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New portable, foldable keyboard for the Orange SPV Smartphone made of special conductive fabric. Out in Europe now. Read
The battle over who created the original old school phone handset for a cellphone is heating up. Both Ali Rahimi and Nik Roope claim to have been the first to create one, something that’s a dubious distinction any way you slice it. First Ali shot off an accusation that Nik had engaged in some “player…
Amazing array of concept designs called “Offspring” from Frog Design and Motorola for a new line of wearable devices that connect to each other via Bluetooth. Among them, a Wearable Digital Assistant that uses voice recognition instead of a numeric keypad and has storage for music and video files; the Wristable (pictured at right), a…
Toshiba’s finally taken the wraps of its new e750 Pocket PC. With built-in WiFi and 64MB of RAM, the e750 is pretty much like its predecessor the e740, but has a transflective LCD screen and a slightly faster processor. Read
Brighthand article on three technologies that could “profoundly change” handhelds: fuel cells, near-eye displays, and virtual keyboards. Read
Nokia has a musicphone of its own coming out, the 3300. The 3300 has a somewhat unusual design for a cellphone, and comes with a built-in MP3 player, an FM tuner, digital recorder, an MMC memory card slot for storage of audio files, and a 128×128 pixel color screen. Read
PocketPCThoughts review of SanDisk’s Compact Flash 802.11b card for adding WiFi to PDAs. Also comes with an adapter so it can be used with laptops. Read
We don’t normally cover gaming-related news, but the word on the street is that Sony is going to release the PlayStation 3 this year, two years ahead of schedule. If this is true, it’ll be the death-knell for the Xbox. Read
Bluetooth’s just barely gotten a foothold in the world of technology, and already Intel, Sony, Philips, Texas Instruments, Samsung and others are working on a new wireless standard to replace it. There’s no catchy name for it yet (just the designation 802.15.3a) but it’ll use ultra wideband and be 100 times faster than Bluetooth. Read
Several readers wrote in that the new four-megapixel Ixy Digital 400 digital camera from Canon, which comes out in Japan soon, will be released in the US next month as the PowerShot 400. Read Amazon
ZDNet article on how to keep your wireless network happy. The trick: updating the firmware on your wireless router and access point frequently. It’s something we at Gizmodo HQ learned the hard way, figuring this out only after several maddening hours trying to figure out why a WiFi-enabled Pocket PC couldn’t access the wireless network…
You can now search DNA databases using your cellphone. Read
Ok, so this is a good deal: SONICblue’s 40-hour ReplayTV digital video recorder is just $128.94 after rebate at Amazon. Like we’ve said before though, they really should be giving these away and signing people up for two or three year service contracts, just like with cellphones. Amazon
New line of coin-operated cellphone chargers from InfiniTec are coming to America. There are already thousands of these already in China apparently, and they’ll cost about a dollar for ten minutes of charging time and be installed in hotels, food courts, and convenience stores. Guess you need something to fill the empty spaces that are…
A few months ago design firm IDEO won the Grand Prize for its series of five concept cellphones that try to make using phones in public less socially disruptive in the 2002 Media Arts Festival held by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. The concepts are finally finally up on IDEO’s site, with our personal favorite…
Superthin GSM cellphone from Haier that’s just 12.9mm wide. The P5 also doubles as a digital voice recorder. Oh, and the photo is a bit deceptive, it doesn’t actually have a color screen. Read [Thanks, Gert]
This looks like the gadget of our dreams: a totally silent wireless 40GB hard drive called the Martian NetDrive that hooks up to a network via 802.11b and lets any computer in your home access the files stored on it. Works with Mac, PC, and Linux so that everybody can share music, movies, photos, etc.…
Nicely designed new digital camera from Canon (the picture at right doesn’t really do it justice). The four megapixel Ixy Digital 400 has a 3x optical zoom lens and comes out in Japan around the end of this month. Read [Translated from Japanese using Babelfish]
New widescreen 17″ LCD monitor from Melco. The W17VS-ST has a built-in TV tuner, a high contrast ratio of 600:1, and comes with a remote control. Read [Translated from Japanese using Babelfish]
New line of Sony digital audio stereo components that come with Firewire ports. Right now connecting a Super Audio CD player to a receiver involves using a whole bunch of RCA cables; the advantage of Firewire is that it replaces all those cables with a single all-digital connection, which results (or at least should result)…