It's pretty ridiculous that it's almost April of 2004 and it's still not possible to buy an SD expansion card with WiFi for a PDA running on Palm OS 5. A variety of conspiracy theories for why this is the case abound, but what we do know is that SanDisk was supposed to have come out with one ages ago. We hate to get anyone's hopes up, but C-Guys says they'll have an SD WiFi card for Palm OS 5 out by May.
Read MoreOne of the big downsides to having only a single expansion card slot in your PDA or smartphone is that sometimes you have to choose between using a memory card or adding an attachment like a GPS receiver or a WiFi card. Addressing that problem is SanDisk's new 802.11b SD expansion card that comes with 256MB of memory built-in. And, oh yeah, this only works with Pocket PCs, so don't bother trying to use it with your Treo 600 (or any other Palm). A driver for Palm handhelds isn't expected for several months.
Read MoreHardware Zone review of the Western Digital Media Center, which despite the fancy name, is really just a 250GB external hard drive with slots for no fewer than eight different kinds of memory cards formats: Compact Flash Type I & II, MicroDrive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, MultiMedia Card (MMC) and SD Card. Which isn't so bad in and of itself isn't when you think about it, with the idea being that you can transfer your digital photos directly do it without having to use a PC.
Read MoreA couple of new dual-format DVD burners from Toshiba, the SD-R5272, which is an 8x speed drive for desktops; and the SD-R6372 (pictured at right), a slim 4x speed model which should start showing up in laptops soon. As we've said before, this whole business of having two competing recordable DVD formats is frustrating, unnecessary, and leading people to spend extra money on dual-format drives just so they can feel like they've covered all the bases.
Read MoreTo go along with their brand-new XPC mini desktop PCs, Shuttle is introducing a line of LCD monitors that come with handles and carrying cases so you can take them with you to LAN parties (you know, where a bunch of people network their PCs together to play Quake or Counter-Strike or whatever). The first one, a 17-inch model, should be out soon, with a 19-inch and a 21-inch model to follow next year (which sounds embarrassingly late to us).
Read MoreWe're not sure we'd want to be double-clicking with this thing all day long, but someone in Japan has invented the Footmouse, which is exactly what it sounds like it is. Only costs 54,800 yen, or $513. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreIt's sort of thing we'd think would be hard to say with a straight face, but Logitech is touting its MX510 Performance Optical Mouse as its "most powerful mouse ever". Which mainly means that the mouse is extremely accurate (something hardcore gamers look for), but it still sounds funny to describe as mouse as being the "most powerful".
Read MoreThere have been so many 3D displays that work without special glasses announced over the past several months (from Sharp, NEC, Toshiba, LG, etc) that it's almost as if they're becoming - gasp! - commonplace. The latest to pop up is the Fraunhofer Institute's Free2C, which is mainly meant to be used in kiosks at museums and tradeshows and has an optional hand-gesture recognition device so you can press virtual buttons just by pointing at them. [Via GadgetMadness]
Read MoreAnother new wireless digital entertainment adapter from D-Link. Like the other two, the DSM-320 streams audio and video files from a PC over a home network using 802.11g, but lacks the Flash memory card reader of the DSM-320R or the built-in DVD player of the DSM-320D.
Read MoreDigital Media Thoughts notices that Panasonic has dropped the price on the PV-GS120, their three sensor digital video camera, to just $699. Normally it's hard to get massively excited something like this, but Jason Dunn breaks it down for us: To understand why this is such a big deal, you need to look at the other cameras on the market today. The term CCD (Charge Coupled Device) referrs to the light sensor the "sees" what's going on. Single CCD systems have one sensor to record red, blue, and green. This is typical of most digital cameras today, both still and video. A three CCD system, however, has one sensor per primary colour type - the result is a much truer-to-life image. Especially in video, 3CCD systems make an enormous difference in quality, and thus are highly coveted. 3CCD digital video cameras often cost as much as three or four thousand dollars, so to have one this cheap is a good sign of things to come.
Read MoreA ton of new cellphone accessories from Siemens: The PenPhone, an actual pen-shaped cellphone that you dial by writing out the number of the person you want to call. The Gigaset Interactive TV, which is a box for receiving photos and text messages sent from cellphones and then viewing them on a television. The Bluetooth Advanced Pen Input MMI, a digital pen with built-in Bluetooth for writing notes and drawing pictures which can automatically be sent as MMS ( Multimedia Messaging Service) messages. The QWERTY Virtual Keypad, a virtual laser keyboard sort of like the ones we've seen from VKB and Canesta. The Remote Memory Device, a hard drive with built-in Bluetooth that can connect up to a cellphone, laptop, PDA, or digital camera.
Read MoreThe Guiness Book of World Records has officially certified Toshiba's new 0.85-inch hard drive, which can store up to 4GB, as the world's smallest hard drive. We expect this record to stand for about one minute.
Read MoreOur 40GB external hard drive from Maxtor is starting to look seriously pathetic. LaCie just came out with a 500GB the other day, and now SimpleTech has their own 400GB external hard drive on the way. The SimpleDrive, which uses both USB 2.0 and Firewire, has enough space to hold 100,000 MP3s, which adds up to roughly forty weeks straight of music. The drive also comes in 120GB, 160GB, and 250GB versions. But we're really only interested in the biggest and baddest these days.
Read MorePeter Svensson of the AP pans the DocuPen, a $199 pen-shaped scanner that you're supposed to use to surreptitiously scan books, magazines, and other documents: The DocuPen is one of those gadgets that both charms you and breaks your heart. You don't know you need it until you find it. Then, when you realize you need it, it leaves you unsatisfied... One weakness is that it's quite difficult to pass the wand straight over a document. Twisting the scanner slightly while moving it means the text can end up as warped as a '70s psychedelic movie poster. Most scans are legible, though. Svensson makes one other point — that sooner or later cameraphones will take good enough pictures that you won't need to carry around a separate scanner. [Thanks, Ken]
Read MoreThere's nothing more frustrating than shelling out three or four grand for a high-definition television only to discover that it's really only "HDTV-ready" and that if you want to watch over-the-air high-definition broadcasts you're still going to have to hook your new TV up to the right kind of tuner. Anyway, it's not the first of its kind, but ViewSonic's NextVision HD10 high-definition TV tuner is the latest $400 accessory for making that new plasma TV more useful. [Via Digital Media Thoughts]
Read MorePopular Science has a DIY guide to making your own digital photo picture frame. First, you should familiarize yourself with the Linux operating system (assuming that you aren't already). Then you just need to buy a motherboard, a hard drive, an LCD monitor, a power supply, and a switch. Once you've got all your parts, you just need to assemble them all together, install Linux, figure out how to connect it to a network, and then transfer all of your photos to it. Yeah, this sounds way easier and cheaper than just buying one. [Via Slashdot]
Read MoreMatsushita, the company behind Panasonic, says that this June it's going to come out in Japan with a DVD recorder that uses the new Blu-ray discs. Blu-ray is one of the several high-definition formats that is jockeying to succeed the regular DVD discs we've gotten so used to lately. The advantage that the Blu-ray discs have over its competitors (the most formidable of which is Toshba's HD DVD) is that it can hold 50GB, or about 4.5 hours of high-definition video. And we hate to be the heavy here, but the introduction of two competing formats is going to be a massive headache for consumers (imagine having to make sure that every DVD you rent or buy is compatible with your player) and is only going to slowdown the already inexorably slow introduction of high-definition DVD movies.
Read MoreWe've never worried about this before, but now we're wondering whether this is something we need: dummy cleaning cards from Kaiser Fototechnik (which is the most German-sounding company name we've come across in awhile) designed specifically for getting the dust and dirt out of CompactFlash and SmartMedia card slots. No version for SD cards? [Via The Red Ferret Journal]
Read MoreWe have our suspicions that there is some sort of conspiracy to insert USB Flash memory drives into every conceivable type of gadget (wristwatches, mice, pens, even yesterday's USB Swiss Army Knife), so maybe we shouldn't be all that surprised by Vertex Link's new webcam with 128MB of memory onboard. In fact, by comparison it seems almost reasonable.
Read MoreBesides all those new phones, Sony Ericsson introduced a whole slew of accessories today. The pick of the litter is the Bluetooth Media Viewer MMV-100 (pictured at right), which lets you wirelessly beam photos taken with your cameraphone to any TV or projector. The others include the HBH-600, a new Bluetooth headset; the HPS-20, a hands-free kit; and the IAC-25 Active Case, in case you feel like wearing your phone on your arm.
Read MoreThe perfect thing for the next time you wanna pound out a few emails while scuba diving, NavigatorPC's wireless Bluetooth Keyboard is meant for "marine" use and that can be submerged in up to 60 feet of water and still work. Only costs $700, too. [Via Panbo.com]
Read MoreComing soon from Upstream Engineering in Finland, the world's smallest color video projector, a battery-operated unit which they say should eventually be small enough to fit inside a matchbox and powered by a cellphone. Don't expect to see those until 2005, though. [Via Slashdot]
Read MoreThis isn't the first of its kind (there are definitely few others like it kicking about), but the Wireless PenDrive is another one of those two-in-one gadgets that makes perfect sense, combining one of those portable USB Flash memory drives (up to 256MB) with a wireless 802.11b adapter for PCs. [Thanks, Jacek]
Read MoreiBiz Technology's Virtual Laser Keyboard, in which you type onto a projected image of a keyboard rather than actual physical keys, should be out by the end of the month. The Virtual Laser Keyboard attaches to a PDA (it's both Palm and Pocket PC compatible), and will also work with laptops and desktops. A version for cellphones is due out around the end of the year. We were able to play with one of these at the Consumer Electronics Show this past January, and while it does take a little getting used to, it definitely does work as advertised. Whether we would want to tap away at a flat surface for hours on end is another matter entirely.
Read MoreJulio Ojeda-Zapata of the Pioneer Press charts the rise of those increasingly ubiquitous keychain USB Flash drives, which are now so prevalent that there's a trade group behind them (the USB Flash Drive Alliance) and so cheap that companies hand them out to customers instead of promotional brochures or pens emblazoned with their logo.
Read MoreRather than complain endlessly about the battery life of his iPod, Drew Perry decided to take matters into his own hands and build an external battery pack for it out of an empty playing card case, two nine volt batteries, and a couple of AA's. He says he's able to get about ten hours of playback out of this jury-rigged contraption. He provides instructions so that anyone who wants to get all MacGyver-style can duplicate his efforts.
Read MoreNot that anyone seems to be demanding yet another Flash memory card format, but SanDisk just took the wraps off of T-Flash, which is meant to be used with cellphones. The new format is just 11mm by 15mm, or half the size of a SIM card (i.e. easily lost), and comes in 32MB, 64MB, and 128MB varieties. Motorola is the first cellphone manufacturer to get behind T-Flash, and conveniently, the cards will work in an SD card slot with the proper adapter.
Read MoreSpeaking of Apple and audio formats, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser is asking Apple to open up the iPod to other formats besides AAC and MP3. This sorta smacks of desperation to us since Real can't sell music downloads that will play on the iPod (which is currently the most popular MP3 player), but Glaser tries to spin it the other way. He argues that consumers won't want to be locked into buying from just one store (Apple's iTunes Music Store), and that eventually sales of the iPod will begin to suffer. We haven't seen any indication of this, and we're guessing that this idea of locking-in customers doesn't bother Apple one bit.
Read MoreMacPlus.org is reporting that March 23rd is the big day that Apple will unveil their updated versions of thePowerMac G5. A few others think it might be a week later, since that is at the beginning of Apple's second fiscal quarter. But what's really caught our eye is the news that Apple sent out an invitation for a special presentation they're doing at the big National Association of Broadcasters conference next month that reads "Moving pictures. Moving sound. Moving the industry. Please join Apple for a special presentation at NAB 2004 to see the latest Apple technology." Probably just be something to do with Quicktime or the popularity of the Mac for video editing. But we like to think it has something to do with plans to introduce a video iPod.
Read MoreSpeaking of the oft-predicted death of Apple, coincidentally Money magazine argues that sales of overwhelmingly popular iPod aren't enough to save the company. Why? Because the iPod isn't driving sales of Macs, profit margins are thinner on the digital audio player than they were before, and that there are very real costs to running a chain of retail stores. We're not even going to touch this one. [Via Slashdot]
Read MoreAlong with all the heated speculation about an upgraded iPod with a color screen, there's also talk of updated PowerMacs and a Cinema Display that'll match the aluminum casing of the G5 desktop (the picture above is just a speculative illustration, not an official photo), possibly as early as March 23rd. [Thanks, Jason]
Read MoreWord on the street is that Apple is getting ready to upgrade the iPod to 50GB. But it gets even better. The 4th generation of the iPod (we're not counting the mini) is also supposed to feature a 2-inch color LCD screen, a video out port, photo-viewing capabilities, and a new navigation wheel like that of the iPod mini.
Read MoreFirst Apple made Starbrite change the name of the pPod, that software MP3 player for the Pocket PC which emulates the look of the iPod, to the pBop, and make it look less like a virtual iPod. Apparently that wasn't enough for them, so now Starbrite has removed the application from its site and ceased distribution of it entirely, a step which is guaranteed to prevent the average person from confusing a Pocket PC with a picture of an iPod on it with an actual iPod.
Read MoreFor some reason a company called Stone Multimedia Solutions has been emailing users and former users of Apple's long-discontinued Newton PDA, asking them why they think the Newton wasn't a success first-time around (um, it didn't work all that well?) and if there'd be any interest in a new version. Could Apple be putting out feelers for whether they should take another stab at the handheld market?
Read MoreSure, you thought it was that it looked cool, or that you could carry around 10,000 songs in your pocket. But Dr. Michael Bull, a researcher at the University of Sussex, says that the real reason people like the iPod (and other portable music players) was because they are "multi-faceted transformative devices" and a "tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self." Or in other words, a way to keep weirdos from bugging you when you're walking down the street. [Thanks, Bev]
Read MoreFrom the Chicago Sun-Times, more hints that Apple is working on a video iPod: Microsoft has developed Windows Mobile software for the portable media center platform that has been adopted by Creative, iRiver International, Sanyo, Samsung Electronics and ViewSonic Corp. Apple is testing a device in Silicon Valley. Everyone seems pretty convinced that Apple has something up their sleeve, and of course we think that they should come out with some sort of personal video player, but we'd take any news that a video iPod is on the way with a grain of salt. Steve Jobs has said before that he doesn't like the idea of watching video on a small screen and Apple has this annoying habit of not listening to our (or anybody else's) advice.
Read MoreSpeaking of the iPod mini, Julio Ojeda-Zapata wants to use one as his organizer: I'm so ticked off with PalmSource for abandoning the Mac that I'm mulling a non-Palm replacement for my Palm m105, which I now use as my personal organizer. That replacement would likely be, given my Mac bent, an iPod... It was a joy to cradle an iPod mini in my left hand as a I thumb-scrolled through driving directions attached to a calendar entry, which had transferred flawlessly over from Outlook 2002. The iPod's screen is much smaller than my Palm's screen, but the backlighting is several orders of magnitude better — it's a more-than-acceptable tradeoff. Best of luck with this.
Read MoreWe sorta dig the idea of a computer that hisses, hums, and wheezes (well, only in theory), but Apple has admitted that in some cases using the new dual-processor 1.8GHz Mac G5 with pro audio equipment causes it to emit all sorts of unusual sounds, and has gotten around to fixing the problem. Turns out it had something to do with the G5's power supply.
Read MoreCNET's David Carnoy takes a look at DVD To Pocket PC, some new software from Makayama (that not surprisingly given the name) copies your copy-protected DVDs into files that you can squeeze onto an 128MB or 256MB memory card and watch on a Pocket PC. Now if they'd just make a version for Palm.
Read MoreOur pal Neil McIntosh of the Guardian gets the scoop on Lifeblog Multimedia Diary, which is the rather ungainly name for a new software app that Nokia is going to introduce for its phones later this month at CeBIT: Lifeblog is a very interesting app: one that pulls multimedia messages, SMS messages, annotations and video files off your Nokia Series 60 mobi, and creates a digital diary, arranged in chronological order. It's a bit like iPhoto for mobile phones (although, ironically, it will appear only for Windows PCs in its first incarnation). You can search through the application on your PC, and deposit favourite messages back on the mobile, all through a very slick interface that works horizontally (rather than vertically like this weblog) and without hierarchy. Lifeblog will work with a range of Series 60 phones yet to be launched (they arrive this summer). The weird thing is that LifeBlog doesn't publish to the web, which seems like either a gross oversight to us or an indication that Nokia has something even on the way.
Read MoreIn case you were having trouble keeping track of all the recent developments in Flash memory cards lately (assuming you've were even trying to keep track in the first place), EMediaLive has a roundup of what it dubs the "Flash Wars" i.e. what's been going on with SD, miniSD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick PRO Duo, MultiMediaCard, and SmartMedia. Though, as Smartphone Thoughts notices, there's no mention of newer Flash memory card formats xD and T-Flash, both of which we'll be hearing a lot more about in the future.
Read MoreWe don't anyone who has even gotten around to buying a first-generation Blu-Ray video recorder, which can pack up to 23GB onto each disc, but Sony is already planning to have the second-generation out by the end of the year (pictured at right, their first-gen player, the BDZ-S77). The new version can squeeze 50GB, more than double that of the first-gen recorder, onto a single Blu-Ray rewriteable disc. The new players will also support playback of pre-recorded BD-ROM discs, and Sony says they'll be releasing high-definition movies on BD-ROM discs around Christmas of next year. Which is excellent, because it means we'll have yet another high-def format out there to compete with all the other high-def discs trying to replace the DVD.
Read MoreThey're not planning to actually put any of these into production, but NEC has added some new items to their line of "Resonantware" concept-devices. Among them (pictured above from left to right): The "tag", a flexible cellphone that can wrap around your arm or change shape depending on its function. The "flacon", a virtual bottle for storing digital photos. The "gumi" (who's naming these things?), a wearable RFID chip that "hold the usage rights to images and music available on the network" (they're also edible). [Thanks, pt]
Read MoreJVC has had one of these out for a while now, but Sony has finally gotten around to introducing a consumer/prosumer high-definition digital camcorder. The camera is only a prototype for now, but it looks like it'll be better than JVC's GR-HD1. No word yet on when it will be out or how much it will cost, but we do know that recording those family vacations in HD is definitely overkill. [Thanks, David]
Read MoreSony used to be one of the few PC makers that could compete with Apple on a purely aesthetic level, but lately, the industrial design of Sony's VAIO laptops and desktops has been remarkably mundane. He's all mysterious about it, but eWeek's Rob Enderle says that this is all going to change in a few months and that Sony has some big stuff in the works, including a new PC that "should keep Steve Jobs up at night."
Read MoreToshiba is showing off a small 3.45-inch Organic Light Emitting Diode display at the big CeBIT tradeshow that's going on this week in Germany. It looks like it's just a prototype, but OLEDs like this one - which are brighter, thinner, and lighter than LCDs - could start showing up in Toshiba's Pocket PCs soon.
Read MoreWhile we were sleeping, ASUS decided to become interesting. Or maybe we just underestimated/ignored them for too long. Either way, they're announcing an impressive array of new gadgets at the CeBIT tech trade show in Germany next week. Among them: The W1N (pictured), a sleek new laptop with a 15.4-inch widescreen display, a built-in surround sound speaker system with subwoofer, and a TV tuner card (with remote). The Pocket Access Point, a wireless access point that's about size of a deck of cards. The WL-HDD, a wireless hard drive that uses 802.11g for file-sharing. The MyPal A730 Pocket PC (which we've mentioned at least once before), which has a high-resolution VGA LCD screen, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, a 520MHz processor (speedy for a PDA), and built-in Bluetooth. [Via Pocket PC Thoughts]
Read MoreAs expected , Varioptic is taking legal action against Philips, alleging that they violated Varioptic's patent for a fluidfocus, no-moving parts camera lens.
Read MoreWe'll admit to having gotten a little blasé recently about digital cameras, to the point where we're not even fazed anymore by announcements of new seven and eight megapixel models. But when you think about it, it's pretty amazing what you can get for so little these days, and TechTV has a roundup of five decent digital cameras that retail for under $200, including the 3.2 megapixel Olympus D-395 (pictured) and Fujifilm FinePix A210, the 3 megapixel Kodak EasyShare CX6330, and the 2 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 2200 and Gateway DC-T23. [Via PhotographyBlog]
Read MoreFrom Konica Minolta and Olympus, a pair of six megapixel digital cameras that will retail for less than $500. Both the Konica Minolta DiMAge G600 and the Olympus C-60 Zoom should be out next month and are good indication that we're rapidly approaching a time when the number of megapixels will matter less and less (after a certain point most people can't tell the difference) and things like lens quality, response time, and battery life will matter more and more.
Read MoreThey might be illegal and the government's crackdown on them intensifying, but the Arab News reports that stores in Saudi Arabia are still selling cameraphones, they're just not keeping them on the premises given the likelihood of a raid. Instead, if you want one, the shopkeeper will send someone out a car to grab one — and charge 50% more the phone than you'd pay for it anywhere else. [Via Reiter's Camera Phone Report]
Read MoreOver at CNET, our pal John Falcone just updated his ranking of the best headphones you can buy, putting Grado's SR125 (pictured at right) at the top of the list and the pair that we use, Sennheiser's HD497, second. [Via Digital Media Thoughts]
Read MoreNo, not Nobu the famous sushi chef whose restaurant you can't get reservations (though we sorta wish he had something to do with this). It's a new PC from company called Nobu that comes with a 12.1-inch touchscreen and is meant to be mounted into one of the walls of your home and used to control stuff around the house (like lights, air conditioner, entertainment system, etc). We're having them installed in all of the rooms here at Engadget HQ.
Read MoreGetting us ever closer to the day when we can safely throw our laptop against the wall in frustration and still expect it to work afterwards, Hitachi is coming out with a line of ruggedized hard drives for laptops that can withstand up to 1000G's of force. The 40GB Travelstar 4K40 also has a lower failure rate than most drives.
Read MoreThis past weekend we hit the Whitney Biennial exhibition, the big roundup of the best of contemporary and up-and-coming American artists that happens every other year, and while wading amongst the scads of meticulously dishelved hipsters we managed to covertly snap (with our Treo 600, hence the dismal quality) a photo of David Muller's illustration of an iPod that was included in the show. The best part is that even though we took this with our phone, a guard still shouted at us that picture taking was not allowed, so he's obviously heard of this whole cameraphone thing.
Read MoreSome grad students at the University of San Francisco are trying to put together a flash mob. And not of people spontaneously gathering at a mall to annoy people for fifteen minutes. They're trying to put together a flash mob of over a thousand laptops connected together to create one of the world's top 500 fastest supercomputers. To do this they've written some special software to connect together all the computers, now all they have to do is hope that enough people will show up on Saturday with their laptops in tow to make it happen.
Read MoreWe've been hearing about the Simputer, a PDA designed for use by the world's poor, for years and years now, and it's been delayed so many times that you've gotta wonder whether it was such a good idea in the first place. Well, finally the first ones, manufactured by Picopeta, went on sale in Bangalore, India yesterday. The Simputer has specs that sound about standard for a mid-range PDA: a 206MHz processor, 64MB of RAM. The big differences are that it runs a special version of Linux that can run on voice commands (most people using the Simputer will probably be illiterate), and it uses regular AAA batteries, since finding a place to recharge can be tough. With its high cost of about $220 (which can be equivalent to an entire year's earnings for many people in the developing world; the idea is that villages will pool their resources to buy them) is there enough of a market for the Simputer, especially considering that an off-the-shelf Palm or Pocket PC can be had for under $200 (or even under $80)?
Read MoreSpeaking of cheating at casinos, this week's Circuits section of the New York Times has a piece about how casinos are using new electronic surveillance techniques to keep tabs on which players are doing well and which ones aren't (and it involves using a Tablet PC!): By contrast, the MP21 system maintains a level of vigilance that no human can match. It takes notice when a particular gambler alone at a table is playing 120 hands an hour at a 1.5 percent disadvantage (in other words, fast and poorly), recognizing that he is more valuable to the house than another player who bets slowly and skillfully. The pit manager can call up this information on a tablet PC; he can monitor any game in real time and can calculate a gambler's statistics for the last hour, the last 30 days or since the day the player's casino account was opened. The technology can also spot card counters, whose tactic of periodically raising their bets for no apparent reason would eventually prompt the system to alert the manager.
Read MoreA couple of brief optical disc stories: TDK has been showing off a 23.3GB disc that works with Sony's new blue-laser professional disc system. Believe it or not, Professional Discs aren't being aimed at the consumer market. Read And from Memorex, a new line of 8cm recordable "Mini-DVDs" that are meant to be used in DVD camcorders. Read
Read MoreA few weeks ago the DVD Forum, the industry organization in charge of the DVD format, decided that Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 format would be one of the mandatory playback standards for high-definition DVD players (which we promise are on the way!). Now in a somewhat perverse twist of fate, the DVD Forum has selected the AAC format (which Apple uses for its iTunes store) to appear on DVD Audio discs. What's happened is that the DVD Forum wants all of the audio tracks on a DVD Audio disc to appear twice — once as regular high-fidelity DVD Audio files, and a second time as lower-fidelity tracks that can be played on a PC (since very few PCs have DVD Audio drives) — and AAC was selected to be the standard for these lower-fidelity tracks. ?a W?y?Wegister, making the customer-turnover that much faster. The Japanese government and industry types are hoping that applications like this, and o?IeUŸ%?We standard product-control uses, will stimulate growth in the RFID market to as high as "17 trillion yen ($159.2 billion) by 2010 or 2011". The only way that's going to happen is for RFID to be everywhere, and&#?t0L?y?Wapan RFID tags are expected to be inserted into almost anything that can be tracked, from library books to public records.
Read MoreAnother one of those ultraportables that falls somewhere between a PDA and a laptops. The NEC MobilePro 900c runs on Windows CE .NET (rather than the Pocket PC OS), and has a half-sized 8.1-inch touchscreen LCD, a keyboard that is precisely 92% the size of a regular laptop keyboard, a 400MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, a USB port for using with a mouse, PC card and CompactFlash card slots (for adding memory or WiFi).
Read MoreAs if we needed more headaches when it came to recordable DVDs (you know, this whole DVD-R versus DVD+R format war that's been raging), there's a possibility that those new 4X speed DVD-RW discs that are coming out won't work in drives that can only record at 1X or 2X speed. The problem is that they had to make 4X speed DVD-RW discs more sensitive to laser light to faciliate faster recording, that makes them not work so well with slower burners. Pioneer's DVR-A06 (pictured and Sony's DRU-510A and DRX-510UL are among the drives affected. [Via Slashdot]
Read MoreSpeaking of mini PCs, Mini-ITX is coming out with an even tinier one called the Nanode that's a mere 3.7 inches by 5.9 inches by 6.3 inches in size. It'll be rather bare-bones as far as PCs go these days, and will only have up to a 1GHz processor, a 40GB hard drive, and a CD-ROM drive. And maybe 802.11g as an option. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreWe love computers (as you could probably guess), but since we love the meager square footage in our apartments even more we were very pleased when a few years ago several companies started coming out with so-called "Small Form Factor PCs" — which typically packed the power of a full-fledged computer into a slick aluminum cube barely bigger than a DeLonghi toaster oven. No more ungainly and plain PC towers. The big catch with these was that you usually had to install components like the CPU, hard drive and memory and build the system yourself, something that (unbelievably!) not everyone wants to do. For all of you who aspire to buy - rather than build - your geek cred, Shuttle's joined the ranks of vendors like Dell, HP and Gateway with a sexier PC than any of the big boys of beige could manage. They're offering a line of complete, pre-built systems ranging in price from $800 to 3000. $2499 buys you a Pentium 4 3.4 GHz system with an ATI Radeon 9800XT video card, 1GB of high speed RAM, a DVD+RW drive and a 200GB hard drive - enough to satisfy the most rabid gamer. $999 nets a super-quiet (and even slightly tinier) Microsoft Media Center PC (which gives the TiVo's user interface a run for its money) with a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 and 512MB of fast memory. We only hope Shuttle's customer service can keep up.
