Gadgets

If it seems like technology and cartoon humor don’t fit as well together as crusty old millionaires and big-boob gold-diggers, it’s probably true.

The principles that drive tech innovation are based on a certain amount of hopeful enthusiasm that is hard to make fun of sometimes. Many new gadgets focus on dry accumulative hardware developments that are technically dense and the personalities driving them are often, on the surface, quite serious.

What better way to welcome the new year than with a collection of bright and shiny party gadgets?

You can handle the basics: Flare pants. Sequin dress for the ladies (and some of the gentlemen). Hair gel. Beer. Breath mints.

But Wired’s Gadget Lab has the electronic tools that will make this a truly 21st century event. Whether you will live it up on Times Square, throw your own block party or merely make a drunken nuisance of yourself in a subway car, here are 11 cool gadgets that can help you pass the last few hours of 2008 in high-tech style.

It’s the season for bailouts and the digital television switch program is the latest to ask for a little help.

Broadcasters are set to switch to digital transmission starting Feb. 17 but many consumers could be left out in the cold as funding for converter box coupons that can make analog TV sets digital-ready could fall short.

"The expected surge in consumer demand for converter box coupons is occurring and the fact that NTIA now projects it will have to delay or possibly deny the issuance of converter box coupons to consumers without additional funding is of great concern," says Congressman Ed Markey in a statement.

Along with eggnog, ugly red sweaters and disco mirror balls, it is also time for another year-end staple: the best-sellers list.

While gadget enthusiasts were chasing the Flip HD and Blu-ray players, millions getting their gadget fix from Amazon.com went for the basics: GPS navigators, headsets and cameras.

Amazon.com’s list of the most popular electronics sold through the site, till date, surprises only in how GPS still dominates the charts in terms of popular electronics bought this year.

Microsoft may have already snagged the name Surface, but this table from Established & Sons is in some ways even more impressive.

The Surface Table is based on technology from Formula One engineering, and combines thin layers of carbon fiber. In itself, that’s not so impressive, but listen to the specs: The table measures almost 10 feet long, but is just 0.8" thick (for our more modern readers, that’s three meters by 2mm).

Photography Bay has posted a very useful, and rather interesting, comparison of high ISO shots from the brand new Canon 5D MkII and Nikon’s low-light superstar D700. The image above shows the result at ISO 3200 — Nikon in the left, Canon on the right. It is also butchered in Photoshop to fit it onto the page, so you should check the images below for bigger versions.

These two cameras, both full frame and both right at the top end of their respective product lines, are obvious rivals.

In something of a surprise announcement earlier today, streaming video hardware-maker Vudu released a standards-based platform for its set-top box.

It’s a daring attempt to bring the expertise of web-based third-party developers to box-based ‘consumer appliances.’ We know what they’re thinking: Hey, it worked for Apple’s iPhone with the App Store didn’t it?

Vudu’s RIA (Rich Internet Application) project combines the powers of open-source development to a hardware machine that already did some cool things, like up-converting video to HD quality.

While my Hackintosh netbook was on display at Gizmodo Gallery last week, I had a chance to tinker around with the 10.2-inch Samsung NC10 on loan from Samsung. Much to our surprise, Samsung sent
Wired.com an e-mail giving us permission to hack the NC10 however we wished. Two words: Hell yeah!

Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was beautify the NC10 with an install of Mac OS X. After reading some forums, I discovered the OS X
installation process for the NC10 was almost exactly the same as the steps Charlie Sorrel and I followed to hack our MSI Wind netbooks.

Despite the growing public support for a Zune phone and the recent claims of analysts, a Microsoft insider is shooting down the rumor of a hardware release for CES 2009.

Brian Seitz, Group Manager of Zune, got in touch with Gizmodo’s Brian Lam and told him "there’s no Zune phone at CES.”

This contradicts a lot of what we’ve been hearing for months about a possible Zune phone, but not everything.

Two days ago, we noted that Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry claimed that Microsoft would release a Zune phone and would physically resemble the hardware design of Danger’s Sidekick.

The latest beta version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser brings built-in support for the multitouch trackpads on modern Mac notebooks. Back in October, Mozilla’s Eddie Lee produced an experimental version of Firefox that allowed Mac users to control the browser with multifingered gestures (no, not that kind). In v3.2 Beta 2, those gestures have been made official.

I gave it a try, and the gestures are even better than those in Apple’s own browser, Safari. Here’s the list of what you can do, provided by MacRumors. "Swipe" means a three fingered sweep:

On my old (multibody?) MacBook Pro, the gestures are all supported.