Dreamhack, a 10,000-person LAN party that just occurred in Sweden, is a close second to a few buddies and some hot pockets in a basement. If you're into this sort of thing. [Dreamhack and Flickr]

Available starting today, the $30 Energizer Flat Panel 2X Charging System from Performance Designed Products is an inexpensive, quick, and cool way to juice up your Wii remotes.

This is an inductive charging system, meaning that there’s no need to connect any cables between the charging pad and the remote. The NiMH battery packs slips into the Wii controller and is magnetized to align with the special charging area on the black pad you see in the above photo. It’s a pretty neat feature that’ll add some much needed class to “Busch Light and Wii Bowling Thursdays” that have made your house so popular. Simply place the remote on the pad and watch it wiggle itself into the correct charging position like magic.

At $30, the system is priced somewhere between entry-level and mid-range Wii remote chargers. I can tell you that without knowing the price beforehand, I assumed it’d retail for around $50 when I first took it out of the box and set it up. So there’s that.

The battery packs are nice and hefty and hold a charge for about as long as standard AA batteries – maybe a tad shorter, but not enough to make a huge difference. If you’ve been using regular batteries for your Wii remotes up until now, you’ll definitely appreciate switching to rechargeable ones over the long haul. And with inductive charging, you’re able to charge your Wii remotes without taking off any protective silicone jackets or the MotionPlus add-on.

Recharge time is refreshingly quick for an induction system. Inductive charging generally takes a bit longer than standard recharging systems but the technology has come a long way over the past year or so. The system I reviewed in March took a long time to recharge – overnight, pretty much — whereas this Energizer system takes about 3-4 hours.

Overall, I can safely recommend this product as a solid purchase for anyone looking for an attractive induction charger at a decent price. Battery life is good, recharge time is quick, and the magnetized charging surface adds a touch of cool for good measure.

Energizer Flat Panel 2X Charging System [PDP.com]

We've seen Family Guy take on Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Come December 22nd, Fox will release DVDs of Family Guy's Empire Strikes Back parody. Here's the first trailer. And yes, I'm still a sucker for knee humor.

Well, there really isn't much you can do with USB 3.0 yet for starters. And people who still have laptops with ExpressCard slots don't strike me as the early adopter type. Oh, and then there is the AC adapter.

You see, in order to supply the full 900mA for each port you will need weigh yourself down with the optional AC adapter when out and about. Plus, the whole thing is so damned bulky in general that you are liable to break it sooner or later. At least StarTech is offering a lifetime warranty on it. Of course, with a product like this, StarTech probably won't be around long enough for you to get your $50 worth. [StarTech via EverythingUSB via Ubergizmo]

Comcast's acquisition of NBC from GE is a done deal reports David Faber on CNBC. All that needs to be done is paper work at this point. The deal should be announced Thursday morning, says Faber.

This is hardly a surprise. After yesterday's news that GE would buy its NBC stake from Vivendi for $5.8 billion, the closing of the deal was basically a formality.

Now comes the next phase of hard work. The deal is expected to take a year to fully close, as the government scrutinizes it.

Have you run into the black screen of death in Windows 7 yet? I haven’t, but that’s probably because I only use Windows as a conduit to playing Team Fortress 2 and spend only as much time as I can in there. I also haven’t applied any security updates to it, and that may be the culprit.

So Microsoft has admitted that is’s looking into this mess. This mess, yes, is the black screen of death.

The glitch, as described by the BBC, “means that users of Windows 7 see a totally black screen after logging on to the system.” I cannot think of a more aggravating glitch.

The glitch doesn’t just affect Windows 7, either, with reports out there of it also affecting Vista and XP.

A security firm, Prevx, says it has the glitch can be triggered by as many as 10 things. Most fingers are pointing to the November 10 security update.

I’m trying to think when was the last time I saw a “(blank) screen of death” in Windows, or a kernel panic in Mac OS X. In fact, the last time I saw a kernel panic was at a computer lab in school in 2005.

So it’s been a while.

Hey baby, look, we all have priorities. For me, my gadgety toys just so happen to fall a teensy bit above you on the list. Don't be offended! Here, look, I got you a present! Now, back to my iPhone.

BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the Grinch hated Christmas, click here.

