Toshiba announces a slick new Netbook running Android OS and NVIDIA processor.  It boots in about 1 second, yes, that’s right, 1 second…and is it just me, or does that case look like leather?

The AC100 has a full sized keyboard, 10.1 LED backlite screen and 512RAM [upgradeable to 1GB] with 8GB of storage.  With the USB port and mini USB port storage should not be a problem as it’s virtually unlimited with USB hard drives and USB flash drives.

Toshiba claims that the machine is good for up to seven days on standby with mixed use and the machine weighs in at 870g and is 14mm thick at the thinnest point.

The AC100 will be released in the UK first with an undiscolsed price point, but can’t be more than $350.  To find a bit more here is the Toshiba PDF.

Several years ago, I reported on a USB wifi extender in parabolic form.  Now, we’ve got a slimmed down version using an empty food can and your USB wifi dongle.

It’s not the prettiest thing, but it works and will boost your signal strength enough to grab the channel from your neighbor who’s barely showing up in your wireless network.

Plus this hack gives you adjustable control both up and down, and left and right.

The concept here is getting the can to increase your signal.  In addition, mounting the can and USB wifi dongle to a portable camera stand.  This will give you the stability you need to keep the signal strength strong while in use.  It will also allow you to keep the position for use from day to day.

CD ripping is certainly nothing new, but if you’ve ever done it, the process is slow, boring and a massive suckage of time.  For that reason, I wanted to post about it a new service I found.  Rip2iPod is a CD ripping service which converts your CDs into MP3 files.

The CD Ripping service is very straight forward.  Ship the discs.  They rip them.  They send them back on a DVD archive.

At that point it’s your job to finish the task and drop those MP3s into your iTunes or media management software.

After reading their FAQ about the CD ripper process I learned a couple things I didn’t know, for example; an average CD collection is 250 discs.  The CD ripping for that quantity would take about 20-25 hours of solid work.

The CD ripping process includes meta data [tagging of songs] which include genre, album artwork when available, date, etc etc.  You also have the choice on bit rate compression…or simply put, the quality of CD ripping you’d like.

The minimum order is quantity of 100.  To get more details on price, shipping instructions and options, visit their site.

There is nothing more satisfying for a finger work-out then using a laboriously slow old school typewriter.  Or on those cloudy days where you feel a bit melancholy and in the mood to write the start of a novel you’ll never finish, you may need to punch down on those exhausting keys of a manual typewriter to get the creative juices flowing.

Today I present you that possibility and better yet, with a touch of technology to  make your craving a bit more current.

A well known steampunk modder [Jack Zylkin] has taken the traditional typewriter and transformed it’s key punching into a digital conversion of letters and numbers.  Using some customized PCBA, a USB connection and a bit of code it’s now possible to sync your great grandmother’s typewriter with your computer, or in this video, your iPad.

Your craving wont go without some minor cash flow issues, as you can purchase a pre-made [or pre-mod I should say] USB typewriter or you can buy a kit and down grade your very own typewriter and keep the family air loom alive and kicking.

To get more details visit the Etsy Shop to make your purchase or gather more information.

So what could you get a guy who has everything?  How about a USB boob lamp.  That’s right, a LED light in the shape of a single boob, nipple and all.  The USB boob lamp will activate upon touch [of course] and illuminate a soft glow to brighten your surroundings.

This is the first I’ve heard of this product, and interestingly enough, I found it just near Father’s Day.  Granted, it’s not something you’d like to receive from your kid, but maybe a great joke to plan on “conservative” Dad.

At just $11 USD how can you resist?

So here is the kicker, to make the LED turn on, you simply brush the nipple.  To turn it off, brush the nipple again.  Hmm, sounds about right.

USB Boob product page.

In today’s digital age, it’s very common, in fact – expected – that everyone own a USB flash drive.  Flash drives are the easiest and most convenient way to store data, transfer files and keep that ever changing data near you.  If you are like me, you have a favorite flash drive.  It’s not necessarily because of the way it looks, but rather – over time – all of your important information has accumulated to one stick.  You get to a point where saving data can only be done on that one, favorite USB drive.

This is where RecycleUSB.com comes in, if you have extra sticks lying around, which aren’t gett’in the love – donate them.  Recycle USB is a USB recycler service that partnered with Sugar Labs to turn unwanted flash drives into portable learning computers for kids.

What do I mean by portable learning computers?

Well Sugar Labs created a Linux distro [based off Fedora] which boots directly from a flash drive.  The distro is a customized learning platform for kids to learn, interactively, on a computer.  The great part about Sugar Lab’s approach is that it doesn’t leave a footprint on the host PC.

The USB Recycler service will take your drive, load it with the latest version of Sugar on a Stick and send it to Sugar Labs for global deployment.

Sure you can do this yourself or just drop the USB stick in the mail and not worry about it.  If you’re looking for the weekend project here is the link to Sugar Labs.

Recycle USB mentions that if you are really in the mood for donating, you can get a tax credit for larger donations [say your company had a couple hundred extra flash drives from a trade show which are no longer being used].

It’s very common these days to see a media player with a USB port.  Whether it be a Blu-ray player or a set-top box, chances are, a USB port is somewhere in the front or back.

At first glance you say to yourself, “sweet, a USB port so I can play content off my flash drive” but then you think a bit more and wonder if you can hang a wireless dongle off the media player and stream content to your media box from a source computer?

Well, Home Server Technologies Inc is one step ahead of you.  Their new Wireless Media Stick will do exactly that; stream digital content to your media player.

Whether it’s a laptop, TV, DVD player, Stereo or game console the Wireless Media Stick can stream the content and your media player will play it.  There is no limit to the type of format, music, audio or video.

Currently the USB Wireless Media Stick will only stream saved content from the source computer, but future updates will include the ability to stream internet content to your wireless setup, so now you’ll have the best of both worlds.

The Wireless USB Media Stick is $99 USD.