Gadget Access

About a month ago I finally decided to cave and purchase an ipod Touch. To be perfectly honest, I love it, and rarely leave the house without it in my pocket. When I have WiFi access, I’ll use it to check my mail and keep up on news, which is pretty cool. I was surprised at how easy it was to use the keyboard, even if I’m still a bit slow with it. If you’re looking for something to improve your ability to type on your iphone or iPod Touch, you may consider My Touch Keys.

This plastic overlay covers the entire screen of your device, save for the letters on the keyboard and the home button. This provides the much-needed tactile feedback, yet still allows you to use the touch screen features on your phone. While it shouldn’t interfere with use of the phone, I would likely get annoyed with it when I was doing anything other than typing. Since a pair of these will only set you back $7.99, you don’t really have a whole lot to lose. So if you’re looking to improve your typing, I’d give it a shot.

Source: Technabob

Asus has unveiled plans to include touchscreens in the next generation of the Eee PC. These will be included in the Eee PC 900 which will feature the 8.9-inch display, and is sound like these updates will make most current Eee PC owners just a little jealous.

According to Kevin Lin, who is the vice president of Asustek’s sales department the new Eee PC’s will feature touchscreen panels and possibly include GPS support. In addition to the touchscreen and GPS, the new lineup will also see a boost in both memory and storage. The standard RAM will be 1GB as opposed to the current 512MB and the storage will go up from the current 4-8GB to 8-12GB’s.

The new Eee PC’s are expected to begin shipping in May or June and retail for around $500. Asus also has plans to ship their previously announced E-DT desktop model around the same May or June timeframe, which is expected to retail for $199.

Via [DigiTimes]

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Posted Mar 26th 2008 6:23AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Wireless
var When did the practice of lawmaking require an accompanying press release issued by a professional PR firm? An embedded photo of the sponsoring state official, too? Shameless. Nevertheless, it did bring our attention to a new law in the state of Washington which prohibits “malicious” RFID spying. When the new law (said to be a first of its kind in the US) goes into effect in July, anyone caught scanning a person remotely “without his or her knowledge and consent, for the purpose of fraud, identity theft, or some other illegal purpose” will be charged with a Class C felony. Great, so that covers the obvious criminal abuse of the technology. However, the original bill also included an opt-in measure that would require your approval before retailers and others could track your activity via that handy, store-issued discount card you carry, the implant you received during that stint in the joint, new credit card, or personal ID card you’re required to carry. Unfortunately, the opt-in requirement was stricken from the bill (and therefore not in the final law) after succumbing to heavy corporate lobbying. You thinking what we’re thinking? Contact information posted in the read link below.

“Tank” may be a strong word, but Om Malik points out that SiRF Technology, which is a maker of GPS chips, is letting go some of its workforce and he feels that SiRF is a bellwether of the GPS industry. As he puts it, SiRF is the “canary in the GPS coal mine” and the GPS end-device makers may follow. For years now, GPS has been the single best-selling electronics category.

I agree with Malik who makes the point that GPS-only devices will go by the wayside as GPS functionality is integrated into other devices, particularly cell phones. I hope that Dash is looking to the future as they have an interesting and potentially very useful product.

Posted Mar 26th 2008 2:54PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Misc. gadgets
That Skullphone billboard hack we saw yesterday had everyone at Engadget HQ pretty impressed with the corporate-pranking hijinks. Too bad it turns out that Skullphone is actually a phony (and total buster, we might add) who had to pay The Man (aka Clear Channel) cold hard cash to “glitch up” the digital billboards. According to Curbed LA (and our reliable tipsters / commenters), Skullphone paid the massive media conglomerate for one-day Los Angeles-wide ads — there was no hacking involved at all. From now on, he should just leave the signage-goofing to the pros, or at least make it clear there’s some money changing hands. Fool us once, shame on you… and… we won’t get fooled again.

