JVC flashed a tit at a few Japanese journalists, giving them a quick glance at its upcoming GZ-HD3 tapeless camcorder. The demo revealed a tiny shooter with a relatively large lens, packing 60GB of hard disk space that will yield five hours of HD goodness at its maximum quality. It should serve as a worthy little brother to JVC’s GZ-HD7 tapeless HD camcorder we reviewed a couple of months ago, but this new one should cost about $500 less. Find out what you get for your $1200, and peek at another pic.

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Throwing its fins into the proverbial pool with various water-bourne robots such as the Strider, the CMU Water Runner, and whatever this creep is called, is the new STRIDE — soon to be the aforementioned Strider’s enemy number one. The name stands for Surface Tension Robotic Insect Dynamic Explorer, and the minuscule bot works by mimicking the strider insect and skirting along the surface of the water using hydrophobic wire legs coated in Teflon. Researchers discovered that the 1-gram bot could carry a 9.3-gram payload without breaking the surface by utilizing a sculling motion for movement. The robot is 10-15 times slower than the actual insect and 10 times larger, but the engineers hope to lower the bot’s size and increase it’s speed by downsizing its build, along with expanding its capabilities by harnessing technologies such as sensors, wireless communication, and autonomous control.

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Internet radio — a market which seems to be heating up lately — is getting another entry to the game in Freecom’s latest device. The company has just announced its MusicPal WiFi radio, which can access up to 5,000 pre-programmed internet stations (or you can add your own), stream your MP3s and WAVs from your PC or network, and can be connected to your home stereo when it’s time to really party. The petite, stylish device runs on the Linux 2.6 kernel, has 802.11b/g and wired 10/100 RJ45 connectivity, and sports a 128×64 pixel monochrome LCD display. The MusicPal goes on sale in August for €129, although the company is taking pre-orders right now. Too bad royalties are poised to kill the internet radio star this Sunday.

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SCEE President David Reeves revealed in an interview that the 60GB PS3’s long-overdue price cut is actually a fire sale, at least in America. When the last one is sold, it will be just that—the last one. It’s entirely possible we could see a “clarification” of the statement, but Reeves was pretty unambiguous in his language.

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While we’ve seen all sorts of blazing feats over fiber here lately, it’s not often that such wide open bandwidth gets piped directly to a home, but a 75-year old Swede recently changed all that when she had a 40Gbps connection installed in her domicile. ‘Course, this fine dame is the mum of Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg, and she’s hoping to somehow “persuade internet operators to invest in faster connections.” The trick behind the setup is a “new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000-kilometers apart with no intermediary transponders,” and just in case you’re wondering, she can download a full high-definition DVD in a painstaking two seconds.

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While some people would say that the iTravl is what I use to write my posts*, I don’t really know how well it translates between English and the eight languages it supports using its look-Ma-no-hands speech recognition system. Just for its cheesy, retro sci-fi look, however, I wouldn’t care if it translated my “Hello, where can I have a pizza, please?” to “Take your pants down and take me to your leader!” when I visit Moscow. Jump for more details and see my nipples explode with delight!

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We had a hunch that a once over just wasn’t enough time with Asus’ oh-so-intriguing Eee PC 701, so we’re quite pleased that the folks over at NotebookReview were able to get a little alone time with the mini-laptop and give us some food for thought. As expected, this decently spec’d (for the price, of course) machine booted into an Asus-customized flavor of Linux “in about ten seconds flat,” while the entire shutdown procedure took about half of that. Once inside, they seemed quite impressed with the amount of built-in applications and responsiveness, and noted that enough software was included to “definitely serve all of your basic needs.” Of course, the understandably scrunched keyboard “took some getting used to,” and although the display wasn’t jaw-dropping, it served the purpose. Best of all, they were able to snag quite a few shots of the wee device, so be sure and give their writeup a look if you could potentially see this thing in your future.

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Fujitsu’s got a new bag, baby, and it’s called the LifeBook A3130. The business-centric, Vista-ready, 15.4-inch laptop features a 2GHz AMD Turion processor, 2GB of RAM, a 120GB HDD, an ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 graphics card with 256MB of RAM, and a DVD-RW optical drive. With Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g, five USB ports, and a bitchin’ fingerprint reader / scroll button, you’ll be the toast of the boardroom, possibly. The zippy little number also includes a spill-resistant keyboard and a screaming-fast V.90 56K modem. Available right now for the bargain price of $1149.

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Feel that? That’s the unexpected stir of nostalgia welling inside your dorktic-loin. Rest easy, you’re not alone. In fact, that picture aroused a deeply seeded HP fanboi-ism long obscured by thick slabs of drab computing plastic and opaque printer ink. The 35s marks the 35th anniversary of the industry defining HP-35 pocket scientific calculator (and death of the sliderule) — a first to offer basic trig and exponential functions. While HP preserved the original’s reverse Polish notation, gone is the single-line of red LEDs which illuminated the childhood wonder of so many budding engineers. The new 35s also introduces an algebraic entry mode for those who find RPN entry just a bit too, well, reversed. Of course, it’s fully modern with 800 storage registers, 100 built-in functions, and a large 2-line alpha numeric display with adjustable contrast. Better yet, the 35s will only set you back $60 compared to the $395 it cost back in 1972 — that’s a lot more 8-tracks for your swank Ford Capri, eh Pops?

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If you can’t wait for the eventual Apple update, then by all means have at it weekend hackers: custom iPhone ringtones can now be yours. Disparate hacks have been cobbled together into a step-by-step guide over at the appropriately named hacktheiphone site. The instructions make use of both the iPhoneInterface and jailbreak hacks which opened up full access to the iPhone’s UI and filesystem. Unfortunately, the former only works on the Intel-based Macs at the moment. For those of you a bit wary of screwing the $600 pooch somewhere along the 23 steps, take heed: “everyone [they] know has been able to restore their iPhone fully by using iTunes.” So go ahead, we double-dog dare ya. Just report back in the comments how it went, mkay?

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