Good old Darth Vader never fails to impose himself, and this time the Sith Lord comes in the form of a USB hub. Of course, his chest controls are no longer fancy LED lights that blink randomly, but instead reveal themselves to be a quartet of USB 2.0 ports (presumably - who deals with 1.1 these days anyways). Good thing the €43 you pay for this doesn’t result in just a deadpan USB 2.0 bust, but Darth Vader’s head will automatically come to life the moment he is hooked up to a computer. His eyes will glow red, while his famous breathing sound comes into play as he moves his head around. We’re fortunate in a way that his hands are not there to Force Choke us whenever we start killing time at work by checking out our Facebook account instead of crunching numbers.
The latest edu-gimmick to hit small-town America: Liberty, Missouri’s handing out a hundred and change media players — Zunes, to be specific — to local high school and middle school students for listening to lesson-supporting podcasts in the hopes of saving them “lost class time.” Surely this will raise test scores, right? Or at least improve the Zune’s cachet? Who knows — even the district superintendent said, “Is it the next great thing? I don’t know. Maybe. But it is another tool.” Maybe the Kindle might make a better tool, but either way, Microsoft apparently intends to release data on the case study later this year.
