In the fight against drizzle and crappy weather, there can be only one victor. If you’re like us, you often get rain in your part of the country. What better way to combat the forces of evil precipitation than by getting your grubby little hands on one of these bad boys. It’s an umbrella, it has a samurai sword hilt, and it is indeed awesome. Prices range from $20 for the Tanto short version to $30 for the full on, face slicing, super badass Katana version. Both come with a nylon scabbard for wearing it around your waist like a true swordsman, push-button release, and is guaranteed to get you the ladies. Click the jump for a few more shots, or just go for the gusto and click the source to order one, or twelve.

Source: ThinkGeek (order here!)

Picture this- You’re in a coffee shop, sipping on your favorite drink (which is most likely a caramel steamer, since we all know you’re too much of a pansy to order a coffee). Your eyes roam over the patrons of the cafe and you spot a lovely girl sitting in the corner. She locks eyes with you.. you turn away in embarrassment. She casually gets up, gathers her things, and walks by your table to leave, discretely dropping a small note on your table. The note reads “Do you like me?”, and there are “Yes” and “No” check box. You quickly search your bag for a pen. Finding one, you scribble on the “Yes” box. Nothing appears. Only after scribbling in frantic circles to try and get the ink flowing again do you realize the pen is out of ink. You fool! She had waited outside for you to respond and you just blew it. She’s gone.

You vowed never again to let a chance like this slip away, and you bought an inkless metal pen from vat19 that same day.

The “ink” is actually pure lead and, when used on paper, resembles pencil graphite, except it’s smudge-proof and permanent. No eraser is going to work on this bad boy. It even writes on glossy paper and upside down! Since the pen only releases tiny amounts of metal onto the page, it will actually last a lifetime without sharpening or running out. All this, wrapped in a classy stainless steel shaft for only $28. I just ordered a dozen.

Source: Vat19

So who cares if most of the people around the office can’t drink out of a bottle without getting half the contents all over themselves. It doesn’t make them less of a person. It just makes them half-retarded. Oh, sorry, is ‘retarded’ not politically correct these days? How about just ‘stupid as shit’? So why not give them a birthday or Christmas present they can really enjoy and put to good use? It’s the least you could do for calling them retarded earlier. What? You think I said that word? You’re obviously delusional my friends. Meet me out back behind the monkey bars after gym class and we’ll settle this like real men. Just don’t touch the face. It’s my meal ticket baby!

The BottleBob punches holes in the tops of both plastic and metal bottle caps, allowing you to perfectly fit a straw into the top. No more spills, no more mess. Created by the great minds of Core77, and sold via the Epauletshop (source) for only $21. That’s a small price to pay for not getting soda on your shirt. Trust us.

Source: Core77, Epauletshop (buy here)

Hi folks, Geekogle here. Are you too pale to go out in the sun? Too much of a pansy to go paintballing? Well have I got a product for you! ThinkGeek has a new version of their obscenely popular Marshmallow Gun that holds more ammo, and shoots farther, for hours upon hours of sniping fun. It’s the perfect gift for yourself, your friends, or your co-workers. Just remember; It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it’s fun and games, just someone can’t see very well. Open target!

Now you might be asking yourself, “Holy moley Geekogle, shut up and tell me where I can buy 12 of these mothers!” Well, we’re getting to that, but here are some quick features you might like. If you don’t like them, you can go to hell.

• Gun will shoot both mini marshmallows or included “soft pellets”!
• Shoots up to 30 feet!
• 20 pellets or marshmallows per clip!

30 feet, 20 marshmallows. I’d like to see god himself create a better gun that is both fun and delicious, all for $20. He can’t, trust me. I’ve asked. Both ThinkGeek and the manufacturer say to never, under any circumstances, eat the mini marshmallows after shooting them, we’re pretty sure you can bump up the 5 second rule to at least a minute and a half. Mmmm.. floor candy.

Source: ThinkGeek (order via link)

If you spend most of your day outside a cubicle, no where near a computer, or you are a hermit with a wicked long beard who lives inside a cave up in the mountains, you probably haven’t heard about the iPhone 4′s reception problems. In a nutshell, the issues are that holding the phone in a ‘normal’ way to quite a few consumers drops your reception considerably, all due to the fact that the users hand touching the aluminum band around the phone disrupts the antenna signal. Most of the tech news outlets have covered this and conducted their own tests and determined it’s a very real issue. Now, with such a large entity like the Consumer Reports agency doing their own tests, then later saying they “cannot recommend the iPhone 4 at this time with it’s reception problems”, Apple has decided to continue to ignore and disregard the claims. In a new tactic of douchebaggery, Apple has decided to selectively delete user posts on their support forums about the issue. Furthermore, Apple itself has admitted that the signal bars you see on the iPhone 4 are over exaggerated and incorrect, and Apple is working on a “fix” to accurately represent the signal strength again.

