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Lovable dino-bot, Pleo, was on the endangered list when owner of the intellectual property, Ugobe, went bankrupt. The company and consumers were about to lose the baby Dinosaur to the lonely streets until Jetta Company Limited saw those baby blues and took him in. Jetta plans to re-launch the robotic baby dino, Pleo, with all accessories still intact. It seems like a match made in heaven.

[via Engadget]

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Host Kyle Monson has guest gamers Dan Evans and Whitney Reynolds talking about E3 and, well, gaming. Other host, Brian Heater, joins the crew in spirit and interviews while covering the Entertainment Expo in L.A.

The crew covers recently released game, Sims 3, and speculates if Last Guardian (from makers of Shadow of the Colossus) will be a hot title.

Brian takes us to the show floor where he discusses booth babes with Jordan Morris and how they've changed over the years. He also takes us to an exclusive interview with pro gamer, Fatal1ty.

Tune in by going to the PC Mag After Hours site or download the show off iTunes.

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Metal-Detecting-SandalsIt's a shame I didn't have these unusual sandals with me at the beach over the weekend. I might  have found some spare change!

Hammacher Schlemmer today added to its catalog The Metal Detecting Sandals ($59.95), wearable metal detectors that let you find buried treasure with your feet. The Metal Detecting Sandals, according to a press release, have a "copper coil built into the right sandal--powered by a battery pack that straps to your calf by an elastic band." The sandals use what's called "beat frequency oscillation technology" in order to create a magnetic field. The 9V battery pack  then alerts the wearer of metal up to 2 feet underfoot via flashing red LED lights and either a vibration or an audible buzz.

Providing up to 6 hours of use on a single charge, the sandals have PVC uppers, non-skid soles, and polyurethane foam footbeds; they are available in two unisex sizes.

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I took the Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810T (6415), recently reviewed by our laptop expert Cisco Cheng, for a spin and found it to be an affordable, ultra-thin laptop that can handle most tasks the average user could throw at it.

On the outside, the AS3810T is an attractive gray color with an aluminum-and-plastic frame. It may not be as tough as a MacBook Pro (I've accidentally dropped mine off of any type of furniture you could imagine, and it still manages to work fine), but for its $900 price tag, the system is built very well.

The only thing really missing from the machine is an optical drive, sacrificed for the sake of portability. For most users, however, this is far from being a deal-breaker, especially considering the built-in multifunction card reader and three USB ports.

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When in doubt, take a picture? NASA's Spirit rover has taken photographs of its underside in order to help engineers figure out the best way to free the stuck rover, according to Space.com. The rover is currently buried up to its hubcaps, with the problem being that if someone gives it the wrong command--such as flooring it, which admittedly did work once before--the rover could end up even more stuck.

To get a better look, Spirit took images of its belly on June 2nd (Sol 1925). Scientists utilized the rover's microscopic imager instrument, which is mounted on the end of her robotic arm, according to the report. Project scientists tested out the operation using the other rover, Opportunity, which is currently exploring the opposite side of the red planet. (If it looks a little blurry, that's because the camera was designed to focus on targets only a few centimeters away.)

The next step is for scientists to figure out whether a small mound, showing in some of the photos, is in fact touching the rover--and whether it is a rock or more of the same soft soil, according to Steve Squyres, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover Project. The report said that a rock would mean more risk for any emergency maneuvers. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)
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Western Digital has always played favorites with the Mac with its My Book Studio Edition II line of external hard drives, and the new release of the 4-terabyte model continues the trend.

Apple has positioned the Macintosh line as a premium PC, and the Studio Edition II is also a premium external storage solution: the whopping 4 terabytes of storage capacity (across two drives)  is matched by an equally hefty $649.99 price tag. Users can purchase the drive either through a retailer or through WD's site.

Both the MyBook Studio Edition and Studio Edition II ship with a FireWire 800/400 connection that Apple has endorsed, as well as eSATA and USB 2.0 connector.

The new Studio Edition II is user serviceable, meaning that users can swap new drives in and out. One catch: only WD's GreenPower drives are supported, as the case does not use a fan. RAID 0 functionality is supported for all of the drives; the drives can also be mirrored in a RAID 1 configuration. A capacity gauge is also included so that users can see how much available space has been used.

