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Review: LEGO Battles for the Nintendo DS
I don’t get a bonerd for LEGOs like some people I know whose names start with a J and end with an S and work for a site that rhymes with shmimono, but I have fond memories of spending countless hours as a youth erecting LEGO fortresses and castles and whatever else my imagination could conjure up. It was always about smashing the other fortress and kicking some tiny LEGO ass, but that was at least 20 years ago. Now fast forward to 2009 and while I still like to kick ass, I enjoy doing it on a much smaller scale. Enter LEGO Battles for the Nintendo DS. If you’re a hardcore RTS gamer then Battles isn’t really for you, but it’s still fun to see tiny LEGO pirates, knights and moon men duke it out on the small screen. However, the charm dissipates rather quickly into story mode one of six. Think of Battles as an introductory course to real time strategy games. I hate RTS, but found LEGO Battles to be amusing and worth the time to review. The cut scenes are fairly amusing and I have to say that the tiny actors portraying LEGO characters are hilarious, which made me laugh out loud. Multiplayer is about as good as your chosen opponent allows. In other words, find someone who is good at RTS and multiplayer can be pretty sweet on Battles. Another highlight is the free play mode where you can mix and match troops from the Space, Pirates and Castle series to do your bidding. LEGO Battles isn’t perfect, though. With such a small screen on the DS (and even DSi), trying to control your troops when there’s so much going on can be a challenge. The artificial intelligence is pretty dumb and I spent a few minutes cursing them out when they decided to get lost or stop doing their jobs. Can you imagine a grown man yelling at a video game on a packed plane? Yeah, that was me over the weekend. I enjoyed Battles but it’s not for everyone. Seasoned RTS gamers will want to pass unless they plan on handing it down to junior RTS nerds in the making. If anything, LEGO titles like Battles are much better than the licensed titles that involve non-LEGO characters like Batman. Just saying.
Source: CrunchGear | 25 Jun 2009 | 3:21 pm Android hacked onto the Samsung Omnia
With a nice big 3.2″ touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, and 624mhz CPU, the Samsung Omnia wasn’t a bad piece of hardware when it was released last year. Hell, it still outspecs most phones released today. Hardware-wise, it’s set - but on the software front, it’s luke-warm garbage. The TouchWiz interface helps a little, but deep down inside it’s still Windows Mobile 6.1. Well, a handful of handy hackers might soon fix the Omnia’s software shortcomings by way of Android. It’s still in an early (read: not working) stage, but they’ve managed to get it to start up and provide some basic level of functionality. Best part? You don’t even need to flash your handset; they’ve got it running right off the SD card. Keep up the good work, guys. [Patrick Soon via Android Community] Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Source: MobileCrunch | 25 Jun 2009 | 3:15 pm More on the Windows 7 upgrade program - CNET News
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 25 Jun 2009 | 3:15 pm Sexually Frustrated? There’s an App for That. [Digital Daily]
But far from the last, I’m sure. A few weeks back this sort of update never would have made it into the App Store, but now that it supports age restrictions for applications Apple has adopted a more permissive stance towards
“Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity?” Interesting. It would seem then that Hottest Girls isn’t just the first app to boast nudity, it’s also the first to set up shop in what may become the iPhone’s Red Light district. Source: All Things Digital | 25 Jun 2009 | 3:04 pm Google Rolls Out AdSense for Mobile in Growing Market (NewsFactor)NewsFactor - Google launched the Android mobile operating system last year to tap into the growing demand for smartphones and the applications that run on them. Now Google is launching a beta of its AdSense program for mobile applications.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 Jun 2009 | 3:01 pm Structure 09 Live StreamToday we are live-streaming Structure 09, our second annual conference devoted to all things cloud computing. As Om said in his opening remarks this morning: Last year companies were just taking about...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm Windows 7 pricing released, with limited time discounts
For a limited time — specifically, tomorrow until July 11 in the US — Microsoft will be selling the Home Premium upgrade for $50. The Windows 7 Professional upgrade is $100 during the same period. After July 11, you’ll be paying full price for the upgrades. Sorry, Europe: no upgrades for you. But Microsoft is offering discounted versions of the full Windows 7 starting July 15 in the U.K., France and Germany. Expect to pay 49 or 99 euros for Home Premium or Professional. And to show you what a swell company they are, Microsoft will be making free upgrades to Windows 7 available to people who buy a PC with Vista prior to the release of the new version. That’s nice.
PC manufacturers are on board with this already. HP has information about the free Windows upgrade online already. Expect your manufacturer of choice to follow suit, soon.
