How to Turn an Old Hard Drive into a Wall Clock

Posted by Kristin Wenzel Categories: Smart Home, Mods / Hacks,

This is a cool mod to try out if you have an old hard drive laying around that doesn’t work anymore.  Turn it into a fancy piece of wall art!  Here are all the directions you need to recycle your dead drive into something slightly more useful - more useful, that is, than a dead hard drive, not more useful than having a drive that functions. Give it a try, this one looks awesome.

Read More |  Alan Parekh

Blu-Ray May Deal Out “Punishment” to Hackers

Posted by Alex Grahmann Categories: Corporate News, Home Entertainment, Mods / Hacks,

According to Reuters, hackers or modders that tinker with their Blu-ray players may be subject to their devices being remotely disabled.  The feature, operated through a required connection between the player and the internet, could monitor the device and shut it down if any changes are made to hardware or internal firmware.  While this may not affect the mainstream user, having an outside entity attempting to control and monitor yet another component of home entertainment is sure to cause waves in the tech-savvy community, especially for those used to tampering with regional coding in their current DVD players.  In the battle against HD-DVD for format legitimacy, the mention of this feature will certainly put a damper on Blu-ray.

Read More | Reuters

Capcom Offers Limited Edition Resident Evil 4 Collector’s Pack

Posted by Alex Grahmann Categories: Accessories, Action, PlayStation 2,

For anyone falling into the category of “extremely obsessed” when it comes to the PS2 version of Resident Evil 4, Capcom is now offering a special Collector’s Pack by way of their official homepage.  The pack costs a measly $120 and includes the PS2 game, a 6-CD set of game music called the “Biohazard Sound Chronicle Best Track Box,” a 7” Leon figure, and a Resident Evil 4 t-shirt.  Only 100 of these Collector’s packs will be available.  The ironic twist in all of this is, of course, that if you’re obsessed enough to buy the Collector’s Pack, you probably own the game already, making its addition in this bundle somewhat redundant.  Well, at least the Leon figure will be good company for the equally-useless bookends and statuettes you got with the Lord of Rings movies.

Read More | Capcom

Yahoo! Small Business Domains for $1.99

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories:

Through the end of the day on September 2, Yahoo! Small Business will be selling .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and .us domain names for the very cheap price of $1.99. Now, looking at the fine print, it appears that the number of domains Yahoo! is willing to part with for that small sum of money is just one. You must also be new customer, possibly never having purchased a domain from Yahoo! Still though, it’s a nice price to pick up your next domain at.

• The most popular domain name extensions
  (.com, ,net, .org, .biz, .info, .us)
• 24-hour toll-free customer support
• Domain name registration terms from 1-5 years
• Easy-to-use control panel with DNS management
• Domain forwarding so you can point to an existing site
• Email forwarding to a free Yahoo! email address
• Bonus starter web page to post online until you are ready for a web site
• Domain locking helps prevent unauthorized transfers
• Private Domain Registration helps protect you from spam by blocking your contact information from the public WHOIS database (+$9.00, at sign-up)

Click to continue reading Yahoo! Small Business Domains for $1.99

Apple iMac and Mighty Mouse Are Upsetting Me

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: PC / Laptop, Peripherals,

What the heck, yo? I picked up a Mac mini and a PowerBook over the past few months, and both worked so well that I decided to drop $2,000 on a new iMac G5 to use as my main work computer. Not even a couple of weeks out of the box, and it is already giving me strife. Hooked up to it is my Mighty Mouse, which when connected to the PowerBook, worked flawlessly. Now I use it with the iMac, and the cursor jumps to the corners of the screen at random, even if I am in the middle of clicking or dragging something. I just finished running all sorts of utilities to get the iMac back into the stable world, as all programs just stopped functioning - and the Finder couldn’t be restarted. So I repaired permissions, and repaired the volume, and finally the iMac is back up to snuff…I think. The annoying-as-hell Mighty Mouse problem still remains. I have tried using the thing with two different mousepads, as well as without one. Still, no dice. If I could get this mouse working correctly, that would so solve a bunch of my troubles.

Anyone out there with a similar Mighty Mouse experience?

