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A lot of places are cracking down on making phone calls while driving, but Singapore has clarified its law to make it clear that it’s also illegal to send text messages while driving. Which despite Singapore’s draconian reputation for banning just about everything, isn’t that unreasonable, since it’s way more distracting to try and send…
We thought that 100-hour TiVo with the 120GB hard drive from Samsung was hefty, but Sony is about to blow out the rest of the digital video recorder market (at least in Japan) with a new version of its CoCoon DVR that has a 500GB hard drive. The CSV-EX11 also has two TV tuners for…
TabletPCBuzz digs up some details on Fujitsu’s forthcoming convertible-style Tablet PC, the Lifebook T3010, which is due out in October here in the US, and has a 1.4GHz Centrino processor, 256MB of RAM, 40GB hard drive, an external CD-RW drive, and a 12.1-inch screen. Read
We weren’t too disappointed to discover that the New York City Taxi and Limousine is pulling the plug on a pilot program that put LCD touchscreens in the back of 515 cabs. Even though we only occasionally rode in a cab with one of the screens, we found ourselves thoroughly annoyed every time single time,…
More news from the IFA consumer electroncis trade show in Berlin: Daewoo is working on a line of wireless LCD televisions that will use special 802.11a wireless chips developed by ViXS Systems. Read
They haven’t officially announced it yet, but Microsoft is coming out with a wireless adapter for the Xbox. According to details contained within the FCC filing which inadvertantly leaked the news, it looks like the MN-740 wireless adapter will support both 802.11g and 802.11b. Read
I’m working on a potential weekly column for a major online publication (that’s not Gizmodo), and need your help. Part of the column will be sort of a gadget-centric Dear Abby, answering reader questions and offering advice about gadgets. So here’s your chance to ask me whatever gadget-related questions you’ve been dying to ask. Please…
Steve Kosky of ZDNet did something pretty impressive: after moving to a place where he couldn’t get broadband (Northern San Diego County) he built a home wireless network using Novatel’s Merlin C201 laptop card, which connects to Sprint PCS’s CDMA cellular network at speeds around 100kbps. He wanted to share the connection with the rest…
British scientists have figured out a way to let people sign their name online using a mouse. Basically, it’s special software that uses a neural net to recognize the unique ways in which people create their signature when using a mouse. Read [Via Slashdot]
We love our Aibo, that robotic dog from Sony (even if we feel guilty for not playing with it enough), and Taiwan News has a profile of Katsura Moshino, the man who designed our little robot companion. He has ten of the robots in his home, saying, “They are like my kids.” Lately Moshino has…
MSMobiles.com was at the big IFA trade show going on in Berlin and got to play with T-Mobile Germany’s new MDA II, the successor to the T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone which came out last year. They’re saying it’ll be one of the best Pocket PCs ever once it comes out later this year, and with…
New pocket-sized digital camcorder from Panasonic that eschews video tape entirely and records to SecureDigital Flash memory cards instead. The D-snap SV-AV100, which is supposed to be the world’s thinnest camcorder (we think some of those new videocamphones in Japan might lay claim to that title), weighs just 156 grams, has a 10x optical zoom…
A couple of new GSM cameraphones from Samsung. The SGH-E700 is a clamshell handset with both internal and external displays, and a special night mode for its digital camera for taking pictures in the dark. The SGH-X600 (pictured at right) is Samsung’s first candybar-style phone to come with an integrated digital camera. Has a built-in…
A British company called 1 Limited has figured out how to get the tiny lenses in cameraphones, which are now fixed-focus, to zoom and focus with the same precision as lenses in regular still cameras. Read
Check out these photos of actual billboards using Magink, that full-color digital ink we mentioned the other day. Magink is the first digital ink technology to be able to display color (the rest are black and white), and can hold an image for up to 12 years without needing any electricity. Read
Determined to be the number one seller of flat-panel televisions, Sony is coming out with twelve new displays. Not a whole lot of details on what those televisions are, but they’re determined to overtake Panasonic, which will hopefully spark some sort of price war between the two giants. Read
We’re suspect that Sony isn’t too pleased about the new MediaPlayer from GameShark which turns the PlayStation 2 into a digital media adapter. The MediaPlayer lets the PlayStation 2 stream audio and video files (including MPEG-1, 2, and 4, DivX, WMV, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis) from a PC over a home network using the PS2…
In case you missed any of them, some highlights from the past week of Gizmodo: Sony’s F-828 vs. Canon’s EOS Digital Rebel Hitachi’s 4GB Microdrive Toyota’s self-parking car WiFi burglars? Casio’s Exilim gets smaller New Pocket PCs from Dell on October 15th? Share and share alike Smarter Roombas To tell the truth… on a cellphone…
A look at some of the concept designs for futuristic gadgets that NEC is working on, like the WACCA (pictured at right), a bracelet/wearable video camera for capturing footage of everything you do throughout your day; the Duo-pc, which seems like a Tablet PC-redux; the Duo-phone, which has a detachable display; and the P-ISM, a…
It’s already been available for a few months now, but PalmInfocenter has a review of the Zire 71, Palm’s mid-level “consumer” handheld, which runs on Palm OS 5.2 and has a 144MHz processor, 16MB of RAM, a 320×320 pixel, 65,000 color display, and a built-in digital camera. Ryan gives the Zire 71 points for having…