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Although no records were broken, this year’s Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships went off successfully, with one 38 year old engineer and former potato thrower called Tommi Huotari causing a buzz for throwing a cell only meters short of the recently attained 95 meter record setting throw: “surprisingly, a potato flies further,” he said. Tommi should know better than to compare a cellphone to a spud. For a fair comparison, he should at least try flinging a bar of Chocolate.

[Via textually]

We’re not really sure how a company like Dell hasn’t been able to track down anyone with some laptop coloring chops to fulfill its backlog of XPS M1330 and Inspiron orders, but whatever their reason might be for not figuring things out by now, Dell is pinning colored Inspiron delays on that exact same paint job problem they detailed for the M1330. As has been the case from the start, your best shot at getting a laptop in a timely manner from the big D is to completely disregard those ads of theirs and order a boring old black or white model — individuality is overrated anyways.

[via Engadget]

Nah, Buffalo isn’t manufacturing the HD DVD / Blu-ray drive that sits comfortably within its new external enclosure, but those parked in Japan can reportedly get ahold of this peace maker for just ¥51,000 ($440). Apparently, Buffalo chose the GGC-H20N optical drive to read both high-definition formats in its BHC-6316U2, and CyberLink’s PowerDVD7.3 Ultra will also be thrown in for good measure. Next month, Buffalo will be loosing the BRHC-6316U2, which will utilize the GGW-H20N Blu-ray burner / HD DVD reader and will run customers a respectable ¥74,800 ($644).

[Via EverythingUSB]

Yeah, we’ve seen bizarre apparatuses that bring about otherworldly feelings, but new studies have reportedly been able to induce out-of-body experiences with just a set of “virtual reality goggles, a camera, and a stick.” Apparently, the “research reveals that the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self, is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams,” and when the newfangled system forces individuals to peer at “an illusory image of themselves” while the stick prods them “in a certain way,” the guinea pigs said they felt as if they had been removed from their bodies. Of course, it seems the real purpose here circles more around the science of the brain rather than hashing out a DIY guide to accomplish this on your own, and no, so far as we can tell, it (unfortunately) does not play Doom.

[via Engadget]

Despite the launch of the Wii in the US occurring months and months ago, there is still a perceivable shortage of the little white console. Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter made his own analysis of the recent upturn in US Wii console sales by predicting that Nintendo filled the gap by diverting manufacturing in Japan to feed the US stores. It’s almost beyond belief that Nintendo still hasn’t been able to get a grasp on its manufacturing process, over nine months since the Wii was released. Wasn’t half the point of focusing on casual gaming — and therefore lower specs — that the console would be easy to manufacture in vast quantities?

[Via Joystiq]

Here’s one that the carefree kiddos are sure to hate. Hamilton Electronics has unveiled a wired set of headphones dubbed Guardian, which put an interesting twist on limiting the volume that one hears. Rather than including some form of internal volume diminisher, these cans sport red and green LCDs on an earcup which light up depending on how loud you’ve got the music cranked. As you’d expect, the green LED signifies that the volume within is perfectly acceptable, while nudging that knob to 11 will cue the red light to glow, consequently leading your paranoid mother to remove them from your head entirely. Yeah, you’ll have to hand over $39.95 to pick ‘em up, but trust us, it’s for your own good.

[Via I4U News]

We’ve seen a couple interesting gaming mice come out of Leipzig this year, and the SteelSeries Ikari Professional Gaming mouse is right up there with Microsoft’s new Sidewinders and Razer’s Lachesis. The outer shell is built to accommodate the “three major gaming grips” of “Swipe, Claw, and Palm,” and gamers can select their choice of models: a high-res optical version for FPS gamers, or a laser system for RPS and MMO addicts. Both feature switchable DPI settings and five programmable buttons, with a proprietary 500MHz transmitter to reduce any lag or interference. No word on price, but SteelSeries says these’ll be out in Q4, so you gamers had better start saving your pennies.

[Via IGN]

calls wherever there’s an open If you can reach back into the archives of your brain, you may be able to recall an elusive Netgear WiFi Skype phone that was previewed in May. Unless our eyes are seriously deceiving us, that very handset has now been launched, and it’s been titled the SPH200W. Sporting 802.11b/g compatibility, around four hours of talk time (or 48 hours in standby), WEP / WPA / WPA2 support, and most importantly, the ability to take and make SkypeWiFi signal, this device also allows you to manage up to 500 contacts and touts a built-in speakerphone. Unfortunately, there’s no word on how much this unit will cost you just yet, but feel free to indulge in a few extra photos waiting after the jump.

[via Engadget]

So we were noodling around the laptop section at Best Buy the other day, semi-shocked at the relatively frenzied activity at the big box retailer, when we happened to glance over and notice a very lonely device being ignored by the throngs of shoppers. That poor, unloved gadget was none other than the Sony Reader, which saw a fair amount of hype prior to its (perpetually-delayed) release, but now seems to have basically slipped off most people’s radar. Are people buying this thing? Has it developed a following? Is there a community devoted to software and hardware hacks? We’re honestly not sure, which lead us to wonder how Sony could have changed things up to make the Reader — in general, a solid concept — a more desirable purchase for the mass market. Since it’s surprisingly format agnostic for a Sony product, we don’t expect to hear too many suggestions in the compatibility department, although there will understandably be some folks seeking support for WMA, non-BBeB protected content, native DOCs, and the like. That being said, should they have loaded it up with more flash, or at least made it compatible with memory cards bigger than 4GB? Would out-of-the-box support for Mac and Linux users help? How about a non-crippled RSS reader? (Hey, at least they hooked you up with Engadget, though). Help us out here, people, what would it take to send you home with a brand new Sony Reader?

[via Engadget]