Optimus Mini Keyboard
The Optimus 3 Key Mini Keyboard uses programmable OLED screens as buttons.
Origianlly, the Optimus Keyboard was going to be made into a full fledged, completely customable keyboard– however, this 3 Key Mini Keyboard is the child of that endeavor. There are 6 possible presets for the three keys.
The Keys are 20 mm x 20 mm with 96 x 96 pixels each, and animation at 3 frames per second. The keys can be configures to start an application, show free memory and CPU usage, display a web cam, display time and weather, or control IE, Windows Media, and Word. The Optimus 3 Key Mini Keyboard will become available in September from ThinkGeek, and will cost $160.
Nokia 6230i Mouse
A Nokia user hacked his phone, and converted into a mouse.
The Nokia mouse has bluetooth, selectable buttons (also called soft buttons) on the phone as mouse keys, and uses existing Nokia Sync software to transfer data. Pyrofer wrote the java code and windows driver that would enable him to use his Nokia 6230i as a mouse. Pyrofer said: “Recently I saw an article on a USB Optical mouse that had been modded to include a Nokia Colour LCD Screen. This got me thinking, The screen was quite usefull but why go to all the effort of modding a mouse, why not use the whole Nokia?” To read more, and watch a video, go to Pyrofer’s Projects.
Dell Battery Recall
I shoud have seen it coming: a Dell Battery Recall. After many Dell laptops have been recently exploding, Dell finally recalls batteries on Dell Latitude, Inspiron, XPS and Dell Precision Mobile Workstation notebooks. How many batteries? Oh, just 4.1 million batteries, making this “the largest safety recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry.”
Potentially affected batteries were sold with the following models of Dell notebook computers or separately as secondary batteries:
- Latitude: D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620, D800, D810
- Inspiron: 500M, 510M, 600M, 700M, 710M, 6000, 6400, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 9400, E1505, E1705
- Precision: M20, M60, M70, M90
- XPS: XPS, XPS Gen2, XPS M170, XPS M1710
The affected batteries were shipped between April 1 2004 and July 18 2006. The funny thing is that it was really Sony who manufactured the defective batteries for Dell, not Dell, yet Dell is taking full responsibility for the recall.
Learn how to check if your Dell battery is affected at Dell’s Official Battery Recall Site.
Pharrell’s New HP Ad
Sony Vaio’s UX50 “Ultraportable”
Sony is releasing a new vaio unto the world, the UX50, an ultraportable notebook.
It’s sleek design and adorable 4.5 inch SVGA LCD screen make it the uber ultraportable companion. Other features of the Vaio UX50 include a 1.2 ghz processor, 512 MB RAM, 30 GB internal storage, and Windows XP. The UX50 starts at $1800.
