Gadget Access

If you’re one of the millions that didn’t heed our warnings about buying into the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war, and ended up making the wrong choice, you may be getting a little medication to help ease your pain. Those who purchased an HD-DVD Player or XBOX-360 add-on drive at Best Buy before February 23, 2008 will automatically receive a $50 gift card good towards anything in the store.

Some may look at the $50 gift cards as a token gesture, considering that HD-DVD playback devices sold between $180 and $500 until Toshiba pulled the plug back in February. It’s important to remember that early adoption of new audio, video, and gaming formats is a…

Read the rest at TechLore.com

MySpace Mobile has officially gone live. MySpace addicts can now access the social network website on their favorite mobile devices. While no other impressive features were added, MySpace is expecting that more and more users will get to try the mobile version. Just like the website version, MySpace Mobile also allows reading and send bulletins, accessing of MySpace message, approving friend requests, viewing of photos, searching for other users, posting comments, blogging, and checking out friends profiles.

Sprint particularly is MySpace’s partner in this venture but any compatible mobile phone can be used to access the mobile site. To access MySpace Mobile, users simply need to type m.myspace.com on their phone browsers to visit the website and start “MySpacing”. However good the MySpace Mobile seems, listening to songs and viewing videos are currently not possible. Hmmm…very limiting?

Via [WirelessInfo]

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Every war has an aftermath. In the case of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format wars, HD-DVD users are now at the first phase of reconstruction. Like the South after the Civil War, it is going to be an uphill climb.

Best Buy, the nation’s largest customer electronics retailer, is trying to ease the transition by offering $50 gift cards to customers who purchased an HD-DVD player or HD-DVD attachment from United States stores before February 23, 2008. They have budgeted $10 million for this endeavor.

In fact, Best Buy plans to mail cards to all customers that the company can positively identify as having purchased an HD-DVD player. That means that many of the grieving will receive a little windfall that will be a breath of fresh air to their normal bills. Of course, some customers will be missed, which is why Best Buy also offers a (888) BEST BUY hotline. All an HD-DVD purchaser has to do is call up and give them their proof of purchase.

The best part about it is that the customer can keep his or her HD-DVD player. However, Best Buy is offering a service for those to get rid of their HD-DVD players with www.bestbuytradein.com. This service will start on March 21, and will provide instant estimates on the value of HD-DVD players, as well as HD-DVD movies.

It’s nice to know that the end of the format war was not the end of hope. By the way, Best Buy isn’t the only one offering this service, as Future Shop, Circuit City, and other stores have similar campaigns. If only stores had done this when Betamax died.

Source

Doesn’t this Dubble Bubble gumball machine phone look like something that the kid from The Toy would have had in his bedroom? You know he would’ve made Richard Pryor call him again and again so that he could hear the circus music, see the flashing lights, and eat the gumball every time the phone rang.

$139 a pop from Custom Phones. I hope they have a Wonder Wheel phone too.

Via Shiny Shiny.

Most British readers will be familiar with entreprenuer Martha Lane Fox, or with her most famous invention at least: super successful holiday site LastMinute.com. Along with Lastminute business partner Brent Hoberman, Oxford-educated Lane Fox has launched a new interior design site called MyDeco (tagline: “Wipe your feet and come on in”) — and it looks like being just as big.

The site is beautifully designed (I literally said “Ohhh!” when I saw it) and like many homeware sites, showcases an exciting array of furniture from the unique to the practical. But the site offers something different, too: the chance to make changes to your home from the comfort of your chair.

Posted Mar 19th 2008 9:28AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Digital Cameras
It’s been a solid tick since we’ve heard any rustling in the bushes from Phase One, but the company’s striking back with a vengeance with the 645 (also known as the Mamiya 645AFDIII). Hailed as the “world’s most flexible, open medium format digital camera platform,” the unit plays nice with a smorgasbord of high-end lenses (Mamiya’s 645 family, Hasselblad V-lenses and Pentacon Six lenses, for starters), and can achieve shutter speeds from 1/4000 second to 60 minutes. Unfortunately, that’s about all the details we’re given for now, and while pre-production units are sneaking out at this week’s Photo Imaging Expo, we’ll be forced to hang tight until Q2 before indulging in full technical specifications. No worries — we figure most folks will need a quarter or so to save up, anyway. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Thanks, Harsh A.]

