Jawbone Jambox vs. Soundmatters foxL v2... fight!

Two portable speakers clamber into the ring, each boasting big, beautiful sound for their diminutive size. Both cost $200. Both have the same technology inside. The Jawbone Jambox and the Soundmatters foxL v2 with Bluetooth each want to be your wireless audio wunderkind, blasting music and taking Bluetooth calls. At best, you're only going to buy one. Which speaker should you choose? Following ourJambox review, we got our hands on a foxL and put the two head to head, and after the break you'll see which one came out on top -- both literally and figuratively. 

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Samsung unveils i-Functional NX11 mirrorless camera, WB700 with 24x zoom (update: pictures)

Just when you thought it'd be a week devoid of notable announcements -- what, with CES less than a week away -- along comes Samsung with two new cameras. The first one is an upgrade to the mirrorlessNX10, naturally called the NX11, that boasts a change in grip design and compatibility with i-Function lens found on the NX100. The other nitty-gritty details for the 14.6 megapixel shooter: a 3-inch AMOLED LCD screen, VGA viewfinder, 720p 30fps HD recording, and an APS-C sensor. Price and date? $649 with a bundled 18-55mm zoom lens, available in February.

In smaller news -- volumetrically, at least -- the 16 megapixel Samsung WB700 sports a 24x zoom (that's 18x optical and 1.3x smart zoom), a 24mm ultra-wide Schneider Kreuznach lens, CCD sensor, and 1080p HD video.

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Thermaltake's Max 5G dual-fan USB 3.0 HDD enclosure cools your platters with style

We know what you were thinking: my external hard drive enclosure is nice and all, but why is it so quiet? Well,Thermaltake is here to fix that with its new Max 5G dual-fan enclosure. Outside the fans and the fancy LED lights (which can be switched off, if you're feeling unextreme one particular morning), the enclosure is pretty great itself, with a smokin' USB 3.0 plug and support for high-end 3.5-inch SATA 3.0 drives. The fans are to promote long life on your hard drive and "data integrity" and all that, but pretty much they just say to your SATA drive: "I care." And isn't that all that matters? The enclosure is available for pre-order right now for $52, no word on release.

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Motorola Cliq 2 pictures hit the outside world?

What, you didn't forget about the Cliq series, did you? The followup to Motorola and T-Mobile's slider's been long rumored -- we heard a few morsels of information back in September -- and now CellPhoneSignal has a few pics of what it claims is the Begonia, aka Cliq 2 (for T-Mobile, naturally). The keyboard here is, well, interesting, to say the least, and there's also apparently a five megapixel camera on the back. We're not really sure how our thumbs feel about the layout, but if this is legit, we'd reckon they'll get to try it out themselves sooner or later. That's what giant gadget trade shows are for, right? Right. More pictures via the source link.

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BYD Motors to debut e6 Premier, S6DM plug-in vehicles at the Detroit Auto Show

China's BYD came out of nowhere in early 2009 to debut a MID / phone running Windows XP, but consumer electronics are just one arm (actually spun off) of the relatively young mega-corporation. Its BYD Motors division has also been working on various plug-in vehicles for the past few years, and it's now set to roll into the Detroit Auto Show next month with two new models. Those include the all-electric e6 Premier crossover, and the S6DM dual-mode plug-in hybrid SUV, the former of which promises a range of 300 kilometers and a top speed of 140km/h, while the latter can eek out 60 kilometers solely on electric power or close to 500 kilometers when the 2.0L gasoline engine comes into play.

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Fujifilm explains how its X100 hybrid viewfinder works, we nod and pretend to understand

If you just tried to tell us the FinePix X100 was a bog standard digital camera, we'd still probably pay any price for those amazing retro looks, but Fujifilm has more in mind. Specifically, the X100 harbors an all-new viewfinder setup, that can switch between a full-on optical view (something that's currently impossible in similarly sized Micro Four Thirds cameras), and an electronic viewfinder. The optical mode also includes overlaid shooting data, which isn't typical for a straight compact viewfinder (since it's looking through its own lens, not the camera's main lens). You'll have to read Fujifilm's full-on explanation to really know what's going on here -- it gets a little technical

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HP slashes Envy 13 price to $999 with $450 rebate

First it was the Adamo, now it's the Envy. HP has joined Dell in deeply discounting its aging 13-inch ultrathin, though unlike its Round Rock competitor, it hasn't bothered to give it any spec bumps. Consequently, even with this interest-building $450 rebate, the Envy 13 loses out to the Adamo 13 in a straight spec fight -- a 1.6GHz CPU, 3GB of DDR3 RAM and a 5400RPM hard drive are all either slower or smaller than Dell's offering -- but it does still have a pair of aces up its sleeve to get latecomers to part with

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Kinect Hacked to Play World of Warcraft

Kinect hacks are coming thick and fast, but here is one that will set millions of PC gamers' hearts a-flutter: A hack that lets you gesture control a game of World of Warcraft.

