Nintendo DS 3G

Nintendo is considering taking a page from the Kindle playbook and offering free 3G wireless web access with its next handheld console (next gen, not yet another DS version), according to company president Satoru Iwata.

The move, if it did happen, would clearly be a response to the surging popularity of iPhone gaming.

"Only people who can pay thousands of yen a month [in mobile phone subscriptions] can be iPhone customers. That doesn't fit Nintendo customers because we make amusement products," Mr Iwata said.

The Kindle's one-off cost would better suit Nintendo's customer base, he said. "In reality, if we did this it would increase the cost of the hardware, and customers would complain about Nintendo putting prices up, but it is one option for the future."

USB 3.0 motherboard

It has 10 USB 2.0 orifices too. Personally, I'd just wait for a full USB 3.0 board, where every port's USB 3.0. Otherwise, you're just gonna feel cramped and then dumb, when you have to buy another board. If you must have the 3.0 now this slab supports CrossFire and SLI with a pair of PCIe x 16 slots, a pair of Gigabit ethernet ports, and eSATA. Of course, there's no price or date for this thing yet, which makes it a little less exciting, perhaps. As exciting as gimped USB 3.0 motherboards can get, anyway.

Rachet and Clank A crack in time

Technically, one can think of the freshly released Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time as being the third and final part in a trilogy that began with Tools of Destruction. And based on Insomniac's comments, we may not see another installment for quite some time...

According to VideoGamer, Insomniac senior community manager James Stevenson calls the story arc involved their "magnum opus," and says A Crack in Time "concludes the story" at hand. This latest title brings everything to a satisfying conclusion; it'd be all the more satisfying if you played them all (Quest for Booty being part two), and those people should feel as if the stories in the three games were all just "one thread." Ideally, this is the team's "masterpiece" and when developers are using comments and terms such as these, it makes us think the franchise may be done for a little while. But while this can't possibly be "the end," R&C may take a break for a good long time. Said Stevenson:

"Never say never. We could do another Ratchet & Clank game. It's a huge IP, big universe and a lot of stories to tell and I'm sure it's a big property for Sony. Sony owns the IP. So, I'm sure this isn't the end for the characters, but I think players will have to see the end of the game to understand more."

Not only is it popular, but it's also one of the best PS3-exclusive franchises out there, so it's highly unlikely that Sony would wish to shelve Ratchet. At the same time, when it comes to completing a trilogy, the developers may wish to go in a very new direction when the series returns...and we might have to wait a little longer than usual. Who knows?

Touch Speakers

Someone's fetish definitely comes through with this speaker concept design. You turn the system on by giving the cheeks a gentle tap while the volume is controlled with tender caresses. I want someone to turn this design into reality so much, because I definitely don't fondle my current speakers enough.

Windows 7

Windows 7 officially launches today, but we've been testing, tweaking, customizing, fixing, and writing about this OS for a year now. We present here a guide to everything we've learned about the OS, from first install to final settings change.

Whether you've played around with Windows 7 during its beta or release candidate versions, launch day is finally here, and Windows 7 is finally ready for widespread, public consumption. This guide will take you straight through from system requirements and upgrading your PC to highlighting Windows 7's best new features to helping you hit the ground running with all of the awesome tweaks Windows 7 has in store for you.

New Apple Mouse

The first was the Apple Pro Mouse. I got one free at the July 2000 Macworld Conference & Expo in New York City. After taking tons of crap for the original iMac's hamburger mouse, Steve Jobs conceded and happily presented the insanely great Apple Pro Mouse. So insanely great it was that he gave one free to every person in the audience. I got two, because I'm greedy like that (and my first wife was with me at the time).

It's still my favorite Apple mouse ever. It was sleek, all in black, with two layers of polycarbonate: One transparent outside, the other translucent black inside. It felt like it was made out of mercury, with its circuitry glowing in laser red. Like the Apple Magic Mouse, it also clicked, with a crunchabolous clickity-clack noise more satisfying than biting a five-Pringles stack.

