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The iPad is great for reading books, playing games and browsing but it seems to be lacking somewhat when it comes to video. Sure, you can rent from iTunes and buy a few movies but transferring movies you already own is cumbersome since you need to convert them to a compatible format and sync it to you device before you watch it. After all, if netbooks can let me just copy over my videos, why can’t the iPad?

Enter OPlayer HD. This iPad app lets you transfer videos and play them back on your iDevice without any need for conversion. It’s accessible via a web interface, through USB (via iTunes) and can also easily connect to your FTP and Samba drives. This means you can connect directly to your media center or computer to transfer files right on the iPad.

As for playback, I would have wanted some audio boosting capability bundled in. Overall though, all the videos I’ve played on it have worked flawlessly. It even supports music playback and can view Mail attachments. If you’re a video junkie with an iPad, I highly recommend this slick, easy solution to watch your collections on the go.

Penguin United, a company established by gamers, has announced a new peripheral shooter addicts will surely want. The Eagle Eye lets you connect a USB keyboard and mouse direct into your console, giving you that PC first-person shooting experience the PlayStation 3 has been sorely lacking. Reviews of the device during the recent E3 gaming event praise the accuracy and speedy response of the commands. You can also program functions of one-button combos. Setup takes less than a minute and you’re off blasting away at enemy soldier, zombies and what not. While all this might give you an unfair advantage over opponents, I’m sure the $60 (€48) peripheral will at least assuage that guilt by letting you own each of your gaming rivals.

via Engadget

We’ve heard ISPs offering anything from keychains to MacBooks in order to get subscribers hooked. German internet provider 1&1 will be manufacturing a tablet PC running Android that has all the basic specs we’ve come to know and love from slates of this sort. The 7-inch touchscreen SmartPad will have WiFi, an optional USB 3G modem, an SD card reader with 2GB plugged in, USB port, 500 MHz ARM11 procie, 256BM RAM and 1GB ROM. The company is the second biggest ISP in Germany and will likely bundle this with a 2-year contract and likely 3G coverage will be locked to them. No word if you can get this sans contract but if this proves popular, other ISP will probably jump to offering their own tablets just like what they did for netbooks. It’s expected to be available by the end of this month.

via SlashGear

New Xbox hit town recently, and Engadget has the low-down on the console. The Xbox 360 now has a glossy black case, housing a proprietary 250GB drive. It’s thinner but deeper than its predecessors and also comes with WiFi-N built-in. It also has more USB ports (five to be exact) and comes with a wireless controller. The best thing about it would likely be that it is compatible with Kinect, the grown-up version of the Wii’s motion sensing technology. All in all, it’s just a slight upgrade from the previous model so if you already own one, you probably won’t be interested in this new device just yet. It goes for about €240 ($299) at your favorite gaming retailer.

via Engadget

The Parker Brothers Choppers in Florida are selling off three working Lightcycle replicas like the ones in the upcoming movie TRON Legacy. If you’ve been dreaming of having your own Lightcycle ever since the first TRON and have the cash for it, better act quickly since there are only three of these babies left.

Each bike will set you back around €27,900 ($35,000) and each unit is custom-built and unique. Even the color is one-of-a-kind since they won’t make a bike the same color as ones already sold. To top it off, these are real, working motorcycles and not just something to sit on and pose for a photo-op.

I doubt buyers will be using these for their daily grocery run but the maker says they are built for street use. Each bike features hubless wheels, neon accents, a fiberglass body and either an electric or gas motor. Check out the link below for more info.

via Parker Brothers Choppers’ TRON Lightcycle eBay auction

Toshiba shared one of their prototype Libretto W100 dualscreen laptops with Engadget and their resident portable reviewer Joanna Stern had a go at it. The Japanese tech company is planning to release the device next month through retailers including Amazon. Some of the highlights are the tandem operation of the two screens that maximizes the device despite being on top of a Windows 7 OS. You can configure it into many modes including a laptop mode that puts the keyboard on one screen, and a mode that splits the keyboard onto the bottom half of the two screens. There’s even a touchpad mode to help out if you need to. It does need a bit of work on the heat dissipation and the responsiveness of the accelerometer.

