Gadget Access

Posted Feb 8th 2008 3:15PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
In a memo sent out today by Dell, the company has reassured us that even though AMD is disappearing rapidly from its online store, the company remains “committed” to AMD, and is just “in the process of redistributing its product mix” — whatever that means. But despite those euphemisms, consumers can only buy most Dell AMD systems through a retail store or over the phone. Dell pointed out that it has kept its Energy Star 4.0 Inspiron 531 consumer desktop available online, but most other AMD machines are now just for business customers or those strange creatures that use “phones” and “buildings” to buy things.

Read - Reg Hardware
Read - The Wall Street Journal

…or more precisely, a billion Yen. Bandai, a renowned toymaker in Japan, has come with an ingenious way to make ordinary baths into luxurious and frivolous experiences.

Bandai has come up with a way to make money by selling, well, money — mind-boggling 100,000 Yen notes which are not exactly what they look like. These “bills” which are 10x larger than Japan’s largest denomination, the 10,000 yen bill, are actually bubble bath tablets. Simply drop them in the tub and and they dissolve into the water over time. Too bad it won’t be sold outside Japan. I wonder how it feels like to swim in money quite literally.

via

Now this is definitely one interesting wall clock that will definitely get everyone talking the moment they lay eyes on it while in your home.

Take a moment at the top of every hour to enjoy a quick spin around the super-speedway with these two built-for-speed cars, with horn and revved engine sound effects. Volume settings low, high and off; light sensor deactivates sound effects after dark. Uses 3 C and 1 AA battery (not included). Plastic. 13½ diameter.

The Race Car Chime Wall Clock retails for $44.95 a pop.

Product Page via Book of Joe

Posted Feb 8th 2008 10:04AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: cellphones, Handhelds
Despite the clear advantage of a physical keyboard in a business handheld, Apple’s iphone is obviously making just about everyone in smartphone land a tad uncomfortable — even if they won’t admit it — which means we could be seeing some new BlackBerry form factors from RIM in the coming months to keep consumers interested. Of course, there’s no telling if those new form factors will have a tilt-and-slide mechanism, or multitouch, but these here patents are certainly a start. The tilting mechanism aims at giving users the best of both worlds: a true keyboard and a big display, but the multitouch mechanism is interesting as well, and uses a different tech than the capacitive touch in the iPhone. Only time — and hopefully Mobile World Congress next week — will tell if these patents are going to be put to good use (hopefully as a team) in your next blackberry, but we’re certainly intrigued.

Just recently we told you about the ongoing campaign to help “save Windows XP” from its certain death. As it stands now Microsoft will stop issuing new licenses for XP as of June 30, 2008 and based on their latest response it seems that date will hold true.

A Microsoft spokesperson recently stated that they are “aware of it” when referring to the campaign, and went on to state that they are listening “first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs.” Well at last count the petition had just over 75,000 signatures on it, if that is not enough customer feedback than I am just not sure what they would be looking for.

Via [PC Pro]

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Nokia had originally released the E51 back in late September, now a nice camera-free model has just been announced with business users in mind. Still today lots of business locations restrict their employees from having any form of camera due to security reasons, even those that include the lower-resolution models typically found on mobile phones.

The camera-free Nokia E51 will begin shipping shortly and will retail for around $368. Aside from the lack of camera, the E51 will retain all of the other features to include support for 3G, WLAN, and HSDPA connectivity.

Via [Wireless Info]

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If you remotely rely on your phone, you know this is the big event of the year for new phones.  Beautiful Barcelona is where all the hot action happens and this year (should be) the year of the touchscreens.  Will we see the industry’s response to the iphone?  I have no idea, but here are what the contenders are releasing early to get our attention:

Andriod: there has been some speculation about Google getting a good SDK out there, we’ve been promised no phones for a long time to come, but who will bravely show?  Doug Berger had this to say:

The story sites “a source close to the company”, but both Google and ARM have yet to comment on the claims.  Will we see the first Gphone?  Who knows.  Hey - they could even run the new OS on a computer and we’d still be happy to see it.  Do you think Android sounds ready for the public-eye with its recent delays?  I sure don’t.