Sure, it only had one button. I didn't care. I would rather have one button that works every single time, than two fake buttons that work so-so, two side-buttons that I had to deactivate because they were driving me crazy, and a nipple that gets dirty quicker than a Bangkok brothel, except that this whiskered hooker never works. That's the Apple Mighty Mouse. One lousy mouse that will not be missed.

Fall leaves shooting challenge

Adam has already rounded up resident graphics artisans for his weekly Photoshop Contests. Consider Shooting Challenge its straighter-laced cousin, a weekly contest that challenges resident photographers to capture funny, beautiful and creative shots. This week's theme? Fall leaves.

Interpret the theme in absolutely any way you'd like. We only have three rules:

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the "challenge" part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.

I took the lead shot was taken on a Panasonic GF1: f/3.5, 1/100s, ISO 100, 14-45mm kit lens.

Send your best entries to me by the end of Thursday at contests@gizmodo.com with Fall Leaves in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Include your shooting summary in the body of the email.

Thanks, I'm looking forward to everyone here showing me up by the end of the week.

Tentacle shower

It may look like the business end of a squid, but I have a feeling the Sculpture showerhead from Vado would be bad ass in the bathroom. Think about it—you can set those tentacles up to spray water in any direction. It's kind of like blending elements of traditional shower heads, rain shower heads and those full-body systems that everyone dreams about owning.

6 YO lost in homemade air balloon

A 6-year-old boy is floating over northeastern Colorado in a homebuilt lighter-than-air craft and authorities are racing to try and rescue him. The homemade flying saucer , covered in foil and filled with helium, lifted the boy into the air near Fort Collins Thursday morning after the balloon became untethered at the family home. Fort Collins police and other authorities have been alerted and Airtracker 7 has launched in an effort to locate the boy. We're told the boy was near Milliken around noon and was heading southeast at about 7,000 feet, which would be about 2,000 feet above ground level. Skies in the area are partly cloudy and southwest wind speeds are 15 to 20 miles per hour. "It is believed the device could rise to 10,000 feet," said Eloise Campanella, Larimer County Sheriff's Officer spokeswoman. Deputies from Larimer and Weld counties are tracking the balloon as it drifts.

6 YO lost in homemade air balloon

A 6-year-old boy is floating over northeastern Colorado in a homebuilt lighter-than-air craft and authorities are racing to try and rescue him. The homemade flying saucer , covered in foil and filled with helium, lifted the boy into the air near Fort Collins Thursday morning after the balloon became untethered at the family home. Fort Collins police and other authorities have been alerted and Airtracker 7 has launched in an effort to locate the boy. We're told the boy was near Milliken around noon and was heading southeast at about 7,000 feet, which would be about 2,000 feet above ground level. Skies in the area are partly cloudy and southwest wind speeds are 15 to 20 miles per hour. "It is believed the device could rise to 10,000 feet," said Eloise Campanella, Larimer County Sheriff's Officer spokeswoman. Deputies from Larimer and Weld counties are tracking the balloon as it drifts.

New Wi-Fi Direct to Connect Gadgets Without Routers

Coming mid-2010 there will be a new Wi-Fi standard that will allow any Wi-Fi gadget to connect wirelessly with each other without having to go through a wireless router. The best thing: It will only require a software update.

The new standard is called Wi-Fi Direct and—unlike Bluetooth—the technology will enjoy exactly the same speed and range as Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi Alliance—which includes Intel, Microsoft, and Apple—says that it will automatically detect and hitch any device equipped with Wi-Fi within a 300 range, from computers to cameras to TVs to printers to anything in between. All peer-to-peer.

The Wi-Fi Alliance and everyone else—including myself—are pretty excited about this. So excited that they are planning a big advertising campaign to make people move to it. And since it will only require a downloadable software patch, you can expect the technology to become ubiquitous pretty fast.

