Yes, indeed, the Splitterbot is a friendly little white guy (I mean he’s made from white plastic) who sits on your keychain waiting for your need to share a banging tune with one of your mates.

At this point, his head conveniently comes off (completely, mind you, not just tilting back like our R2-D2 trash can) so you can plug him into your PMP and then (kids, look away now) shove a couple of headphone jacks into his eyes.

I feel more could have been made of this robot. Maybe a Splitterbot Deluxe is called for, where his antennae become useful switches or dials that control volume.

Take a look at those feet, though. They’re almost LEGO-like. Of course, they’re not, but how cool would it be if he could stand around at home with your collection of personalised LEGO people on a piece of that weird chunky bobbly green plastic grass?

Anyway, Splitterbot is yours for the tidy sum of $7.99. Grab one now.

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Oh, if only I had owned Top10.com, which a British company has just bought for around $1m. Yes, that’s one million dollars.

Granted, it’s a pretty nifty name, and because the company who now owns it specialises in technology comparison websites, makes a lot of sense to own.

Potentially small change as well, given that the company turned over £9m last year and gets 1.5m visitors every month. Quite interesting that it’s a UK company, too, because I still think that us Brits are a bit behind the times compared to the US when it comes to the Net.

It’s still a fraction of what was paid for the likes of sex.com, business.com and casino.com, but not to be sniffed at either.

Maybe it is, but to a music-appreciating tech geek, the comparisons fall a little flat.

Take a look:

(Hopefully that video is still there, though for some reasons advertisers don’t always like the exposure that free YouTube marketing gives them)

OK, so “first there was the road map. Now there is the GPS”.

Let’s skip for a moment the horrible phrase “the GPS” because that’s not the focus of this rant.

Now…

“First there was vinyl. Now there is the MP3″.

Unless L’Oreal is trying to tell consumers that INOA is of a lower quality than established products, this is a poor statement to make.

Most of us know that, MP3 files even encoded at their highest quality cannot match that of lossless audio files, or even lossy formats with better encoding like AAC.

Don’t even get me started on the notion that MP3 (or even CD) could be of better overall quality, in theory at least, than vinyl… and this is coming from someone who never owned vinyl but understands why it is technically superior, if not particularly convenient.

I guess the marketing peeps would’ve found it harder to justify going to the masses with the phrase “First there was MP3. Now there is 24-bit Free Lossless Audio Codec”.

Sigh. It’s not easy being pedantic, you know.

I didn’t come up with this idea when I created five concept watch designs, but I wish I had.

Called OV’L, this wall clock displays both the date and time on a series of concentric circles. The inner four circles display year, month, day and weekday, while the outer circles display hours, minutes and seconds.

I’m not entirely clear whether this clock really exists or not. Designer Stefan Vasilev is into graphic and logo design, so this could just be a concept.

In any case, it looks great, and I’d be really happy to have this on my wall. It might even cut down on the amount of time I spend looking at time passing. After all, I’d actually have to work out the time by studying the dashes, rather than simply being able to glance up and see a regular clock face.

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Forget the possibility that a Beyonce track may not count as geek music (far too mainstream, right?) or that you don’t have to be an uber-geek in order to set this up…

…kudos to this girl for (a) having or obtaining three iPhones and (b) setting up apps to produce a pretty seamless performance.

Oh, and (c) for having a very nice voice.

Some offer more precision that others, and some are easier to read, but all are definitely not your average analog or digital watch.

1. Fraction Clock

Granted, this is a simple digital watch so it’s not hard to see what time it is.

However, what this watch will do is to chime once in each one hour period — not necessarily on the hour but based on the associated fraction for that hour.

The minutes and seconds are calculated from the rounded decimal equivalents of each fraction.

So, where hour one is 1/1 or simply 1am/1pm, the seventh hour is 1/7 or 07:14:29.

Interesting that the sixth hour becomes 06:17:07 because there would be no such time as 06:16:67.

2. Rainbow watch

The inner circle, divided into four sections, denotes the hour.