Motorola.  Much has been said about the mighty Moto, but what will stick.Will we see a haptic update to the Q9?  Will they sell their mobile division?  Robert Nelson reports on the M990, a business-like car phone:

I think the best part is when the document mentions that “it is targeted to a broad band of markets looking for exclusivity like business men, limousines and private cars looking for stylish communication and navigation solution.” Even the description of the intended market makes this phone sound like a device from the 1980’s.

Then there is the Moto ZiNe Z12, a good looking PDA style phone.  Our Indraneel has this to say:
Is this the Motorola Z12? While the phones on the far left and in the center are the Z8 and Z10, the device to the far right may well be the new ZiNe Z12. The rumored Motofone is said to have built in GPS and Wi-Fi, as well as a 5 or 8-megapixel camera. Also supposedly in the package is a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen, which seems to be pictured above.

Samsung is showing off some fun ones.  Robert Nelson posts on the G810 stating:

While the image of the phone is not that impressive, the specs are solid…The G810 smartphone is rumored to feature a 2.6-inch 262k color QVGA TFT display, 5-megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom, face recognition, macro mode and auto-focus, 150MB of internal memory with a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0 and GPS navigation. The G810 is also expected to feature GSM/UMTS/3.6 Mbps HSDPA connectivity and be running Symbian 9.2.

Samsung also is showing off the flagship Soul, I described just this morning:

What sets this phone apart from other good-lookers?  Actually a couple of really cool things.  Check out the User Created Skins and you’ll create a skin all your own, additionally Sammy packed in different UI themes.  A Magical Touch (and yes, they capitalize it, good grief), application specific buttons that change depending on what you are doing.

Glofish, an up and comer is dropping two new phones.  I had this to post earlier this week:

E-TEN dropped two new phones for their Glofish brand, and they look impressive.  E-Ten’s Glofish brand is getting sexier and these new phones are the latest proof.  These new phones are Pocket PC phones geared to always connected freaks like me rather than business folk.  Both models feature HSDPA, WiFi and GPS.

What have I left out?  Many say we’ll see nothing super impressive come out of this show, do you agree with them?

Stay tuned to phone-obsessed Gadgetell for the very latest from Spain.

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Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business International Marketing Director John Starkweather has recently confirmed that talks were taking place between Microsoft and Nokia. Could we possibly see a Windows Mobile based Nokia device in the future? While the talks are there I would not expect to see it, especially anytime soon.

John mentioned that while Nokia has “significant investments in Symbian … there are a lot of places where we have significant synergies and we would love to see the day where those synergies would extend completely with Windows Mobile.” Of course he later went on to mention that “It’s something we talk about all the time.” Personally I think if Nokia went with Windows Mobile they would have a lot of angry Symbian fans on their hands.

Via [IntoMobile]

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The U.S. podcasting audience reached 18.5 million in 2007, according to eMarketer and was projected to top 65 million by 2012 with 25 million listeners downloading one or more podcasts a week.

Ad spending on podcasts in the U.S. is also expected to creep up, from $165 million in 2007 to $435 million in 2012.

Major podcasting networks like Revision3 are growing with the medium’s success by revamping their websites and adding new programming.

If you’re not already a podcast consumer, then check out the podcast section in iTunes. There’s a lot of great stuff from tech shows to yoga workouts. And they are all free. I usually watch 5-10 podcasts a day on either my iPod Touch or Apple TV. Makes the bus ride to work much more enjoyable.

Here are a few favorites:

• Diggnation - weekly rundown of the front page stories on Digg.com
• Tiki Bar TV - drinking games
• Unboxing Live - take a new gadget, and open it up while the camera is rolling
• Midwest Teen Sex Show - explores topics concerning teen sexuality from gym class to syphilis
• The Totally Rad Show - movie, comic books and game reviews
• Make Podcast - how to tweak, hack, and bend technology any way you want
• Play Value - the history of video games.
• NBC Nightly News - the full TV broadcast sans commercials

methodshop

Mobilemag reviews the Motorola ROKR E8 and writes, “I used to be a big fan of Motorola products, but as the other manufacturers have continued to step it up with cool new features, better user interfaces, and more interesting designs, Motorola has started to lag behind. The ROKR E8 is supposed to be hip and new, but outside of the “haptics” morphing controls, the ROKR E8 is little more than a dressed version of the SLVR. The feature set is quite good, to be sure, but I was ultimately left quite unsatisfied with the final result.”

Read more about the Motorola ROKR E8.