TorrentSpy lawyers said the torrent-tracking service won't pay the $111 million judgment a U.S. judge levied against it. Attorney Ira Rothken said he would appeal one of the nation's largest copyright penalties. The search engines' owner, he said, has filed for bankruptcy.

The eco-geeks aboard the carbon-neutral, biodiesel-powered Earthrace trimaran have completed the first leg of their trip around the world. And they're on pace to do it in record time.

The social networker plans to allow its customers to share their personal data with websites operated by Yahoo, eBay and others, a move that would change the nature of social networking.

Turn last night's dinner into a piece of scientific scuplture by cleaning a chicken's bones and reassembling the skeleton. Follow our guide in Wired's How-To Wiki.

Trippy CGI visuals take the checkered flag in the Wachowski brothers' new movie, with actors planted firmly in the back seat.

Los Angeles County, following New York's lead, is declaring property a public nuisance if it's used to counterfeit copyrighted music and videos. Among the reasons: "It's detrimental to the public health, safety and welfare" of the public at large. Penalties range up to $1,000 for violation and properties can be shuttered.

Wired Science's Brandon Keim reports from The New Yorker conference, "Stories from the Near Future," which features visions of the next decade presented by the biggest names in science, technology and culture.

Get a peek at the dark visual style of the upcoming straight-to-DVD animated flick.

The Defense Department is keeping plump war-time budgets fat to fund a "longer war on terrorism" with lots of new gear. A new $165 billion House defense-spending bill goes well beyond what troops need on the ground in Iraq -- $50 billion is allocated for the latest manned and robotic aircraft, as well as new aerial and weapons systems.

Climate change threatens many animals -- but with any luck, some will handle weather shifts with as much aplomb as Parus major, a colorful songbird also known as the great tit.

In a study published today in Science, ornithologists from the University of Oxford tracked the egg-laying times of great tits in Wytham, England. Since the mid-1970s, temperatures in Wytham have risen steadily, hastening the start of spring by two weeks. The birds have followed suit, timing their breeding to coincide with earlier hatches of their favorite food source, a species of moth caterpillar.

The birds' adaptation appears to be based in what's known as phenotypic plasticity -- the ability of a creature to respond to changes in its environment -- rather than natural selection favoring birds with earlier breeding times.

Such plasticity allows the birds to respond quickly to climate change. Although there's no guarantee that they could handle more-radical warming, the findings strike a rare optimistic note in a chorus of warnings about climate-change-induced animal doom.

"These changes were driven not by evolution, but by the inbuilt ability of individuals to respond to their environment," said study co-author Ben Sheldon. "If driven by natural selection, this adaptation wouldn't have happened so rapidly. In terms of matching environmental change, this is more effective."

Great tits walk a fine line. If they lay their eggs just a few days late, the winter moth caterpillars on which they rely for springtime sustenance will have already hatched and departed when their chicks are hungriest.

But some environmental cue -- most probably temperature-related, though the researchers aren't sure -- triggers timely egg-laying in Wytham's great tits. Whether spring comes early or late, they've laid their eggs on time ever since scientists started tracking them in the early 1960s.

This versatility, said Sheldon, is produced by individual adaptive mechanisms, rather than long-term calibration by natural selection that favors earlier-laying birds.

"The temperature is changing in one direction, but each year it fluctuates a little bit. Natural selection would have trouble keeping up with those fluctuations," said Sheldon.

Such plasticity is good news for the birds.

"You can have rapid evolutionary responses to climate change -- but plasticity, if it does the right thing, can occur more quickly," said Andrew Hendry, a McGill University biologist who has studied the effects of climate change on animals.

"If plasticity is common in these traits that are influenced by climate change, it will aid population persistence," added Hendry, who was not involved in the study.

The findings in Wytham run contrary to those in another great-tit population in the Netherlands. Though they experienced similar weather patterns, the Dutch birds failed to lay their eggs on time.

Some populations may prove better able than others to handle climate change, said Sheldon, but he warned against expecting plasticity to handle the worst of our greenhouse excesses.

"We've seen these birds adapt to a 1.5-degree rise over the last three decades, but there's no guarantee they could cope with another five degrees," he said.

