Doug Aamoth…

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We’ve been getting requests from various citizens to feature their respective cities in our new Geek Weekend feature here on CrunchGear, so when a request came in for the Twin Cities, John asked me to write it up and I thought, “Oh, great. More work.” “Perfect! I grew up there! I know where geeky stuff is located!”

Background Info: The Twin Cities denotes the capital city of St. Paul, MN and the larger, more cosmopolitan city of Minneapolis, MN. Together the two cities are home to roughly 2.5 million people.

There’s always been a friendly little rivalry going on between the two cities, with some people from Minneapolis viewing people from St. Paul as more blue-collar and rough-around-the-edges, while some from St. Paul think people from Minneapolis are yuppies. I’ve lived in both cities and they’re both nice places. Overall, the rivalry is pretty silly, but it’s there. Look hard enough in any city, though, and you’ll find both a-holes and nice people. No different in the Twin Cities. Everyone’s pretty nice, overall, though.

Minneapolis features a relatively large downtown commercial district. It’s home to the Target Corporation, the Target Center (home of the Timberwolves, concerts, etc.), the Metrodome (home of the Twins, the Vikings, and monster truck rallies) — soon to be replaced by the new outdoor Target Field, and First Avenue, a little music club that’s seen a fair amount of pretty big acts.

St. Paul has the Xcel Energy Center (home of the Wild, concerts, etc.), the St. Paul Saints minor league baseball team (owned by Bill Murray), the Science Museum, and the capital building.

The gigantic University of Minnesota (50,000+ students) sprawls across both Minneapolis and St. Paul. The two cities’ downtown areas are about ten miles apart.

Where to Buy Gadgets: When you realize that you’ve forgotten something important at home, I can recommend the following places based on firsthand experience.

Micro Center: Where I spent most of the past five years of my life before I moved to Boston. This place is located a few blocks from the home I used to own. It’s a great place for cheap cables and the staff is relatively helpful without being pushy. You can walk around in here for an hour or so before anybody bothers you. They have some name brands at decent prices and a fair amount of gray market-type stuff that you’d find on the internet.

General NanoSystems: Very knowledgeable and helpful staff, excellent prices, kind of like a mom and pop computer store that’s able to compete with other retailers. Similar to Micro Center but more local. Very cheap cables — probably the cheapest you’ll find.

FirstTech: All Apple, all the time. These guys are the kings and queens of Apple sales, training, and tech support in Minneapolis. Located right on Hennepin Avenue in the middle of trendy Uptown Minneapolis, it’s not a huge store by any means but they’ve got it all and they know their stuff.

Best Buy — Store #5: Of the trillions of Best Buy super stores, Store #5 is still standing. One of the original Best Buy stores (back when it was called Sound of Music), legend has it that Store #5 was a present from original Best Buy CEO and founder Dick Schulze to his wife. She’d forever get all the revenue generated by the little store that could.

It’s seriously a sight to behold, especially if you’ve only been in the gigantic Best Buy stores before. Store #5 can’t be more than a couple thousand square feet, everything’s packed to the rafters, and the aisles are uncomfortably tight.

Little known fact: Store #5 is where I worked in high school — it was my first job ever. I sold computers, earning $5.38 an hour. I spent my entire first paycheck on a Super Nintendo.

Where to Eat and Drink: First thing in the morning, you’ll want to pick up a coffee at local legend turned #2 coffee company behind Starbucks, Caribou Coffee. They’re everywhere, even moreso than Starbucks.

If #2 is still too big for you, try local legend turned… um, still local legend, Dunn Bros. They’ve got some strong coffee there and many locations have morning coffee on the honor system — pour your own and pay a buck. And don’t leave without trying the gigantic Rice Krispie square. It’s big as your head.

