Africa: Kenya gets world first mobile phone money transfer service

Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest mobile phone operator, has launched a service this week that will use short message services (SMS) to transfer money even from or to customers without bank accounts. The product allows the operator’s 5.8 million subscribers to use their mobile phones to send money within Kenya where often the money earner of a family is working in a city to support family members living in rural areas. “…This service is the first of its kind in the world. We have plans to take it elsewhere…the first international link, between the U.K. and Kenya, will come in the very near future…

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Gadgets: The Lettuce Safe

If you want to hide away your valuables where a burglar would never look for you can now use the “Head of Iceberg Lettuce Safe”. It looks like a normal salad head but is actually a small safe. While the fridge/freezer has been rather popular place to look for - remember all those Hollywood movies where the valuables have been hidden under the ice cubes - have you ever heard of someone stealing…

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Gadgets: The A-List of iPod Skins and Cases

We searched dozens of websites and manufacturers to bring you this list of the best skins and cases for your iPod. Most of them are available for different iPod models and all of them are still available for sale (We had to exclude some that are sold out). You will find an image, a short description and a link to the manufacturer web site, but if a particular skin or case is only available from an online shop you will find that link too…

(This story has 9 pages)

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Gadgets: Floppy Notebooks

Online shop “ThinkGeek” is offering recycled Floppy disks as writing journals. They even have old 8” for those who need to write down a lot. Floppies in the standard sizes 3.5″, 5.25″, and 8″ have been converted into writing journals. The floppies used are assorted, so some of these floppies have labels, while others are blank. Some are colored and some are just black…

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Humor: Art Lebedev Eraser

Russian design studio Art Lebedev is offering a palm-size eraser that is shaped like a Delete key on a computer keyboard. About USD 8…

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Research: Unveiling the Quantum Computer

There were quite some stories going around the last days regarding Canadian company D-Wave and their presentation in the Silicon Valley yesterday.
If you want to learn more about it:

ABC News has a two page story about it.
Rose.blog (D-Wave) also has more detailed info and links.
There is a Press Release at the [...]

Electronic Paper: First mobile device with rollable display available in 2007

We have recently reported that rollable display devices are “getting ready for mass markets”. This week “Polymer Vision” and Telecom Italia announced an agreement that they will together develop and market the first available mobile device with such a display. The Cellular-Book, as the device is called, is expected to be available to consumers during 2007. The device will be presented to the Industry at…

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Gadgets: ZINK portable Printer

Update 03-Feb-2007: Just added image of Zink 7MP camera with built-in printer. — If you have a mobile phone with a camera you want one of those printers. “Zink Imaging” has launched their new pocket size photo printer at DEMO in Palm Springs this week. It uses special paper with embedded dye crystals that are activated by heat from the printer. The outputs are wallet sized, water resistant 2×3-inch prints in photo quality. The printer tray can hold up to ten papers internally and images are transfers via Bluetooth from mobile phones…

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Electric Car: ZAP announces new EV sports car based on Lotus APX

US electric car manufacturer “ZAP” announced that it will present this week a new electric sports car based on a Lotus Engineering design. To take on “Tesla Motors” Roadster high-performance electric vehicle it is using the Lotus aluminum APX concept car as the platform and promises 644 horsepower / 155mph max speed by replacing Lotus’ APX’s conventional gasoline V6 engine with in-hub electric motors. By comparison, Tesla’s Roadster that is due for delivery the end of this year has 248 horsepower and a similar max speed. The company further says…

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Pimp your iPod with the iGoatse Case

It has been around for quite some time but after recently so many different ways to “skin” your iPod have been introduced we thought it would be good to also remind our readers of this great concept work. More information, contact and full size images at “extraneo.it”…

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