Read MoreEver get the feeling that Microsoft decided that if Apple wasn't going to make a video iPod, they may as well come out with the next best thing? We're not saying it'll be as nice as one by Apple, but Microsoft is confirming that the first personal video player running on their new Portable Media Center software, a 20 to 40GB player from Creative, will be out in the second half of this year in Europe
Read MoreNetworkWorldFusion has a short piece on network cameras (like the Wireless-B Internet Video Camera from Linksys, pictured at right), which are sort of like webcams that you don't have to plug into a PC (or actually they're exactly like that), and why they're poised to take off. The big idea behind network cameras is that you can connect them up to a home network (a lot of the new ones use WiFi), and then access the video feed from any web browser, anywhere. [Via LockerGnome]
Read MoreCommenting on El Gato's EyeTV 200, one of the few options out there for getting a Mac to double as a digital video recorder, Julio Ojeda-Zapata remarks that when it comes down to it, PCs do a better job when it comes to recording TV shows. El Gato Systems is trying to fill in the gap with its new EyeTV 200, an external device that offers TV-recording functions, and its EyeHome, which provides access to a Mac's multimedia content (EyeTV recordings along with other digital video, plus pictures and music) via a TV or stereo... But hold off on EyeTV and EyeHome purchases for now because El Gato is in bug-eradication mode. First, EyeHome control screens on a TV appeared only in black and white. That hardware glitch got fixed, but a recent EyeTV defect has prevented some TV shows from being recorded as scheduled... Even when all the hardware problems are resolved, though, El Gato will need to overhaul its increasingly long-on-the-tooth EyeTV recording features, which pale alongside the more automated and user-friendly Media Center PC equivalents. This is one area where Windows still has the upper hand. Apple could easily sell a ton of media center Macs if it wanted to, especially given how popular its multimedia apps like iPhoto and iTunes are. There isn't any indication that they're planning one (and in fact Steve Jobs has made lots of statements to the contrary), but we'd ecstatic if they changed their minds about this one. Besides which, we're gonna want something to sync our video iPod to.
Read MoreWe don't think we've ever been this angry at hardware: frustrated by the death of his hard drive, some guy in Mexico decided to take it out back and shoot it.
Read MoreThere's something oddly endearing about the mangled English of Japanese gadget website KoKoRo, especially in their post today about a really big calculator: "Although Japanese love a small gadget, some people love a big one. This calculator is very big but small processor." You can't argue with that.
Read MoreLike both Netgear and D-Link before it, now Linksys has its own amped up version of 802.11g to contend with. Called Wireless-G with SpeedBooster, it's supposed to be backwards compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g wireless cards, but you can only get the full bump up in speed (which they claim can be improved by as much as 35%) by using both a SpeedBooster wireless access point with a SpeedBooster wireless card.
Read MoreAn all-in-one entertainment PC you wouldn't be embarrassed to have in your living room, Fujitsu's FMV-DESKPOWER is a 22-inch widescreen LCD TV with built-in speakers and subwoofer, combined with a PC with a 2.8GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a 200GB hard drive, a DVD-R/RW drive.
Read MoreWhile the rest of us are still fiddling about with 256MB and 512MB USB Flash drives, M-Systems just came out with a 90GB Flash memory drive. That's not a typo. Even crazier, the drive costs $40,000, too. Why would anyone drop 40 grand on a gigantic Flash drive rather than say, a platinum-plated cellphone? Because when it comes to recording video a regular hard drive simply can't match the read/write speed of Flash memory, and is a lot more shock and vibration resistant than a hard drive. Since Dell probably isn't going to offer these as an option anytime soon, M-Systems says that the drive most likely find use in "military and aerospace" applications.
Read MoreHitachi raises their game yet again with a massive 400GB hard drive called the Deskstar 7K400, which they say could start showing up in digital video recorders later this year. We'd say that the over 500 hours of TV you could store on one of these drives would be bordering on the ridiculous (and the pathetic), but if you're going to record any serious amounts of high-definition television (which takes up a lot more space) you'll need a drive this big.
Read MoreBuried at the bottom of this story about PortalPlayer, the company which supplies the chips and software used in the iPod, is the revelation that they're also working on a combination player/digital photo album. Could it be that the next generation iPod isn't going to be a video player at all, but just a regular iPod with a large color screen for looking at JPEGs and that syncs with iPhoto as well as iTunes? [Pictured above, Designworks Windsor's concept design for an iPod with a large color screen]
Read MoreIt ain't cheap, but JVC is releasing a portable high-definition player/recorder designed for playing back video recorded with their HDTV camcorders, the GR-HD1 and the JY-HD1. The CU-VH1 has a small 3.5-inch LCD for reviewing footage while in the field, but can also be hooked up to any high-def or standard-def monitor (if you don't wanna have to squint while watching those tapes of your family vacation) and has a few other neat features like an SD memory card slot for saving JPEGs captured from video clips. The one thing it can't do is record directly off of a digital TV set-top box, probably because the networks would totally freak out at the prospect of people being able to make perfect digital copies of their shows. ?art?Y?
Read MoreScientific Atlanta, which makes TV set-top boxes used by Time Warner and other cable companies, says it's working on new boxes that will be able to play video games. Not that we believe them, but they're even claiming that the quality of the games will rival that of the Xbox and the PlayStation 2. Of course, there's no word on when the first game boxes would be ready.
Read MoreIt took them a little while, but Acer has a 17-inch widescreen laptop of its own on the way. And it's a monster of a laptop. Weighing in at almost 16 pounds, the Aspire 1710, which hits tomorrow, is just about the heaviest portable computer we've seen since perhaps the late Eighties. On the other hand, with all that heft you do get a massive screen, a 3GHz processor, an 120GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, a DVD burner, and built-in 802.11g.
Read MoreA new ruggedized tablet-style PC from JLT Mobile Computers that runs on Windows XP Professional rather than the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system. The G-force 850, which is designed for use in the field, has an 8.4-inch display, up to 512MB of RAM, an 800MHz processor, and a 10GB hard drive. No built-in WiFi, though.
Read MoreToshiba got a lot of people excited about their new nickel-sized 0.85-inch hard drives, and how they could start showing up in PDAs and cellphones (or just about anywhere else), but don't expect Hitachi to play catch-up and come out with a similarly sized mini-drive themselves. In an interview with PC World, Bill Healy, senior VP at Hitachi Global Storage Tecnologies, says that they're gonna stick with the one-inch sized Micro Drive and Flash memory, and that: "Hitachi has looked at smaller hard-disk drives than 1-inch for some time. Our concern, and why we have not introduced a product, is first, our customers are saying the [1-inch] Micro Drive is the correct solution. Also, like everywhere, there is competition and the competition beneath the Micro Drive is flash memory and so we have to be very cautious of that with yet smaller hard drives." He's wrong, of course, since we fully expect our next Treo to have a mini-hard drive in it, and from the sound of it, it's gonna be Toshiba that makes those drives.
Read MoreAccording to Thomson and Fraunhofer — the companies that license and own the patents behind MP3 digital music technolog — the popular standard music format is getting a makeover aimed at blocking unauthorized copying. The move is aimed at pushing more deeply into the world of authorized music distribution through services such as Apple Computer's iTunes or the new Napster. All those new services sell music wrapped in digital locks—most in incompatible proprietary technologies by companies such as Apple, Microsoft or RealNetworks—while MP3 songs today are typically distributed free of copy controls.
Read MoreSo earlier this month some genius decided to steal a cellphone from the Siemens booth at this year's CeBIT tech trade fair in Germany. It was the perfect crime, except for one thing: the phone he swiped was a prototype for showing off Siemens' new GPS navigation technology. Once the people working at the booth realized the phone was missing they were able to get the phone's location by sending it a series of hidden text messages, and they had the police sent right over to arrest the unwitting culprit.
Read MoreConstantly changing which cellphone you use definitely helps if you're a terrorist trying to avoid detection, but it turns out that it's not gonna get you very far if you keep using the same SIM card in each phone, which is apparently how the US was able to capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda's military commander. Even buying anonymous, pre-paid SIM cards didn't make a difference, and in fact was what lead to their downfall. Because they could be purchased anonymously, the terrorists didn't think it was important to switch cards from time to time.
Read MoreIt must be a slow news day today, because the best Wired News could do is this kiss-ass story about how many times the iPod turns up in personal ads on the New York version of Craig's List.
Read MoreSomeone alert Paris Hilton: NEC's new i-Mode cameraphone has a night-vision mode for shooting video clips and taking photos in the dark. PS - Yes, there's a ton of cellphone news today. It's because CeBIT is starting tomorrow.
Read MoreThis looks perilously easy to accidentally deploy on oneself, but High-Tech Security is selling the Stunning Ring, a gaudy piece of bling bling that shoots out a burst of pepper spray, preferably at an assailant. [Via GadgetMadness]
Read MoreWe're guessing that this is for Japan only, but Tuka is coming out with what is said to be the world's thinnest flipphone, the Tk41, which is 18.8 millimeters thick (or slightly thicker than two CD jewelboxes).
Read MoreSome semi-amazing video footage of the Grand Challenge robotic road race that DARPA held earlier this month. It's not exactly NASCAR, but we did get a kick out of watching robot after robot starting up and then moments later either crashing into a wall, stalling, or catching on fire.
Read MoreSmartMobs points us towards Call a Bike, a (relatively new) service from Deutsche Bahn (the German railway company) that's available in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich. They leave bikes locked up around the city and when you want to rent one you just call the number affixed to the bike with your cellphone, enter your credit card number, and they give you a number that unlocks the bike. You can use the bike for as long as you like, at a cost of 6 cents per minute (euro cents, that is), up to a maximum of 15 euros per day. When you're done with it you just lock up the bike at the nearest major crossing and get another code that you call in with to confirm that you've finished with your rental.
Read MoreSomehow we don't like the idea of a way that enables people to be even lazier drivers, but Toyota says it's working on a radar-assisted cruise control system for cars. Designed for use during stop-and-go traffic jams, the system works by automatically tracking the speed of the car in front of you and sounding an alert whenever they stop. PS - We've added a new category for "Transportation" just for covering stuff like amphibious cars, personal jetpacks, robotic speed boats, etc.
Read MoreReading like a robotic comedy of errors, DARPA has produced a masterfully understated official summary of the performance of each of the teams participating in yesterday's Grand Challenge. Some highlights: Vehicle 22 - Red Team - At mile 7.4. Vehicle went off course, got caught on an obstacle and rubber on the front wheels caught fire, which was quickly extinguished. Vehicle has been disabled. Vehicle 21- SciAutonicsII - At mile 6.7. Vehicle went into an embankment and became stuck. Vehicle has been disabled, and the team is recovering it. Vehicle 5 - Team Caltech - At mile 1.3. Vehicle went through a fence, and couldn't come back through. Vehicle has been disabled, and the team is recovering it. Vehicle 7 - Digital Auto Drive - At mile 6.0. Vehicle was paused to allow a wrecker to get through, and, upon restarting, sensors were not able to determine the proper route. After sensors tried unsuccessfully for three hours, vehicle was disabled. Vehicle 25 - Virginia Tech - Vehicle brakes locked up in the start area. Vehicle has been removed from the course. Vehicle 23 - Axion Racing - Vehicle circled the wrong way in the start area. Vehicle has been removed from the course. Vehicle 2 - Team CajunBot - Vehicle brushed a wall on its way out of the chute. Vehicle has been removed from the course. Vehicle 4 - Team CIMAR - At mile 0.45. Vehicle ran into some wire and got totally wrapped up in it. Vehicle has been disabled. Vehicle 20 – Team TerraMax – Got to mile 1.2. Vehicle then started backing up and after .5 miles, the vehicle was disabled. You can't make this stuff up!
Read MoreWe're only two hours into the Grand Challenge, and it's already not looking good. One team (Team TerraHawk) has withdrawn, and seven robots are now listed as disabled, including Carnegie Mellon University's roboticized Humvee which was considered the odds-on favorite. Team DAD, which entered a driverless Toyota pick-up (pictured), has managed to get the furthest of any of the robots — about six miles.
Read MoreIt's on! Today's the day for the Grand Challenge, the the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's road race to see if an autonomous robot can get from Barstow, CA to Las Vegas in less than ten hours. We were worried that none of the 25 robots that entered would get past the qualifiers (it was looking iffy), but DARPA ended up relaxing the rules and clearing 15 teams to race. We'll have results from the challenge as soon as they become available. [Pictured at right, today's favorite, CMU's Sandstorm, during a weaker moment]
Read MoreSony Ericsson's Car 100, that little micro RC racer that you control with your cellphone via Bluetooth, was one of gadget hits of the holidays (at least at our house). If you didn't get one in your stocking and just don't feel like shelling out 90 bucks for one yourself, no problem. SimCar-100 is an application for your PC that simulates the Car 100. Just like the real thing, it uses a Bluetooth connection to control the car on your PC screen from your phone (you'll need Bluetooth on your phone as well as your PC). Sure, it's not like the real thing, but this way when controlling a tiny car from your mobile phone no longer seems fun and the car is collecting dust in your gadget graveyard, you won't have to eBay anything.
Read MoreGetting ready for the Grand Challenge, that captivating robotic road from LA to Las Vegas which is being held this weekend? Well, not so fast (literally). Anyone expecting a dramatic, neck-and-neck race to the finish is in for a mighty disappointment. None of the eight robots entered in the competition could complete the 1.25 mile test course, and the smart money says that none of the 21 teams that entered is going to be able to finish the race in the ten hours allotted (and win its million dollar price), not even the favorite, a converted Humvee built by Carnegie Mellon University (pictured at right).
Read MoreReader Ben Bethel alerts us to the news that with financing, one of those Segway Human Transporters can now be had for just $75 a month, bringing it in reach of the average person and making it possibly the geekiest thing you'll ever go into debt for.
Read MoreSure, that redesigned Prius looks sporty and has that gadgets appeal. And the Lexus RX400H means there's finally a soccer mom-mobile that's environmentally friendly. But Toyota's other hybrid, the new Volta, will leave them all in the dust — literally! This sexy Italian-designed beast goes from zero to 60mph in four seconds and puts out an impressive 408 HP — and even with all this power the Volta it still manages to sip an economical 32 miles per gallon. Like all good sports cars, the Volta has rear wheel drive (both its engine and two electric motors are mounted in the rear), and has room for three passengers in its cabin.
Read MoreThe Gadgeteer has roundup of the best programs out there for emulating old video game consoles on a Palm handheld. Among the ones checked out are CaSTaway (for Atari ST games), XCade (for classic arcade games like Donkey Kong and Space Invaders), NESEM (for original Nintendo Entertainment System games), Atari Retro (for Atari 2600 games), Gizmo Ultra (for games from the lesser-known Game Gear handheld and the original Sega Master System), and Phoinix (for Gameboy games), and Frodo (for Commodore 64 games). [Via Palmtops.About.com]
Read MoreBernie Yee hit this week's Game Developers Conference in San Jose for us, and here's what he found: ATI just announced that Qualcomm is going to use their newest 3D mobile graphics chip, the Imageon, in their next generation of handsets. Now, Motorola and Tapwave have been using the earlier generation of this chip, but the Imageon is the first ATI product with 3D support built-into the hardware (rather than trying to do it all in the software). While you probably won't see cellphones with Imageon in consumers' hands before 2005, it looks to me that phones with it will be more powerful than a Gameboy Advance — or maybe even an N-Gage. nVidia has a mobile 3D solution too, but at GDC there were actually prototypes of handset-sized demos running with the ATI chip. Logitech announced a few new gaming peripherals — 2 wireless, 2.4GHz controllers (one for the PS2 and another for Xbox), that run on just 2 batteries and promise 50 hours of non-stop button-mashing fun. They were pleasantly sleek and comfortable, and felt not at all laggy even when playing a very latency-sensitive game like Virtua Fighter 4. And in time for the long-awaited release of Gran Turismo 4, Logitech also showed off a new driving controller for the PS2 (pictured above), a wheel that allows 600 degrees of freedom (which means hand-over-hand steering action).
Read MoreWalking through Times Square yesterday on our way back from a meeting on 43rd Street we were handed an ugly car-shaped keychain promoting Yahoo's revamped Yahoo! Autos website. We wished we'd stuck around longer (or maybe looked up), because besides handing out crappy keychains, Yahoo had also set up one of the giant billboards at Broadway and West 43rd with an interactive racing game that you can play from your cellphone. You have to call 1-800-660-4402 to get in the queue to play, and once you're in you press 2 to make the car go faster and 8 to make it go slower.
Read MoreLet this be a lesson to us all to get outside everyonce in awhile: A computer-game addict in western China collapsed and died at his screen after playing the popular online game, Saga, non-stop for 20 hours. The 31-year-old began playing the game regularly at an internet cafe in Chengdu, Sichuan province, three months before his death, according to the South China Morning Post. An employee at the cafe said he would play for more than 10 hours a day and was found dead at the weekend after a marathon 20-hour session. We hope that he was at least winning when he expired.
Read MoreSingTel launched the Asian answer to BotFighters today. Gunslingers is a game you play on your mobile phone but instead of playing against some faceless opponent over the internet, you hunt down, and hopefully "shoot" people in the same geographic location as you. The game assigns users to complete missions involving other nearby players. When they successfully complete a mission, they get points they can use to upgrade weapons or armor, just like in any good video game. Considering how notoriously strict Singapore is towards guns, or even gum, we're surprised you'd be allowed to even virtually shoot your targets.
Read MoreAt first the GameBike looks like a tricked-out bike simulator to use with the PlayStation 2. But it's not. On closer inspection you have to provide your own bike, buy a rear wheel bike trainer, and instead what you get is a rotating platform that's placed underneath the front tire and a magnetic sensor which tracks the speed of your rear wheel. And you have to provide your PlayStation 2 and games (but you probably already guessed that). The GameBike is supposed to work best with MX 2002 Ricky Carmichael, Splashdown, Rumble Racing, Cart Fury, Smugglers Run, and Extreme G Racing. [Via The Red Ferret Journal
Read MoreWhen we saw the review of Dragonball Z SS3 Goku vs. Majin Buu, we expected it to be some new Japan-only fighting game based on the infamous franchise. We were wrong. It turns out that this is the longest name for a PlayStation 2 controller ever - and a nice controller at that. The body of the controller puts a huge image of Dragonball Z's Goku under your left hand and Majin Buu under right, and it's all under a hefty clear coat so they'll stay there despite sweat and scratches. If you're a fan of the little blonde guy and remember his battle with the little purple wizard, you'll think this controller looks sweet. Otherwise you'll just think it's plastered in some over the top anime-style graphics. The SS3 doesn't just look over the top, it actually performs well, too. The shape and button placement are well thought out and all the controls are responsive. About the only complaint IGN can come up with is that the cord is only six feet long; then again the regular PS2 controller only has six feet of cable too, so it's not any worse than the original and it looks a helluva lot cooler.
Read MoreOur favorite punching bag, Nokia's glorious failure known as the N-Gage (no relation), is in the news again. And not because it's sales have been poor or because it's gotten another negative review. No, this time it's because Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has banned several of Nokia's ads for the N-Gage, saying that they're too violent and "offensive and distressing." We haven't seen any of the ads yet, but we're sure they'll be a huge hit here in the States.
Read MoreThe rumors that Nokia was planning a follow-up to their poorly-selling N-Gage gamephone started flying almost as soon as it hit stores last fall. The latest speculation is that they'll announce the N-Gage 2 at E3, the big video game trade show being held in Los Angeles this coming May, and that the next version correct many of the most common complaints about the much maligned gadget, like how it's a huge hassle to swap in a new game.
Read MorePC Magazine review of the ASUS S5NE, a new pearl white ultraportable laptop from AsusTek which does sorta look like an iBook if you blur your eyes a little bit. The specs on the S5NE aren't bad for an ultralight — a 12.1-inch LCD screen, 256MB of RAM, 1GHz processor, built-in 802.11b, 40GB hard drive — but apparently its battery life isn't so hot.
Read MoreBusinessWeek article about the US military's preferred laptop, the ruggedized Toughbook from Panasonic. They're issued to Special Forces paratroopers and used by B-1 bomber crews, and one soldier in Iraq actually used one to stop bullet during a firefight. Even though they're expensive, ruggedized and semi-ruggedized laptops (like ones you probably couldn't stop bullets with) are said to be selling well with non-military types as well, since they reduce the 20% failure rate of regular laptops to just 5%. And lest you worry that all the extra bulk of a ruggedized note is gonna slow you down, Panasonic makes an ultralight version. [Via BoingBoing]
Read MoreFrom Toshiba, a new version of its portable Media Center PC with a 17-inch widescreen display. The P25-S670, which tops out at nearly 10 pounds, has a 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a DVD burner, built-in dual-band 802.11a/802.11g WiFi, and an 128MB video card.
Read MoreSharp's half-inch thick Actius MM10, which at one point was the world's thinnest laptop, never got much love from anyone, mainly because of its hand cramp inducing keyboard and its eye strain inducing screen (hey, that's what you get for buying the world's thinnest laptop). Sharp hasn't made the screen any bigger, but they do say that their followup to the MM10, the Actius MM20, they've improved the keyboard layout and upgraded it by adding an Efficeon processor (Transmeta's answer to Intel's power-saving Centrino chip), built-in 802.11g, and doubling the RAM to 512MB.
Read MoreSort of like how you sign up for a two-year contract for cellular service and the carrier throws in the phone for free, in Europe Fujitsu Siemens and Vodafone have started a program to lease laptops and Tablet PCs to businesses for $179 a month with wireless data service included. Unless there is going to be some sort of option to upgrade the laptop's connection over the course of its two year lease this is probably not such a great idea, since you can bet that there will be much faster cellular networks around 24 months from now and you'll be stuck with what will seem like an ancient wireless connection. [Via TechDirt]
Read MorePC Plus review of JVC's latest ultralight laptop, the MiniNote MP-XP731, which has a dimunitive 8.9-inch LCD screen which looks like it's had the top half lopped off. The rest of it isn't so bad, at least not for a laptop this size, and it has a 1GHz processor, 40GB hard drive, 256MB of RAM, and built-in WiFi. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreLate this year Chinese computer manufacturer is going to come out with the Vela, a laptop two displays: one a 15.4-inch main display, just as you'd find on a regular laptop, and a second 4.4-inch by 2.4-inch LCD display on the front so you can do basic stuff like check email, look at your calendar, etc while your laptop is closed. At first we were almost surprised that no one had done this already, but then we remembered that having a second, smaller display on the outside of a laptop like this isn't all that helpful. [Via Digital Media Thoughts]
Read MorePure marketing gimmick? Well, yes. But setting aside it's blindingly bright red casing, Acer's new Ferrari-themed "Ferrari 3000" is actually a decent laptop, with 512MB of RAM, an 128MB video card, a 15-inch LCD, 60GB hard drive, Bluetooth, built-in 802.11g, and a multiformat DVD burner. Too bad the battery life (not even two hours) is almost as bad as a real Ferrari's gas mileage.
Read MoreOm Malik went to the VON conference in Santa Clara and spotted a bunch of videophones at the Microsoft booth: I loved the phones which worked with the ease of regular phones. While clearly VoIP based, Windows CE powered devices, most of them paid attention to the real world needs and incorporated an analog PSTN port. While most of them are not WiFi enabled and need a wired ethernet connection, I suspect it is only a matter of time before they become Wi-Fi enabled. We're guessing that these will probably be aimed at businesses rather than consumers, but you never know.
Read MoreCeBIT is turning out to be awash in new cellphones, and MSMobiles has details and photos of three new ones running on Microsoft's Smartphone operating system: Mitac's new Mio 8860 (pictured at right), a flipphone that you'll be able to add WiFi to via an SD expansion card. Samsung's second Smartphone, the SGH-i250, which has a one megapixel digital camera with flash, Bluetooth, a miniSD memory card slot, and a whopping 96MB of total memory. And Sagem's low-end model which we mentioned the other day, the myS-7, which is actually built by Mitac and has a VGA quality digital camera.
Read MoreMicrosoft has been showing off a prototype for a new car module at the Detroit Auto Show this week. Dubbed the "TBox", the unit acts as a hardware connection between your car's audio and navigation systems and your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone. Very much like Intel's Connected Car PC (which they announced way back in 1998), the software giant hopes it will become the interface standard for autos. Before you start pondering what a Blue Screen of Death would be like at 80 mph, the prototype stresses voice navigation and text-to-voice capabilities for managing your Outlook appointments. Another added benefit they are touting is the ability to store and transmit diagnostic data from your car, which could pave the way for some serious under the hood hacking.
Read MoreMicrosoft's research lab is tooling around with a prototype of a digital camera you wear around your neck and which snaps up to 2,000 photos thoughout the day. It can even react to bright lights or sudden movements, or take more shots when your heart rate increases by guessing that something you might want to record is going on. Hopefully they're working on some software that'll help you make sense of all the thousands of photos you'll be collecting — otherwise having so much a massive visual record of your life will be pretty much worthless.
Read MoreThere were already a few high-definition DVD discs and players using Microsoft's new WMV HD format, discs and players being shown off at this past January's Consumer Electronics Show, and now we've learned that a steering committee for the DVD Forum, the industry body that governs the DVD format, just granted provisional approval to use the technology as one of the mandatory playback standards (along with MPEG2 and H.264) for high-definition DVD video players. This means that when high-definition DVD players <i>finally</i> hit it big, it's most likely they'll have to support the Windows Media Video 9 format. This doesn't mean that Microsoft is going to suddenly control the market for HD-DVDs, but it does mean they're going to pick up a nice royalty payment for every high-definition DVD player that gets sold with their codec built-into it.
Read MoreWe don't care much for all that inside baseball stuff, but over at ChicagoBusiness.com, Julie Johnson examines the marriage of convenience that is the recent Motorola/Microsoft partnership, speculating that Motorola is using Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system for smartphones to maintain its position in the market until its own Linux-based OS is ready, while Microsoft is just happy to have a major manufacturer building phones that run its software: Motorola needed Microsoft because its own operating software wasn't ready and it couldn't afford to miss the market shift to smart phones. Microsoft needed Motorola as a foothold in the wireless market, a key new growth front for the company.The partnership gives Microsoft a chance to dominate wireless software the way it does the personal computer industry. With cell phones morphing into little computers, profits will lie in their software brains, not their wireless guts. If Microsoft captures the market, Schaumburg-based Motorola could be relegated to the low-margin role of assembling smart phones powered by Windows-based operating systems. New Motorola CEO Edward Zander, a veteran of Microsoft archrival Sun Microsystems Inc., knows the risks. He's betting that Motorola's software will be ready for the mass market before Windows attracts a wireless following, and that he can spin away from Microsoft intact. No other big cell phone maker was willing to take that bet before Motorola.
Read MoreYeah, so every kid has tried to convince their parents to buy them something at one time or another by telling them that "everyone else has one." Well, parents in Norway are screwed, at least when it comes to trying to get out of buying their kid a cellphones because according to this report by the Norwegian Telegram Bureau and the Norwegian national statistical office, a full 100% of the teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 that were surveyed reported having cellphones. They couldn't find a single person that age without one.
Read MoreIn Europe, where phones with Bluetooth are fairly common, cool affordable cars are starting to roll off assembly lines with Bluetooth hands-free kits built-in. In the US, it's a different story. There are only a handful of cars that come with a Bluetooth kit. Sure you can have an aftermarket one installed, but then something winds up sticking out, ruining the clean lines of your ride's dash, no matter how pro the installation is. The Bluetooth Weblog, one of our blog cousins, has good news for all you hipsters craving a new Mini. A press release has just hit the web revealing (as often happens) that the new Mini Coopers will have a hands-free Bluetooth with noise canceling technology. Let's see if Toyota follows suit and sneaks Bluetooth into their Scions (they've already put into the new Prius).
Read MoreWe find the whole idea of a fashion show sponsored by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association somewhat unsettling, one actually did take place earlier this week, complete with models walking the runway decked out in all manner of wearable displays, cellphones, and a few oddities like Motorola's Bluetooth-enabled helmet (pictured).
