With everything electronic these days getting smaller, it’s nice once in a while to see something getting big – really big. Big enough for those of us with poor vision and big, clumsy fingers to still hit the right button every time.

That seems to be the idea behind Brookstone’s new Super-Sized Remote, which is a gigantic slab-sized universal remote control measuring 5″ x 11″ x 1″. In all other respects this is a fairly basic 6-in-1 remote control offering one-button selection for TV, VCR, DVD, satellite, cable box and an auxiliary device (and codes for 296 of the most popular A/V equipment). The buttons are correspondingly huge and glow-in-the-dark, meaning if you ever lose the remote again you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. (more…)

We’ve gotten a lot of e-mail from our readers over the last year asking us about our lab facilities, as in - do we really have any?

We most certainly do. And to prove it, here’s a video recently taken in our durability lab, where we stress test products to see how well they’ll hold up for the long haul. Senior Lab Assistant Rudy is (the hirsute individual on the treadmill) is running the Pure Digital Flip Video camcorder through its paces. As you can see, the quality is quite good and, thus far, the Flip camera is holding up quite well.

Wish we could say the same for Rudy.

download

There have been many great quests in the annals of myth and legend – The Golden Fleece, The Rescue of Helen of Troy, The Holy Grail, The Fellowship of The Ring. Here at The Geek Beat, one quest has loomed above all others: The Quest for A Functional HDTV Antenna.

Seriously, we’ve tried them all – indoor, outdoor, amplified – and they’ve all failed miserably. It’s embarrassing, really. The Geek Beat offices are based on a hillside overlooking the westside of Los Angeles; we have direct line of sight to every major digital transmitter in the L.A. basin. And yet not a single antenna we tested could manage to tune in more than one station at a time. Position it to get CBS, you lose NBC. Got NBC? Forget about FOX (actually, if it wasn’t for Bones and House, we would; but that’s for another article). It was truly crazy-making. (more…)

I’m fairly sure this will be the one and only time I will ever say this, but I wish I had the right to vote in Finland. In what may well be the first time a politician running for a national office has based his campaign on appealing to geeks (and not just any geeks, mind you, but geeks who understand Klingon), Jyrki J.J. Kasvi, current member of Finland’s Parliament, just relaunched his website in four languages – Finnish, Swedish, English and, yes, Klingon.

“pe’vIl parmaq vIvoq. qo’ vIDub vIneH; motlhwI’ vIqaD vIneH; ngoch ngachlu’taHvIS qechmey chu’ vIchel vIneH,” states Kasvi in Klingonese. Translation: “I strongly trust in love. I want to improve the world, challenge standards, and add new ideas when policies are being debated.” (more…)

This story is getting such extensive coverage in the Blogosphere, you’d think Moses just discovered an 11th Commandment etched on the back of one of his stone tablets. Something to the effect of, “Thou shalt not restrict a user’s ability to exercise a license they’ve legitimately paid for.”

Well, Steve Job isn’t Moses, but he is as close as you get to an iconic authority on the subject of downloadable music. And here’s what Steve had to say on the subject of Digital Rights Management, or DRM, in an opinion piece posted to Apple.com earlier today:

“The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”

For a media executive – and let’s face it, as the majority stockholder in Disney, Steve Jobs is a media executive – this is nothing short of sacralidge. And unbelievably cool.

To read Mr. Jobs treatise on the whole DRM issue, click here. It’s a good read, and we highly recommend it.