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While Bluetooth headsets are a dime a dozen, ones powered by the sun like Nuclear Man from Superman IV aren’t. Orange claims that its Iqua Sun is “the worlds first” [sic, italics theirs] solar-powered Bluetooth headset. Fancy! The green half-ouncer gets 200 hours of life on standby and nine hours of talk time in darkness,…
The OLPC’s Christmas initiative, also known as Give 1 Get 1, is starting now. What this means to you is you can pay $399 for two laptops, one of which you get to keep and the other you get to send to a child. The only caveat is that you can’t specify where your donated…
Boy Genius reports that Sidekick Slide users are getting sudden restarts after sliding the screen up and down a few times. The cause? Apparently a build flaw that has too big of a gap between the contacts for the battery and the connector on the phone. Telstra, an Australian company, seems to be having similar…
The Skinny: Like the big brother YX510, the YX300 is a cellular repeater. It’s dual band (1900MHz and 800MHz) but it’s only 1/4 the strength. I like it better. https://gizmodo.com/save-our-signal-zboost-yx-510-cellular-repeater-hands-287591 The Verdict: If you’re in a small apartment this is the one to get. Instead of huge coil of full-on coax and a outdoor-mountable antenna,…
We usually try to look for the good in everything, but this cre8txt keyboard looks to us like a pretty bad idea. It’s essentially a keyboard that lets you type like you do on a cellphone, but on a computer. You can plug it into any PC, Mac, Xbox 360 or PS3 and type away,…
Itching to get in on the Zune 2.0 action? Woot’s got both black and white 30GB Zunes for just $84.99. Yez, these Zunes are refurbished, but if you’re not too picky about using something some stranger’s handled, you can save a few bucks. And if you’re a fan of the brown Zune, like we are,…
Coolermaster, a big name in DIY enthusiast PC cases, has just announced that their Cosmos line of chassis will conform to the Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) initiative. ESA is supposed to allow more components to communicate with each other so people who build their own PCs can monitor exactly what’s going on inside the system.…
The SDK included an Android emulator. Here are some screenshots from the software gPhone. •There’s a browser (no flash, but still better than the shipping Windows Mobile browser), address book, maps. •Missing are YouTube, Gmail and Calendar apps. •There are demos for OpenGL/3D, autocomplete, scroll bars, alarms, and pop-up notices with images. •You know you…
Google’s Sergei Brin and Steve Horowitz show off multiple prototypes of the Android platform, one of which has a Palm smartphone form factor and one that has a higher-end, HTC Windows Mobile form factor. The former shows off text messaging and Google maps (which looks pretty great, btw), and the latter shows off 3G desktop-quality…
Guys, thanks for the emails this morning RE: Zune 2. I know a lot of you were expecting rich Zune 2 coverage this AM, but we were apparently put on the second tier list and are waiting for our hardware to arrive today, after everyone else has run their coverage. I’m not sure what happened.…
Here’s a sneak preview of version 2.0 of Microsoft’s Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 that’s currently making its way through the FCC, since, after all, it is a wireless device. It’s not altogether clear exactly what’s been changed here, but aside from that flying-saucer-gold paint job with the black trim, its shape is similar to its…
If you were reading the Google Android developer’s blog this morning, you might have come into quite a surprise. Namely, what’s shown in the image above. No, that’s not me. It’s some other Jason Chen that’s taken my name and is using it to whore out the Android project. The only whoring I do is…
Working the shaft is exactly what you’re going to be doing with The Shaft joystick as you enjoy Virtual Console games like Street Fighter 2 or Raiden 2—two arcade games that we’re not even sure are on VC yet. In either case, you get a peanut-shaped controller in either albino, flesh or coal miner for…
We reported on Asus’ ultra green EcoBook bamboo laptop back in March, but now that we’re seeing it in person, we can tell the design has changed. This latest edition of the bamboo beauty features even more wood accents than before with bamboo surrounding the touchpad, as well as the bamboo facade. The bamboo is…
The mystery baron who’s dropping $475 million on an Airbus A380, the biggest commercial aircraft in existence, has been revealed. It’s none other than everyone’s favorite member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. Oh Alwaleed, you were always the crazy one in the family! He already owns a 747,…
Good news for people thinking of picking up a Helio Ocean: Helio has lowered its rates for its all-in plans, giving you all-you-can-eat service for $99 a month. It’s also starting to offer refurbished phones through the Helio Refreshed service, with the Ocean now available refurbed for a mere $99. That’s a pretty awesome deal…
It’s a busy episode with the Gurus of Cool covering everything from new hard drives for TiVo, free software for TiVo2Go, the HD DVD race heating up, a really big monitor and the inside scoop about that pen that’s really a cellphone. All this, plus the Rapid Fire Roundup of Cool Products. [Free Podcast at…
You might have heard about Verizon’s new 20/20 symmetric FiOS—a sweet 20Mbps upstream and down. But 20 ain’t 100, and we’re damn jealous of the Japanese, so we got on the phone and asked the guys managing Verizon’s tubes what’s around the bend. The scoop for city dwellers is that we can expect “not too…
We had a riot across the weekend, there was booze, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. Sorry you missed it? Well that’s what happens when you skip Giz. Here’s your chance to catch up: • We freshened up with Ubuntu cola. • Sony’s new Cybershot ad made us strike a pose. • NBC Direct went live.…
As promised, the Open Handset Alliance and Google have launched the Android SDK, and a very quick glance inside shows the plan for four different smartphone configurations, very close to the design aesthetic we’d expect with HTC on board. There are also a bunch of sample images depicting a warm, friendly—I might add, familiar—user interface.…