TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Luxury audio specialist Shure has added a new model to its line of high-end, sound-isolating earbuds. SE420 blocks out 90 percent of ambient noise and manages to cram two drivers — tweeter and woofer — into its tiny little chassis.

They’re $400. And, like most canalphones, they sit tight enough to raise the temperature in the ear canal just enough to melt earwax into a runny, smelly goo that collects on the foam insert and… Oh, pardon. Were you eating something?

Fujifilm just announced a slew of new digital cameras, hoping to cover every base from fashion-conscious teens to serious shutterbugs.

We begin, in no particular order of grooviness, with the FinePix Z10fd, a slim 7.2-megapixel model with 3x zoom lens, 2.5-inch LCD, face detection and a "blog" mode that produces images sized for e-mail or posting to you-know whats. The camera comes in a choice of five colors and sells for $200.


Next is the FinePix S8000fd, Fuji’s entry into the how-far-can-you-go zoom contest.

A proposed Canadian tax could add $75 to the price of an iPod. The tax, which the Canadian courts ruled against back in 2005, has been re-submitted and this time approved by the Copyright Board of Canada. If appeals are unsuccessful, the “levy” could go into effect next year.

It breaks down like this: $2 on a 1GB memory card, $4 on an 8GB card and a whopping $75 on a 30GB digital audio player (the tax tops out at 30GB).

It won’t net you a free iPhone, but this little exploit of a loophole in AT&T’s rulebook will get you another phone for nothing (actually, less than nothing). Usually when you buy a subsidized handset, there is a penalty when you upgrade early, but as the iPhone is not subsidized, adding one to an existing plan incurs no such fee.

To use an example from PhoneNews.com, if you buy a Nokia N75 from Amazon on a two year contract, it’ll cost $20 (minus a $25 mail-in rebate).

No sooner do the children of Nigeria score their first batch of OLPCs then they are on the net surfing for smut. We shouldn’t be surprise; give a kid a dictionary and the first thing they do is look up the dirty words.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reporters have found images stored on pupils’ computers, and a spokesperson for One Laptop Per Child has said that filters will be added to the XO software. They shouldn’t worry too much, though. How much fifth can be stored on a 1GB drive anyway?

Best Buy has promoted one of its junior execs to senior vice president and charged her with bringing in more female customers. The retail chain estimates that women control $68 billion of U.S. spending on consumer electronics, yet most marketing is focused on men.

Best Buy has been retooling stores with innovations such as softer music and non-pushy sales clerks who sometimes know what they’re talking about.

Best
Buy names exec to boost female customers

[Reuters]

Olympus may not make the slimmest or sexiest SLRs on the market, but it does manage to pack a lot of photographic oomph into its beefy shooters. And the new 10-megapxel E-510 is no exception. Heir apparent to the E-500, this SLR retains its predecessor’s live-view LCD and dust management, but also adds a re-vamped in-camera image stabilizer, gentle but proficient noise reduction, and a new hyper-sophisticated metering system. But it’s the included "gradation" function for balancing overly bright and shadow-heavy images plus the clever flash bracketing that really made our exposures breathtaking.

We really love MIT for all the technological delights they throw into the world, and next year’s pavilion at the Expo Zaragoza 2008 in Spain is certainly no exception. The pavilion will feature digital water walls, created by closely spaced solenoid controlled valves. The valves are accurate enough to “produces a curtain of falling water with gaps at specified locations” says MIT’s Carlo Ratti, “a pattern of pixels created from air and water instead of illuminated points on a screen.”

The flat roof of the structure is a shallow pond which can be raised or lowered on hydraulic pistons, depending on wind conditions.

I keep seeing this crazy Limited Edition Beatles iPod rumor going around the net. This time the good folks at CrunchGear and Shiny Shiny are reporting that the Yellow Submarine iPod will actually see a release. Well, I know where this rumor started, and it was a hoax.

Blogger and podcaster extraordinaire Merlin Mann started this meme as a joke on an episode of the MacBreak Weekly podcast, just to see if it would take off. If I remember correctly, he picked the most ridiculous thing he could think of. A yellow iPod loaded with the entire Beatles catalog.

The funny thing is, as this story snowballs it seems more and more likely that Apple might just make it. In which case Mann, who describes himself as “a baseball mitt in a wig” should probably get one free.

We all live in a Beatles-themed Yellow Submarine iPod [Shiny Shiny]

Yellow Submarine iPod Coming Soon, Complete With Beatles Catalog [CrunchGear]

MacBreak Weekly [TWiT]