Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

If you live in Japan and you don’t have Vista yet, why not pick up this Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Live OneCare bundle that is packaged in a hot pink box decorated with cherry blossoms, which are called sakura in Japan. The Live OneCare subscription is good for one year, and the box also includes a Vista tips and tricks book. It makes sense that this is for Vista Home Premium as I can’t imagine Vista Business being in a pink box! This is sure to be a collector’s item, as this special edition is limited to only 2500 copies. So whoever buys this better not throw that box away. Yes, the pink color and the petals are girly, but that goes along with the Japanese cuteness concept.

Via [i started something]

• Datel suing Microsoft over lockout of unauthorized memory cards
• Japanese Import: Cave’s Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5 makes its debut
• DSi LL had a better debut in Japan than the PSPgo

Allow me to introduce you to DAVE, the laptop table from IKEA. The 2008 IKEA print catalog shows DAVE in a teenager’s room and only shows white as a color option, but really it is suitable for all ages and also comes in black. I recommend getting the black though since the white could start to look dingy over time with heavy use. 

DAVE currently retails for $24.99, which is already a great price for a laptop desk, but DAVE also has good design going for him it. It’s height-adjustable, and the tabletop’s triangular shape will allow it to easily fit into a corner, which could be a perfect storage spot when he it is not in use. The tabletop also has a hole in back for cords to go through, and is spacious enough to fit a laptop, mousepad, as well as other small accessories.

OK, so this being a table from IKEA it doesn’t exactly feel the sturdiest, but hey, for only $24.99 you can expect perfection, its also better than burning your lap. Currently owning one I can say it works fine for me!

Via [geeksugar]

• Datel suing Microsoft over lockout of unauthorized memory cards
• Japanese Import: Cave’s Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5 makes its debut
• DSi LL had a better debut in Japan than the PSPgo

So maybe we can’t all be a programming director at a radio station, but anyone can compile an online mixtape. Two new websites that let you do this are Muxtape and Mixwit. 

At Muxtape, you can upload up to 12 songs, but you can have no more than one song from any album and you can have only one mixtape per user. Mixwit is a bit fancier in that you can upload your own pictures to use as a skin for your tape in addition to the styles on the site. Both Muxtape and Mixwit join the existing iTape MP3 player type on MyFlashFetish, which lets you add up to 100 songs.

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Ian Usher, a 44-year old resident of Perth, Australia who’s originally from Darlington, England, is doing a big spring cleaning. For one week on eBay starting on June 22, he will auction off every part of his current life, from his house and all of its contents, even going as far as introducing the winner to his friends and to his job where he works for a rug importer. Although he loves his life in Perth and has the support of his employer and friends, everything sadly reminds him of his five-year marriage that broke up a year ago. After the auction, Usher wants to start all over in life with nothing but his wallet and his passport in his pockets, and do some traveling.

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Chicago-based electronic medical records provider Allscripts is merging with British company Misys PLC to create a firm that will manage data for a combined 150,000 practicing doctors in the U.S., around a third of the nation’s total. Last year, Allscripts and Dell Computers partnered to bring electronic prescribing to doctors for free. Now the new entity (which will keep the name Allscripts) plans to collaborate with Google, who are introducing their own service called Google Health, and with Microsoft.

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The NME is reporting that Guy Garvey of Elbow is against the practice of downloading only certain songs off an album in iTunes instead of downloading the whole album. 

Accodring to Garvey, it’s not about the money;

“I’d rather people went ripped the whole thing for free than got the individual tracks for 79p each, you know what I mean, there’s no point in doing what we do (otherwise).”

Garvey feels that the practice is killing the idea of the album as an art form. That’s why he wants iTunes to let artists be able to lock their albums. Currently iTunes and other music download stores allow for certain tracks to be available only with purchase of the full album, but iTunes (or more specifically Apple) doesn’t allow for artists to allow only album sales.

The two comments to the article both agree with Garvey, and so do I. Downloading individual tracks is great for EPs where you just want the B-sides. But for full-length albums, if you like the artist enough, just buy the whole album, if only for the economies of scale aspect of it. Maybe bands could release just radio edits of singles, so that if fans want the original versions of the songs, then they have to buy the album.

Read [NME.com]

• Datel suing Microsoft over lockout of unauthorized memory cards
• Japanese Import: Cave’s Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5 makes its debut
• DSi LL had a better debut in Japan than the PSPgo

The Charlatans (here in the U.S. they would be called The Charlatans UK) have pulled a Radiohead and are initially making their latest album available to download for free! But unlike Radiohead, where fans had to decide how much they were willing to pay, the Charlatans’ offer comes with no such strings attached. There’s no guilt trip whatsoever! All right, there might be a bit of one when the Charlatans have the CD release of their album, which is their 10th and is called You Cross My Path, in a couple of months. You see, I downloaded the album and burned the songs to CD, so I already have my CD.

Maybe the Charlatans are hoping that fans won’t be burning the downloaded songs to CD and would still want to have the liner notes enough to buy the CD when it comes out. I guess since the Charlatans have been around for a while like Radiohead, they can afford to risk a hit to the pocketbook. OK, so here are the details. On the Xfm site you can download the whole album as a .zip file, or you can download the songs individually. The songs are MP3 files, so that’s thoughtful of the Charlatans in that they could still have had the songs be free but in a format that would not be compatible for everyone.  Anyway, thank you Charlatans and Xfm for your generosity!

Read [Xfm] Read [Tech.Blorge]

• Datel suing Microsoft over lockout of unauthorized memory cards
• Japanese Import: Cave’s Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5 makes its debut
• DSi LL had a better debut in Japan than the PSPgo

Recently during a Washington think tank, The Urban Institute discussed the phenomenon that as the number of iPods sold has increased, so has the rate of violent crime. The discussion seems to focus on iPods of course, but electronics in general are also mentioned. Some arguments for a connection between iPods and violent crime are that iPods are very coveted, iPod owners are easy to spot and are not always alert to their surroundings, which makes it’s harder for the thieves to get caught. Also, the Urban Institute points out that robberies by young people have increased more than for adults.  But there are arguments against a connection as well, for example there was also an increase in crime before the introduction of iPods. So the only thing you can really say is that, just like you learned in school, “Correlation does not imply causation.”

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Did you know that doing a web search can also help find a cure for breast cancer? One site powered by Google is the new Search The Cure started by JDMedia. On this site 75% of the revenue generated goes towards fighting breast cancer, and you’ll be able to see on the site how much in donations has been made. Another site also powered by Google is Find It Girlfriend, which has links throughout to The Breast Cancer Site, on which just a click will help fund mammograms for the poor. Find It Girlfriend is designed specifically for girls with its bright pink background, so if you have more than one computer in your house, you could have Find It Girlfriend be the homepage on the chick’s computer and Search The Cure be the homepage on the dude’s computer.

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Personally I wouldn’t wear unisex Crocs, to me they just look too much like a clown shoe, but I wouldn’t mind it if my cell phone could wear them as cell phone holder. As you can see in the photo, it looks exactly like a miniature Croc shoe, down to the heel strap.  It looks like you can put the heel strap in front of your phone when it’s in the holder, and then swing down the strap when you want to take out your phone. Plus, as with the Croc shoes, you can customize it with the Jibbitz charms of your choice. Can you imagine, if the heel strap were the kind that you could also put Jibbitz in, and your cell phone had a charm dangling from it too, now that literally would be too charming!

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