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We don’t own a car, but if we did, we’d surely invest in this: a $300 gadget which can change red traffic lights to green with the press of a button: The traffic light changer, called the MIRT for mobile infrared transmitter, emits a beam with a 1,500-foot range to a receiver installed at the…
Check out this hyperfuturistic single-person concept car that Toyota showed off at the recent Tokyo Motor Show. Besides looking it’s traveled back in time, the Toyota PM (which stands for “Personal Mobility”) has a floating virtual holographic display for accessing vehicle data and a system for communicating with other PMs so that they can travel…
We know a few people who could really, really use this: a pair of eyeglasses invented by scientists at MIT that make it easier to remember things. The eyeglasses are attached to a mini-computer that’s programmed with whatever it is you want to remember, which then flashes messages onto tiny screens built-into the lenses of…
We hate to get bogged down in too much of the inside baseball of the cellular industry (or any industry, for that matter), but we couldn’t help but chuckle when we read this article on Forbes.com about how the CEO of Verizon has been getting hate mail. But not from subscribers. The mail is from…
I4U reports that Suunto is getting ready to come out with the n3, their first wristwatch with Microsoft’s Smart Personal Object Technology, or SPOT, which uses FM radio subcarrier frequencies to deliver information like the weather, news, stock quotes, etc directly to all sorts of devices. Read
Lengthy review over at MobileBurn of the new P900 smartphone, Sony Ericsson’s follow-up to their popular P800 handset which was officially announced last week. Is it that much better than the P800? Maybe, maybe not: While most all of the changes made to the P900 have been incremental, rather than outright new features (the ability…
Howard Chui reviews Motorola’s new GPS-enabled iDEN cellphone, the i730 (pictured with Motorola’s i205), which is only works with Nextel’s cellular network. Howard likes the phone, calling it a big improvement over its predecessor, the i95cl, but he also wasn’t able to get one of the most attractive features of the phone — it’s built-in…
Some photos have turned up of those three new cellphones that Nokia is set to announce next week: the 6230 (left), which will have a built-in digital camera, Bluetooth, and an FM tuner; the 6820, which looks like it’ll be Nokia’s follow-up to the 6800 (we’d seen this called the 6850, as well), which improves…
In case you missed any of them, some highlights from the past week of Gizmodo: iRiver’s iPod killer? Sony Ericsson’s P900 is official The Sendo X Treo 600 reviews roundup The robot census World’s smallest five megapixel camera FancyLogic’s feature-packed MP3 player USB air purifier What a difference VGA makes N-Gage sales are low. Really…
We’ve been hearing quite a lot about this massive solar storm yesterday which was supposed to have disrupted cellphone networks, satellite communications, radio signals, etc., but so far there it doesn’t appear that it caused any signficant problems for anyone. Anyone hear of any major problems? Read
PDA Buyer’s Guide review of one handheld that much to our dismay will never be released here, Samsung’s NEXiO S160. (If you want one, you’ll have to get it from one of those websites that imports gadgets from Asia). The S160 is somewhat bigger than a regular PDA, and has a 5-inch transflective screen, a…
Lengthy review over at Videography.com of JVC’s HD10 video camera, their professional version of the GR-HD1, which was the world’s first (and for the moment, only) high-definition digital camcorder for consumers. It ain’t cheap, but it’s still amazing that these days you can buy a high-definition video camera for less than $4,000. Read
You may recall our post from a couple of weeks ago about that pay-by-cellphone system which has been set up in South Korea. Well, now Sony and NTT DoCoMo are working on putting special microchips into DoCoMo’s FOMA handsets so subscribers can pay for stuff at stores just by swiping their phones near a card…
A member of the N-Gage Special Forces (Nokia’s street team promoting the phone) who wishes to remain anonymous wrote in to say that those low sales figures are pretty accurate. But it gets even worse: During my demos I never encountered anyone who already owned the product nor did anyone seem very interested in a…
And just to go totally overboard on Japanese gadgets today (c’mon, indulge us just this once!), there are a few new 3G cellphones from DoCoMo, the most noteworthy of which seems to be Panasonic’s P505iS, which has a built-in 1.28 megapixel digital camera and a very unusual rotating and swiveling 65,000 color display. Read
Unconfirmed details about Sony’s followup to their super tiny PCG-U101 Vaio laptop, which should be out in December and is tentatively named the UX5. It looks like the UX5 will have have a 7.1-inch display, 256MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, built-in 802.11b and 802.11g WiFi, and use Transmeta’s new low-voltage 1GHz Efficeon processor…
The saga of the delayed Treo 600’s continues. It appears that the GSM/GPRS version of the Treo 600 might be available on Monday, but only directly from Handspring. T-Mobile, Cingular, and AT&T Wireless won’t have them until next month, but we’re assuming that Handspring would be selling an “unlocked” version of the phone which would…
Another new Pocket PC that’s probably just for Japan. Fujitsu’s Pocket Loox FLX3AW should be out next month, and have built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, SD and CompactFlash card slots, and 128MB of RAM. There’s also another version without WiFi. Read
A prototype of Sharp’s forthcoming Linux-powered Zaurus handheld has turned up, and it looks impressive. The SL-6000 will have built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, a 4-inch display, SD and CompactFlash card slots, a built-in speaker and mic for using it as a Voice over IP phone (that new Toshiba Pocket PC sports this feature as well),…
The Register has a few details about that new Series 90 cellphone that Nokia is going to unveil soon. The phone will be a successor to their 9290 Communicator, use both pen and keyboard for input, and presumably have built-in Bluetooth. Read