The WatchScale, oddly enough, is a watch with a built-in weighing scale. It can weigh anything up to 300 grams (10oz) with a 0.1 gram accuracy, comes with a 20 year warranty, and will make you the talking point of the local drug-buying populace. Oh, and it also tells the time.

Claiming the title of “smallest digital scale ever made”, you’d expect this bad boy to cost some serious money, but as it happens it’ll only set you back $18.

Here’s a credit card from MBNA with a difference - they’ll donate money to open source projects every time you use it! The card has raised over half a million dollars for the open source community since its inception in 1999, donating money to projects including Debian, Blender, Wikimedia Foundation, Freenode, and lots of others too.

Plus, it has a picture of Tux on it!

Get yours here.

Today we all take MP3 players for granted. iPods are ubiquitous, mobile phones can play the format, even most new car stereos support MP3 right off the showroom floor. But it wasn’t always like this - Back in 1998, highly illegal sites like Audiofind were giving away artist’s songs quite openly and completely for free in pretty poor-sounding 112 and 128KBps MP3 format, and we were downloading them with our 56K modems - often taking up to half an hour a time.

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There are quite a few options out there for people looking to hack their Wii, from mod chips to crazy lighting kits, as well as some awesome totally custom jobs… Hell, you can even go all-out and play the damn thing with your genitalia if you like (not really a mod, but I just had to mention it).

But one thing I haven’t seen until now is a PC crammed into the Wii case. I’m guessing that there just aren’t enough dead Wiis around to mod in the first place, or maybe Nintendo fans just can’t bring themselves to take the dremel to their favourite console.

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The guys over at Kombo.com grabbed the above screenshot to highlight what will be released as next weeks Rock Band DLC, the PAX pack containing 3 songs at 240 points ($2.99) for the pack, with all profits going to the charity Child’s Play:-

• Jonathan Coulton - “Skullcrusher Mountain”
• MC Frontalot - “Livin’ on the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe”
• Darkest of the Hillside Thickets - “Shhh….”

But that was not what grabbed me about this picture.  It’s the one at the bottom, the Offspring Track Pack that we reported on a few months ago, and it seems we could well be getting it on 09.09.08!  The line up for the Offspring pack is:-

• Self Esteem
• Gone Away
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy

This release date is not yet confirmed, but seems a bit odd to advertise it with this weeks and next weeks tracks if it isn’t due then, doesn’t it?

(source, source)

This week I decided to go and take a look at Brando, because all of my previous awesome gadgets have been from DealExtreme, and it’s a bit unfair to give them all of the crapgadget glory.

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Thanks, Reddit user Crackerpac, whoever you are, for providing one of the funniest things I’ve seen all week. I really need to stop looking at screenshots and get out more.

That’s “Elmo”, y’know, the little fuzzy guy from sesame street, not “emo”, which Guitar Hero has had plenty of flirtations with in the past. This mod was created by a parent who wanted their 2-year-old to play along with them, and crams the guts of a PS1 controller into the Sesame Street guitar casing.

The fact that there are only four buttons means little Jimmy (or Janey, in this case) won’t be playing any songs on anything above medium skill level, but I’d be impressed to see a 2-year-old playing the game at all. A kid truly destined for greatness!!

It seems that Bloomberg dropped the ball yesterday by accidentally publishing Apple legend Steve Jobs’ obituary, despite the fact he is still alive and kicking!

The whopping 17 page document was accidentally published after Bloomberg decided to update the document, as apparently having an obituary ready and waiting despite the person being in perfect health (pancreatic cancer aside) is quite a common thing for the news agencies.

The document had placeholders for multiple causes of death as well as a long list of people to contact for comments in the event of his death.  I really can’t imagine that this did Apple’s share prices much good yesterday, but I guess that’ll all be back to normal by now.

Bloomberg have since posted the below retraction and take the story down

Story Referencing Apple Was Sent in Error by Bloomberg News

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today. The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted.

—Editor: Joe Winski, Cesca Antonelli

Follow this link to Gawker.com’s copy of the full obituary.

(via)

What do you get when you combine nVidia’s NVISION show, the Mythbusters Adam and Jamie, and 1,100 paintball guns? You get possibly the most impressive rendition of the Mona Lisa I’ve ever seen.

The whole thing is supposed to explain the difference between traditional CPUs and GPUs with parallel processing - or something. Look at the pretty colours! Compressed air is fun!

(via)

Entertainment Weekly have been given a glimpse of things to come for Rock Band in the form of the next 6 full albums to be released for the game, excluding Rush’s Moving Pictures which looks like it won’t be surfacing for a few weeks yet! The 6 albums are:-

• Foo Fighters - The Colour and The Shape
• Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic
• Jane’s addiction - Nothing’s Shocking
• Megadeth - Peace Sells…  But Who’s Buying?
• Stevie Ray Vaughn - Texas Flood
• No Doubt - Exclusively compiled greatest hits

Well what a list!, the Foo Fighters and RHCP albums are no brainers for me, along with a couple of selected songs from the others.  No word on release dates yet, just that they will be upon us in the coming months.

(via)

In a recent interview, president of 3D Realms George Broussard announced that the long-awaited Duke Nukem 3D sequel Duke Nukem Forever is currently undergoing play testing, and it seems to be going well. I’ll let him explain in his own words:

“There are several hours of fairly polished game to play. We’re actively testing parts of the game and getting feedback from play testers and things are coming together. It’s fun, it’s in focus, we know what bits are fun and which are not, and it’s just a matter of time now.”

But how much time? I think we’ve been in this situation a few times in the past 10 years, and still no DNF. I fear that Duke Nukem’s core audience are far too old to enjoy toilet humour and boobies now. Still, I guess this news, and the gameplay video we posted a while back, are enough to give us a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe this time Duke will actually be gracing our screens again in the near-ish future.

