Every year, Hanover, Germany hosts hordes of tech journalists, analysts, and PR people for CeBIT. It's like CES, sort of, except further away, and more boring. We decided not to go this year; it ends tomorrow. Here's what we missed!

To be clear, these were some of the bigger stories of the conference, at least for American audiences. We've written a few other CeBIT stories up as well, which you can find here, but by and large, the event just sort of came and went. So, this is what was happening over in Hanover this week, while the rest of the tech world was going about their business.

Pierre Cardin Tablet: Wikipedia tells me that Pierre Cardin is a "Italian-born French fashion designer" who is famous for his "space age" clothing designs. He's paired up with a small Taiwanese OEM to make a tablet—the old foldy kind, not the slate-like new kind. It's pink, and it will cost $450, if it ever hits stores in the US.

ASUS EeeTop ET2010PNT and ET2010AGT On the exterior, ASUS EeeTops are basically a budget take on the AIO concept you're familiar with from the likes of the iMac and HP's Touchsmarts. On the interior, as with most ASUS products, they're incomprehensible parts soup.

Shuttle I-Power External GPU: Breaking news, for people who would like to buy a box that's nearly the size of a netbook and which can help boost their notebook's graphics capabilities! (But only certain notebooks, because you need a special adapter!) The Shuttle I-Power External GPU is ready to accommodate your fantasies.

1Cross B'ook ereader: Entourage eDGe on a budget: The first step here is to try to remember what the Entourage eDGe is. Now that you've done that, the second step is to figure out why you care about this cheaper, gaudier, and somehow less practical take on the same concept.

Intel Atom for Storage Devices: Intel's Atom processors, traditionally meant for netbooks and cheap laptops, are about as unglamorous as tech products get. I'd even hold that this was true five minutes ago, which was before I'd even heard about the Intel Atom for storage devices, which is a special version of the platform for household and small business network storage devices.

newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/8NCiPe-UzD0&hl=en&fs=1&fmt=22","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":412,"ratio":0.824,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube"} ); New Intel Classmate: Intel's ultra-budget Classmate convertible tablet PCs are evolving! (Slightly!) Here is the reference design for the newest one, which is quite similar to earlier reference designs on the outside, but adjusted slightly for cost and performance reason on the inside.

LG 12x Blu-ray drives: Did LG not have 12x Blu-ray writers before? Are these just new versions of their old Blu-ray devices? Such are the mysteries of CeBIT, which could easily be solved, if anyone cared enough to Google for backlinks.

ASUS O!Play USB 3.0: We're big fans of the ASUS O!Play set-top boxes around here and we're not very slightly more enamored with the concept, now that it supports USB 3.0.

At the Hanover zoo, an orangutan must pull a succession of strings before being rewarded with a nut. Sometimes, the experience gets a bit frustrating:

We've all been there, buddy. We've all been there. [Telegraph via Animals don' think...][Image by Rex Features]

My friend and colleague Harry McCracken recently bought a brand new Droid from Motorola. He says it's a "loaf of day old bread." He's right. The Droid and Android 2.0 were introduced with much fanfare in December, but have already been eclipsed by Android 2.1 running on Google's Nexus One, and there are some serious ramifications for being behind. For example, Google recently touted the latest mobile version of Google Earth, which is a cool app that you won't be able to use unless you're running 2.1. Sure, Google says "Google Earth will be available in Android Market on most devices that have Android 2.1 or later versions," but that's most, not every. And what does Google mean when it says "as devices like the Droid get updated..." to 2.1? When will they get updated? Is it any wonder that some Android users are starting to get pangs of buyers remorse?

When Android was announced, I wrote that if "Google can deliver, the impact could be huge," but I caveated a major issue: Google would need to prevent the market from fragmenting and allow it to succeed where other mobile and desktop Linux implementations had failed. Linux fragmentation remains one of the many reasons the open-source OS has failed to capture a meaningful share of the PC desktop market, and Android is rapidly following a similar path by fragmenting into different versions with different core feature sets, different users experiences and run different applications.

Continue reading Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform?

Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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German researchers are working on mobile phone technology that would convert silent mouth movements into speech. It's an ingenious way to have a noiseless conversation, but if they don't get it right there could be some unfortunate mix-ups.

The tech—developed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology—involved uses electromyography, and measures the electrical potentials generated by muscle activity in the face to translate mouth movements into speech. You'd be able to speak silently, but the person on the other end of the line would hear what you were saying loud and clear.

Of course, lip-reading is an inexact science—even more so, I would imagine, when implemented by a machine. So while you'll be able to share PIN numbers without sharing it with the whole room, you'll want to proceed with caution on more intimate conversations. [Cellular News via Dvice]

Well, that was quick: thanks to some new information we've received, we're now able to confirm that the Motorola i1 is indeed the so-called Opus One that the company has been rumored to preparing for its iDEN carrier partners with Android on board -- and it's exactly the leaked device we saw back in December. We don't know much in the way of specs, but it sounds like we should expect Android 1.5 (sigh), a 3 megapixel cam, and a possible announcement within a couple weeks -- a time frame that would line up splendidly with CTIA toward the end of the month. Naturally, you can bet your little green robot we'll be there.

[Image via BGR; thanks, Gus N.]