Read MoreThere's an update to our story from Tuesday about those people who were busted on suspicion of using their cellphones to cheat at roulette. There had been some dispute over whether such a thing wes even possible but apparently it can be done, just not using cellphones with laser scanners, which is what the three people arrested at a casino in London are suspected of doing. According to Norman Packard, a physicist who tried to break the bank in Vegas in the Seventies, you have to use the cellphones as stopwatches: Such a caper is "fairly easy to set up", he says. Just two equations - one for the ball and one for the wheel, which move in opposite directions - predict the likely area where the ball will stop. These equations comprise only a handful of parameters, including the mass and size of the ball, the shape and roughness of the track, and the tilt of the wheel. A scouting mission to the casino could give these values for a particular wheel and ball in advance, meaning the equations can be partially solved before attempting betting. The cell phones reportedly used in the alleged London scam could have been used to determine the ball's speed if buttons on the phones were pressed when the ball was released and then after one revolution, Packard says. In fact, some cell phones have their own built-in stopwatches.
Read MoreEvery time we've ever written a cellphone jammers we've gotten at least one irate email from someone declaring that it'll be our fault if someone dies because a doctor can't get a call on his cellphone or whatever. It's pretty much a moot point, since cellphone jammers are illegal here in the US (our old friends at the FCC have made it exceedingly clearly that they don't like anyone messing with the spectrum), but if you're interested in creating a little peace and quiet no matter where you go, Suresafe sells a portable one that will block all cellular transmissions within a radius of 30 meters. And they do make a point of mentioning that the kinds of pagers used by doctors aren't affected. [Via GadgetMadness]
Read MoreIncensed by rumors that were spreading via text messaging that the ruling party in was bussing in pro-government voters to try and tilt an election in the Malaysian state of Terengganu, angry flash mobs of opposition voters have been scuffling with police outside of government buildings there. In response, the Terengganu chief of police is threatening to arrest anyone forwarding rumors via text messages and charge them with either sedition or threatening national security. [Via SmartMobs]
Read MoreIt's getting harder and harder to take seriously some of the stuff that's coming out of Japan these days. Avon Cosmetics Japan says they're going to start using WisdomTex's software which uses the built-in digital camera in cellphones to do close-up analysis of people's skin. The idea is that Avon's sales people don't have to receive any special tranining, they can just put their cellphone up against someone's face (something we're sure the average Japanese person will feel completely comfortable with), and then the software can make suggestions about which Avon products would be best suited for them.
Read MoreThe casino at the Ritz hotel in London had a trio of Eastern European gamblers were arrested on suspicion cheating at roulette using a laser scanner attached to a cellphone (they'd manage to win 1.3 million pounds, something which quickly aroused the attention of the casino's management). There's only one problem: no one is even sure that it's possible to cheat at roulette using a laser scanner. Actually, there are two problems: cheating a casino is apparently not against the law in Britain. How come we're only just learning this?
Read MoreWe have no idea how the merger with Cingular might affect this, but AT&T Wireless says they're going to push ahead and start rolling out their high-speed 3G UMTS cellular network in San Francisco, Seattle, and two other cities later this year. The first phone that'll be compatible with the new network should be Motorola's new A845 cameraphone we mentioned the other day. [Via PhoneScoop]
Read MoreNot sure how old this is, since it features a first-generation iPod, Joi Ito points us towards this animated video of (and we're not kidding here) Santa Claus wearing a Steve Jobs mask and riding a giant iPod that transforms into one of those pod racers from Star Wars: Episode I. [Via Joi Ito]
Read MoreThe Register's been at the CeBIT tech trade show in Germany for less than a day and they've already spotted one gadget they don't think is gonna make it: Vitaphone's Mobi-Click Senior-Tel, a cellphone for the elderly that has only three buttons - two for calling pre-programmed numbers and a third for contacting emergency services.
Read MoreTech heavyweights Sony, Nokia, and Philips are working on a standard for how gadgets could communicate with another using RFID tags. Near Field Communication, in theory at least, could be used to connect together two wireless handhelds for swapping music files (the RFID chips doing the identifying, you'd still have to use WiFi or Bluetooth to actually transfer stuff) or for letting cellphones double as e-wallets.
Read MoreThere was once a time when the terms "cellphone" and "carphone" were somewhat interchangeable, since the average handset was so big and had such terrible battery life that for a lot of people the only option was to keep them mounted in their cars. The trend these days seems to be just using a regular phone with a hands-free headset, or simply adding Bluetooth to the car itself, but every once in a while a big handset manufacturer will come out with a phone just for using in the car. Motorola's new M900 is just such a phone, with special auto-centric special features like extra large characters, voice recognition for hands-free dialing, and echo cancellation so the other person will be better able to understand what you're saying.
Read MoreWe just discovered another reason why we're glad we don't live in Iran: $530 SIM cards for cellphones. Apparently SIM cards (the little plastic cards with a chip on them that you need to use most cellphones), and thus mobile phone lines, are so hard to come by there that people are lining up at post offices and banks to try and buy them, even at that exorbitant of a price. And that's not even counting the cost of the handset which you'll have to put the SIM into.
Read MoreSiemens aren't the only ones who can make a landline phone that mimics a cellphone. The new DECT 511 cordless phone cops some features from cellphones like the ability to send text messages (why you wouldn't simpy walk over to your computer to do that is beyond us) and download ringtones off of the Internet.
Read MoreDespite the fact that almost no one else has been able to succesfully do this, a start-up called USDTV is trying to build a new non-satellite wireless pay television service. Subscribers have to buy a $99 set-top box to receive the signals, which are broadcast digitally over the regular VHF and UHF television spectrum, and then pay a monthly fee of $19.95 for a small selection of cable channels like Fox News, ESPN, Discovery Channel, and regular local stations.
Read MoreHoping to shed some light on the mystery about what's been going on with Cingular and their cellphone email service which mysteriously went down the other day, reader Seth Miller forwarded us the following signature which is being appended to all of the photo emails he sends from his phone: Photo Messaging brought to you by Cingular Wireless http://www.cingular.com. You can send the sender of this email a Text Message by simply replying to this message. It sorta does appear like they're trying to push people into using text messaging and photo messaging (which they can make money on) rather than email.
Read MoreAlan Reiter reports that Cingular's GPRS data network has been down in several parts of the country, including southern California and Washington, D.C., since March 10th. What's even weirder are the unconfirmed rumors that Cingular has shut off customer access to email, and instead are trying to get people to use MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) instead, since it can charge more for sending MMS messages than it can for sending emails.
Read MoreIt's just a reference design right now (which means it's a long ways off from showing up in stores), but yesterday Philips unveiled the Nexperia Personal Media Player, which looks like a portable video player with a hard drive and a high-resolution screen that can play MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and DivX video files but which also (and here's the part we're excited about) will have built-in WiFi for streaming audio and video files that are stored on your PC. [Thanks, Kakyou]
Read MoreA law firm in California is trying to put together a class action lawsuit against AT&T Wireless, Verizon, Cingular, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular (i.e. - just about everyone) alleging that the cellphone carriers have been overcharging for "Night and Weekend Minutes" and then refusing to credit customers' bills. This has never been a problem for us, but if it's something that's happened to you, you can register your complaint and find out more information about joining the suit.
Read MoreRob Pegoraro of the Washington Post takes Verizon Wireless's new high-speed Broadband Access service for a test drive and comes back impressed. Sure, it's expensive (about $80 a month), but it's also blazingly fast and you can get speeds right around what'd you get with DSL — except that you can use it anywhere, or at least any place where Verizon offers coverage for the service. Right now that's just Washington D.C. and San Diego, but Verizon is planning to roll this out nationwide over the next few years. And one other thing: Verizon doesn't have any phones for it, just wireless PC cards for laptops.
Read MoreMost people in China can't afford proper cellphone service, so China Telecom and China Netcom decided to offer cheap wireless phone service called Little Smart that's sort of like having a cordless phone with a really long range: A Little Smart handset looks like a cell phone and, for the most part, works like a cell phone: users can make calls, send text messages, disrupt meetings and annoy theater-goers just as they can with a standard cell phone. Technically, however, Little Smart is a limited-mobility extension of the fixed-line phone network. Think of it as a revved-up household cordless phone with a citywide reach: Little Smart users connect to the copper wire network through base stations placed on rooftops around their city. The only functional difference from cellular phones is that Little Smart users can't roam beyond their home cities. [Via SmartMobs]
Read MoreApparently very serious about people being able to get watch their favorite shows on their cellphones, South Korea's SK Telecom and Toshiba have launched into orbit a satellite specifically for beaming television shows to cellphones and in-car TV sets. The satellite will carry more than 100 channels and is mainly for South Korea and Japan.
Read MoreA few days ago we linked to the story of a woman who signed up for cellular service with Verizon and somehow ended up with Chris Rock's old number. This starting to push the limits of banality, but we think we know why he might have given up his number in the first place. Turns out that Motorola is sponsoring his nationwide "Black Ambition" concert tour in order to promote their forthcoming V600 cellphone, a cellphone which doesn't happen to be compatible with Verizon's network. They probably gave him a free V600 (or maybe are even requiring him to use it as part of the sponsorship deal), and since it's a GSM phone he'd have to switch to another carrier to use it. We're guessing that he simply couldn't be bothered to port his number over to his new carrier or maybe just wanted to start afresh with a new number. Either way, we're fairly sure he's not with Verizon anymore, which we know is tough news for everyone out there to take. [Thanks, Andrew]
Read MoreWhile the electronic age has tried its best to kick the novel to curb, lately Japanese high school kids and commuters alike have become addicted to reading entire novels over their cellphones. Rather than being downloaded as one massive file, "mobile novels" are read in 1,600 word installments (which are emailed as they become available) and "avoid the use of difficult words". Tolstoy might turn over in his grave, but then again he never had to deal with the monotony of the daily Shinjuku-Otemachi commute. The reigning author of the new medium, who goes simply by the name of Yoshi, kicked off a guerilla-style marketing campaign for his mobile novel Deep Love (which is about a teenage girl) by passing out flyers to thousands of high school girls in the ultrahip district of Shibuya. Deep Love ended up becoming so popular that it was turned into an actual printed book and became a bestseller. Not surprisingly, a film is in the works.
Read MoreWe doubt that anyone has been losing sleep over the fact that AT&T Wireless as a brand was going to disappear after its merger with Cingular, but the original AT&T (which spun off its cellular business years ago) says that once the merger is completed they're going to revive the AT&T Wireless brandname and create a new cellular service by leasing air time from one of the major carriers. This will definitely not be confusing.
Read MoreIf you are absolutely determined to be able to use your cellphone no matter where you are, Altobridge's AM Gateway Platform creates a sort of mini-cellular network that (we're guessing) links up to already existing satellite networks to keep you connected. It costs something like 25 grand, so Altobridge is pitching this to airlines and cruise lines as a way to offer cell service for their customers when in the air or out at sea, and thus bringing us that much closer to the day when there will be NO place on earth where we can go to escape from people yammering away on their cellphones.
Read MoreRather than offering a combination cellphone/PDA/camera that does tries to do everything in one device, a company called IXI is pushing their idea that people should instead carry a whole bunch of gadgets that use Bluetooth or WiFi to connect together in a little network via a Personal Mobile Gateway, or PMG. They're hoping that the technology starts to show up in a sorts of mobile gadgets, but right now IXI's line-up includes the neoFone, a cellphone with a built-in mini-router that also serves as the network's connection to the Internet, and the first two PMG Companion gadgets: the neoChat NC-10 (pictured), which does email and instant messaging, and the neoSnap NS-10, a wireless digital camera which can automatically beam photos to a moblog. All three are set to come out in Italy later this month and should hit the US sometime later this year. Assuming that this whole PMG idea catches on (and IXI doesn't go bankrupt), we could also see PMG-compatible wristwatches, pens, and game consoles soon after. Why do we have the weird feeling that the Personal Mobile Gateway is all set to be this year's CueCat?
Read MoreThe ever enterprising Phillip Torrone decided he wanted a cover for his cellphone that would change color in sunlight. So what'd he do? He just stripped the "light adapting composite" leather off of a volleyball from Spalding and made one out of that. The crazy part is that he took the leather off the ball with his bare hands.
Read MoreThe CDMA Development Group just approved a new cellular standard with the rather intimidating name of CDMA 2000 1xEV-DV. With EV-DV we're starting to get into the holy land of 3G cellphones, with download speeds as fast as 3 Mbps (about twice that of a cable modem) and uploads as fast as 1.8 Mbps, which means you'll actually be able to make video calls with an EV-DV cellphone. The first EV-DV networks are supposed to be ready sometime next year. We're betting it'll be a little while longer than that before you can buy an EV-DV cellphone, but when it does happen the odds are good that the it'll have a Sprint logo on it, since they're the first carrier in the US to get behind the new standard. [Via PhoneScoop]
Read MoreYou get your cable TV and your cable Internet from them, but would you sign up for Time Warner cellular service? Doesn't sound like they have a specific plan for what they're going to do, but the chairman and CEO of Time Warner's cable unit says that they're thinking about it. This is in addition to their already announced plans to start offering a Vonage-like Voice over IP phone service to its cable subscribers. [Via TechDirt]
Read MoreWhile we languish under the tyranny of CDMA 1xRTT, GPRS, EDGE, and a whole lot of other acronyms which really just stand for disappointingly slow data speeds on our cellphones, Japan is already pushing forward with 4G and have been testing a standard for cellular networks which could potentially be as fast as 1 gigabit per second, or more than a thousand times faster than DSL.
Read MoreAnyone who has ever complained about how their Verizon Wireless cellphone won't work overseas is in luck because they're about to introduce a handset that's compatible with Verizon's national CDMA cellular network and can also roam on regular GSM networks when you're abroad. Curiously, there's no word on who the manufacturer of the phone is, just that it's expected to cost about $300.
Read MoreAttention AT&T Wireless customers: your phone is about to become obsolete. If you own one of the cellphones listed below and live in the New York metropolitan area, Northern New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Las Vegas, or Seattle, there's a good chance that AT&T doesn't want you to use it much longer. Explaining why is a little hairy, but here's the scoop: When AT&T initially launched their GSM cellular network a few years ago, they used their license for the 850 MHz slice of the radio spectrum for their analog cellular networks and TDMA (another, older cell standard). So because that part of the spectrum was already being used, they decided to launch their GSM network at 1900 MHz part of the spectrum, just like other mobile carriers like Pac Bell and T-Mobile did. In fact, none of this even mattered because GSM cellphones that operated on the 850 MHz part of the spectrum weren't even for sale then. In the past few years compatible cellphones have become available, so Cingular and AT&T gradually have been phasing out obsolete protocols (like TDMA and analog) and building out their GSM networks at the newly freed space around 850 MHz. Just take a look at the map below. AT&T's GSM 850 network is indicated by dark blue (the map also shows part of Cingular's network). Subscribers in these areas are the ones most likely to be affected by AT&T's replacement program. Once compatible phones became available (in early 2003), Cingular leapt on the chance and quickly changed their entire lineup to GSM 850/1900 models, even in areas like California, where they only use the 1900 MHz band. Despite their buildout of their 850 MHz GSM network, AT&T took their time, continuing to offer popular new models that were missing the 850 MHz band, and thus wouldn't work with that part of their network. Astoundingly, among these were every single smartphone offered on AT&T prior the Treo 600, including the popular Nokia 3650, the Pocket PC Phone, Motorola's MPx200, and those BlackBerry email communicators that business users love. An army of subscribers who could only use half the airwaves AT&T owns was making AT&T's reputation for poor reception and coverage even worse. To rectify the situation, AT&T Wireless recently started quietly offering free replacement phones for anyone using a phone that isn't compatible with the 850 MHz network, but the catch is that the "upgrade" often isn't an upgrade at all. For instance, customers with an obsolete Sony Ericsson T68i are getting Sony Ericsson's T226, which lacks Bluetooth and has worse battery life than its replacement. Although AT&T has been trying to clear out their stock of Sony Ericsson T616, the model that succeeded the T68i, customers are not being offered this phone as a replacement. Subscribers who use the Nokia 3650 smartphones are being offered the Nokia 3100, 3200 or Siemens C56 - none of which even come close to what was the phone of choice last year for mobloggers. In fact, of the replacements offered, only the Nokia 3200 even has a camera! And what about users of Nokia's N-Gage, Siemens' SX56 Pocket PC Phone, or Motorola's MPX 200 Smartphone, none of which are compatible with 850 MHz? There's been no word from AT&T about the fate of these phones (we've contacted AT&T regarding this, and have not heard back from them yet). The now obsolete phones will still work on the AT&T network, however they will continue to have poor reception. Use them at your own risk. These are the models once carried by AT&T that are affected: Motorola MPx200 Nokia 3650 Nokia 8390 Nokia N-Gage RIM Blackberry 7210 Siemens SX56 (Pocket PC Phone) Sony Ericsson T68 Sony Ericsson T68i These are the free replacements that should offer improved reception. However unless you have the Nokia 8390, each is a downgrade in features from the phone they are replacing. They are (pictured from left to right): Nokia 3100 Nokia 3200 Siemens C56 Sony Ericsson T226 There are a few cases on Howard Forums of users being able to actually upgrade their T68i to a T616 if they sign up for a two-year contract, but there does not seem to be an official policy in place. On the other hand, if you have handset insurance and "lost" your t68, perhaps the T616 might be offered to you as a replacement (though we don't encourage or recommend that you engage in insurance fraud). The same sort of situation may exist for the Nokia 3650 and its new replacement, the 3620, but since we're not AT&T reps, we can't say for sure.
Read MoreVerizon announced they would be launching their 'fast-as-DSL' CDMA 1xEV-DO network starting this summer, with plans to cover the country by 2005. Now we know Verizon will be actually offering phones for the new data network, rather than forcing us to use a wireless card in our laptop to enjoy the benefits of those high-speed connections. As usual, the FCC leaked the news, approving the first 1xEV-DO phone for use in the States: the LG VX8000. It's a clamshell with a 1.2 MP camera and added support for video and 3D graphics. However, like all American CDMA phones, it's missing Bluetooth, so you'll need a cable to hook it up to your PDA or laptop (and you'll be lucky if Verizon doesn't specifically prohibit you from doing even that). It's so Nineties! The thing looks like it's a relic from the Nineties as well — it's a folding silver brick with (gasp) an external antenna of all things.
Read MoreSay what you want about the iPod mini — that it's not quite mini enough, that it costs too much, that the colors it comes in are tacky — but Apple has an undeniable hit on their hands. In just its first two weeks they've sold almost 100,000 of them. They're close to being sold out, and even Apple's online store is telling shoppers to expect up to a three week delay for one.
Read MoreFor ten bucks a month, Verizon Wireless will let you forward calls from your cellphone directly to your seat while flying, as long as you're traveling on an airline that uses Verizon's Airfone service, that is. There's also a cost per minute of 10 cents, but compared to what it normally costs to make a phone call while aloft ($3.99 for set up, plus $3.99 a minute), this is a huge bargain.
Read MoreWith all the money governments and companies are dumping into biometrics these days, we weren't all that surprised to read about "The Authorizer", a tiny square of film designed to sit in the middle of a cellphone's touch pad and be used to identify you by your fingerprint when you make online purchases using your cellphone to. Cross Match Technologies, a Florida-based company, plans to push The Authorizer into production this fall, but we're wondering if any manufactuers will bother to put these into their handsets since people aren't really using their cellphones as platinum cards yet.
Read MoreLooks like a ton of British newspapers were a bit duped by yesterday's story about iPod muggings and Apple's nonchalant response that their customers would "rather be robbed" than use headphones that weren't cool. Our pal Adam, who works as a reporter in Britain, writes in: I thought you should know the British iPod theft story is a total hoax, albeit one that landed on the front page of 3 newspapers!! I called Apple and the police station mentioned in the article, and they said the quotes attributed to them were completely fabricated. A local press agency quoted a guy who freelances for Apple (that was the 'rather be robbed' line) and some random police officer. There was nothing official from either.
Read MoreWilliam Norwich, the New York Times' Style and Entertaining editor, answers some reader questions about etiquette and entertaining, and towards the end is asked by one person if it's rude for a guest to ask to use a host's computer to check email or surf the web or play games. We usually have a spare laptop lying around the house for houseguests can use, but Norwich recommends shaming them with this technosnobbish rejoinder: "Have you lost your Blackberry?" [Via Gothamist]
Read MoreBegging to Differ has some photos of an Albertsons where they're using that new Shop 'n' Scan self-service system we mentioned yesterday where they give shoppers in their supermarkets handheld scanners to ring themselves up as they walk up and down the aisles. Could someone in Dallas please try this out and tell us what it's like?
Read MoreWe wrote a little story for Slate today about the different options out there for listening to MP3s in your car. Perhaps not surprisingly, we're most partial to Rockford's Omnifi Auto Digital Media Player (pictured at right), which lets you wirelessly beam MP3s from your PC to your car's hard drive over WiFi. Which of course raises the possiblity of someday being able to pull up to a gas station and fill up your car's tank with gas and its hard drive with new tunes. Or better yet, the prospect of swapping MP3s with the car stuck next to you in traffic.
Read MoreIt's sorta creepy/fascinating that TiVo collects so much data on its users, but they've released a few of the more interesting statistics (though nothing too juicy), like that the total number of programs recorded so far has been 5.5 billion and that TiVo users have decided to pause or rewind live TV about 80 billion times.
Read MoreFrom Linksys, a new 802.11g WiFi access point with a twist. Besides being able to do all the usual stuff, the Presentation Player can connect to a monitor or projector so that any wireless computer within range can display on it without having to switch cables or anything. It's mainly meant for making it easier for different computers to share the same projector in a conference room, but we really want to set one of these up at home.
Read MoreBBC News Online states the obvious for us: that our gadgets have become disposable. They report on a study in the UK which finds that most people between the ages of 16 to 34 replace their cellphones and DVD players every three years. Every three years? That's nothing. We know people who replace their cellphone every four or five months. [Via TechDirt]
Read MoreAt first we were excited by the prospect that Virgin Atlantic was going to start lending out iPods to passengers to keep them company on those transatlantic flights, but then we kept reading and realized that Virgin is only offering them for use at their JFK and Heathrow Clubhouses. Ah well.
Read MoreResearchers at Arizona State and Wright State Universities are working on a new computerized sight-assistant system for the blind called the iCare that consists of cameras mounted to glasses and a laptop stuffed in a backpack (which we're sure blind people are going to be stoked to lug around with them all day). The iCare, which can help a blind person read, search the web, recognize friends and family, and move throughout rooms, works by transforming images into words and can answer questions like "What the hell is that?" or describe the scene in one continuous long monologue (sounds like some people we know). It comes with a couple of specialized applications, the iCare-Reader, which translates texts into words, and the iCare-Assitant, which uses software to verbalize university course content. Another application destined for misuse is the iCare-Human Recognizer which has "a high probability" of recognizing people in a database — though it can only really do so when the subject is utterly still and has replicated the exact position and lighting of the picture of them in its database. The final component is the iCare-SceneAnalyzer which can describes the user's surroundings in words, making it possible )(at least in theory) to walk around with ease. Sounds a bit like a seeing side kick.
Read MoreSince you probably feel like you don't already spend enough time focusing on your computer, a company Suma sells a pair of goggles called the Sumacke which restrict your field of vision to just your computer screen. They claim it'll reduce all the glare from windows, desk lamps, ceiling lights, along with all the "visual noise" around you that can be so distracting, you know, like the real world. [Via LockerGnome]
Read MoreAlbertsons is taking this whole self-checkout thing to the next level at a few of their supermarkets in Dallas and is just giving customers handheld price scanners they can use to ring themselves up as they go along. The scanners also give you a running tally of how much you're spending, so you can make sure you don't go over your budget. If you change your mind you just rescan it and press the minus key on the scanner, and once you're ready to pay you just go to a cash register, scan a barcode on it, and then pay as you would normally. [Via TechDirt]
Read MoreWe feel like we've heard this before, but police in Britain are warning iPod owners there that wearing the white headphones included with the iPod makes them a target for muggings. It shouldn't be too big of a deal to just buy new headphones (especially since the ones you get for free with the iPod aren't that hot anyway), but what's really bizarre is Apple's response to all of this, with a spokesman claming that some iPod fans would "rather be robbed" than use headphones that were less cool.
Read MoreA new wireless Internet radio from Reciva that doesn't need a PC to work, all it needs is WiFi and a broadband Internet connection. Their Wireless Household Internet Radio can streams stations that webcast in MP3, WMA, RealAudio, and Vorbis audio, and also has an optional FM tuner if you want to listen to regular radio broadcasts (who does that anymore?). Weirdly, the radio only has one mono speaker - you have to attach a second speaker if you want stereo.
Read MoreThere's an old cliche about high-definition television that the picture is so good that you can count the number of pores on the actors' noses. The downside is that that extra level of detail is going to prove cruel to some performers since you can actually see all the imperfections now. Philip Swan watched Showtime's recent HDTV broadcast of a Britney Spears concert and reports that things aren't looking too pretty for her: At the tender age of 22, Spears doesn't have to worry about crow's feet yet. However, during tonight's concert in Miami, she looked like she hadn't slept in days. Her face was bumpy and puffy, making her appear five to ten years older than her years. The pop princess, who reportedly has been partying hard at night spots across the globe, simply didn't look very healthy tonight under the naked lens of high-def. Her make-up artists apparently tried to conceal the imperfections with heavy rouge on her cheeks, but it just added to the overall mess. Ouch! [Via Uprez]
Read MoreA new iPod car kit from Denison that takes things a step further than just plugging a cassette adapter into your car stereo. The ICE-Link plugs into your iPod's Firewire and audio ports, and while you can only browse through your music collection by doing it on your iPod, you can use your car stereo to pause and advance tracks. [Thanks, Ole]
Read MoreWe're kinda thinking that something was lost in translation, but Pravda is running a story about a woman who claims that she's been receiving cryptic messages on her pager from her recently deceased son. Or at least that's her interpretation of what appears to us to simply be a case of a malfunctioning pager.
Read MoreLong before sleek home gadgets were unveiled at overhyped conventions, household gizmos were hawked door to door or pitched on TV by slick shucksters. The men who paved the way for infomercial greats like the Clapper and the Topsy Tail, made millions inventing the pitch to post-50's moms. The Popeil brothers, Sam and Raymond, and later Sam's son Ron, were responsible for such 50's era arcana as the vegetable-dicing, Veg-O-Matic and its close cousins, the Chop-O-Matic, Whip-O-Matic and Peel-O-Matic. Other kitchy gems the Popeils made famous, include the Pocket Fisherman, a folding fishing rod, the Miracle Broom, battery-powered sweeping, and the smoke-sucking Smokeless Ashtray. In an exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center, showing through mid-May, a collector shows off 150 pieces from his collection of Popeil's Americana. And though the Veg-O-Matic sold for less than 10 dollars a piece, don't knock the business model, the Popeil family continues to churn out an gadgets from their home in Beverly Hills.
Read MoreA ton of new stuff from JVC: The XV-NP10 Media Station, a DVD player with slots for memory cards (for looking at your digital photos on your TV) and support for playback of DivX audio files. The EX-1A, a stereo system which took 20 years to develop and has a speaker cone made out of birch wood that's been soaked in sake (whether this is a good thing or not, we don't know). A couple of standalone DVD recorders with built-in hard drives, the DR-MH20, which has an 80GB hard drive, and the DR-MH30, which has a 160GB hard drive. The MP-XP841, a new version of their compact Mini Note PC that comes with a built-in DVD/CD-RW drive (the earlier versions had external drives).
Read MoreCashing in on the current low-carb craze is the new Nutrition Assistant from Robi. It looks like a pocket calculator but the only numbers you'll be crunching with it are the number of calories, carbs, fat, and protein in what you're eating. Stop the madness!
