Gadget Access

While the Treo 600 or 650 may be just a memory (albeit good and bad) for a lot of the Palm users, a class action lawsuit that originally began in 2005 has just received a settlement offer. This lawsuit was dealing with the many issues that were experienced with those models and claimed that Palm “misrepresented claims regarding the phones in advertising” and in turn delivered phones that “were “inherently defective” and “failed at unacceptably high rates.”

“Palm is entering into this settlement to avoid burdensome and costly litigation. The settlement is not an admission of wrong-doing or an indication that any law was violated,” the company said in its summary of the settlement.

The offer is simple, Palm will give a $75 cash rebate that you can use to replace a Treo 600 and $50 cash rebate that you can use to replace a Treo 650. The cash rebates are assuming that you had to replace your phone two or more times after your purchase. In addition to the cash rebate Palm is also offering a “right of repair” form that can be used by customers who had trouble but never had to replace their phone.

Via [SlashPhone]

Posted Jan 27th 2008 6:42AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable VideoIf you’ve got a certain brand loyalty to the official iPhone Dev Team then take note, they just released their own special flavor of the 1.1.3 jailbreak for iPhone / iPod touch. We guess that with the splitter version already outed (and it’s secrets revealed to Apple) there was no sense in keeping it under wraps any longer. The hack requires a v1.1.2 jailbroken device with the BSD Subsystem v1.5 or greater installed — it does NOT upgrade your baseband. All the usual cautions apply hacker-boy so be careful out there, we haven’t tested… yet.

[Thanks, Ben]

Download — official 1.1.3 Dev Team jailbreak

Posted Jan 27th 2008 4:27AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Laptops
Sure, you might’ve napped through the marketing speak and blearily paged through the tech documentation, but apparently you haven’t heard all there is to know about the new Isaiah architecture from Via. The folks at [H] Enthusiast got to see the chip in action, and were most impressed by the 1.8GHz bugger’s ability to run Crysis. Apparently the folks at Via are fairly certain their chip can best the upcoming UMPC-friendly Silverthorn chips from Intel, and it seems like Crysis is about as good a benchmark as any. We’re sure to hear more about this little rivalry in the coming months, but we like the way things are headed.

[Via Wired]

I just love the clean, minimal design of this white-on-white LED clock from Japan. The simple dot-matrix display is powered by bright white LEDs layered beneath a clear and white acrylic shell.

The clock offers alarm capability, and can be automatically set via a radio signal (although it’s possible this feature only works in Japan). Measuring in at about 4-inches wide and 2-inches deep, It’s just the right size for a desktop or bedside table.

Alas, this is yet another one of those wonderful items which appears to only be available in Japan. If you’re willing to do a little translation, you might be able to coax the guys at Visions Coax into shipping you one. Retail price for the clock is ¥7875 (appx. $73 USD).

[BTW, these look a heck of a lot like these dot-matrix LED clocks I featured a while back. Only those ones came blue or green dot patterns - but I now prefer the white one.]

read more about:

acrylic, alarm, clock, dot matrix, japan, led, round, white

Back in the early 1980s, long before the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 dominated the “next-gen” video game market, a little known console lived on the cutting-edge of gaming technology. The RDI Halcyon was a LaserDisc-based gaming system which was designed to bring the first full-motion video gaming experience to your living room. Now one of these rare gaming systems has found its way onto eBay.

RDI was the manufacturer behind such LaserDisc arcade classics as Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace, and the Halcyon was their attempt to bring the same type of gaming experience to your living room. In addition to its FMV game play, the Halcyon had speech synthesis and early voice recognition capabilities. It also was one of the first systems which let you save your gaming progress.

The one that’s up for sale on eBay comes with everything but the original microphone that came with the system, and even includes the only discs ever released for the console: Thayer’s Quest and NFL Raiders vs. Chargers. This is an extremely rare find, so I’d expect the price to shoot through the roof. Here’s the kind of exciting gaming action you’ll be missing out on if you don’t win the auction:

click to view this video clip

[Video from the arcade version of Thayer’s Quest, but you get the point].

With only two games ever released and originally priced at a whopping $2500 (in 1985 dollars), it’s no wonder the system never really caught on.

[eBay via GameSniped]

read more about:

1980s, arcade, classic, console, laserdisc, rdi, speech, video, voice

Posted Jan 27th 2008 1:19AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Misc. GadgetsThere have certainly been gizmos to surface throughout the years that react in some form or fashion to rain, but Jean-Jacques Chaillout and colleagues at the Atomic Energy Commission in France are fantasizing about using those diminutive droplets of water to actually power useful creations. After using computer models to find out just how much energy could be created by rainfall landing on piezoelectric materials, they determined that between 1 nanojoule and 25 microjoules of energy could be generated per drop. Granted, that won’t keep a WoW gamer crankin’ through the eve, but it could be used in everyday sensors that just need a smidgen of power in order to beam back results or data to ground control (or Major Tom). So yeah, these may not work so well in Death Valley, but we hear Amazonia could really benefit.

[Via NewScientist, image courtesy of ABC]

Welcome to Tokyoflash’s latest style in watches… the Tibida.

Tibida expresses three functions through its name; time, binary and date. Created using 42 white LEDs, this design offers three conceptually different ways to tell the time; hour-centric, minute-centric and binary.

Combining a stainless steel case and clasp with a mineral crystal lens and polyurethane band, Tibida is available in four styles; polished stainless steel case with either a red, blue or black face or IP black case with an orange face.

Tibida is only available to buy from www.tokyoflash.com and until February 5th 2008, they are offering a special launch price of just 12,900 Japanese Yen ($122, €82, £62) including free 5-day worldwide shipping.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $122

Cowon has recently made some great PMP’s, however, the pricing was always a little bit on the high side so it was good of Cowon to drop some of their prices. They cut down prices on the Q5W, A3, and the iAudio 7.

Beginning with the Q5W, they cut off $40 from the original price and it even comes with a free GPS cradle with a purchase, which is normally $199. The 16GB iAudio 7 went down to $209, which is about $90 lower than the original price. Finally, they took off about $20 from the 30GB A3. You can check out all these new prices at their JetMall website. This seems to be a great move by Cowon and is sure to boost their sales of their PMP’s especially the Q5W.

Read [JetMall] Via [Crave]

Lately is seems like every hot smartphone is going pink, just recently we saw the Centro change color, now Verizon becomes the latest with their pink Blackberry Pearl 8130. This one however does not come as much of a surprise, we all knew it was coming, but now its officially available. If the pink Pearl is for you go ahead and grab yours for $149.99, along with a 2-year agreement.

Read [Verizon]

Posted Jan 26th 2008 9:03PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Cellphones
Sure, we’ve seen cellphone encryption contraptions before, but KoolSpan’s aiming to make things extra easy for green CIA agents. Set to be released next month, the microSD TrustChip slips right into a-many of smartphones and enables callers to hit up other undercover gurus and chat with 256-bit AES encryption, providing that the receiver of the call has a TrustChip jammed in his / her phone as well. Furthermore, the device itself touts enough features to make Maxwell Smart all sorts of envious: on-chip crypto processing, key management and a tamper-resistant environment for starters. Word on the street pegs this bad boy at $300, but we all know the cost of getting a call sniffed could be much more costly than that.

[Via GetFlashMemory]