Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
TechJapan has a fun (but too short!) article that details the histories of seven Japanese electronics corporations and how they got their name. Did you know, for instance, that Mitsubishi was named after the thunder god who first colonized Australia by having sex with Ayer’s Rock, whose progeny went on to carve the first dive-bombing…
Vodafone Japan is getting two new Toshiba handsets, the V603T and V603SH, both of which are clamshells. The V603SH has a motion sensor, allowing users to wave it around to perform basic commands (not unlike using mouse gestures)—neat, but ultimately pointless, I fear. At the very least, it’s golden, which should be worth some price…
Mobiledia has a nice review of the LG VX8000, a pedestrian-looking but otherwise very swanky clamshell that works on Verizon’s high-speed EV-DO network. They seem to be pretty impressed with the capabilities that a high-speed cellular network affords, like streaming television and really fast internet (durrr). The VX8000 even has enough oomph to play 3D…
Built to withstand the hottest lava flows (or at least being placed in a Humvee’s tire tracks for a press photo), Olympus has announced the world’s first “Tough Digital Assistant”. Configurable in both milquetoast Win CE.Net 4.2 or the hairy, bearded Linux option, it can also include both Bluetooth and 802.11b, if you chose, ruggedly…
The new iSkin eVo2 Wildsides are everything I hate about “hip” product design: gaudy colors, ridiculous X-treM advertising, gimmicky glow-in-the dark features, a naming scheme that sounds like it was first carved by ballpoint on a 7th-grader’s notebook (Verve! Rebel! Diva!), and a price ($35) that far outweighs the amount of thought or effort that…
MioTech is showing off their new Mio269, which has the distinction of being the first GPS units with a built-in hard drive (which honestly, sounds a little suspect to me, but maybe in the handheld space that’s true). The 2.5GB hard drives are pre-loaded with maps of Europe, but retain 500MB of free space for…
Nintendo has given a firm launch date and price for its DS handheld gaming console for European markets. Showing up for 150€ on March 11th, the DS will have a considerably better launch title line-up than the US or Japan had, with at least two or three more ‘must have’ titles (including WarioWare touched, which…
As the next in Near Near Future’s ‘Strangely Familiar’ series of gadgets, this Quattro prototype alarm is a solid translucent block that has no visible buttons or markings. As the Quattro is rotated, its function changes—on the side it’s a radio, tilted up it’s an alarm, and horizontally it’s a clock, each indicated by a…
The Register is reporting that Sony will be launching a new music service specifically for its PSP portable gaming system. The new download service is supposed to be in place by March here to coincide with the launch of Sony’s player. Tony Smith speculates that the service, once in place, could just as easily be…
It’s not wrong to love a toilet company, I promise. Toto continues to innovate in the john, with a brand-new model that includes an MP3 player that loads songs from swappable SD cards. It appears to be an optional accessory for Toto’s new models, which also include built-in air fresheners and other civilized accouterments. Press…
I’m not nearly the cook I think I am, but that doesn’t stop me from buying the best gear I can find. KitchenAid mixers aren’t just ‘handy to have around’—they’re the cornerstone of culinary gear. My girlfriend buys unused accessories for hers like I buy pointless media gadgets. So it only makes sense that, with…
DAPreview is onto something when they ask portable media companies to start accepting standard 2.5-inch hard drives as a swappable media format. It only makes sense—hard drives are going to remain an order-of-magnitude larger than flash for the foreseeable future, they’re relatively inexpensive (especially since movie playback works just fine from slower, cheaper 4,200RPM drives),…
Maybe the reason I can never keep myself organized despite a surfeit of gadgets designed to assist in that very purpose can be blamed on the Missouri Public School System. Just one state over, elementary kids at the Avery Coonly School in Downers Grove, IL, (formerly Quaalude Hollow) are successfully using PalmOne Zire 72s to…
NHJ Japan is sort of the Ronco of Japanese electronics manufacturers, but for every Cornballer they sell they do occasionally find the mark. That’s not to say the new D’Zign DV-5 isn’t crap—I’m sure it probably is—but it is notable that they are going to be the second to market with a camcorder that uses…
Despite my best intentions, I ended up thinking a lot of what Markus Giesler, interviewed at Wired News, has to say about the iPod culture. People do have a lot of their identity wrapped up in music, and by extension, the iPod, so that the loss of their music library while on the go can…
Kenwood, of all people, is releasing flash-based portable music players, called the M512A3 and the M256A3—guess which one has the larger capacity? All in all they don’t seem like anything special, but just another addition to an already crowded market. The flash players are just the first in an entire series of portable media products…
Here’s the first good look at the black Motorola V3 Razr phones that will be handed out to Oscar winners at this year’s show. I’m not sure I like it better than the silver model, but it’s sure to be a big hit—if they actually release it. Oscar goody bags looking Razr sharp [CNet]
I don’t know what’s more disturbing: that these naked people are covering their meat ports with computer hardware or that it appears all these photos were taken at a technical school. If someone would have told me the Vo-Tech had a ‘naked photography with hard drives’ course, I probably wouldn’t have gone to that stupid…
Cingular has launched the LG F9100, the strangely captivating phone with the slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It’s only $150, too, so it’s not that much of a hit to the wallet. Until somebody gets a hold of one to review it, though, I’m going to reserve judgement. These sort of Sidekick fighters live and die by…
Product Highlights • Verizon’s latest 3G Phone: UTStarcom’s CDM8940 [MobileBurn] • No-cost Skype strikes chord with businesses [CNet] • Evercell, portable power for lazy people and gossipers [DAPreview] Business • Ford hanging up on land lines [Money.CNN] • SBC Said to Be in Talks to Buy AT&T [NYTimes] • Will Mac Mini spur petite-PC revolution?…