Filed under: Cell Phones, Computers

In the wake of exploding batteries in some laptops, airlines are taking measures to ban the use of those laptops in flight. For the year 2008 a new FAA-wide battery ban has gone into effect, and this one potentially applies to all of your gadgets — not just your laptop.

The ban doesn’t focus on a specific manufacturer or model. The new rules dictate how much lithium you are allowed to carry on a flight, and how you are permitted to do so. Lithium is of course a key component of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, and with these new rules you are allowed to carry on and check a maximum of 25 grams of lithium.

How do you figure out just how much you have in all your gadgets? Well, there are some guidelines and examples at Safetravel.dot.gov that can help you get a good estimate, but unless you always take three or four spare batteries for your laptop along with you, chances are you have nothing to worry about.

However, it’s important to note that spare batteries cannot be stored in checked baggage. So, while you can still take a second or maybe even a third laptop or cell phone battery with you, you have to keep it in your carry-on baggage, or risk it not being there when you get to your destination!

From DailyTech

Related Links:

• American Airlines and JetBlue to Offer In-Flight Wi-Fi
• American, Lufthansa Adding In-Flight Wi-Fi
• United Adds Cool Gadgets to First and Business Class

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US actress Lisa Kudrow has revealed she fell head over heels in love with Ireland while she was there shooting new film PS I Love You.

The Friends star - who plays Denise, the quirky pal of Hilary Swank’s Holly in the big screen adaptation of Irish author Cecelia Ahern’s chick lit novel - says she felt a deep connection with the country.

“I loved Ireland, I had been there just briefly earlier in the year and I fell in love, I loved it,” she gushed.

“I just feel good there. I don’t know why and I’m not Irish at all, there’s not one ounce of Irish blood in me I don’t think. I just really connected in, I loved it.”

Lisa, 44, also told how she palled up with her American co-star Gina Gershon on set.

“It was fun, it was really fun. Gina and I got to hang out a lot in Ireland because Hilary worked like, round the clock, it was a very tight schedule.

“But Gina and I got to hang out and that was really fun. We grew up like within a mile of each other, we had the same orthodontist it turned out, you know, we were almost friends when we were growing up.”

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Former Miss Universe and Bollywood diva Sushmita Sen has landed herself in trouble. Her forthrightness and frank attitude has landed her in a bush of thorns.
Ooops now you must be wondering why and what must have happened that the lady divine is in such a trouble.
Well, its because the lady expressed out her view on […]

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Filed under: Gaming

This is just the faintest whiff of a rumor, but Sony Asia just put up a questionnaire in which it asks how interested PlayStation Store for PC customers would be in a “Monthly subscription plan (1 price for unlimited download).” That suggests that the company is at least thinking about a service that would let gamers play as many downloadable PS1 and PSP games as they want for a monthly fee — although it’s not at all clear if the service would be PSP-only or work on both the PSP and PS3, which would sweeten the deal considerably. Chalk this up as wishful thinking for now — but those of you with PSN IDs may want to hit the read link and fill out the questionnaire.

[Via CVG, thanks L. Rawlins]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Gaming

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen video games and VR in particular applied to medicine, but this is certainly the boldest claim we’ve heard yet. According some research done on chronic pain sufferers up at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, test subjects who were playing VR games were more comfortable than participants who were on pain meds alone. That might sound like a no brainer, but the researchers are saying that video games apparently have the potential of providing a safe, partial alternative to addictive medicine, boring counseling and lame-sauce physical therapy. Sounds like a miracle cure, but who are we to argue with Canada’s finest?

[Via DailyTech]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Gaming

Just a few months ago, we received word that DS demo downloads would be headed to the Wii, but if recent comments made by the Big N’s own Reggie Fils-Aime are to be believed, entire games are also on the horizon. According to the New York Times, Reggie noted that “complete games as well as game samplers will be able to be downloaded into the Wii using its broadband connection, and then transferred wirelessly to the DS.” Sadly, no definitive time frame for the service was revealed, but you can color us all kinds of intrigued.

[Via PCWorld]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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MatrixStream will be bringing the future of high definition to homes worldwide with their MX-1 set-top box, provided that one is equipped with a 6Mbps broadband connection at the very least. At least, that’s what’s needed on paper for 1080p videos, while those who are willing to settle for 720p will require just 3Mbps with 480p folks being satisfied with just a 1.5Mbps connection. It just remains to be seen whether content creators will provide permission for their movies to be ported over to H.264 video on MatrixStream’s MX-1 though before we start hailing this as the next big thing.

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[CES 2008] If you can’t have the largest plasma TV display in the world, then there is always another accolade you can gun for - the thinnest across the entire globe. That’s exactly what Pioneer aims for with its 9mm thin HD plasma TV that will be unveiled at CES 2008. 9mm translates to a wee bit under 1cm, so one can just imagine how thin the display must be. I suppose it ought to come with the sign “Lovely to see, nice to hold; once broken, considered sold” wherever this svelte plasma display is sold in the future. More details to come at CES 2008. Check out the video of it in action.

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I have seen a lot of controversy about whether or not more expensive cables are worth their price, and the argument that comes often is that digital signal is just bits (0 and 1) and is therefore not degradable. And while I’m attempting to settle the “expensive versus cheap” cables debate, I would like to comment about this notion.

A digital signal is by nature more “resistant” to degradation, but it doesn’t mean that it is immune to degradation. With an increase in the length of the cable, and in the frequency (how fast the signal switches between 1 and 0), errors can be introduced, bits might be lost and sometimes error correction protocols might not be able to fix them. For a video signal, this might produce randomly blinking pixels (which would be more visible on a very large screen/projector), blocky corruption artifacts or plain black screen. However, it *cannot* produce a fuzzier image, like a “bad” analog cable might.

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Apple has filed for a patent that would provide a wireless LAN-type system that targets retail shopping specifically if approved. The “wireless communication system” patent is tipped to receive a remote order from a wireless client before prepping it for processing. It will then transfer that order to a different queue for processing. Customers can place their orders via a “wireless media player, a wireless personal digital assistant, [or] a cellphone.” Should this shopping idea take off, will there be a need for front line staff sometime down the road? I think that the human touch is still important, although others who prefer convenience will gladly skip the waiting in long queues as well as employees who have woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

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