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Business 2.0 article on the new Apple store in SoHo, and why it’s a success. Part of the success is due to CEO Steve Jobs’ obsessiveness about having every little detail in every store be just right: Apple CEO Steve Jobs spends half a day each week with a 20-member design team, hashing out tweak…
An article in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine about all the new surveillance and interrogation-themed toys at this year’s Toy Fair, Charles McGrath wonders, “Which comes first, our passion for surveillance or all the spy toys American kids learn to love?” You gotta love a game called Liar Liar Pants on Fire that comes with…
Having your cellphone battery die is an annoyance, but apparently in Japan it could lead to social ostracism according to an article in Online Journalism Review about how cellphones are changing the ways in which Japanese teenagers socialize: One college student I spoke to described leaving one’s phone at home or letting the battery die…
Unlocked Sony Ericsson P800 cellphones have started to turn up here in the US. Since they’re unlocked you can use them with any number of compatible services, so they’ll work with any carriers SIM card. But there is a downside: you’ll have to pay a cool grand for the privilege of being the first on…
First cellphone that can play an MP3 as its ringtone from Austrian company Tel.Me, so you can pretty much hear anything you want when your phone rings. The T919i also comes with a built-in digital camera, slots for SD and MMC memory cards, and pulls double duty as a PDA as well. Read
Taiwanese company Benq is working on a gadget that combines a portable audio and video player. Looks like it’ll come with either a 10 or 20GB hard drive and play MP3s and MPEG-4 and other video formats. No word on what the phone part of the gadget will be like. Can’t wait to see what…
Right now most cameraphones – cellphones with built-in digital cameras – have pretty poor resolution, usually about 640×480 pixels. But it looks like one megapixel cameraphones aren’t that far away, despite as resolutions go up and file sizes get bigger, it gets harder and harder to email those pictures from your phone to somebody else’s…
Believe it or not, that guy who created that old school telephone handset for his cellphone apparently wasn’t even the first one to do that. Nik Roope wrote in the other day to assert his status as the original telephone handset master, throwing downwith a link that includes, as proof, something about his “Pokia handset”…
I4U gallery of watches that use Microsoft’s new Smart Personal Object technology. Still not blown away by the design of any of these, but hopefully the next round of SPOT watches will look a little better. Read
Finally a Smartphone we wouldn’t mind owning: the Mio 8380 from MiTAC is one of the first Smartphone-powered cellphones to feature a clamshell design, and the first with an integrated digital camera. Read
Article over at USA Today on one big problem being caused by the ever-shrinking size of gadgets: they’re getting so small that it’s hard for anyone with less-than perfect vision to figure out how to use them. [A]s the gadget-buying population of the USA grays and the rush to miniaturization accelerates, the disconnect sometimes seems…
New car alarm system from Clifford that doesn’t blare all night, and thus avoids waking up the neighbors and annoying the hell out of me, as someone who is usually up all night blogging rather than sleeping. Instead, the Matrix RS3 actually does something simple: it alerts you via a two-way remote control that something’s…
Someone’s actually gone and built a meter which gauges the world’s level of terror by connecting to the Internet and continually analysing the appearance of certain terror-related keyworks in global news feeds. As if anyone really needs a constant, easy-to-read reminder of the distressing state of the world right in front of them at all…
First NetGear, now Linksys has a tri-mode, dual-band wireless laptop card of its own coming out. Read
Courtesy of a very alert reader: a link to one of those special laptops that are designed to collect data from the site of a biological or chemical attack. The CoBRA Hardpak combines a rugged Itronix GoBook Max laptop with a software program known as the Chemical Biological Response Aide, and can even be decontaminated…
Without much fanfare, Apple switched the kind of DVD burner it uses as its internal SuperDrive on 17-inch iMacs, from a Pioneer drive to one made by Sony. The reason? The Sony drive supports both competing recordable DVD formats, DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW, while the Pioneer drive supports only DVD-R/RW. But curiously Apple has actually shut…
CNET roundup of the most notable cameras of the recently concluded Photo Marketing Association show and convention. Topping the list: Sony’s new five megapixel CyberShot DSC-V1. Of the small number of enthusiast-oriented models hitting the market, the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-V1 certainly takes the most intriguing approach. With a wide variety of controls and a…
After a long hard day at work there’s only one way for any gadget fanatic to properly unwind – in a jacuzzi with its own built-in home theater system. It comes complete with a DVD player, digital surround sound, a 43-inch flat screen TV, and, of course, a floating remote control. We’re having one installed…
If you’re really paranoid about keeping your PC safe from unauthorized users, you might want to get the Authenticam, a new webcam from Panasonic with a special feature – it can protect your PC by requiring users to prove their identity through an iris scan. Read
Inexpensive CompactFlash 802.11b wireless card for PDAs from TrendNet. Read