If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of products that do more than one thing; solve more than one problem. If you know me you also know I’m dead set against bulky belt-clips for mobile phones that do nothing but make your precious phone easier to steal and let the world know what kind of device you have. Seriously, I even wrote an article over at our sister blog The Classy Geek about the fact that if CES 2010 taught me anything, there’s no excuse to walk around with a belt clip for your phone.

To that end, the fine folks at Malcolm Fontier were kind enough to send me one of their newest products, the iMojito, a combination wallet and mobile phone holster, that’s designed to not only be stylish, but also keep all of your important items like your phone, your ID, your credit cards, and a little bit of cash even, securely tucked away in your pocket without looking like you’re carrying a massive weight in your pants pocket. I really liked the iMojito, and I’d reccomend it not just for people who have iPhones, but anyone who’s tired of carrying a mobile phone case and a bulky wallet and wants to lighten their load. Read more of my impressions behind the jump.

Continue reading Hands On with the iMojito from Malcolm Fontier!…

Everyone has probably heard about the Boxee Box by now, but it was up there as one of the coolest things I saw at CES this year, and I had a chance to speak with Casey Pugh (creator of Star Wars: Uncut, a crowdsourced project to re-shoot Star Wars scene by scene with fans in place of the actors!) about the Boxee Box, it’s really interesting remote, and the way the Boxee Box works.

The Boxee Box was amazing to use, the interface was really clean and easy to use, and CES was the first time a lot of people had a chance to actually play with the Boxee Box, which has been anticipated for months but released and unveiled for the first time in action at CES. The Boxee Box is clearly a media extender, and while it doesn’t have storage of its own, it can reach out across your home network and out to the Internet to pull in music, movies, and other content that you own or have rights to watch and bring it in to your HDTV effortlessly.

When you watch that content and you like what you see, you can rate it using the Boxee software, share what you’re watching and what you thought about it with your friends, and do it all without inturrupting the media you’re watching. The D-Link hardware and the NVidia chipset under the hood makes for a really powerful set-top box as well, and the fact that it can play just about any audio or video codec or format you throw at it helps as well.

Boxee is a completely open platform as well – the software is still available for you to install on any Mac, PC, or even XBox you choose, and speaking with Casey he pointed out that Boxee has no plans to close off the software just because there’s a hardware platform on the market that comes with it too – so you can still roll your own Boxee Box, but if you don’t want to, you can buy one.

The remote was also interesting: on the front it works just like any remote – complete with a d-pad and selection buttons, but on the flip side it has a full QWERTY keyboard for typing in updates to your social networks, writing short reviews for the media you’re enjoying, rating things you see, and searching your media library without having to click down a hundred times to find something you want to watch. All in all, the Boxee Box was as impressive in action as it is to read about, and I’m seriously considering getting one.

Check out a video I shot while playing with the Boxee Box:

And head over to Boxee.tv for more information on the box and details on how to get one:

[ Boxee - Boxee Box by D-Link ]

Building a Hackintosh is really no big deal, and there are tons of guides out there to help you do it if you want, you just run the risk of the thing not working the next time Apple releases a patch for Mac OS X. That being said, this particular Hackintosh is a killer.

Will Urbina decided that his old classic XBox wasn’t doing too much useful around the house these days, and it would make a good case for his Hackintosh – so what does he do? Picks up the required parts, then gets his hands dirty taking the Xbox apart and makeing it the perfect case for his new build. The whole thing is documented in the glorious video above, where you can watch step by step as Will goes through the motions of making his vision come to reality. It’s absolutely mindblowing – and not just in that “He fit a Mac in that Microsoft device!” way, either.