Read MoreThis week we're hearing about more mobile phones as companies announce their new handsets for North America at CTIA. Motorola launched four phones, but only two of them are really new. Worse yet, although the phones are VERY different, they have practically the same name. Good luck remembering which is which. If this were a buddy cop movie, the A840 would play the good cop. Building on the continually delayed V600 form factor, the A840 is packed with an amazing set of features for a dual band (900/1800) GSM phone — it's got Bluetooth, a 1.2 megapixel camera and a T-Flash memory card expansion slot — but the kicker is that the phone is also a dual band CDMA phone (800/1900) so you can use it here in the States and then roam with GSM overseas. It looks good, it's feature packed, and it really should work just about everywhere. What more can you ask for? The A845 (pictured), well, is just not quite as impressive, and could easily play the bad cop in my movie because it has the shape (and very nearly the size) of a baseball bat. The A845 will be one of the first 3G phones for the US, and is exactly like its cousin on Britain's 3 network, the A835, except that it uses 1900MHz for 3G. Because it's so unwieldy, it hasn't sold well abroad, and we don't think a phone you can't fit in your pocket (it literally is THAT big) will sell any better over here.
Read MoreOk, so if you're a graphic designer or a 3D modeller, you probably spend a lot of time controlling a mouse with one hand while the other one sits idle, just sorta hanging out and wasting its time (at least that's how we imagine it). Well, 3D connexion wants to put your other hand to good use, and is trying to convince people to start using a second device which is sort of like a small joystick to complement their mouse: A SpaceMouse or similar device enables a designer to be much more productive and to reduce wrist strain by minimizing the number of menus they have to click through in order to work on a project, Swarup said. "If we can get you to use the other hand, which is sitting idle most of the time, you can be a lot more efficient," he said. It's mainly for use with Photoshop or 3D modeling applications like Maya, but apparently it'll also work Microsoft Office.
Read MoreNot sure if there are plans to release this here in the States, but Rio is coming out with a new Flash memory-based MP3 player in Japan. The SU40, which will come in 256MB and 512MB versions, is about the same as the SU30 which came out last year, just with the addition of a line in jack for making recordings. Like the SU30, there's a mic for making voice memos and a built-in FM tuner.
Read MoreApex has made a few tweaks to the ApeXtreme, their new video game console that will play most of the popular PC games, since they showed it off at the Consumer Electronics Show this past January. Now, in addition to being able to play games and DVDs, the ApeXtreme is also going to be able to record and playback TV shows like a TiVo and will support 6.1 channel surround sound.
Read MoreIt's possible to get a digital camera for next to nothing these days, usually because the manufacturer has stripped out any absolutely unnecessary features like LCD screens and and memory card slots. It's still gonna take terrible pictures, but at least the Argus DC 1730, $45 VGA-quality digital camera from Hartford Computer Group's, has a color LCD on the back so you'll have a chance to see what they look like right after you've taken them. We're thinking you might be better off with a cameraphone.
Read MoreWe sorta thought at first that this was a joke, but iPodlounge has a review of not one, but two different brands of iPod polish. Ice Creme and iCleaner are supposed to be able to remove scuff marks and scratches and restore your iPod to the its original shininess. They found that iCleaner's Scratch Remover was better able to get rid scratches to the plastic front of the iPod, but that none of the products they tested did a good job of polishing up the metal back and a few of them actually made things worse by adding hundreds of tiny swirl scratches.
Read MoreCNET review of an inexpensive 20GB MP3 player we'd missed, the RipDrive from PoGo Products, which is a little big compared to the other players out there (it's a full-inch longer and a half-inch wider than the iPod), but is also pretty cheap for a 20GB player (about $270) and includes some nice extras like a built-in FM tuner (that you can record MP3s from) and line-in recording.
Read MoreA new system for circular saws called the SawStop that can detect contact with skin in about 5 milliseconds and automatically stop the blade, thus preventing your own accidental mutilation. How does it work? By recognizing the differences between the electrical properties of wood and the human body; any change in the electrical signal and the blade shuts down immediately. Make sure you check out the video. [Via BoingBoing]
Read MorePerhaps we spoke too soon the other day when we speculated that Wal-Mart would be the first to sell a plasma TV for under two grand, Pat Hurley alerts us to a deal at Costco.com for a 42-inch model that, with a $300 coupon, goes for a mere $1,999.99. It's not a high-definition display, and we've never heard of the manufacturer, but that's the cheapest we've ever seen a plasma TV sell for.
Read MoreNormally we wouldn't even bother mentioning a new Flash-based MP3 player (they're a dime a dozen these days), but MSI's new MEGA Player 515 is one of the first MP3 players of any kind (that we've seen, at least) to come with one those Organic Light Emitting Diode display that are eventually expected to replace LCDs. The 515 comes in 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB varieties, and also comes with a built-in FM tuner (that you can record MP3s from) and microphone for using it as a digital voice recorder.
Read MoreDark skies make it hard for many of us to get out from beneath the covers in the morning. Far more effective than that aroma alarm clock we wrote about to yesterday are alarm clocks that wake you with light. The good ones that simulate daybreaking cost a pretty penny and look like a big wooden box. Nice, but there's not much gadget cool there (other than the price tag). The Light Sleeper is a set of pillows and a duvet that are lined with electroluminescent fibers woven into silk. The sheets and pillows simulate dawn by slowly glowing brighter and brighter (though for the first few minutes your bedroom will look something out of Tron), gently waking up heavy sleepers with an eventual 10,000 Lux of synthetic daylight.
Read MoreThe Register is backpedaling on its recent story about how AAC format (which Apple uses for its iTunes store) had been approved by the DVD Forum for use in DVD Audio discs, and is now reporting that the selection process is still underway. They still expect AAC to make the cut, though.
Read MoreTakara, the company behind those infamous housepet translators, the Bowlingual and the Meowlingual, says it was another trick up its sleeve: a gadget called the Damenzu Walker which is, for all intents and purposes, a loser detector that supposedly can tell you how compatible you are with a prospective boyfriend or girlfriend. The Damenzu Walker, which sounds like it's about as scientifically accurate as those pet translators, is supposed to use an artificial intelligence engine (sure) to make predictions based on information you enter about yourself and the object of your affection. All we know is that it's way too easy to make a joke involving a loser detector. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreBusinessWeek on why you might not need to wait for the cable guy anymore: new plug-and-play TVs from Sharp, Pioneer, and Motorola will be digital cable-ready, so you won't need a separate set-top box anymore. Activation will be as simple as sending new customers a special card in the mail. BusinessWeek says that the set-top box makers are going to be in trouble, but we could care less about what happens to Scientific Atlanta and all the others (c'mon who really aspires to own a cable box?).
Read MoreWe've all read about the RFID tag industrial-complex, which is already tracking everything from cattle to cars parts. But in those frenzied conveyor-belt sushi restaurants of downtown Tokyo they've found another practical use for RFID. With patrons sitting elbow-to-elbow, grabbing at sashimi as it sails past, it's not uncommon to see discarded dishes stacked 20-plates high — a real hassle when each dish has a different price. About 120 sushi bars so far are now using a new speedy system called "Oaiso" (meaning check), which uses RFID tag-embedded sushi plates to tally the bill. Servers just place a scanner on the looming sushi-dish tower, which sends the total to the register, making the customer-turnover that much faster. The Japanese government and industry types are hoping that applications like this, and other more standard product-control uses, will stimulate growth in the RFID market to as high as "17 trillion yen ($159.2 billion) by 2010 or 2011". The only way that's going to happen is for RFID to be everywhere, and in Japan RFID tags are expected to be inserted into almost anything that can be tracked, from library books to public records.
Read MoreIt's couched in all sorts of rhetoric about "challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks" and how this is an "an apparatus that forces one to reconsider and question notions of virtuality, materiality, displacement, proximity and community," but all the WiFi.Bedouin really is is a backpack with a wireless access point and a battery pack in it. The idea is to create a little self-contained local area network anywhere, so the access point isn't itself connected to the Internet and all you get is the ability to hook up to whatever other computers or handhelds are nearby and/or visit spoofed versions of web sites you might try to search for. I think we're already pretty good at not being able to connect to the Internet from everywhere, and lots of pseudo-theoretical posturing can't hide the fact that this isn't all that interesting. [Via SmartMobs]
Read MoreFrom Princess, a new line of bathroom appliances designed by Philippe Starck, who was one of the hotshots of industrial design in the Eighties and has done stuff for Kartell and Target (yes, that Target). The new line includes a hair dryer, a hair curler, a clock radio, an electric razor, two ultrasonic toothbrushes, and two electric dental flossers.
Read MoreGateway shook up the plasma TV business a little while back when it came out with its $2999 plasma TV, a move which forced everyone else to drop their prices. That will be nothing compared to the fact that Wal-Mart is coming out with its own line of flat-panel plasma and LCD TVs (which are actually made by Taiwanese manufacturer Tatung). If anybody is going to be able to bring the price of 42-inch plasma TV to under two grand, it'll be Wal-Mart. [Via Uprez]
Read MoreFrom the Heinrich-Hertz-Institute in Germany, an immersive, three-dimensional video conferencing system called the im.point. It's just a prototype right now, but we're gonna go out on a limb and say that the im.point is going to prove very popular for "personal" as well as business purposes.
Read MoreSanyo isn't the first name that comes up when you think of digital cameras, but they've got an actually nice-looking compact four megapixel digital camera on the way. The Xacti J4 has a 2.8x optical zoom lens and can record (or so they claim) DVD-quality video clips, although you'll only be able fit less than six minutes onto a 512MB SD memory card.
Read MoreEarthLink is getting into the cellular game, and is going to start offering cellphone service to users of RIM's BlackBerry email communicator (they already offer data-only BlackBerry service). They'll actually be leasing space on another carrier's network just like Virgin Mobile does with Sprint.
Read MoreSharp's Aquos flat-panel televisions may be a little expensive, but the nice lines and the unbelievable sharpness of their LCD screens say "buy me", even if you do have to spend a little more on them. If you've always wanted one but needed something bigger than 30-inches (the largest size they came in last year), there's some good news: here at CeBIT we've spotted Sharp's new 37-inch Aquos, which will be out shortly (if it's not available already at your local superstore, that is). If that's not enough for you, just wait until the summer when Sharp says they'll have a 45-inch Aquos out. This one will have an extremely high resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and just about every kind of connector you'd want, including DVI so you can use it with many new high-end components or even hook it up to your PC (we've been dreaming of surfing on a 45-inch monitor ever since). And if a 45-inch TV isn't enough for you, Samsung has announced that they'll launch a 57-inch LCD later this year. The design of the 57-inch is nice, but its picture isn't as breathtaking what you'd get with an Aquos.
Read MoreYes, we know it's hard to conceive of, but there are people out there who just don't like TiVo. At least there are supposed to be. After reading that gushing story in the New York Times last week about how everyone just loves their TiVo, Jason Kottke decided to ask: Who doesn't like their TiVo? A lengthy discussion ensues (no suprise there), but most of the complaints seem to center around the fact that people want their TiVos to do more, not that they hate it altogether.
Read MoreApparently acronyms and specs are out at CeBIT this year (at least according to David McHugh of the Associated Press), and design and simplicity are in. We'd like to believe it, too, but with a few exceptions most of the gadget design out there is still woefully pedestrian. And let's not pretend that all those acronyms are going to disappear anytime soon, either. Most people might buy a cellphone because it looks cool, but ultimately they're going to have to make sure it works with whatever carrier they're with.
Read MoreBut wait, there's more. In addition to the world's thinnest 20GB MP3 player, the e-book reader, the portable video player, the OLED digital photo viewer, and the 3D monitor, Toshiba is also showing off a whole slew of concept devices that use its new 0.85-inch hard drive. Among them, a wristwatch PDA (pictured at right) with a high-resolution display and built-in Bluetooth and WiFi; a digital wallet with a biometric fingerprint scanner; an "Intelligent Eye Display System" that lets you choose items on screen just by focusing on them; and an MP3 headset with built-in WiFi.
Read MoreToshiba introduced a bunch of other products besides that new Gigabeat MP3 player at the big CeBIT trade show this week, including (pictured from left to right): An e-book reader with two high-resolution 7.7-inch LCDs that uses SD memory cards. A portable video player with a 3.5-inch LCD screen, a 20GB hard drive and an optional megapixel digital camera attachment. A digital photo viewer with an SD memory card slot and a 3.45-inch Organic Light Emitting Diode display. A 15.4-inch widescreen 3D monitor that works without special glasses.
Read MoreLots and lots of new MP3 players (and a couple of new personal video players) coming from iRiver later this year. Among them: The iFP-1000, a Flash-based MP3 player with a built-in digital camera and a 1.2-inch color screen. The medallion-style iFP-1100. The iHP-300, which has a 2-inch color screen. The iMP-1000, a portable CD player which besides also being able to play MP3s has a video-out port for watching DivX video files on a TV. The PMC-100 personal video player, which has a 3.5-inch screen and runs on Microsoft's Portable Media Center software (pictured above). The PMP-100, another personal video player with a 3.5-inch screen that can play games as well as movies and music. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreMaking a splash at this weekend's International Housewards Association show is a non-electric matt that keeps your pillow cool all night by acting as a heat sink. Now that we think about it, our pillow does get kind of hot at night. But not hot enough for us to do anything about it. [Thanks, Katie]
Read MoreJim Louderback says the words we don't want to hear: TiVo will die. He gives three reasons, one, that it's too easy to do what they're doing and add digital video recording capabilities to all sorts of stuff; two, that they've taken too long to add support for high-definition TV; and three, that sooner or later DirecTV is going to drop TiVo from its set-top boxes in favor of something cheaper. We've heard all of many, many, many times before, and honestly, the arguments are starting to sound a bit like the ones we'd been hearing for years about how Apple's demise was just around the corner: that Macs are too expensive, that Apple doesn't have enough users, that Microsoft will kill them, etc. We'd like to hope that it's still possible for a company that makes a better product to survive, but we'll concede that it's going to be tough-going for TiVo these next few years. [Via OnlineBlog]
Read MoreHow anyone could write yet another one of those "people love their TiVos!" article at this late stage baffles us, but the New York Times has just taken another stab at it (we're pretty sure they've done this story at least once before).
Read MoreIntel is showing off a digital concept car at the CeBIT trade show in Germany this week. . The BMW 7 Seres car comes with an HP Tablet PC (with Centrino, naturally), built-in Bluetooth and WiFi, and has both 3G and GPRS for connecting to the Internet.
Read MoreAn ex-soldier has invented a digital camera that's packed into a mortar shell, shot up to 2,000 feet into the air, and then beams photos back to soldiers while it slowly glides down to earth using a parachute. The idea is that it's a lot cheaper and easier for a soldier to get a picture of of the battlefield ahead of them using this than to send out unmanned drones.
Read MoreWe were half-joking when we mentioned yesterday that we'd be covering robotic speed boats in our new Transportation section, but Yme Bosma already found one for us to write about: Marine Robotic Vessels International's Ghost Guard is an unmanned speed boat that can be remotely controlled from almost anywhere, and has radar, sonar, and video cameras for tracking and surveillance purposes. That bright yellow paint job will make it impossible for drug traffickers to spot the Ghost Guard, too. [Via Panbo]
Read MoreA new industrial-strength digital video recorder from JVC that can save up to 16 different video streams onto its dual 120GB hard drives. The JVC VR-716E isn't for making sure you don't miss a single minute of basic cable, it's designed for storing streams from multiple surveillance cameras. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreThe Daily Yomiuri profiles Ryota Kuwakubo, a Japanese artist/inventor who just won the top prize for art in this year's Japan Media Arts Festival. Kowakubo's inventions are mainly high-tech gadgets with displays for 80's-style pixelated imagery that lend up looking a bit like Frogger crashing the design wing of the MOMA. Though rather than create stuffy pieces meant to be shown in museums or galleries, projects like Kowakubo's wearable Bitman medallion, the Vomoder, the loopScape (pictured at right), and the HeavenSeed (a beachball hooked up to speakers that can project sound), are meant to be toys that you can interact and play with.
Read MoreCNN has a preview of the CeBIT, the world's largest technology fair, which kicks off this Thursday in Hannover, Germany. No huge bombshells are expected this year, just slightly improved versions of the same stuff we've been seeing a lot of lately: cameraphones, LCD panels, digital entertainment hubs, etc. PS - Engadget will be there this year. We'll have some reports from the floor show next week.
Read MoreReuters reports that police in Hong Kong were called to the home of a 13-year-old boy who was threatening his parents with a kitchen knife after his father unplugged the computer game he was playing. Nobody was injured, but our big question is, What game was he playing?
Read MoreWe're really hoping that this classified ad that turned up yesterday on Craig's List here in New York is just some bizarre piece of guerrilla marketing for Apple: Hi, I'm having my parents come visit me sometime in the next two weeks and have lied and told them I am dating someone I am in love with. You will only have to come to one dinner. In exchange for this I will buy you an IPOD - yes new - we walk into the store together and buy a new IPOD. Let me know if this interests you, and if you want to be in a loving relationship with all the benefits it brings ;-) I want to pretend we are totally in love. I am 24, swm, a grad student, italian-american, (not a guido), athletic build. Send pics and i will send you mine, note I check email basically every 3 hours. You should be in your 20's and athletic (great butt and legs are my main interest when I say athletic). [Via Gawker]
Read MoreKodak's been getting a lot of heat lately for taking too long to change with the times and adjust to the brave new world of digital. It looks like they're trying hard to turn things around with their new prototype for a 3D computer monitor, but the problem is that there are already a few of these on the market (mainly from Sharp and NEC), and Kodak's Stereoscopic Imaging Display won't find its way into stores anytime soon.
Read MoreHere's a shocker: the designs for lots and lots of gadgets were influenced or anticipated by the original Star Trek series. Among them, like the original user interface for the Palm (the Enterprise's bridge panels), Bluetooth wireless headsets (Uhura's wireless earpiece) the original Treo (Star Fleet's handheld communicators), and even, this article in the San Francisco Chronicle claims, the use of Flash memory cards to store music and video files: On "Star Trek," the crew recorded audio and video messages on square, palm-size cartridges that were played back with a computer. Today, small, square flash-memory cards are used to store digital photos, MP3s and short videos. Disk drives, CDs and DVDs also store multimedia files. "In the '60s, it was inconceivable that you would have a miniature disk drive, let alone nonviolable semiconductor memory in a plastic square,'' said Perlman in an e-mail.
Read MoreIt's best for kids to get good at Russian Roulette while they're young: Kaba Kick is Russian Roulette for kids. The player points the gun at his or her own head and pulls the trigger. Instead of bullets, a pair of feet kick out from the barrel (which is shaped like a pink hippo). If the gun doesn't fire, the player earns points.
Read MoreAnother one of those Bluetooth-related pseudo-memes has sprouted up (remember Bluejacking?). The latest, called Bluetooth Against Bush, is about getting anti-Bush types to use their wireless laptops, PDAs, and cellphones to help find each other. (We suppose you could try and do something like this about anything people have common. Sounds just like the Internet!). Anyway, we'd reassure President Bush that he has little to fear from Bluetooth Against Bush, but we have a sneaking suspicion he'd have no idea what the hell we were talking about (and we're not saying this is a bad thing).
Read MoreWe'd all but banned the use of the word "convergence" from Engadget (not that it was hard, there as there haven't been many occasions to use it these past nine days), but over at newmediazero Nigel Walley makes a case for resuscitating that little piece of technospeak. He argues that the late Nineties conventional wisdom about convergence (like that the TV was the new PC) had it all backwards, and that it's clear now that it's actually the PC that is the new TV. Look at the evidence: TVs haven't become a particularly popular way to access the Internet, but whether it's hooking up your set to a hard drive-based digital video recorder (which is really just a customized PC) or watching live TV feeds over the Internet, he says it's clear that it's the PC that is becoming more like a TV than the other way around. Now of course none of this is news to anyone with a TiVo or a Media Center PC or who has ever tried to read a website on a television screen, but we think we know what he's getting at: convergence isn't a dirty word anymore. [Via TechDirt]
Read MoreFrom Konica Minolta, a new ruggedized digital camera that's aimed at one specific market — the construction business. The 3.34 megapixel DG-4W meets the oh-so-strict (we're assuming they're strict) requirements of the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and is designed to absorb shocks and is both dust and water proof. We're guessing that the camera also works at other places besides construction sites. [Via Digital Photography Blog]
Read MoreDesignTechnica review of the QuickCam Orbit, Logitech's new webcam that has the eerily futuristic ability to automatically follow your face as you move around to make sure you stay in full view of the camera. It also happens to be about as good-looking a webcam as you're gonna find, though you have to be really into webcamming (if you know what we mean) to consider spending the $129 that the QuickCam Orbit retails for.
Read MoreSpeaking of obsolescence (which seems to be today's theme), this week's Circuits section of the New York Times profiles Stephen P. Teplansky, the man at Sony Electronics in charge of marketing for another gadget whose days are surely numbered: the voice tape recorder: Known formally as Sony Electronics' senior marketing manager for general audio, Mr. Teplansky has spent 33 years selling, developing and championing products meant strictly for recording the human voice. "I don't do music," he said proudly in his relatively lonely corner of the open house two weeks ago. Of the 101 journalists who attended the event, exactly two spoke with Mr. Teplansky, he later recalled. "I understand the big picture," Mr. Teplansky said last week over lunch near Sony's compound in Park Ridge, N.J., where he is based. "The music players, the television sets, the computers - I know that's what excites the public. I am in a category of products that doesn't have that sex appeal. But to people who actually use these technologies, it's a godsend."
Read MoreGateway's updated its Connected DVD Player, their progressive-scan DVD player which can also hook up to a home network for streaming audio and video files stored on a PC. The new version, the ADC-320, now works with 802.11g (which is the faster version of WiFi). But the big news is that it new player can also stream TV shows and other videos recorded on a Windows XP Media Center Edition PC.
Read MoreA new superslim 3.24 megapixel digital camera from Ricoh called the Caplio RX which has a wide-angle lens, 3.6x optical zoom, an ultraquick start-up time of only 0.9 seconds, and a shutter response time of just 0.012 seconds, which they claim is the world's fastest for a digital camera. [Via Photography Blog]
Read MoreEver been stuck at a traffic light behind someone with one of those in-car DVD players and you start watching the movie that's on, and then before you know it you're following them around just to see what happens next? No? Us, either. But apparently some people have sort of the opposite problem: they're sick and tired of being exposed (so to speak) to other people watching porno in the, um, semi-privacy of their automobiles, so are trying to get laws passed making mobile porn-watching illegal and strengthen enforcement of laws against the public performance of pornography. [Via BoingBoing]
Read MoreAnnounced at the National Association of Broadcasters convention late last month, Panasonic's new DVCPRO P2 series AJ-SPX800 camcorder not only allows direct recording to special 4GB PC cards (which can hold about eight minutes of video - fortunately there's space for five of them), but also allows recording to other memory formats like SD and, we assume MMC. The $19,500 camera also includes an extra PC card slot if you feel like adding WiFi, Bluetooth, or even GSM wireless cards to your camera (though it'll take a mighty long time to transfer all that footage over a cellphone connection). Once recorded, the storage cards can be placed in any slot that can read them and editing can begin immediately without the need for re-encoding. With 200GB+ hard drive prices falling so fast, it's hard to imagine that a HD recording camera with a decent amount of storage on it isn't too far off. [Via The Red Ferret Journal]
Read MorePentax's new waterproof camera, the Optio43WR, looks actually decent for a camera you can rinse off in the sink — it has a resolution of four megapixels, a 2.8x optical zoom lens, and a 1.6-inch LCD. Pentax calls it the "dunkable digicam", but it's not quite as waterproof as you'd think, the Optio43WR is only submersible in up to three feet of water. So maybe not the best thing for that scuba diving trip.
Read MoreA network administrator in upstate New York decided to propose to his girlfriend by building her a dekstop PC customized to look like a tiered wedding cake. An enthusiastic custom computer-case builder, or "case modder," Johnson realized he had an opportunity to combine his hobby with the proposal Tolliver had been expecting for some time. "I was getting the bug to do another mod," he said. "And she needed a new PC at her office.... I was sitting on the train and I thought combining them would be a pretty good idea. No one has done that before." The case took three weeks to build, at a cost of about $250 in frilly materials. To keep it secret, Johnson built it in his parents' garage. His mother thought it was a little crazy, Johnson said. "It was all my own original design," Johnson added. "I didn't use any special reference materials, especially not (stuff by) Martha (Stewart), now that she's going to jail." Johnson painted the case virginal white and decorated it with lace and pearls. He used a rhinestone for the power button. We were gonna guess that doing this was probably cheaper than buying a ring, but turns out he gave her one of those, too. We're also starting to wonder if this qualifies as news.
Read MoreWe're not sure how it works (and to be honest, we don't care), but the Mobile Sensor Pen uses a flashing light to let you know when you're getting a call, so you can finally start putting your cellphone on silent and stop bugging the hell out of us with its grating ringtone. Or you could do what normal people do and put your phone on vibrate.
Read MoreToshiba's new line of high-definition LCD TVs is going to come with a web browser built-in. It doesn't say, but we're guessing the TV either has WiFi or an Ethernet port, and you connect it up to a home network. Sounds sorta like the return of WebTV to us, but at least you won't get stuck paying a monthly fee to experience how awful it is to surf the web using a TV. [Via Uprez]
Read MoreAt some point or another every all-in-one gadget ends up being described as the "Swiss Army Knife of gadgets". Well the new Swiss Army Knife of gadgets is a Swiss Army Knife. Victorinox is making a version of their famed knife that comes with up to 128MB of Flash memory. But don't worry, the USB Swiss Army Knife still has all the regular stuff like scissors, a corkscrew, and a can opener. And we're sure that having all your Powerpoint presentations will come in handy next time you're lost in the mountains.
Read MoreRather than come out with digital cameras that people want to buy, Kodak is turning to the tried-and-true method of suing its rivals for patent infringement. The latest to be sued is Sony, who Kodak alleges has violated ten of its patents for digital imaging; Sanyo and Olympus have already licensed Kodak's technology, which probably doesn't bode well for Sony.
Read MoreFrom Japanese manufacturer Daido Metal, a new toy car with a fuel cell that runs on water. So how come we can already get a toy car that's powered by a fuel cell, but it's supposed to be a few more years until we can get one in a laptop? Yeah, we know.
Read MoreWe blogged about Replay's new digital video recorder, the 5504, but CNET caught one special feature about it that we hadn't been aware of: that with a program called DVArchive it's easy to pull the saved TV shows off the 5504's hard drive and store them on your hard drive or burn them to DVD for archiving or watching on a laptop while traveling (we're not exactly sure if this is legal or not). Not being able to easily extract the video files trapped on its hard drive has been one of the biggest complaints about TiVo. TiVo is supposed to introduce something called TiVo To Go later this year that would you let you transfer shows to a PC, but there are going to be all sorts of restrictions on what you can and cannot do with the files.
Read MoreApex Digital, best know for selling the sort of bargain-bin DVD players that cause stampedes at Wal-Marts across America, is coming out with their first connected DVD player. The AD-8000N can connect to a home network over Ethernet or WiFi, so you can finally watch all those Paris Hilton videos you've downloaded on your TV rather than your PC. Oh, and it can stream audio files, too.
Read MoreWell, this didn't take long. The rabid dogs that are Apple's legal department has put the smackdown on the pPod, that software MP3 player for the Pocket PC which emulates the look of the iPod. They demanded that the developer, Starbrite Solutions, change the software to make it look less like the iPod and also forced them to change the name, too. So the pPod is now the pBop. It was fun while it lasted.
Read MoreFinally, an LCD monitor that looks as good as any designed by Apple. Better yet, it even matches the new G5, which Apple's own Cinema Displays don't. The Eyegonomic is an LCD TV designed along the sleek, clean lines of current European flat-screen models. In short, it doesn't look like a nerdy monitor at all, and it's even better-looking than 99% of the TVs out there too. Clean lines aren't all the Eyegonomic has going for it. At 22-inches and 32-inches, the screens are huge, at least by computer monitor standards, and have excellent brightness and contrast. And it doesn't matter what kind of outputs your computer (or home theatre uses), because the Eyegonomic is loaded with just about every kind of jack imaginable. The only thing the Eyegonomic doesn't have is support for NTSC, American TV. So far it only supports Europe's PAL TV standard, but the company says support for both NTSC an SECAM is in the works.