Source: Gizmodo | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:58 pm Shazam Now Tweets, Maps Your Music JourneysThe Shazam app for iPhone - that listens to songs playing out loud, telling you its name and artist - has gotten an update and allows you to send electronic postcards to friends, as well as sending...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:53 pm China throttles Google, US ratchets up trade war over Green Dam - ZDNet
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:53 pm Kaminsky On DNS Bugs a Year Later and DNSSECL3sPau1 writes "Network security researcher Dan Kaminsky has had a year to reflect on the impact of the cache poisoning vulnerability he discovered in the Domain Name System. In the time since, Kaminsky has become an advocate for improving security in DNS, and ultimately, trust on the Internet. One way to do this is with the widespread use of DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions), which essentially brings PKI to website requests. In this interview, Kaminsky talks about how the implementation of DNSSEC would enable greater security and trust on the Net and provide a platform for the development of new security products and services."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:50 pm Will Apple's First "Approved" iPhone Porn App Last? - PC World
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:50 pm Roadsters Embrace Green RacingFast and green. That's what it takes to get to the winner's circle in a new type of auto racing.Called green racing, it's a meshing of the fast and furious world of auto racing with the quest for cleaner-burning fuels and more energy efficient engines.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:43 pm AT&T confirms the MicroCell is still coming eventually
If you live in one of those houses where making a call on your AT&T phone requires standing in a specific corner, knocking three times, and saying a short prayer, you were probably pretty jazzed to hear about MicroCell, AT&T’s broadband-powered cell tower for your living room. When we discovered mentions of the MicroCell in an iPhone update, you probably got outright excited. It seemed like it was just weeks away from launch. That was February. 4 months later, AT&T has still been mostly mum on the matter - until now. Unstrung caught AT&T network delivery honcho Gordon Mansfield talking up the MicroCell, saying it’s “on track for a full national launch by the end of 2009.” A window of six months? Pah! That’s like a lifetime in the mobile world. There will be 14 new iPhones released by then! So don’t worry, folks - by the time you have a flying car and a broadband connection in said flying car, you’ll be able to pick up a MicroCell to go along with it. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Source: MobileCrunch | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:43 pm Nematode Courting Caught On Video FootageResearchers studying the nervous control of nematode mating behavior have produced video footage of a male worm preparing to mate with a hermaphrodite.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:41 pm Oh, look, a StarCraft cake!
This is a cake. It’s probably a delicious cake, yes, but that’s not the issue right now. No, the issue right now is that the cake is a StarCraft cake. Tell your friends. Gearfuse called it “Zergalicious,” which seems fair. Meanwhile, here’s a Mario Kart cake. It’s pretty new.
Yes, it’s going to be one of those days. I can feel it.
Source: CrunchGear | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:40 pm CANADA STOCKS-TSX heads higher as oil, gold strengthen* Energy sector, up 1.9 percent, leads rally (Adds details, quotes)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:39 pm UPDATE 1-York Pharma in fresh merger talks - source* Analyst speculates that may be Sinclair, Futura, IS PharmaSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:36 pm A New Way to Mute the Backchannel: ParaTweet for Live EventsIf you've ever been to a conference or some sort of large event, you've probably seen a live Twitter stream in action. Up on a big screen in a prominent place, often the stage itself, the live stream tracks...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:35 pm New loop library recreates classic 8-bit sounds (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - Musicians using GarageBand, Logic and other loop-based apps with a bent towards the fuzzy sound of 8-bit computers and video game consoles have a new tool in their arsenal, thanks to Sony Creative Software: 8-Bit Weapon: A Chiptune Odyssey. The new loop and sample package costs $40.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:35 pm Gore Unveils 'Join Gore & Change Your Life' Global Brand Campaign Showcasing Its Corporate Culture and Employment OpportunitiesNew Careers Initiative, Launching June 25, Provides Inside Glimpse at What It's Like to Work for Gore in a Variety of Industries NEWARK, Del., June 25...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:35 pm Fido Factor and The San Francisco SPCA Partner to Launch Comprehensive Guide to Dog Friendly San FranciscoNew technology service provides dog friendly info, educates owners, and helps homeless animals. SAN FRANCISCO, June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Fido Factor, the ultimate...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:34 pm Honeywell to Release Second Quarter Results and Hold Its Investor Conference Call on Monday, July 27MORRIS TOWNSHIP, N.J., June 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Honeywell (NYSE: HON) will issue its second quarter results before the opening of The New York Stock Exchange on Monday,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:34 pm New Yahoo Homepage Spotted In The Wild