In related media, here is a picture of Steve Jobs laughing because he likes censorship.

The newest iteration of Apple’s cash cow was, without a doubt, the most hyped and anticipated piece of hardware for this year. As with all previous years, really. After a grueling Thursday morning and afternoon waiting to get our grubby little hands on one, we did. But the masses must be appeased, and while we try and touch on topics outside the limelight, the seemingly gravitational pull of the iPhone 4 is a necessity.

Skip to the bottom if you are wanting to know if you should buy this little hotcake or not, but don’t have the time to be bothered with such things as specifications and details.

What’s Hot:

The shape of the handset is different, but in a good way. It’s still got it’s rounded corners, but the abrupt cut off point of the front and back glass, along with a slightly protruding metal rim makes for a more testosterone fueled design. There is no doubt aesthetics was a huge factor for this redesign.

Holding the device, we initially thought it felt about as thick as it’s predecessor, the 3G/S. However, only when putting them side by side did we see how dramatically thinner the device is. It was a pleasant surprise that the device isn’t too thin, and that it still feels solid and fits well in your hand.

And thus brings us to the screen itself. It’s vibrant, colors appear to “pop” more compared to the previous generation, and fine lines (our best example was looking at the Notes icon with it’s red vertical lines and brown-ish horizontal lines) are better defined. Whether this is due to the (perhaps overly hyped) Retina display or simply the boost in screen resolution is left to be determined, but there is no doubt it looks much, much better than the 3G/S. Holding them side by side, the previous version screen looks like utter garbage.

FaceTime is neat and works as expected, but we have always been (with any handset) cautions on if the whole video conference thing will actually catch on for casual phone buyers.

The battery longevity is where the phone shines the most in our opinion. During normal usage, reports are already coming in that post up to a 38 hour battery life with normal use of phone calls, games, app usage, etc. That’s a pretty amazing number, and especially attractive to the corporate playing field, as long flights with no chargers can become common.

The camera and video recorder will be adequate to the needs of most people. While it may not replace a point and shoot, it certainly is up to par with some of the low to mid range “flip” style video recorders concerning motion blur and focus time. The pictures in optimal lighting are nice and crisp and display a surprising amount of detail.

The upgraded RAM and processor lend greatly to the snappiness of the phone OS. Moving between screens is quicker and more fluid than before. Apps open faster, close quicker, and generally run better in almost every aspect. The OS has always been a well oiled machine for it’s application of a phone/small media player, and the upgrades simply add more to that experience.

One last little thing we noticed, and it’s almost not mention-worthy, is the home button feels super duper snappy. It actually feels like a button, rather than a mushy feature. For something so small, we really noticed and appreciated it.

What’s Not:

One of the biggest gripes about the “phone” itself is that it still carries the burden of being on AT&T’s network. While we cannot fault the device itself, we’d be doing a disservice not to touch on the very root of the device, which after all, is a phone. Dropped calls, laggy dialing/connection, slow 3G speeds, and over all problems will forever be the bane of both Apple and AT&T. It comes down to what you can tolerate without pulling your hair out in frustration and if you still have high hopes of AT&T upgrading their service.

As it’s been reported by CNN, left-hand callers may experience dropped calls or horrible reception (if that’s even possible). On top of that, several reports are coming in saying that the iPhone 4 actually gets fewer bars (on occasion) of reception when holding it next to a 3GS. Calls to AT&T to attempt any sort of solution or reason why this may happen have been unfruitful.

While we like that Apple got some issues and features on this version, such as folder organization and multi-tasking, we’re disappointed that it has taken this long to get basic functionality that has been on Jailbroken phones for years now, let alone on Android. It simply seems to us that Apple may be running behind the competition on a lot of aspects of the OS functionality, which is uncommon with Apple’s reputed innovative stature in the computer market.

We know both sides of the argument, but Flash still isn’t supported, and probably never will be. We could write an entire article about this, but most of you who follow it know where each side lies (Adobe vs. Apple), so we won’t go there. Needless to say, we are disappointed that they won’t include this functionality on the iPhone, even if they say the technology is on it’s way out.

In the same note as not supporting Flash (with regard to previous versions of the phone), you still are unable to remove and replace the battery. This may be a deal breaker for some who are accustomed to carrying a few spares around while on vacation or for work related things.