Read MoreFrom AnexTek, one of the few MP3 players we've seen with built-in stereo speakers. The S-MEDIA Butterfly doesn't have a ton of storage space (only up to 256MB), but it does mean you don't have to lug around a pair of external speakers any more if you're not the type to listen to music on headphones. Also has a few extras, like an integrated FM tuner (which you can record MP3s from) and a built-in microphone for recording voice memos. [Thanks, Jacek]
Read MoreYes, they're the cat equivalent of Lee press-on nails. And what's scary is that someone out there thought this was a good enough idea to start manufacturing them. SoftClaws are nail caps for your cat that come in five colors and are supposed to keep your furniture from being scratched up while also making your pet more attractive to other cats. Successfully getting them onto your cat without sedating it first is your problem.
Read MoreErik Thauvin takes on TiVo's marketing strategy, calling it "pathetic", and that they're not doing a good enough job of conveying to the average non-technologically inclined person (i.e. non-Engadget readers) what exactly its advantages are over a regular old VCR. He says that TiVo needs a hook, but doesn't offer any suggestions as to what that might be. We'd recommend it be something to do with being able to pause and rewind Super Bowl halftime shows. Or they could try updating their goofy logo. [Via Scobleizer]
Read MoreA Californian state senator is trying to get statewide ban on cellphone use by drivers under the age of 18. But it's not the only cellphone-related ban that's on the table. One state senator there has proposed prohibiting the use of a hand-held cellphone while driving in a school zone, while another has introduced a bill that would impose fines on any driver who engaged in any of the following activities while driving: using a cellphone, adjusting the radio or CD player, smoking, eating, drinking, interacting with passengers (!), reading, writing, combing hair, or applying makeup. Sure, it's less hypocritical than the other bills, since it's pretty well established that most of these are just as distracting and dangerous for drivers as talking on a cellphone, but there is NO WAY that people in California (or anywhere else, for that matter) are going to accept a law which punishes them for fiddling with the radio while in traffic. No freaking way. [Via MobileTracker]
Read MoreIn the latest installment of his weekly column for the New York Times Magazine, Rob Walker explains the perverse cache of bargain electronics brand Apex, which is most notorious for those profit-defying $30 DVD players that were so popular this past Christmas. Astoundingly, 10% of the DVD players sold in the US last year were made by Apex, second only to the far more established consumer electronics company Sony, and Rob chalks their success up to "the cultural capital of savvy that goes with finding a great bargain."
Read MoreAnd what a week it's been (well, it's really only been five days). Thanks to everyone who's shown their support for us these past few days, it's much appreciated. Things are only gonna get better, for real! Anyway, in case you missed any of them, some highlights from our first week: T-Flash: aka "Yet Another Memory Card Format" [pictured at right] Microsoft on every DVD player? DIY iPod battery pack Video of Motorola's MPx300 Pocket PC Phone The Ferrari of pet robots So where is that Treo 610 everyone was talking about? The ZVUE gets DivX World's smallest MP3 player How to never miss a call while flying iBiz's Virtual Laser Keyboard Probably not coming soon: the sperm-killing cellphone Microsoft's SenseCam The Disposable Computer A Treo Pocket PC? It could happen Japan turns to robots for taking care of the elderly Know what you're eating Phone-eating fish! Acer's Ferrari laptop USB-powered fragrance oil burner
Read MoreLike a 21st century version of the mood ring, Allison Lewis's concept for the "Think Of Me" involves a pair of wirelessly connected rings meant to be worn by two people in love (though we suppose that any two people could wear them). The rings each have a 900Mhz transmitter and receiver, and the idea is that if one person touches their ring the other person's will change color and warm up, sort of way for people to feel connected over long distances. [Via CacheOp]
Read MoreThe fact that it's sold out implies that somebody has been buying this, but we've been scratching our heads at the prospect of Arvel's USB-powered fragrance-oil burner, which is supposed to help make the area around your computer smell a lot better than it really does (we're not implying anything). The best part is that they even go out of their way to explicitly describe the oil burner as "fire free". [Via I4U]
Read MoreFor a study he's working on about the social impact of personal stereos a researcher at the University of Sussex in England (hey, we studied there!) is asking iPod owners from around the world to fill out a questionnaire about their attitudes toward Apple's digital audio player. Sounds serious. If you'd like to help you out, you can email him for a copy of the questionnaire at M.Bull@sussex.ac.uk.
Read MoreIt seems that catfish in southern England have aquired a taste for cellphones: The red-tailed catfish enjoyed his latest meal with a difference when a visitor accidentally dropped the contents of his pockets into the water. The 4ft creature, which lives in Marwell's tropical house, gobbled up the phone in one gulp. Staff tried to get the creature out of the water and attempted to massage it out but were unsuccessful. They were not too concerned because each time it had happened before, the catfish had always brought it up eventually. The crazy thing is that even they won't swallow the N-Gage.
Read MoreFinally a way to find out what it really is that you're eating when you order: a test using a DNA chip which can identify which of 32 animals that piece of meat came from (or for the vegans in the house, make sure it's 100% cruelty-free). A joint venture between Affymetrix and bioMerieux, the FoodExpert-ID chip can tell what animal your dinner came from, like whether there is a little bit of mouse or rat in that hot dog you're about take a bite of, or whether that's really veal or not. Then again, maybe you'd rather not know, since it might become really difficult to eat out from now on. [Via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
Read MoreGuess today is the day for electronic wallet-type gizmos. Don't expect to see this over here, but Dainippon Printing has created the Ubiqitous Networks Passport Advanced-Light, which stores your electronic cash on a SIM card (the same ones used in cellphones), and can be refilled by connecting to your PC over a USB cable. To pay for stuff, you simply swipe the Ubinetpass through a card reader and its LED screen will tell you how much you have money you have left. What's even better is that the LED screen can read product information stored on RFID tags, if you want to find out more about what you're thinking about buying. A version with Bluetooth and a biometric fingerprint scanner (for that extra little bit of security) are planned.
Read MoreChameleon Networks has a plan for both reducing all that clutter in your wallet and making it a lot more difficult to steal your credit cards: The Chameleon Card's black strip covers a programmable transducer that mimics the information on the magnetic strips of the cards it is replacing. A new handheld device from Chameleon, the Pocket Vault, programs the Chameleon Card to take the place of any credit card the consumer chooses for a transaction. Shoppers will be able to swipe their Chameleon Cards through the same magnetic readers used in stores and banks today. And instead of reading bar codes off the back of customer-loyalty cards, retail bar-code readers will scan the bar code displayed on the Pocket Vault itself. We're not sure that carrying around a mini-vault is any easier than just carrying around a few credit cards, and besides which, a company called Privasys already had this idea years ago, and it wasn't as complicated or expensive as the Chameleon. Instead of the Pocket Vault you got one really thin card with a keypad, an LED display, and a reprogrammable magenetic strip that stored all of your credit card numbers (and could generate disposable ones). You just entered your PIN, selected the card you wanted, and you were set. Not sure whatever happened to this, but the prototypes we saw definitely worked.
Read MoreSomeone's gone ahead and created a line of desks with PCs built right into them. Sure, the PowerDesk has "European craftsmenship" and comes in your choice of marble or corian desktop, but the specs — a 2.4GHz processor, 256MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, and a CD-ROM drive — are a bit poky for a desktop, meaning that in three months when your PC is obsolete you'll either have a huge piece of furniture to throw out or figure out how to upgrade.
Read MoreWe're not exactly sure it's a devil or why ducks are such a popular motif for these things (remember the iDuck?), but TikiMac is selling a Devil Duckie USB 2.0 Flash drive that comes in 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB versions and is compatible with Macs and PCs.
Read MoreSpiral Scratch, a British start-up, say they've created an inexpensive gadget for making 3D scans of any object. It's still a couple of years away from production, but they're claiming it'll cost just 100 pounds when it comes out. Combine one of these with a cheap 3D printer, and you can expect a boom in people swapping scans of all sorts of objects online.
Read MoreDon't get me wrong, the iPod mini feels so right in your hand, and they've done their best to prevent the hard drive from skipping, but if you're jumping around, eventually your iPod is going to skip — or worse yet, freeze up. (And yes, we know that can be remedied with a simple reset.) The iRiver 595T and 599T are two new Flash-based players that come with a whopping 512MB and 1GB respectively, and also pack a built-in FM tuner and MP3 recording, a couple of features the iPod mini lacks. They are also both a bit smaller than the mini, and claim a staggeringly long battery life of 28 hours, but there's a massive downside to these long-lasting, skip-proof players: their cost. The 1GB player runs $450, or about the same price as the 40 GB iPod. Ouch.
Read MoreThe San Francisco Chronicle says that SanDisk, which makes those Flash memory cards used in digital cameras, is set to become the Kodak of the digital age, and is trying transform itself into a household brand name. By contrast, Kodak (the Kodak of the analog age) is struggling as the market for traditional film continues to slide and slide and slide.
Read MoreSamsung has what they're claiming is the world's smallest MP3 player which is just 5.4 centimeters tall, and weighs only 24 grams without its battery. The YP-T5, which comes in 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB versions, also has a built-in microphone for making voice recordings and Samsung's "SRS WOW" surround sound technology.
Read MoreTiVo has just dropped their prices on standalone units and are offering another $50 rebate on top of that. The major stores are getting in line behind the price drop — all the big chains have followed suit. TiVo's web store and most of the chain stores we visited were out of the 60-hour model, and it seems the supply of 40- and 80-hour models isn't exactly brimming over. Could they be killing off their smaller capacity lines now that they have a 140 hour model on the way?
Read MoreMaybe it was the Motorola V70, maybe it was the Sony Ericsson SO505i, but somewhere along the line a new trend in cellphone design got started. Flipphones are SO last year, 2004 is the year of the twistphone. Motorola announced the V80 a few weeks ago, an advanced follow-up to the V70 with a color screen, camera, Bluetooth and all the other advanced features its predecessor lacked. Now Kyocera has practically copied Motorola's new design with a CDMA version called the Koi. Like all America-bound CDMA phones, it lacks Bluetooth, but the Koi makes up for it (sort of) with a 1.2 megapixel camera and fast 1xRTT data connection to send off those big pictures.
Read MoreThere's some other news regarding Engadget to relate: I've been lucky enough to convince Eric Lin, one of the most talented writers on wireless and mobile tech that I know, to become a contributor to Engadget. Eric is going to be pitching in with a few posts a day, focusing on cellphones and wireless stuff, but he won't be limited to those areas, and I'll continue to cover them as well. Please join me in welcoming him to the site!
Read MoreHandHeld Entertainment just announced that they're adding support for DivX to their remarkably inexpensive $99 ZVUE personal video player. That means that if you've got an SD memory card that's large enough (the ZVUE has no internal storage of its own), you can just download DivX files of TV shows and movies off of the Internet (we're sure you know how), and take them with you anywhere.
Read MoreHardwareZone review of the D70, Nikon's new budget digital SLR camera. The D70, which has a resolution of 6.1 megapixels and is compatible with Nikon's lines of AF and DX Nikkor lenses, is the most direct competition yet for Canon's EOS Digital Rebel (also known as the EOS-300D). Hardware Zone gives it high marks, calling it "a good choice for beginning SLR photographers who want to venture into more serious digital SLR photography in the future."
Read MoreWe get a lot of the same questions round these parts (in fact, you might say these particular questions are frequently asked), so we figured we'd make things a little easier for you with a FAQ. Hope it helps you out before you give us a holler. -The Engadget Team Why do you need my email address for comments? We do this to cut out down on comment spam (it happens a lot these days). We are (still) working to institute a user-profile system to make commenting easier, but remember, even full user profile systems on web sites require a valid email address, so the question of posting comments without a valid email address is kind of null. If you do want to make comment on something anonymously you can use our feedback form, which doesn't require an email address. Just ask us and we can post it up for you (if it's worth posting, of course). We can tell you a few things for sure: these addresses are not harvested -- we hate spam, too (please see our privacy policy). We certainly wouldn't wish it on anyone else, so don't ever expect mailings from us unless you've signed up for an opt-in mailing list of some sort. Why was my comment removed? We allow users to comment on our posts for the betterment of the Engadget community, so as to share knowledge, expertise, and to spread good-humored mirth (please read our disclaimer on commenting). If your comment is spam, off-topic, unduly belligerent, insulting, or berating, or otherwise not, er, nice (or if you completely missed the point of the post), do expect your comment to be removed. It's like mama said, "If you don't have something nice to say..." Why did you post that? It's old news. While we primarily cover new news of the goings on in the world of gadgets and consumer electronics, we are also a resource for readers to find out about the products and services out there that they never knew existed. Those products and services may be foreign (see below) and they also may be not necessarily be new. Just remember: for every one reader that knows that something is old, there are a thousand more who've never even heard of it. Why do you post rumors and unofficial information? Well, simply put, we're not the AP. If we think our readers are going to enjoy or benefit from the sometimes-dubious information floating around out there, we're going to put it up. That's not to say we'll just put anything up, but if after we critically determine it's a rumor that's got substance, importance, and likelihood, then we're going to try and keep you in the know. Do you carry this? We have no idea why people think we're a retailer (are you even reading?), but no, we don't carry that, or anything else for that matter. Where can I buy this? How much does it cost? Sorry, we're not an online shop, and we're not a portal. If we don't print a price, it usually means we don't have that information or because prices change so quickly that it'd be pointless. We don't normally tell you where to buy it because for us it can be a conflict of interest -- we're not about to be accused of favoring one retailer over any others (unless there's a particular reason, like a retailer who is selling pre-release products). So good luck on your hunt! Is this coming out in America? A lot of the important news in gadgets and electronics is not coming from America (gasp!). We know you're totally surprised, calm down. Since we're not here to provide you with a Best Buy shopping list, we're here to keep you informed about what's up. We will frequently post stories about products you may never even see. We don't mean to tease you, but you can make more informed buying decisions by knowing what's going on with everything out there -- even that which you can't easily get. And besides, a lot of people just want to know (not to mention that a lot of our readers don't actually live in the United States). Your information is inaccurate. While the volume of information and news we process can be enormous, we consistently do our best to provide quality information. But we're human, we make mistakes. If you've seen we've made an error, please let us know in the feedback form, and we'll correct it. You could post it in the comments, but we tend to delete comments that are off-topic, and a comment about an error becomes off-topic once we've made the correction. What's with the ads in the RSS feeds? We could get into a dialectic about subscription vs. ad-based content, but in the end we want to provide the best possible service to you, the reader. Which is why we give you our full content in RSS, unlike many other sites which cut their feeds after a few lines of content, clog up the feeds with ad posts, or only provide headlines. Just like any medium where we provide full, high quality content for free, we need some method of ad revenue to keep the site going. Thanks for understanding! What happened to all the cellphone news?What, you didn't hear? We launched Engadget Mobile! We're still posting important cellphone news to Engadget's main page, but for complete, comprehensive cellphone coverage, check out Mobile. [Last updated April 21st, 2006]
Read MoreWriting a story about Engadget? Blogging? New media? Any of that fun stuff? Pull quote, profile, or TV appearance, whatever, you can hit us up here, and we'll get back to you on the double.Note: please do NOT send us press releases, tips, links, or suggestions, all that should go to www.engadget.com/tips. This is for other media only. Thanks!Mail: mediacontact at engadget dawt com
Read MoreSony is coming out with a black version of the the DSC-T1, which currently lays claim to being the world's smallest five megapixel digital camera. At least in Japan, they are, there's indication yet whether the DSC-T1 will make it to these shores.
Read MoreIt's not exactly news anymore that the Eighties are in again, and Nintendo, who were the console kings back then, are taking advantage of the nostalgia for all things Reagan-era and releasing an NES-styled Special Edition GameBoy Advance SP. The special edition starts with a plain old silver GBA SP, but they've swapped the A and B buttons out for red ones and slapped on a black decal with grey stripes to make the GBA look much like the original NES controller. Even if you don't like the looks of retro controllers, everyone loves retro games. As part of this retro celebration, Nintendo are also releasing eight classic NES games as GBA carts. There are some arcade classics like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man as well as some serious NES old school favorites like Legend of Zelda, Bomberman and the original Super Mario Bros.
Read MoreEven more details about Nintendo's new portable game handheld, the Nintendo DS (or Nitro or whatever they're calling it these days). It's going to offer some sort of instant messaging capability (communicating locally with other handhelds over the RF spectrum), have a clamshell design like that of the Game Boy Advance, cost between $199 and $249, and be capable of playing back movies and music. [Thanks, Ed]
Read MoreWe're not 100% these are legit, but someone just passed along to us what looks like a page from an internal Nintendo corporate document that shows the specs for their upcoming DS/Nitro portable game console. There are no photos or sketches of what it's going to look like, but here's what we've gleaned: Whether it's just an internal code-name or not, the new console is going by the name. "Nitro". 4MB of RAM. Confirmation that it will have a touchpanel (the big speculation is whether this will pull double duty as some sort of controller). A 256x192 pixel, 262,144 color main LCD screen. A built-in microphone. The biggest scoop (again, assuming that these specs are for real) is that the Nitro is going to have WiFi rather than Bluetooth. Is there going to be some sort of online gaming service for the Nitro? [Thanks, Cabel]
Read MoreNot that we ultimately care what they end up naming it, but there's speculation that Nintendo is going to call it's new dual-screen portable game console that's due out later this year (which currently goes by the DualScreen or Nintendo DS) the Nintendo Nitro. Or it could just be a code-name they're using internally.
Read MoreIn an interview with Mainichi Interactive, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata hints that their next-generation DS [Dual Screen] portable game console will have built-in Bluetooth for wireless multiplayer gaming. We haven't seen any photos of what the DS might actually look like yet, thoughas far as we know it's still set to come out before the end of this year.
Read MoreNot sure how much you can read into this kind of news, but giving an indication of just how big of an investment Sony is planning to make in the PlayStation Portable, Gamesindustry.biz reports that they're placing orders to buy about $400 million worth of LCD screens a year from Samsung and Sharp to put into the new mobile gaming console.
Read MoreOver at FirstAdopter, Robert Keenan is a little skeptical of the PlayStation Portable, Sony's new mobile gaming console which should be out in a year or so. Besides the fact that it'll sport an optical drive (which are easily damaged) and they've been a little vague about the actual gaming part of it, he also isn't sure they'll be able to deliver it at a retail price of under $150, at least not with all the features they're promising it'll have.
Read MoreWe're not sure we can wait that long, but Sony says that PlayStation Portable will come out no later than March 31st of next year. They also released a few more details about the PSP, like that it will be more powerful than the PS2, and that it will have built-in 802.11b WiFi for connecting over a home network to both the PlayStation 3 and to PCs (for transferring audio and video files onto it).
Read MoreSony has finally gotten around to releasing its long-anticipated hard drive attachment for the PlayStation 2, which they've been talking about coming out with ever since the launch of the PS2 back in 2000. The 40GB drive, which ships today, costs a hundred bucks and comes complete with a copy of online multiplayer game Final Fantasy XI pre-installed. In case you were wondering, there's no way to buy the drive without a copy of the game on it. At least not yet.
Read MoreThere's word that the PSX — Sony's amped-up version of the PlayStation 2 with a hard drive that record TV shows like a TiVo — will be out in the UK in time for the holidays. Since it's rare that a gadget like this comes out in Britain before the US, we're hoping that plans for a Stateside release will be announced soon.
Read MoreTom's Hardware Guide review of Creative's MuVo TX, a 512MB MP3 player with a built-in mic for voice recording that can also double as a portable USB keydrive (you just pop it out of the battery pack). The big improvement Creative's made over the previous version of the player, the MuVo NX, is that the TX connects using the speedier USB 2.0 standard, so you can fill up the player with music in less than a third of the time it takes with a regular USB 1.1 connection. Also comes in 128MB and 256MB versions.
Read MoreAnother review, this one by BargainPDA, of the Mio 168 from Mitac, the first Pocket PC to come with GPS navigation built-in: The Mio 168 deserves a thumbs up rating. If you're looking for a GPS solution and a PDA, this could be the perfect and most reasonably price combination. The GPS locator software is extremely good, I can't think of a single feature missing. The PDA aspect of the Mio 168 is as good as or better than many PDAs on the market. The nice, bright screen and excellent audio are definitely stand-out features of the device. The overall design is decent and the memory and processor could have been better, but given the fact you're getting a $200 software package, a lot of included accessories for free and a well rounded overall PDA device at the price of $499 (MSRP) then you can't really complain.
Read MoreCasio keeps coming out with new permutations of its superslim Exilim digital cameras, each one just slightly different from the one before it. Steve's Digicams reviews the latest, the four megapixel EX-Z40, which is similar to the EX-Z4, only with a few new features like the ability to record video clips of unlimited length (assuming you have the space on your memory card), and a lighter aluminum body. Should be out late next month.
Read MoreePhotoZine review of the X'S Drive Pro VP300, a portable 30GB hard drive with a 6-in-1 memory card reader for dumping photos from your digital camera that can also play MP3s: The X'S Drive Pro is a straightforward memory card backup device. It won't win any awards for speed, build or sound quality but at the end of the day it does get the job done. It's also reasonably priced and available from some retailers without a hard disk allowing you to fit your own. The bottom line is that if you're looking for a memory-card compatible storage device that includes basic MP3 playback at a competitive price the X'S Drive Pro will do the job. If however you are at all serious about listening to music on the move we'd suggest you look elsewhere. There is one other very serious downside to the X'S Drive Pro: a miserable battery life of just two hours. Ouch. [Via Photography Blog]
Read MorePocket-Lint.co.uk review of Sony Ericsson's new MMV-100, a Bluetooth digital photo viewer which which lets you wirelessly beam photos taken with your cameraphone to any TV or projector. They like the concept, but think the MMV-100 is just a bit ahead of its time given that the quality of photos taken with cameraphones is so low these days that they're really not worth looking at on anything other than a cellphone screen.
Read MoreIt's been a little hard to tell from all the photos we've seen so far just how big Motorola's new MPx Pocket PC Phone (you know, the phone that everyone is going to be scrambling to buy in about six months) really is. MobileGadgetNews snapped this photo showing it side-by-side with the MPx200, and it's definitely smaller than we thought it would be. Our lust grows (though we're hoping that the finished product has slightly better styling). [Via PocketPCThoughts]
Read MoreFrom Creo, a pair of superhigh-resolution digital camera backs with built-in Bluetooth. The 22 megapixel Leaf Valeo 22Wi and the 17 megapixel Leaf Valeo 17Wi are both basically digital camera sensors that you add to the back of a regular large format camera. And the Bluetooth part? That cheesy graphic notwithstanding, the Bluetooth isn't actually for wirelessly transferring photos (sending an uncompressed 300MB digital photo file to a laptop using Bluetooth would take a long time), it's for controlling the camera using a Pocket PC.
Read MoreJoe from bookofjoe isn't particularly happy with one his recent purchases, SideWinder's Emergency Cell Phone Charger: I tried my new SideWinder out yesterday with my Nokia 8260. Yes, I know, I was supposed to switch to my new Sony Ericsson T630 this past Monday, but it just didn't happen. Anyhow, when the "Low Battery" icon came on and the phone started its beeping aka death rattle, I plugged in the SideWinder, and called someone. I warned her at the outset that there would be background noise (when you turn the crank on this gizmo to generate power, it sounds like a grinder) from time to time. The product info says "six minutes talk time for two minutes cranking the handle." We talked 20 minutes, I cranked at least half that time, and the battery suddenly died. Game over. Product failure. R.I.P.
Read MoreArchos has been showing off its next-generation personal video player, the AV500, which besides having a 40GB hard drive and being able to play audio and video files (WMV9 as well as MPEG4 and DivX), will be able to double as a PDA. And if that doesn't already sound too good to be true, they're also saying that if you want go wireless with it the AV500 will support WiFi and Bluetooth. Should be out around the end of the year.
Read MoreFuturistic-looking new wall-mountable A/V system from Bang & Olufsen called the BeoCenter 2 that can play DVDs and CDs and stream audio files stored on a PC over a home network. This is one of those things that if you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford it.
Read MoreToshiba is coming out with a new version of the Gigabeat G20, which is currently the world's thinnest 20GB MP3 player. The Gigabeat G21 still has only 20GB of storage space on it, but the big difference with the new version is that it comes with a dock that lets you wirelessly connect it up to a home network (with a USB WiFi adapter, that is), allowing any PC in the house to access the music stored on it.
Read MoreIt's always a mistake to write-off Apex's as just another maker of low-end consumer electronics, and the latest reason is their announcement that they will come out with a $799 entertainment PC, most likely one running on Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system. Just as Apex's $50 DVD player put pressure on Sony and other manufacturers to lower the prices on their machines, some sort of media/entertainment PC from Apex is likely have a similar effect on the PC market.
Read MorePC Mag review of the FireBall DVDM-100, a very expensive digital entertainment hub from Escient that you can use to control up to three of those massive 400-disc CD and DVD changers from Sony and Kenwood. Connected to a TV, the DVDM-100, let's you browse through your music and video collection, automatically loading up track listings and cover art (a patch that'll let you browse your DVD collection by actor or director is in the works). There's an optional hard drive attachment you can stream MP3s from.
Read MorePopular Science has a feature on the accessories you'll need to have a fully-loaded, tricked-out Treo 600, including a 512MB SD memory card, decent headphones, BoxWave's miniSync combination synchronizing cable and charger, and software apps like PDANet (for using the Treo as a laptop modem), Pocket Tunes Deluxe (for listening to Internet radio stations), SnapperMail for email, and LauncherX 1.1 (for changing the Treo's application launcher interface). Cost for all this, including monthly service: $1,040. [Thanks, Ethan]
Read MoreBack when we had a real job in a real office (as opposed to the fake blogging job we have now where we work out of a fake office in a real apartment), we used to secretly fantasize about swiping the conference room's fancy digital projector to hook up to our new bleeding-edge DVD player (this was a few years ago). Anyway, besides the felony part, it probably wasn't a good idea, since Popular Mechanics has a round-up of several excellent new theater-quality digital projectors for the home (like the SIM2 Domino 20 [pictured at right], the NEC LT170, the Epson Powerlite S1, and the Sony Cineza VPL-HS20) and notes that you definitely don't want to use a business projector at home unless you absolutely have to.
Read MoreCellphones running on the Series 60 operating system always seem to be cursed by the worst keypads, and the Siemens SX1, the newest phone to hit store shelves running Nokia's smartphone software, is no exception. It features an impressive list of specs - some are de rigeur for Series 60: a VGA-quality digital camera, tons of memory, a big 176 x 220 screen - but the SX1 also adds stereo output, an FM radio, and a customizable home screen. Even though it's about the same size as other smartphones (Nokia's 6600, Sony Ericsson's P900, etc.), it probably beats all of the others in number of buttons, and sadly suffers from awful button layout. Mobile Burn claims it's ok for texting or other two-handed tasks, but terrible for one-handed uses like dialing. We respectfully disagree. The far row of numbers is difficult to reach during one-handed use, and when you do manage to stretch your thumb over to the other side, you actually wind up blocking the screen from view. Besides which, when is texting is a two-handed task? How is anyone supposed to ride my bicycle and text with two hands? No matter what we're doing, even if we're just standing somewhere, we still tap out text messages with one hand.
Read MoreInfoSync review of the T630, Sony Ericsson's follow-up to their poplular T610 cameraphone (which is also known as the T616, depending on your carrier). Sounds like it's almost the same as the T610 — they're just about the same size, and have the same 128x160 pixel screen and low-resolution camera — but that the T630 makes a few small improvements in usability and ergonomics that make it a better choice.
