Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Our sister site Gamertell has spotted an interesting freebie at Target retail stores. The chain is putting out a Speed Racer-themed gift card that comes with a 60+ MB USB 2.0 Flash drive built right in. It is one of those gift cards you fill with money to give to someone else, so it’s essentially free if you happen to forget to fill it before you take it home. (*wink*)

The Flash drive is preloaded with 50 MB of promotional files including the usual wallpapers, printable coupons, movie files and a videogame cheat code for the upcoming release of May 6, 2008, release of Speed Racer: The Videogame. You can, of course, keep or delete the files as you wish and simple have a nifty fat credit card sized Flash drive with a Speed Racer skin.

Read [Gamertell]

Nokia has finally launched its N-Gage gaming service with high hopes of revitalizing the ailing mobile gaming market. (And possibly earn a few more bucks?) Although an official announcement will be made on Monday, the N-Gage blog took one step in advance and informed the loyal N-Gage followers who were testing the product during its beta stage, that the N-Gage platform is already opened.

The N-Gage is fully compatible with Nokia’s top mobile phone series – the N95, N81 and N82. With Nokia striking a deal with major cellphone game developers such as Electronic Arts, Gameloft and Glo Mobile they should prove to be successful. Nokia hopes to have around 25-30 games available by mid-2008 and add another 25-30 during the second half of the year.

Can the N-Gage re-ignite the dying flames of mobile phone gaming? That remains to be seen.

Read [N-Gage] Via [I4U]

Product: Ultra m998 ATX mid-tower PC case
Price: $199.99
Rating: 8/10
Pros: A lot of room to work, very sturdy construction, finished interior and incorporated power plugs.
Cons: Unclear instruction manual and a few crucial difficult-to-reach screws and non-existent “tabs.”
Overall: Great for anyone looking to piece together a rig from scratch and load it up with drives and extra cards.

Click through and read the full review on Gamertell.com.

Its never a nice post when its related to someone passing away, but sometimes its nice to celebrate a little bit of what that person may have accomplished. In this instance the “father of the role-playing game” Gary Gygax who was the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons has passed away.

For some of the younger readers around here, D&D was originally founded 1974 and is the game that started the role-playing phenomenon, it was also one of the best selling games of all time. Its sad to see someone like this pass away, it is being reported that he had been suffering for several years from various health issues and passed away in the comfort of his own home.

A sad day indeed, I will admit D&D was a huge source of entertainment when I was younger, well that and another role-playing game called Star Frontiers. Yes, I was always a geek at heart.

Via [Boing Boing] Via [Wikipedia]

Phil Harrison, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios will be leaving his current position as of February 29, 2008. The news comes via an announcement from Sony, however no details were given as to why he is stepping down, there is speculation that he has become a victim of the not so stellar PlayStation 3 sales. Kazuo Hirai, who is the president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment International will step up and assume his role.

Via [Crave]

Toshiba has introduced the latest and the meanest version of its flagship gaming notebook series. The Satellite X205-SLi has a cogent Penryn at its heart backed by NVIDIA’s SLI graphics, which will combine to give you the crispiest gaming experience imaginable.

The X205-SLi’s processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 (45 nm) that clocks 2.1 GHz with a 3 Mb L2 cache. Besides the processor, the NVIDIA SLI graphics - with not one but two Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphic processing units - will make life a whole lot of fun for the professional ilk of gamers by rendering true-to-life graphics. The SLI graphics will give you brisk frame rates even at higher resolutions.

Read [Gamertell]

Imagine if your TV was strong enough to withstand any Wii-mote strikes, you could then indulge in your favorite Wii games wholeheartedly without worrying about accidentally damaging your expensive TV. Panasonic has unveiled a new line of Wii-proof plasma TVs at its HD Networking Conference in Valencia, Spain.

Panasonic claims that the plasmas can resist up to 4 joules of energy, which is enough to protect it from a flying Wii-mote unless it is purposely thrown with great force…

Read [Gamertell]

Product: WattSmart 850W EPS12V 2.91 Power Supply
Price: $204.99 (retail)
Rating: 9/10
Pros: Easy to install, dual cooling fans, many long and well-protected cables and promises to be more environmentally friendly by using less power.
Cons: A little pricey and the dual fans can cause a little extra case vibration. Long and thicker cables might be hard for large-handed modders with small cases to handle.
Overall: A good buy for an environmentally-conscious gamer building a rig who also needs a couple hundred extra watts.

Click through to Gamertell for the full review...

Much like cartoons, most gadgets and videogames are really not meant for kids. Let your toddler play Grand Theft Auto for a while or mess with your iPod and you’ll probably not be too happy with the results.

As a safer and more education alternative, LeapFrog Enterprises has been selling the Leaspter educational gaming system for about four years in retail stores across the US. This Summer (2008), LeapFrog will update the Leapster with web connectivity and also release a new handheld, web-enabled system called Didj.

The web element for both systems will be LeapFrog’s upcoming Learning Path where parents will be able to log in to track their children’s progress in each educational area.

Read [Gamertell]

Glucoboy aims to bring fun and entertainment in the usually boring and scary world of blood glucose monitoring. This innovative, stand-alone blood glucose meter is integrated with Nintendo Game Boy Advance System and Nintendo DS to ensure daily blood sugar testing.

By creating diversion in the form of video games, this accurate meter can help improve patient compliance not only for kids but also to adults who have problems dealing with this activity. To reward diligence and consistency, test results are converted to Glucose Reward Points (GRPs) that kids can use to unlock games or earn rewards in an online gaming community.

Each Glucoboy contains 2 full length video games and a mini arcade. It is currently available in Australia for $260. The company is already working to make this self-diagnostic device available worldwide.

Product [Glucoboy] Via [OhGizmo]