Gadget Access

by Donald Melanson, posted May 30th 2008 at 2:19PMWe haven’t heard much about iRiver’s shiny new Spinn PMP since it was unveiled at CES earlier this year, but Crave has now turned up a couple of fresh new details on the device, including word of the all important release date. That’ll apparently come sometime in August (in the UK, at least), although there’s unfortunately still no word on prices. Otherwise, Crave has confirmed that the player will still be arriving in 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB varieties, and that it’ll be shipping with built-in DAB radio in the UK, as well as built-in Bluetooth and a dedicated (but unspecified) 3D acceleration chip to spice up the interface a bit. In case you missed ‘em the first time around, you can find our shots of the device (under glass) here.

[Thanks, Alsyl]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Blockbuster is about to launch a pilot test of its in-store kiosks for downloading movies into portable media devices. Sounds cool? Even cooler is the fact that downloading one movie would only take a customer two minutes. And we’re not talking here of short half an hour movies but movies for rent in all their full-length glory.

No less than Blockbuster’s Chairman and CEO James Keyes will be the one to demo the pilot kiosk during Blockbuster’s shareholder meeting. But don’t get too excited about this uber cool service yet folks, because the in-store kiosks only contain a few titles of movies, as Blockbuster is still negotiating with major studios regarding the possibility of including their movie titles into Blockbuster’s in-store kiosks database.

The in-store kiosks was Blockbuster’s way of responding to consumers’ demand for a broader service when it comes to providing their entertainment needs anytime, and anywhere they want. Although the pilot in-store kiosks are currently capable of downloading movies for two minutes, Blockbuster doesn’t want to rest on its laurels and is even aiming for a reduced downloading time to possibly within 30 seconds. Blockbuster is earmarking the same experience that consumers get when transacting with ATM machines. Future plans for this in-store kiosks would be the inclusion of game downloading service.

As for the pricing details, Blockbuster is looking at a possible $10 monthly subscription fee.

Read [Hollywood Reporter]

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by Ryan Block, posted May 30th 2008 at 4:07PM
Watch out, everybody, the Optimus Popularis has gone from foam mockup to proper-looking prototype. (We’re really digging that full-length display in the space bar.) With any luck, we won’t have to watch this one develop over the course of 2-3 years like we did the Maximus — and with a little more luck, this one will be easier to type on, too.

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Filed under: Displays, Peripherals

Two things immediately sprang to mind when I saw this new invention: “Why didn’t I think of that?” and “Where was this when I was in high school?”

From what I know, these Wordlocks are the first combination locks that allow you to set your combination using words rather than numbers. If you’re like me, and can’t remember a number sequence, these are for you. With a variety of products from padlocks (great for lockers, toolboxes, etc.), bike locks and TSA recognized luggage locks, you’ll never need to remember a number combination again.

A UK theme park has decided to ban PDAs from May 25th until June 1st. Their explanation for it is that they want to encourage families to fully connect with each other.
Anyone caught with a PDA in the park will be asked to leave it in a specially designated “PDA Drop Off Zone”. 

Russell Barnes, Divisional Director for the Alton Towers Resort explains; “What we have here is the ultimate short break location where every member of the family can unwind and
have fun. We feel it’s so iportant for parents and kids to focus on nothing more than having the best possible time, we are prepared to take drastic action to ensure that parents really
leave their work behind!”

The goal is admirable, but can you imagine something like this being introduced at DisneyWorld or Six Flags? It wouldn’t probably go over like a lead balloon. I can hear the screams
of discrimination and rights violations already. There’s also safety to consider. These days most people who use PDA’s have Smartphones, those ultra popular phone/PDA hybrids.
If you ban them, you take away people’s phones as well-and as any mom can tell you, a cell phone can be a lifesaver when you’re trying to keep track of your kids in a bustling theme
park. Alton Towers seems pretty dedicated to the idea thought. They say if the experiment goes over well the ban will become permanent.

Read[Crunchgear]

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by Darren Murph, posted May 30th 2008 at 1:57PM
DigiTimes has it that HTC has already shipped its first batch of over 10,000 Touch Diamond mobiles to Hong Kong CSL, which has consequently sent our saliva glands into overdrive. The report continues on to say that deliveries to European / Asia-Pacific operators should get going in June, though no further details were mentioned. Meanwhile, North Americans are left to weep softly to keep from embarrassment.

[Via SlashPhone]

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Filed under: cellphones

Apparently the legal department of RIM got to CrackBerry before we could and had them pull the pictures down, but at least we still have the pamphlet shots. The BlackBerry KickStart, RIM’s first entry into the flip-phone market, got a hands-on experience from CrackBerry and it seems as if they are pretty darn happy with it. The basics include opening the flip to answer the phone, closing to end it, seeing the caller ID on the outside LCD screen, and external music controls (as expected), but here’s where RIM comes in.

On regular candybar blackberry’s if the phone is holstered, the message will automatically appear once you pull it out of the holster. If there are many missed messages/alerts, there are multiple icons to display and you can also check alerts on the external display. The KickStart is said to be released with OS 5.0 and Bold owners will be able to upgrade to 5.0 when released.

Via [CrackBerry]

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by Ryan Block, posted May 30th 2008 at 2:32PM
Whoa, hard to believe its been three years since the last internationalized version of Engadget launched, but we’re back and have a number of new sites in the pipeline — kicking off with Engadget in Polish!

Why Polish, you ask? Well, besides the fact that we had some amazing talent waiting in the wings to blow it out, it’s also a smaller (dare we say underserved?) market to soft-launch in that allows us to work out the kinks as we prepare to do even more international versions of Engadget in the coming weeks and months.

So if Polish isn’t your bag, just hang tight, you’ll be seeing even more localized Engadgets soon enough. And if it is, head on over and welcome our Polish team to the fold!

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Filed under: Announcements, Meta

Fujitsu has just launched its new F906i mobile handset in Japan. Aside from the cool red design of one of the F906i models, this baby wallops some nice features that would make us wish we are leaving in Japan just to get hold of this phone right now.

Who wouldn’t like to have a mobile phone with a one-touch button that fires up a cool search utility and searches for almost anything loaded in the mobile piece? With the F906i’s search key, you can look up contacts in the phone book, find an MP3 file or photos, and of course do web search. If that feature still falls short of your standard for an uber cool phone, how about if we tell you that the F906i can split its screen enabling users to watch TV on the side, while navigating the internet on another side? Sounds fun?

In addition to those two features, the F906i also boasts of other great features including; a rotary 3.2-inch full widescreen in VGA resolution (864×480), two 3.2 megapixel and 320,000 pixel cameras, microSD/SDHC slot with up to maximum 8GB capacity, OneSeg TV Tuner, FM radio, and GPS. The F906i also boasts of rainbow-color illumination for its keypads, a small finger-print sensor that serves as a multi directional key, Adobe Flash 8 compatibility, and a quick zoom-in and zoom-out functions.

And lest we forget, the F906i is also 3G capable, so you don’t have to worry of long searching time whenever you are surfing the Internet. Too bad Fujitsu has not came up with a pricing for the F906i yet.

Via [Akihabara News] Via [Fujitsu Japan]

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This may be quite a leak if it turns out to be true, but take a close look at this photo. Do you see the Apple logo? Recognize the approximate size? Yep, it’s an iphone, but this time in white and very curvy.
A couple of Dutch Apple fan sites released this pic and more this week. I’m waiting for Apple’s lawyers to hit the fan and get these taken down; anyone interested in forming a pool?

Posted in Phones, Portable