Melodeo's nuTsie app makes it easy to embed most of your favorite songs on your Facebook page.

If you hang around the tech industry long enough, you realize: It's just like high school. These grown men and women may have millions or billions of dollars, but it's the same old set of dramas on a bigger canvas.

Which seems exactly the way to view the action these days around the Microsoft-Yahoo ordeal. Today's news: Steve Ballmer has put out "feelers" about buying Facebook in the wake of ending his pursuit of Yahoo. Let's parse the Reuters story with this perspective in mind.

Microsoft gauged Facebook's interest in a possible acquisition after the software giant's failed takeover attempt of Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Steve, frustrated and hurt after being spurned by Yahoo, got out the yearbook, found the most popular girl of the moment, and decided to go for her whether he really wanted to or not.

The newspaper reported on its website that Microsoft's bankers put out subtle signals to Facebook, the social networking website, to see if it would be open to a full acquisition. Steve didn't want to be rejected again, so he got his friends to feel out her interest.

The talks were first reported by website All Things Digital, owned by Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones. One of his friends told the school gossip, who of course blabbed to everybody.

Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker declined to comment on the report. Microsoft officials were not immediately available for comment. The girl's sidekick girlfriend wouldn't let on whether she knew this happened or not. When asked, Steve's friends also refused to say whether Steve was actually interested.

In October, Microsoft took a $240 million stake in Facebook, which valued the start-up at $15 billion. Citing an unnamed source, the report said there are no active discussions between the two companies. Steve, a senior and a BMOC, flirted with Facebook last fall, immediately raising her profile, but nothing much happened between the two of them after that.

The news came a few days after Microsoft dropped its unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion. The aim of that proposal was to build an online advertising powerhouse to rival Google. Steve's interest in Facebook is seen as a rebound thing.

Facebook, founded in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, has become one of the hottest properties on the internet because of its rapid growth and the loyalty of its users. Facebook has more than 70 million active users. But Facebook has in the past year turned into a hottie, and Steve probably can't get her now.

Digital music pirates are the same as drug dealers, prostitutes and gangs in New York and Los Angeles -- at least as it relates to the government's ability to declare your place a public nuisance, shut it down for as long as a year (or worse) and fine you. So it's time to knock on your teenager's door and pray he's just downloading porn.

Hackers who probably also think that torturing small animals is funny bombed an epilepsy foundation's site with animations and link forwards to sites that serve up pulsating kaleidoscopic images. Severe migraines and near-seizure reactions were reported by the afflicted. The FBI is investigating, and we're wondering what punishment fits this crime.

Microsoft informally approached Facebook to gauge its interest in a merger after talks with Yahoo fell apart, according to a couple reports.

Papa John's says it has sold more than $1 billion worth of pizza online in the seven years since it has taken orders over the web. In the fierce battle for click orders the nation's third-largest pizza chain says it has spent $15 on fulfillment technology and has seen online sales grow at 50 percent a year, to $400 million last year alone.

Best Buy, the biggest US retailer, is paying $2.1 billion for a 50 percent stake in Europe's largest cell phone retailer, The Carphone Warehouse.

Comcast is considering putting a formal cap on monthly downloads instead of just calling up users who used several times a typical subscriber's 2 gigs. It's a bid to increase transparency about limits that have always been there on an "unlimited" usage plan, they say. Others say "good luck" putting the genie back in the bottle.

Latin America's top mobile provider says it has a deal to bring the iPhone south of the border. Mexico City-based America Movil, which has 159.2 million subscribers in 16 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, didn't give any details -- including whether it would have an exclusive.

If you've got $9,995, E-Fuel Corporation's got a washing-machine-size machine that makes distilling ethanol as easy as doing laundry.

Samsung's newest iClone has just hit the store shelves. Designed with a touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad, the Glyde is no iPhone killer, but it is a solid device with one rock-star twist.

1790: The French National Assembly decides to create a decimal system of measurement. The metric system is born.

This came after the storming of the Bastille but still before the declaration of a republic and the execution of King Louis XVI. But revolution was in the air: "National Assembly" was simply the new name the upstart Third Estate had given itself.

