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Besides ruggedized PDAs, some soldiers in Iraq are carrying around with them the Phraselator, “which looks a little like a handheld PDA, [and] allows the Marines to speak a phrase in English, and have a prerecorded output phrase – in Arabic – played through a speaker, so that Iraqis can understand.” Read
ViewSonic used to stick mainly to making monitors, but lately they’ve been brancing out, what with their recent Pocket PC and Tablet PC. They’re latest foray is a PC that runs Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition, the new variant of the OS that’s supposed to be good for recording television like a TiVo, organizing…
Gizmodo pal Paul Boutin has been writing up a storm over at Slate lately. His latest piece is about night-vision gadgets, which cost less than a hundred bucks these days. Paul actually takes one for a spin: In urban tests, the Aero let me read the license plates of cars parked overnight on my block…
Microsoft’s not messing around when they say they want their software to run everywhere. There’s even a new version of Windows now that just for automobiles. We were going to make a joke, but it’s almost too easy, you know? Read
You have an MP3 player and a cellphone, but listening to one usually precludes talking on the other. Skullcandy’s (which is a horrid name for a company) new LINK headphones connect to both gadgets, so you can actually listen to music while you talk on the phone. You can also turn the volume all the…
There’s a good chance that the FCC might wimp out (it already did once before), but starting in November you should be able to bring your number with you when you change cellphone providers. It’ll mean that after your initial contract expires carriers wouldn’t be able to lock you in anymore and actually would have…
Amazon sale on the iConcepts travel charger for Palms. Works with the m500, i705, and the Tungsten T. These normally list for $30, but they’re going for $9.47 now. Amazon UPDATE: Sold out!
ZDNet review of Panasonic’s new 3.34 megapixel Lumix DMC-F1 digital camera, which sports a 3x opitcal zoom Leica lens. The DMC-F1, they also note, bears a more than passing resemblance to Minolta’s F100. Read
Buried at the bottom of this ZDNet article about how Sony’s new humanoid SDR-4X robot costs so much that Sony is worried about finding people to buy them is this little tidbit from Masahiro Fujita, the creator of the SDR-4X: [Fujita]warned of potential dangers from the technology. Without strict network security, for example, he noted…
Congressman Darrell Issa, Republican from San Diego, is outraged, outraged! he says, that plans for Iraq’s post-war telecommunications infrastructure includes building a cellphone network that runs on GSM, a standard developed by… surprise, surprise, the newly-loathed French! Ever the patriot, Issa proposes that the American-made CDMA standard be adopted instead: It is outrageous that these…
The Roomba isn’t the only robot that can vacuum your floors any more. Electrolux’s new Trilobite robotic vacuum cleaner accomplishes the same task and even looks almost exactly like iRobot’s Roomba, except it comes in red, rather than black. Read
Jacek Rutkowski of MSMobiles gives his advice on how Microsoft can take down Nokia and dominate the cellphone market with its Smartphone operating system. Read
The San Jose Mercury News doesn’t think much of HP’s new wireless Digital Media Receiver, which connects your PC with your home entertainment system so you can listen to MP3s and look at digital photos that are stored on your hard drive in other rooms of your house: [Y]ou can’t listen to music on the…
New dual-band wireless laptop card from Sony Ericsson combining 802.11b with GPRS, so you can still check your email even if you’re out of range of a WiFi hotspot. You still can’t seamlessly move from one type of wireless network to the other yet, but that’s coming. Read
It took PC manufacturers long enough, but they’ve finally figured out that ripping off Apple’s PowerBook G4 and building widescreen laptops is a good idea. Best Buy’s vpr Matrix was the first to do it, followed (surprisingly) by Dell (we would have bet on Gateway). Now HP has its own widescreen laptop on the way,…
SONICblue, the company that makes ReplayTV digital video recorders, declared bankruptcy last week. Normally an electronics manufacturer going out of business wouldn’t be such a big deal for its customers, except that for a ReplayTV to work properly it needs to dial in to SONICblue every week or so and download updated programming listings. Owners…
First smartphone from Samsung to run Symbian’s Series 60 operating system. We’re somewhat partial to the sharp design of the SGH-D700 – it’s all right angles – but the integrated digital camera and rotating color LCD screen don’t hurt either. Sadly, it looks like this one’s just for the European market. Read
More details on Palm’s new Zire 71 color handheld. Looks like it’ll run Palm OS 5.2, have a 320×320 pixel color screen, 16MB of RAM, a built-in digital camera, and cost considerably more than the original, more budget-friendly, Zire. Read [Thanks, Mike]
Amazon sale on the keyboard we use right here at Gizmodo HQ: the USB Office Keyboard from Microsoft. Comes with dedicated undo, copy, and paste buttons for those too lazy to hit ctrl-z, ctrl-c, or ctrl-u. Amazon
So-called “rugged” PDAs are making an appearance in the war in Iraq, with some ground troops in Iraq being issued handhelds like the Tacter RPDA-88 Pocket PC (the “R” stands for “Ruggedized”). The RPDA-88 comes with built-in GPS, a tactical military modem, and a laser range finder(wouldn’t mind seeing that on a civilian Pocket PC)…