Revision3's own Daniel just couldn't sit idly by watching portable N64 after portable N64 pass him by while doing nothing, so he decided to gut his own console and shove it into a battery-powered unit that can be taken practically anywhere. Sure, it's one thing to read through a step-by-step guide that you barely understand, but it's another to see the whole process broken down for you on video. Check the read link for the perfect holiday project, and yes, you can actually play the re-gift card here and not got scorned.

Now this is a fight worth waiting for.

[Photo courtesy of Robert Scoble]

Details are in, Nokia has a new flagship phone. The N97 packs a 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel (that's a 16:9 aspect ratio) resistive touchscreen display with tactile feedback and QWERTY keyboard into this sliding communicator with an "always open" window to favorite internet or social networking sites. Nokia calls it the "world's most advanced mobile computer." To back up the claim they've dropped in HSDPA, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios, A-GPS, a 3.5-mm headjack, 32GB of onboard memory with microSD expansion (for up to 48GB total capacity), and a battery capable of up to 1.5 days of continuous audio playback or 4.5-hours video. 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss glass and "DVD quality" video capture at 30fps, too. The specs are certainly impressive, let's see if the S60 5th Edition OS can support it. The N97 will launch with a retail price set at around €550 ($693) excluding subsidies and taxes, phone to ship in H1 2009.

Update: Hah, Nokia just boasted on stage at Nokia World that the N97 was the scoop "Engadget didn't get." O RLY??? Sure looks like the device codenamed Eitri that we broke to the world last month.

Update 2: Video demonstration after the break.


Read -- Press Release
Read -- A bit more detail
Read -- Even more detail

In a move that will undoubtedly increase its street cred among technophiles and tinkerers alike, Atheros announced that it's releasing the specs to allow open source drivers for its ATH5K and ATH9K chip families. The move comes after Atheros first released some open source drivers for newer 802.11n chipsets and now the company is finally opening up its HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to developers, even using Linux as the reference public code base. No word on when any of this stuff will be released, but rest assured, we'll be on the lookout for more info -- we're sure the hackers out there are champing at the bit.

The amount of power consumed from appliances and such left in standby mode is certainly up for debate, but what's not is the fact that they'd all be better off, um, off. That's according to Spanish inventors who have developed a technology to automatically detect when gadgets fall into standby mode and then shut 'em off completely; the best (read: differentiating) part, however, is that devices won't have to go through their boot-up sequence again after rising from the grave. Of course, this technology is worthless with devices such as security systems and DVRs, which obviously require at least some power at all times in order to effectively answer the call of duty. Still, the elaborately named Good for You, Good for the Planet is hoping to get its tech into power strips and individual gizmos soon, with one hotel chain in Spain already testing a prototype. Here's hoping these thoughtful entrepreneurs aren't squeezed to death by all of the collective hugging from trees that's surely going down.

[Via WalletPop, image courtesy of GavinBell]

While this isn't the first device we've seen of its kind, new images of a wireless-capable, ruggedized la Fonera router have surfaced on the FON head honcho's personal blog. CEO Martin Varsavsky clearly states that "this is not a product announcement," and that the pictured devices are part of an R&D project, so pricing and availability info are certainly out of the question. Still, it's promising to see FON working to extend the reach of its network beyond the current Fonera / Fontenna combos. Just let us know when this one hits the market, okay Mr. V?

[Thanks, Joas]

We're still not over Sony's trickeration -- which led us to believe the version 2.53 firmware update was hitting prior to the US Thanksgiving holiday -- but we're not ones to turn down a free update under any circumstances. As of now (as in, right now), Sony's PlayStation 3 can support full screen embedded Flash videos courtesy of the latest firmware, so there's really no excuse for you not firing up the System Update and sucking it down. Get to it!

[Via PS3 Fanboy, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Believe it or not, this is far from the first we've heard of bringing high-def video to cellphones, and it's not even the first application to dabble in mobile 1080p. Still, we'll take all the innovation we can get in this space, and when the real Touch HD ever arrives, we'll be ready and waiting with Full HD capabilities. Announced at ISSCC 2009 in San Francisco, Renesas Technology is showing off an application processor that enables handsets to process 1,920 x 1,080 resolution video at 30 frames-per-second; the processor's core has a maximum operating frequency of 500MHz and supports MPEG-4 AVC / H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video formats. There's no telling when the 6.4- x 6.5-millimeter chip will be available en masse, but we need the HTCs of the world to get us a 1080p phone and a retina implant or two to read 0.2-size fonts before it even matters.

We've spent a bit of quality time with the new MacBook Air, and while there's little on the surface to denote a change, Apple did quite a bit under the hood to turn this into a serious laptop -- of sorts. Full disclosure: we (meaning a certain Paul Miller, specifically) have been using a Rev. A MacBook Air for the better part of a year as a primary machine, to very much frustration, so we had some pretty big bones to pick with whatever revision Apple might toss into our laps. Luckily, our fears were unfounded; read on for all the gory, romantic details.

[Images courtesy of Sam]

It's two things that are inevitably tied to one another each Sunday -- LCD TVs and alcohol. Now, Micro Matic is bringing them together like never before, and only the most serious of in-home bartenders need apply. The v-POD comes in a couple of shapes and colors to best suit your needs, with the stainless steel Kool-Rite boasting a half-dozen taps, stereo speakers and an inbuilt 10-inch LCD. Now, if only these were available with slightly larger HDTVs and price tags nowhere near the three grand mark, we'd be talking.

[Via Engadget Chinese]