Colours red through indigo (no violet) denote hours 1-6, 7-12, 13-18 or (without indigo) 19-23, with the colour appearing in the appropriate section – top right is the first six hours, bottom right is the next six hours, and so on.

The outer circle, divided into ten sections, denotes the minutes.

The ‘tens of minutes’ are denoted by colours — red = 0, orange = 1, yellow = 2, green = 3, blue = 4, indigo = 5 — while the units are represented by the position – zero at top right and then incrementing clockwise.

Times from 00:00 to 00:59 have no colour displayed in the inner circle.

3. Periodic Table Watch

This is a very simple clock to read. The white illuminated element denotes the hour while the yellow illuminated element denotes the minute.

If the hour and minute are the same, the element is divided equally. If one or other colour is not present, it denotes a zero.

The following times are shown for 00:20, 11:23, 15:15 and 23:00:

4. Letter Watch

Letters replace digits on this watch.

For the hours, the letters ‘a’ through ‘x’ represent digits 0 through 23.

For the tens of minutes, the space is a hyphen for zero, and then one of the five vowels for 1-5 — i.e. a = 1, e = 2, i = 3, o = 4, u = 5.

The units of minutes are represented by the letters ‘a’ through ‘z’, and change approximately every 23 seconds (23 x 26 = 598 seconds).

The following is what would be displayed for times 05:24:25, 12:09:01 and 22:57:59.

5. Planet Watch

The eight planets of the solar system are used to show the time.

The top row denotes the hours, with planets from left to right (distance from sun) representing the digits 1-8. Each planet can have up to three red dots beneath, representing an hour multiplied by either one, two or three.

The bottom row denotes the minutes: a new planet will appear, from left to right, every 7.5 minutes.

The faces below represent 08:19, 15:32 and 21:56.

What do you think? Would you wear a watch that told you the time like this?

We already know that a number of consumer electronics companies and broadcasters are pushing full steam ahead with plans to launch hardware and programming in 3D, and now Sony and CBS have partnered to open up a 3D Consumer Research Centre.

Located in the CBS Television City research facility at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, it’s designed to be “a dedicated resource devoted to studying 3D in all its forms”. That’s according to Sony Electronics’ executive VP and CMO, Mike Fasulo.

Created in two zones, one section will focus on 3D theatrical entertainment while the other concentrates on 3D home entertainment.

Visitors will be able to see the latest 3D cinema releases coming up, as well as explore the latest hardware such as HDTVs, PS3 and 3D Blu-ray and learning about new launches such as ESPN 3D.

Obviously, you’d expect the facility to be highly Sony focused, though there’s also support from RealD, a company providing advanced 3D filters and eyewear.

According to Credant Technologies, some users are unwittingly advertising the location of their laptop to anyone with a cheap off-the-shelf handheld wireless signal detector.

Apparently one of the global hotspots for this kind of theft is Jamaica, but the crime could easily be committed anywhere else.

Something I wasn’t aware of (and is rather worrying in its own right) is that some notebook PCs can stay awake for up to 30 minutes even after the lid is shut. Quite why this is necessary (unless it’s deliberately set by the user) is a little unclear.

Anyway, the message is clear: turn your Wi-Fi off when you’re not using your laptop to reduce the risk of thieves locating and stealing it.

Well, it seems Logitech has applied this approach to the latest set of portable speakers. The Z205 is a speaker ‘bar’ that attaches to the top of your notebook’s screen and delivers a much more powerful sound than you’d expect from the internal speakers, while you don’t have to worry about standalone speakers disappearing while you’re on the move.

The picture shows the speaker centrally located, which is probably the optimal position. However, if you have a laptop with a built-in webcam you may well have to site it to the left or right so it doesn’t obscure the lens.

It’s not a huge speaker, though, measuring just 1.35 x 2.5 inches. It connects up via USB for both power and audio. Available for around £35 ($50).

