Boy, we've gone from rumor to hands-on experience in just a couple of days with this thing. Microsoft's November 9-bound Xbox 360 controller refresh couldn't escape the clutches of Joystiq, who have put together a neat photo gallery and video overview. That chrometastic new D-pad is clearly the headliner here, and the early feedback is that it works well -- it takes a bit of effort to transform from a flat button to the elevated four-way navigator you see above, but that's apparently a good thing as it means you'll never flip modes by accident in the middle of a hot and heavy gaming session. The analog buttons have also been subjected to some nipping and tucking and there is of course a new desaturated color scheme to explore as well. You'll find a shot of the retail packaging after the break and a lot more at the source.

You may never have heard of auto electronics provider Rydeen Mobile, but it certainly knows of you -- or more specifically, your desire to obtain a slick new tablet PC -- and has thus created an 7-inch Android tablet that integrates the dedicated map functionality of its GPS machines. The "gPad" GCOM701 won't be a terribly high-end device, mind you, with an 800MHz ARMADA 166 SOC, 256MB of RAM, bring-your-own-microSD-storage and what we're led to believe is a resistive touchscreen, but it sounds like at least Rydeen isn't being stingy on the software front. You'll find a full suite of Google Apps, Adobe Flash Lite 4 and AVI support, not to mention 4 million points of interest thanks to the integrated Navteq client. Connectivity include GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, both mini and full-sized USB ports, plus a front-facing camera for video chat, and there's a 2400mAh battery the company claims will provide six hours of solid use. Find it this November at an unspecified price, no doubt alongside the pictured (but not mentioned) car dock.

A New Jersey Transit spokesperson has announced that its seeking a company to install WiFi on its rail lines and at its train stations. The installation would make New Jersey one of the few major transit systems in the country to have WiFi on its 165 stations and 12 lines. The spokesperson also said they hope to get the installation under way quickly, and to have the hotspots available to riders by next year.

No surprise that iHome is first out of the gate with a speaker dock that's compatible with Apple's newly-open AirPlay music streaming system, but unfortunately the teaser page is maddeningly light on details -- all we know is that it'll have a rechargeable battery and be available for the holidays. We're actually pretty stoked for AirPlay gear -- the idea of setting up a quick mix-and-match whole-home audio system that can stream lossless audio straight from iTunes seems awfully hard to resist -- so we're eager to hear more about this thing, as well as the other third-party AirPlay devices like receivers and stereos that have been promised. We'll keep digging for more, so stay tuned.

[Thanks, Fred]

There are no hard and fast rules in the gadget game, but there is one bit of wisdom we generally stand by: everything benefits by being ruggedized. Sure, we know this speaks to a deep-seated need to smash things, drown things, run 'em over in a truck or shoot them -- and we're not making any excuses. Housed in vandal resistant stainless steel, the Stealth KYBX-400-DT-BL-TB-USB keyboard feature an optical trackball mouse, and NVIS-compliant red adjustable backlighting (just the thing for when you dig out the night vision goggles). If that weren't enough, the whole thing is environmentally sealed to NEMA 4, 4X, IP65 specifications (whatever that means). Yours now for $695! Get a closer look below.

While Sony's new Bloggie Touch provides the template for how simple and easy a touchscreen camcorder could really be, Kodak's similarly well built and attractive PlayTouch provides a stark contrast, with a modicum of simplicity on the surface, but a megaton of functionality to uncover. The PlayTouch isn't as pick-up-and go as the Bloggie, but the basic touchscreen controls can be quickly mastered. What sets the PlayTouch apart are the in-depth features like an external microphone jack (complete with gain control), video effects (like black & white and sepia modes), and the particularly ambitious video editor. You can only trim shots and extract stills from that latter mode, but paired with the newer generation EasyShare functionality that lets you pre-assign photos and videos for upload to YouTube and Facebook, among other services, you can almost completely avoid using your computer as anything but a dumb pipe to the internet.

The PlayTouch really isn't a "gift it to your grandma" sort of camcorder; even with a $230 pricetag you still have to bring your own SD card, there's no built-in storage, and most of the higher end functionalities like the external audio jack will be lost on the general populace. Still, if you're looking for a pocket camcorder that is more than just a dumb pocket camcorder, Kodak seems to be continuing the niche it carved out for itself originally with the Zi8.

It's no good buying an eCoupled inductive charger if it won't work with your Powermat, or your Touchstone. Non-standard chargers suck, so we're glad to see that the Global Qi wireless power standard has been released, and the first products have been announced. A number of companies, Nokia and RIM to name but a few, have signed on their support, with Energizer stepping up first with the Energizer Inductive Charger. When it releases this fall it will initially work with charging sleeves for the iPhone 3G/S and BlackBerry Curve 8900, but we presume others will be coming. More promising is Sanyo, which is designing battery packs "without making any change in designs and aspects of existing mobile devices." In other words: they'll look and act like a normal battery pack, but also be able to be charged wirelessly. Beware, ubiquitous micro-USB charger: your days are numbered.

