If you can’t sleep at night thinking about the environmental damage caused by your need to have a new cell phone every six months, you’ll be glad to know that eco-friendly cell phones made of corn flour are about to be launched in Korea by Samsung Electronics. The Samsung SCH-W510 has a battery cover and other parts made of bio-plastic constructed from corn starch and other environmentally friendly materials. The W-510 is the first of its kind from Samsung, and, according to PCWorld, the handset contains no heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium). Apparently, the high price of oil is partially responsible for this renewed interest in using plastics made of corn in manufacturing.

Via Telecoms Korea, by way of textually.org.

Source: gadgetsnews.info

You may not get excited by mice, but I have quite a collection of the cute critters. There’s the Logitech multi-media zoomer, my pink Kensington travel model, the Wow-Pen ergonomic version, not to mention the drawer full of reject mice that weren’t up to my exacting standards.

The SlimBlade Presented Mouse by Kensington is my newest pet. It combines a full-function laser mouse and presenter in one sleek device, and is still small enough to fit in your pocket.

Bluetooth connection; switch to go to presentation mode; goes to sleep when your notebook does; ultra-thin design for traveling – what’s not to love? $59.99 at Kensington.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Source: gadgetsnews.info

Each year our block in the South Bay has a wild (but very well-organized ) July 4th Block party. We do it up right – get a permit to close down the street, rent a double slip n’ slide, run pop-ups and tables down the middle of the street, set up cooking in “BBQ alley” (Brad’s driveway), referee a volleyball and basketball tourney, and string up pinatas. In the evening, the neighborhood band plays and we all dance – munchkins and seniors alike. And all the while I’m serving up my “famous” margaritas.

What’s so fabulous about them? It’s not the homemade mix, fresh limes, or margarita salt. It’s the Herradura tequila, a secret among tequila aficionados. Located and produced in the heart of Mexico’s tequila region, in the tiny town of Amatitan, Jalisco, Tequila Herradura is 100% blue agave tequila carefully crafted using traditional methods, such as cooking the agave in clay ovens and fermenting naturally with wild yeast. They’re one of the few producers to grow their own blue agave, which takes up to 10 years to mature. Like a fine wine, they’re aged in oak for different lengths of time. For example, the Herradura A?ejo Herradura Gold (Reposado) ferments for 2 years, and my favorite, the Herradura Silver, for only 40 months, and none of their tequilas contain carmel (for coloring), sugar or additives.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Source: gadgetsnews.info

One of the reasons I don’t watch much MySpaceTV is its horrible, horrible video player. When you have a slider bar, forward and back buttons are pointless. Why waste space with volume controls when you can just slide them out?

The whole thing just stinks of offline video thinking. Good to see they’ve finally done something about it.

Recall that NBC CEO Jeff Zucker admits Hulu, the sucky NBC/Fox video site, copied a lot of stuff from YouTube. Looks like Fox’s MySpaceTV just did the same with their player.

Source: gadgetsnews.info

At a startup dinner in Palo Alto the other night, YouTube founder Chad Hurley told the story of YouTube. Grab some popcorn, kids, because this is thrilling stuff.

YouTube’s been around three years. TV’s been around fifty years. The former is well ahead of schedule to kick the latter’s ass.

Tags: Chad Hurley, YouTube

Source: gadgetsnews.info

I’ve written before about both my love of good (preferably large) watches and my nostalgia for cassette tapes, and here’s a design that brings them both together with a dash of style.

It’s available for ??35.00 (around $69) from Asos, who for some strange reason have it in the men’s section of their website… Hey Asos, girls can be geeks too, y’know!

Source: gadgetsnews.info

Here’s an interesting website I just uncovered that might alleviate some of the $4/gallon gas pains everyone is having.

It’s called PickupPal and it connects drivers with passengers and packages. I’ve seen sites for carpooling and ride-sharing before but this is a bit of a new twist.

PickupPal’s core service is providing a venue for either passengers or packages to find or be matched to a driver—typically already travelling in a certain direction or destination—for a small commission. This intelligent matching is performed via our own proprietary set of software algorithms that dynamically and in real time compare routing, frequency, locational, and driver/passenger preferences against a pool of registered users.

This kind of service may have really come in handy for me a couple of years ago when I sold an antique silver chest on eBay and ended up driving it to Norfolk, VA myself because I didn’t quite trust any other shippers.

Would you use a service like this? What other similar services have you seen to compare it to out there?

Source: gadgetsnews.info