beam

The closer you can come to feeling like a real rock star in Guitar Hero or Rock Band the better, right? As long as you don't have to deal with the occasional drug overdose or huge bills from angry hotel managers, life is good. Now, two dudes on the Internets bring us slightly closer to living our fantasy.

YouTube user adderd019 posted a video of what is believed to be the world's first light beam gaming guitar. The guys took a gaming guitar, removed the strum bar, and replaced it with a single infrared beam, projected by a … Read more

Command your own fleet of nerds with this replica of the original Star Trek communicator, and guess what? It also happens to double as a VOIP phone, meaning you can use it to actually talk to another human being using Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, iChat, etc...

Bad news, though: unfortunately, the device does not have built-in Wi-Fi, so you must use USB for connectivity...worst. communicator. ever. Good news, though! Whoever designed this replica had the foresight (and the fear of vengeful Trekkies everywhere) to include buttons that play sound effects from the original series and a real mesh flip … Read more

If you're under 40, you might think TVs always had remotes. The early ones were called "clickers," "channel changers," or "selectors."

Sure, there were TV remotes as early as 1956, notably the Zenith Space Command, but remote-controlled TVs didn't really enter the mainstream until the 1970s.

It's true that there weren't many channels from which to choose at that time, but changing channels or volume without a remote was a matter of getting up from the sofa, walking over to the set, and turning big, clunky knobs on the TV.… Read more

Intuit has just launched a useful but limited little financial tracking utility for your mobile phone: Quicken Beam. You tell it about your financial accounts, like your bank and your credit card, and then it will alert you when balances reach a certain point. You can also send it a text message and it will message you back current balances or recent transactions. There's a mobile Web version for iPhones.

Beam has the benefit of being simple, but it is not deep. It will tell you about only your last five transactions in an account, and it doesn't … Read more

Orgoo, one of my favorite communication aggregation services, quietly launched a new video-chat service yesterday. It lets anyone create a text chat room with four spots for Web cam video and audio without any sort of registration or software besides Adobe's Flash plug-in. I gave it a spin earlier today and came away impressed.

Like the company's multiclient e-mail and chat mashup, which I checked out back in September, it's been designed with simplicity in mind and setup is about as easy as it gets. Users can privatize chat rooms simply by providing a password and can … Read more

Talk about versatility. On one hand, high-end flashlights and personal lasers can be used to blind, electrocute, and stun assailants, all before making breakfast.

But then there's a softer side, or so we're supposed to believe. That's why TechLasers is marketing its "Power Pair Valentine's Special Gift Pack," which includes "two Infiniti 125mW green laser pointers, one Infiniti 15mW green laser pointer, two LaserShades, and two cap sets," according to BornRich. As far as the romance meter goes, it ranks right up there "My Clocky Valentine."

This is the seventh in a series of posts from the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University. The previous installments looked at technology and software, process technology, multicore designs, IBM's Power6 efforts, Vernor Vinge's keynote address, and Nvidia. Other CNET coverage may be found here. This is sort of an experiment for me; I usually prefer to have time to review my work before I publish it. If you see anything wrong, please leave a comment!

This session has two presentations--one from SiBeam describing wireless HDTV transmission for home use, the other from Broadcom on new 802.11n Wi-Fi technology.

The SiBeam presentation is easily summarized: It describes a chipset that sends uncompressed HDTV video over… Read more

Crave has seen some bizarre health and fitness equipment, but this may deserve a category all its own. The Korean-made "Photo Sauna Cauterizer" (cauterizer?) emits a laser with a "low level of radiation" for what its manufacturer claims are a variety of health benefits. An understandably skeptical Red Ferret says the claims involve "some kind of oxygen rejuvenation." Call us chicken, but anything that mentions cauterization and radiation in the same sentence isn't something we want strapped anywhere near our waistlines, or anyplace else on our bodies.

With so many distractions on the road these days--inside the car, as well as out--how is a person supposed to notice the flashing lights on the radar detector? Rocky Mountain Radar has found an answer to the sensory-inundated driving experience with the "C-450 Laser Detector."

Not only does it detect and scramble radar guns and beams, but Gadgetizer says the C-450 also issues a voice alert when police vehicles are within range. Does it help promote road safety? Of course not. But neither do cell phones and DVD players.