This is a special edition of the Arc Mouse that Hong Kong design store Goods of Desire turned it into a work of art. Very nice. We’d like to see more mice make dramatic statements like these.

Just don’t lose these in your china cabinet.

[Gizmodo]

This is a special edition of the Arc Mouse that Hong Kong design store Goods of Desire turned it into a work of art. Very nice. We’d like to see more mice make dramatic statements like these.

Just don’t lose these in your china cabinet.

[Gizmodo]

Google has released its official Gmail gadget for its Google Desktop product line, offering users the choice to run a gamut of various Gmail accounts as standalone gadgets simultaneously. This tool will introduce a bunch of useful Gmail features including keyboard shortcuts, mail, and contact search, and the indispensable option to award your messages with a star. Not only that, users are able to compose emails in small pop-out windows that does away with the need to launch a browser. This is a Windows-only application at this point in time and will require Google Desktop version 5 or higher to run, so Mac and Linux users are out of luck at this point in time.

Permalink: Gmail Gadget Now Official from Ubergizmo (US, FR) | Good deals | Hot: Storm Review

The photo on the right uses exactly 10,000 application icons to compose the image of an iPhone. Pretty neat, and it's in 4,674-by-7,011-pixel resolution on Flickr, so the few of you with wide-format printers can print a poster to show off your iPhone pride (or print a bunch of these and sell them on eBay).

Tap Tap Tap developers John Casasanta and Phill Ryu designed the poster. MacRumors and AppShopper provided the icons.

Apple's App Store exceed 10,000 applications last week -- a significant achievement, seeing as the store launched in July with about 500 apps available. 148Apps, a site that reviews and tracks new iPhone apps, announced the number and made a tribute page displaying miniature icons of each of the 10,215 apps available. 

Photo: TapTapTap/Flickr (Thanks, Phill!)

• Electric Sports Bra Razor – The Panasonic Vortex Nano wet/dry shaver (ES8228S) is on sale at Amazon for $76, shipped — about $30 off. [Slickdeals]

• Science! Kits! – All the science-themed kits at HobbyTron are on sale with at least a 5% discount. The vacuum tube Radio Ace kit for $88 looks neato. (Brilliantine not included.) [HobbyTron]

• Netbook – Ace Aspire One 8.9-inch netbook for $265, shipped. Basic, but cheap! [Dealnews]

• Barebones PC – The new MSI Wind Atom-powered Mini PC for $135, shipped. What an age we live in. [Dealnews]

• eBook Reader – Ectaco Jetbook eBook Reader for $180, shipped. That's about $120 off. [Dealnews]

• DSLR Body – Canon EOS Rebel XSi 12.2-megapixel digital SLR body (no lens) for $450. [Dealnews]

• GPS – TomTom ONE XL widescreen GPS with Bluetooth for $100, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Digital Picture Frame – Basic 5.6-inch LCD picture frame from Philips for $30, shipped. [Dealnews]

• PC Toolkit – Bag O' Tools from Rosewill for $10, shipped. I've got most of this stuff and I'm about to order another. [Dealnews]

• Phil Spector MP3s – The '60s Mark Ronson, Phil Spector, produced "A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector" features The Ronettes and more. It's on Amazon MP3 for $2 today. [Dealnews]

• Planet Earth – The only reason to own a Blu-ray player is on sale for $34, shipped. This is the Weaver version, not the Attenborough one. [Dealnews]

• Halo rifle – Halo 3 Covenant Plasma Rifle toy for $60, shipped. With real pew-pewing action. [Dealnews]

• Webcam + Mic – Today's Woot is a two-pack of Philips Plug and Play USB Webcam with Microphone for $18, shipped.

While this may look like I just copy-and-pasted the majority of the current deal sites, this really only skims the cream off all the good deals out there right now. There are a bunch of totally healthy deals happening. It seems to me that Amazon and Newegg are doing especially strong discounts.

By Evan Ackerman

Electronics used to be just a bunch of humming beige boxes with blinking green lights. We’ve made a lot of progress in the last decade or so, and now electronics are mostly humming black boxes with blinking blue lights. This vase router take a refreshing approach, forming a wireless router into a sort of nuclear power plant shape with space for a flower in the top. If it’s got space for water in there, I imagine you could fill it with soil and actually get something to grow, and the radiation from the router will undoubtedly cause all kinds of exciting and potentially horrific mutations. Like exploding petunias. Kaboom!

Or, you could just set a vase on top of your existing router and try to grow something in that. Your call.

VIA [ Dezeen ]

In our ongoing quest to make a cheap, modular camera bag, we discovered something: Putting a camera into our single-chamber Stealth Bag works great, but as soon as you add a lens or two, things start to get ugly. Why? The internal padding doesn't separate the different parts of your kit, so although they are well protected from the outside world, they are free to bang up against each other inside the bag.

