Bug Labs Sells Out!

  No Bug Labs has not sold out to some large electronics corporation, rather they have sold out their initial inventory. This is pretty impressive, until you see there is no sales number given, so their initial inventory could be anywhere between 1 and infinite. The first offering of products was targeted towards developers to build a solid base for the 'do it yourself' platform before it is workable for the general public.
  At first I was not blown away with the Bug Lab concept, but after seeing a video of their platform in action at this years CES I changed my mind. The device has all sorts of interesting functions that can not currently be done with most consumer electronics, a GPS tag for photos being one such example. With the companies plan for up to 80 more Bug modules the Bug Devices are showing strong potential.

Korean Music Video Faces Lawsuit From Final Fantasy Creator

  Joystiq is reporting that Korean recording artist Ivy has lost the lawsuit brought against her for the Korean music video Temptation of Sonta. While watching the video you might get a strong case of deja vu despite having never seen the video. This is because Ivy's camp has taken 80% of the plot, characters, and outfits.
  Perhaps the music video did not do too well financially because the courts ruling only awarded around $17,000 USD to Square. In the end its better then nothing, and will hopefully teach Ivy that by claiming to be an 'artist' she is generally required to be creative and come up with ideas of her own.

Three Years Of The PSP

  PSP Fanboy has put together an excellent slide show looking at the various achievements and events surrounding the PSP. The slide show marks the third year anniversary of the PSP's launch.
  I picked up the PSP the first day it was released. At the time there was nothing like it available, portable media on such a generous screen for a reasonable price was unheard of at the time. As the months went on and the novelty began to wear off I used my PSP less and less. I am not a huge gamer, I mostly purchased the PSP cause I liked it and wanted a portable media player. I did end up purchasing a couple UMD's and converted a couple videos to watch on it, but I never did utilize the system to is full potential.

The Sony PMX-M70 PMP, Slick Design Serial Number Name

  One could spend days pondering why Sony would give such a well designed and beautiful PMP player such a generic serial number of a name, but then again Sony rarely does get to creative in the name department. Considering this is a China only release, the name would not have been comprehensible to me anyways so on to the facts.

  The PMX-M70 sports a 4.3 inch LCD, handles MPEG4, MP3, WMA, and ACC, 8GB internal flash memory, and built in speakers. Unfortunately after sleuthing around a little the PMP does not have a China only price. People have reported seeing the device available in Shanghai for around $300.

Zipit Wireless Messenger 2

The Zipit Wireless Messenger allows users to use online text messaging services such as AOL online, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger while they are away from their computer. The small portable texting device works with any wireless network the user has access too. The Zipit also functions as an MP3 player and can play picture slide shows.

The Zipit Messenger has a QWERTY keyboard, high resolution LCD color screen, and an SD slot to expand the memory. The retail price is usually around $150. The Zipit is similar to the Sony Mylo, but one of the things it is really lacking in voice chat. The price point would be rather attractive if the device had some Skype functionality, but I suspect this is geared towards a younger dare I say less sophisticated teenage crowd who would probably stay away from real voice conversations only.

If you have a pre teen or teenage kid who permanently occupies your home computer to juggle several text message conversations at once the Zipit might be a great low cost alternative to buy them a computer, or never using your own.

23andMe: "Genetics Just Got (Way Too) Personal"

  23andMe has received a lot of attention lately for decoding individuals genomes for low prices. Also that fact that it has received funding from Google and one of the co-founders is married to one of Google's co-founders makes the company a hot topic these days.

  For the low price of $999 23andMe sends you a tube which must be filled with saliva and sent back to their lab. There they will decode your genome and provide you with some nice software that will tell you all sorts of things you want to know, such as who your ancestors are, whether you take your looks from your mother or father, and how you compare to other people you know. They also tell you some things you might not want to know, such as what health problems you are likely to suffer or die from.

  So far so good, but what do they do to protect your genetic information? Even if there are no names attached to the genetic information 23andMe will have control over a database that insurance companies will pay top dollar for. The real profits for this company will not come from decoding genomes, but from selling this information to insurance companies, who will use it to deny you coverage or raise your rates.