Gearfuse

It seems like only yesterday I was using my 350 MHz HP desktop. It was the creme of the crop at the time and ran the original Half-Life like a champ. Combined with my 3DFX Voodoo 3 graphics card, I was set. Fast forward to the end of 2008 and Asus is unveiling a PDA phone with an 800 MHz Marvell CPU. You’ll also secure a 2.8-inch touchscreen, HSDPA 3G with GPRS/EDGE/GSM, 802.11b/g WiFi and a three-megapixel camera.

Come to think of it, this blows almost every non-Apple PC I’ve ever owned. I suppose Dylan was right when he said “the times are a changin’.”

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Apparently, NXT STEP blog reader DTAAX’s watch must have broke, which would explain why he designed this LEGO sundial. This DIY finds a new way to tell time the old way. It was built using the LEGO NTX platform (plus a PDA for trigonometric functions) using a slew of light and touch sensors, allowing the sundial to perform like any other sundial save that it’s powered by three motors.

After the LEGO set rotates for some time, Bluetooth communications are sent out which detail the exact magnetic point in which the maximum level of light had been seen. It is accurate within fifteen minutes of actual time, so don’t go using it for your next dentist appointment despite it having a better track record than traditional sundials. Unfortunately, it will not fit in your LEGO backpack like a normal watch or clock would.

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Messing with LEGOs is good times, even if you’re 53. That’s why some geek in Germany turned a few 2×2 transparent bricks (of a variety of colors) into high speed Bluetooth adapters. On sale in limited quantity, these bricks are priced at about $50 before shipping and handling. They’ll give you that “I’m an 8-year-old!” look and at the same time, sync your expensive top-of-the-line wireless gadgets together. While there are better ways to call attention to yourself, the LEGO Bluetooth Mini Dongle is ultimately more useful than the alternatives.
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What would you do if you were to lose your moleskin notebook or PDA as you scrambled around from errand to errand, desperately trying to finish all of your plans? You’d be totally clueless to what you had left to accomplish. The To-Do Tattoo literally adds a to-do list to the palm of your hand. Your very own “palm” pilot.

The set of tats comes complete with 12 rub-on tattoos, so you don’t actually need to get a real tattoo on your hand, of course, unless you want to. Hell, if the system works well for you, you might want to make it a little more permanent. — Andrew Dobrow

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One thing that has always turned us off about PDA’s is the inaccurate control the touch screens actually grant you. They hand you a stylus and send you on your way, but they neglect to tell you that the touch control does more messing up than it does controlling.

Some researchers for Microsoft over in Redmond are working on a system called Shift, which will enable users to use their fingers as a mouse to control their PDAs. This technology is similar to what the iPhone might have or will have in the future. Maybe we’ll see it in a Zune phone eventually. One thing’s for sure, Apple seems to be the company to follow in terms of innovation, and Microsoft is doing exactly that. — Andrew Dobrow

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Sure, NES was the introduction to video games for most children of the early 90’s (born in the mid-late 80’s), but what about those of you born in the late 70’s and early 80’s? True, many of you would likely answer Atari or some equally low-bit system, though a nice chunk of you probably remember playing the old C64, the Commodore 64 computers. What use to be only available in a larger then life box has now been minimized to the size of a Gameboy Advanced. The forum in which it was found in describes it as a Commodore PDA, which is actually a pretty cool idea. And being built with a relatively minimal amount of supplies makes it even cooler. You know the thing is small when a can of Mountain Dew looks imposing. — Andrew Dobrow

Petscii Forums [via MAKE]

Motorola has just released its PDA cellphone, the MOTO ROKR E6. Unfortunately, it’s only available in China, hopefully we’ll see it here sometime soon. This baby looks pretty sweet with its 2.4” 262k color touchscreen TFT display and its reasonable thickness of 14.5mm. The laser blue accented navigation outline still impresses. The E6 also has a 2 megapixel digital camera on the back of it, and it boasts an amazing 8x digital zoom (which you know not to pay attention to). Following in true ROKR fashion, it is an MP3 player and has FM integration. Luckily, it doesn’t try to integrate iTunes anywhere; we know how that went. The E6 falls short in terms of built-in memory, only 8MB, so don’t forget to grab an extra spacious SD card when you buy this. The MOTO ROKR E6 will show up in India sometime in Q2 next year.

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