The only thing that worries me is that the specifications page makes no mention of the power output or anything else. Either that means it’s really poor, or it’s a silly oversight by the usually attentive company.

Product page

In fact, after years of wanting a digital recorder, I now use my iPhone. However, there are still some nice features on these new recorders from Sony that would make me look twice at getting one.

Obviously they’re digital. That means you can store a huge amount of audio on the solid state disk, with no fear of quality degradation. It’s all nicely indexed, so no fast forwarding and rewinding (unless you liked listening to high-pitched squeaking as you tried to find your place).

Claiming to be unique, these recorders feature three microphones. Two allow stereo sound to be recorded, while a powerful direction mic is in place for singling out distant speakers.

As well as long-record mode for cramming up to 1,505 hours on up to 4GB of memory, there’s Linear PCM mode for recording high quality music and other audio. As it’s all USB based, the devices can also be used as portable drives for other files.

Available in eight models of varying capacities and types of battery (either rechargeable or AAA) and bundled with digital voice editing software from Dragon.

Sony

Social networking seems to be at such a place presently that, although it is widely accepted as the norm by those who use it, for others it is still a complete mystery.

Yet, particularly if someone dies quite young, it is those who are confused by Web 2.0 that may be left to decide what to do with the accounts.

The Facebook account in question hasn’t been “memorialised” yet, and perhaps that isn’t the best thing to do. One has to weigh up the benefits of making the account more secure with the fact that many pieces of information (such as the archive of wall posts) may no longer be available.

As social networks continue to increase in importance, and as more and more relationships are lived out online, these questions are going to become more common.

Should an online presence be enshrined forever? Could a more tech-savvy friend or relative create a virtual memorial for the deceased? Who has a say over how defunct accounts should be maintained, when relationship circles now extend far beyond immediate family?

I don’t have the answers, but I know that this is only going to become more common. I’m not even sure how I feel – using Facebook everyday means I will have the bittersweet reminder of his life and death much more often than had he not had an account. Enshrined, virtually immortalised, as we continue to grow older.

What do you think?

It follows a lengthy legal battle in Europe which has seen Microsoft accused of anti-competitive behaviour because it bundles Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system. This means that many computer users don’t realise there are alternative browsers available — amusing given that many users don’t really appreciate what a ‘browser’ really is.

Us geeks have been switching in droves to alternatives such as Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome, but most ‘standard’ users have stuck with IE out of ignorance.

It’s interesting that Apple, though having a significantly lower market share, hasn’t been officially questioned over its bundling of the Safari browser with OS X.

Windows users who have already switched to another browser won’t be presented with the list of options, which includes Avant, Chrome, Firefox, Flock, Green Browser, K-meleon, Maxthon, Opera, Safari, Sleipnir, Slim — and Internet Explorer of course.

Who’ll benefit the most from this? Browser manufacturers, most likely, and IT helpdesks. For those of us who are unpaid technical support for friends and relatives, it may be a potential headache but at least it forces the issue that it’s generally a good thing to switch away from Internet Explorer.

Whether my mum and dad are going to suddenly dive into using Firefox is another matter — I doubt it somehow.

Interestingly, the list of choices will be randomised to a certain extent, with the big five (Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE) appearing in random order on the first section and the other seven randomly spread out below.

What do you think of this move?

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Not to be outdone by Acer with their Ferrari One comes Hewlett Packard’s limited edition dot VR46 netbook computer designed for Moto GP world champion Valentino Rossi.

Though the main reason you’re likely to buy this is for the brand association and design, it’s not a pushover when it comes to specifications either. The 11.6-inch display sits atop a full-size keyboard and multi-gesture touchpad. With 1,366×768 resolution on the Diamond View TFT LCD, you can watch high definition content with ease, or port out via HDMI.

Under an inch thin, and weighing in at 1.35kg, it features a six-cell battery claiming up to eight hours of use on a single charge. There’s also the usual additions you’d expect: Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, webcam, and card reader, plus Dolby headphone technology and 640GB hard drive.

