Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Thanks to the industrious folks of Korea, there are three new flash players on SorobanGeeks this morning: SignStyles’ Si-228 (pictured), Si-300, and Si-200c. In apparent defiance of the naming scheme, the 228 is probably the best of the three, with up to a gig of flash, whereas they’re reporting the 300 as having only 256MB.…
I always get nervous when someone tries to sell me a piece of consumer electronics as an ‘investment’. Generally that means it is going to be spectacularly expensive today, and will proceed to depreciate rapidly for the next few years, at which point the item will either be obsolete and off the market, or selling…
Navman’s new iCN 510 is a pocket-sized GPS unit with a QVGA screen and a magnesium case. By default the unit comes with 32MB of map memory, but it accepts SD/MMC cards for expansion—up to a gig (and probably more). And despite this image clearly indicating a more Euro flavor, the iCN 510 will come…
Relative unknown manufacturer JaceTech offers this strange DDP-1500, a 20GB hard disk-based portable media player that is most notable for its built-in Wi-Fi and the ability to decode a wide range of file formats. Despite the kooky form-factor (why bother with a clam shell that doesn’t protect the screen?) built-in 802.11b is pretty hot, although…
Sprint is testing a fixed wireless device that will let customers to use the PCS wireless network to replace land-lines from their local telco. The plain-looking box Phonecell SX5T essentially serves as another mobile phone on your plan, but drops a regular dial tone to devices plugged into it, so that units like TiVos or…
LaCie started offering a new 20-inch 321 LCD monitor that they claim provides a greater fidelity and accurate color reproduction than any other LCD panel—approaching color accuracy as good as top-end CRTs. They even provide an optional hood to screen out ambient light so that design professionals can see the colors more closely to how…
You have to give the requisite snaps in the customary formations to a man willing to put a picture of himself pulling duty on the A/V Squad in high school, right on the front page of his site. But there’s another good reason to go to Carmine Castiglia’s website if you’re a PalmOne Tungsten T,…
The WPC EXPO 2004 is underway in Japan, and thus far it’s mostly just junk we’ve seen before. But fortunately there’s a couple new items, such as two yet unannounced flash players from a random Korean company being sold under the Rio name, wireless speakers also from Rio, and a solution to turn any set…
Reader Paul Paik sent me a bunch of great links about Samsung’s 5-megapixel SCH-S250 phone, and since he already did all the heavy lifting I figured the least I could do is pass them on. There isn’t a ton of new information, but some new pictures and self-congratulatory quotes from the Samsung execs might ease…
Sony has a new solid-state music player about to ship, the NW-S23 S2 Sports Network Walkman. The $230 $180 player has only 256MB of storage, and only reads Sony’s proprietary ATRAC3 file format and MP3 (although I’m sure their included software will convert MP3s, and converting a quarter-gig of songs should take terribly long). The one…
A San Diego-based company has invented an inflatable surfboard called ULI that can pack down small enough to be placed inside a large backpack. Although they freely admit it’s not suitable for riding the gnarliest waves, it does have the advantage of being extremely safe, since it is sort of just rubber filled with air.…
How to make an iPod fake: Step 1: Remove signature scroll wheel. Step 2: Replace streamlined interface with wonky computer-like controls. Step 3: Add every bit of software, hardware, and functionality you’d ever imagine anyone wanting. Step 4: Photoshop! But hey, you could use Salling Clicker on the iPod 5G to control your cellphone to…
Yesterday, I felt I could state with confidence that nobody had ever wished ladders would generate audible digital tones as someoneone made contact with the rungs. I can no longer state that, however, cause some geisteskrank German designmeister named Christopher Bauder not only had that very wish, but he fulfilled it using all kinds of…
PhoneMag got a whole of a draft copy of the Motorola MPx user manual, chock full of typos like “Protrait mode,” but also with lots of, you know, actual technical details. If you’ve had your heart set on this phone for a while, thumbing through the draft manual is a lot more fun than thumbing…
Dispelling all notions of what an electric car can be, a group of students from Ohio State University have developed the first entirely electric-powered car to capitalize on the aerodynamic shape of a tumescent schlong. http://www.jalopnik.com/cars/alternative-energy/ohio-state-students-design-fastest-electricpowered-car-023835.php Oh, and it’s the world’s fastest electric schlong, too, attaining 314 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Ohio State…
“I am the very model of a modern manufacturer…” so begins song number 13 of the famous DV opera The Pirates of Pentax. Little wonder, Pentax has been churning out quality products for years, with the somewhat retro-styled MX4 (which looks like a cross between a pistol-grip Super8 and some random Star Wars weapon) as…
DLP (Digital Light Processing) is a great technology, and as Om Malik reports, it’s making serious inroads into living and board rooms, with sales of DLP televisions outselling plasma in North America. RCA just dropped a release today saying that their extremely slick Scenium DLP HDTVs are now available in Best Buys in So-Cal this…
Samsung and T-Mobile launched two new phones this week, the e315 (pictured) and the c225. Neither are particularly exciting, I’m afraid. Feature-wise, they are both about where you’d want them to be if you wanted to be on the cutting edge in, say, 2000. In today’s jaded market, however, you’re going to have to give…
Although it’s far from being put into a commercial product, HP Labs showed off a flexible plastic LCD panel Monday in London that they hope will be used in signs and other static display devices. It’s not fast enough for video yet—it takes about half-a-second to switch to a new image—but it does have the…
Yet another cute little flash player debuts at WPC this week, this one from Datafab and weighing just 1.2 ounces. The MPF-001 is the second player in Datafab’s iFunky series; their last offering, the MPH-001, is almost twice as heavy while being half as sexy, and doesn’t look like it comes with any onboard flash—seems…