Silicon oxide has long played the sidekick, insulating electronics from damage, but scientists at Rice University have just discovered the dielectric material itself could become a fantastic form of storage. Replacing the 10-nanometer-thick strips of graphite used in previous experiments with a layer of SiOx, graduate student Jun Yao discovered the latter material worked just as well, creating 5nm silicon nanowires that can be easily joined or broken (to form the bits and bytes of computer storage) when a voltage is temporarily applied. Considering that conventional computer memory pathways are still struggling to get to 20nm wide, this could make for quite the advance in storage, though we'll admit we've heard tell of one prototype 8nm NAND flash chip that uses nanowires already. Perhaps it's time for silicon oxide to have a turn in the limelight.

Maybe we're a bunch of idiots, but while the Flip and its ultra-simple camcorder ilk have certainly made shooting video simpler and more accessible for the masses, we still find many of these cameras surprisingly unintuitive or just "blah" at doing what they do (Kodak's otherwise excellent Zi8 and PlaySport cameras come to mind) when it comes to UI. After playing with the horrendous Flip Slide HD, we were almost sure touchscreens would act as another obstacle to using these things, but of all people, Sony has come to the rescue. We found the original Bloggie line very unimpressive, but this new Bloggie Touch crop is exactly as easy to use as you'd imagine a one button device would be.

That big record button on the front? You press it, and it records stuff. The responsive touchscreen UI takes care of secondary issues, like playing back that stuff you recorded, swapping resolution (it shoots at up to 1080p), setting a timer, and more detailed settings, with four well placed icons, while a touch slider operates the digital zoom. If you hold the camera like a still camera and tap the camera shutter button now naturally placed on the top you can take 12.8 megapixel stills (okay, we lied, there are two buttons, three if you count the on / off button). Despite the slim, sexy design of the camera, Sony still worked in a pop-out USB plug and a full sized HDMI jack. Even the $180 / $200 price (for 4GB or 8GB of storage) is surprisingly good. Just a reminder, in case you'd forgotten: the Bloggie Touch is built by Sony. We'll be looking forward to its October launch.

The problem with the future is that it's always 3 to 5 years away. Nevertheless, what you're looking at is what Philips and Dimenco, a small company of ex-Philips engineers, say will be coming to the consumer television market as early as 2013 -- earlier if you're in the professional advertising business or just want to view your family photos on a small 3D photo frame. Just remember that Philips has been showing off variations of the glasses-free technology behind this prototype lenticular lens television for years, so we're not getting our hopes up. Nevertheless, Dimenco assured us that the path to the consumer market for its 3D display is clear.

So how did it look? Well, it was ok, we guess. It doesn't have that in-your-face pop of the current generation of 3D televisions that require 3D glasses. The effect is more subtle (or maybe the content was). Our biggest problem was with the sharpness of the display. Although the 56-inch prototype CCFL LCD was 4k (that's 4 times the resolution of your Full HD TV) the image we saw was coarse in appearance due to the lenticular lens required to refract the left and right images for each eye. Having said that, the lenticular lens technology used is certainly better suited for non-stationary viewing. While the border around objects on the screen tended to shift quickly and blur (see the video after the break) when looking at the panel frombetween any of its 15 viewing angles (spread across a 120-degree arc), at least it didn't exhibit those horrible dark vertical bands seen when changing your angle even slightly while viewing 3D panels based on the parallax barrier method of glasses-less 3D. Still, it was hard to find the viewing sweet spot and honestly, given the option to sit in front of this display and a 4k panel "limited" to 2D, we'd have to opt for the latter. Get back to us in 3 to 5 and see if we feel the same.

We still have memories -- some would say nightmares, but we digress -- of hanging out at a neighbor's house and taking turns playing matches of Mario's Tennis, our biological ocular displays assimilated into a rubber mask that engulfed our brains and left us in a permanent state of viewing the world in red wireframe. Crude 3D though it may be, it's still a part of history we must accept, and if you happen to own a Virtual Boy, we have just two things to say to you. One: we're insanely jealous. Two: if you ever need to know how to rip it to shreds for repair / stress relief, iFixit's got you covered. In the world of Man with Screwdriver vs. Game Console, yet again Man wins. Seems a perfect ending to a week that featured Atari 2600, Nintendo Famicon, RCA Studio II, and Magnavox Odyssey 100. Check out highlights in the gallery below, or hit up iFixit for the whole shebang.