Read MoreSurely cheesing off the Apple cultists out there (we're almost afraid to cross them these days, lest we wake up some morning beside the dismembered remains of a PC), Creative's 4GB Nomad MuVo2 MP3 player has supplanted both the iPod mini and the 15GB iPod as the best selling MP3 player on Amazon. [Though to be fair, this is probably because Amazon counts each differently colored iPod mini as a distinct product rather than grouping them together.] Whether part of the popularity of the MuVo2 is that you can cannibalize its 4GB MicroDrive and to use with a digital camera, essentially getting a $500 drive for just $200, is hard to judge. But we bet the people at Creative don't mind at all. [Via I4U]
Read MoreImaging Resource review of the one digital camera we've been looking at with lusty glances for the past few weeks, Sony's superslim DSC-T1, which is the world's smallest five megapixel camera (at least for the time being): [T]he DSC-T1 breaks new ground in the subcompact category, packing more features into a smaller space than pretty much anything else out there. Most impressive is how few tradeoffs Sony was forced to make relative to full-sized five-megapixel models. The DSC-T1 shows good image quality, with good color, high resolution, and excellent sharpness from corner to corner (a common failing of the optics of subcompact digicam models). Its image sharpness and noise levels aren't quite up to the level of the best full-sized 5-megapixel cameras out there, but they're impressive for a subcompact model. That's all we needed to hear. [Via Photography Blog]
Read MoreIf you just can't countenance buying the same dustbuster that the rest of us plebes own, you'll probably want to invest in Alessi's sleek new handheld vacuum cleaner which looks way too stylish to be used for something as mundane as tidying up the house.
Read MoreWe weren't particularly impressed with the GMini 220, that 20GB MP3 player Archos introduced late last year. We still think it's uglier than it needs to be, but Dave Conabree's writeup over at MobileMag is forcing us to reconsider our opinion. For starters, you can simply drag and drop files onto it (unlike having to load tracks through software like you do with lots of other players). It also has a display which is bigger than that of the iPod and most other MP3 players, and Archos puts the extra space to good use, with a graphical interface that looks pretty easy to use. Other extras include line-in recording (without requiring the purchase of an extra attachhment), a built-in microphone for voice memos, and a slot for dumping JPEGs from your card's CompactFlash card slot (you can even view your photos on it, but only in monochrome). The one major flaw seems to be its battery life, which is shorter than that of just about every other hard drive-based player.
Read MoreThe Tech Report rates seven LCD monitors — Eizo's 19-inch FlexScan L795 (pictured at right), HP's 17-inch L1730 and 20-inch L2035, Philips' 19-inch 190B4CS, Samsung's 17-inch 173MW and 173T, and Sony's 19-inch HX93. They also include a good overview of what makes an LCD monitor better (and worse) than a regular CRT monitor, which if you're in the market, is well worth the read.
Read MoreOver at Luminous Landscape, the first of a three part review of Leica's five megapixel Digilux 2, which doesn't just have the retro-styling of a vintage Leica — its manually operated controls actually mimic those of a regular analog film camera. The Digilux 2's aperture, focus, and focal length can all be manually adjusted using the rings on the lens and it's shutter speed dial works just like that of a regular camera. And according to the reviewer, being able to manually set all those controls does make a difference, at least if you're doing more than just pointing-and-shooting: If one is setting exposure manually, as I often do, it's easy to see at a glance, on the actual controls themselves, the selected aperture and shutter speed as well as focus distance and focal length. There's no need to hunt through menus or even look at an LCD settings screen to get this information. Having been frustrated with the little zoom buttons and levers on most compact digital cameras, it is a particular pleasure to use a zoom ring on the Digilux 2. [Via Photography Blog]
Read MoreSteve Sande of PDAntic reviews Apple's (relatively) new In-Ear Headphones, which are reputed to have better sound quality than the standard earbud headphones that ship with the iPod. Except that according to Steve they don't: [T]he sound quality? It's crap. Everything I listened to sounded "hissy", as opposed to the smooth and mellow tones of the standard earbuds. I tried playing with the equalizer on the iPod to adjust the sound quality, but nothing helped. The fact that he couldn't get them to stay in his ears probably didn't make things any easier.
Read MoreGateway keeps coming out with more and more products that aren't PCs (anyone know if they're actually making any money off of this stuff?), and CNET reviews one of the latest, a wireless router. CNET says that the WGR-200, which uses 802.11g (the version of WiFi that's nearly five times faster than 802.11b), is pretty easy to use and set up, but that can't match the performance of other wireless routers like Netgear's WGT624.
Read MoreBrighthand has an in-depth review of the latest wireless Pocket PC from Asus. The MyPal A716, which has a 400 MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, and built-in Bluetooth, is one of the few Pocket PCs you can buy these days which has both built-in WiFi and a CompactFlash card slot, something which is a big deal for anyone who has tons of CompactFlash memory cards or expansion cards lying around. (It also has an SD card slot if that's your thing.) The MyPal A716 isn't too easy to find in the States (it was never officially released here), but Brighthand mentions a few retailers who are carrying it.
Read MoreWe'll admit we've gotta weakness for retro-styled digital cameras that are designed to look like film cameras from the fifties and sixties. The latest we've found is the Mini-Digi from Rollei, which squeezes a two megapixel camera into the miniaturized body of a classic RolleiFlex twin-lens reflex, mimicking the original right down to putting its LCD viewfinder at the top of the camera so you have to look down into it take a picture. Comes out in Japan on May 21st.
Read MorePC Magazine review of the latest digital video recorder from ReplayTV, the 5504, which can store up to 40 hours of programming (which is starting to seem a bit paltry, these days). The new ReplayTVs also lack some of the finer features of the old ones, like the ability to automatically skip commercials or email shows to friends. The new owner of ReplayTV didn't feel like being sued, so these features promptly got the ax. But to be fair, TiVo has never had either of those abilities.
Read MoreThe iPod and its battery life has been the subject of an unusual amount of scrutiny these past few months (we won't get into it), but anyone buying an iPod mini can set their mind at ease, at least partially. iPod Lounge has been testing the new player for more than week and found that after charging it a few times, the iPod mini not only matches the eight hours of playing time that Apple says it has, in some cases it actually exceed that time by almost two hours.
Read MoreThis is just bizarre on so many levels: Because of all sorts of complaints from human rights groups about the practice of kidnapping children from other countries and forcing them into service as jockeys in camel races, the Persian Gulf state of Qatar held its first camel race the other day using robot-jockeys rather than actual live human riders. It's definitely encouraging to see Qatar taking a big step forward like this.
Read MoreJames Pethokoukis thinks it's curious that the 21st-Century Nanotech Research and Development Act explicitly omits funding for the study of nanobots, possibly because of a fear that tiny self-replicating machines might reproduce uncontrollably and eventually cover the earth (the so-called "grey goo" theory), and that the government's policy seems to be that nanobots could only be used for destructive purposes. [Via Instapundit]
Read MoreThese days the most advanced handgun you can buy isn't from the US or Europe, it's made in Australia. Primarily designed for law enforcement, the VLE (short for Variable Lethality Enforcement) does more than just shoot bullets. Imagine a gun that pages the police station when it's drawn from its holster, can hold a number of different types of rounds, and announce how it's armed in a several different languages. To be sure the officer is the only one firing the gun, it's also equipped with a smart grip technology which locks it to one authorized user. The company that is developing the VLE (called Metal Storm, which sounds like the name of a bad Eighties sci-fi movie), is also developing a machine gun that fires rounds electronically instead of mechanically, but the article doesn't say whether the VLE also features this technology. [Thanks, Warren]
Read MoreDottocomu has some links to video footage of the Enryu, Tsmuk's giant rescue robot, driving around, ripping the door off a car, and picking up steel girders. Apparently it requires a special "rescue robot driver's license" to operate, which effectively dashes our plans of hijacking one and wreaking havoc in downtown Tokyo.
Read MoreClark Boyd of BBC News Online notes that there were some interesting, ahem, "cultural differences" between the robots at this past weekend's ROBOlympics in San Francisco: The Japanese robots reigned supreme when it came to sumo-wrestling, while the European teams showed off their skills on the football pitch. As for the American machines, they specialised in demolishing the living hell out of each other in one-on-one robot combat.
Read MoreRemember last year how scientists said they were able to train a monkey to control a robotic arm using only its thoughts? Well, they've done some more work and are saying that the they should be able to get it to work with humans. [We know that it sounds like we're making up a lot of the posts today (cellphones that analyze skin and measure body fat! loser detectors!), but we swear that this one is real, too.]
Read MoreThe Border Patrol says they're going to start using unmanned robotic aerial drones (like the one pictured at right) to keep an eye on illegal immigrants, smugglers, and terrorists trying to enter the United States along its border with Mexico. [Thanks, Gabe]
Read MoreThis really is the week for underwater robots. Besides the Aqua, which we mentioned the other day, the International University of Bremen is working on an underwater robot called the Deep Sea Crawler which can transmit images directly to the Internet using a webcam connected to (what we presume to be) an extremely long fiber optic cable.
Read MoreNow that three more teams have qualified for tomorrow's Grand Challenge robotic road race from LA to Las Vegas, it looks like there's going to be an actual race (pictured at right, the race's first qualifier, CMU's Sandstorm). Sure, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is holding the competition, had to relax the rules for qualification a bit even to get that many teams in the race. And expectations are now so low that none of the robots entered are expected to even finish the race. Hmmm. Maybe it's a good thing we cancelled our plans to fly out to Vegas for this.
Read MoreTurns out the Japanese don't have a monopoly on elderly-helping robots. Scientists at Staffordshire University's Center for Rehabilitation Robotics in the UK (a whole research center dedicated to creating helper robots!) have built the Flexibot, a robot which the elderly and disabled will someday be able to have help them with basic tasks around the house. Has anyone spotted a photo of this?
Read MoreGiving us hope that at least one team will be able to compete in the Grand Challenge (the robotic road race from LA to Las Vegas taking place this Saturday), is the news that the Sandstorm, a tricked-out Humvee built by Carnegie Mellon University, was able yesterday to successfully complete the 1.36 mile test course that's serving as a qualifying round. Though the picture at right of the Sandstorm, which flipped over during a trial run last week, doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence in them. UPDATE: Apparently this whole thing of only one team qualifying for the actual road race worried DARPA, which was sponsoring the event, so they relaxed the rules, and are going to let teams that didn't complete the qualifier compete on Saturday. Read
Read MoreWe're starting to get the impression that every auto manufacturer in Japan has decided to get into the robot business: Toyota showed off a trumpet playing robot the other day and says it plans to beef up production of the humanoid robot, which is now planned for commercial sale around 2010. Clearly trailing Honda's ASIMO (not to mention non-car maker Sony), Toyota plans to create a special robot R&D site filled with hundreds of engineers to push the project along — or just catch up.
Read MorePotentially obsolescing yet another line of work that doesn't involve people sitting around staring at screens all day, there's now a working prototype of a robot that can "print out" buildings. The "contour crafter", which is like a giant 3D printer, hangs from a crain and uses a computer-guided nozzle to shoot wet concrete exactly according to an architect's plans. Behrokh Khoshnevis, an engineer from the University of Southern California who created the robot, says the the goal is to be able to build a single-story, 2000 square foot home in one day. [Thanks, Jill]
Read MoreSony's pint-sized humanoid QRIO robot (which costs as much as luxury car) has been spotted around the world riding the train (pictured at right), greeting international dignitaries, making a cameo in the Astro Boy cartoon, and just generally being an international robot of mystery. The robot's latest escapade has been a guest slot conducting the Tokyo Philarmonic Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. QRIO's next trick? Stealing your girlfriend.
Read MoreA new robotic cop has hit the streets of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, Robotcop the Third, which was built by researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, isn't dispassionately chasing down criminals (or taking matters into its own hands and single-handedly cleaning up the streets of Detroit). Instead it's designed to teach kids about how to fight crime and stay out of trouble. Boring. [Thanks, Roland]
Read MoreWe're not used to cellphone companies coming out with robots (at least not over here), but South Korea's biggest carrier, SK Telecom, just introduced a new security bot which they'll start selling this summer. The robot, which is actually built by Mositech, can detect a fire, gas leak, or "suspicious" activity and automatically a beam a message (with photos) to your cellphone. The best part: it only costs $850, or a fraction of what other guard robots on the market like the Banryu retail for. [Via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
Read MoreThe Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner (pictured at right) has an almost cult-like following, but they've still got a long way to go before you'll be able to throw out your regular vacuum. That's why Hoover, probably the best-known vacuum cleaner company there is, has yet to introduce their own robovac. They say they're concerned about "performance", but that a robotic vacuum cleaner is definitely in their future and that they'd like to build ones that can also clean stairs and furniture.
Read MoreOver at Asahi.com, a profile of Yoichi Takamoto, the president of Tsmuk, the company behind the Banryu, a fierce-looking robotic guard dragon designed to protect homes from intruders. They cost nearly 2 million yen (about $18,000), but they've managed to sell 30 of the robots which can sense any disturbances and automatically alert its owner via cellphone. Why'd they decide to build robotic guard dragons and not robotic guard dogs? Takamoto explains that Sony had already cornered the market in robotic dogs with the Aibo.
Read MoreFaced with a shortage of young people to take care of the elderly, Japan is doing exactly what you'd expect them to do and turning to robots to get the job done: This spring Japanese companies plan to start marketing a "robot suit," a motorized, battery-operated pair of pants designed to help the aged and infirm move around on their own. Then there is the Wakamaru, a mobile, three-foot-high speaking robot equipped with two camera eyes. It is used largely by working people to keep an eye on their elderly parents at home. And then of course there's the incredibly disturbing/enticing image of Sanyo's robotic human washing machine (pictured at right), which we're having installed here at Engadget HQ next week.
Read MoreWe've seen a few of these pop up in Japan, but now there's an American-made robotic exoskeleton suit, as well. Researchers at UC Berkeley have created the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton, or BLEEX, which consists of mechanical metal leg braces that are connected rigidly to the user at the feet, and, in order to prevent abrasion, more compliantly elsewhere. The device includes a power unit and a backpack-like frame used to carry a large load...The researchers point out that the human pilot does not need a joystick, button or special keyboard to "drive" the device. Rather, the machine is designed so that the pilot becomes an integral part of the exoskeleton, thus requiring no special training to use it. In the UC Berkeley experiments, the human pilot moved about a room wearing the 100-pound exoskeleton and a 70-pound backpack while feeling as if he were lugging a mere 5 pounds. All we can say is that we're glad there's finally a homegrown powered exoskeleton out there.
Read MoreIt's not made by Ferrari but it's expensive like one, come in red, and was designed by Kiyoyuki Okuyama, the same man who brought us the elite Ferrari Enzo. A 39 centimeter tall humanoid robot from a new company called ZMP, the Nuvo looks a bit retro — like something out of Iron Giant or a Jack Kirby comic — but it's strictly high tech. Users can control the Nuvo from the PC using Bluetooth or if they really want to impress their friends, they can control it using their cellphone with a special accessory that allows them to navigate using a real time video feed from the robot's camera eye.
Read MoreSamsung is coming out with a redesigned version of their DuoCam combination digital camcorder/still camera. Rather than try to do both with the same sensor, the VP-D6050i actually has two lenses, one for recording video and one for capturing five megapixel still images (and you don't have to swivel it around to switch from one mode to the other like you had to with the older DuoCams). And to sweeten the deal the VP-D6050i is one of the very few digital cameras that can accept more than one type of Flash memory card, and will work with Memory Stick, MMC, and SD cards.
Read MoreWe were lucky enough to get to play with one of these at the Consumer Electronics Show this past January, but it wasn't until yesterday that Samsung offically announced their new YH-999 personal video player which will run on Microsoft's new Portable Media Center software. The YH-999 will have a 3.5-inch LCD screen and have a 20GB. Samsung is claiming that it is the world's smallest digital multimedia player, but we'll just have to see about that.
Read MoreWe've long-wished that Samsung would release their Nexio handheld (pictured at right) here in the States, and it looks like the next version, the Nexio XP30, might make it over here in early2005. The XP30, which runs on Windows CE. NET, is supposed to have a 400MHz processor, a 5-inch widescreen LCD, 192MB of memory, built-in 802.11b, a CompactFlash memory card slot, a USB port, and an optional keyboard cover.
Read MoreThese days it seems like most toys for kids end up using technology as a substitute for imagination, but MIT's Media Lab is developing toys to help kids learn and invent without restricting them to wooden blocks, Legos, and Playmobil sets. Their new I/O Brush is a digital paint brush with a camera and sensors embedded in the business end. The idea is that kids pick a paint color and texture by pointing the brush at an object in the real world — a sort of visual sampling — and then they paint the sample on a digital screen. [Via FilterFine]
Read MoreWired News reports on the Degree Confluence Project, a new website that is trying to collect photos from every point on the globe (at least the ones on dry land) where the whole-number degrees of latitude and longitude intersect (they also note that it gives people who bought GPS devices something to do). So far about 3,000 of the 16,000 confluence points on land have been documented, but a few of the points, like a few high up in the Himalayas or another on a nuclear testing site in Nevada, are going to be tough to ever get to. [Pictured: The intersection of 23 degrees north and 10 degrees east, which is in the desert of southern Algeria.]
Read MoreYesterday it was the Sawstop, today it's the Sawfish, a remote-controlled robotic submarine from Triton Logging that comes with a chainsaw for cutting down underwater trees. We hadn't even realized that there were trees underwater that needed cutting down, but apparently there are some 200 million trees worldwide that are at the bottom of lakes and reservoirs that were created by the building of hydroelectric dams. If the water at the bottom of the lake is cold enough, the trees usually don't rot and can actually be sold as lumber. [Via Slashdot]
Read MoreReader Andy Brenner went to Japan last month and actually experienced first-hand one of those sushi restaurants that calculates your bill by scanning RFID tags attached to each of the plates. Fortunately for us he snapped a picture of one of the plates, flipping it over to reveal the waterproof RFID tag glued underneath.
Read MoreA group of Japanese scientists have managed to create a solar photovoltaic chip that can convert light into electricity by strapping blue-green bacteria, which use photosynthesis to create energy, to silicon chips. Not technically a gadget, but sort of creepy and fascinating all at the same time.
Read MoreFrom Japan (of course!), a new type of bicycle tire that automatically reinflates itself while the bike is being pedaled. The Air Hub automatically keeps tire pressure up by taking the kinetic energy of the wheel's rotation and using it to power an air pump mounted inside the hub of the wheel. Any excess air is automatically let out to keep the tire from bursting. [Thanks, Katie]
Read MoreScientists at UCLA have used nanotechnology to make the world's smallest elevator, a "molecular platform" that is just two and a half nanometers in height that can be raised or lowered on command.
Read MoreSan Jose Mercury News piece on some of the wackier inventions coming out of Silicon Valley these days, including a padlock that uses letters instead of numbers, a magnifying glass for cellphones, a guinea-pig-powered lawnmower (which we're pretty sure was already invented on the Flintstones). The funniest part of all this is that the one of the Google ads that comes up with the story (at least when we were reading it) is a text ad for www.GuineaPigSecrets.com, which promises to teach you "Everything You Really Need To Know In Order To Rescue A Guinea Pig!" You could probably start by freeing it from that lawnmower it's been trapped in. [Thanks, Katie]
Read MoreThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which most recently was in the news for the charming fiasco that was the Grand Challenge, has built a portable atomic clock that's accurate to within 0.0000001 seconds. While it'd be nice to have an atomic wristwatch, the real reason DARPA developed this is to reduce the military's reliance on GPS signals for navigation.
Read MoreIt's almost a cliche to talk about how nanotechnology is going to solve all sorts of our problems, but we truly want to believe Lucent and mPhase when they say they're using it to improve the perennial laggards of the technology world: batteries. It's a bit beyond our level of expertise, (something involving the "fine control of liquids at the micro and macro scale"), but if a nanobattery means that we finally can get a laptop that can last for more than five minutes without needing to be recharged, we'll be happy.
Read MoreWe're not even sure how exactly to describe the Solar Plant or exactly how it works, but somehow we're not surprised to hear that it comes from Japan. From what we can gather, it's a lamp in the shape of a young sapling that you expose to sunlight during the day, and then at night begins to glow, emitting the light it's absorbed. Comes in green, yellow, and clear. [Via CacheOp]
Read MoreYou gotta admit that this is a little freaky: the Washington Post reports that scientists are experimenting with putting implants directly into people's brains. The so-called "brain pacemakers", which provide electrical stimulation directly to different parts of the brain, are ostensibly being created to treat a whole range behaviorial and neurological disorders, but you know that eventually someone is going to figure out how use a brain pacemaker for "recreational" purposes. [Via Slashdot]
Read MoreNew wristwatch from SpeedTech Instruments that can alert you to changing weather. The WW-1, which retails for about $150, has a built-in barometer and altimeter, can measure wind speed and calculate wind chill, and of course does all the regular stuff you expect a watch to do.
Read MoreExtremeTech interviews two of the teams competing in this saturday's Grand Challenge, DARPA's road race to see which autonomous robot can get from Barstow, CA to Las Vegas the most quickly. First one to cross the finish line wins a cool million bucks. Disappointingly, Anthony Levandowski, leader of the team behind the Ghost Rider, the only entrant which is a motorcycle, admits that their entry isn't even designed to win the race — it can't go fast enough to complete the course in the ten hours allotted — but that they're just hoping to land some government contracts. Fortunately, the other team interviewed, Team LoGHIQ (pictured at right with their vehicle), is in it to win it.
Read MoreIf mace isn't quite doing the job for you anymore, you might want to look into the Phasor Blast Wave Pistol, an "experimental" device which is intended to scare away animals, but its "high pressure complex sonic shock waves", which create discomfort, disorientation, and nausea, can also be used on people. In fact, the misnamed "Information Unlimited" carries a whole range of sonic devices, including the Phasor Pain Field Blaster; the Phasor Pain Field Generator (for crowd control); and the Ultrasonic Blaster (for blowing holes in metal — or cleaning jewelry). [Via GadgetMadness]
Read MoreCypak is trying to convince everyone that they've created a disposable computer made out of paperboard. It only has 32K of memory and as TechDirt says, all they've really done is "mount a chip on paper... and then called it a disposable computer. On the other hand, sounds more like a fancified RFID tag to us, but they do only cost a $1 in bulk. And by combining them with RFID tags there appears to be some interesting applications for integrating them with product packaging, like making it possible to keep track of every time a medicine tablet is removed from a container or to make sure that parcels aren't tampered with during shipping.
Read MoreWe weren't able to catch the big 3GSM trade show in Cannes, France, last week, but after hearing about some of the crazy cellphones that surfaced there, we really wish we'd been able to make it. Some of the oddities include: The Encyclo-phone, which has the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica stored on it; the Defenderfone, which has a built-in stun gun; the X-PandaCam, which can project a slideshow onto a wall from as far as 10 meters away; and most disturbingly (and we hope this is some sort of hoax), the Nippit 3000, a special chip from Prophy-Lectric meant to be installed into cellphones. The Nippit 3000 can project a ultrasonic beam that supposedly kill any sperm within a range of 18 feet and is supposed to be used as a form of birth control. What's terrifying is that anyone crazy enough to employ such a bizarre method of birth control probably shouldn't be reproducing anyway.
Read MoreMimicking the way the human eye works, Philips has created a camera lens that can focus without any moving parts and is made entirely out of two non-mixing fluids. The Philips FluidFocus lens consists of two immiscible (non-mixing) fluids of different refractive index (optical properties), one an electrically conducting aqueous solution and the other an electrically non-conducting oil, contained in a short tube with transparent end caps. The internal surfaces of the tube wall and one of its end caps are coated with a hydrophobic (water-repellent) coating that causes the aqueous solution to form itself into a hemispherical mass at the opposite end of the tube, where it acts as a spherically curved lens. The supposed advantage of the FluidFocus lens is that because it has no moving parts it can be manufactured cheapily and easily, meaning that focusing lenses could be brought to all sorts of things (like cameraphones and low-end digital cameras) which usually only have fixed-focus lenses.
Read MoreDean Takahashi, who we used to work with at Red Herring about a million years ago, reviews HP's new mobile printer with built-in Bluetooth, the Deskjet 450wbt, which can wirelessly print photos taken with Nokia's 3650, 6600, 6620, and 7650 cameraphones. Wirelessly printing from your phone sounds easy enough, but the pictures you'll get aren't too great, though that's because of the phone not the printer. That, of course, will be changing once one megapixel cameraphones start showing up here in the US. [Via Reiter's Camera Phone Report]
Read MoreEvery company coming out with a cellphone running on Symbian's UIQ operating system seems to have a different approach for dialing. Sony Ericsson uses keypads that flip down, BenQ handsets put it below the screen, and Motorola skips the keypad altogether. Sure you don't need an actual physical keypad with actual buttons to dial a phone, but it's nice to have one, especially when you can you use it to tap out text messages as well. Anyway, now there's yet another approach from Arima. With their new smartphone they put the keypad in a cover that flips all the way over the top to the back of the phone when you need to access the entire screen. Other than the new approach to key placement, Arima's smartphone is simply a tri-band GSM phone running on the UIQ OS with a 1.3 megapixel camera and Bluetooth.
Read MoreSouthpaws rarely get any love from the gadget manufacturers, but Sony Ericsson is coming out with a left-handed version of its new Z200 flipphone. It isn't really all that different except that they've reversed the keypad so that the buttons run from right to left rather than the other way around. We know that somebody must have done this before, right? Anyway, Virgin Mobile is going to carry the phone in the UK, no word yet on a US release.
Read MoreTapland, a website dedicated to Tapwave's Zodiac gaming handheld, visited the Game Developers Conference last week and spotted some sort of PDA phone with a high-resolution VGA-quality LCD screen that we'd never heard of before. The PDA, which had the brand name "Intrinsic" on it, was being used by one of the companies showing at the conference to demo a mobile game. Anyone recognize it? UPDATE: Mystery solved. Looks like Tapland misspelled the brand of the PDA. Reader Luke Klein-Brandt points out that it's actually "Intrinsyc" not "Intrinsic" and that the PDA in question is a reference design.
Read MoreBrighthand had dinner with some of the higher-ups at Sony's handheld computing division, and learns that Sony isn't making a smartphone because of a non-compete with Sony Ericsson (no surprise there), but that they could easily put a cellular radio and antenna into their UX50 Clie handheld (pictured at right) and that it's likely that they will in some future version of the device.
Read MoreMobileBurn was able to check out Nokia's pricey new 9500 Communicator, which has all the bells and whistles — Bluetooth, WiFi, a large color LCD screen, compatibility with the new high-speed EDGE networks — everything except a keyboard you'd actually want to use, apparently.
Read MoreAfter nearly six months of delay, Motorola's V600, which is sure to be the hit accessory for your skimpy summer wardrobe, is finally shipping to AT&T Wireless stores this week. It's been so long since we first heard about this phone that you may have forgotten what a powerful punch this svelte little clamshell packs. It's smaller than the Sony Ericsson Z600, but sports a large color screen, quad-band GSM, a VGA-quality digital camera, built-in Bluetooth and can even play MP3s as its ringtones. Reports say you can already order them by calling AT&T, but they should be in stores by the end of the week.
Read MoreWhat the hell is going on in Hong Kong? First it was that 13-year-old boy who tried to kill his parents after they unplugged his video game, now it's a 14-year-old girl who attacked her mother with a knife and a wooden pole after she decide to take away her cellphone. When the Hong Kong police showed up they found mother barricaded in a bedroom with the girl hacking away at the door (like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, The Register notes). They eventually subdued the girl with pepper spray. Maybe she just had an important call to make?
Read MoreMSMobiles reveals that HTC, the same Taiwanese manufacturer that makes the SPV and SPV E200 Microsoft Smartphone-powered cellphones for European cell carrier Orange, is going to build a Smartphone for Motorola. Not a ton of details about the phone itself, except that it'll be compatible with Nextel's iDEN network, and from the looks of it will be a cameraphone with some sort of high-res LCD screen on the outside. Could this be the i930 we heard about last year?
