Every once in a while, some company will improve on something that you wouldn’t think needed any improvement at all. Take the grand piano, for instance. Its sleek blank ebony framework and perfect ivory keys are a symbol of pure music.

And yet, Yamaha has made the grand piano even more perfect with the recently unveiled Disklavier Mark IV, a piano that can “play itself, teach you to play, and perform in sync with your favorite CDs”.

It is also one of the first pianos to have a Wifi connection with 802.11b specification. As far as I know, the Disklavier is also the only piano with a remote control. This PDA-type pocket remote controller has buttons and a full-color LCD touchscreen, and some models include a tablet-PC remove with 10.4 inch touchscreen.

Another feature is its open-ended software-based architecture with Linux Operating System, which is fully upgradeable. The Mark IV’s hard drive is 80 gigabytes, which completely trounces the 16 megabytes of flash memory in the previous models.

Other features include some family entertainment features such as karaoke-file compatibility, microphone input and vocal harmony in the piano’s built-in speakers or external sound system.

I could probably fill three articles with all the other features. Anyway, these pianos are available in many models for about $11,000 to start.

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Most Macs I’ve seen so far are things of beauty, making this DIY Corkboard Mac look rather out of place with the rest of its brethren no thanks to the way it was constructed. Most of the innards consist of an older PowerBook, all held together by a series of colorful push-pins. Well, this is way too fragile for me to display openly whenever there are kids around, so I think it would be better off enclosed in a transparent glass case and placed in a museum instead. Creepy.

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Take a peek at the upcoming Asus Eee Box, a desktop version of the wildly successful Asus Eee PC. This white mini PC will definitely be a firm favorite with folks who are competing with four other family member every morning for the bathroom since everyone shares a cramped apartment. Being diminutive in stature, the Eee Box is tipped to be powered by either Linux or Windows XP, and will feature the following :-

• e of hard drive options (80GB to 250GB)
• Draft-N connectivity
• Four USB 2.0 ports
• SD/MMC/MS memory card slot

Don’t expect to play Crysis on a machine like this - it is more suitable for casual web surfing and pumping out Word documents. Prices start from $328 upwards.

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Are you an over shopper? No matter how many times you go to the grocery store you always wind up buying too much food. This surplus of extra food eventually expires and is quickly introduced to the trash can. But why? Why do we waste so much food when we can use it for creating something usable?

The Kitchen Composter takes all of your leftover or rotting food and composites fully-usable fertilizer within two weeks using only 10 watts of power. The extra fertilizer not only saves you money from your local garden product dealer, but would be awesome to use on your home garden, growing your own family some fresh veggies.

The composter does its thing over a period of two weeks and notifies you that the job is done with a red light. The selection of 6 colors allows you to mix and match with your home decor, so the composter doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

NatureMill offers some special goodies behind the scenes, including free field technician repair and even replacement of the entire unit up to three years after purchase. So you figure that the initial $395 investment will set you back a tad in your finances, but over time, you’d surely make all of that back and more.

Product Page via EcoFriend

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Dragons aren’t the only creatures that are able to breathe out fire and roast their target - all it takes is a little bit of ingenuity, plenty of DIY skill and passion in order to create an inorganic fire-breathing device - a wheelchair. This unique seating device uses parts from several different machines, consisting of a Marine rescue Helicopter seat and parts from an electric golf cart as well. Fully powered by electricity, it hits full stride at 22mph, and if a gentle demeanour fails to let ordinary folk move out of your way, you can always threaten to give them a tan they won’t forget anytime soon.

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NEC will be rolling out its new 3G cell phone known as the N706ie in Japan, with the main talking point (no pun intended) being a total talking time of four hours, which should be long enough for you to share all your sordid stories with your best friend without missing a beat. Specifications consist of :-

• 3″ WQVGA display
• 2 megapixel camera
• 1-Seg mobile TV support
• FOMA service

The NEC N706ie measures 105mm x 49mm x 16.6mm and tips the scales at 115 grams. It will only be available in Japan this September at a yet undisclosed price.

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Golf simulators are dime a dozen, and despite the sky high prices that they come with, the experience of a real golf course can never really be replicated digitally - at least today’s technology is rather limited in this aspect. Eball Games hopes to offer a substitute with its inflatable golf simulator that comes with a large projection screen and a bunch of sensors that help detect the motion and speed of an actual golf ball in order to display a virtual ball on the 3D course instead. You’d best make sure that it is placed in a location that will not ruffle the missus’ feathers as shifting it around can be quite the hassle. For those who want to experience a truly portable golfing experience, why not pick up a golfing sim on the DS Lite or PSP?

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Now the Glovephone concept will probably never take off, since it can be quite a hassle to use if you happen to attend barbecue parties all the time. Imagine taking off your phone just for the sake of tearing into some delicious racks of lamb. While electronics woven into clothing has been around for a while already, that doesn’t mean it will work with a phone sewed onto the palm of your glove. According to the designer, one good thing about this is it will call 911 automatically whenever it detects itself being in a fist fight. Pretty neat, although you won’t have time to talk to the operator on the other end of the line when you’re busy trying to avoid punches.

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by Thomas Ricker, posted May 29th 2008 at 3:37AMBeating Sony to the punch is SanDisk’s new 8GB Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo card. The “Extreme III Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo” touts the most convoluted name in portable flash storage as well as 3x the performance — 30MBps read and write — of standard Memory Stick Pro Duo cards. As such, they are perfect for high performance DSLRs and camcorders. Available worldwide in June for $150.

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NEC will be rolling out its new 3G cell phone known as the N706ie in Japan, with the main talking point (no pun intended) being a total talking time of four hours, which should be long enough for you to share all your sordid stories with your best friend without missing a beat. Specifications consist of :-

• 3″ WQVGA display
• 2 megapixel camera
• 1-Seg mobile TV support
• FOMA service

The NEC N706ie measures 105mm x 49mm x 16.6mm and tips the scales at 115 grams. It will only be available in Japan this September at a yet undisclosed price.

Continue reading...