23andMe: What better way to make up for neglecting your girlfriend than by giving her the most personal gift possible: a detailed analysis of her genetic code. She'll be able to learn about her descendants as well as get clued in on what sorts of diseases she needs to look out for in the future. And as an added bonus, all that data she'll get will require a good amount of time for her to go through. Time you can spend playing video games. $300-$500 [23 and Me]

Classmates.com membership: Nothing will make her appreciate your half-assed brand of boyfriending like a trip down ex-boyfriend lane, especially the high school sections. Look, you might not be able to make it through a dinner without dicking around with your phone, but at least you didn't get fat and never leave your hometown like these schlubs. Here's to being the most palatable of an unpalatable group! $39 [Classmates.com]

New Super Mario Bros Wii: Your girlfriend might hate Modern Warfare 2, but if there's any game that will turn a game-averse girl into a trash-talking controller jockey, it's this one. You can play together, alternating between helping each other out and throwing each other into bottomless pits. I'm sure there's a metaphor for your relationship in there somewhere, but I'll leave it to you to suss out. $50 [Amazon.com]

Don't Buy: Kitchen Gadgets: Even if she says she wants to get more into cooking, you probably don't want to give her a kitchen gadget as a gift. I mean, sure, you might think that her making a delicious meal for the two of you while you surf the web sounds great, but insinuating that that's how she should pass her time will probably earn you a swift kick to the hanging brains.

Asus O!Play: Getting a gadget for a gadget-wary girl might seem like an obvious blunder, but think about it: with this thing, you can stream downloaded movies and TV shows to your TV that you can watch together! As long as you are well prepared with some of her favorite movies and shows, you'll be able to sneak in some gadget-lust fulfillment in a way that you can enjoy it together instead of by yourself. A novel thought! $99 [Link]

TiVo HD: Look, you don't have to be super into gadgets to appreciate the quality of a TiVo HD when compared to the crap DVR your cable company provides. And this is, again, something you can use together rather than something she has to tolerate you paying attention to instead of her. $215 [Amazon.com]

Canon 7D: If there's a guaranteed way to get her into gadgets, it's buying her one of the best. And really, if she's into photography even a little bit, she'll love the 7D. It's a monster of a camera, one that'll have her taking pictures all the time. Looking for something a bit cheaper? Check out our DSLR buying guide. $1,900 [Link; Amazon.com]

Don't Buy: Dyson DC25: You don't want to get this for the same reason you don't want to get her a kitchen gadget, but even more so. You can be into cooking, but no one is passionate about cleaning. Seriously, if you value your relationship at all, avoid at all costs, no matter how cool you think the vacuum is. $500 [Link; Amazon.com]

Don't forget to recommend your own favorite girlfriend-pleasing gifts in comments-include pics and pricing if possible.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favorite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We'll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

Hundreds of photos of BSODs arranged into the visage of Steve Ballmer, a stabbing, probing, flicking tongue protruding from the gaping maw in the center. Here's the tongue—oh God—up close, so you can see some of the photos:

I kinda want to see a Steve Jobs made out of kernel panics and beach balls now. [Poorly Drawn Portraits via Fake Steve]

Augmented reality Twitter isn't new to the App Store, but their official geolocation service is just a few weeks old. How? Hacks! Twitter 360 is the first augmented reality Twitter app to support the official API, and it looks fantastic.

Previously, the only way to grab location data from Twitter was to scrape through user profiles or to rely on some kind of third-party geodata service, with which Twitter users could upload their current locations as individual Tweets. It worked, sort of, but it was janky and awkward. Now that Twitter lets you embed your location in each tweet without taking up any characters, things are different.

Most new iPhone Twitter clients support the GPS tagging feature, so there's no shortage of location data to play with, and Twitter 360 is one of the first apps to really take advantage of it. You can basically watch your Twitter friends leave a trail of narcissistic word nuggets all over town in real time, rendered on a map or through your iPhone's camera. It's fascinating, if, you know, you're into loose acquaintances' latitudes and longitudes. (Which is an acceptable thing, in this 2009.)

Twitter 360 is $3 and only available for the iPhone 3GS, since a compass is necessary to properly orient the tweets on screen. And the app itself is executed well enough, though its function are fairly narrow—if you can stand to wait, I'm sure free multipurpose AR apps like Layar will get support for Twitter geolocation soon enough. [iTunes]

Continue reading Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide: PMPs

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