Read MoreTheir P30 smartphone still hasn't come out yet, but BenQ has already moved on to the P31, a slightly improved version of the P30 which will run on Symbian's UIQ operating system and have tri-band GSM/GPRS, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, built-in Bluetooth, a large 2.5-inch touchscreen, and an SD memory card. We've heard that the P31 might also have WiFi have built-in, but we haven't found confirmation of this. [Thanks to Luis for the pic]
Read MoreNokia's head of developer relations revealed a few more details about the N-Gage 2 at this weeks Game Developers Conference. The phone, the sequel to their poorly received (to say the least) N-Gage gamephone which came out last year, is supposed to correct a few of the defects of its predecessor (like the fact that you have to remove the battery to swap games) and will be backwards-compatible with games for the first N-Gage. But the biggest news is the end of all the sidetalkin' (see demonstrated in the photo at right): the next-gen N-Gage will have its speaker and mic mounted on its face like a regular phone. We've got to admit that we're almost saddened to hear that Nokia is going to try and fix all the problems with the N-Gage — the foibles and hijinks of the phone always proved incredibly entertaining. [Thanks, Jason]
Read MoreA few months back we were able to check out a pre-production model of Sierra Wireless' forthcoming Voq Smartphone, and our initial impressions weren't too great, mainly because we thought its fold-out QWERTY keyboard wasn't so hot (it felt like it was going to break off). We weren't the only ones making that complaint, and apparently someone at Sierra Wireless was listening. Alan Reiter reports that he was able to play with a new version of the phone the other day and that it now sports a sturdier keyboard. It's not as good as the BlackBerry's keyboard, he says, but it is better than what you'll find on the Treo 600.
Read MoreSo $8,500 sounds like a ridiculous amount to spend on a Pocket PC, especially one that's really just a modified iPAQ h5550 from HP. But Geekzone reviews Surveylab's ike (which is mainly meant to be used by utility workers and other people who probably won't be paying for it themselves), and for that extra eight grand they put the iPAQ h5550 into a special ruggedized casing and add GPS, a digital camera, a laser range finder, and a digital compass.
Read MoreBack when we told you about AT&T Wireless sending their customers low-end phones in exchange for non-850MHz smartphones, we didn't know what was going to happen with their Microsoft Pocket PCs and Smartphones, though we've recently learned that Motorola's MPx100 Smartphone will be compatible with AT&T's new network and they should have it by this Summer. Apparently AT&T also has some Pocket PC plans as well. HP's long-rumored Pocket PC Phone (which may or may not be called the iPaq 6000 when it eventually launches) is due out this June, but you're out of luck if you want to use it with AT&T, since T-Mobile is reported to have a three month exclusive on it. So now the word is that AT&T will launch a new Pocket PC Phone from Audiovox in the next few months (the phone is actually made by Wistron, who also make the phone for Lenovo). Details are slim but they claim that the SP230a will have a 400MHz processor, 32MB ROM, 64MB RAM, and support tri-band GSM (850/1800/1900 — i.e. it'll work with AT&T).
Read MoreTo go along with that Japanese cellphone which analyzes your skin, a whole bunch of health-care handsets turned up at Korea's International Medical and Hospital Equipment Show this week. Among them, a cellphone for diabetics from LG with a microchip that can measure glucose levels, then gather up the data and automatically send it off to a person's doctor; a phone which can measure the percentage of fat in your body; one that gauges skin humidity level; and lastly, a handset with a built-in "massaging function" (we'll leave that up to your imagination). [Via SmartMobs]
Read MoreWe're not sure whether calling Audiovox the "Apex of cellphones" is a compliment or a diss, but we do agree with Om Malik that they are on the cusp of shedding their image as being only a low-end handset manufacturer (though we do wish the phones were slightly better designed). Among the phones they announced this morning are the CDM-8930, a clamshell-style phone with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera and a swiveling, 2-inch, 262,000 color display and the CDM-8920, a clamshell-style phone with a 1.3 megapixel camera with flash.
Read MoreWe were all jazzed up about the prospect of Hitachi's fuel-cell-powered PDA. That is, until we saw this photo of it posted up at I4U. They say it's just a prototype, and all we have to say is that it really better just be a prototype. If the actual final product, which isn't due out until next year, is as grossly oversized as the PDA pictured, Hitachi is going to have a hard time convincing anyone to buy one.
Read MoreA new high-end CDMA flipphone (which is compatible with the kind of network used by Verizon and Sprint) from Nokia. The 6255 has both internal and external color displays, a VGA quality digital camera (with flash), a slot for MMC memory cards, Bluetooth, a built-in FM tuner, and software for playing MP3s and videos. Should be out sometime around the end of the year.
Read MoreWe've been hearing about Digit Wireless' Fastap cellphone keypad (which squeezes a full alphabetical keyboard by interspersing lowered number keys between raised letter keys) forever, and the first handset with one, a modified LG 5450, is going to be offered by Telus Mobility in Canada. Our impatience with tapping out text messages on a regualr numeric keypad is what drove us into the arms of our Treo 600, so we'd be curious to see how well a Fastap cellphone works.
Read MoreTaking so long that we're not even sure we care anymore, Royal says they're just about to release their way overdue Linux-based PDA, the Linea LX. Unless of course you really, really need to have a PDA with Linux on it, the specs on Linea LX (a 200MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, a 3.5-inch LCD) don't seem like anything to get excited about, especially given its expected retail price of $399. [Via Slashdot]
Read MoreOur man in Hannover, Eric Lin, reports straight from the CeBIT show floor: We're going to skip the the regular mobile phones and go straight for the smartphones. You're not interested in the low-end stuff anyway, right? We're also going to ignore talking about the differences between each of the varios smartphone operating systems, because, well, either you already know which one you like or you simply don't care. Microsoft: I have seen them all, and honestly, it's going to be tough to impress me. Despite claims to the contrary, we totally missed the the i250 at the Samsung booth, though other sharp eyed websites caught it - still, I can't actually comment on it. The Motorola was clearly the bottom of the barrel. Being one of the lucky few who used a Sendo Z100 before Microsoft and Sendo split up, I can honestly say this phone gave me horrible flashbacks to that first Smartphone. Sure, it has Bluetooth and a decent camera, but it's big, feels stiff, and doesn't exactly reek of cool or quality. The Sagem is a little better, but I've also heard some poor reports about it's performance. The only thing I really didn't like about it was the joystick, which was difficult to use and unresponsive - other than that it was pretty typical. I didn't get a chance to play with the Mitac 8860 (pictured at right), just look at it, and, boy, was it big - still as big as the other beasts we've seen from Mitac. Symbian: Everyone has a new Symbian smartphone. The Motorola A1000 and BenQ P30 use the UIQ version of the operating system, and though neither are brand new, neither has gone on sale yet. The Motorola is the same size as the Sony Ericsson P900, which seems like a small miracle considering their previous UIQ models have all been as big as a house. The BenQ P30 is thin and narrow and feels so good in your hand, but the external antenna kind of ruins the form factor and the pocketability. The keys, despite the fact that they look like little lines, are well spaced and fairly high, making them very easy to dial with. It's pretty nice already, but BenQ says they're already working on a successor with an integrated antenna and additional features. Samsung, Panasonic and Nokia each launched new Series 60 phones. The Nokia 7610 (pictured at right) is the same height as the 6600, but it is narrower and thinner (though not by huge amounts, but still enough to notice). The one megapixel camera is nice, but the coolest thing is the Lifeblog application, a little piece of mobile blogging software that could make converts out of many people, and the desktop version is equally nice. Nokia obviously put alot of thought into this. The Panasonic X700 is small and light. It feels great in the hand, and can even fit into your change pocket - a small miracle for a Series 60 phone. However, the camera is oddly placed near the hinge of the flip and taking a clear, steady picture is quite difficult. Other than that, this could be the cream of the Series 60 crop. Being a Series 60 user myself, it will be hard for me to choose between the 7610 and X700, I tell you. The Samsung D710 was a bit of a hog. See our evaluation in the Samsung review for physical descriptions. The one thing not mentioned below is the fact that the camera application is SLOW on that device. After taking a picture the Samsung said "please wait 15 seconds," which already sounded absurd, but when it actually took about 20 before we could do anything else, we just put the phone back down. And *this* was the long awaited successor to the D700, a phone that was delayed so long they simply scrapped it? SAD. Though Siemens didn't really have any new smartphones, they showed off a limited edition glossy black "McLaren" SX-1. The color was the only thing new about it. It looks better in black than it does in white (which is pictured at right), but it still has a screwy keypad. The Samsung may be sad, but the Sendo X, well I don't even know what to say about it. I've obviously had bad experiences with Sendo in the past, but I was trying to look at the Sendo X with fresh eyes. Sure, Sendo have been true to form, delaying the release of the X again and again just like a certain other smartphone model, but that's a good thing because the X clearly is not ready for prime time. In the course of about four minutes, a friend and I managed to crash all three display models. For those who have been waiting for the Sendo X based on its impressive specs, I recommend you find another model to lust after. Unless, of course, you're a Sendo employee or have some crazy sort of attachment to the brand name (which would be a little weird, if you ask us). Palm: The only new Palm phone was the Samsung i520. While it doesn't look much different from its predecessor on the inside, the outside is new. It looks like a slightly larger Samsung e710, with the slick black OLED screen built neatly into its blue cover. If you want a Palm OS phone, at least this one doesn't look too dorky or just like all the other flip phones all your friends have. I think you'll be impressed with its design.
Read MoreSamsung released nothing short of a million new mobile phones this week at CeBIT. So many of them are gadgety that it's hard to pick one as the star of the show, but their new P730 (pictured above) probably gets the most looks. It's just a regular clamshell-style megapixel cameraphone, but has a crazy flip and twist hinge that lets you use the phone like a regular flip phone, an L-shaped cameraphone (a la the Motorola V80) or a small candy-bar style digital camera (like the Sony Ericsson S700). Honestly, despite the gadget-factor, the hinge is ugly, the phone is thick and the camera button is actually hidden under the hinge, so you can't activate it except when the phone is in regular flip mode (not to be confused with Busta's flipmode). Samsung also launched two new CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO phones, that could potentially make their way into the US on Verizon's new high-speed network. The SPH-V4400 has a camera that points out of the side of the phone and a screen that flips and then twists sideways so that the phone looks like Panasonic's SV-AV100 mini-camcorder when you use it to take pictures. The SCH-V500 is a flip phone for video conferencing with a screen that has a hinge in the center so it can rotate 90 degrees into landscape mode. Finally, Samsung has launched the D710 (pictured at right), the successor to their never-released D700 Series 60 smartphone. The phone looks and feels like a Samsung version of Nokia's 7650 (the original Series 60 phone), but improves the resolution of the camera to a megapixel and is the first phone I've ever used with a slide-out keypad where the keys were actually comfortable and easy to press. The only problem is that like the 7650, the D710 is a little too thick - at least for our tastes, but the spring-loaded slide is sure to get some ooohs and aaahs when you take it out of your pocket.
Read MoreYes, we know it's frustrating when it seems like every amazing new cellphone you read about is meant only for Europe or Japan. Well, Motorola's just announced three new high-end cameraphones which are definitely coming out here in the States: The A845 (pictured at right), a 3G cameraphone with built-in Bluetooth designed for video calling. Should be out from AT&T Wireless in the second half of this year. The A804, a one megapixel cameraphone which is compatible with both CDMA and GSM cellular networks, and so could potentially be offered by either Sprint or Verizon as a "world phone" that'll work when you're overseas. The V710, a one megapixel clamshell-style cameraphone with Bluetooth.
Read MoreWe just spotted BenQ's new P50 Pocket PC Phone here at CeBIT, and, well, let's just say that the Treo 600 has some competition. The new P50 is about the same size as the Treo 600, and has a large LCD screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel camera (with flash), and best of all, a mini-keyboard. Oh yeah, and it's supposed to run on the new and improved version of the Pocket PC Phone operating system that Microsoft isn't announcing until next week. We're hearing that Motorola's MPx will run on that new OS as well, which is why they haven't been showing any working models of it here at the trade show.
Read MoreOk, so scroll down a few posts. See that Motorola MPx Pocket PC Phone we were just talking about? Try hard to forget about it. It's going to sell for over $900. At least that's what the price in Europe, where Motorola lists as 749 euros. The US price might be a bit less, but probably not by much. [Via Smartphone Thoughts]
Read MoreMobile Burn has some photos of this year's most lust-inducing smartphone, Motorola's dual-hinged MPx Pocket PC Phone, which opens one way to be used as a cellphone and the other way to be used as a PDA. If that's not enough to melt your heart, the MPx also has a built-in QWERTY keyboard, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, WiFi, and Bluetooth.
Read MoreIt isn't even supposed to be a real product (despite the photos that have surfaced), but a tech support page has turned up on HP's website for the iPAQ h6300, a Pocket PC Phone with a whole slew of features like built-in WiFi, Bluetooth, and a digital camera. That's usually about as good an indication as any that something's in the pipeline. Or the good people at HP could just be messing with us. [Via Pocket PC Thoughts]
Read MoreThe word from on high at palmOne is that we should expect a bunch of new Palm handhelds next month. In an interview with BBC News Online, palmOne CEO Todd Bradley that due up are some new Palms that will have more memory for storing music and video files. We're guessing that this'll be the Tungsten E2 and Zire 31 we've been hearing about, but there's also a chance they have something else up their sleeves. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreNormally we think that people freaking out over the misues of cameraphones is usually unjustified, but we wouldn't blame anybody for being a bit nervous about Chubutokkisangyo Corp.'s new attachment for Japanese cameraphones which is specifically designed for making it easy to covertly spy on other people. Maybe we're off base here, but couldn't this basically be done with a software application rather than having to attach something to the phone?
Read MoreWe were under the misconception that you didn't need to do anything to convince teenagers and pre-teens to use cellphones, but apparently worried that they're missing out on this critical part of the market, AT&T Wireless is sponsoring classes at science museums to indoctrinate kids into the ways in which they too can join the cellular revolution. Something must be working because a survey shows that nearly one-third of 8- to 10-year-olds have cellphones.
Read MoreSony says it's coming out with a personalized radio service for cellphones. But not for the US. The service, which'll be part of their new "Connect" online music store, will probably only be available through European carriers, in the US and Japan you'll just be able get regular, non-personalized music streams. The audio fidelity isn't going to be that hot, either. Since it has to be sent over a regular GPRS data connection, the best they'll be able to offer is about 16 kilobits per second.
Read MoreMSMobiles has the dirt on an unannounced new low-end cellphone from Sagem running on Microsoft's Smartphone operating system. Despite supposedly being low-priced, the Sagem Smartphone (we haven't seen a name for it), will have decent specs — 32MB of RAM, a 200MHz processor, a VGA quality digital camera that can record video clips, and a 64,000 color display. So far every Smartphone-powered smartphone that's come out has been pretty pricey (carrier subsidies and rebates notwithstanding), so the introduction of an inexpensive, entry-level model would be a welcome development.
Read MoreFor the narcissists in the house, Philips new 639 cellphone has a special PolyLED external screen that transforms into a mirror and can also dispay animations and caller ID: Philips has applied PolyLED technology in the Philips 639's sensational 'Magic Mirror' display screen on the outside of the phone's clamshell design. With the phone in standby mode, the display provides a clear mirror – ideal for consumers who need to check their appearance on the move. As soon as the phone receives a call or a message, the mirror becomes the display. This can be further discovered on the phone's primary high-resolution 65K colors TFT display. The Magic Mirror is also a versatile display screen, capable of showing a variety of animations. The display also provides a unique 'window' on incoming calls: the Mirror feature or the identity of a caller can be seen through the mirror with the phone's new IconCall feature which allows fast, easy identification. [Via The Red Ferret Journal]
Read MoreWe're sorta over this whole "land-line" thing, but in case you aren't and need to have the best of the best, Siemens' new Gigaset SL740/SLX740isdn is a cordless cameraphone (the first ever!) that can snap photos and send them as MMS messages to cellphones. It can send regular text messages as well.
Read MoreNew 3G Japanese cellphone from from Sanyo called the A5505SA with a dizzying array of features, any one of which we'd be happy to find in a cellphone here in the US: built-in GPS navigation, a digital compass, an FM tuner, a one megapixel camera, miniSD memory card slot, and 3D stereo speakers. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreWe can get excited about Nokia and Sony Ericsson coming out with one megapixel cameraphones, but Samsung and Pantech & Curitel say they'll have a two megapixel model on the market by July. Better yet, their two megapixel cameraphone will have a 2x optical zoom lens (which are virtually non-existent in cameraphones) and a built-in MP3 player. [Via Reiter's Camera Phone Report]
Read MoreNokia finally gets with the program and comes out with a one megapixel cameraphone. The new 7610 comes with their new Lifeblog service that we mentioned the other day, built-in Bluetooth, a 65,000 color screen, and a massive 72MB of memory. Should be out in the second quarter of this year.
Read MoreFinding your way around in Japan can be next to impossible, in large part because they don't number their streets in the same way we do here. Consequently GPS navigation systems, especially built-into cellphones, are massively popular (before that faxing maps was huge and before that we don't know what people did). A couple of Japanese firms, Index and Jicoux, have a new navigation application for cellphones there that can show on a radar-type display the location of friends, train and bus stations, etc. on a map. What's best about this is that when you get to within 50 meters of you're going, the cellphone's display switches from a compass pointer to an actual 3D map of the area to make it easiest to find your destination. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreWe'd still rather just have a cellphone that has WiFi as an option (where the heck are they?), but ZyXEL, a company that apparently chose the letters for its name at random, has a new WiFi phone out that lets you make cheap Voice over IP phone calls from 802.11b hotspots. We'd consider using the Prestige 2000W (which looks just like a regular cordless phone) at home, but we really don't see ourselves carrying one of these around with us just to be able to make free phone calls from Bryant Park. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreNot that it matters much for us here in the States, but UK mobile carrier O2 says they're going to start integrating Research In Motion's popular BlackBerry email technology into their XDA II Pocket PC Phone. (Ok, we admit it, we really just wanted an excuse to post this photo.)
Read MoreIt's not the Treo 610 everyone's been buzzing about, but TreoCentral says that cameraless version of the Treo 600 will be available from Sprint on April 21st. Why in the hell would you want a Treo 600 that does less than the original? Well, a lot of people don't have a much of a choice in the matter, since businesses that decide to issue employees Treo 600s for work often also have policies banning cameras (and thus, cameraphones) from the workplace.
Read MoreMobileBurn has the scoop on the S65, a new cameraphone that Siemens is all set to announce next week. There aren't a heck of a lot of details available, but what we do know is that it's going to have a 1.3 megapixel digital camera built-in and come with a passable 32MB of memory.
Read MoreCameraphones being banned from gym locker rooms, factories, and classrooms isn't exactly novel anymore, but the Saudi Arabian government is taking things a step further. To enforce the kingdom-wide ban on the devices they've started going store to store, searching for the contraband goods. Given everything we've heard about crime and punishment there, it sounds like store owners caught selling cameraphones are getting off remarkably easy: confiscated handsets are re-exported and the store owners are compensated for their loss. [Via Reiter's Camera Phone Report]
Read MoreSurely adding to the controversy over whether it's for real or not (a controversy which is both frustrating and delighting Treo 600 owners everywhere), price comparison search engine Shopping.com just added a page for the Treo 610. There aren't any details or specifications listed for it, and the photo is of a regular Treo 600, but this definitely adds some more fuel to fire.
Read MoreIt sounds like spam to us, but someone at Nokia must have thought this was brilliant marketing: send a picture SMS message to customers inviting them to check out the Club Nokia Nokia lounge at the massive CeBIT tech trade happening later this month in Germany. Unfortunately, the messages also disable the phones of anyone with a Nokia 3510i, 5100, or 6100, breaking them so badly that the phones have to be brought into a Nokia service center (and left there for a day) in order to be fixed.
Read MoreYou might recall the rumors that were flying last month about the iPAQ h6300, a Pocket PC Phone from HP with a whole slew of features like built-in WiFi, Bluetooth, and a digital camera that was supposed to debut next month. There's only one problem. It might not exist. Bargain PDA (which we'll admit, has burned us before) reports that the photos that were circulating might have been of a test unit that isn't ever going to be manufactured. We'll keep an eye on this one.
Read MoreNews of the T919i, a new smartphone from Austrian company Tel.Me. that will run on Microsoft Windows CE (rather than their Smartphone OS) and come with a built-in 2.1 megapixel camera (with flash). No word on when the T919i might actually see the light of day, but we're annoyed that no one is even talking about releasing a two megapixel cameraphone here in the States.
Read MoreOur beloved Treo 600 can play movies and take pictures, but the one thing it can't do is record video clips. Until now. It's still in alpha (which means you're using it at your own risk), but Ryan Rife has released a version of his MovieRec software for the Treo 600. You can't save to memory cards yet — so you might run out space on your phone pretty quickly — but that feature will probably turn up in a subsequent version (which is why they're calling thos one an "alpha").
Read MoreResponding a recent spate of kidnappings there, manufacturer LG is selling a phone with extra features designed specifically for dealing with emergency situations. At the press of a button the "Aladdin" will display the location of three different subscribers (so you can get help) or automatically send a photo to three other people. And SK Telecom has a new service that periodically sends text messages to family or friends with information about your location, so if you disappear they can immediately know your last reported location.
Read MoreCorie Lok says that once WiFi starts popping up in cellphones, the age-old dream of "one person, one phone" (we almost wrote "one vote") is about to become a reality: In the next year, though, Wi-Fi—the popular wireless technology installed in many buildings that allows laptop users to surf the Net—will make mobile phone calls work virtually anywhere. An emerging crop of technologies will stitch Wi-Fi networks and existing cellular networks together, allowing calls to automatically switch between the two. The percentage of mobile phones that are Wi-Fi enabled will grow from near 0 percent last year to 85 percent by 2007, predicts On World, a San Diego, CA-based wireless-market research firm. "I'm very optimistic that within 10 years, most people will be carrying a single phone and making and receiving most of their personal and business calls on that one device," says J. Gerry Purdy, an analyst with Mobiletrax, a Cupertino, CA, mobile- and wireless-research firm. Seems to be a bit optimistic to us, but hey, we won't be complaining if it happens. [Via Futurismic]
Read MoreNo fewer than five new GSM cellphones from Sony Ericsson today, including three intended for North America: the Z500, which has dual color displays and a built-in VGA-quality digital camera which can record video clips; the T637, which has built-in Bluetooth and a digital camera; and the low-end T237, which has a 4,096 color display. Too bad the best two models they've announced probably won't come out there — the swivel-style S700, which has a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, a 262,000 color screen, Bluetooth, an MP3 player, and a slot for the Memory Stick Duo memory card; and the K700 (pictured at right), which has a VGA-quality digital camera with flash, 32MB of memory, and a built-in FM tuner.
Read MorePDA Buyer's Guide review of the Mio 168 from Mitac, the first Pocket PC to come with GPS navigation built-in GPS. Usually hybrid gadgets turn out to be the worst of both worlds, but it sounds like the Mio 168 (which has a 300MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, and an exceptionally bright 3.5-inch LCD), makes for both a decent PDA and a decent GPS navigation device. The only real drawback is that to it does have a bulky antenna for the GPS module.
Read MoreOh man, even more new cellphones from Motorola. The latest three are all "musicphones" that can play MP3s, download music over the air, and have memory card slots for storing songs transferred from a PC. The E398 has built-in 3D stereo surround sound and Bluetooth; the E680 (pictured at right) comes with RealPlayer pre-installed, can play MPEG4 video clips, and has dual surround sound speakers and Bluetooth; while the C650 comes with a digital camera, support for MP3 ringtones, and Motorola's MotoMixer software for creating your own ringtones. [Via PhoneScoop]
Read MoreThe cameraphone is already the fastest selling consumer electronic device of all-time, selling 50 million last year, but that number is expected to more than double this year to 102 million. You always gotta take those kind of projections with a grain of salt, but even so, anyone who thought that cameraphones wouldn't catch on has got to be eating their words right now (or deleting those posts from their blog). [Via PicturePhoning.org]
Read MoreWe already saw a few of these surface earlier this week, now there's yet another video of what is shaping up to be this year's "it" smartphone, Motorola's dual-hinged MPx Pocket PC Phone which comes with a built-in QWERTY keyboard, 1.3 megapixel digital camera, WiFi, and Bluetooth. [Via Pocket PC Thoughts]
Read MoreWe mentioned the other day how Oscar nominees managed to get their hands on Motorola's high-end clamshell V600 cameraphone, but how nobody else would be able to until the end of the month. Well, for whatever reason, the V600 has been delayed yet again. AT&T, who will be launching the flagship model, say they still need to do more testing and don't expect to launch the V600 until sometime in late April or early May - easily five months later than originally planned. By the time this model comes out, it'll already be out of date and out of style. Well, perhaps not quite out of date, since the V600 packs quad-band GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth and MP3 ringtones (though its VGA-quality camera looks measly compared to Motorola's recently announced 1.2 megapixels models).
Read MoreIs Motorola out of control, or what? It feels like all the cellphone news these days is about one of their new phones. Guess they wanted to dominate the 3GSM trade show. Anyway, what may or may not be the last handset of theirs we hear about this week is the Moto E1000. It's a new 3G phone with Push-to-Talk, but we're hesitant to call it a smartphone as it looks like it's merely running an extra big version of Moto's 3-button interface rather than a proper PDA-like operating system. Why extra big? Because this thing has a 320x240 pixel screen, which you're not going to find on too many other phones like this. (Say it with me in your best Kindergarten Cop imitation, "It's not a touchscreen.") Like Moto's other 3GSM belles, the E1000 has a 1.2 MP camera with a flash, expandable memory (using the new T-Flash card standard), and Bluetooth. Despite the big screen and the fact that it has more buttons than a Steel Battalion controller, fortunately the E1000 looks more like an easily pocketable candybar-style phone than your typically massive smartphone.
Read MoreEver since Palm split up into PalmSource (which got the Palm operating system) and palmOne (which got the hardware business), there's been a trickle of speculation that the newly unshackled palmOne might commit what amounts to heresy (in some people's eyes) and start selling handhelds that run on other operating systems besides Palm. Adding some more fuel to the fire is a recent conference call with Morgan Stanley in which Todd Bradley, the CEO and Chairman of palmOne, is asked point blank about the possibility of them making a version of their Treo 600 smartphone running on the Pocket PC operating system and he most definitely does NOT deny it as a possibility. Not that any of this means anything one way or the other (he mainly talks about how there's nothing precluding them from using another OS, not they had anything specific in the works), but it does raise some very interesting possibilities.
Read MoreMotorola appears to be doing its damnedest to keep the MPx220, the followup to its MPx200 Smartphone, under wraps. They're refusing to even acknowledge its existence, even though they announced a few other smartphones in the MPx line at the recent 3GSM trade show last month. Thickening the plot, Mobile Gadget News has what's supposed to be a photo of an actual MPx220. The photo is incredibly, almost annoyingly blurry, leading us to believe that someone must have taken it on the sly with a cameraphone during a business meeting or something, but it does match the other images we've seen of the phone. CoolSmartPhone has what are rumored to be the specs for the MPx220: quad-band GSM/GPRS, a 1.3 megapixel camera, 64MB of RAM, an SD memory card slot, and built-in Bluetooth.
Read MoreMSMobiles reports that it won't be until next year that we see a 3G cellphone running on Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. Not that it makes a bit of difference here in the US, where 3G remains a (somewhat) distant dream, but in Europe high-speed 3G cellular networks are already a reality, and sooner or later anyone willing to shell out some serious cash for a smartphone running Windows Mobile is going to want one compatible with 3G.
Read MoreOm Malik reports that Motorola (not to go totally overboard with news about them this morning) may have included their sleek new V600 cameraphone in the famously overstuffed gift bags given to all Oscar winners and presenters, but good luck getting one if you're a not a celebrity. There's been no official announcement, but supposedly the phones have been delayed, possibly due to some sort of technical problem and now aren't expected out until the end of the month at the earliest.
Read MoreMotorola just announced their latest 3G phone running the Symbian UIQ operating system, the A1000. Its predecessors, the A900 and A925, each had a lukewarm reception when they were made available by 3G carrier 3. The A900 was a boat of a handset and curiously lacked Bluetooth, while, the A925, launched just two weeks ago, swapped in Bluetooth and reducing the size a little bit. Well, Motorola must have been hard at work putting this latest smartphone on a serious diet. The A1000 keeps Bluetooth and the other features of the 925 (while upgrading the camera to 1.2 megapixels), but manages to be smaller and slimmer (though still not sexy yet, sorry, Moto) than either A900 or A925.
Read MoreA somewhat unusual-looking new Pocket PC Phone from ADCOM Group called the EMIRATE 1, which besides being the first Pocket PC built in the United Arab Emirates, also comes with built-in GPS navigation (which they tout as being able to help you find Mecca when it's time to pray), Bluetooth, 64MB of RAM, a 312MHz processor, and an SD card slot.