You would think that two touchscreen would be twice the fun, right? After all, the iPad was excellent and it only has one screen. Well, you better look at the price first since the Libretto will clock in at roughly €880 ($1,100), way too much for an unproven piece of tech. Maybe if Toshiba adds some excellent software to the mix that takes advantage of the dual screen but even then, the price point need to drop a bit for people to get interested.

via Engadget

Crunchgear’s Matt Burns gave a quick hands-on with the new Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3TB. I’m pretty sure prolific downloaders as well as media professionals will be eyeing this new desktop drive though I concur with the reviewer that many will probably want their media in more than one drive. But 3000 GB really is impressive. Some takeaways are that Seagate gets negative marks on not bundling USB 3.0 and Firewire adapters with the device (you have to buy it separately) and it seems to have no eSATA as well. On the plus side, it’s quiet and solid with an external casing that’s easily removable for people who want to pry out the drive and stick into their desktop. This looks like the best solution if you want the most disk space in a single drive though personally, I’d rather slice up my storage needs into separate hard disks, just in case.

via CrunchGear

Cisco certainly has big plans in the pipeline and will be moving more and more into the consumer space in the next few months. One of the snippets taken from a recent interview at the recent Cisco Live! event at Las Vegas with Marthin De Beer, Senior Vice President of Emerging Technologies at the network solutions giant, was that their mobile video camera Flip will soon have WiFi baked in before the end of the year. De Beer also hinted that they might just put in some FaceTime integration in there as well. FaceTime is Apple’s new video chat technology that is available on the recently released iPhone 4. The company will also be introducing an app for iPhone that will leverage their new video technology based on Movi. No word on pricing and availability on that app as of yet, though.

via ComputerWorld

The new iteration of Tesla’s electric sports car recently made its début, just a couple of days after the successful IPO of the company. The Roadster 2.5 is an upgrade of its 2.0 model and those lucky enough to have the previous model can purchase upgrades wherever possible. You can get the new model starting at €81,175 ($101,500).

Aside from the new look which you can see in the image below, the 2.5 also has directional forged wheels, a touchscreen display with back-up camera (optional), better seats that offer lumbar support and improved comfort, a quieter cabin and power control hardware.

Tesla introduced its electric super car last 2008 and reinvented the way vehicles were manufactured by infusing Silicon Valley tech, engineering and practices into their automobile production. The company boasts having the best battery technology for electric cars in the world and has over 1,200 cars sold, located in more than 23 countries.

via Tesla

Jaybird follows up their SB1 bluetooth headset with a splash of color with the SB2 line. The new wireless headgear sports nine colors you can match to your candy-colored MP3 player, from PowderPuff Pink to Sonic Blue. Besides the colors, it also has some updated tech and uses apt-X to improve your audio’s depth, treble and bass plus it can even give you CD quality sounds with an apt-X enabled adapter. Of course it not only handles music well, it also can be used to answer calls and control the playback of your music. It’s selling for €79 ($99) plus shipping at Jaybird’s online store as well as at select retailers like eXpansys and Amazon.

via Jaybird

UK mobile phone operator has announced that it will remove unlimited data from all of its smartphone plans, this include the new Apple iPhone 4. From the 24th of June 2010, when O2 starts selling the iPhone 4 it will introduce additional monthly charges for all new customers and existing customers who upgrade to the iPhone 4 and other new smartphone users.

An example of this is that a customer who is paying £35 a month on a two year contract will get 500MB of free data per month, if they go over this allowance, O2 will charge them an extra £5 for every 500MB of data they used.

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When Apple [AAPL] announced the iPhone 4 yesterday, the three major networks in the UK announced that they would be carrying the iPhone in the UK, O2, Orange and Vodafone.

Now UK mobile phone operator T-Mobile has also announced that they will be selling the iPhone 4 in the UK, this is great news for UK iPhone 4 customers and is bound to bring more competitive deals between the four networks.

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Apple’s [AAPL] CEO Steve Jobs has announced the next generation iPhone, the iPhone 4 at his keynote speech at this years World Wide Developer Conference.

The new iPhone 4 features the same design that we have been seeing for the last month, a complete new design over the iPhone 3GS, and the new iPhone 4 is 24% thinner than the 3GS measuring just 9.3mm thick.

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Apple’s iPad goes on sale in the UK tomorrow, there will be two models for sale a WiFi model and a WiFi +3G model. If you are looking to buy the 3G model you will need to get yourself a micro SIM card with a data plan from one of the providers in the UK, but which one is the best deal?

Four of the UK’s mobile phone operators are offering the micro SIM cards, and all of them have different tariffs available with different levels of data, so we though we would put together a chart comparing the deals on offer.

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Check out this innovative way to recycle bicycle inner tubes. The ElasticShelf designed by SystemDesignStudio uses tension created
in the tubes when they are stretched between two fixed metal bars on the wall. This tension is then used to keep your objects in place and no the shelf.

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