Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Demonstrating once again how embarassingly far behind the cellphone industry is here in the US, in South Korea banks, credit card companies, and the cellular carriers have teamed up to make it possible for people to easily make purchases with their cellphones: Instead of handing over credit or debit cards that get swiped, users type…
IDG has a piece about the latest in “living room” technology, we’ve covered everything mentioned at one point or another except for Casio’s PCP-50 printer for making personalized postcards. Doesn’t need a PC either, the PCP-50 has a memory card slot for uploading photos and a keyboard for adding your message. Comes out in Japan…
Besides those two new wireless iPAQ Pocket PCs, HP made a couple of other product announcements today, including a Bluetooth GPS module for Pocket PCs, and their new TC1100 Tablet PC, which has optional 802.11g for wireless networking. Read – iPAQ Navigation System Read – TC1100
Scientists at Duke have taught monkeys with special brain implants how to control a robotic arm using just their minds. Which is kinda freaky when you think about it, though obviously this research could have some very positive benefits down the line: The technology could someday allow people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries to operate…
We’re beginning to suspect that it isn’t too hard to make a digital media adapter; we seem to be hearing about a new one every week or so. The latest we’ve come across is the Show Center from Pinnacle, which has an Ethernet port for connecting your TV and stereo to your PC, and can…
You’d almost think they’d already have one out, but JVC is coming out with its first flat-panel LCD TV, a 26-inch widescreen model called the LT-26WX84. Read [Via HomeTheater.About.com]
NASA has been showing off a model airplane powered entirely by a laser positioned on the ground. This is undoubtedly interesting in and of itself, but because it means you could build a plane that doesn’t have to have any onboard fuel or batteries and could stay aloft indefinitely, the hope is that they’ll use…
Researchers at Philips in Aachen, Germany have created a line of underwear, including bras and briefs, that have built-in sensors that monitor a person’s heart rate and can automatically call an ambulance if you’re having a heart attack (we wonder if it triggers false alarms as well). You gotta love the big grin on the…
In the tradition of that Ferrari digital camera from Olympus, there’s a new limited edition Ferrari-styled laptop from Acer. Besides being bright red and having a Ferrari logo on it, Acer’s Ferrari 3000 laptop has 512MB of RAM, a 15-inch screen, a 60GB hard drive, built-in 802.11g, a DVD burner, and a memory card reader.…
These weren’t supposed to be unveiled until Wednesday, but those two new wireless iPAQ Pocket PCs from the HP, the h4150 and the h4350, were officially announced today. Both have built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, as well as 400MHz processors, 64Mb of RAM, and SDIO expansion card slots. The h4350 (pictured at right) is the one…
Sharp’s laptop with the 3D display, the Actius RD3D, is finally out. Read
Mobile Burn managed to get its hands on one of Sony Ericsson’s Z600 cameraphones, which is essentially Sony Ericsson’s T610, just with a clamshell design. They say that it’s “damn near perfect,” keeping many of the best features of the T610 and improves on it with a better screen and substantially improved reception. No word…
Despite repeated assertions from Microsoft that there won’t be a new version of the Tablet PC operating system until Longhorn, the next overhaul of Windows, comes out (which could be 2005), Chris Coulter is reporting that version 1.7 of the Tablet PC will be announced at the Comdex trade show and should be out in…
MSMobiles spotted a new smartphone from Samsung at the ITU World Telecom conference in Geneva this past weekend, the Palm-powered SGH-i505. The SGH-i505 is an updated version of their i500 Palm phone, and has a touchscreen that rotates and flips around so it can be used sorta like a regular Palm, a built-in digital camera,…
Siemens is getting ready to come out with the Autumn/Winter 2003/2004 collection of its line of Xelibri “fashion phones.” Apart from one of the phones, we weren’t too impressed with last season’s collection, and from the looks of it, the 2003/2004 collection isn’t much better. Siemens needs to get some actual fashion designers on this.…
Spotted at the CEATAC show in Japan, a protoype of a modular cellphone from Mitsubishi with all sorts of different attachments, including a digital camera, a GPS receiver, a TV tuner, and a game controlller. Read
Review of the NEX ia, a new MP3 player from Frontier Labs with styling reminisicent of the iPod, but that uses swappable CompactFlash memory cards instead of a hard drive for file storage. You have to provide the cards yourself, though, since it doesn’t come with any, so maybe not worth buying unless you have…
In case you missed any of them, here are some highlights from the past week in Gizmodo: Five amazing new 3G cellphones from KDDI in Japan World’s largest plasma TV A true plug-and-play peripheral How to blow a hundred million dollars The Bass Station The PSX debuts today Sierra Wireless it is The hard way…
A reader wrote in with word that, like T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless won’t be carrying the new Treo 600 until November 24th. Whether this is because of the same technical problems with the phone that T-Mobile alluded to, we don’t know.
We’ve yet to see a video phone system that works well over regular wired telephone lines, but British company called Pic-Tel has a new video phone coming out that they’re hoping isn’t just the latest in a long line of failures. The claim that the difference with theirs is that it makes use of some…