How do 3D Realms even make any money these days anyway?

It seems Guitar Hero rip offs are all the rage at the moment with such excellent gadgets as the Shredmaster, Guitar Superstar and the Guitar Hero Caribiner gracing the shelves of our stores.  Well not to be left behind it seems like the christian rock movement have decided to jump on the bandwagon with Guitar Praise for the PC and Mac.  The priceless blub describes it as:-

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You see that little logo there on that mouse? Looks awfully familiar doesn’t it? Turns out that the whole death-of-lasers thing was true, with this mouse using a blue LED and a special lens to improve tracking on different surfaces, but it’s not quite as exciting as we thought.

This picture was found on Amazon Germany, and has since been taken down, as I’m guessing that this glimpse of the future was a little premature. We don’t have any details but I’m hoping that the mouse (known as a “Blue Track”) will use Bluetooth, and that the included mini-dongle is only for those lacking it.

That, coupled with the “street” early-2000s blue glow emanating from its underbelly, should make this mouse a pretty strong contender for your peripheral-bound expendable income.

(Thanks Bubba!)

Did you find yourself wondering what may be on the Gears of War 2 Limited Edition bonus disc? As if that multiplayer-only golden lancer wasn’t enough for you, you also get these pictures, videos, and mysterious other stuff along with your serving of Gears, according to British film classification people BBFC who have rated the disc’s content.

Here’s the list in case they take it down:

• n/a GEARS OF WAR 2 BONUS DISK
• 00:34:29:00 BENEATH THE SURFACE
• 00:01:05:00 RENDEZVOUS
• 00:01:28:00 BARE YOUR TEETH
• 00:07:30:00 E3 2008: GEARS 2 DEMO
• 00:03:38:00 GTTV SPOT
• 00:11:56:00 CHARACTERS - MARCUS FENIX
• 00:07:40:00 CHARACTERS - DOMINIC SANTIAGO
• 00:07:40:00 CREATURES - BOOMER
• 00:07:10:00 CREATURES - KANTUS
• 00:15:55:00 LOCATIONS - HOSPITAL
• 00:13:01:00 LOCATIONS - THE HOLLOW
• 00:07:08:00 VEHICLES - CENTAUR
• 00:06:10:00 VEHICLES - REAVER
• 00:13:00:00 WEAPONS - LANCER
• 00:10:50:00 WEAPONS - HEAVY WEAPONS
• n/a MAIN THEME
• n/a CINEMATIC OPENING
• n/a ASSULT INTRO
• n/a MARIA
• n/a COG SQUAD PACK (5 IMAGES)
• n/a LOCUST SQUAD PACK (5 IMAGES)

I’ll leave it up to your imagination to decide what some of these things actually are, but I should hope that most of them would be pretty obvious. The disc’s content managed to get an 18 rating, unsurprising really considering the level of gore and violence that Gears is well-known for.

It’s not often that Microsoft tease and enthral us with something like this, so I’m guessing that their upcoming September 9th announcement about saying “Goodbye to Laser” is going to be something pretty special. Either that, or we’re all going back to the dreaded days of fluff-encrusted rollers and stolen balls.

This picture appeared on the Microsoft Hardware site, and as the only laser-based hardware they make are mice, it’s pretty safe to assume that there’s some interesting mouse tech on its way. Motion sensing perhaps? Maybe GPS?

Or maybe not? The suspense is killing me!

Remember that Xbox 360 replacement case from Lian Li that we posted about a while back? Well, hardware site bit-tech have managed to get their hands on one, and have posted up lots of unboxing pics and some first impressions for the world to see.

There’s nothing too out of the ordinary, but it’s interesting to note that the case comes set up ready for additional watercooling should the need arise, it reduces the 360’s noise levels considerably, and that the assembly seems relatively easy.

They’ll have a full review up in a few days, so it’ll be interesting to see whether this thing’s worth all the effort for all those modders and hackers out there, as well as nomal folk like you and I who just want their console to survive a little longer.

If you’ve been over to GP2X.co.uk recently, you will have seen the message saying:-

“It’s been fun, but the GP2X is no longer manufactured - It’s time to prepare for the Pandora handheld - The most powerful handheld in the world.”

Well, it seems that the GP2X guys have decided they are not going to give up the fight that easily, as they have just announced the GP2X Wiz.  Boasting a 533mhz ARM9 processor, 64mb RAM, 1Gb onboard flash storage plus expansion via SD card and a 2.8 inch OLED touchscreen.  The system runs on GamePark’s own version of Linux.

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This came out of a competition over at Gizmodo… Ways to Ruin the Olympics Using Technology. This was Mark FX’s entry - I knew those old boxes were still good for something!

Official Xbox Magazine are reporting in their October issue that Gearbox Software, responsible for the original Half-Life expansion packs as well as the Halo:CE PC port, are working on Halo 4 and that it’ll be a launch title for the new Xbox console, rumoured to be due around 2011.

Apparently their suspicions were aroused back in February, when Geabox started advertising for developers and artists, and their CEO Randy Pitchford released a statement saying that their next project was “Something big … when you find out what this is, you’ll likely agree that I can’t oversell this one.”

Seems possible, if a little unusual, but OXM are claiming to have inside information on this one. I guess we’ll have to wait and see as more information leaks out.

-

Update

We have a response from Gearbox!

We’ve been hearing from a lot of people regarding that rumor, as you can probably guess!  We haven’t made any official announcements regarding any work with the Halo franchise – if we haven’t put out a press release announcing a title, it is just a rumor.

Hooray! That,er, clears that one up then.