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Thoughtful essay by Paul Goldberger (the New Yorker’s architecture critic) in Metropolis magazine about how cellphones are uprooting and altering how we connect to the world around us: But the cell phone has changed our sense of place more than faxes and computers and e-mail because of its ability to intrude into every moment in…
An inexpensive new print server from Buffalo for connecting a USB printer to a router so it can be shared by all the computers on a local area network. The Network USB Print Server should be out this January. Read
Apparently college students are showing up to campus with so many gadgets these days that some colleges and universities are starting to have problems supplying enough power to dorms, and are having to upgrade their electrical systems to keep up with demand: The average freshman at Miami University takes 18 appliances to campus, according to…
As expected, ViewSonic showed its new convertible-style Tablet PC at the big COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas today. When it hits stores, the V1250, which comes with built-in WiFi, will be the lightest convertible with a 12.1-inch screen on the market, and have a 30GB hard drive, a 1GHz processor, and 256MB of RAM.…
Seiko Epson has a figured out a new way to wirelessly recharge batteries. It apparently works so well that someday you might even be able to recharge a dead cellphone just by putting it near the battery of another phone. Read [Thanks, Gert]
The Tapwave Zodiac and the N-Gage might be getting some competition. A company called Tiger Telematics is coming out with portable game console called the Gametrac that runs on Windows CE .NET and can play MP3s and MPEG-4 video files, send and receive text messages, and will have a built-in digital camera, an MMC memory…
New external CD burner from Japanese manufacturer Greenhouse that has a built-in Flash memory card reader for recording CDs directly from SD, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, and Memory Stick memory cards without needing to be connected to a PC. The is out in Japan now, No word on whether the Yakeru-Kun GH-YKR48 will ever be available here…
Microsoft is now saying that the first wristwatches featuring its new Smart Personal Object Technology, which uses FM radio subcarrier frequencies to wirelessly deliver information like the weather, news, and stock quotes, is officially delayed for further testing and won’t be ready until the first quarter of next year. The first SPOT watches were supposed…
Dell is adding a couple of new LCD televisions to its burgeoning home electronics line, a 23-inch model and a 30-inch model. Read
Another DIY dashboard Mac, this one with the screen mounted on what looks like PVC piping and the rest of the iBook hidden away in the glove compartment. Read
We didn’t mention Sprint’s new MobiTV television service for cellphones last week, mainly because we’re completely underwhelmed by the prospect of paying ten bucks a month to watch choppy, one frame per second video on a cellphone. Douglas Rushkoff’s column in The Feature this week echoes our sentiments, writing that the carriers are wasting their…
A couple of new high-resolution precision mice from Razer. Razer is claiming that the Boomer Control and Boomer Speed (pictured at right) have about twice the speed and accuracy of regular mice and are targeted mainly at hardcore PC gamers. Read
A few months ago the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, announced the Grand Challenge, a Las Vegas to Los Angeles road race in which a road race in which all the contestants have to be “autonomous motor vehicles” that can drive and navigate entirely without any human control. The prize for this robotic…
Fantastic new retro-styled digital camera from BenQ which looks a bit like an old Kodak Instamatic. The DC C50 has a resolution of five megapixels and a 3x optical zoom lens. Read
Earlier this year a company called Pocket PC Films announced a plug-and-play cartridge for watching videos and listening to music on the Game Boy Advance. At the time they said it would use SD memory cards, which meant you could just transfer files from your PC and later watch them on your GBA, but now…
During his speech at the big COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas Sunday night, Bill Gates confirmed that an update for Microsoft’s Tablet PC operating system is coming sometime in the middle of next year and that it will be offered for free to current Tablet PC owners. Some of the improvements include better handwriting…
The Cartoon Network is selling a $40,000 replica of Space Ghost’s desk that features a pop-up 15-inch LCD screen, surround sound speakers, a built-in mini-fridge, and a cordless phone. I know a lot of people who like Space Ghost, but I doubt I’ve ever met a Space Ghost fan who was so fanatical that they’d…
The price of Motorola’s new MPx200 Smartphone has plummeted. Amazon is offering it for $79.99 with new service activation from AT&T Wireless. Read [Via MobileTracker]
This week’s New York Times Magazine has a whole slew of great articles by James Gleick, Paul Boutin, Cory Doctorow, and others about the networked digital home. All of the pieces are available online, but this is one of those all-too-frequent weeks when picking up the Sunday Times is truly mandatory. Read
The massive marketing machine that is NASCAR marches ever-forward. Their latest conquest? A new line of NASCAR-themed cellphones from Nextel. [Thanks, Brian]