[ Engadget :: OS XBox Pro Casemod Build Video is Mesmerizing ]

If you’re looking for some really slick apps for your mobile phone, look no further than PC Mag’s massive roundup of 100 awesome free apps for your mobile device, no matter what operating system it’s running. If you have an iPhone, you’ve got 40 great free apps in the list to choose from! Using a Motorola Droid (like me) or an Samsung Moment? There are 20 awesome apps in there for Android mobile phones to! Even if you’re all business and rocking a Blackberry Storm 2, you can find 20 apps in the list to help you pass the time on those long business flights. There are even some generic free games and 10 Windows Mobile apps for those of you with Windows Mobile devices!

Because the roundup is strictly free apps, you’ll miss out on some of the high-end apps that may require you to pay to download them, but the list is incredible comprehensive and has a ton of useful applications that can help you do everything from shop on the go to check your travel plans at the drop of a hat to compare prices on an item in the store to items online to stay in touch with your friends while you’re out and about town.

If you read the roundup and you’re itching for some more great apps for your mobile device, or if you’re a Symbian user and don’t see yourself represented here, head over to Popular Science and check out my roundup of Must Have Mobile Apps to help bolster your list!

[ PC Mag :: Top 100 Free Apps for Your Phone ]

MotionBox is well known as one of the leading video sharing sites that already has support for true HD streaming video, downloadable media, and the ability to control who sees your video. Whether you want to share your videos with the world or you want to keep some of them private to friends and family, MotionBox has plans and tools to help you do that. Additionally, if you’re looking for a way to add some flare and spice to your blog or business, MotionBox can host your video somewhere that isn’t YouTube, for example, or one of the other popular video hosting services, and you can re-post and embed your content anywhere you choose.

The beauty of MotionBox is that even though other video hosting services have their hooks into mobile devices and camcorders, they still manage to make it easy for you to upload, edit, and share your video with the world whenever you choose.

MotionBox previously had both free and premium accounts: the free accounts give you the option to give the service a whirl, store and upload a limited number of videos, edit them online, and create DVDs and eCards using your own video for an added cost. Premium accounts allow you to upload virtually as many videos as you choose, securely share the ones you want to keep private with only the people you want to see them, upload and stream movies in HD, and even allow certain people to download the videos you allow them to.

Last week, MotionBox announced a new account type: MotionBox Pro, which allows commercial and business users to sign up for the service, and offers them unique streaming and editing tools to make video sharing work for their organization. Pro users also get priority video encoding, so you don’t have to wait as long to upload your video and have it be available for people to see, and you get all of the benefits that the premium accounts provide as well!

To celebrate the announcement, MotionBox is giving away a few Roku digital set-top boxes to select users who sign up for MotionBox this month – all you have to do to enter the contest is sign up for an account and e-mail their contest address with the subject line “Roku Giveaway!” Yes, before you ask, the contest includes the free accounts – so whether you’re a business user or a personal user looking to post your videos to the Web without dealing with YouTube commenters, you can get in on the action as well!

For more information, head over to MotionBox to learn more, see how much the premium and new pro accounts cost, and sign up today!

[ MotionBox ]

This gorgeous laptop has been making the rounds for a while now, with WoW Insider even giving one away last week. This gorgeous Dell XPS comes in two flavors, one Alliance and one Horde, with a beautifully designed case that lets the world know that you’re a WoW fanatic. Under the hood is a pretty impressive laptop, to boot, with specs more than good enough for a decent WoW experience, and definitely enough for some of the best graphics the game can offer:

Full Specs:

* Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500
* 2GB Memory 667MHz
* 17inch UltraSharp TrueLife WUXGA
* 512MB Dual NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT w/ NVIDIA SLI
* 200GB HDD
* Blu-ray
* Intel Pro Wireless 3945 a/g Mini Card
* Vista Ultimate
* Logitech Game Panel
* Ageia PhyX Accelerator
* 1 year warranty.