Read MoreHigher-resolution cameraphones are quickly becoming the standard in Japan, and the latest offered by carrier DoCoMo is Panasonic's 1.3 megapixel P900i. The P900i's built-in camera also as an auto-focus lens, another feature we expect to become commonplace in cameraphones rather soon.
Read MoreLast week Danger showed off their new Hiptop by appointment only at 3GSM in Cannes. Journalists were allowed to write about the new device, but not allowed to take pictures of it. Here's what we know: the device is thinner, and a bit longer. On the face, the new model has a couple of new buttons, a new speaker and mic, and we hear there's a new screen that looks much better [Editor's note - turns out this isn't the case]. But the big news is that the camera is finally built in (with an LED flash), and apparently it's VGA quality. One of the prominent member Hiptopper took a picture with his new baby and posted it to Hiptop Nation, then whoops, Danger asked him remove to the pic. He did, but that didn't stop a loyal devotee from posting it to his own site.
Read MoreOk, so it's March 3rd, and so far there is no absolutely no sign anywhere of the Treo 610, the rumored new and improved version of the Treo 600 that palmOne was supposedly going to unveil a couple of days ago. And curiously enough, Bargain PDA, which appears to have gotten this whole thing started with a post about the Treo 610 back in January, still has something up on their site listing the Treo 610 as "Released: 3/1/2004".
Read MoreNot a name you hear much here in the States (anymore), but Alcatel has several new GSM cellphones coming out, including the One Touch 756, which has a digital camera that can record video clips and the One Touch 835, a clamshell-style cameraphone with a 262,000 color main display and a 65,000 color external caller ID display.
Read MorePocketPCTools says that Asus is planning a Pocket PC with a VGA-quality LCD screen of their own to compete with Toshiba's recently released e800. There isn't a whole lot of other information about the Asus A730 available, except that it'll likely run on the new 2004 version of the Windows Mobile operating system, have a built-in digital camera, and be out sometime around May or June of this year.
Read MoreSmart mobster Howard Rheingold wonders what happens when social networking (like Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, etc.) go mobile and get combined with cellphones, GPS, and location-based services: Considering the popularity of today's deskbound social-networking software, will tomorrow's mobile-presence enthusiasts want to know where their buddies' buddies' are? More likely,when social networking, mobile telephony and locative media collide on the small screen, something altogether surprising will emerge, the way virtual communities, online markets and self-organized dating services emerged from wired cyberspace. Right now, it's an easy bet that the ability to know where your buddies are will become a necessity for the unwired population – less certain is whether you will really want to know that the person standing in front of us in the elevator is a good friend of your good friend. Personal issues of privacy, social boundaries and vulnerability enter the picture when you use technologies to distinguish between the people you want to be available to and those you want to exclude. If our female friends' experiences with Friendster are any indication (e.g. endless virtual harrassment), the most immediate result of Friendster going mobile will be endless real harrassment.
Read MoreFox Sports reports that the Boston Celtics basketball team went on a six game winning streak after the team's owners gave each player an iPod engraved with his name and number. Just six games? [Via MacMinute]
Read MoreThe only two-wheeled robot entered in today's Grand Challenge, Team Blue's tricked out Ghost Rider motorcycle, has withdrawn from the race. No word yet on why.
Read MoreJust wanted to let everybody know that we now have individual RSS feeds for each of our sections, so if you just want all the latest posts related to digital cameras or robots or whatever, you can find a link to that section's feed on the sidebar of its page.
Read MoreThere's something that feels really wrong about the Fishing-CAM, an underwater wireless camera that attaches to the sinker part of a fishing rod and let's you see exactly what's going on down there. [Via Mike's List]
Read MoreAnother player to join the music download competition. Virgin just announced the launch of Virgin Digital in August. Virgin Digital will be the front end for MusicNet — an online distribution company formed by Sony, BMG and Warner Music Group. The Virgin Group laid out ambitious plans to open this summer an online store featuring 700,000 songs. It will launch the Virgin Music Club, where monthly subscribers can listen to songs in a continuous stream, download them to their computer or take them along on their Virgin-branded music players. And it will allow Virgin's cellular phone customers to use their portable phones as MP3 players, downloading and listening to the latest tunes.
Read MoreDuring this years' South By Southwest Festival more than 1,200 live acts will take place in Austin, Texas from March 17 to 21. About 600 musicians have provided free MP3 of their work to be available on the SXSW website. The organizer are also making the catalog available through a shared playlist over a Wi-Fi network. "If someone launches iTunes, these 600 songs will pop up in their iTunes," said Scott Wilcox, chief technical adviser for SXSW. "Because we have their audio in-house, we're able to — with the appropriate permission — make these tracks available for free as part of the promotion for playing South by Southwest."
Read MoreNapster announced that will launch a service dedicated to the UK market before "the end of summer. That means that Apple is still ahead in the game — they're scheduled to launch in Europe during Q2. The Apple service is also expected to cover a number of EU countries and not just the UK. So far the only similar services active in Europe are O2 — the biggest player, and Wippit which has been slowly adding music label catalogs. The move confirms previous assessments which indicate the UK market will become the battlefield for dominance of the global music market. Napster has chosen to "target the UK" as its first European market. A new localized version of Napster 2.0 is set to launch in the UK "before the end of summer", the company said today. The service will be: "Complete with UK-specific genres, promotions, and content from domestic acts, and this will be the first time Napster has been made available outside of North America." The company will offer access to it service using a UK domain, www.napster.co.uk.
Read MoreSony says that next month they're going to come out with an e-book reader that uses Philips' new electronic ink technology. The LIBRIe will have a resolution of 170 pixels per inch (more than twice that of most computer monitors), enough memory to hold up to 500 e-books, and its four AAA batteries provide enough juice to flip through more than 10,000 pages.
Read MoreA new Tablet PC from Fujitsu designed specifically for outdoor use. The Stylistic ST5000 is less than one-inch thick and has the option of an indoor-only 12-inch display or a 10.4-inch display which gets brighter when exposed to direct sunlight rather than all washed out like a regular LCD. Also comes with a 1GHz processor, up to 1GB of RAM, and a shock-mounted 60GB or 40GB hard drive.
Read MoreA new ruggedized Tablet PC from HP. The tr3000 costs a lot more than a regular Tablet PC (about $3500), but then again, you do get a computer you can drop. The new Tablet also comes with a shock-mounted hard drive, an 8.4-inch LCD designed for use outdoors, and meets or exceeds military specifications for shock, dust, and water. [Thanks, Christopher Coulter]
Read MoreNew Tablet PC from Toshiba. The Portege M205, which is a convertible-style Tablet (meaning that it's really a laptop with a screen that can swivel around and fold down), has a 60GB hard drive, built-in 802.11g WiFi, a 1.5GHz procesor, 512MB of RAM, and a 12.1-inch display.
Read MoreThe Tungsten E2, palmOne's not-yet-announced follow-up to their Tungsten E handheld, has been an open secret for months now, and apparently online software store PalmGear accidentally confirmed its existence this week by accidentally listing the Tungsten E2 on its site. There's no definitive word on when the new Palm might be released (could be as early as next week), but the word on the street is that the Tungsten E2 will have a 320x480 pixel display and built-in Bluetooth.
Read MoreThe first e-book reader that uses electronic ink should be out later this year from Philips: The device uses E Ink's tiny fluid-filled balls containing oppositely charged black and white particles, which are layered in a thin film on a sheet of plastic or glass. Connecting this film to electronics allows the reader to display text and graphics by controlling the voltage across each ball, determining whether it appears black or white. The result: higher contrast than newspapers and better resolution than laptop screens. The 15-centimeter-diagonal display is about half the weight and thickness of comparable liquid-crystal readers. [Via Futurismic]
Read MoreBargain PDA has some first thoughts on Sony's recently released Clie PEG-TH55 Palm handheld, the one with built-in WiFi, 32MB of RAM, and a built-in low-res digital camera. So far their big complaint about the TH55 seems to be its ergonomics: In the TH55, Sony continues their holy war against usable buttons. What is with these people? They seem to go lightyears out of their way to design button arrangements that are as poor as possible. In this case, its four tiny bars along the bottom of the screen, left and right buttons placed with the jog—barrel?—and back button on the top rear of the case. What the hell? Okay, I can understand that Sony is trying to make their scroller ambidextrous, but I never had a problem operating a left-mounted jog dial with either hand—less trouble, certainly, than a backwards roller will cause.
Read MoreSome more details about a couple of additions to palmOne's line of lower-end Zire handhelds: an updated version of the Zire 71 that is supposed to have built-in Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera (up from VGA quality), a faster, 300MHz processor, and 32MB of RAM; and the Zire 31, which will have a 200MHz processor, 16MB of RAM, a 160x160 color display, and an SD memory card slot.
Read MoreThere are now not one, but two different programs for recording video clips with your Treo 600: MovieRec (which we'd reported on previously) and now Toysoft's Live!, which can record video but not audio.
Read MoreFrom Japan, a retro-styled, oversized television remote with just two knobs — one for adjusting the volume and another for changing channels. [Via The Red Ferret Journal]
Read MoreJapan's NTT DoCoMo say they're working on a "controller" for home appliances, that'll let you do things with your cellphone like program your digital video recorder to record shows and then watch them later on your handset, remotely turn on and off air conditioners and lights, etc.
Read MoreFrom NEC, a new low-end tablet-style PC running on Linux. The Lookpal is meant for basic tasks like surfing the web and has a 400MHz processor, 32MB of RAM, an 8.4-inch LCD screen, and a CD-ROM drive, but curiously, doesn't have built-in WiFi.
Read MoreMobileGadgetNews has some photos of the MPx100, one of Motorola's new cellphones running on Microsoft's Smartphone operating system, showing it side-by-side with a freakishly tricked out Motorola MPx200 Smartphone.
Read MoreUSA Today, of all places, has a decent roundup of four new wireless technologies we're going to be hearing a lot more about in the next few years: WiMax, 802.16e, 802.11n, and Ultrawideband. [Via OnlineBlog]
Read MoreFrom Samsung, a new wireless 5.1 channel surround sound home theater system that uses Bluetooth to wirelessly connect all the speakers together. [Via I4U]
Read MoreTalk about losing your phone privileges. A judge in Vicenza, Italy has banned two men from ever using cellphones again because they were harrassing their ex-girlfriends with offensive phone calls and text messages. So now it's illegal for any cell carrier in Italy to offer them service.
Read MoreIt looks a little over-designed considering what it is, but if you want a foosball table that won't look out of place next to your iPod, Garlando makes one that will fit right in.
Read MoreSpeaking of portable gaming, Microsoft says that there's no chance that they'll come out with a portable Xbox or any other kind of mobile game console. Instead they're just going to focus on supporting game development for Smartphones and Pocket PCs.
Read MoreIf you want to protect your laptop with something a little more secure than a password, Gateway says they're going to start building biometric fingerprint scanners into their new 450+ series of laptops.
Read MoreAlmost missed this one: Research In Motion is doing a new color BlackBerry, the 7750, for use with Verizon Wireless. Should be out next month. [Via PhoneScoop]
Read MoreAnother sign that the iPod mini is proving to be a hit: Apple has had to delay the player's worldwide launch because of unexpectedly strong sales here in the U.S.
Read MoreOff Roads Adventure is selling customized Segways which have been tricked-out with camouflage paint and ruggedized for off-road use, including a version for all the geek/hunters in the house, a "Stealthy Ground Attack Vehicle" that comes complete with a gun holster.
Read MoreAs far as we can tell, ViewSonic's new V1205S will be the first Tablet PC with the 802.11g version of Intel's power-saving Centrino technology. [Thanks, Christopher Coulter]
Read MoreFrom Imation, a new USB 2.0 Flash drive with a cap that swivels around so that you won't lose it, thankfully solving that major, nagging problem with Flash drives. Comes in 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB varieties.
Read MoreLive from the CeBIT trade show floor, a (blurry) photo of the P50 Pocket PC Phone, BenQ's Treo 600 killer which has a large LCD screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel camera and a mini-keyboard.
Read MorePhoto of the SX1 from Siemens with their new virtual laser keyboard attachment. [Via The Red Ferret Journal]
Read MoreFrom Panasonic, a new cameraphone with a screen that pops out for taking pictures and recording video clips. The X300 should be out this Fall.
Read MoreReuters reports that Microsoft is getting ready to drop the price of Xbox yet again, this time to $149, or less than half of what it cost when it came out.
Read MoreWe're happy any time that robots are forced to compete against one another, so we're considering flying out to San Francisco for this weekend's ROBOlympics, which has events including a robot sumo wrestling, robot soccer, and a robot triathlon.
Read MoreYou might want to carry around a few extra quarters around next time you're trying to find WiFi: some obscure company from Hong Kong is selling a coin-operated wireless access point. [Via Wi-Fi Networking News]
Read MoreFrom CoasterDynamix, an expandable and customizable home model roller coaster kit called the Dragon". They're only taking reservations for the kits right now (they cost $500), but they should start shipping this spring. [Via BoingBoing]
Read MorePocket PC Magazine has a lengthy roundup of Bluetooth GPS receivers from Pharos, TeleType, CoPilot, TomTom, and Hewlett Packard.
Read MoreYou can now add Qwest to the list of nationwide cellphone companies. They've had a regional network in the midwest for a little while, but they've decided to launch a national service leasing space on Sprint's network. [Via PhoneScoop]
Read MoreWired News article on disposable gloves from Bernard Technologies that emit chlorine dioxide, a bacteria and virus-killing gas when exposed to light. Chlorine dioxide isn't supposed to be harmful to humans, at least not in small doses.
Read MoreRemember that fluidfocus lens from Philips we mentioned the other day that mimics the way human eye worksand has no moving parts? Someone already did it. The Register reports that a French company called speculates that the two companies are headed towards a legal showdown.
Read MoreNissin is coming out with a "light-emitting stick" that powers an LED by being shaken or slammed against something. What anyone will end up doing with this is beyond us.
Read MoreCan you believe that a full 25% of the cellphones sold this year are expected to have a camera built-into them? It really wasn't that long ago that the notion of a phone with a camera in it was a total novelty. [Via MobileBurn]
Read MoreFrom industrial designer Jacob Jenson, a new "intelligent" smoke detector that isn't completely ugly and grimly functional like every other model out there. The intelligent part is that the detector can automatically alert you when it needs to be cleaned.
Read MoreSony says it's going to build a brand new laboratory dedicated to creating intelligent robots, with the goal being "to bring into existence in five years' time a robot which can communicate so naturally that it is indistinguishable from man."
Read MoreThat's it. It's over. Every single robot entered in the Grand Challenge is now either disabled (read: it crashed or just stopped working) or didn't even make it out of the starting gate in the first place.
Read MoreReuters is reporting that cellphones were used to trigger all those bombs used in this past Thursday's terrorist attacks in Madrid. Each phone was set with an alarm to go off at exactly 7:39AM. [Via MobileTracker]
Read MoreThe makers of the Mini Cooper appear to be after the technosexual market with a well-crafted hoax website that's supposedly the homepage of an English engineer who's transformed a Mini Cooper r50 into a bipedal robot. [Via Slashdot]
Read MoreWe're mildly annoyed by the fact that there are two competing standards for recordable DVDs, but assuaging our aggravation a bit is the PX-712A, Plextor's new 12x speed DVD burner which can burn to both the DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW formats. [Thanks, Mike]
Read MoreRobots are clearly really hot this week, and News.com has a lengthy summary of just about everything that's going on in the world of robotics right now. [Thanks, Alberto]
Read MoreA bunch of new Bluetooth stuff from Socket for use with Palms, Pocket PCs, and laptops, including a wireless 56K modem, a handheld barcode scanner, and a serial adapter for eliminating serial cables.
Read MoreWe're several months into the advent of cellphone number portability, and the number of people reporting problems with their transfer to a new carrier has dropped to 15%, which makes you wonder how staggeringly high the number must have been in the first few weeks. [Via TechDirt]
Read MoreTurns out that the globalphone that Verizon is planning to carry is Samsung's SCH-A790, which besides being compatible with both CDMA and GSM networks, also has a built-in VGA-quality digital camera with flash. [Thanks, Rich]
Read MoreTom's Hardware Guide review of the Nostromo n52, Belkin's intimidating-looking (where exactly does your hand go?) new one-handed game controller with a built-in mini-keyboard. [Via BoingBoing]
Read MoreWe've seen some pretty unusual uses for Bluetooth in our day (that remote-control toy car from Sony Ericsson being one of them), but one of the more offbeat is the DLE 150 Connect, a Bluetooth-enabled laser rangefinder from Bosch that can wirelessly beam data to a Pocket PC. [Via MSMobiles]
Read MoreContrary to reports from earlier this week which made it sound like Americans weren't interested in PDAs with Bluetooth, Dell says that they are going to sell a version of their Axim X3i wireless Pocket PC that includes both WiFi and Bluetooth here in the States.
Read MoreNot sure why they're just getting around to this now, but we're hearing reports that T-Mobile has started collecting a monthly fee for cellphone number portability. [Thanks to reader Jeffrey Hoffman for the tip]
Read MoreEffectively saying that Bluetooth is for Europeans only (sorta like unpasteurized cheese!), Dell's new version of their wireless Axim X3i Pocket PC with built-in Bluetooth will only be made available in Europe.
Read MoreThe rumors that a Treo 610 will be announced this month persist. We still have yet to see any concrete evidence that palmOne actually has one in the works.
Read MoreA brand new camcorder from Panasonic that records onto mini three-inch DVD-R discs rather than cassette tapes or Flash memory cards. The VDR-M70K comes out in Japan next month.
Read MoreNew universal microphone adapter for the iPod from Belkin. You won't be bootlegging that next Radiohead concert, though, since it only records at 8kHz — or just good enough for capturing voice memos or lectures.
Read MoreSome details about Samsung's new Palm-powered smartphone have surfaced. The clamshell-style SGH-i530 is supposed to have 32MB of RAM, a 324x352 pixel, 65,000 color display, an SD memory card slot, and a built-in digital camera.
Read MoreMac users rejoice! Here's an excellent tutorial on setting up a Bluetooth-enabled headset with iChat AV.
Read MoreNew DVD recorder from JVC that can record up to 16 hours of video on one double-sided 9.4GB DVD. The DR-M10 should be out in Japan soon, no word on a possible US release.
Read MoreOver at Smartphony.org, some video clips of the MPx300, Motorola's eminently buzzworthy new dual-hinged Pocket PC Phone with a built-in QWERTY keyboard, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, WiFi, and Bluetooth.
Read MoreIt's a little hard to tell from the Babelfish translation whether this is an alarm clock which wakes you up via smells, or (more likely) if it's just an alarm clock that starts emitting scents 30 minutes before its alarm goes off. Either way, we aren't surprised that this is Japanese. [Via The Red Ferret Journal]
Read MoreTracey Logan of the BBC News visits the Ideal Home Exhibition behind held in London right now, and contrasts 1960 exhibition's moddish home of the future, which was meant to evoke the second stage of a Saturn IV rocket, with today's more pedestrian Space Air house, which with its flat-panel TVs and wireless network looks more like a showroom for Philips than some bright-eyed vision of the future. [Via TechDirt]
Read MoreEmily Turretini, my fellow smartmoblogger, reports at Ringtonia.com about Carphone Warehouse's CEO speech at 3GSM in Cannes. He said operators should do more to differentiate their content to gain customer loyalty "Drawing on the success of portable music devices, Dunstone predicted that downloadable music will be the next major driver of data revenues for operators. "The Apple iPod has begun to normalise the idea of downloaded content on a portable device," he said. "Will phones become iPods or will iPods become the phone? I don't know, but it won't take long before people want content on their iPods immediately without going to their computer." Some other speakers were a bit more careful: "I keep telling all the independent and major labels: don't think for the moment that this will be a new distribution channel for full track downloads," said Cedric Ponsot, president and CEO of Universal Mobile, the mobile content division of international music label Universal Music. "It could, one day, but if you think it is the key for the moment you will miss the market." Who's correct? Share your opinion.
Read MoreYes, we now officially live in the age of high-definition TV, and PC World has a good overview of what you need to know to navigate in this new era, especially the confusing difference between digital TV and HDTV (HDTV is a kind of digital TV). gA?C?Yis week we're hearing about more mobile phones as companies announce their new handsets for North America at CTIA. Motorola launched four phones, but only two of them are really new. Worse yet, although the phones are VERY different, they have practically the same name. Good luck remembering which is which. If this were a buddy cop movie, the A840 would play the good cop. Building on the
Read MoreNew York Times article about the world of ultrahigh-end consumer electronics and the people who are willing to spent tens of thousands of dollars on their television (some day we hope to count ourselves amongst this group). Some of the super-expensive TVs they mention include Runco's WideVision and Video Xtreme home digital video projectors (which costs up to $120,000), Sony's $30,000 front-projector SXRD, and LG's 76-inch plasma display (pictured at right) which is supposed to cost so much when it comes out that the company admits is aimed mainly at the "billionaire market".
Read MorePerhaps blissfully unaware of the brave new world of cellphone number portability that we live in today, Chris Rock changed his number a few months ago and neglected to tell people about it. The woman who got his old number (when she got from Verizon, incidentally) immediately started getting tons of calls for people looking for Mr. Rock, including a few from celebs like Adam Sandler and Spike Lee. We're glad she took the time to write up an account of what happened, but we're incredibly disappointed she didn't take the opportunity to spark some sort of massive celebrity feud. How often do you get a chance to do that? [Thanks, Jason]
Read MoreThe first DualDiscs - double-sided hybrid discs which have regular CD audio tracks on one side, and DVD music or video on the other - are being test marketed in Boston and Seattle (just look for the logo!). The big downsides: the discs are a bit thicker than regular CDs or DVDs, so they might just jam your player, and some PCs are said to have trouble recognizing them. [Via HomeTheater.About.com]
Read MoreV Inc. has come out with the Bravo D3, an upgraded version of their Bravo D1 DVD player. Normally we wouldn't waste your time (our ours) with the news of another DVD player, but this is one is important. Why? Because the Bravo D3 is one of only a handful of players that support Microsoft's new high-definition Windows Media Video 9 format, meaning you can take full advantage of that plasma TV you paid too much for and start watching high-definition DVDs (though admittedly there aren't many titles available yet) at home right now.
Read MoreMini Cooper said it best: small is the new big. Bluespoon, who already make one the smallest, if not the smallest Bluetooth headset you can buy, are about to outdo themselves. Later this year they'll release their new 5G model. That's not 5G as in fifth generation, that's 5g, as in grams, as in 5 grams. When it comes out, this will undoubtedly be the smallest, lightest Bluetooth headset ever. Sure, you sacrifice battery life for the tiny size, but you'll get a headset that's finally comfortable to wear and damn cool to show off to all your friends. (Though, let's face it, the 5G will also be easy lose too.) No price yet, but we hope it's not too expensive — there's no way this won't get lost somewhere in our pockets or in our tiny gadget filled flats or gym bags.
Read MoreA new service from MTC in Japan that lets you snap a picture with your cameraphone and have it put onto the face of a wristwatch. It's a total gimmick, of course, since it's been possible to get a watch made with the image of your choice for years now (just look for the ads in the back of any in-flight magazine). Now if it was a watch with an LCD that you could somehow beam photos too, then you'd be talking.
Read MoreWe know people use them, but we don't think we've ever spotted anyone sporting a wearable display in public, something which probably bodes poorly for their future prospects. Or it could just mean that people who own them are simply reluctant to wear them outdoors. Either way, Interactive Imaging Systems has a new one coming out called the Second Sight M2100 that can connect to laptops and Pocket PCs and make it appear as if you're looking at a 17-inch monitor from three feet away. [Via Pocket PC Thoughts]
Read MoreAs if more ways to sneakily take pictures of other people in compromising positions were needed, the iTouchless is a wristwatch with low-resolution digital camera built-in. Casio has had one of these out for years, but the iTouchLess takes slightly better pictures (though let's face it, it's a choice between crappy and crappier), a color LCD screen, and 2MB of internal memory. [Via GadgetMadness]
Read MoreAnother new mini Flash-based MP3 player from NH Japan. The unforgettably-named V@MP iOPS-F300 comes in 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB varieties, supports playback of MP3, WMA, and Ogg Vorbis audio files, and has a built-in FM tuner (that you can record from) and a decently-sized electroluminescent display.
Read MoreIt's become semi-fashionable to slag off all those new SPOT wristwatches that use Microsoft's wireless MSN Direct network to receive instant messages, stock quotes, news flashes, weather, etc. Some of the biggest complaints of all have been about the fact that one of the features promised (and plastered on advertisements everywhere) has been the instant delivery of sports scores to the watches. For whatever reason it's behind schedule, but it's not the only new service that's waiting in the wings. SpotStop reports that Fossil (one of companies making SPOT watches) has accidentally posted a list of the other MSN Direct channels that are coming, including a few that sound fairly useful like local traffic conditions, restaurant listings, movie times, and lottery results.
Read MoreEven though Sony already tried this with the Glasstron (and failed), wearable display maker Eyetop is launch their latest product, the Centra, next month. As you'd expect, the Centra has the videoscreen and stereo headphones which are integrated into a pair of wraparound sunglasses that jacks into any AV output (be it laptop, portable DVD player, PDA, etc). While we're dubious of their claims that the Centra is somehow "fashion-forward" (read: a little less Borg and a little more Oakley than it's predecessors), you'll be hard pressed to find the cool kids wearing these. On the other hand, you'll finally be able to watch a DVD on a plane without the freeloader in the seat next to yours stealing glances, and the fact that it can double as a fancy a camcorder viewfinder makes it a natural fit for the next time you're making a Girls Gone Wild video at Mardi Gras.
Read MoreThe Telson TWC 1150 is by far the craziest watchphone we've ever seen, and unlike so many of the others (um, Samsung?), it's actually on sale. However, unlike the others (and this is maybe why it's actually available), it's so big that calling it a watchphone is being kind; the thing is bigger than one of Wonder Woman's bracelets and you could probably get the same effect just strapping a regular cellphone to your wrist. That said, the TWC 1150 is a CDMA 2000 1x wristwatch, err phone, err wearable computer with a mini numerical keypad on the band, menu keys, a speakerphone, and has a color LCD on its double-wide face. And if that's not enough, you can plug in attachments like the included VGA camera and a "finger-phone" (you can probably guess what that is).
Read MoreA new wristwatch that supposedly can repel mosquitoes. How? By emitting the same ultrasonic high-frequency sound made by an approaching male mosquito. Normally we wouldn't think that that would do the trick, but it turns out that it's pregnant female mosquitoes who do all that biting and that they really don't like male mosquitoes. Bonus points for the watch having bad Eighties styling.
Read MoreSee, this is what Microsoft should have done with those new SPOT watches: let you beam photos, customized alarm melodies, contacts, and your schedule directly onto them from a PC (the over the airwaves stuff is cool, but it'd be nice to do both). And better yet, the ICW001 has a 256-color LCD screen which we'll bet looks loads better than the basic monochrome of the SPOT watches. [Thanks, Nelson]
Read MoreThere was some speculation about this about a week and a half ago, and now it's official: beginning tomorrow Microsoft is dropping the price of the Xbox down to $149, just half of what it cost on its debut. The big speculation now is that Sony will follow suit and cut the price of the PlayStation 2, as well. And for some reason Microsoft included this picture of Paris Hilton carrying an Xbox bag with their press release. Not that we're complaining, or anything.
Read MoreIt's mainly meant as a way for publishers to build new video games more quickly, but XNA, Microsoft's new set of developer tools for Xbox 2 and PC games, will also have the nice side-effect of making it possible for owners of an Xbox 2 console to plug their controllers into the back of a PC and use it with PC games. There's also talk of extending the Xbox Live service so that PC and Xbox gamers can play head-to-head against each other.
Read MoreThis isn't exactly news (almost the opposite of news, when you think about it), but The Register is reporting that the Xbox 2 (also known as the Xbox Next) is NOT going to be unveiled at the Game Developers Conference later this month. The rumor is that Microsoft is waiting to see what Sony has in store for the PlayStation 3, presumably so they can up the ante a bit.
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