By Chris Scott Barr

The ketchup packet is one of those things that has stayed exactly the same since before I was born. After all, it fulfills the duty that is required of it. It holds your condiment until such a time that you’re ready to add it to your food. Well at some point Heinz decided that they could do superior, and undertook the task of reinventing the ketchup packet. The end result was essentially a cross between the old packet, and the little plastic containers that you get BBQ sauce in at McDonald’s.

It does seem to make perfect sense. When you grab a burger and fries through the drive-thru, where do you put the ketchup that you’re going to dip your fries in? Maybe on a napkin, or even the wrapper for your burger. Either way, you’re increasing the danger of somehow getting it on your clothes. Now you can tear off the whole top and dip your fries in, or just tear off a part of it and squeeze the ketchup onto your sandwich.  So simple, yet so brilliant.

[ Heinz ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

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By Chris Scott Barr

Everyone that owns an iPhone is looking for a way to make their battery stretch a tiny bit longer. Sure, my 3GS lasts longer than the previous models, but after a long day of solid use I still find myself doing anything I can to conserve what tiny battery life it has left. There are a lot of solutions out there, but one can never have too many choices. Scosche has a new one that’ll recharge your iPhone twice over.

The solBAT II is a backup battery that can be charged either via USB or using solar power. It features both a suction mount for soaking up solar rays through a window and a carabineer mount if you want to attach it to a backpack. The battery has a 1500mA capacity and a 5V output, so it’ll charge your phone at the same rate as a standard wall outlet (or your PC).

If you’re constantly running low on battery life for your iPhone (or any other device that charges via USB) and you’re into the “green” scene, then this is worth checking out. It’s only going to set you back $29.99 and is on sale now.

[ Scosche ]

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Logitech Squeezebox Touch delayed, again originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T certainly made a few of us happy yesterday when it announced that the iPhone SlingPlayer app would now be granted to run over its 3G network, but the carrier apparently embellished the facts a tiny when it stated Sling had optimized the app to be “more bandwidth sensitive” — Sling’s John Santoro told Ars Technica that it “didn’t change anything,” and that “AT&T never discussed specific stipulations with us.” So much for that happy narrative — we thought AT&T’s line sounded odd, given that SlingPlayer has always run just fine on AT&T Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and S60 devices. It’s cool, though, Sling isn’t sweating it: “Whatever the reason, we’re just glad AT&T has approved it.” Now it’s just up to Apple to let it through the App Store — any day now, guys.

Update: Sling just called us to clarify the above statements — while it didn’t make any specific changes to iPhone SlingPlayer, its engineers did work with AT&T to make sure the app didn’t interfere with other customers and clog up the network. Sling says that once AT&T was involved in the testing process and “saw how the app worked,” things went smoothly, and that the app was “refined” to meet AT&T network requirements — refinements we were told would come to other platforms over time. Sounds good to us, even though we’re still wondering why this wasn’t the party line in the first place.

Sling says it didn’t change iPhone SlingPlayer for AT&T (Updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We can’t state we were overwhelmed by the first leaked photos of what we’ve come to know as the Nokia Mystic, but there’s something about this QWERTY candybar form factor that Nokia just does so well that we’ve to hang onto the benefit of the doubt. The latest news on this front is that the handset will be dubbed the Nokia C6, which makes a lot of sense as a counterpart to the numeric keypad-equipped but similarly styled Nokia C5 that was recently leaked. Word is that the C6 should retail for around 200 Euro (about $274 US), and that it should be released in May or June. It seems logical that we’ll see both of these S60 3rd edition phones at MWC this month, but there’s nothing solid on that front just yet.

Nokia’s mid-tier ‘Mystic’ to be dubbed C6, will hit stores in May or June? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Andrew Liszewski

Looking like a cross between a Sidekick, a PSP Go and a portable DVD player, the JXD V3 doesn’t seem like it’s made up its mind when it comes to what it’s good at, so I guess it’s just decided to be a jack of all trades… master of some? The 4.3 inch TFT LCD display has a resolution of 480

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By Andrew Liszewski

In past articles I’ve already made my frightening Nostradamus-like prediction that Hello Kitty will eventually take over the world. But that doesn’t mean the human race has to go quietly, and ironically this Hello Kitty themed chainsaw will be the perfect tool as we battle for our freedom from the forces of cute and pink.

[ Hello Kitty Hell - Hello Kitty Chainsaw ] VIA [ Albotas ]

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Bandwidth scarcity, is there any more pressing global issue that we’re faced with this day? We think not. Given the exponential growth in both computing power and software’s exploitation and expectation of greater resources, it’s no surprise that at some point we’ll have to look beyond easy electrical currents as the transporters of our data. One bold step taken in that direction has been the demonstration of an operational germanium-on-silicon laser by researchers at MIT. By tweaking the electron count in germanium atoms with the help of some added phosphorous, they’ve been able to coax them into a photon-emitting state of being — something nobody thought possible with indirect bandgap semiconductors. Perhaps the ideal part of this is that germanium can be integrated relatively easily into current manufacturing processes, meaning that light-based internal communication within our personal is now at least a tiny bit closer to becoming a reality.

Germanium lasers offer ray of hope for optical computing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Andrew Liszewski

I reviewed AAXA Technologies’ P1 Pico Projector last year, and while I was mostly satisfied with its abilities, the prospect of having to constantly re-focus a handheld projector was a huge downside. But that’s no longer an issue with the company’s latest model, the L1, since it uses a three color laser light source that apparently projects an image that’s always in focus, even on a curved surface.

With 20 lumens of brightness the PCOS laser technology is able to project an 800

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What’s cooler than the latest in technology? How about the latest in self-powering technology? University of Pennsylvania researchers have put together what seems like the world’s first photovoltaic circuit, which is to say that the electronic parts of your devices will no longer have to just consume energy, they’ll be able to harvest it directly from the sun. The most obvious application for this would be in smartphone touchscreens, which could recharge themselves while you sip your latte at the local sun-drenched coffee shop. Of course, such practical uses are still a fair distance away, as the team can generate only minuscule amounts of power at present, but the theory is in place and so is our attention. Don’t let us down, Penn!

Photovoltaic circuit makes solar-powered touchscreens possible, not yet plausible originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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