Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Hedviga Golik made herself a cup of tea and sat down to watch some television in her hometown of Zagreb, Croatia. Sadly, she died in her chair. This was in 1966. She was just found, 42 years later, in her time capsule mausoleum where she’s been sitting ever since. She never finished her tea. What’s…
Some may see LG’s latest ad for their LG Secret phone as about as tasteful as softcore porn, with none of the subtleties. We disagree. We’d like to see LG go down this road with all of their products. Especially that Scarlet TV. Just one note from us though: You might want to tone down…
Don’t expect any big new features here, it’s a strictly under the hood affair, delivering improved “system stability when playing select PlayStation format software titles.” Perhaps they’re referring to a more stable Grand Theft Auto experience? Go find out, if you can tear yourself away from Metal Gear Solid for a few minutes. [Kotaku] https://kotaku.com/ps3-firmware-2-36-live-they-promised-it-its-now-here-5017435
Don’t just take author Douglas Coupland’s word that you’re an asshole, there’s now an online study of 25,000 people that confirms what we’ve all been thinking. https://gizmodo.com/gen-x-author-douglas-coupland-claims-that-technology-ma-371280 Apparently, people who are early adopters of technology score high on personality traits like assertiveness, but low in modesty. Those who have high points in assertiveness and leadership…
The Songbird Flexfit is an $80 disposable hearing aid, the first of its kind, and it was developed by the Sarnoff Corporation, the same company behind HDTV. It’s a one-size-fits-all behind-the-ear device for people with mild to moderate hearing loss who aren’t ready to plunk down thousands of dollars on a typical hearing aid. As…
PC Mag is reporting that Verizon is looking at a couple different ways to spread the good word of FiOS beyond the projected 18 million homes it’ll reach in 2010, maybe by using less, um, fiber after that, according to tech chief Mark Wegleitner. Update: Verizon’s Policy blog has a post that makes it clear…
The Sega E.M.A. fembot we showed you on the weekend is really the WowWee Femisapien, and WowWee has just popped up a couple of "insider videos" of it in action. They show the cleverer parts of the tech, and get Femisapien doing a little swashbuckling: though the two ‘bots are just going through a set…
Panasonic is doing its part to see Blu-ray make even more of a success with its new LM-BR25MD and LM-BR50MD disks for home disc-burning. Both are single-sided, write-once BD-Rs, compatible with Blu-ray Disc Recordable Format version 1.3, and they’re 25GB and 50GB-sized. They’ll be released in Japan in July, at a price of $15 for…
WD just launched a drive that looks awfully familiar: Because the WD MyBook Mirror Edition houses two 3.5″ GreenPower drives—in this case either 500GB or 1TB each—it uses the same case as the networked MyBook World Edition. But this one is just for you, and you alone. The Mirror, which costs $550 for 2TB version…
Verizon FiOS’s blazingest 50Mbps downstream/20Mbps upstream package is no longer confined to the pit of the tri-state NY/NJ/CT area and select other locales. Starting next week, it’ll be available across Verizon’s entire, growing FiOS footprint in 16 states. (Though it’ll run $139.95 a month to NY and VA’s bargain $89.95/month.) Also, everyone who got 15/15…
Sprint is trying to set some kind of sales record with its exclusive Samsung Instinct: The fun little don’t-call-it-an-iPhone feature phone goes on sale June 20 priced at $129 after a $100 mail-in rebate. A week ago, we reported that the price had fallen from $299 to $199. Honestly, I can safely say there’s no…
Optoma is winning the race to build the world’s first pico-projector, the near-mythical mini projector that can throw up a display much larger than the source device’s—think iPods, digital cameras and smartphones—screen. Optoma’s pico will use the DLP chipset, support composite video quality and run on Li-ion batteries. The projector will make it to market…
Laughing in the face of the clip-on Coolman MP3 player and almost widdling in the trousers of the iPod shuffle itself is Philips’ new GoGear SA2840 PMP. It’s petite, clip-on and comes with a 4-line screen. Yup, even though it’s just 1.6-inches square and 0.6-inches deep its got a 128 x 64 pixel OLED and…
With its four LCDs, the LP-XP200L is bigger, brighter and more colorful, claims maker Sanyo. With brightness of 7,000 lumens, a Color Control Device to perk up colors, as well as a built-in Active Maintenance Filter system, the projector will be on sale in Japan from September 24, for a mahoosive $17,500, but curious buggers…
Soon after the iPhone Mark 1 launch last year, we brought you an estimate of its manufacturing cost, and now the same analysts have looked at the iPhone 3G. Portelligent thinks that this time Apple may pay as little as $100 for the components, down from $220 for the original. The saving’s made in engineering…
Tea Drinkers of the Giz unite! And get me a Bodum Clara kettle for my birthday next month, please (I share it with Ringo Starr, useless-fact fans). Made of borosilicate glass, which keeps the water smell-, taste- and taint-free, it weighs less than 500 grams and holds 1.75 liters of water. The Clara has got…
The latest craze for teenagers with no place to go except Facebook is “dipping,” or gatecrashing someone else’s swimming pool. According to the Daily Mail (commenter djheath‘s favorite publication, if I recall correctly) putative trespassers select their swimming pool using Google Earth, and then notify their mates using social networking sites. The would-be revellers often…
A recent dig around in the BBC’s archives has resulted in an unexpected find: recordings made in 1951 of a Ferranti Mark 1 computer playing tunes. Predating what was thought previously to be the first (on a Bell Labs IBM mainframe in 1957) the tapes were made during a recording of Children’s Hour in Manchester…
John Chan from Cnet Asia has been given a tour of Android by Google’s Andy Rubin. However, the touchscreen handset that the software was demoed on was deemed out of bounds—FYI, it’s veeery similar to an HTC TyTN II. Anyway, this is what he had to say about the software. The Android user interface, like…
Back in January we showed the Panasonic HDC-SD9 camcorder, which has a 3-CCD sensor, but the HDC-SD100 and HDC-HS100 announced today have a spanky new MOS system. This makes them the world’s first AVCHD camcorders with “3MOS,” which has double the light-receiving area of the CCD version, better for low-light shooting. The HS100 model records…
