Gearfuse

Good news! Walmart isn’t just for hicks and drug addicts anymore! Now gamers can actually get excited about their parents dragging them to everyone’s favorite discount retailer. 77 stores in the Northeast US have received these nifty trade-in kiosks. You trade in your games and the value is put on your credit card a few days later. I wonder if the prices are competitive enough to go against Gamestop. If anyone can shake the market up a little, its Walmart.

Have you used one of these? What was it like? Let us know.

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GameStop, with its icy grip on the retail video game industry, has a new competitor coming up the pipelines. No, Funcoland isn’t making a comeback but rather Best Buy is trying out a trial program that lets customers trade in used video games for store credit. As Brian Crecente of Kotaku points out, this is a fantastic time to be in the used video game industry. No kid or adult has $60 to plop down on a next-gen game nowadays, save for Killzone 2.

I think this is a great move for Best Buy. It’ll force GameStop to become more competitive and will lower prices on used titles even further. Let’s see how Best Buy plays this out…

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I’m not talking about Phantom here, I’m talking about the web browser, Opera. Apple has beef with the competition and in turn has decided to keep Opera off the App Store. Says ZDNet:

Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Apple is trying to gain market share with it’s web browser Safari. Hopefully we’ll see some alternatives in the future, but for now, you’re shit out of luck.

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The lovely folk at T-Mobile just sent us our Android-equipped Google G1 phone for review. After the jump, all the pics you could ever want, including a sampling of the supposedly three-megapixel camera it has.
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Everyone has dreamed of traveling to space at one time or another. The problem is, no one wants to spend a fortune forcing themselves into a marriage just so they can get into space. So the finest Japanese minds are collectively collaborating the construction of an elevator into space. This vision has spurred the inspiration of many scientists around the world as well as government organizations such as NASA.

Now, several separate projects have launched and it has become a competition to see who can make the best carriages and tether for the lift. Could it really be possible to build an elevator whose “top floor” is outside of the Earth’s atmosphere? Scientists seem to think so. Until I see results, I’ll remain in the lobby: planet Earth.

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In respect to 150 years of watch crafting, Timex, in collaboration with Core77, held a global design competition called 2154: the future of time design. OK Timex, you win this one. No one is going to compete watch designs with 150 years of watch experience.

One runner up of the competition, the TX54 concept, is a disposable clock and calender that can be worn on the user’s thumbnail. No one wants an obtrusive monster of a watch around their wrist when they can have a translucent nail clock that makes seeing in the dark as easy as pressing down on the end of your thumbnail. Look, it’s 4:20. You know what that means.

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As part of the Scandinavian Furniture Fair, Kenneth Lylover entered his Surf Chair into the Internet Collection competition. It won “Best Product” and it’s easy to see why. This semi-circle-shaped chair comes with a built-in LCD on the front and a padded frame to allow for the most comfortable Internet browsing experience possible.

With a mouse and keyboard included, the only reason you’ll ever need to leave your inner circle is for chips and Mountain Dew. Using the bathroom? Ha! That’s for wimps. I shit my pants at least four times during a round of Snood.

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