If you’re planning on staying at the The Plaza hotel in New York, you have one more thing to look forward to, and that’s iPads in every room and suite. Since January, the five star hotel has put iPads in all guest rooms for a multitude of reasons. One of the coolest? The custom app that the iPad runs. Replacing an older touch panel, the new app allows guests to control lights in the room, change their heat and air conditioning systems, order room service, make restaurant reservations, request wake...

Famed iOS hacker geohot is utilizing his talents to aid the tinkering community of another platform, the PlayStation 3. Mr. Hotz has successfully acquired and published the root keys used by Sony’s popular gaming console, opening the door to custom software and ROMs. On his site, geohot has noted that he does not condone piracy in anyway and wouldn’t mind being “on the other side” — perhaps an offer to work for/with Sony? Hit the read link to check out geohot’s handy work. ...

Dear hardware OEMs: Resistance. Is. Futile. It seems as though the gang over in the IRC channel #G2Root xda-developers have found a permanent rooting solution for T-Mobile’s HTC G2 handset. As you may recall, the rooting community ran into a little hiccup with the Android 2.2 device due to an auto-restore feature aimed at helping the average consumer un-brick their handset. The new solution comes just days after HTC released the source code for the G2 on their website. The root exploit for the G2 is far...

Ever since Apple announced the new MacBook Air — and we found out there was a built-to-order option which upped not only the RAM but CPU — we figured it would be worth putting it head to head with the stock model to see performance differences. We have a 13-inch MacBook Air “stock” model with a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD drive. Our built to order MacBook Air is rocking a 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD drive. Hit the j...

Happy Monday to all those DROID X owners anxious to shoehorn a custom ROM onto their handsets. A Twitter user has posted of video of the DROID X running the Android 2.2, Sapphire AOSP 2.2 ROM. While the DROID X had been rooted, it had not yet been loaded with a custom ROM due to several extra security measures put in place by Motorola. We’ve got the 59-second video — complete with questionable background music — after the break. Hopefully an instruction set and stable build will surface ne...

The folks over at alldroid.org have posted a note in their forums claiming that Android tweaker extraordinaire ”Birdman” has successfully booted a stock DROID X into a custom recovery state. The post reads:Using a hack discovered by the folks who’ve done all the work on the Milestone, birdman has booted a custom recovery on his handset. The process is labor-intensive and dangerous if you’re not prepared to recover from a bricked device (and technically this bricks the device since you...

The folks at Colorware have added the latest Xbox 360 S to their impressive repertoire of custom-colored electronics. The new slim and sleek Xbox 360 S can be painted in your choice of 46 custom colors for $175 if you already own the gaming console, or for a reasonable $500 if you buy the system with a custom paint job directly from Colorware. We’ve been impressed with Colorware’s work in the past and highly recommend the service if you want something more than drab black for one of the hubs of yo...

It’s no mystery that manufacturers are dying to ship Windows 7. Regardless of its current state, there’s still just too much of a stigma attached to Vista and manufacturers are all too eager to move on. Moreover, so is Microsoft. As such, we highly doubt the Redmond-based giant will put up much of a fuss over the fact that small custom PC builders like Puget Systems are advertising the availability of Windows 7 ahead of its official launch on October 22nd. According to Puget’s site, Windows ...

The folks over at Colorware just hit us to let us know about their latest offering — the Stealth MacBook Pro. Take your standard MacBook Pro with a 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 8GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2x4GB), 15-inch matte widescreen display and a 256GB solid-state drive, and wrap it in a sleek, smooth-textured, zero gloss black finish. Drool. Only 10 units will be produced so you know this won’t be on everyone’s table at the local coffee shop. The price of exclusivity: $5,999.Read...

The winners of our recent Slacker Radio Plus giveaway won’t be the only ones excited to learn that Slacker Radio’s mobile app has just received a major upgrade. Version 2, 2.0.2 actually, is now available and it includes a variety of bug fixes and enhancements. Highlights include faster performance / app response and much (MUCH) shorter gaps between songs. Transition gaps were one of the few complaints users had with Slacker but now once the app gets rolling, users can move through that 4 million-...

Official word that VUDU jazzed up its service offering with the addition of Pandora came through this morning but now some less-than-official news is creeping out that may be even more interesting. As you can see in the leaked screen shot above, VUDU is currently working on a new feature called Home Movies. According to Zatz Not Funny!, Home Movies will provide a Slingcatcher-like PC to TV streaming experience. It will reportedly allow users to stream H.264 video from a PC to the VUDU box, plugging yet anothe...

Since the announcement of VUDU’s Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform, we’ve been waiting for some new big news to come down from the Santa Clara-based set top box-based movie distributor and this morning it looks like we’ve got it. Pandora, perhaps the most popular among a new wave of intelligent internet radio services, is now available via VUDU hardware. Pandora represents the first music application to hit the VUDU box and owners will have full access to just about all of PandoraR...

Everyone’s favorite gear customization outfit has just announced a new addition that will definitely excite all you audiophiles out there. Yep, Beats by Dre headphones have indeed been added to ColorWare’s repertoire, giving owners of what are likely the hottest casual over-ear headphones a way to separate themselves from the pack. Anyone who has sampled the renowned headphones spawned from a partnership between premium gear-maker Monster and Dr. Dre will tell you they’ve got the goods sound...

You know the drill by now… Colorware isn’t an afterthought after you buy your brand spankin’ new device, it’s a pre-thought. Meaning, you’re hoping Colorware is all setup to customize whatever device you fancy even before you’ve actually gotten a hold of it. They were nice enough to hook up DJ Clue and myself, and while I haven’t had a chance to take some pictures of his device, there’s a couple of mine over here. Just don’t let me catch you rockin’ ...