Filed under: Wearables

Gore-Tex is fine and dandy, but the real argonauts out there know it still buckles under the most extreme conditions. Now, however, adventurists that happen upon a ridiculous amount of water could soon ford rivers (à la Oregon Trail, of course) without worrying about soggy socks. The technology, dubbed ion-mask, was originally crafted to “ensure soldiers’ clothing remained impermeable to chemical weapons,” but now shoe maker Hi-Tec has inked a deal that will being the solution to a smattering of its kicks. Reportedly, ion-mask can outperform “commercial waterproof fabrics such as Gore-Tex by more than a factor of 100,” and in testing, it maintained its breathability / waterproof abilities even after 100,000 flexes. No word on when full suits will be doused in this stuff, but hopefully you’ll be able to wear the same outfit to the office and the jungle here shortly.

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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Remember that fad where everyone had dining room tables of their favorite Disney character? Or the age in the 70s where tables were shaped like lava lamps? No? At any rate, the modders over at SCAD Inc. have spent all summer crafting a fully-functional Super Nintendo controller-table, which reminds us an awful lot of the fully-functional NES controller-table we saw in May of this year. So, which geek is gonna take on the N64 controller table? Or better yet, the Virtual Boy?

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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Be honest here, GoLive2’s Stix didn’t stand a chance at being taken seriously, and even when one reviewer attempted to have fun with the unashamed Wiimote knockoff, he failed epically. The Stix 200 looks strikingly like Nintendo’s accelerometer-packin’ controller, though this 2D-only rip was seen as “a set of slightly unresponsive, highly inconvenient arrow keys” rather than an exciting new controller. The PC games that can be played with the device are equally dreadful, and while the 3D-capable Stix 400 might be able to make up for some of the 200’s shortcomings, we can’t wholeheartedly say it’s even worth the effort to check out after reading this review.

[Thanks, Robert]

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Filed under: Laptops

HP has always been confident that the 2133 Mini-Note would sell quickly, to the point where the company planned to build some two million units this year, and it sounds like that bet’s paying off — China’s Apply Daily is citing sources at HP Taiwan quoting worldwide sales growing 50 percent monthly. That’s pretty good for one of the more expensive small laptops on the market — we’ll see if that rumored cheaper edition moves even more.

[Via Brighthand]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Neurosurgery with robotic assistance is getting pretty old hat nowadays, so it looks like scientists are trying to up the difficulty factor by keeping their patients awake — a team of French doctors just completed the first successful removal of malignant brain tumor from a still-conscious patient, using a computerized laser and an MRI scanner to guide the probe. The fiber-optic laser was fed into the brain through a 3mm (.12 inch) hole in the patient’s skull and guided via MRI to the tumor, where it fired for two minutes and completely destroyed the cancerous tissue. Once the tumor cells were dead, the cable was removed and the patient was allowed to return home — all within a single day. That’s pretty impressive, and it comes on the heels of 15 similar trials where five out six patients who underwent the total removal procedure were cancer-free nine months after surgery. The team says further research will cost an additional two million euros to progress, but if this technique works as well as they claim after peer review, we’d guess that money won’t be hard to come by.

[Via Fark]

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Filed under: Laptops

HiVision (also known as Shenzhen), a Chinese OEM exhibiting at IFA, is completely unabashed about its collection of netbook look-alikes, which range from 400MHz ARM-based computers that could retail for as little $150, to full featured VIA-powered affairs. Everything was as plastic as could be, of course, but the HP Mini-Note rips were almost passable as sexy. Almost.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

We won’t belabor these two: X-Fi has been spotted plenty of times before, and the Zen Mozaic “is a crap,” as our friends at Engadget Spanish put it. There was no functioning WiFi to test out the X-Fi’s networking features, but they looked pretty tedious on the surface, and the player is otherwise okay but unimpressive. Meanwhile, the Zen Mozaic is just another in a long line of shoddily built — if interesting looking — low-end DAPs from Creative. Next!

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