Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
In case you missed any of them, some highlights from the past week of Gizmodo: Get ready for Bluejacking Nirotek’s single speaker surround sound system Treo 600 available from Cingular Dr. Phil: Gizmodo’s new arch-nemesis Nokia’s new Bluetooth accessories First look at the PlayStation Portable Connected appliances come home Removing the camera from the phone…
Confiriming the rumor that was bandied about earlier this week, Verizon is confirming that this Monday they will introduce the i600, Samsung’s new cellphone running on Microsoft’s Smartphone operating system. Read [Via MSMobiles]
Gateway is the latest to jump on the supersized laptop bandwagon. Their new M675XL has a 17.1-inch widescreen LCD, a 3.2GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive, a DVD-R/RW/CD-RW combination drive, and built-in 802.11g. Read
Just when you thought online advertising couldn’t get any more insidious than spam or spyware, Belkin is using a firmware upgrade for its wireless routers to force advertising on its customers — from within their own home network. Believe it or not, the upgrade reprograms the router to periodically redirect a user’s browser to a…
Word of a couple of unannounced new convertible-style Tablet PCs coming from Gateway. The M275X will have a 1.4GHz processor, 256MB of RAM, a 14.1-inch display, and a built-in DVD/CD-RW combination drive. The M275XL is about the same, just with a 1.6GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 60GB hard drive. [Thanks, Christopher Coulter]
There’s a new version of Bluetooth out. Version 1.2 has a few overdue improvements over version 1.1, like faster connection setup times (addressing a perennial complaint), better voice quality if you’re using a Bluetooth headset with your cellphone, and something called Adaptive Frequency Hopping which is supposed to increase transmission speeds by avoiding radio frequency…
Gamester has a line of game controllers called the Clash Pads that let you deliberately interfere with and take over your opponent’s controller: Press a button on your controller and the matching controller will start acting up. Buttons will stop working or will act like entirely different buttons, or you can take command of the…
It’s no secret that Sony has been drifting lately: profits are way down, competitors like Samsung are beating them on both price and design, and they’ve all but ceded the portable digital audio market to Apple and its iPod. Forbes.com looks at the company’s malaise and wonders whether the expected ascension of PlayStation and PlayStation…
A new standalone Internet radio receiver from Japanese company Atmark Techno that can access Internet radio stations streamed over Peercast’s decentralized P2P network. Without going into too much detail, what Peercast does is let anyone cheaply and anonymously set up an Internet radio stream, which is then relayed through the peer-to-peer network with every listener…
MobileBurn review of Nokia’s new DT-1 Music Stand, a pair of external stereo speakers for listening to the built-in FM radio which comes standard on lots of new Nokia phones these days. Also has an integrated microphone for use as a speaker phone and can double as a desktop charger. Read
Deliberately courting the ire of Apple lovers everywhere, Eliot Van Buskirk of CNET gives five reasons why not to buy an iPod: its battery life is too short, you can’t/shouldn’t jog with it, it’s expensive, you can’t use it to make high-quality recordings, and it doesn’t work with any of the other online music stores…
One reader wrote in to point out that we hadn’t mentioned anything about Toyota’s latest version of its Prius hybrid car, which besides being more fuel efficient than most cars, has built-in Bluetooth, a 7-inch LCD touchscreen, a voice-activated navigation system, and a keyless entry system which is opens doors and starts the car using…
AT&T Wireless has been having some problems activating service for new subscribers because of a software glitch, but we’ve also been hearing complaints from existing AT&T customers who have seen their service cut off or disrupted. Read
Apparently Mike Tyson (pictured at right during one of his title matches) was spotted riding a Segway in Miami Beach. When a crowd of people began surrounding him (you know how people are about celebrities), he started denying that he was really the famous boxer and was merely someone who bore a resemblance to him.…
There won’t be a Tablet PC-version of the ThinkPad until early 2005, at least according to Guy Kewney, but IBM will come out with some sort of slate-style Tablet PC around May of next year. But it won’t be an actual IBM product, it’ll be one that was built by some anonymous Taiwanese manufacturer and…
In a sign of what is surely to come, TeliaSonera, Ericsson, Radionet, and the Helsinki University of Technology were able to successfully demonstrate that its possible to seamlessly roam between commercial WiFi and cellular (in this instance, GPRS) networks without interrupting your connection to the Internet. Read
Proving that Nokia is still in serious denial about the N-Gage (which has been a huge fiasco so far), the company says its standing by its projection that they’ll sell six million of the gamephone by the end of next year, saying they’re “pretty pleased with the viral uptake from consumers.” Sure. Read [Via MobileTracker]
We’re a sucker for any sort of multiple monitor set-up, so it’s no surprise that we want to get our hands on the DualSight’s DS-1000, a dual LCD monitor with two side-by-side 15-inch panels. Of course, you need two video-out ports on your PC to get this to work. Read
As promised, here’s what we could find about what each of the different carriers’ monthly fee for cellphone number portability, which they’re charging even for customers who aren’t planning to switch carriers. Sprint PCS: Collects $1.10 a month for “Federal Wireless Number Pooling And Portability.” T-Mobile: Not charging a cent, and some readers report receiving…
New 40GB MP3 player from I-O Data. The Grandisk uses USB 2.0 for file-transfer, a slot for SD memory cards, a battery life of 14 hours, and also plays WAV and WMA files. Comes out in Japan by the end of this month. Read