The assembly was acting on a motion by Bishop Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. Under the ancien régime, France measured with an inch, foot and fathom (pouce, pied and toise) about 6.6 percent larger than their English counterparts.

The first meter was based on clockmaking: the length of a pendulum with a half-period (a one-way swing) of one second. Responding to a proposal by the French Academy of Sciences, the assembly redefined the meter in 1793 as 1/10,000,000¹ of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole.

The system was elegant. All conversions were based on 10, with Greek prefixes (deka-, hecto-, kilo-) for multiples and Latin (deci-, centi-, milli-) for fractions. The gram unit of weight was defined by the weight of one cubic centimeter (aka milliliter) of water.

The new "Republican Measures" became legal throughout France in 1795 and were made compulsory in 1799 when definitive platinum meter bars and kilogram weights were constructed. But resistance to the new measures lasted for decades.

France also used a quasi-metric Revolutionary Calendar with each month consisting of three décades of 10 days each. (Revolutionaries even attempted a metric day of 10 hours of 100 minutes each of 100 seconds each.) But Napoleon returned France to the Gregorian calendar in 1806.

The current International System of Units -- or SI, for Système International -- is based on the Treaty of the Meter signed in Paris on May 20, 1875. The United States was a signatory, and the metric system is the legal system in this country, although the legal alternate English system remains more widely used. (An online conversion engine can make translation easy.)

The meter was formally redefined in 1960 as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths in a vacuum of the orange-red light radiation of the krypton 86 atom (transition between levels 2p10 and 5d5). The new standard was 100 times more precise than the old. The current definition, adopted in 1983, makes the meter the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during 1/299,792,458 of a second.

That's 39.37 inches to counter-revolutionaries.

Source: Various

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The Z9 effortlessly satisfies the standard phone user, and pleases the rest of us with a couple extra perks. You get your e-mail and IM; you can listen to music from the microSD card or buy some more. Calls are above-average quality (trust us, we've been shouting into an iPhone for the last year). In addition to 2-megapixel shots and recording video, it can also video share -- send live video to other 3-G AT&T users, which is great for broadcasting scenes from your DIY fight club or natural disasters.

But the star of the show is the GPS. This is no cell-tower GPS Lite that only tells you what block you're on; this is the real deal, with turn-by-turn directions, live traffic info, access to the AT&T database for points of interest -- you know, stuff that's actually useful. If you don't want to punch in an address, just call the 877 number and speak it. On the downside, you will visibly age while it initializes, and it sometimes miscalculates your direction. Fortunately, goofs are few and far between and the Z9 picks up on them.

WIRED: Excellent call quality. Strong GPS capabilities. Lets you transmit (or receive) live video to other 3-G AT&T phones. Haptic feedback tickles.
TIRED: GPS can be slower than waiting for the Optimus Maximus. Pretty heavy. Proprietary headset/power connector = crap.

$249 (with two-year contract), Motorola

(Photo courtesy Jim Merithew, Wired.com)

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If Dr. Evil of Austin Powers fame were more musically minded, he may have demanded something like the beamz -- a musical instrument with "fricking lasers" attached to it. As a kid with his music career still ahead of him, beamz founder Jerry Riopelle frequented an ice cream shop with a laser-triggered doorbell. When the MIDI music format appeared in the '80s, he wondered whether the same concept could apply to making tunes. The result, decades later, is the beamz Music Performance System.

This large USB peripheral includes six beams generated by 12 lasers that, when broken, activate elements of 30 songs stored on your computer. Riopelle managed to create a laser-based instrument anyone can play -- a harder task than it sounds, since the musical parts have to mesh musically in nearly limitless permutations of hand waves. Music experience helps with timing, tempo, arrangement and composition, but it's so easy and amusing to play that only the Invisible Man could fail to have fun. — Eliot Van Buskirk

WIRED: Lets anyone make music. With lasers. Near-zero latency. One-shots, loop-based samples, dual-sample banks, "conductor" beams for toggling sections and a backing-track creator allow complex compositions. Exports in WAV format. Plans include a "third-party composer program," a Stevie Wonder play-along and other downloadable songs for $2 each.