EDIT: Wow - it looks like the culprit of the iMac crash was the BlogAds.com order page. Everything works fine until I go there. In fact, right after I wrote the original post, I went there again, and as soon as I did, my monitor went a bit dim, and OS X told me that I needed to hold down my power button to reboot in about five different languages. Come on, Henry, let’s get that fixed. In other news, my mouse is still acting ridiculously stupid.

Logitech Harmony 890 Universal Remote with RF Capabilities

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, Home Entertainment, Internet, Peripherals,

Even more from Logitech, and this one is pretty sweet. Basically, the company took the Harmony 880, made it silver, and added RF capabilities. This means that it has that nice 880-styled color screen, rechargeable lithium ion battery, and backlit keys.

Logitech´s Harmony 890 Remote Control uses both radio frequency (RF) and infrared (IR) wireless signals to deliver complete control of your home-entertainment system that may be hidden behind cabinets or in separate rooms. With a wireless range of up to 100 feet, the Harmony 890 remote sends RF commands to a base station, which then blasts infrared signals to any components in that zone. With the Harmony 890 remote, you can create a system that involves multiple remotes and/or base stations to deliver control of all the entertainment zones throughout the home.

This one is not too shabby, although at $399 USD, the only place we might see these in action is on MTV Cribs.

Read More | Logitech Harmony 890 Product Page

Logitech Harmony 520 Universal Remote, For the Cheapies

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, Home Entertainment, Smart Home, Peripherals,

I love Logitech Harmony remote controls. I have yet to use a remote that is more intuitive, easy to set up, and recognized as many devices at the Harmony line. That being the case, I am looking forward to getting my hands on the 520 to see what kind of product they are putting out there at the $99 USD price range. It is a great option for those with just a few devices that they need to control, although the oddly-shaped housing does leave a bit to be desired. Hey, for $99 you still get the signature Harmony internet setup wizard via USB, which makes this thing cake. Look for it to hit stores by the end of the month. Jump down for the full press release.

Read More | Logitech Harmony 520 Product Page

Click to continue reading Logitech Harmony 520 Universal Remote, For the Cheapies

Nintendogs Strategy Guide, Including Secret Items and Dogs

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Nintendo DS, Simulation,

So I have been messing with Nintendogs since it launched, and it really is an impressive title. There is a lot on the surface, but there is even more if you dig a bit deeper into the game. I particularly love it when Apple (my Golden Retriever) happily finds me a present and brings it to me. If you are tired of walking your dog and putting it through competitions on to see it fail time and time again, check out the 1Up Nintendogs strategy guide. Within, you will find advanced tricks along with ways to unlock more dogs in your game. Unfortunately, still nothing on the whole “I don’t want to scoop poop” cheat code. Deal with it.

Read More | Nintendogs Strategy Guide

The Final Cut: A Closer Look At Underclassman, The Transporter 2

Posted by Devin Categories: Features, Movies,

This week, The Final Cut takes a closer look at two of Friday’ releases- Underclassman, with Nick Cannon; and The Transporter 2, with Jason Statham.  Also in theaters this weekend are The Constant Gardener with Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, A Sound of Thunder with Edward Burns and Ben Kingsley, and in limited release, Margaret Cho: Assassin- the comedienne’s fourth concert movie.  As always, if you’ve had the opportunity to see one of this weeks’ releases feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts on it.  You can catch The Final Cut’s recommendations after the jump…

Click to continue reading The Final Cut: A Closer Look At Underclassman, The Transporter 2

Chad Dyner, Inventor of Heliodisplay Interviewed

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Misc. Tech, Peripherals,

The Heliodisplay is an awesome interactive tactile 3D display that projects images in midair that one can “touch”, causing the objects to react. OhGizmo secured an interview with the inventor of this technology, Chad Dyner.

Okay, so let’s turn to the technology. You say it will accept any video source, be it DVD, TV or computer. So, how exactly does the unit interact with a computer?

It’s essentially plug and play. Now, I realised early on that if we were to bring into the world a disruptive technology such as this one, we were going to have to take incremental steps. You have to understand first of all, that the infrastructure in the world right now is built for two dimensional data. So then, as soon as you say you have a display for two dimensional data, then you get different protocols for displaying this data: NTSC, PAL, VGA on the computer and different types of video signals that can be received into our system.

Read on for the entire interview.

Read More | OhGizmo!