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Turns out that Japan’s teenagers are so used to using their cellphones for accessing the Internet and sending messages and emails that they’re not bothering to learn how to use PCs: Peer pressure is a critical factor pushing students to own cell phones rather than computers. Almost every teenager in Japan has a mobile telephone…
There are a few ways to add WiFi to a PDA that doesn’t come with it built-in, but the most ingenious we’ve seen is this new leather carrying case for Palm handhelds from Enfora. The WiFi chip is actually in the case itself, you just pop the PDA in, making sure it’s connected properly, and…
We all know there’s only one way to be a true player, and that’s to have a carphone. Fortunately Nokia’s decided to bring them back with their new 810 handset, which is designed specifically to be used in a car, and even has a separate display for mounting on your dashboard. Sure, it makes more…
Better wait a few weeks before buying that iPod. ThinkSecret reports that re-designed iPods with new control buttons and docking stations are due out by the end of the month, and that Apple is dropping both the 5GB and 20GB iPods in favor of 15GB and 30GB models. There had been some speculation that Apple…
Crazy as it sounds, Toshiba has figured out a way to make an LCD screen that doubles as a scanner. The Input Display, as they’re calling it, has an optical sensor for each pixel. Read [Thanks, Rich]
So it looks like there’s more than one new one megapixel cameraphone coming out in Japan; over the coming months NTT DoCoMo should be releasing three new higher-resolution cameraphones from Fujitsu, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson. Shouldn’t be too long before you can take a decent picture with your phone right here in the US. Read
We didn’t even realize that this was something one could expect from a peripheral device, but All4DVD is selling a line of external FireWire hard drives and DVD burners designed by Swiss artist Johann Ulrich that promise to “exhilirate the creative soul.” Read [Via MacMinute]
Great roundup of robot photos from the recent Robodex 2003 trade show held in Yokohama, Japan last week. We especially like the bewildered look of the Ifbot (pictured at right). Read [Via BoingBoing]
In this week’s Circuits section of the New York Times, a guide to the software applications that’ll you need if you want to leave the laptop at home and do all your work on a PDA. Read
Updated version of Panasonic’s tiny GD55 cellphone. The G50 has a 4096 color screen, connects to GSM for voice and GPRS for data, weighs just 75 grams, and is only 80mm x 43mm x 18mm. Read
Remember last month how John Dvorak speculated that Apple was going to switch to Intel processors? Well John Gruber takes Dvorak’s conjecture to task in an piece over at Daring Fireball, and it includes a few gems like this: No matter how badly people clamor for it, Apple is never going to release a version…
You might have heard something about how the FCC has set a November 24th deadline for cellphone companies to make it possible for you to keep your number when you switch carriers. Well, the carriers, who know full well that this isn’t good for them, are mounting a last ditch effort to stop the FCC.…
Turns out that GSL doesn’t have just one new Palm PDA/phone coming out. PalmInfocenter reports that a second is expected as well. The Onyx, as its called, looks even better than the Zircon, and has a clamshell design reminiscent of Samsung’s Palm-powered PDA/phone, the i500. Read
Speaking of robotic birds, it can’t quite scare off pigeons, but the PC Mascot can read you your email and let you know when you’re about to miss an appointment. Basically it’s a plastic bird that plugs into the USB port of a PC and alerts you whenever you have new messages. In our case…
Brighthand wonders if the forthcoming iPAQ h2200 Pocket PC from HP is the “Perfect PDA”. It’s small (just .63″ thick), light (5.5 ounces), expandable (slots for SD and CF memory cards), has a great screen, a fast processor, plenty of RAM, and built-in Bluetooth, and is expected to retail for around $400. While the omission…
Ross Rubin of Ziff Davis on why Bluetooth is in a “state of decay.” It suffers from a WiFi inferiority complex, he says, and: until it gets into far more cell phones, Bluetooth may have no greater an impact on most users’ digital life than infrared did. Syncing wirelessly with your PDA is a convenient…
Microsoft’s Wheel Mouse Optical is on sale for just $15.93 over at Amazon. Maybe we’re still jet lagged, but shouldn’t they have named it “Optical Wheel Mouse”? “Wheel Mouse Optical” sounds too much something William Safire would say. Amazon – Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical
It isn’t actually the first, as Research Machines beat them to the punch just a few days ago, but Acer has its own Tablet PC running Intel’s new Centrino chip coming out. The TravelMate C110 has up to 2GB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch LCD screen. This last spec comes as…
Philips is looking for fifty beta testers for its latest MP3 player, the HDD100, which has a 15GB hard drive and uses USB 2.0 for file transfer. Read
From a company called Tonight’s Menu Intelligent Ovens of a prototype of a microwave that can be controlled from a cellphone or over the Internet and that can cook food and then refrigerate it until it’s ready to be eaten. The idea is to save time, but it still won’t do much about the fact…