Firefox 3.6

MacBooks and Thinkpads already have all the hardware they need to know which way they're tilting, but most software doesn't even bother to ask. Now, with the orientation-aware Firefox 3.6, your accelerometers might finally get some exercise.

Apple and Lenovo generally include the sensors as data protection tools: using readings from an inbuilt accelerometer, a laptop can recognize when it's in freefall, and spin down, or even cushion, its hard drive to try to minimize platter death. It works, sometimes! But on a hardware level, these accelerometers are just like the ones in your cellphone, meaning they can track orientation finely enough to play simple physics games, which you'll evidently be able to do in the next version of Firefox:

Originally built as something that we would include for our upcoming mobile browser release, we've made it available on desktop systems as well. Many modern Macbooks and Thinkpads contain devices and drivers that expose this information. We've added support for Linux, Macs and some Thinkpads where drivers and devices are available.

So it was an afterthought for Firefox proper, and you'll have to code special games and sites for it, and it'll only work on a few major laptop models. It's not exactly The Future of Firefox, but it's a cool trick nonetheless.

Dyed Black White Donkeys?

GAZA (Reuters) – Two white donkeys dyed with black stripes delighted Palestinian kids at a small Gaza zoo on Thursday who had never seen a zebra in the flesh.

With their long ears, drooping heads and sleepy eyes, the impostors probably would not have fooled the zoo's only lioness. But the effect achieved by the zoo owners' dye job looks not so bad -- to the unpracticed eye, and from a distance.

On closer inspection it resembles the classic striped convict suit of cartoon strips.

Nidal Barghouthi, whose father owns the Marah Land zoo, said the two female donkeys were striped using masking tape and women's hair dye, applied with a paint-brush.

"The first time we used paint but it didn't look good," he said. "The children don't know so they call them zebras and they are happy to see something new."

A genuine zebra would have been too expensive to bring into Israel-blockaded Gaza via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, said owner Mohammed Bargouthi. "It would have cost me $40,000 to get a real one."

Gaza's Palestinians are impoverished by their isolation under an Israeli embargo against its Islamist Hamas rulers, who refuse to give up armed resistance against the Jewish state.

Bargouthi's zoo charged an entrance fee of just $15 for a full busload of children.

Buffalo's HD-HU3 Poised To Be The First USB 3.0 Hard Drive

Buffalo is set to cross the USB 3.0 finish line first with their HD-HU3 hard drive. They also plan on offering NEC's IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI Expressx1 host controller with the drive so you can, you know, use it. The drives will be available this month—although it appears to be a Japan-only release for the moment. The drives will run around $250 and $284 for 1TB and 1.5TB models respectively (a 2TB model is also in the works.), and the controller will run an additional $60. It's probably a bit early to jump on 3.0, but chances are we won't have to wait long before the technology goes mainstream.

Verizon's HTC and Motorola Android Phones Caught Red Handed

Verizon said this morning that it will drop two Android phones "within the next few weeks." And all signs point to these being them. That's likely an HTC Hero on the left and the Motorola Sholes on the right. So nice of Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam to keep them warm until we get our hands on them. [Verizon via Boy Genius]

Boy Genius is reporting double confirmation that the HTC phone is in fact the Verizon edition of the HTC Hero, and that it will be out in November.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Trailer

The new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Trailer shows clips from the campaign. As shown here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agJWuWywquA Call of duty has many new maps and guns. They even have new vehicles such as a snowmobile and boats and other means of transportation. You can pre-order this game that comes out November 10, 2009. This game is going to be amazing!

Custom Camera Rig Allows For a Stunning Vertical Panorama of a Giant Redwood

Wildlife photographer Michael Nichols wanted to photograph a 300-foot-tall redwood in a dense forest with no clear lines of sight. So he built a custom camera rig to take tons of close-ups to stitch together. The result is a stunning composite of 83 different shots of this incredible tree. Look for a huge foldout of the image in the October issue of National Geographic, and here's a video of Nichols talking about the process of capturing the image.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9LHjV48e9s&feature=player_embedded#