The case design is by Aldo Drudi and features the sun and the moon as worn on Rossi’s racing helmets. And if you didn’t know, 46 is the number he races under.

Available in the UK “soon” for £449.99.

For the uninitiated, finger was a command that, given an email address based on a Unix system, allowed various real-world information to be gleaned, depending on what the user wanted to share: usually a real name, a real location, maybe other methods of contact, plus some witticism, quote, ASCII art or other.

I had one when at Uni, though I don’t know if anyone actually used it.

Sadly, due partly to security concerns, the finger command all but fell into disuse. However, Google is now looking to bring back “web finger” using HTTP.

It’s now increasingly accepted that email addresses would be good identifiers for people (since that’s what people are used to already, and have on business cards and in their addressbooks, etc.), but we’re back to the original problem that email addresses are write-only.

If I give you my email address today, you can’t do anything with it except email me. I can’t attach public metadata to my email address to give you more information.

WebFinger is about making email addresses more valuable, by letting people attach public metadata to them.

You can read more about the proposal at code.google.com/p/webfinger.

Would you like to see finger make a comeback?

Take the latest announcement: that of the first Rugged eSATA hard drive.

LaCie is keen to point out the cost savings of getting an eSATA hard drive over an equivalent eSATA SSD. Given how reliable hard drives generally are now (unless you are extremely unlucky) and the rugged nature of this drive — something LaCie does well — it’s a factor worth considering.

Obviously, you’ll need an eSATA port on your computer in order to take advantage of this, but they are becoming a lot more common.

You’ll get speeds of up to 90MB/s with Power eSATA, and also compatibility with existing USB 2.0 ports.

Protection-wise, the drive is housed in scratch-resistant aluminium, internal shock absorbers and shock-resistant rubber bumper. You’ll likely already be familiar with Neil Poulton’s design on this style.

Available in 500GB capacity for around £139 ($210).

LaCie

I’ve already done away with (nearly) all of the gizmos that won’t take rechargeable batteries, but I’m still left with power bricks and USB cables, and when I’ve looked a charging stations before they’ve tended to be expensive — or perhaps I just assumed they’d be expensive.

Enter the IDAPT i2 and i3 charging stations: two/three port charging stations complete with six popular charging tips.

Twenty-two tips are available, claiming to cover a whopping 3,500 devices, so chances are high that your gadget is covered. If not, and it takes rechargeable batteries, you can charge those as well.

Gadgets can sit neatly on the device even when not being charged, so you don’t really have an excuse for losing your mobile phone or iPod.

For those who get really peeved that many modern devices don’t have an “off” switch (my hand is up) — the IDAPTs do.

The price? Just £20 or £30 (that’s about $30/$45). The six charging tips supplied are iPod/iPhone, microUSB, miniUSB, Nokia 2, Samsung 4 and Sony Ericsson 2.

Oh yeah, you can get them in bright pink, too. Natch.

IDAPT

How annoying is it when you don’t want to charge up your electronic items from your laptop’s USB ports, but you also don’t want a load of bricks sticking out of regular power sockets?

Enter Fastmac’s U-Socket wall outlet. Pictured is a US version, though I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to install it on international power sockets either.

Yes, it has two USB ports: one on each side of the power sockets. It costs $19.95 and is available to pre-order, though it sounds as if it still needs to pass various regulations, which is just as it should be for power-related products.

Now, two is not nearly enough for my liking, and I think some manufacturer should take things a stage further and provide a nice little ledge on which you could place the gadgets you’re charging. I don’t particularly want to have my iPhone and camera dangling from a wall socket.

Hey, how about integrating it with the home’s Ethernet network and allowing remote syncing of your iPod without having to be near your computer?

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Take a look at S&J’s new “Eggy” speaker. We can easily see why it has the name, and it’s not far off the size of a chicken’s egg either, because it can fit into the palm of your hand.

Unscrew the two halves of the egg and you have two speakers complete with their own mini stands.