The traditional solution is a bunch of separate compartments, but that's not very flexible, and the partitions are often confined to a single bag. We decided instead to make individual cosies for the lenses so they could be slung, safely, into any old backpack or suitcase. Best of all, if you already made the Stealth Bag, you won't have to buy anything -- it's all done with leftovers.

For this project, we're using the same foam we used for the bag lining. It's thin, slightly squishy and offers a fair amount of protection. It's not a real replacement for a commercial, waterproof case, but for our uses, it turns out to be more than adequate.

Step One: Assemble Your Weapons

This time, I went with scissors instead of a craft knife. Even relatively blunt kitchen scissors go through the foam easily and give a much cleaner cut. You can probably identify the rest of the kit in the photo, including the accompanying listening -- This Week in Stocks and Shares (formerly This Week in Tech).

Here we have the first strip, eyeballed to be the height of the lens plus the thickness of two pieces of foam (the top and bottom caps). Next, measure the length. If in doubt, go long. You'll see why in a second.

I wrapped the lens and marked a rough guide with a pencil. The v1 case, made over the weekend, was a little too tight, so I wanted this one to be big enough to slide the lens in and out easily. Here it is with a few strips of tape (gaffer, of course):

As you can see, I screwed up the measurement, but another thin foam shim takes care of the gap. It doesn't matter too much as this will be covered in tape. Next, the ends. By chance, the holes in each end are the same size as the inside of the roll of tape. I marked the foam using the roll as a template and cut with scissors. It's a little easier if you cut out a rough square first before refining the circle:

That one fit perfectly, so I immediately cut another. The bottom lid only needs to be taped in place as it will remain closed. I crossed the strips and finessed the creases as best I could:

It's not particularly tidy, but it'll do the job. For further dust and splash-proofing, you could cover the remaining gaps with more tape.

The top lid needs some kind of hinge and something to hold it shut. Gaffer tape works fine here, but a piece of self-adhesive Velcro would probably be better for the "clasp". I chose nothing to actually close the lid tight -- friction does a good enough job for now, and there isn't any Velcro in the apartment.

I also ran an extra strip of tape down the inside seam of the cylinder to prevent gaping and strengthen the join:

The original version had a strip of gaffer tape running around the middle of the cylinder, but it tightened the case and didn't make anything much more secure than a strip on each side of the seam, as we did here.

So, here's the final case, offering its warm, motherly protection to a Nikon 28-105 ƒ3.5-4.5 AF-D lens. It looks so cosy!

Try it out. And if you do, post any tips back here. You can also add to this article on the Wired How-To Wiki, and post photos of your home-made goodies on the Gadget Lab Flickr Group (where, incidentally, there are some excellent scanner-cam photos from member McGiffert).

See Also:

• Make It: Stealth Camera Bag
• How To Make a Scanner Camera
• How to Turn a Desktop Scanner Into a Camera

One of the things I enjoy most about being part of the Gear Diary team and whatsoniphone.com is the opportunity to get to know some the developers creating apps for the iPhone. Over-all I have found them to be a really interesting, nice and creative bunch. Best of all, as I have discovered more than once, many are committed to constantly improving their apps and are surprisingly receptive to end-user input. This is certainly the case with the game Cronk.

… [visit site to read more]

Inside the D3X, one will find that the heart of the D3X is its FX-format, 24.5-megapixel (6048 x 4032) CMOS sensor that offers extreme resolution, dynamic range, color depth, detail and sharpness that will satisfy even the most demanding clients. It can be used to create catalogs, magazine covers, billboards or gallery prints without too much hassle, where its large 5.49-micron pixel size and high signal to noise ratio is able to churn out vibrant images with breathtaking image fidelity while keeping lost highlights and shadows to a minimum, resulting in smoother tone reproduction with minimized noise. You are able to capture up to five frames-per-second (fps) in 14-bit file format, which translates to approximately 138MB per image. Better bust the bank account to purchase a bunch of memory cards for use with the D3X as you’ll run out of them pretty fast.

The D3X currently works fine with Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (CLS) that offers photographers a mobile lighting solution which is easy to manage. In addition, you can hook it up to Nikon’s GP-1 GPS receiver to gather information such as latitude, longitude, altitude and date of shooting for those who love archiving stuff. When tethered via USB, you are able to send images to a computer directly. The Nikon D3X will be out this month, retailing for a whopping $7,999.95.

Press Release

Good OS has just introduced its Cloud operating system at the Netbook World Summit in Paris which is running on a new Gigabyte touchscreen netbook. This operating system will rely on a web browser as its main interface, featuring an overall look and feel that resembles SplashTop in many ways. Cloud will feature an integrated dock that offers a bunch of essential tools (for today anyways) such as Skype, YouTube and the entire Google family of applications. You have the choice of installing Cloud as a dual-boot partition on your hard drive or SSD or onto a flash chip hardwired onto a motherboard if that's your cup of tea.

Permalink: Good OS Debuts Cloud from Ubergizmo (US, FR) | Good deals | Hot: Storm Review