When it comes to keeping unwanted personnel out of your property, whether that be an estate or an alcove, you can't be expected to hang around holding the big guns all day long. That's when you need an automatic-targeting turret, and Rick Prescott's Infrared Seeking Sentinel is a good, non-lethal choice. Built on a Nerf Vulcan EBF-25, he added an infrared tracker, motor, and battery pack to make the thing autonomous, capable of firing in semi- or full-auto modes. He's posted full instructions on how to make your own, and his effort won him the Make Gadget Freak Design Contest. It also won him something else: our admiration. Full explanation and demonstration after the break.

Yeah, we spied a few of LG's new 31-inch, 2.9mm thick displays the other day, but we hadn't seen the standard TV-like configurations -- which don't mean too much, because this is still a prototype, but they're a comfort all the same. We also managed to peep a 3D setup with the screens, which used polarized glasses and was surprisingly sharp. We promised ourselves it would just be a quick look, and that we had important things to do today, and that we really don't need a new TV all that much... but three hours later we found ourselves still planted in the same spot, a small trickle of drool dripping all over our camera gear. When we finally managed to snap out of it, we clicked a few stills and grabbed a video of one of the screens spinning before running out of the LG booth with our eyes shut tight and desire still raging in our heart.

As beta testing programs go, Microsoft's Kinect venture has been kind of... leaky. No surprises, therefore, that we've now received our first in-the-plastic pictures of the motion-tracking camera peripheral, replete with a few select shots of its packaging. Redmond's promise that hardware was en route to testers was clearly not a hollow one, and we can now probably expect a bunch more unauthorized disclosures about the user experience with what should be final retail units. The outside of the packaging includes a couple of teasers encouraging users to pick up some of those bodacious PDP stands and wall mounts for their Kinect -- presumably the start of a tidal wave of Kinect accessories.

Remember how Samsung downsized the Wave to make the Wave 723 and killed off the pricey, fancy Super AMOLED display in the process? Yeah, well, the same rule applies to the Android-powered Galaxy line -- so if you were hoping to see some mind-blowing contrast ratios on Sammy's new PMP... well, you can just keep on hoping (and besides, even the mighty Tab has gone the TFT route for now). The Galaxy Player 50 is pretty cute in the flesh, featuring a 3.2-inch WQVGA LCD with multitouch capability, Android 2.1, and your choice of 8GB or 16GB worth of internal storage with microSD expansion up to 32GB. It's also packing a 2 megapixel cam on back and support for 802.11n -- and heck, like the Philips GoGear Connect it's even got a mic, basically putting it just one spec sheet line item shy of being an actual smartphone.

For all intents and purposes, the PMP feels like a midrange Android smartphone when you're holding and using it; it's reasonably responsive, and we were happy to see that it has Google Maps Navigation on board (along with the Android Market and all the other standard "Google Experience" Android apps). We found the keyboard a bit cramped, but there's only so much you can do with a portrait virtual QWERTY keyboard on a 3.2-inch display, and we imagine we could get used to it with time. Needless to say, the total package feels more put-together than the GoGear, and if we were rocking a dumbphone, wanted to keep our music compartmentalized, and couldn't stand the thought of adding an iPod touch into our lives, we imagine the 50 would be on our short list. Follow the break for Samsung's press release -- and don't forget to have a gander at the gallery!

We're excited about the Boxee Box, and the new-look Apple TV is intriguing, but no single box is as good as a box that doesn't exist yet does the same stuff. Confused? Sit down, let us explain. That's the point Plex is making in announcing its new partnership with LG, which will integrate Plex software into its 2011 Netcast HDTVs and Blu-ray players. Plex enables the same sort of functionality as those smart little boxes mentioned above, letting you serve content from a machine running OS X and push it to your TV or to a mobile device (iPhone and iPad right now, Android coming). Plex also supports all the major online streamers, like Netflix, Hulu, and even the BBC iPlayer. Lack of PC support is something of a bummer, but a Windows version is said to be coming, so even your beige box can soon get in on the box-free fun.

Welcome to the future, dear readers, where boring black tires are replaced with bright orange and yellow ones and where your car can dynamically expand or contract. This is the X-Frame Folding Vehicle, a concept from the Nagoya Institute of Technology that was first shown at the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show, but rolled out of hiding again for the city's recent Good Design Expo. The car changes shape to offer seating for either one or two and can raise or lower itself dynamically based on terrain, speed, and proximity of Clown Gang members when you're cruising in Neo-Tokyo. No word on when or if it will see production, but don't let a complete lack of crash-worthiness get you down on this vision of tomorrow.