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We Crave the Wii laptop

Today I welcome Ryan Block, managing editor of Engadget! He shows us the Wii laptop, one of the best gaming mods I've ever seen. Then, of course, I dazzle him with yet another disco product (are there ever enough?), the Funk Fone. And you'll be dazzled blind by the Diamond Flower, a $24,000 mouse studded with, naturally, diamonds. Last but certainly not least is the Ergopod 500--a great contraption for people who need computer access while they're bedridden, but also a possible earthquake hazard. See you next week!

Roomba, meet the Wiimote

Already bored with playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on your new Wii? You might try using using the console's already legendary remote to control a household robot.

One person who did just that is a young man named Chris Hughes, who hacked the Roomba vacuum cleaner so that he could make the rugbot do his bidding. And he's posted the modified source code online so that you can do the same.

Hughes, who bears a strong resemblance to Matt Damon, offers a quick intro to the Wii-Roomba hack in a YouTube video that can be found … Read more

Xbox 360 to PC: The $200 HD-DVD drive

Two Franklins might seem like a lot for an ordinary optical drive, but when that drive is a blue diode-using, next-generation disc reader, then a $200 price tag is a bargain. Most HD-DVD drives currently cost at least $400, but the enterprising nerds at tech site UNEASYsilence figured out how to get the $200 Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive to work with a PC. It was originally intended just to work with the Xbox 360, but a hacked device driver means the USB drive can read HD-DVDs for any PC. Granted, there isn't much HD-DVD material out on the shelves … Read more