TIRED: The demonstration video almost defies explanation. Seriously, click on it. Some of the sounds seem dated. No Mac version (yet). Pricey considering that this is nothing more than a fancy toy.

$600, Sharper Image

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What RIM's aversion to 3-G is we'll never figure out. With version 8120, RIM updates its beloved Pearl smartphone with WiFi but still omits a 3-G radio and, oddly, GPS, the latter of which can be found on both the 8110 and 8130. The shell is virtually identical to older Pearl models, and functionally very little here has changed. Aside from some minor interface tweaks (woo, new icons!), the trackball-and-two-letters-per-key experience is fully intact.

The big news, of course, is the addition of WiFi, and RIM seems to have finally gotten the kinks worked out of its 802.11g implementation; we didn't encounter any of the troubles we experienced with the BlackBerry 8820 last year. If you dig the BlackBerry's mature e-mail features (who doesn't?) and can handle the whole bi-character key setup (and we know many who don't), the Pearl 8120's a solid upgrade to hold you over until a 3-G version (fingers crossed) arrives. —Christopher Null

WIRED: Camera upgraded to 2 megapixels plus flash and video capability. Software is somewhat better at word detection and correction; even works well with odd, multiword URLs. Crazy-loud speakerphone. Very sensitive mic offers exceptional call quality in our tests. Very fast battery charging, and nearly nine solid hours of talk time in our benchmarking. Stable WiFi implementation.

TIRED: Pearl keyboard still not for everyone. Lack of 3-G is absurd. No GPS.

$200 (with two-year contract), RIM

(Photo courtesy Jim Merithew, Wired.com)

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The latest effort to get the boob tube on a mobile device is AT&T's Mobile TV with FLO (Forward Link Only), and it's surprisingly good. Coupled with the LG Vu phone, it's a match made in couch-potato heaven. The MediaFLO service uses an unusual, nonstandard bit of spectrum to ensure that the streaming of your favorite flicks is uninterrupted. Instead of downloading the data over AT&T's 3-G network, the Qualcomm-developed technology operates primarily on the old UHF television band, though it does tap into the 3-G network in order to get started.

The result is that there's virtually no buffering and programming starts up within a few seconds. On the Vu's brilliant 3-inch screen we found picture quality to be insanely clear and frame rates to be smooth as the ice cubes in a tumbler of 30-year-old bourbon. "Mobile TV" is a bit of a misnomer. Only a few channels are simulcast, meaning you can watch them in near-real time. All other programming, like episodes of your favorite Fox shows, are time-shifted and updated when necessary. Still, watching live streaming TV or movies like The Karate Kid on the Vu's 3-inch haptic touchscreen is pretty amazing.

WIRED: Good selection of simulcast and time-shifted programming. No network lag. Live streaming CNN is a must for news junkies. Variety of programming packages should fit just about everyone’s viewing style.

TIRED: Unless you're in an area with strong 3-G coverage, the service simply will not work. Right now the service is only available in 58 locations nationwide.

$30 per month as tested, AT&T

(Photo courtesy AT&T Wireless)

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The Kensington SlimBlade trackball mouse is an aerodynamic, sleekly designed peripheral. It's also a tad schizoid. And that's a good thing. What I am crazy about is that with the touch of a button on top of this mini-size travel mouse, its smooth-gliding scroll wheel transforms into a responsive trackball. Finally, there's a pointing device for your notebook that works in tight spaces and is as comfortable to use as the larger desktop mice I'm more accustomed to.

The SlimBlade’s 1,000-dpi laser is dependable: No matter what surface it lands on, the mouse performs perfectly. The roller ball even offers 360-degree scrolling without having to physically move the mouse. Bluetooth connectivity means that the thin-profile mouse is all you need to carry -- no extra USB adapters or encumbering cables to schlep around. If your PC doesn't have built-in Bluetooth, Kensington's new USB Micro Adapter should do the trick. With a mouse of this caliber, don't be surprised if you find yourself plugging it in to your desktop PC as well.