[Thanks, Dakota]

I remember during the late 1990s and early 2000s saw cell phones take the “smaller and lighter” route, with each new model deemed “good” or “excellent” based on its size first, and functions second. Who could forget about the race to have the smallest handset? Nokia’s 8xxx series and Ericsson’s colorful flip handsets definitely forged a path for everyone else to follow, but somewhere along the way cell phone design experienced a paradigm shift. Manufacturers realized that consumers wanted their cell phones to do more than just carry out conversations and send text messages - which is why handsets from then on started to get bigger and heavier due to the inclusion of more features. Fast forward to where we are today, it is a pretty tricky balancing act to figure out what consumers want - to do everything a high-end Nokia Communicator can without forcing you to tighten your belt by two notches to prevent the handset’s weight from dropping your pants. This is where the Modu phone comes in, as it has just picked up the title of the world’s lightest phone.

Tipping the scales at a mere 40.1 grams, the Modu will be made available to the masses in Q4 this year. This is a modular handset where you will be able to choose various add-ons to suit your needs at a particular point in time - for example, if you feel that you might want to snap a few photos during your night out with friends, just tack on the camera module and head out. The Modu is extremely small, measuring a mere 72.1mm x 37.6mm x 7.8mm and features Bluetooth connectivity, music playback and built-in 1GB memory, making it a viable portable mass storage device as well.

No idea on how much the Modu will cost, but you can be sure it won’t be a physical burden on your pocket then.

Source: Gizmag

Take a look at the curtain above. You are probably thinking - on a perfectly sunny day, perhaps the tree behind cast its shadow over the curtain, giving it the beautiful breezy look, right? Wrong. Take a look at the picture below.

The image in the curtain is actually made out of plain old ASCII characters! Designed by a dutch artist genius Nieke Sybrandy, they are unfortunately not yet available for sale.

Via Engadget.

Researchers have managed to discover a new inkjet technology that can “print” LCDs thanks to silver nanoparticles,laying down wiring made out of silver nanoparticles via a customized inkjet printer. Currently, TFT manufacturing consists of the development of masks which are then used to generate a pattern for the wiring on the surface of the semiconductor. The entire process is wholly dependent upon the mask, which results in a slower turnaround time. This also means minor design changes are a no-no, since a new mask will have to be created from scratch. With printing technology instead, one will be able to introduce both speed and flexibility to TFT manufacturing although initial attempts have shown success on a limited level. Today’s TFTs require a wiring scale of approximately 2µm, but inkjet technology is not that matured yet as it is limited to ink drops on the order of picoliters, which is ultimately more than 10 times the size required in diameter.

Hence, the need for a custom-made inkjet nozzle which can deposit femtoliter-sized droplets, measuring a whopping thousand times smaller than the ones produced by normal inkjets. These droplets utilize organic solvents in the ink which are so small, the solvent evaporates even before they manage to touch the surface. As for the “ink”, it features silver nanoparticles that are deposited in dots as small as 1µm. A one-hour heating session of up to 130°C will cause these dots to coalesce into conducting wires.

With just a single pass print, one will be able to produce silver wires that has a fair bit of resistance which can be reduced by printing over the same line a number of times. The semiconductor gates when operated at 3V managed to yield an on:off current ratio of about 106 which is touted to be some of the best figures ever generated with an organic TFT. Well, I can’t wait for circuit boards to be printed in the future, but that will still take a fair bit of time before the technique is perfected for complicated stuff like motherboards.

Source: ArsTechnica

There’s good kitsch and bad kitsch, and for the most part these cute tins from Dumpling Dynasty are good kitsch.

They feature stylish retro designs and good quality products and would make great gifts or keepsakes. There’s a shoeshine kit, baking kit, first aid kit and sewing kit, which all look great. But the pigtail kit and explorer kit, whilst good whimsical fun, play into gender stereotypes a little too much for my liking (boys explore while girls fix their hair? Pah).

I recommend subverting the patriarchy and buying the former for your bald self-deprecating uncle and the latter for your sexually adventurous sister…

Via Strawberry Fool.

The Modu Mini phone has now reached an official status of “the lightest mobile phone in the world”. It weighs a puny 1.4 ounces and measures just .3 inches thick. The record was recorded by the Guinness book of world records.

The Modu Mini Phone is a gadget which acts as the core of a mobile phone and can work as a standalone device. The interesting thing is that the Modu also acts as a core of other “jackets” which can expand the functionality of the phone to make it in to a gaming phone, smartphone or music phone. Expect to see the Modu later on this year or early next year.

Source - Fosfor

Guest Post by Matthew of Gadget Venue.