For years, Diebold has embarrassed itself by claiming that obvious faults were actually not faults at all, and during the past decade or so, it mastered the act of pointing the finger. Now that it has ironically renamed itself Premier Election Solutions, it's finally coming clean. According to spokesman Chris Riggall, a "critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point" has been part of the software for ten years. The flaw is on both optical scan and touchscreen machines, and while Mr. Riggall asserts that the logic error probably didn't ruin any elections (speaking of logic error...), the outfit's president has confessed to being "distressed" about the ordeal. More like "distressed" about the increasingly bleak future of his company.

[Via Techdirt]

Premier should just start reselling its designs to ho hum resellers rather than spending the loot to brand its own products, as it seems to be the object of desire for companies like Ricoh and Voigtlaender. Nevertheless, Germany's own has rebadged the DM6365 and slapped a Vito 65 logo on it, but didn't bother tweaking the specs. Touting a 3.48- x 2.17- x 0.75-inch enclosure, this compact features a played-out six-megapixel CCD sensor, 2.5-inch LCD monitor, 32MB of internal storage, SD slot, 30fps movie mode, 3x optical zoom, built-in red-eye reduction, USB 2.0 connectivity, and PictBridge compatibility. Per usual, Voigtlaender manages to pack a humdrum feature set into a fairly overpriced package, with the Vito 65 coming in at a less-than-attractive €199 ($265).

[Via LetsGoDigital]

Apparently today was the agreed upon date to launch (or "prelaunch," anyway) svelte new mobiles that we'd been waiting ever so patiently on, as this discovery comes just hours after Motorola officially released its MOTOFONE F3. While we've known the BlackBerry Pearl was coming, sneaked a few peeks of it in action, heard all about the pre-release reviews, and had strong suspicions (twice) that it was headed to Cingular, today we can finally say it's here -- well, almost. Accessible through Cingular's Premier web portal, the Pearl is available for pre-order as an interestingly-labeled prelaunch affair. While the design nor the specs have changed up on us, we're finally getting some concrete info on the price; it'll run you $579.99 straight up, or around $179.99 after corporate and web discounts, and while we're sure plain ole consumer pricing will be similar, you'll (probably) only snag this jewel for under $200 if you sign away your cellular soul for a couple years.

[Thanks, Scott V.]