The My Book Studio Edition II can also be used with Windows PCs, although users will have to suffer through the lengthy format times that Mac users must deal with while using drives that have been preformatted for Windows machines.

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I'd like to thank everyone for this Webby award for Best Technology Deals Column Aimed at Frugal Geeks. It was an awesome night. Great partying with you, Trent.

1. Giant flat screens aren't just for the TV room. You'll find you're more productive when you've got this Samsung 2243SWX 21.5-inch screen on your desktop. It delivers a 1920x1080pixel resolution, a 15,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, and a 5ms response time. It even has a handsome design, with a piano black bezel and a soft, rounded design. Buy.com will deliver it to you for $169.99, with free shipping. Now that's a big screen bargain.

2. There are huge deals to be found on music players that don't have the word "iPod" on the box. For example, Amazon is selling the SanDisk Sansa m250 for $32.95. It's an attractively compact 2GB player for people who prefer something on the smaller side.

3. Label your world with the Brother PT-9500PC. It connects to your Windows or Macintosh computer so that you can print labels right from your screen. OnSale.com has it for $186.99, which includes a $50 instant rebate.
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iLuv-iCC77.jpgThe iPhone 3G S was announced just yesterday, and already one company has produced a line of accessories for it. iLuv today announced its iPhone 3G S accessories, including cases, a windshield mount kit, and an armband.

The iCC77 Flexi Clear Thermoplastic Polyurethane Case is a lightweight, flexible case for the iPhone 3G S that's both tear- and damage-resistant. It will come in four color choices (pink, blue, clear, or black) and will be on sale for $24.99 in mid-June.

Other protective cases include the iCC705 Graphic Silicone Case ($24.99, July), iCC79 Hard Case with Stand ($29.99, available now), iCC74 Clear Crystal Hard Case ($24.99, available now), and the iCC75 Holster with Stand and Cover ($34.99, available now).

Road warriors will find a use for iLuv's iCC781 Windshield Mount Kit with Power Combo Pack. Since the new iPhone is now capable of turn-by-turn directions, this kit will come in handy for mounting the iPhone to your dashboard, so you can view the screen easily . The kit also features a car charger for powering the iPhone. Look for it in July for $34.99.

Health nuts can take their iPhone 3G S along with them on runs and to the gym, thanks to iLuv's iCC212 Armband for iPhone 3GS. You can purchase it now for $34.99.
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During yesterday's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple didn't make much mention of AT&T;, the iPhone's sole carrier in the US. Was it a sign of bad blood between the two companies? Perhaps. An even more likely possibility is the fact that carrier has little plan to implement some of the newly announced features for the iPhone 3.0 software.

Apparently AT&T; won't support the long-awaited addition of MMS upon the iPhone 3GS's launch. Boy Genius Report explains the situation thusly,

[T]he reason it's not good to go right away is because AT&T; has to manually remove all the "Opt Out MMS codes" on each account. Basically, if we were to summarize this, and we're going out a little bit of a limb, remove the Opt Out MMS code, and MMS will work with the final OS 3.0 build right away. Who wants to try it with the GM 3.0 build just released?

Also expected to be crippled at launch is the ability to tether a PC to the phone, though the company is reportedly working on a $70/month data plan that includes tether--but not SMS or MMS.

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SD card array.JPGSomewhat lost in the many WWDC announcements made Monday was an interesting point: at Apple, at least, the SD card format has won.

Most of the new MacBooks have replaced an ExpessCard slot with an SD card slot, which was designed as a slot to bring in photos from digital cameras. (Given that the iPhone lacks a memory card slot, I think it's fair to say that the SD slot serves way to bring content in to the MacBook, rather than send it out.)

Why do the new MacBooks have an SD card slot, instread of a five-in-one card reader, like other notebooks and desktops? Because "SD is really ubiquitous," Todd Benjamin, director of portables for Apple, said during an interview on Monday at Apple's developer conference in San Francisco.

Consider all of the various small-form-factor card formats there are, or were: CompactFlash, the various Memory Stick flavors, SmartMedia, miniSD, microSD, xD.