While we mentioned above that the FaceTime program is neat, it’s still only usable over WiFi, and only on other iPhone 4′s. Yes, the iPhone has a huge market share, but why limit this functionality to only the sole device, and only over a network that isn’t readily available? We know the data streaming over AT&T’s already crippled 3G network would be a cluster, it just seems like yet another thing Apple is hurried to release that isn’t quite as refined as it should be.

More glass, more cracks. We like how both sides of the device are the highly resistant glass we’ve come to love from Apple, but as the YouTube videos that float around will point out, you drop that $199 sucker once and you’re going to break something. We liked how the plastic (or even the aluminum of the 1st iPhone) was farily resistant to cracks. Chips and dings, sure, but that didn’t screw up the whole phone. It’s glossy, shiny, and we cringe for all those who casually remove the phone from their pocket, lose grip, and see it tumbling in slow motion down to the concrete.

Long Lines & The Summary:

Holy long lines, Batman. One of our editors reported standing in line for over 9 hours to get their hands on one, and many in other parts of the country who waited even longer. It wouldn’t have been that bad, but we fault the AT&T, who should have been more prepared on release and pre-order day with their web servers. The same editor here tried desperately to pre-order two weeks ago to no avail, only to have to stand in line in the warmer-than-necessary sun at the local outside Apple store. To all those who had to bare this unfortunate torture, we both salute you and roll our eyes. We don’t care how awesome a phone might be, it’s not worth 9 hours of sitting in line, twiddling your thumbs.

However, the summary is simple: It’s a great device, it’s respected familiar feel (both outside and in) is even better than previous versions, and if you’re a fanboy or just want to upgrade, go out and do it.. just don’t stand in line for 9 hours to get it, open the box, and smudge the hell out of the screen.

Yesterday evening, the makers of the text recognition software Swype Inc. put a public beta up for the Android OS. Anyone can download it via a sign up form from the website. After entering all required information, including email address, you are sent a link to download the software. We gave it a try, just to see what all the hubbub is about. After all, the only Guinness Book of World Records recognized texting record was broken by Franklin Page using the software (video after the jump).

The installation is pretty straight forward, and during and after the installation, Swype Inc. did a good job at giving the user all the necessary info to enable and use the device. Heck, they even have a quick tutorial in the installer package. We’re pretty amazed at the complexity of the software itself. We threw a whole slew of words at it, and it predicted and displayed (almost) every one, sans a few expletives where simply were not in the standard dictionary. It takes some getting used to, and right now we’re not sure exactly how more efficient it is for a regular person using it over the standard press/release QWERTY keyboard layout of most phones. Either way, it impresses anyone we show it off to on how easy and strikingly accurate it is. We’re pretty sure Swype Inc. hired a band of wizards to code this thing. Sorcery is afoot.

We’ve been able to play around with HTC’s newest smartphone, the HTC Evo 4G, for about a week now. Here are our impressions after digging down into the hardware, OS, and the little tidbits that got on our nerves. You’ll notice the review compares the Evo often to the current generation iPhone, since it’s the most popular smartphone  (and competitor) on the market at this time (we know the 4th iPhone will be out later this month, which we’ll also do a full review on).

As expected, it’s a long review, so skip down to “The Summary” if you’re short on time, or have the attention span of a gnat.

The Good:

The phones massive screen is clear, bright, and amazingly beautiful. The 4.3″ screen dwarfs those of the iPhone, or really any other smart phone sans the obvious other HTC large screen devices like the Incredible. Color is stunning, and we’re all very happy HTC decided to go with the TFT screen rather than an OLED screen. While an OLED or AMOLED screen would have cut the handset size and weight down dramatically, the extremely poor visibility in direct light makes their choice of screen material a wise one.

The Android OS, skinned by HTC’s Sense UI, is fantastic. It’s got more eye candy than you can shake a stick at, but doesn’t overcrowd the OS in a way that hampers it. We have so much love for the OS because, as opposed to the iPhone, it’s an extremely open platform. It’s actually quite a liberating feeling to see extremely useful apps (such as Sweet Dreams, which can put the phone into silent mode at specific late-night hours) be able to alter the phone in great ways that Apple would never allow. It’s also nice to see apps on the Marketplace that are not just silly filler, but actually useful, intuitive, and mature. Quite frankly, we got tired of sorting through the hundreds of fart apps on the Apple store.

