Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Wednesday night around this time, we like to check in with our favorite columnists. Tonight we expected MacBook Air reviews from Walt Mossberg at WSJ, Ed Baig at USA Today, Steven Levy at Newsweek and of course, David Pogue at the venerable New York Times. Only, when I refreshed my browser at 9pm, Pogue’s Jan.…
A press release from RIM has revealed that a new update for BlackBerry phones should hit in the first half of 2008. Users can expect upgrades that include: editable Word, Powerpoint, and Exel documents, remote search for email messages, HTML and rich text email rendering, and enhanced security. Hit the link for the full details.…
A DRAM spokesperson from a company called Nanya believes that Vista SP1 will hit the street on Feb. 15th. PC World followed up with a phone call to Microsoft but they only confirmed a Q1 release. [Digitimes and PC World]
If you had a slap bracelet back in the day (and I am ashamed to admit that I did), you will surely enjoy this concept device from the Chocolate Agency. Imagine a full-fledged multimedia device that can be slapped on and worn like a wristband. It would feature an e-paper surface and a battery that…
PCWorld’s Ulrike Diehlmann passed away on January 17th, succumbing to cancer after a long battle. She was responsible for developing the performance charts of PC gear and later HDTV reviews. Rest in Peace, Uli. [PCWorld]
As you know, nothing gets a woman hotter than a really cheesy pick-up line. Or better yet, a really cheesy and wildly inappropriate line—”Oh, I’m sorry, I thought that was a Braille name tag” for example. Fortunately, even the shy awkward geek can get in on the action thanks to our good old friend the…
When your company earnings nose dive 84% in the fourth quarter and you issue a warning that the recovery will take longer than expected, It is not all that surprising that the reaction on Wall Street will be swift and brutal. To put that into perspective, Motorola’s net income amounted to 4 cents per share,…
Understandably, the near sighted, big breasted, and fat gutted amongst us can have some trouble seeing the readout on a conventional scale. Thankfully, the Eye Level Wireless Scale can help with a handheld or wall mountable remote infrared LCD that displays the weight calculated on the four sensor scale. Never think of those big breasts…
Given the untimely death of HD DVD (the people’s format), one has to wonder—what will become of all the hardware out there? So, our question to you is: what do you plan to do with your now defunct HD DVD player? https://gizmodo.com/blu-ray-domination-pushes-hardware-sales-to-93-after-c-347773 Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you’re viewing this in an RSS reader,…
I kept looking for the punchline on these 500xl speakers designed exactly like a giant pair of gigantic white earbuds that come with an iPod. I didn’t find one. They’re battery powered, but run off of AC power, too. USB or minijack. And as they are named, they’re supposed to be 500 times bigger than…
Maxim Magazine isn’t usually known for their software engineering efforts (though I know for a fact that software engineers love them despite of this), but their iPhone weather checker takes the cake. And by cake, we mean boobs. Lots of boobs. Every time you refresh your weather, you’ll get a new “hometown hottie” from Maxim’s…
Pentax’s long-rumored $1299 K20D is a shot square at Canon’s 40D and the Nikon D300. Besides price, it bests both in pure megapixel count—14.6 effective, with a new CMOS sensor developed w/ Samsung—and rocks the same top 3200 ISO (6400 expanded) as the D300. (Is it as impressively noiseless though?) Expanded Dynamic Range promises more…
Pentax’s previously peeked and rumored K200D also officially exists today, bringing with it a 10.2MP hand-me-down sensor from the K10D, Pentax’s now-outdated prosumer model. It’s on the same strata as Nikon’s D80, with same MP count (its sensor is a smidge smaller, 23.5 x 15.7mm to the D80’s 23.6 x 15.8mm), 12 bits/channel RAW and…
Here’s what $230 will buy you in the point-n-shoot world right now, as embodied by the pleasantly mainstream Pentax Optio M50: a sleek little body (under 4″ wide and just over 2″ high), a 5X optical zoom lens, an 8-megapixel sensor, and a choice of pink, blue or silver. Little perks like “Smile Capture” make…
We’re not saying pixel count matters anymore, or that anyone can tell the difference between an 8-megapixel shot and a 10-megapixel shot anyway, but if you want something unusual to brag about, the Pentax Optio S12 is certainly unique. The $280 camera has a 12-megapixel sensor not a whole lot else—that tiny little 5-oz. body…
If, when the NES emulator was released for the iPhone, you thought "boy, I wish this was SNES instead" and not "boy, this is totally unplayable with a touchscreen and not a controller," then this pre-release SNES emulator should be awesome news for you. Otherwise, not so much. [zodttd]
Click to viewAnd the fourth angel sounded the trumpet, and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck, and the Anti-MacBook Air was born, with an AMD processor, and all the necessary ports, and an optical drive, and a 120GB SATA hard drive, and…
This was built a few months ago, but we just heard about it today courtesy of Jean-Luc Picard’s ancestor Steve. The guy who made this hooked up an Xbox 360 to one of those XFPS adapters that let you use a mouse and keyboard on your 360, then hooked it up to a custom microcontroller…
This Boomerang concept by interface company Synaptics is supposed to illustrate a few different input methods for remotes to control TVs and DVD players. Although it’s buttonless, the Boomerang still has a TouchPad (like the one on your notebook), as well as gesture recognition for stuff like channel switching or volume control. Kinda neat in…
Losing tuners comes more naturally to us than actually playing the guitar, which is why this N-Tune guitar tuner seems so great. It attaches under your guitar’s volume knob and lights up to the appropriate key when you’re in pitch. At $100 it’s also $94 more expensive than the tuner we currently own, so we’re…