Panasonic has announced the Lumix TZ50, a Wi-Fi enabled digital camera that looks and performs like the previously released Lumix TZ5. The 10x optical zoom, the 3-inch LCD and the appearance of the Lumix TZ50 are reminiscent of the older Lumix TZ5. But that’s not saying that the Lumix TZ50 has nothing better to offer. The Lumix TZ50 is a powerful digital camera in itself besides having built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g.

With Wi-Fi capability the Lumix TZ50 will allow users to upload photos directly from their digital camera to the web for storing and sharing. But since, the Lumix TZ50 is currently available only in Japan, uploading site is limited to Panasonic’s Lumix Club site. Perhaps when, or if the TZ50 is released officially in the US, users will have more options for uploading photos, it is speculated that this will include Google’s Picasa, but we can also hope for Flickr. 

Aside from the Wi-Fi connectivity, the Lumix TZ50 also features a 28mm ELMAR Leica wide angle lens, bright 3-inch LCD with intelligent LCD function, 10.7-megapixel 1/2.5-inch CCD, high ISO sensitivity from 100-6400, various shooting modes, PictBridge compatibility, 50MB of internal memory and a memory card slot that supports SD, SDHC and Multimedia Card.

The Panasonic Lumix TX50 will be available in the Japanese market by May 18, 2008 with a price tag of ¥49,800 (around $500 US).

Via [Engadget] Read [Panasonic Japan (translated)]

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Panasonic has introduced a new Lumix digital camera that offers a 3-inch touchscreen LCD. According to Panasonic, this is the first touchscreen LCD that has been released for a Lumix digital camera model. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 also features a 25mm ultra-wide-angle Leica DC lens, 5x optical zoom and 10.1-megapixels.

The Lumix DMC-FX500 boasts of innovative features and intuitive design that will enable consumers to experience enriched digital photography and ultimately enable them to take better photos. Having two modes of operation, touch-screen and joystick, the Lumix DMC-FX500 can record HD video, adjust photo quality by touch using their finger or by using the Lumix stylus pen that comes with the Lumix FX500. Users can also set the auto-focus and exposure frames by touching the subject on screen while taking photos.

Other noteworthy and new features of the Lumix FX500 include Auto Focus tracking, intelligent auto mode, and the easy organization menu for viewing sets of photos. Photos can be scrolled through the their thumbnails which are located below the main window. Users can also edit the titles of the photos using an on-screen virtual keyboard.

The Panasonic Lumix FX500 comes in black and silver and will retail for $399.95 once it hits stores in May 2008.

Read [Market Wire]

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Polaroid had announced they were leaving the instant picture business and with that many people thought they would just quietly disappear. Well it seems that has been quite the opposite, just recently they had announced the ZINK printer and now they have announced the Freescape 4360 portable media player.

The Freescape 4360 features a 4.3-inch 16:9 widescreen display, 60GB of internal storage, Wi-Fi, FM tuner and TV-out. With a rechargeable Li-ion battery it will offer up to 16 hours for audio playback and 4 hours for video playback. The Freescape 4360 has support for MPEG4, WMA, WMV, MP3 and JPEG formats, with some speculation that there will be a future plugin for DivX. While the Freescape 4360 is not yet available, it is expected to retail for around $400.

Via [CrunchGear]

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Posted Mar 19th 2008 6:56AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: LaptopsDrop those pitchforks m15x owners and prepare to update, Alienware just released a fix to your overheating (and downclocking) problems. A new beta BIOS — X29b P3A30 — features a few tweaks including the ability to spin-up the fan to a new 5400rpm max. So more noise for more speed; sounds like a reasonable trade-off to us. Unfortunately, the new BIOS is only available if you email area51_m15x@alienware.com for a copy. A general release is expected shortly. Until then, however, it looks like all m15x shipments are on hold. Ouch.

[Via Laptop, thanks Kris J.]