For breakfast, head over to Linden Hills and eat at Zumbro. Nothing geeky about this place, but it has the best, most consistently-delicious breakfast in the history of eating. Get the “Eggs Etc.” over hard with bacon and sourdough, plus a single pancake. You’ll never have a better breakfast. Tell them Doug from Boston sent you. I eat there every time I’m in town.

You can also try Cafe Twenty-Eight, which is right down the street and very delicious as well. Get the farmer’s breakfast. If it’s lunch or dinner time, get the bacon cheeseburger and a local beer — Surly Furious is my favorite. Surly is relatively popular in the Twin Cities and the guy who owns it also owns Cafe Twenty-Eight.

And any geek worth his or her salt will do a fair amount of eating and drinking at the Chatterbox (two locations in Minneapolis, one in St. Paul). Great food, excellent beer selection and — wait for it — old school video game consoles and vintage board games at every table. Snag the NES table and rent just about every Nintendo game all night for $1 apiece. There is NO better way to hang out for hours on end, as far as I’m concerned.

After you’ve had your fill of retro gaming and beer, head over to Northeast Minneapolis and go low-tech at Nye’s Polonaise Room. Home of the self-proclaimed “World’s Most Dangerous Polka Band” and live piano karaoke, Nye’s was voted the Best Bar in America by Esquire Magazine. The look and feel of the place hasn’t changed in… well, ever, and the drinks are cheap and strong.

Once you’ve stumbled back home, make sure to call in for late-night food from Galactic Pizza — which I could have sworn used to be open until 3AM, but it now seems that they’re only open until 1AM on the weekends. Oh well, do it anyway. Know why? Because they deliver in three-wheeled electric pods while dressed as superheros. It’s outstanding.

Daytime Activities: Aside from eating your way through the Twin Cities, there’s plenty of other fun stuff to do throughout the day.

Here’s a curveball to get things started; head over to the St. Paul Curling Club. Remember Curling? From the Olympics? Like bowling on ice, kinda? The St. Paul Curling Club is the largest curling club in the country and makes for a great way to kill a few hours on a hot day. Bring some friends and have a few beers afterwards. It’s fun, I promise.

While you’re over in St. Paul, check out the Science Museum of Minnesota — especially if you have kids with you. There’s a lot of fun stuff for them to do there and almost everything is interactive in some way. Let them run around and play while you relax and take in a show (or nap) in the Omnitheater.

Round out the afternoon with a visit to St. Paul’s Fort Snelling. You’ll see old-timey reenactors blasting cannons and muskets at each other. Sure, it’s a bunch of stuff from the early 1800’s, but there’s still some cool old war technology and weaponry there.

For some straightforward Chuck-E-Cheese-style gaming, but for adults, head to downtown Minneapolis’ Block E and visit Gameworks. There’s a pretty decent bowling alley inside, too. Try to go during the daytime, if possible. That whole area gets a little dicey at night (unless they’ve cleaned it up by now).

Just outside of the Twin Cities sits Valleyfair, Minnesota’s answer to Six Flags, Disneyland, and various kid-friendly waterparks. Admission costs almost $40 per person but you can get a four-pack of tickets for $25 apiece. Use the money you save to buy half of a small drink once you’re inside the park.

Also just outside of the city, Grand Slam is a pretty fun place for the kids. There are batting cages, an 18-hole miniature golf course (pirate themed!), laser tag, go karts, and video games.

And, of course, I have to mention the Mall of America. Don’t go to the Mall of America. Walk around your local mall 60 times in a row to get the same effect. If you’re dead set on going, there’s an amusement park in the middle of the mall with overpriced, non-thrilling rides for the kids and an underwater aquarium, which is actually kind of cool. Go in the middle of the week if you can. Weekends there are an absolute madhouse.

If you’re looking for some exercise, there are plenty of lakes with excellent walking, running, and bike paths. In the city, you can scoot around Lake Harriet, Lake Calhoun, and Lake of the Isles — they’re situated within blocks of each other. Lake Harriet is a nice walking lake with a big bandstand and ice cream for the kids, Lake Calhoun features some very beautiful Scandanavian eye candy (both men and women), and Lake of the Isles is a little quieter but has some pretty enormous houses for architecture buffs.

