've announced that the issues have been fixed . Windows Desktop Search now works, and users can control how the archiving operates. For those who continued to use the completely dysfunctional version, Google will save you from yourself by automatically updating to the current release . Sponsor . The Problem. The most serious problem with the Google Apps Sync was that it interfered with Windows Desktop Search, making all Outlook data (not just what was synchronized with Gmail) completely inaccessible to indexing and thus making your email a complete quagmire. The Fix. To fix this, Google says they "worked closely with Microsoft," to make sure both the Desktop Search and the standard Outlook search play nicely with the plugin. In what looks like an attempt to appease Microsoft more than anything else, they also have taken steps to make crystal clear where data is being stored, and making autoarchiving something users can control. In addition to the fix, Google threw a lifeline to those still stuck in 1996 with support for access to Windows Live Hotmail via the Outlook Connector plugin. Discuss .

This RainBrain smart shower controller from Hansgrohe seems like one of those things that you didn't think you needed, but once you try it you can never go back to what you had before. This thing controls music streamed wirelessly via Bluetooth, lighting in your shower and even (who'd have imagined) what kind of water is raining down on you. It even has a Scottish Shower mode, which I had to look up to find out that it meant alternating hot and cold water spray. [ Hansgrohe via Trendir via DVice ].