The kickstand is a nice addition to an already great outer design. It’s classy looking, and definitely appears to be a forethought rather than someone thinking of a good idea and slapping it on there mid-production. It’s a solid piece of brushed aluminium, and while other reviews have said it felt secure and solid, it was looser to get it open/closed than we expected. However, don’t let that make you leery of using it, as the design, spring, and feel does not seem like it would break easily. It also virtually eliminates the need for a docking station, though we’re eager to get our hands on the dock Best Buy is slated to release later this month, which features both a charging outlet and mini HDMI outlet.

The Sprint network (we’re also lucky enough to be in a 4G network area) seems solid and dramatically improved in both coverage and reliability since we looked at them a few years ago. Luckily, Sprint also made some very important changes in regards to customer service, and we were pleased that while talking with tech support and our Sprint rep, they both spoke English and seemed to have adequate knowledge of any questions we asked. Never underestimate the power of U.S. based phone support.

The 4G is pretty quick. Even with a pretty hammered network soon after release date, we still got great download speeds and super fast website loading. Our speed tests in our area were around 3.5 Mbps. Heck, even the 3G network is faster on this phone when doing a side-by-side comparison with an iPhone 3GS.

The 8MP camera for photos and HD video is makes photos and video nice and crisp. It’s better than our iPhone for sure. The pictures are large (you can set the MP size in preferences for smaller pictures) and clear. The dual-LED flash is extremely bright and works very well in low-light situations. It has a manual on-the-fly zoom, auto-focus, and even face recognition in both photo and video applications.

The Android and Sense UI interface (using Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr) does a great job to sync all your information with the cloud. Syncing contacts with the appropriate social network site is easy and cleanly imports phone numbers, addresses, websites, email, and any other information directly into the phone. If your contact changes phone numbers, the phone automatically updates itself. It even imports birthdays from your Facebook friends into your calendar, neat!

Most of the apps that we truly used on a frequent basis on our iPhones had direct (and sometimes better) replacements off the Android Marketplace, so the transition was an easy one. Not only that, but a few of the ones some of us use around the office were free in the Marketplace, where in the App Store they were paid.

The speaker gets a special happy nod for the Evo. While it’s on the rear of the phone and can get muted when sitting on a table while you show your friends that cool new YouTube video, it’s very, very loud. Alarmingly loud. But that’s a good thing, if you ask us. It is only a single speaker, so you’re not going to get the fidelity of a stereo experience, but we’d be hard pressed to actually care about that on a phone.

The Bad:

Most of us coming from the iPhone were used to having two ways of bringing the interface up: The power button up top, and the “home” button down below. Most of us used the home button because it was easily accessible while still having a firm grip on the phone. The Evo does not have such functionality. You must press the power button on the top of the device to get the screen to turn on. It’s unfortunate that the button itself is small and raised up past the edge of the device very minimally. It takes some getting used to, and we’re sad that they didn’t make the button as solidly raised and easily found (it’s a black button on a black shell) as the iPhone.

If you are small, or have small hands, do yourself a favor and mess around with a friends HTC Evo, or go into a local retailer and check it out. Because of the massive size of the screen, it’s sometimes hard for some of us to move your thumb/finger around with one hand to get where you want to go, especially dragging down the notification window, which is at the very top of the screen.

The HD video via the 8MP camera suffers from a bit of motion blur, but it’s nothing that a low to mid grade video recorder wouldn’t also suffer from. The 1.3 MP camera does fine on the front, and serves it’s purpose for quick shots or for video conferencing via the Qik application

Much like any newer smart phone, the glass on the screen is a fingerprint/oil/dirt magnet. We wish someone would learn from past mistakes and make a anti-glare/anti-fingerprint screen that is as optically pleasant as a gloss screen, which would save us from having to buy a screen protector and diminish the beautiful screen colors (even if it is almost negatable).

One other big complaint was the music player in the phone. Or rather, it’s lack of smooth transition from our iPhones, which was taken care of via iTunes. With our iPhones, we simply hook it up to a USB cable, hit sync, and it’s done. With Android, it’s a little more involved, in some ways better, but in a lot of ways worse. The good news is that the HTC Evo uses a standard micro SD (secure digital) card for it’s expandable memory (the 1GB of onboard memory is reserved for apps, OS, etc.), which allows us to quickly transfer music to and from the card when plugged into a system. It makes it easier to manage music and media in that we can put exactly what we want on there, without having to deal with un-checking the “sync” boxes in iTunes. However, album art importation is horrible. If you’re like many of us, we’re a little OCD about having all our music have their respective album art. To accomplish this feat easily, you’ll need to make sure your music has the album art embedded into the MP3 file itself, which can be a pain if you’ve previously let iTunes handle much of the album art via it’s separate folders. You can, however, use Windows Media Player to sync your music to the device, but it’s easier to not only keep track of it via the SD card, but also because most of us here in the office run on Mac’s.