It's not clear whether the new MacBook card slot supports the SDHC format, as well as SD. If it doesn't, it surely will in the next revision, with a roadmap toward the terabyte SDXC standard. As you can see, there certainly are quite enough different dorm factors within the  SD format alone. It's also unlikely that the smaller SD form factors will go away as the external storage formats for cell phones.

Still, Apple essentially killled off the floppy; it's probably time that it helped consolidate the industry on a single flash card format for desktops, as well.


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Let's be honest--even with a product-packed keynote like the one that Philip Schiller gave today during the opening of the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the hardcore Apple fanboys and girls among us were hoping for that perennial favorite, the "one more thing moment," preferably in the form of a newly re-energized Steven P. Jobs.

Jobs, of course, isn't expected to return to the helm of the company until later this month, and while Schiller didn't offer a literal "one more thing," he did manage to sneak one into the proceedings with slightly less fanfare. In amongst the seemingly endless list of iPhone apps and features, after introducing the $199 16GB iPhone 3GS and the $299 32GB version of the same handset, he added, relatively unceremoniously that the 8GB version of the old iPhone 3G was sticking around.

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iPhone 3G S, compared.JPGFrom a chip standpoint, this is one of the key questions of the iPhone 3G S launch. And one which Apple doesn't seem too inclined to answer, at least at the moment.

Which processor is in the iPhone 3G S? Odds are that it's an ARM chip, as the Samsung ARM 11 was the chip used by the previous iPhone 3G. But the real question is whether or not it's a chip from the PA Semi team that Apple acquired for $278 million in 2008.

The issue is the instruction set. Apple's iPhone OS is written for the ARM architecture, will be available for the iPhone 3G and the new 3G S; if Apple planned to move to a new processor architecture, the iPhone OS 3.0 would not straddle both phones. So we can assume that the 3G S is an ARM phone.

Unfortunately, Apple wasn't talking. I interviewed Bob Borchers, senior director of iPhone  worldwide product marketing, who declined to comment on the chip's speeds, architecture, which company designed it, or even if it was an ARM architecture. "Within the mobile space we're mainly talking about what you can do with it," Borchers said.

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Gefen, the signal switcher and converter gizmo company, has announced the GefenTV Digital Audio Decoder, which remixes 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround audio for stereo (L/R) outputs. That means the unit lets any movie or television program broadcasting in 5.1 Dolby digital audio to be decoded, and output on an existing pair of analog speakers.

The idea is to give two-channel stereo systems the ability to convey some of the same surround sound information as a proper 5.1 system, but without the artificialness (I assume) that usually accompanies "surround" enhancement circuitry.

The Digital Audio Decoder comes with S/PDIF and TOSlink inputs; users can switch between them using a selector on the Decoder, in order to connect, say, a set-top box and a computer simultaneously. Meanwhile, the built-in digital to analog converter includes a digital interpolation filter and support for up to 6 channels of audio encoded in Dolby Digital. The GefenTV Digital Audio Decoder costs $129.00 and is available now.
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Apple today kicked off its annual World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco with a keynote presented by the company's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, Philip Schiller. The company used the occasion to announce refreshes across various product lines, including the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, OS X, Safari--and most hotly anticipated, the iPhone.

Schiller kicked off his address by welcoming the 5,200 or so developers from 54 countries who had descended on San Francisco's Moscone West for the week long software-focused event. After highlighting the upward trending Mac OS X, Schiller quickly changed gears to announce the release of a handful of refreshed MacBook laptops.

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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has rebooted its main computer and entered a protective safe mode, Space.com reports--possibly after a hit by a solar particle or cosmic ray. The glitch may be similar to the one that the orbiter encountered in February, which had put a hold on NASA's science work at the time.

"The flight team is cautiously bringing the orbiter back to normal operations," orbiter project manager Jim Erickson at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "We should be resuming our exploration of Mars by next week."

The report said that the orbiter is continuing to beam back data and otherwise appears fine. This is the sixth time the orbiter has entered safe mode since its launch from Earth in 2005. Last month, NASA began to employ a different orbiter, Odyssey, to help "unstick" the stuck Spirit Mars rover on the surface of the red planet.
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