WIRED: Thin enough to stick in a shirt pocket. Seamlessly switches from mouse to a 360-degree trackball. Auto-sleep mode automatically extends the two-AA-battery life up to six months. Seriously. Plastic chassis feels like metal with some heft. Amazingly comfortable to use despite its size.

TIRED: Mouse/trackball mode button initially takes some time to figure out. Hard to know when sleep mode has kicked in.

$100, Kensington

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This no-frills unit rocks a bright 3.5-inch QVGA screen encased in a black plastic chassis, and weighs less than half a pound. On top of all the normal manuals, the NAV730 includes a car charger, mounting bracket, 1-GB SD card containing U.S. maps, USB charging cable and a DVD containing backup maps. The WinCE-based OS was fast enough when navigating the menus, but the user interface was a bit of a downer.

Acquisitions were also a bit of a mixed bag. I was able to get a 28-second lock while outdoors on a relatively clear day. Meanwhile, attempting the same feat indoors took 2 minutes, 32 seconds. These aren't necessarily bad times, but other GPS units we've tested achieve faster locks in more challenging settings. Once I got moving, the voice-guided turn-by-turn directions were easy enough to understand via the text-to-speech feature and surprisingly loud 1-watt speaker. Unfortunately, these solid additions were marred by occasionally spotty destination markers. These navigational hiccups were extremely rare, but honestly there was a moment or two when I questioned whether the NAV730 would accidentally direct me into oncoming traffic.

WIRED: Extremely cheap and mostly effective. Excellent multimedia support (MP3, WMA, OGG, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, GIF, JPG, TIFF). Zippy menu navigation via 400-Mhz processor. Accurate text-to-speech pronunciation of street names. Traffic Message Channel compatible (subscription required). Voice guidance in 20 languages.

TIRED: Seriously light on preprogrammed points of interest. Hard power cycle necessary for charging. Clunky menus and overall UI can prove challenging. No Bluetooth support. On/off switch is too far recessed, hard to toggle. 320x240 screen is hard to read outdoors.

$170, V7

(Photo courtesy navigonusa.com)

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For its price, the Navigon 2100 Max is fairly swank. If you plan out your trip far ahead of time you'll have a positive experience. The Navigon can switch from 2-D to a 3-D Reality mode that will even show you which lane you should be in. In emergencies, you can bring up the nearest tow truck, hospital or pharmacy. But once you leave the highway or want to navigate on the fly, prepare for frustration. It's hard to get the scroll buttons to register, address look-up is time-consuming and unintuitive, and the Points of Interest directories are hard to navigate, especially if you don't know the name of the business you're searching for.

The most aggravating of all is when the unit starts talking back, arguing like a real estate lawyer. If a community is not a "registered municipality," the Navigon can still find it, but won't let you navigate to a street within that area. One address we checked simply couldn't be found because we couldn't provide the correct hamlet for it. Yes, Madame Navigon is hard to satisfy and takes patience to deal with; if you don't have the time to convince or cajole her to do your bidding, then it's time to spring for a pricier model.

WIRED: Midrange features at a flea-market price. The speaker has a good set of lungs and demands to be heard. The unit's excellent mounting bracket is virtually shake-free.

TIRED: Sluggish response time frustrates and causes double-taps. Obstinate refusal to recognize certain towns even though they show up in auto-fill enrages the most gentle souls.

Price/maker: $299, Navigon USA

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The enV2 is apparently the end result of spilling coffee on a stack of consumer satisfaction surveys from the first enV. It's a lighter, slimmer package, but a botched facelift leaves it with all the style of that TI-36 you ditched back in high school. Easy to dial, but with the half-inch-tall screen on the front, the enV2 isn't really good for much else. Thankfully, once you open it up there's a full QWERTY keyboard -- not as wide at the original, but the keys are evenly spaced so it's still great for messaging.

There's a 2-megapixel camera, but even if you have figured out how to comfortably hold an Altoid-can-clamshell without blocking the much smaller lens with your fingers, pics and video turn out pretty grainy. Where to end? Do yourself a favor: If confronted with the choice of purchasing an enV2, think long and hard about it. After all, you're stuck with this device for two years. — Nate Ralph

WIRED: Bluetooth. Vibrant interior screen. External microSD slot. Stereo speakers.

