Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Nokia’s 3650 cameraphone, the one with the circular keypad and built-in Bluetooth, is free with service activation over at Amazon. Amazon
In response to yesterday’s post about the Keiboard, Gen Kanai and Adam Rice write in with somewhat differing answers to whether or not it’s easier to input Japanese text using a cellphone keypad than it is with a PC keyboard: Gen writes: The japanese are often faster on their cellphones than they are on keyboards…
Prototype of new wine bottle that can automatically chill itself and, leveling the playing field between wine snobs and the unwashed masses, also has a small video screen that plays a short video describing where the wine was bottled and what food it goes best with. Read [Via TechDirt]
Wired News on the new craze of people treating their robotic vacuum cleaners like pets: “We have people who actually consider them their companion, even though it’s just vacuuming their floor,” said iRobot spokeswoman Nancy Dussault. “People get attached to them and think of them as part of their family. It’s almost a pet. It…
If you’re not particularly happy with the keyboard on your 15-inch G4 Powerbook, TouchStream makes a new ergonomic keyboard that you can swap in there. The MacNTouch (one of those too clever by half names) isn’t actually a mechanical keyboard; the keys on it sense the movement of your fingers by how they disrupt a…
New color cameraphone from Nokia aimed at business users. The 6600 has GPRS, Bluetooth, an integrated digital camera, a 65,000 color display, 6MB of internal memory, a slot for MMC memory cards, and for streaming audio and video off of the Internet, comes with Real Networks’ RealOne Player built-in. Read – Nokia 6600 Read –…
For commuters in the Seattle metropolitan area, a new wireless handheld device that can tell you, in real-time, which highways are congested. The TrafficGauge draws on the Washington State Department of Transportation’s traffic data, and automatically refreshes itself every few minutes over a wireless connection (we assume using a pager network). Right now it’s only…
TechTV on the M5305, eMachines’ unexpected foray into the world of widescreen laptop. We would have expected Gateway and Toshiba to have widescreen laptops out before eMachines. It may not be the most powerful laptop you can buy, but the M5305 has pretty decent specs for its price (about $1,250): a 15.4-inch widescreen LCD with…
TokyoDV has some great video footage of the new 1.3 megapixel Sony Ericsson SO505i cameraphone that is making such a big splash in Tokyo right now. Watch
So one of the biggest complaints about doing email or text messaging on a cellphone is that it’s easier to type on a computer’s full-sized keyboard than to tap out a message with a phone’s tiny keypad. But in Japan, where PC use is actually down among teenagers, it’s apparently the opposite, with lots of…
Boston Globe article on some new ways that business people are using cameraphones for their work, like real estate agents who use them to instantly email photos of properties to clients, used car salesmen, and contractors who are giving them to their construction crews: [Newton contractor Bob Pino] bought his four picture phones a month…
Steve’s Digicams review of the latest version of Casio’s super-slim Exilim digital camera, the three megapixel EX-S3. This is the one without the optical zoom lens (that’s the EX-Z3), but Steve seems to like the EX-S3 just fine: Casio set the standard for “thin” cameras when they came out with the first Exilim EX-S1 and…
In case you missed any of them, some highlights from the past week here at Gizmodo: Gizmodo 1983 The world’s most expensive remote control TV phone Sony’s smallest digital camera World’s smallest robot Mirror TV Why do you think they call it a clone? Philips Streamium MX-i6000 New 15.4-inch Powerbooks? Prez falls off Segway Wireless…
A new audiophile digital entertainment hub from JoyFaktory for connecting your PC to your stereo and your home theater. As far as we know, the JoyPort is the only one of these that can wirelessly stream audio in high-quality 24bit/96KHz and supports Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. Can also stream video as well. Read
In a daring heist at JFK airport Thursday night, thieves made off 25,000 Sony Ericsson cellphones. There was just one problem: the phones were fake, they were dummy phones to be used in displays in stores. How pissed must those thieves have been when they figured that out? Read [Via TechDirt]
Cellphones probably don’t cause brain cancer and might or might not cause planes to crash, but researchers at the Italian Institute of Health in Rome are pretty sure that GSM phones could interfere with a person’s pacemaker, possibly causing them to have a heart attack: They report in Physics in Medicine and Biology that the…
I’m somewhat reluctant to even alert others to existence of this, but there’s a new software program from Alatto that lets you do karaoke on a cellphone. Air.karaoke, as it’s called, comes with a back catalogue of over 8,000 songs, and works on handsets from Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Samsung, and Sharp. Just please don’t try…
Rather than actually showing up himself to spin, a DJ in Philadelphia has taken to renting out iPods filled with his custom mixes to restaurants, stores, and salons. BoingBoing has a good thread going on whether or not this is actually legal to do, since the DJ is making copies of songs for non-personal use.…
With the new color Sidekick from T-Mobile, Gizmodo pal Paul Boutin finally finds what he’s been looking for: I have long fantasized about an all-in-one pocket device that doubles as cell phone and mobile search engine: a Googlephone! But the Googlephone has been an elusive device. Mobile Web browsers are still a novelty feature, plagued…
Word that Sony is going to take touch pads to the next level. They’re working on a new tactile panel to use in its PDAs that could potentially replace keyboards: new type of touch panel that creates a tactile sensation in users. These sensations range from that of clicking a button to that of writing…