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Bluespamming, otherwise known as Bluetooth spamming, otherwise known as “Oh, I have a message oh wait I don’t,” has just become extremely legal in the UK. While their Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has a set of guidelines for electronic consumer marketing that regulates spam flow (requiring users to “opt-in” to receive the marketing), they have…
This unnamed Pacific Bell concept video from 1991 is set in the year 2003. With a young woman giving birth as our main plot device, we’re able to see how people of the 21st century will work, shop and communicate. Below is part 1 of 3. See also:Connections: AT&T’s Vision of the Future (1993)Flowers by…
Remember that Terrafugia Transition flying car we showed you nearly two years ago? Its makers have been busy since then, and might even get the thing flying before the end of next year. https://gizmodo.com/transition-personal-air-vehicle-to-fly-by-2009-155483 This summer, they demonstrated the aircraft’s automated folding wing, one of the biggest challenges to the design, and it worked perfectly,…
Some Casio Exilim 720’s have gotten dressed up by their cruel, older sisters in wuss gear. Rebranded the Hello Kitty Camera, the device still takes 7.2MP pictures, but it’s been covered in pink and stickers and evilness. AND during startup, the camera makes weird, gross Hello Kitty noises and shows weird, gross Hello Kitty pictures.…
The K790 from Flytech is an ultra-rugged compact PC. The 12, 15, 17 or 19-inch touchscreen houses the entire Celeron PC—a la iMac—but that touchscreen is housed in 60mm of stainless steel. Clearly waterproof, the K790 is intended for public use in kiosks, but the high brightness display will make it suitable for your poolside.…
Nokia cuts price of hot E65 slider cellphone by 15% [Reuters]
Designer Yuta Watanabe’s motivation in creating a ceramic concept TV remote was the disdain we usually show our little infrared friends, tossing them around, losing them in seat cushions, leaving them in another room. If the remote was an objet rather than a mere object, we might not be so rough on it. Yes? I…
Sanyo, longtime supplier of Sprint’s wilder phones, has reached a “basic agreement” to sell its phone division to Kyocera, creating the not-too-intimidating seventh largest handset maker. [Reuters UK]
Here’s a complicated but well documented method for taking an iPhone from a unlocked state to a factory fresh state, so you can go on and upgrade to 1.1.1 if you’ve been testing unlocks. It works by refreshing the baseband firmware to factory default; meanwhile, bricking is supposedly caused by the altered unlocked basebands being…
The September 20, 1964 Chicago Tribune ran an article about Glenn T. Seaborg’s predictions for the futuristic year of 1989. An excerpt appears below. In another 25 years, [Seaborg] speculates, teen-agers and adults will have two-way wrist watch radios . . . their own computers to aid studies or automatically translate foreign tongues into English…
Reader Felix just let us know that he’s jailbreaked and installed many of the iPhone third-party apps onto his iPod touch—including the new Summerboard hacked Springboard that lets you scroll between many different homepages. He’s got Google Maps from the iPhone running on there, as well as all the other fun ones like Apollo and…
The iPhone touch interface is innovative, there is no doubt about that—but it does have some drawbacks. For example, multi-touch is ill suited to fat fingers and the process of navigating obstructs the screen. Wigdor at MERL, and Patrick Baudisch at Microsoft Research are hoping to change all that with a new touch sensitive gadget…
The HTC Juno, aka T-Mobile Shadow, looks like it’s definitely going to T-Mobile. Like we said before, there’s the two-letters-per-key SureType keyboard, plus new details like 128MB on-board RAM, 4GB microSD card support, Wi-Fi, Stereo Bluetooth, myFaves 1.5, and a new top-level UI called “Top Screen”. We’re still not sure on the date of launch,…
If you are not familiar with it, Splashtop is a Linux variant that provides basic functionality like wired and wireless connectivity, Firefox, Skype and simple games. What’s unique about the software is that it runs entirely in RAM. That means you don’t have to wait for your computer to boot in order to surf or…
Click to viewThis isn’t the KE850 LG Prada that we played with before, but a new LG CU920 Prada version that’s heading to AT&T—which means there will be two touchphones battling it out on one network. Our source tells us that it’s very light, but comes with an antenna (!) that’s easy to snap off.…
The wishy-washy specs on Dell’s first tablet PC, the Latitude XT, have been firmed up, according to a French site. Its brain is a 1.2GHz ultra low-voltage Core 2 Duo with ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 integrated graphics, and buyers can pack up to 3GB of RAM into two slots. You can also pick between CCFL…
This USB drive is more than its wine-shaped exterior would suggest. It’s a tool for the hardcore wine enthusiast. Features include; 1GB of memory, wine related ringtones (eh?), desktop wallpaper, a screensaver, a wine tasting demo by Michel Rolland (who?), and privileged access to the BeWineConnected Club. The most interesting feature however, is the inclusion…
The ban on taxing your intertube access is set to drop dead next month, but signs are looking decent it’s taxation you won’t have to worry about for at least another few years—the House Judiciary Committee voted 38 to zip passing an amendment to the Internet Tax Freedom Act that stretches the tax-freeness out another…
Joost will test live streaming TV in the US in early 2008, alongside its pre-packaged on-demand video. The key here is sporting events, which are always better the first time around. But sports mean express written consent, and rather than try to compete with the big boys, Joost may be planning to start at the…
Just because you have the resources to build the world’s first toilet-shaped house doesn’t mean that you should. Then again, if you happen to be Sim Jae-duck, the chairman of the organizing committee of the Inaugural General Assembly of the World Toilet Association, you may have an interest in such a thing. And a guy…
