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Push-up bars for the Wii Balance Board ? Now that sounds like a fantastic idea — just the thing broad-shouldered individuals need to play Wii Fit without backstrain. Too bad this particular set of bars isn’t worth the plastic it’s printed from. The latest and greatest from the minds in the chintzy plastic peripheral industry, the $25 CTA Digital Wii Push Up Bar is held in place by only your weight and a few foam strips without reinforcement of any kind, meaning it could detach itself with any significant exertion. The only good that comes out of all this is an embarrassing video demonstration after the break, which features a pair of smiling humans…

Intel this week offered a preview of platforms using its Core i7 Extreme Edition processor. Although the company is aiming the processor heavily at the gaming market, analysts said there are also clear business applications for the processor. Code-named Gulftown, the i7-980X Extreme Edition processor is the industry’s first 32nm, six-core processor with 12 computing threads. Intel introduced the i7 family last September with its exclusive Turbo Boost technology and Hyper-Threading Technology. Turbo Boost is built into the latest-generation Nehalem micro-architecture and automatically allows processor cores to run faster than the base operating frequency if the chip is operating below power, current and temperature …

We know you’ve been champing at the bit for some Odroid news… wait, you forgot already? You know, the Android-powered handheld game system that the manufacturer, Hardkernel, bills “the developer-focused portable game device”? To be honest, we’d hope that the company would focus on game players, but that’s really beside the point: the thing finally has a release date: “early March.” And for those of you lucky enough to get in on the ground floor, they’ve gone and upgraded the thing to Android 2.1. Peep it in action after the break. Continue reading Odroid handheld game console due early March sportin’ Android 2.1 Odroid handheld game console due early March …

Sure, you read reviews and take recommendations from friends before you buy a new cellphone, but have you ever stopped to consider what the inventor of the cellphone uses on a daily basis? C-SPAN has, and recently took the opportunity to ask the man himself, Marty Cooper, that very question during a wide-ranging interview. While Cooper said that he has used an iPhone previously, he recently passed it on to his grandson in favor of a Motorola Droid , which he says he chose because he wanted to get more experience with Android. But that’s not all, Cooper also revealed that he…

If you’ve seen G-Tec’s thought control cap being used to control a Second Life avatar, play a game of Pong , or make music in an orchestral setting, you probably wondered when the thing would become available for less frivolous pursuits (to help the disabled communicate, for starters). Well, it looks like that day is close at hand: With the brand name Intendix, the €9000 (about $12,250) brain-computer interface gives you everything you need to send text messages with brain activity alone via EEG cap. According to the company, most people achieve five to ten characters per minute the first time they use the thing, with some folks eventually typing as fast…

So here’s a deal, but it’s a bit odd. The Toshiba R600 is advertised as being Toshiba’s ultimate notebook, and for the price it better be. You can buy it from Toshiba’s website for $2,099 for the base model which includes a 160GB hard drive, 3GB of RAM, and a 12.1″ screen, and comes standard with Windows 7. But that’s not the deal. If you don’t want to use Windows 7, and would prefer OpenSolaris, you can buy the exact same machine for $500 less . Odd, I know. And it definitely makes you wonder exactly how much you’re paying for that copy of Windows 7 Starter. [Thanks to Chris for the tip]

Remember the $200 smartbook reference design that we saw at CES this year? Well, it’s back, it’s holding on to that same price and 7-inch enclosure, but this time it’s also showing off an expanded OS compatibility. Adapting the open source Chromium OS and another Linux variant to the ARM architecture of the prototype device was apparently not much of a hurdle for Freescale, who has an Android option in the works as well and claims to be just optimizing and enhancing the user experience at this point. Presumably one of the enhancements will be the installation of a capacitive touchscreen as the present demonstration requires either a mouse and keyboard or a resistive torture test to operate, but we’ll accept the company’s explanation that this is …

If Dell’s Vostro V13 was Batman’s laptop , it looks like the new Vostro 3000 series might just be Bruce Wayne’s. They’re portable, powerful, and sleek rigs for professionals. But are they a value play, or a luxury item? That’s the big unanswered question right now, though we’ll know soon enough; they go on sale today in the US. If the pricing is in line with the V13, though, these could be worth a closer look. The Vostro 3300 , 3400, 3500, and 3700 range from 13-inches to 17-inches, and all offer Core i3 and Core i5 processor options. For true juiceheads, the 17-inch Vostro 3700 even includes a Core i7 Quad Core option. Even better: a discrete graphics option. You can add an Nvidia Geforce 310M 512MB graphics card to the 3300-3500, …

Here’s a little spicy rumor for you Palm fans on this tranquil Sunday: according to TopTongueBarry who claims to work for AT&T , his company has just finished certification tests with GSM flavors of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus ahead of a possible April 26th launch — a date not far from what we’ve heard earlier . However, the bigger news from Barry is that the big A will soon be testing a third mysterious webOS device by the name of Palm Elan, which may greet us mere mortals on May 10th (but possibly in Europe first). Another forum member Shadow-360 also dug up some cached pages that claimed to have accessories for the non-…

AT&T’s preaching about the mucho dinero it’s dropping into renovating its network to pretty much anyone who’ll listen these days, and a veritable cornucopia of press releases this week start to go into detail on some of the upgrades we’ll be seeing over the course of 2010. We’re counting at least a dozen here, covering everything from New York City to Florida to Oklahoma, but the message is basically the same in every one: more cell sites, more 3G coverage, more backhaul. AT&T liberally pimps its nine-figure investments in most states over the past several years, too — but of course, phones need spectrum to communicate, not blank checks and promises. Let’s see…