Included in the prize package:

* World of Warcraft game retail box
* The Burning Crusade expansion retail box
* Warcraft Battlechest retail box which includes Warcraft III & Brady Strategy Guide, Warcraft III: Frozen Throne Expansion Set & Strategy Guide
* World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness novel
* World of Warcraft: Rise of the Horde novel
* World of Warcraft TCG: Heroes of Azeroth starter deck box
* World of Warcraft TCG: Through The Dark Portal starter deck box
* World of Warcraft: Behind the Scenes DVD “The Making of WoW”
* World of Warcraft Soundtrack on audio CD
* Brady Games World of Warcraft Master Guide 2nd Edition
* Brady Games World of Warcraft The Burning Crusade
* 1 World of Wacraft Beta Club card that can be used to access 5 future, unannounced WoW expansions
* 1 upgrade Certificate to flag your account as Collector’s Edition (both WoW & TBC) and allow you to claim the in-game pets from each game
* 1 Golden Ticket redeemable with FigurePrints to have a 3D action figure of your in-game character created
* 1 XPS backpack

If the specs don’t get you, the schwag will definitely win you over. The laptops are expected to go for over $4500, which will be more than enough to dim the sheen on all of the schwag and the impressive specs. But if you’re willing to spend the money, you absolutely love World of Warcraft, and you need to have your hands on some of the best portable gaming hardware on the market, then this laptop is for you.

[ ExtremeTech: Dell XPS Laptops for World of Warcraft Fans ]

Yesterday on Marketplace, there was an amazing story about the practice of “gold farming” and item trading in massively multiplayer online games. They focused specifically on Lineage 2, probably because it’s very popular in the country they visited to learn about the practice, South Korea. In Korea, as the story says and is totally true, gaming can be a professional sport, where televised tournaments make stars and heroes out of gamers who are cheered by adoring fans. Commentators call the moves in the game with fervor, and people treat video gaming, especially multiplayer games like Starcraft, with all of the reverence and respect that Americans treat baseball or football. And in many ways, rightfully so.

The best part of the story is the fact that it takes a serious look at the practice of trading virtual items in many of these massively multiplayer games, like epic weapons and difficult-to-obtain armor and objects, even virtual currency like gold in World of Warcraft (my MMO of choice), for real money. The reporter heads to Korea, the birthplace of many of these trading sites, and the home of many services and people who profit from and participate in the trade, what many of us refer to as “gold farming.”

The story was fantastic, aside from the journalist’s in credulousness that such a thing could possibly happen, but he handled it very very well. I would object to the notion that the items in the game that are being sold “don’t exist,” with the subtle notion that if it’s not tangible and real then it’s not worth anything – people pay for license codes and virtual material all the time and none of that “exists” either; people pay for access to products and services that are completely virtual and online, but none of that technically “exists.” I don’t see that as much different, so it was a weak end to an otherwise great story. I’m more impressed that Korea has an entire government agency devoted to the online gaming industry, which I suppose you have to have if your citizens enjoy it (and some of the best broadband internet access in the world) as much as Koreans do. What also surprised me was that there was an entire industry lobby of companies that profit from item trading and the activities of gold farmers to oppose the interests of the game developers and designers. It was an amazing listen, and the transcript is just as compelling. Check it out!

[ Online 'Gold Farming' More Than A Game ]

The AppleTV has only been out for a few days, and already it’s been hacked backwards and forwards. Is this a bad thing? Not at all! Apple so far has been quiet on the modifications that enterprising geeks have made to the equipment, making it everything from a desktop wifi enabled computer to upgrading the hard drive that’s built in, and people who were taking them apart started finding interesting things under the hood, like hardware that could support full HD video in the future should Apple release a firmware update for it, a pretty fast processor, and more.

The major gripe people have had with the AppleTV up to this point is “limited functionality,” meaning Apple traded ease of use for features that some people would have wanted. Well, since Apple didn’t do much to stop the hardware from being able to perform at its best, people have already started engineering hacks and add-ons to the AppleTV that extends the functionality to levels that even Apple may not have intended when the product was released. The OS is easy to upgrade (it’s actually a version of OS 10.4.7), the hard drive is easy to upgrade and clone, and the AppleTV is surprisingly easy to open.