Finally, make sure to check out the Brave New Workshop on Hennepin Avenue in Uptown Minneapolis. Founded by Dudley Riggs in 1958, it’s the longest running satirical theatre in the country specializing in political and social satire. I spent the better part of my twenties there honing my improv skills and acting in various shows. Now I fumble my way through video reviews of gadgets. Same basic difference.

Other Good Geeky Shopping:

• Source Comics and Games
• Electric Fetus
• Cheapo Discs
• Big Brain Comics
• Robot Love
• Ragstock
• Hub Hobby

Other Geek-Friendly Bars and Restaurants:

• Psycho Suzi’s Motor Lounge
• Bryant-Lake Bowl
• Half Time Rec (indoor Bocce Ball pit)
• Town Talk Diner
• Pizza Luce
• Jimmy John’s
• Uptown Bar (get the skillet)
• Keys
• Highland Grill
• The Happy Gnome (huge beer selection)

Local Tech Businesses:

• Best Buy
• Geek Squad (now owned by Best Buy)
• Target
• 3M
• Medtronic
• Ecolab
• Seagate
• Cray
• Hormel Foods (they make SPAM!)
• Map of area tech startups (from CrunchBase)
• Minneapolis citywide Wi-Fi

Anything Else?

I’m bound to have forgotten more than a few great places. Drop your recommendations in the comments — there’s plenty to see and do in the Twin Cities.

Take the MacBook Air, shrink the screen down an inch, slap in some netbook components, and load it up with Windows 7 Release Candidate and — drumroll, please — you’ve got the iiView A2 out of Singapore. Oh, and lower the price to $468. That’s kind of important there.

Will we ever see this machine in the US? Maybe. Probably not. But it’s got a nice look reminiscent of the MacBook Air, which is basically a really expensive netbook (I’m gonna get flamed for that one).

According to CNET, “the design is so similar that even the monitor-out and USB port are hidden within a flip on the side.” Other features include:

• Atom 1.6GHz processor
• 2GB RAM
• Intel 945 chipset
• 12.1-inch 1,280 x 800-pixel resolution
• 320GB HDD
• Two USB ports, mini-HDMI port, 2-in-1 headphone/mic jack
• 802.11b/g, 10/100 Ethernet
• Six-cell battery
• Windows 7 RC1 with Vista Home Premium license

iiView’s CEO says that the netbook will come with Windows 7 RC1 preinstalled for performance reasons. The Vista license will allow users to upgrade to the retail version of Windows 7 when it comes out this fall, though.

The iiView A2 is expected to go on sale in Singapore next week for $699 (Singapore dollars), which is roughly $467.78 in US dollars.

[CNET Asia via Wired]

Look at that photo. All of that is edible, and likely delicious. The mouse, the iPhone, the aluminum MacBook Pro, all of it. The pens, the Post-It notes, the mouse pad, all made of sweet, sweet cake.

Constructed by BCake of New York, the “Apple Laptop Cake” looks almost too detailed and beautiful to eat. Almost. I’d still eat it. One thing they missed, though, is that whenever you plug an iPod or iPhone into your computer, you get a message saying that a 14-gigabyte update for iTunes is available. Other than that, it’s glorious.

[Flickr via technabob]

Intel’s apparently putting the kibosh on orders for its super low-voltage Z-series Atom processors. The Z-series chips can be found mostly in UMPCs and MIDs but had also made their way into various netbooks like the 12-inch Dell Mini series and the Acer Aspire One 751h, to name a few, as they provided a nice loophole to the “no screens over 1024×600 resolution” rule.

