Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
It looks like Dell was happy with their $199 Mini 9 sale from a few weeks back, because they’re repeating it today. https://gizmodo.com/dell-mini-9-is-down-to-200-for-one-day-only-5161421 The system is available in white, configured with Windows XP Ubuntu, a 1.6GHz Atom, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage (just enough to get a Hackintosh netbook running after some fiddling).…
With the new Peek Pronto supporting unlimited SMS, the company will be cutting SMS out of new Peek Classics entirely. Luckily, those of you who already own Peek Classics will be allowed to keep your SMS (the company is not pulling any services retroactively). Seems like a fair enough way of handling the situation. [SlashGear]
Even though it’s still a bit more intensive than plugging in and typing, the tweakers at Perceptive Development have managed to get an external keyboard working via a custom connection built for the headphone jack. It’s a progression of their previous project which added an RS232 serial modem interface to the iPhone’s headphone jack—a dream…
It must be a sad thing when Google thinks your city is not even worth taking the covers off the cameras mounted in a Street View car. Apparently, someone forgot to do just that for ten miles in Wellington, New Zealand. Or maybe they believed there’s nothing to see in 10 miles of road near…
Just when you thought nothing could happen in the console gaming world beyond Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, here comes the cheap and cheerful Zeebo and launches in Brazil with actual titles from some big labels: We are excited to partner with Zeebo on their visionary and ambitious global gaming initiative. The evolutionary combination of fast…
Who knows if it will work, but Asus wants to put “an end to the keyboard.” So a variety of Eee products will roll out with voice recognition capabilities later this year. According to Asus CEO Jerry Shen: …internally we have one team dedicated to studying voice recognition. Touch and gesture input is universal, whereas…
No sensor, no candles, no lights: Apparently, you just need to put two Marshmallow Peeps on top of your TV and you will be able to control your Wii, like this video shows. What sorcery is this? Is this real? According to reader Nathan Alexander, from Commercials I hate, it is. It does look like…
According to website Kombo, at a Japanese Club Nintendo event, Nintendo confirmed that a Virtual Console would be coming to the DSi in Japan, bringing Gameboy and Gameboy Advance titles with it. The move makes sense, as Nintendo isn’t selling Gameboy games on the Wii, while the DSi is being pushed far more into the…
The heavily rumored Peek Pronto has become official. The successor to the $50, one-trick-pony Peek emailer, the $80 Pronto promises full push email for up to five email accounts. https://gizmodo.com/peek-pronto-is-twice-as-fast-as-original-peek-email-dev-5175583 The Pronto shares the same $20 monthly plan as the original Peek, but on top of unlimited push emailing, that plan also supports unlimited text…
Through a cheap set-top box or a simple PC software client, OnLive streaming games can deliver the latest system-melting titles to crappy hardware you already have. The service’s secret? Cloud rendering. https://kotaku.com/onlive-makes-pc-upgrades-extinct-lets-you-play-crysis-5181300 In a nutshell: OnLive runs the games on their powerful servers, the output is then rendered as a video stream and then sent…
Remind me again why DSLRs are almost always black or silver? Pentax, whose cookies ‘n’ cream white K2000 dazzled in December, doesn’t seem to know either, and now they’re releasing a limited-edition green version. https://gizmodo.com/pentax-k2000-dslr-now-comes-in-cookies-n-cream-white-5112100 The assumption that DSLR buyers won’t want multiple colors for their hardware is a flawed one, as wider demographics are…
"We will make a more professional video in a few days," says the title card, conveniently summing up the ethos of this homebrew gaming project. It may be past Christmas, but Pandora is alive. We last saw the Pandora as an inert prototype, which showed us what the console would look like but not how…
Industrial designer Zhdanova Irina‘s self sufficient mobile kitchen concept, EGGo, looks like it could win an award for the most stylish way ever to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The kitchen, shaped like an egg, has enough space for a water reservation tank, a gas chamber (for storing cooking gas), a water sink and a…
Chinese bloggers have posted photos that are rumored to depict what the Lenovo oPhone‘s operating system looks like. Apparently, much like their moniker, the oPhone OS also has that slight Apple-y touch. https://gizmodo.com/lenovos-china-only-android-ophone-gives-us-an-o-face-5108251 Rounded square icons against a black background? It’s like they’re not even trying to differentiate themselves. Also iPhone like – you slide…
What do the San Jose Sharks’ new jerseys and Seagate’s new hard drives have in common? They are both named BlackArmor, which are eponymous to Seagate’s new 8TB network-attached storage (NAS) systems. The new BlackArmor NAS 420/440 systems are network-attached storage infrastructures that can house up to four different hard drives at once, each holding…
TechRadar has a great post on early Windows 7 concepts that didn’t make the cut— where they originated and what actual features they directly influenced—such as the “Bat Signal”, which became Aero Peek. There were apparently over 400 concept sketches shown off at the MIX conference, an event for developers where Microsoft spoke on the…
Valleywag reminds us that Google’s Visual Design Leader Douglas Bowman bailed last week. We now find out he left for Twitter because Google’s engineers do things like focus test 41 shades of blue. http://valleywag.gawker.com/5169099/twitter-claims-valley-crown-by-poaching-googles-top-designer When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic…
If you thought that the pilot who landed US Airways flight 1549 on the Hudson River was cool, you haven’t seen this simulation with the real FAA voice recordings. I’m absolutely stunned by his nerves. https://gizmodo.com/us-airways-waterlanding-close-up-image-of-inflatable-r-5132435 The captain of Cactus 1549—the codename for flight 1549—is cooler than Batman, Iron Man, and frikkin Admiral Adama all…
Microsoft’s releasing their yearly update for Windows Home Server tomorrow, and it’s called Power Pack 2. People who like putting all their files in one centralized, networked place should be excited. Among the features are improved and simplified remote access handling (it’s just a one-click affair now), as well as media sharing through Windows Media…
The 1981 book School, Work and Play (World of Tomorrow) features this beautiful two-page spread. Apparently, thanks to computers, there’s no crime in the future outside of the computerized variety. The “computer criminal” pictured really doesn’t appear to be running very fast. Maybe they’re playing a game of freeze-tag. Or maybe that policeman’s gun has…