TIRED: VZ Navigator (pay me!), IMs as SMS (pay me!), POP e-mail (pay me!) and the walled garden web "browser" (pay me!) will jack up that monthly bill. No WiFi.

$130 with two-year contract, Verizon

Photos courtesy Jon Snyder, Wired.com

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Packed into a dual analog/digital face, the Tissot T-Touch is literally a flotilla of functions. So what exactly does it do? Well for starters, how about dual time zones, two alarms and countdown chronographs? OK, still not impressed? But how about adding a barometer, thermometer, perpetual calendar, compass, altimeter and an azimuth (sort of a GPS system on your wrist)? Oh what's that? Getting gadget fever? Wait, there's more.

What really makes this timekeeper unique is how all these functions are activated: the face is a touchscreen. By tapping on seven different points on the analog face the digital portion displays the results instantly. Of course to cram this type of instrumentation into a watch requires a certain amount of heft and the T-Touch does not disappoint, weighing in at more than a quarter-pound. Programming the T-Touch's ambitious functionality also takes the same patience that would go into solving a Rubik's Cube. But if you possess that patience, this just might be the ideal timekeeping, temperature-sensing, direction-finding, altitude-detecting, all-in-one, wrist-mounted wundergizmo.

WIRED: Dual analog/digital face provides actual temperature, directional readings and barometric readings. Backlighting and water-resistance to 330 feet useful for all you deep divers out there.

TIRED: Hard to program. Confusing eight-page instruction booklet almost as thick as an issue of Wired magazine. Quarter-pound weight plus J-Lo-class thickness make you conscious of the watch at all times.

$1,100, T-Touch

(Photo and wrist modeling courtesy James Merithew, Wired.com)

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The iK500 iPod Dock's two 5-inch subwoofers and passive radiator on the back pump out the shock waves while the dual tweeters take care of the crispy bits. Whether it's thump or twitter, the Kicker sounds equally good.

More than a brutish and simple set of speakers, the Kicker comes with a remote that lets you navigate your iPod menus to select playlists or songs and adjust the volume, not just the shuffle and volume of lesser remotes like the Bose SoundDock's. Knob revivalists will dig the prominent protuberance on the front of the case, which covers power, volume, bass, treble and aux-in selection. The back of the box offers a 3.5mm line-in port and stereo RCA-out for connecting external speakers.

WIRED: You can't get busted for disturbing the peace if you can't hear the cops banging on your door. Achieves ear-stinging volume without distortion. Volume, bass and treble controls are accessible with a poke and pinch of the front-facing knob. Zune owners can pick up a similar zK500 model.

TIRED: The iPod docks vertically (rather than at an angle), making the screen hard to read. The direction buttons on the remote slow down scrolling. No mic-in for high-decibel karaoke.

Price/maker: $350, Kicker

(Photo courtesy Jim Merithew, Wired.com)

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Admittedly, most people don't sit around thinking, "Gee, I wish I could set up a high-speed WiFi network here at this picnic. Or at the beach. Or in my minivan." But for us gadget junkies, we do think that. That's why this mobile router and EVDO card combo from Kyocera is perfect for us. The router signed on automatically go to Verizon's network after inserting the ExpressCard; you can also use older PC card modems with the router. Soon, we were sharing very snappy net access with everyone in the nearby park. Two small quibbles -- the router required periodic reboots, and we never got scalding download speeds on the Rev A network. Downloads topped out at 700 Kbps while uploads peaked in the 400-Kbps range. But for the price and ease of use, not to mention the McGyver-like ability to quickly throw up a network, the combo is hard to top. — Mark McClusky

WIRED: Dead simple to set up -- we went from box to internet surfing in less than five minutes. Routing functions worked well, easily managing dozens of clients. Handsome white case design. Router accepts PC card, ExpressCard or USB wireless modems. Four-port wired router included. ExpressCard protrudes less from laptops than competing models.