According to sources affiliated with DigiTimes:

“Intel is expected to completely stop the supply of Atom Z processors to the netbook market before the end of 2009 as it looks to clearly define the boundary between solutions targeting netbooks and those for MIDs. However, the company will still fulfill orders already placed by Acer, Asustek Computer and Micro-Star International (MSI), the sources noted.”

This makes sense, I suppose, as the Z-series (Silverthorne) has been around the longest and Intel’s announced that its upcoming Pine Trail platform will be available in Q4 of this year. That, and it’s apparently relaxed the screen resolution rules for Sony’s upcoming VAIO W netbook, which uses the ubiquitous N-series Atom CPU.

UPDATE: False alarm. See the below comment from an Intel PR rep, as well as this post by Reg Hardware.

The path of the Ninja is a deadly one, my friends. It’s also relatively clean. They don’t like clutter. Very fastidious — almost like cats. So it should come as no surprise that all your Ninja friends probably use these Ninja Star Coat Hooks.

They’re now available to non-Ninjas like you and me. One point of the star is actually a screw, so anchor that end into the wall and hang up your um… Ninja blazer, apparently.

Available from ThinkGeek for $13.

Ninja Star Coat Hook [ThinkGeek.com]

A vacuuming robot: you know you want one. I have a Roomba. It sits in its box under my desk ever since we hired a cleaning person to come twice a month. Seriously, though, you should get a robotic vacuum. Amazon has knocked $80 off one of the higher-end Roomba units, the 500 series, bringing it to a cool $199 with free shipping (today only).

This one is better than the one I have (I have the first one ever). Here are the specs:

• Vacuum-cleaning robot with on-board scheduling for all floor surfaces
• 2 high-speed, counter-rotating brushes; anti-tangle technology; side brushes
• Gentle-touch bumper; dirt sensor; built-in cliff sensors; self-charging Home Base
• Includes bumper extension, cleaning tool, power adapter, rechargeable battery, 3 extra filters, 2 Virtual Walls, and batteries
• Measures approximately 13 by 13 by 4 inches; 1-year limited warranty

This one features on-board scheduling so you can set it… and forget it. Hopefully you won’t forget it entirely, though, as I’ve done with my own Roomba.

iRobot 500 Series Roomba Vacuum-Cleaning Robot with On-Board Scheduling [Amazon]

The D-Link DIR-685 Xtreme N Storage Router has a lot of features stuffed into a small, attractive package. It’s the first router I’ve ever made space for on the top of my desk and, expensive though it is at $299, it’s part router, part Chumby, part print server, part network hard drive, and more.

Features (according to D-Link):

• Powerful Award-Winning Draft N Technology
• Insert a 2.5″ SATA Hard Drive to Provide Network Storage and Freedom to Access Files over the Internet
• Use the 3.2″ Color LCD to View Photos Stored on Your Network Drive and Popular Photo Sharing Sites
• Stream Digital Content to UPnP AV Media Players Including PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
• Share a Printer or External Hard Drive with the New SharePort Technology

MSRP of $299.99

Review:

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way: this is a $300 wireless router. And, as a wireless router, it works really well. It’s got a strong, reliable, fast connection and it looks nice enough to sit on your desk. That being said, plenty of wireless routers cost well under $100. So what does an extra $200 get you?

Aside from 802.11n wireless, you also get a network attached storage (NAS) device, a 3.2-inch LCD capable of displaying photos and widgets, UPnP features, direct BitTorrent downloading, two shareable USB ports, and iTunes streaming. If you think you’d take advantage of all those features, then you’ll like this router.

One of the main features that D-Link seems to be pushing with this router is the ability to display photos, billing it as “a digital photo frame.” And yes, it’s a digital photo frame in the sense that it displays digital photos, but the tiny 3.2-inch screen isn’t large or detailed enough to provide any real value as a digital photo frame. If the router is sitting in front of you on your desk, then you’ll like the photo frame feature. If you set the router up in your living room, however, you’ll barely notice the photos from across the room.

