Gadgets

Though unassuming at first glance, Sony’s WA1 is nothing short of a do-everything magic music box. What doesn’t it do? It’s primarily an audio streamer, siphoning music from your PC wirelessly in just about any non-DRM format. But it also plays web radio, has an alarm clock, and can even store tunes on its own built-in flash memory. Despite its small stature, the integrated speakers deliver crystal clear sound and are loud enough to blow your head off at close range when cranked to full volume.  That’s good, because a built-in battery gives you 3 1/2 hours of playback when disconnected from AC, making the WA1 perfect for use in the noisy outdoors.

A group called the Professional Association of Teachers worries that WiFi might be hurting the children. These are people who really should know better than to help these half-baked health scares take wing. See if you can guess which country this lot hails from.

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Speaking at the conference, in Harrogate, PAT general secretary, Philip Parkin, said the issue of wi-fi systems prompted heated debate, with some scientists expressing concern and others convinced of its safety. Mr Parkin said: “There is a view out there that you have no right to express concerns on such issues and that if you do, you are scaremongering or promoting so-called bad science.”

Is pointing out scaremongering and bad science really equivalent to saying people “have no right to express concerns?” Interesting claim.

It may not be the biggest LCD in the world, but Dell’s E228WFP is a slick 22-inch widescreen monitor designed for those who need a high-def display with extra horizontal real estate and 5-millisecond response times. In short, it’s made to game. I have to admit that online cribbage is the extent of my gaming life, but I’ll be damned if there wasn’t one shred of motion lag while dragging virtual cards about the luminous screen. Fifteen-two, baby! More to the point, all that extra space came in very handy for what us Wired editors do all day: Edit documents and layouts. The ability to compare two regular-width Word files side-by-side in the screen’s bright—but not harsh—glow is more valuable than even a 555J in hand.  —Joe Brown

WIRED Fast response time eliminates ghosted streaks.

The notion of paying in blood just got a little more literal. The latest biometric cardless credit payment system in Japan is a system called "finger vein money." Developed by Hitachi, it authenticates individuals by reading the pattern of blood vessels in his or her fingers, which are just as unique as fingerprints but much harder to counterfeit. This identification method would require you to register your "finger vein pattern data" with the credit card company; when you want to buy something, you’d slip your finger into a point-of-purchase vein reader for verification.

Building on the work of the iPhone Dev team and in particular the hacker Nightwatch, “Tomo.M” has compiled a SOCKS (SOCKetS) proxy server for the iPhone, called “srelay”. What does that mean? It means that you can share your iPhone’s EDGE connection with your computer. Beginning with the steps to add custom ringtones, you then install and run the server on the phone.

By Steven Leckart and Daniel Dumas

Your prayers have been answered. (If you’re a PSP junkie.) The G-Lab crew got all up in Sony’s grill today and had a nice long fondle session with the newer, lighter, more colorful PSP. (Big thanks to Patrick Seybold for letting us check it out.) Hit the jump to see the specs and find out what’s different and what remains the same.

So we rocked that PSP like the proverbial hurricane. And you know what?
Not a whole lot is different from the last iteration.

OK, it was one thing for XM and Sirius to astroturf by getting groups of farm wives, commuters and other never-heard-of-’em entities to stump in support of their proposed merger. But the highest ranking Catholic Church guy in the United States? That just reeks of desperation.

Don’t tell that to Edward Cardinal Egan, archbishop of New York, however. His Eminence recently put out a statement supporting the proposed merger, on the apparent theory that it will expose more folks to Sirius’ Catholic Channel and other holy programming.

His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan Applauds Satellite Radio Merger [XM]

Another Apple patent. This one pertains to an old but good technology which Apple have been planning for a while: Portable Home folders. Instead of being tied to one computer, all your files and preferences are kept in one folder. This is standard on the Mac. The portability comes in when you put that folder on an external device. No longer tied to one machine, you can carry everything in your pocket and hook up wherever you find a computer.

There isn’t much innovation in the patent application (is there ever these days?) and Apple even admits that people have rolled their own solutions:

A few sophisticated users have modified operation of existing operating systems, such as Mac OS X, to provide some portability to their user account from a work computer to a home computer.

The difference here is that Apple want to put the folder on “a portion of a portable computing device that provides other functionality besides data storage.

Well, that little sticky note did the trick. Now we have to write something, even if there are no new products. It looks like the Apple Store update was merely a rejig, putting up a new banner for the back-to-school-free-pod promo.

Sorry folks. No iPod Nano.

Winter athletes are frequently burdened with carrying two different pairs of goggles to deal with changing light conditions in the snow. But Uvex’s high-tech Uvision Magic goggles offer a simpler solution. The goggles use liquid crystal technology applied to a double lens; at the touch of a button the user can switch between a high-contrast lens in flat lighting and a dark lens for when the sun is brightest.