Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
John “Wayne” Falcone, who we’ve dubbed the Sheriff-Geek of CNet, answers the question most of us didn’t even know we had: Should we wait for HDMI 1.3? John says not really. The difference between current HDMI and 1.3 will be real, but also very hard to detect for the average home theater couch potato. Especially…
Here’s a first from Samsung: a cellphone with an optical joystick. Slide your finger on it and the cursor moves anywhere you want on the screen, instead of just in four directions like most directional controls on cellphones. Then you can click on the icons on the screen, just like when you’re using a laptop…
Here’s another one of those cryptic watches that make you guess what time it is, the JLr7 by e35 whose little J and L-shaped LEDs seem to light up at random. Even its name seems arbitrary, but check out the top row of LEDs and you’ll see: JLr7. How does it work? The first three…
If last week’s ToughBooks were a little too big for your needs, Panasonic today bestowed its ultraportable W5 and T5 ToughBooks with built-in mobile broadband. The cool thing about these notebooks (aside from their slim waist line) is that they’re the first rugged laptops compatible with Sprint’s EV-DO Rev A network, which delivers download speeds…
We’re pretty sure this Voxtel W740 Windows Mobile phone is the first to breach the 4-megapixel count. Pretty high quality camera for a candybar-shaped phone of any OS. Definitely pants-tent material. The W740 has a 2.4-inch touch-screen, Bluetooth, and Motorola RAZR-like keys, but the bad news is that the phone doesn’t have a keyboard. All…
Our multilingual brothers at Kotaku have discovered some interesting news via a French gaming magazine. Apparently big N is working on yet another DS hardware update, this time upgrading its dual screens from 3 inches to the vicinity of 3.5-or 3.8-inches. I can see why Nintendo released the DS Lite (the original DS was a…
If the looks of this wheelchair aren’t enough to scare you away, then wait till you hear what it can do. Created by Swedish researcher Sven Ronnback, the intelligent wheelchair has the ability to drive itself, navigating through obstacles and open areas with equal ease. It has a distance-metering sensor that tells it when it…
I admit, I don’t like flying, but book me on United’s new “First Suite” service and I’ll literally be on cloud 9. In addition to your own 15.4-inch LCD, the service has seats that come with their own iPod connector so geeks like me can keep their player juiced on those long inter-continental flights. Once…
Microsoft’s not spilling the beans on what’s updated on the Zune 1.2 Firmware release, but after a few minutes of playing around with the device we notice some definite speed improvements. Drilling into the video menu has barely any lag now, and browsing through a large list of songs—even bringing the list up—is noticeably faster.…
Second hand tech usually go the way of Craigslist or eBay. One is a den of cheapskates and scamsters, and the other is a den of cheapskates and thieves. What’s a guy to do? Perhaps this new Flippid service is the solution. How it works: sellers list an item with a price and appropriate tags.…
NYU’s ITP just had their Winter show. Here’s the best of all projects: a photo voltaic laced bikini that puts out 5volts by USB. Just enough to charge an iPod shuffle down at the Jersey Shore. Solar Bikini [via Make]
An interesting set of speakers with an interesting name, the iPhonic from Saitek is meant to be carried and played wherever people congregate. Supposedly. Combining the iPhonic with an iPod turns them both into something similar to the Samsung YP-K5, a player with the speakers built in. Most people probably have little use for a…
•Linksys Not-Apple-iPhone Details and Photos •LG Rolls Out TVPC Line, More to Come •Matsushita to Produce Heat-Proof Batteries •UV Cleaner: In the Future, We’ll All Be Filthy •Exploding PowerBook Surprisingly Not Sony’s Fault https://gizmodo.com/linksys-not-apple-iphone-details-and-photos-222505 Comment of the Day: Rakuten Ultraviolet Toothbrush Cleaner https://gizmodo.com/rakuten-ultraviolet-toothbrush-cleaner-222560 “So if our mouths are filled with bacteria, so much bacteria that…
Best Buy reported/bragged that it received $43 million from unused gift cards in fiscal year 2006. Best Buy expires gift cards after two years, so if you’ve got one you received for Christmas 2004, go spend them now before they’re no longer valid. Or before a crazed-looking Asian lady steals them. Retailers profit from unused…
Just when we thought we had heard the last of the exploding–laptop stories, word has it that two NEC desktops in Japan have caught fire. In both cases, the fire was due to a faulty coil in the power supply, which NEC said they’d replace at no charge to their customers. Fortunately, there were no…
One of the many problems with using a cellphone as your sole media device is the lack of storage space. A one or two gigabyte SD card just doesn’t hold enough music or movies to be used as a full-time mobile entertainment center. Enter the BluOnyx Mobile Content Server. With USB, SD, and upcoming Wi-Fi,…
•Amazon Sues IBM for Patent Infringement [PC World] •Yahoo and Cisco combine their antispam technologies [The Industry Standard] •Google buys Endoxon [InfoWorld] •Intel silently revs Core 2 Duo CPUs [TG Daily] •Samsung and Sony’s Win-Win LCD Venture [BusinessWeek]
What do NBC, News Corp., CBS, and Viacom have in common? YouTube. In an effort to dethrone their young Web-based competition, they’re joining forces on a new venture/website that would host videos from their respective video vaults. This in turn would draw traffic away from YouTube, and put extra cash in the already fat pockets…
Itching to get in close with your cameraphone? Check out this telescopic lens attachment, which turns your Nokia or Sony Ericsson into a zooming machine. Slightly more conspicuous than just snapping off a shot normally, the lens pops onto the back with a mount, and gives you up to 6x optical zoom. With something like…
Here’s a Japanese emergency gadget, like the ones from Eton. It has a handcrank that can power a radio, cellphone charger, or the LED flashlight. And it has a sensor that’ll detect 4.0 quakes or higher, and set off a siren and flash some lights. (In case you didn’t notice your house falling around your…