The screen is far more useful as a Chumby-like widget display. Widgets are configured and added at FrameChannel.com using a straightforward and attractive interface. You can choose from preset widget categories or add your own using RSS feeds.

You’re given a preview of what each widget looks like before you add it to the router.

So the screen itself will NOT replace a nice digital photo frame, but it acts as an acceptable replacement for a Chumby as far as displaying widgets is concerned. Aside from photos and widgets, you can also use the screen to access certain data, stats, and settings for the router, although most of the heavy lifting is still done via the standard browser administrative interface at 192.168.0.1 — the same boring interface found on most routers.

The SharePort USB-sharing utility works great. I was able to set up my printer in a matter of minutes and you can use the second USB port to connect an external hard drive or any other USB device you’d like to access from multiple computers on your network. Simply install the included SharePort software on each computer and you’re set.

The ability to mount a 2.5-inch hard drive (you provide the drive) into the router is probably one of my favorite features. I added a bunch of music and videos to it and then accessed it as a UPnP device with my Xbox 360 in the living room. Everything streamed quickly since it was all loaded up on the router itself, not another computer. The built-in iTunes server worked similarly, with the DIR-685 showing up as a shared library in iTunes and streaming music to various networked computers with ease.

The hard drive shows up as a networked computer as well as a media-streaming device. You can drag and drop files directly to it from here or set it up as a mapped network drive if you’re so inclined.

You can also download torrent files directly to the drive without using BitTorrent software on your PC. Just enter the location of the torrent file — either online or wherever you’ve saved it to your computer. It’s more cumbersome than I’d hoped since you have to log in through the router’s administrative interface first (there’s a CAPTCHA image, which slows down logging in considerably) but if you’re dead set on taking your computer out of the torrent-downloading equation, this is a pretty good alternative.

Overall, the DIR-685 represents the idea of the convergence devices wholeheartedly while flirting with the same “jack of all trades, master of none” curse that plagues most others. Everything works well but things like the too-small screen and ages-old administrative router interface ultimately hold it back somewhat.

That being said, you’d be hard pressed to find a draft-N wireless router, two-port USB sharing device, Chumby, and iTunes-compatible UPnP NAS enclosure for under $300. And if you did, you’d need plenty of space on your desk and above-average cable wrangling skills to keep it all under control. Bottom line: If you can take advantage of each and every feature that the DIR-685 offers, you’ll be very happy with it.

DIR-685 Xtreme N Storage Router [D-Link]

Buckle up. HP is apparently prepping its own 11.6-inch netbook (not pictured above) for release later this year. There’s literally no information about it other than ODM giant Quanta will be producing the thing, so I’ll not fluff this piece too much with superfluous text.

According to Max Wang (best name ever) at DigiTimes:

Quanta Computer will begin ODM production of a new 11.6-inch netbook in August and a new 10.1-inch model at the end of 2009 for Hewlett-Packard (HP), while Inventec will begin producing a revision of HP’s 10.1-inch netbook at the end of September, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

So there you have it. Another netbook to join the sweet spot that is 11.6 inches.

[DigiTimes]

Here are some of the topics from today’s podcast…

• Pirate Bay sale falling through
• CrunchGear Gadget Club contest
• New semi-automatic taser
• WiMax
• iPhone cable features inline rechargeable battery
• Devin fed up with iMovie, sees man on Segway enter coffee shop

LISTEN: Show Link | RSS Feed | iTunes Link

Behold! A portable TurboGrafx-16 system. A modder named Bacteria (eewww) cobbled together a very nice-looking system called “IntoGrafx” featuring three-hour battery life and a 5.4-inch screen.

The IntoGrafx plays original TurboGrafx game cards (the system uses an actual TurboGrafx board, after all) and there’s a region switch that allows you to play either Japanese or US games. All in all, it looks really well done. Now to track down an old Bonk’s Adventure cart.

TurboGrafx/PCE console – *IntoGrafx* [Bacteria via hack a day]