With the ease that tinkerers can get into their AppleTV and upgrade it to be a beefier machine than they may have initally paid for, and the ease of use Apple provides out of the box with the AppleTV with no modifications whatsoever, Apple may seriously have a winner on its hands with another device that’s a lot like iTunes and the iPod – easy to use and very functional at the basic level, and the more you want to dive into it and do with it, the more you can do with just a little extra knowhow. Clearly the AppleTV is everything but limited, and has a pretty long and bright future ahead of it as a device.

[ MacWorld :: Hacking AppleTV ]

The AppleTV is out and about, having been formally released by Apple last week and having begun landing in press rooms, tech labs, and living rooms around the country within a few days. The highly anticipated new TV-to-computer bridge device from Apple has had analysts waiting with baited breath for a while now, and technology enthusiasts and Apple fans alike wringing their hands to find out whether or not the AppleTV would live up to its promise to unify the content on my PC or Mac (or both!) with my television. If early reviews are any indication, it most certainly has.

The AppleTV synchronizes with the first Mac or PC you pair it with, wired or wirelessly over your home network – it copies the contents of your iTunes library to the built in hard drive, and constantly updates based on that library, so if you subscribe to podcasts or video podcasts, the AppleTV will automatically update the new content when its downloaded to your computer. You can also hook up the AppleTV to stream from up to 5 more computers on your home network, beefing up the amount of content you can get on your TV set through the AppleTV. The AppleTV has all of the ports you would expect, from HDMI to component, and while it can’t display true high-def, it already has the ability to connect to any high definition television. The device is so far easy to use, simple to set up, an excellent bridge from your computer to your television, and how well you’ll use it and how much you want one probably has to do with how closely iTunes is to the center of your digital life; that is, if you download a ton of videos from iTunes like Battlestar Galactica or Starsky and Hutch and want to watch them on your living room big screen, the AppleTV is the device for you.

For more information, check out this review from PCMag:

[ PCMag: AppleTV Review ]

And this review (with video!) from David Pogue, technology editor for the New York Times:

[ New York Times: AppleTV Has Landed ]

No photo to go with this article, folks-trying to keep it on the work-safe side.

The rise of HDTV, and now high-definition DVD content, has made many adult film stars nervous even though adult entertainment publishers can’t rush fast enough to push their content out in high-def or on HD-DVD. Worries about every scar, scratch, and imperfection being magnified and projected on walls and on 50-inch TVs have adult movie stars worried about the future of their industries and some even rushing to get cosmetic surgery to cover up blemishes, breast implant scars, and the like. Meanwhile the studios have taken a side in the high-def DVD debate (siding with HD-DVD) and are pushing out downloads and videos in high-def as much as possible.

Families with new high-definition camcorders and news anchors being broadcast in HD have already discovered just how revealing the picture quality is. But few professionals bare as much in front of the camera as adult-film stars, and many are nervous abut the new technology.

“We’re all terrified,” said Stefani Morgan, a star at Vivid Entertainment Group, one of the largest adult movie makers. “I want to be a fantasy. I don’t want to show flaws.”

High-definition picture quality is so good that watching sports on HDTV is like being on the field. Adult industry directors compare it to being in the room.

“I think high-definition is good from a fan’s perspective because it puts everything so beautifully,” said Jenna Jameson, founder and the star of Club Jenna. “But from a woman’s perspective, we hate it because you can see every little piece of our body,” she added.

I don’t think the ladies are the only ones who should have something to worry about, frankly. Even so, the adult entertainment industry has always been a frontrunner in both video and web content delivery and technology (as odd as it is to say or believe that) and word is that there might be ways to produce high-def content that’s still…modest and forgiving to the actors and actresses on screen.

[ PC World: HDTV Makes Adult Movie Stars Jealous ]