We really, really miss the volume/mute toggle of the iPhone, and wish it was on this device also. Sure, it’s easy enough to hold down the volume rocker for a second or two (and it really is only that long, it’s very responsive), but it was nice to have that option of muting all sounds with a quick flip of a switch.

While we love the Sense UI (afore mentioned skinned version of the Google Android OS), we have to note the fact that there will always be delays when updates such as Android 2.2 (Froyo) gets released. As of right now, you can root the Evo and install a release candidate version of 2.2 on it. However once the update goes public, expect at least a 1-2 month delay while HTC updates their Sense UI with the current OS. It’s a good thing the 2.1 UI is so beautiful, which allowsus to be patient an extra month or two.

The Ugly:

The battery, as noted from most other reviewers, is not the best. Oddly enough, it’s not the screen itself that the battery takes a hit on. The “Cell Standby” and “Call Idle” processes for the cellular reception are power hogs, only coming up next is the Android OS that has anything to do with the actual device itself. We’re not sure if Android 2.2 will be able to solve any of these issues, but we hope so. We did, however, find that after doing a couple complete battery cycles, the phone performs much better than day one. If you’re having excessive battery drain, do a full cycle, use it a couple days, then do another full cycle. Also, if you’re as geeky as we are, you’ll have a charger at home, at work, and in your car. At that point, battery life is virtually a null issue.

Reader Tip: One of our readers sent in this little tip that, as we’ve seen, dramatically improves battery life. Go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks, and un-checking “Enable always-on mobile data”. It should have no ill effects on any cellular or 4G data updates such as email or FriendStream, but it’s been reported that Gmail chat/email may be slower than normal. Pick your poison on which is more important. This change removes the phone from the network when an app does not call on a network connection, rather than being “always on” and ready to receive data.

The Summary:

Even with it’s flaws and shortcomings, we think the phone is pretty great. Many of us who switched were die hard iPhone fans, even a couple could be seen as fanboys. With a combination of a lower data/phone plan than AT&T, better coverage, less dropped calls, and all the benefits of a fantastic smartphone, we’re very much happy with the device. HTC made a solid and well refined piece of hardware. We urge all of our readers to check out a Best Buy, Radio Shack, or Sprint store sometime in the near future to at least play around with it.

Think we missed something? Want something discussed and our opinion given on a feature we didn’t cover? Shoot us an email via our contact section, or leave it in the comments.

Did you catch the I Love Lucy reference up on that title? We’re classy like that. Classy like vague black and white TV show references, not classy like San Diego. Sprint, on the other hand, is not being very classy right now due to it’s instituted $10 monthly “premium data” charge for the HTC Evo 4G.

That’s where the good old folks over at Explain the Fee come in. They’ve developed a website to give their visitors an outlet for frustration and disapproval of the mandatory fee from Sprint. The website author explains that the fee, according to Sprint rep’s, is due to the rich features of the phone itself, and that due to these features, Sprint expects the phones users to incur larger amounts of data.

But here’s the catch. 3G/4G service is suppose to be free, and included in the Sprint “everything plan”. Even on Sprint’s HTC Evo promotion party last month, Sprint’s CEO told the public that 4G access would be free. So what is the $10 a month charge paying for? If it’s the “rich features” of the phone, isn’t that what the $199 (on contract) or $449 (off contract) price of the actual phone is for?

So far Sprint rep’s have not been able to give a clear answer (other than blaming the fee on the phone’s hardware) as to what the $10 a month fee is for. For that matter, the HTC Evo is the only phone on Sprint with this monthly charge. The website, as we’ve reviewed it, is really just asking for an honest answer from Sprint on what the charge is for, and not simply hide behind a ruse that it’s because of hardware that has nothing to do with the actual network.

You see what I did there? The title is in the theme of how Yoda talks! Ha! I know, I know, it’s hard to believe so much clever can be stuffed into a single post, but that’s why I’m here people. Just doing my job.

TomTom announced that they will be offering officially licensed Star Wars voices for their previous and upcoming GPS units including Darth Vader, C-3P0, Yoda, and Han Solo. Details were not released on if the voices are recorded from the original actors, but the video (after the jump) sure sounds like James Earl Jones. And really, who else would you want to tell you to turn left on Cherry Street than Darth Vader? For a measly $13 US, you can download Vader himself from the TomTom website, while the other voices are currently being produced and will be available released through the summer during the months of June, July, and August. I’d like to see you find your way to the mall with R2D2 giving you bleep and boop directions.

Source: TomTom