The units are driven from micro-mini 20mm units and feature a digital amplifier powering two watts of output per channel. Available in white and baby shades of blue and pink, because we know how important cutesy colours are.

If you want some music on the move, the “Bike Speaker” does exactly what its name suggests. Safer than wearing headphones while cycling, the speaker is based on the same technology as the Eggy and can be mounted on the handlebars. Additionally, the unit features an FM radio, watch and stopwatch.

The units will be shown off at this year’s CeBIT show in Hanover, Germany.

For that reason, and for the joy of combining the Rubik’s Cube with robotics, we present CubeStormer from RoboticSolutions.

The claim is that this Lego Mindstorms RCX Speedcubing Robot can solve any 3³ in under twelve seconds. The video shows this: I’m happy to take their word on the machine being handed random cubes.

Just brilliant.

Kinda makes your human attempts at solving the cube rather futile, eh? Never mind. You can always dress up as a Rubik’s Cube instead.

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Photoshop

A new “celebrate” tab on the Photoshop Facebook fan page lets users who love the software that much to change their profile picture to the 20th anniversary logo.

Adobe TV will air a special demonstration of Photoshop 1.0 on a rebuilt Mac.

Photoshop itself evolved out of a pixel imaging program called Display, created by Thomas Knoll in 1987. In 1988, Adobe licensed a version of the software that could manipulate digital images, and in 1990 the first version of Photoshop was born.

Of course, the best thing about having Photoshop is how many disasters it inspired. The more popular a piece of software becomes, the greater the number of unskilled people allowed to make an attempt at “professional” work.

It shows weak, fair, good, strong and “unbreakable” passwords, as might be created by teenagers, douches (you work that one out), geeks, nature lovers, professionals, and “normal” people.

Who’s normal?

Interesting that ‘g01111001110011101100e’ — of which the central zeroes and one form five-digit binary groups each referring to a letter position in the alphabet, and actually form the password ‘goggle’ (not ‘google’, ha-ha) — is deemed “unbreakable”. I doubt it is, but I wonder how many geeks would choose a password along these lines? Not strong enough for my liking, but it’s way better than “rockstar” and “iloveu”.

What we don’t have on here are the expletive-laden passwords that I know for a fact many people often use.

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It’s a nice video, anyway. Highly impractical, but then who said that experiments like this had to be practical? We’d never have “will it blend” if that was the rule.

So, who’s going to try it with potatoes? Or, hum, apples?

Click to see the video. If you can’t wait to see the answer, it takes 2,380 orange slices to charge an iPhone (slowly).

To help with that, a system called the Venue Energy Tracker has been devised to monitor how much electricity is being used to provide heat, light and power to the Olympic Village and main venues.

The results are pretty impressive, too. In the first three days of the Games, a 20 per cent reduction in energy consumption has been marked thanks to sustainable practices.

In total that’s around 66,000 kw/h saved so far, with a target of 18 gigawatt hours of electricity saved by the end of the Games — enough to power 1,600 homes for a year.

With London also hoping to host a more environmentally-friendly event in two years’ time, it certainly sets a high standard.

It sure beats those little electricity consumption meters you might have sitting at home.

Oh, and if you like graphs (albeit not particularly clear ones), here’s one of the energy saved so far.

Take Marks & Spencer, the venerable British retailer renowned for its quality food and underwear (amongst other things).

While it may have fallen on slightly harder times recently, that hasn’t stopped it from expanding its collection of electronics items with its own triplet of own-branded netbooks.

It’s not immediately clear which OEM made the imaginatively-titled MSNB netbook, but given that the retailer is also selling a limited edition HP 110 Tord netbook, my money’s on HP. Correct me if you know otherwise.

Specs wise, it’s pretty much as you’d expect from a standard netbook: 1GB RAM, 10.2-inch LCD, 160GB hard drive, Wi-Fi and Ethernet, various outputs, 1.3MP webcam and HD audio through integrated stereo speakers.

It weighs in at 1.3kg and comes in blue, black and pink casing colours. Windows XP on board, and available in the UK for £279.