Donnerstag, 27. Januar 2005

Sonos Digital Ships. Ah, I love these lazy Sunday mornings. With the appearance of a Jetsons-esque breadbox, the palindromic Sonos Digital Music System is finally shipping, according to Om. The general look of the controller and the system itself is 100% Apple, with Sonos making the bold (also, brilliant) move to include a jogwheel on its wireless controllers[~]no doubt evincing a moth-to-flame effect from iPod owners everywhere. The system allows music (MP3, WMA, AAC (MPEG4) and WAV) to be distributed from a central server to any room (with a ZonePlayer installed) in your house[~]each ZonePlayer requires its own speakers, but can operate independent from the rest or in unison, allowing you to enjoy your morning constitutional through the house with a synchronized musical accompaniment. An intro bundle with one controller and two ZonePlayers is $1,200. Sonos Digital Shipping [GigaOm] [Gizmodo] 5:35:03 PM    comment []

Axentra Net-Box Home Network Appliance. Chris Cardinal[~]Axentra is touting their latest offering to the home network appliance arena[~]the Axentra Net-Box. I can only guess they were completely spent after coming up with the company name to conjure up anything more creative for their product. They could have at stolen the enthusiasm of the Japanese and called it the Axentra Oh! Super Net-Box. (And charged $9,500 more, too.) Regardless, it's a typical Swiss Army Knife, merging 802.11g access point, internet gateway, firewall, and web/email/file server functions into one stoic box. And when it's not doing any of those things, you can use it for a perch for your newest Jack in the Box antenna ball. $500 for their 80 GB flavor or $700 for the 160 GB, plus it can accept external USB 2.0 drives for expandability. Product Page [Axentra via eHomeUpgrade] [Gizmodo] 5:33:43 PM    comment []

Homebrew PC Self-Destruct Switch. Self-destruct buttons (especially the deluxe models) have been part of geekgeist at least since Battle Damage He-Man. The self-styled 'Kaizo Aho Ichidai' (roughly, the 'Modding Nutter Unit') has built himself this very nice-looking version that fits cleanly inside a 5-inch PC bay and even works as an on/off switch. Even more attractive, though, are the thick metal toggle switches. Someone needs to build a panel that sits in the front of a PC with about 10 switches in series, each one lighting up a different LED from red to yellow to green, with the last switch actually powering the machine on. Then I would buy it, with money. Product Page [Xe.BZ via Dottocomu] [Gizmodo] 9:51:45 AM    comment []