The tech is coming from the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, where a team has built a toolkit, dubbed the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit, which lets them quickly harness Kinect's various image processing and motion-sensing powers to whatever bits of code they desire. This middleware, with some tweaks, lets FAAST quickly facilitate "integration of full-body control with games and VR applications," via a clever processing server that streams the user's skeleton pattern, including body position and gestures which can be mapped onto keyboard controls.

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Another Sony Ericsson Android leaked in China, successor to the X10 Mini Pro?

Once again, here's proof that China is the place to be for piping-hot gadget leaks. The latest delivery is yet another mysterious Sony Ericsson slider, which is allegedly the Android 2.3 successor to the much loved X10 Mini Pro. Despite its modest dimensions, this little gem packs a 1GHz chip with an Adreno 205 GPU, scoring an impressive 1,553 on the Quadrant benchmark app -- coming close to the Nexus S' score -- and

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Samsung to Show 23mm-thick Blu-ray Disc Player at CES

Samsung Electronics has developed a Blu-ray Disc player that's just 23 millimeters thick, and plans to unveil it at next week's International Consumer Electronics Show, it said Tuesday.

The slim player supports 3D Blu-ray content and includes a function to convert conventional 2D content into a quasi-3D image, Samsung said. The player can also connect to the Internet and display content from sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on a TV screen.

Samsung provided no other technical specifications of the player, but claimed it would be the world's thinnest 3D Blu-ray Disc player when launched.

Pricing and launch information was not disclosed.

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Is a Phone all the PlayStation Portable Needs?

Is the PSP Go's missing link really just cellular service?

Add phone service, clap on a touchscreen, and presto, the handheld gaming device we always wanted? You know, as opposed to the phone-less PSP Go, Sony's overpriced, undersized gaming handheld no one's buying?

More, Meet Same

The PlayStation Phone cometh early next year according to the latest rumors, this one from Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper. The paper claimed yesterday that Sony's long rumored PlayStation Phone would essentially be a PSP Go with phone service, and would launch spring 2011.

Of course we've "known" that much from leaked pictures and loose tongues for months.

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BMW Connected app hits iOS App Store, 'Apps' function hitting vehicles next year

Like son, like father? Evidently that's exactly how things are playing out, with papa BMW following the footsteps of MINI in the run-up to 2011. Just days after the MINI Connected app found itself situated in the App Store, a BMW Connected app has done likewise. The software itself is free to download, but you'll need a 6NR-equipped Bimmer to take advantage. From what we can gather, you'll have to fork out €150 or so for the Apps option, but sadly, there are two costly prerequisites to that: a €3,800 navigation option and a €400 USB interface. In other words, we get the impression that existing BMW owners are out of luck. If you've got the magic concoction (available from March 2011),

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LG Xnote P210 claims 'world's thinnest bezel' title, our undying appreciation

If there's one thing we appreciate more than pixel density, it's slim bezels. LG, a traditional enemy of unsightly frames, is today staking its claim for having the world's thinnest bezel on a laptop with the newXnote P210. This 12.5-inch machine is said to fit within the footprint of an 11.6-incher, but before you start throwing insults like "netbook" around the place, do take note it has a dual-core Core i5-470UMprocessor inside -- capable of running between 1.33GHz and 1.86GHz -- 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB HDD. The LED-backlit display's resolution isn't specified beyond a note saying it's "HD," while Windows 7 Home Premium is the predictable OS of choice. Look for the P210 to hit Korea in February for around 1.3 million won (about $1,135), but don't hold your breath on it coming Stateside for anything other than a flying trade show visit.

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RelayRides P2P car sharing service now available in the Bay Area

Got a car sittin' 'round, clutterin' up your driveway? Love the idea of handing over the keys to strangers? RelayRides, a recent beneficiary of some Google Ventures cash, has just brought its peer-to-peer car-sharing service to the San Francisco Bay Area. Already available in Boston, the service is sort of a "social bikes-meets-Zip Car." The idea is to let customers rent privately owned (and in some cases, leased) vehicles by the hour: owners receive sixty-five percent of the rental fee, and they're protected by a million dollar insurance policy (drivers have to pay a $500 deductable, which should be large enough to keep people on good behavior). RelayRides is unclear on the exact nature of the keyless entry system (which gets installed gratis when your whip enters the program), but we're guessing it's either RFID or NFC.

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Free Kinect keyboard emulator lets you WoW while AFK (video)

World of Warcraft is a lot of things to a lot of people, a whole lot of people, but it's never been much of an immersive gameplay experience -- casting Plague Strike doesn't seem all that unholy when it's triggered by frantically tapping a key on a keyboard. Moving an arm would be at least a bit more involving, and with the Flexible Action and Articulated Toolkit, or FAAST, from the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, that's just what you can do. It's basically a software layer over your Kinect, built over OpenNI, that recognizes a skeleton and enables about 20 different motions to be mapped to key presses. This means you can lean forward to walk, raise your right arm to perform an action, and then sit down

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