Steampunk/Hunley replica flash drive the most impressive yet.

Are you a fan of Steampunk’d gadgetry? I’m kind of on the fence personally. While it is cool to see custom electronics and one-offs, a couple months back there was a huge explosions of steampunk material that frankly, burned me out.

A few months out of the public eye however will do wonders for your interest. Not to mention, if done well, Steampunk gadgets are a sight to behold. Take for instance this Steampunk’d USB flash drive/Hunley (old classic submarine) replica. The drive itself is your run of the mill 16GB flash drive, which I might add is a fair amount larger than many novelty/custom flash drives. Even better however is the obvious attention to detail the creator “WillRockWell” of Etsy put into this little digital wonder.

If you’re feeling all nostalgic (and have a healthy, fat wallet) why not make this flash drive part of your collection? It’s mighty shiny…don’t let the $800 price tag blind you.

[Product Page]

GizmoWatch

WD jumps on the USB 3.0 bandwaggon with MyBook 3.0.

Tired of waiting around for USB 3.0 external drives to hit the scene? Me too. Well, I was until I stumbled across Western Digital’s new MyBook 3.0 external hard drive. The 3.0 addition to the name of course highlights the migration from USB 2.0 to 3.0 internals meaning these new drives will whisk away your precious files at up to 5 Gbps. If you’re keeping note, that’s roughly 10 times more than your standard USB 2.0 drive.

But the drive itself isn’t everything as you need the appropriate hardware on your PC too. On this front, PC manufacturers have drug their feet as well in regards to adding USB 3.0 support. But there’s hope yet.

If you fancy the one and only 1TB MyBook 3.0 and don’t have any USB 3.0 compliant cards/ports on your computer, WD will sell you a kit that includes the drive and a USB 3.0 PCIe card for ~$375 USD. Got your own hardware already? Super. Shave off about $40 as the drive only option will set you back ~$331 USD.

As USB 3.0 proliferates to other manufacturers and devices, expect the prices to naturally fall. It all depends on how anxious you are. Would you drop three and a half bennies on 1TB of USB 3.0 storage or are you happy as a clam, content enough to wait it out for lower prices?

TechShout

Game Boy Advance cartridge flash drives.

Turning anything and everything into a USB flash drive is still all the rage. While I haven’t personally seen as many novelty flash drives flood my inbox, I do still see quite a lot out there by searching on my own.

With that said, I’m a geek. You’re a geek. Many of us are geeks. What better way to show that than toting around your own custom flash drives? What would you do if you saw some special chap sit down next to your at the coffee shop and whip out his GBA Super Mario Bros. cartridge flash drive? I’d be geeked, that’s for sure.

The drives come in many different game titles and range from 4GB – 8GB for $39.99 and $49.99 respectively. If you’re sold, take that attitude and the appropriate amount of cash over to 8BitMemory’s Etsy Page where they’ll be more than glad to fill your bag with their latest creations. How many are you getting?

Geeky-Gadgets

HTC Bravo in the flesh!

Fancy yourself an HTC device running Android on one of America’s cheapest networks? The HTC Bravo may be just your phone then. With specs that are almost a mirror image of the Nexus One, the big thing to give a second look to hear is the Sense UI. The N1 is all HTC and Google but runs stock Android.

So which do you prefer: The grayish casing and Android 2.1 on the N1 or a darker, more sleek package overall with HTC Sense UI and the Bravo? Be sure to specify which Sense UI you like — the old and much loved version or the new version which features the transparent glass orbs around each icon.

Leave it below.

AndroidCommunity

Wind Power for the nature junkie: Eolic Foldable WindPower Generator.

What the hell is that? At first, visions of some new age weapon come to mind. But in reality it’s something much more and much more useful — a mobile solar power generator.

Being green and living clean is getting easier with each passing day. Regardless if the current world we live in is warming or cooling, giving mother nature a helping hand certainly can’t hurt. In the solar power arena, harnessing such power for larger scale applications (read: large tools/small housing) require some pretty hefty solar cells and hardware. Hardware that is anything but mobile. A new design by Marcos Madia, Sergio Ohashi and Juan Manuel Pantano however aims to make the trek into the wilderness, or at the very least, power away from outlets more mobile and easier to use.

The design is simple — attach some solar panels to a foldable contraption and make it lightweight and compact when folded. That’s where this little beaut excels, providing mobile power in a light and small package that can be folded up when the job or need moves. Pretty cool huh?

Anyone have any great ideas of what you could use this for?

LikeCOOL

First Image of native BlackBerry Twitter app leaked.

It’s easy to imagine that those with BlackBerries are generally pretty addicted to digital communication in quick and easy forms. I mean, the BlackBerry is still one of the best tools for doing just that. With that go go go lifestyle and mentality, Twitter has grown off of and built up it’s popularity by relying on that exact same philosophy — quick and easy sharing of information. It seems like the two were a match made in heaven, right?

You’d think. So far however, even though RIM has pushed out official apps for other services such as IM and Facebook, Twitter has remained solely in the 3rd party realm. And then someone leaked that RIM was working on a native Twitter app…

Gazing at the image above, we can see what appears to be a legit image of what the native Twitter BlackBerry app will look like. To me, it looks a lot like the Facebook app but with some different colors — not a bad thing by any means. As far as actual hands on time for the masses goes, it’s still a crap shoot with no hard timeline or release date. Though if we go by recent chatter, a February-ish release doesn’t seem to implausible.

Keep gazing away folks.

CrackBerry

Nexus One 3G problems? Try this.

If you are one of the few Nexus One users in the states, you’ve probably encountered some pretty terrible 3G coverage even in places where you should be surfin’ like a champ. Reasons for connectivity problems have ranged all across the board from hardware to software. A handy tip being thrown around a few Nexus One forums the last couple of days however point to a quick and painless software fix.

Navigate to the wireless settings in the settings app and have the N1 scan for networks. Once done, don’t click on T-Mobile or AT&T. Instead, choose automatic and let it do it’s thing once again. Afterwards, you should be enjoying a much more reliable 3G signal and even latching onto that wireless speed in places you hadn’t before.

Let us know how it works for ya…

BGR > Slashgear