TIRED: Slight instability required power cycling to resolve. Speeds not quite up to our hopes for EVDO Rev. Antenna on card seemed a little fragile.

Router:

$250, Kyocera

Card:

$50 (with two-year contract) from Verizon, Verizon

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Lasonic X Famous i931

The Lasonic X Famous i931 is a ghetto-fabulous boombox designed by former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker, and its ability to play music from iPods, SD/MMC cards, microphones, USB sticks and line-level sources hits us right in the feature-set sweet spot. But with an interface that somehow renders the user-friendly iPod nearly un-navigable and a chintzy plastic construction, it's best-suited for one activity: belting out rhymes over backing tracks stored in one of the above-mentioned formats. See, this thing has a quarter-inch input that works with a standard stage mic. A gain-control knob mixes vocals above or below the music, while an echo knob adds various intensities of delay to your voice. We would not recommend this 2x12-watt monster for regular music listening since it can be so frustrating to use. But if you know exactly what you would do with a microphone enabled iPod boombox, Lasonic X Famous i931 will get the job done in style — Eliot Van Buskirk

WIRED: Plays MP3s from iPods or flash memory. Displays song information. Lets you address throngs with a microphone (not included). Remote control and custom-fitted docks for various iPod models are included. TIRED: Flimsy construction not tough enough for the streets. Semi-opaque plastic obscures iPod screen; no display on remote. Controls are more confusing than MF Doom's rhyme schemes. Doesn't work with iPhone or iPod Touch. Even when blasting "Fight the Power," we didn't feel like tossing a garbage can through a window.

$250, Famous Stars and Straps

(Photo courtesy Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired.com)

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The 10-megapixel Olympus SP-570UZ makes a good shooter for the photo enthusiast who lacks experience yet has enough loot to drop on an entry-level DSLR. You can start out relying on the auto settings (they won't steer you wrong), and then explore the advanced functions as you build your skill. Even the most hopeless of n00bs can use this thing. The more experienced user can squeeze a lot from the camera in various shooting situations, and you can perform nearly all functions manually for more control.

The camera's lens barrel extends to a lewd length, but it packs a 20x zoom. The anti-shake controls help in the long shots, but you'll lose some detail unless you're using a tripod. The camera boasts a litany of functions -- face detection, burst mode, 22 scene presets, movie recording and epic zooming ability, but where it really excels is up close. Those who like to sweat the small stuff will love the super macro mode that captures excellent detail in flowers, bugs and other assorted tiny objects.

WIRED: Stunning macro function makes big shots out of the smallest subjects. Versatile controls soothe the enthusiasts while auto presets comfort the n00bs. Excellent manual. Top-mounted hot shoe makes swapping external flash options easy.

TIRED: Pretend-professional zoom requires two hands. Zoom shots without a tripod can come out blurry. Stubborn clinging to proprietary xD media is irritating: Resistance is futile, Olympus.

$500, Olympus

(Photo courtesy Jim Merithew, Wired.com)

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The brand-new 15.4-inch (1280x800) Gateway M-151X comes in three hues (red, silver and blue) or wrapped in a blue and white floral graphic called Arctic Bloom. While the M-151X is, at heart, a mid-range laptop, its 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM and 250 GB hard drive should provide all the power and storage you need for just about anything that's not specialized: Gaming is decent, graphics are solid and video editing is easy on this machine. The sea of mainstream laptops is littered with lackluster look-alikes, and while the M-151X isn't perfect, it manages to occupy that sweet spot between price and performance, not to mention style.

WIRED: Silver keyboard looks great with the brushed metal bezel that surrounds it. Touch-sensitive volume slider and slot-load DVD burner: score! Bluetooth, HDMI, 5-in-1 card reader, fingerprint reader, 1.3-megapixel webcam with mic. Solid two hours of battery life -- even while running multiple multimedia apps.

TIRED: Only three USB ports (no room for one more?), no FireWire. Speakers leave much to be desired, namely bass. Screen is very reflective, most noticeable with dark images, as when watching movies.

$850, Gateway

(Photo courtesy Jon Snyder, Wired.com)

Read our full Gateway M-151X laptop review.

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