The two Jabra Go 6400 and Pro 9400 Bluetooth headsets are kinda neat, combining a charging dock for convenience with a touchcreen for showmanship. The 6400 has a standard Bluetooth range and looks exactly like a Bluetooth headset from Jabra, whereas the 9400 looks like a receptionist’s headset that you can take around your house at up to a 450-foot range. They both have dual-microphones for noise cancelation and both have the touchscreen to quickly switch between a cellphone, VoIP or landline connections. Both will be available later in the year for $200 each. [ Slashgear ]

You know those Microsoft laptop hunter spots ? Apple may already have responded with TV spots of their own , but these MacBook Pros strike back at Microsoft better than any ad can: by doing. Apple did two things simultaneously that are usually contradictory; they lowered the price of their entire MacBook Pro line while at the same time bumping up the specs. The 15-inch version now starts at $1699 and caps out at $2299, down from $1999 and $2499. What’s even nicer is that the 13-inch MacBook—which previously didn’t have a backlit keyboard or a Firewire slot or a “nicer” screen—got absorbed into the MacBook Pro family and is now virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the Pro line.

It’s kind of amazing how much Apple got right yesterday—and what they got wrong: Their product lines are completely scrambled. The Pro designation has become meaningless and $99 iPhones look just like $499 iPhones. It’s possible that when the subsidized iPhone 3G dropped last year for $199, a new Apple was born. We just didn’t see it clearly until today, with the announcement of the iPhone 3GS and new MacBook Pro line.

We keep trying to imagine ourselves at the keys of one Gateway’s new NS50, NO50 or NO20 laptops, sucking down a too-small cup of coffee and completely blown away by a game of minesweeper or an Excel spreadsheet, but it’s just not working for us. Gateway played it pretty safe here on design, and while the internals are just fine, full-up with pro-level parts to boost security and wireless performance (there’s even a WiMAX option), we’re not seeing much of anything to really differentiate the line. The NO50 and NS50 both do 15.4-inch screens, while the NO20 goes 12.1-inches. No word on price, but we’re guessing cheap. They all should be available right about now in European retailers. Filed under: Laptops Gateway’s new Europe-bound NS50, NO50 and NO20 boringtops for businesses originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 May 2009 05:16:00 EST.

The 3DConnexion Spacepillot Pro, specifically. It takes 3DConnex’s previous SpaceNavigator knob and adds just about everything else a CAD pro, Pixar artist or Second Life sex addict could ever need. Since I am none of these things, the spec page whirs just above my head. But the inclusion of a mini LCD screen for checking mail and selecting workflow macros is pretty great, as is just about every programmable custom function you could imagine. Mike, a Canadian CAD wizard, knows more than I, and he has a comprehensive review here .

What have we here? Why, a fresh shipment of what is, after Pioneer’s exit from the TV business , now among the most valuable retail inventory around—the sole remaining Pioneer Kuro plasma TVs . I ran across this scene today outside Park Avenue Audio on 29th and Park in Manhattan—a shop that caters to A/V junkies (I bought my Grado SR60s there), and it’s a shipment fresh from Japan. The guys at Park Ave. say that it’s becoming quite a battle to secure whatever Kuro inventory remains, but they’ve got a source that should keep them in Kuros for at least a little longer. If you’re just joining us, Pioneer’s Kuros have been the King of All Plasmas for the last several years, with blacks blacker than the depths of cold space

Some of you were wondering how the homeless charge their cellphones —maybe they do it Chechen-soldier style and created their own wooden, dynamo-powered cellphone charger out in the untamed wilderness. Chechen soldiers devised the charger to keep their cell phones charged. Turning the crank will pull the strings and activate the pulleys. As a result, it generates electricity in the capacitor (the blue thing), thereby charging the phone. You’d probably have to put in a bit of a workout to see any results, but hey, at least it’ll allow you to phone home just like E.T. did

Charlie Miller , the security expert whose meticulously crafted exploit took over a MacBook through Safari in 10 seconds at the Pwn2Own hacking competition, says that Macs are in fact safer than Windows. Oh boy. It’s for reasons we’ve heard before —there’s just way less stuff out there attacking Macs. He told Tom’s Hardware : “I’d say that Macs are less secure for the reasons we’ve discussed here (lack of anti-exploitation technologies) but are more safe because there simply isn’t much malware out there. For now, I’d still recommend Macs for typical users as the odds of something targeting them are so low that they might go years without seeing any malware, even though if an attacker cared to target them it would be easier for them.” Whatever OS you’re running, the best thing you can do, he says, is to just keep your system up to date (then you won’t get Conficker , either). And not be stupid.

As sad as it sounds, most of us experience the world through photographs. Now MIT software engineers are taking that idea literally and mapping Flickr photos to regional maps in The World’s Eyes project. By pulling GPS metadata from uploaded photos (and then skinning that data in a neat 3D visualization), users can see how photographers/tourists see a given area. There’s overlap, yes, but that’s entirely the point. It’s a project more about capturing stereotypes (like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Statue of Liberty in NY), than giving a Google Street View objective turn by turn of an area. Add tags like “party” to the mix, and that worldview is altered in very interesting, less predictable ways

The ISS looked this way—with the fourth and final solar panel truss—as the space shuttle Discovery undocked yesterday. It’s almost as big as a Corellian corvette , but there’s still a long to do list: As you can see, it’s still not entirely done. This photo timeline shows how the ISS has evolved since assembly started in November 20, 1998. But there’s still a lot to be done, as you can see in the following list of modules that have to go up there. • Multi-Purpose Logistics Module — Delivered by the space shuttle.