Japan has a thing for face masks. In the summer, people wear them because of those nasty allergies. In the winter, it’s an anti-flu measure (although most Japanese people wear them in order not to infect others. Yes, they are that nice.

If you thought that $300 for the ESPN Ultimate Remote was a tad too high when it was announced about a year ago, the invisible hand of supply and demand agrees with you. They’re now going for just over $100, which seems far more reasonable.

Newegg’s little “here’s a few ‘deals’ you might enjoy” e-mail just showed up in my inbox. It’s about games. There’s a few deals you might enjoy.

This NES-inspired mouse could probably be the hot-selling Wii of the mouse world if Nintendo ever decided to produce such a thing. I would buy one and you would buy one. Repeat that process until there’s a three-year supply shortage and, boom, the NES Mouse is what all the kids want, ladies and gentlemen.

Game on! Cablevision, a cable company that serves the suburbs of New York City, and whose ISP, OptimumOnline, I use, recently announced that it will offer the fastest broadband in America starting next month. Speeds will top out at 101 megabits per second down, 15 megabits per second up. (That translates to around 12.6 megabytes per second down, 1.8 megabytes per second up. BitTorrent seeding just got a whole lot easier. I mean, what else would you use these speeds for?) But you know who’s not too pleased about this? Verizon, what’s with its competing FiOS service. In fact, Verizon is calling Cablevision’s plan a “parlor trick.” I do believe Verizon is stylin’ on Cablevision.

Here is something cool from Japan for the many vinyl fans still out there: A portable turntable for your old records [JP]. The device, made by a Tokyo-based music and DJ equipment maker called Vestax, not only plays your records but also digitizes them.

In case you hadn’t heard, Ikea is on the solar bandwagon. After pumping $75 million into various environmentally-sustainable initiatives, we’re starting to see products trickle out. Aside from solar-powered garden lights — which have actually been availalbe from numerous companies for a while — you can also pick up a $20 solar desk lamp.

Those of you holding out for a rugged touchscreen netbook/tablet might want to ask your kids where to find one. This PeeWee Pivot Tablet Laptop actually looks halfway intriguing.

Amazon’s Personal Document Service has mainatined a $.10 fee for every document transfered via Whispernet since the device was launched, but the service will now cost at least 50% more. Starting May 4th, Amazon will charge $.15 per megebyte rounded up to the nearest whole megabyte for each document transfered. Basicaly, the base fee will soon be $.15 and it goes up from there. It’s not all sour grapes though.

Apparently there were a few lucky people out there who go their Sidekicks a bit earlier then others, and one of them was kind enough to take some shots of an unboxing and share it on the intarwebs for all to see.

Not content at owning 100% of the world’s brand awareness, Apple is looking into building its own chipset and has even hired a team to work on “multifunction” mobile chips.

In the cellphone world, a chip is a chip. Most of them are ARM-based but there are a few outliers. Most importantly, however, each has a similar power profile. Therefore, by controlling the entire chip themselves, Apple can handle its own graphics, video, and audio output as well optimize for power control – a huge concern with devices like the iPhone.

Looks like we’ve got a twofer, folks. Just as I predicted, Android adds the special fairy dust to feature phones that will make them appealing to a mass audience and Moto seems to know it. This phone, code-named “Ironman,” looks to be Moto’s latest foray into the world of high performance Android phones.

Two of the biggest country markets of the world, Japan and China, are on their way to develop a next-generation mobile phone network for the Chinese market that paves the way for Japanese phone makers. The Chinese cell phone infrastructure is still mainly based on 2G (Japan turned 100% 3G just a few weeks ago).

I came across some very interesting news today. I was mostly minding my own business, hammering away at our various sources in the hardware industry and trying to dig up some sort of information on exactly when the Palm Pre (pictured right) might be launching, and how many of them will be available. Rumors are flying about both of those issues over the last couple of days.

And then, wham! A whole new rabbit hole to jump down. One of our better sources indicated to us that Palm is “very far along” on a second Pre-like device and currently has plans to put it on the market in the late part of 2009, possibly as early as the Fall.

This is too soon for a second generation device (Apple releases new generation iPhones yearly). and Palm won’t be expecting people to upgrade their Palm Pre to this new device just a few months after buying a Pre. It’s addressing a different part of the market.

The iTie has a pocket for your iPod
Balloon Russian Roulette: What fun!
Afterglow, a laser drawing system for presentations, now available

Great idea, great execution. One store of Japanese electronics chain Biccamera (think RadioShack in Japan) has one of the coolest facades I have ever seen: A giant hand holding a cell phone whose “buttons” show pedestrians what they can find on each floor when they enter the store.