Motorola i1: we've seen it, and it'll likely be out soon originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The nutjobs over at Harcos Labs (the purveyors of such fine energy concoctions as Blood Energy Potion and Mana Energy Potion) went and hacked one of the Star Wars Force Trainers to shock you if you don't keep your brain absolutely idle. Not a problem! How We Made the Most Painful Toy Hack Ever [harcoslabs] Thanks to nichire and Aaron, who take turns tasering each other because that's just good old fashioned fun. HIT ME AGAIN!

Readers offer their best tips for using old smartphones as feature-rich alarm clocks, listening to internet radio without the Flash ads, and a dress code for getting things done.

Don't like the gallery layout? Click here to view everything on one page.

About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments, share it here, or email it to tips at lifehacker.com.

Use an Old Smartphone as an Alarm Clock

Photo by Dmitry Baranovskiy.

Jeff finds new uses for his smartphones after he's upgraded to a newer model:

I recently picked up a Motorola Droid and hated the idea of throwing away my old (though still fully functional) BlackBerry Pearl. After activating the Droid, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that the Pearl still displayed the current time. Apparently even though the service has been disconnected, the Pearl still picks up the time from Verizon's network. (Maybe this is so the phone still has access to emergency services?)

I realized that the Pearl could serve as a fully-functional alarm clock, which has been awesome for a number of reasons:

1. The alarm on the Pearl can be set to make any number of annoying and startling noises.
2. More excitingly, the microSD card can be loaded up with music, and and any song can be used as an alarm.
3. The Pearl has many more features than my old alarm clock, such as the music playback, automatically-updated time, and unlike my old alarm, the time won't reset in a power outage.
4. The Pearl is so much smaller than my other alarm clock. Less clutter = good.
5. I don't have to make sure that my current working phone, the Droid, lands near my bed at the end of the night. The Pearl stays plugged in, so the Droid can be left anywhere at night.

I've been using the Pearl as my sole alarm for awhile now, and the only downside I can see is that, unless I hang it on the way and keep the screen lit, the time can't be seen at night. This hasn't been a problem for me because it makes the room darker, but it might bother some.

Hope this prevents some people from trashing a perfectly good smartphone.

If not being able to see the clock bothers you, many phones have the ability to keep the backlight on when being charged or in a dock, or even apps that act as an always-on clock display. This will obviously shorten the life of the display, but if you were about to toss it anyway, you've got nothing to lose!

Play Internet Radio Without Banner Ads

TehBeardMan shows us a neat workaround for keeping the Flash down when listening to radio:

I like listening to Pandora online radio as well as Slacker radio. But sometimes the ads on the sites are a bit annoying. Ignoring the obvious of using a adblocker, you can look at the source of the page and find the URL for the flash music player and make that your bookmark.

For example, here is Slacker's music player, free from all the banner ads and such.

And here is Pandora's latest one.

Both on a nice and clean page by themselves.

(I know pandora has a similar option built in for the mini-player but I like everything in one window)

As always, we encourage you to leave the ads alone, since that's how sites like Pandora and Slacker (and us, for that matter), are able to stay free—but, of course, we also know how much of a resource hog Flash can be, so if you're on battery or a computer with low specs, this is a nice way to keep yourself running a bit smoother.

Dress Up to Focus and Get Things Done

Photo by Kai Hendry.

Bonsai_haicyon tells us how he keeps his focus when it's time to get work done:

When trying to study up for a midterm or buckle down on the paper due tomorrow, you might find it helpful to dress up a little, instead of wearing your sweats.

I had a college roommate who would put on a jacket and tie when he had to cram for a midterm or final - dressing nicely helped put him in the right frame of mind for Getting Things Done. It's all mental.

This may not be for everyone, and may seem like a strange tip—but I can definitely back this up for some. It's why I don't own sweats...I feel like I should be watching TV with the flu when I wear them.

Use Old Containers and Sharpies to Keep Track of Collar Stays

Photo by Guilherme Torelly .

mahfrot shows us his favorite collar stay wrangler:

I found myself continually losing collar stays whenever I'd take them out to wash my dress shirts. I'm sure there's a million other options out there, but I found using an old Altoids tin the perfect size. Also, to make sure I remember which stays go to which shirt, I write on the back of the stays in Sharpie the colors or patterns on the shirt.

newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/U4wTFuaV8VQ&hl=en&fs=1&fmt=22","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":412,"ratio":0.824,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube"} ); Rockets made of bacon, broken windows, and beeping smoke detectors. I could not think of a more wonderful experiment. Just don't try it at home.

No, really. Please don't try this at home. I refuse to be responsible for any damage. [Thanks, Jess!]

Note to Microsoft, HP, Dell, and whoever else wants to get in the next-gen tablet game: your concepts are nice -- even spectacular, in the case of Courier -- but Apple's about to actually ship a product, and investors are taking note. AAPL shares hit a record high of $219.36 this afternoon after the news that iPad pre-orders would begin on March 12 with an April 3rd delivery day, and they closed at $218.95, which is up around four percent. That's got us curious: given the choice between actually purchasing the iPad and twiddling your thumbs waiting for unannounced, unpriced, and even possibly un-real devices like the Dell Mini 5, the HP Slate, or the Courier, are you taking the sure thing or holding out for your vaporous dream device? Hit us up in comments -- and be nice to each other, it's the weekend.

Apple shares hit record high on iPad shipping announcement originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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