TechCrunch reader Bradley Scott Shoemaker checks in with us to tell us this new Yahoo homepage turned up when visiting the portal using Google’s Chrome browser. All his other installed browsers still showed the classic Yahoo website, which lead him to believe they’re gradually bucket testing the new redesign for now (update: some users reported seeing it for over a month already). We think so too: the screenshot shows that this design is very close to the redesign we reported on back in September 2008 (embedded below again). They only tested that one for a select few users in a limited amount of countries too, but it was the last we’d actually heard of it. Update 2: The Business Insider posted a screenshot of a new redesign back in May too, but there are some differences, particularly on the color and navigation level. For the record: comScore pegs Yahoo’s total traffic at over 550 million unique visitors worldwide (May 2009), of which 150 million located in the U.S. alone. So, who else has spotted this revamped Yahoo website? Let us know in comments.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Source: TechCrunch | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:33 pm New Yahoo Homepage Spotted In The WildWith all the chatter about Yahoo's impending roll-out of a completely overhauled brand - see Techmeme for more - this particular tip that landed in our inbox last night definitely caught our attention...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:33 pm Hatch, Inc. Expands Early Childhood Product Line and Provides Expert Guidance on ARRA Grant FundingWINSTON-SALEM, N.C., June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- href="http://www.hatchearlychildhood.com/">Hatch(R) (Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:33 pm Madison County Residents to Benefit From Verizon Wireless Network ExpansionInvesting to Stay Ahead of Growing Demand for Wireless Calling, Data Access and Music SYRACUSE, N.Y., June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- In a continuing effort to provide theSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:33 pm Google Attempts To Scale The 'Great Firewall Of China'Google services in some parts of China have been interrupted as the search engine giant is accused of proliferating vulgar content in its Web searches by China’s Foreign Ministry.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:31 pm HTC Sense interface to become available on other HTC phones
Speaking of variants: From what we’ve heard from our talks with HTC, it seems a bit unlikely that Sense will find its way to any “with Google”-branded handsets - at least not in any official manner. That means the T-Mobile G1/myTouch are out, but the ION and another other handsets lacking the “with Google” subtitle are in. Cross your fingers, HTC fans, your phone may get a facelift soon. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Source: MobileCrunch | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:30 pm SAP to Stick to Software, Says CEO [Voices]By Ben Worthen, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal SAP’s new CEO Leo Apotheker says the software giant will focus on its core software business, even as its rivals expand beyond their traditional boundaries. The latest trend in the tech industry–at least among its biggest companies–is to offer products and services that used to be provided by partners. H-P (HPQ) expanded into consulting last year when it bought EDS, Cisco announced in March that it was moving into the server business, in April SAP’s (SAP) software rival Oracle agreed to buy hardware maker Sun Microsystems (JAVA), and in June, Intel (INTC), which makes chips, agreed to buy a software company. SAP has no such ambition, says Apotheker. Whereas Cisco (CSCO), Oracle (ORCL) et al. say that they can reduce complexity for customers by developing all-in-one products, SAP plans to keep making software and work with partners to achieve the same goal. “People want to reduce complexity, but they don’t want it all to come from one company,” he says. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Source: Gizmodo | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:30 pm UPDATE 2-Dress Barn to buy Tween Brands in $157 mln stock deal* Tween's shares up 28 pct; Dress Barn up 8 pct (Recasts; adds terms, background, details on management)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:29 pm Great Firewall of Australia to block video games unsuitable for people under 15Mike sez, "According to the Australian government, video games are worse than porn; they're planning to block web-based games deemed unsuitable for anyone over the age of fifteen. This would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Just call us South China from now on."So far, this has only applied to local bricks-and-mortar stores selling physical copies of games, but a spokesman for Senator Conroy confirmed that under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.Web filters to censor video games Source: Boing Boing | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:28 pm Great Firewall of Australia to block video games unsuitable for people under 15Mike sez, "According to the Australian government, video games are worse than porn; they're planning to block web-based games deemed unsuitable for anyone over the age of fifteen. This would be funny...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:28 pm Researchers Draft 3-D Protein MapA new three-dimensional computer protein map is helping researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) unravel the biological pathways that control brain-cell death after a stroke.The new map will help identify new drug targets and test compounds to slow brain-cell death, halt brain cancer and improve pain control, the study authors said.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:28 pm Northrop Grumman Recommends Siemens CNC Technologies for Use By Its F-35 Supply ChainATLANTA, June 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc. announced today that after extensive testing and evaluation, Northrop Grumman Corporation Aerospace...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:27 pm PC makers race to comply with China's Web filter (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:23 pm HTC Hero: Hands on pics and videoSection: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile You’ve read all about the HTC Hero yesterday, but how about some hands on impressions complete with photos and video? The form factorThe HTC Hero is pretty thin, about the thickness of an iPhone. There has been all kinds of discussions about that 15 degree bend in the phone. Why did HTC go with this form factor? It’s about ergonomics. When holding the device, the bend actually makes the phone easier to hold. What kind of problem will this create in your pocket? The bend is not large enough to cause any major problems unless you wear incredibly tight jeans. Using the HTC HeroThe display on the HTC Hero is very nice and incredibly bright. The “Sense” interface was very responsive. Unlike the T-Mobile G1, there is no physical keyboard. However, there is haptic feedback when you press the virtual keys. Additionally, if you go into the settings you can turn off the haptic feedback if you hate that feature. The HTC Hero does all the latest accelerometer tricks. Turn it on its side and you get a landscape view. However, that feature can be turned off in the settings in case you prefer portrait mode. There is a nice degree of customization on the HTC Hero. The device was very responsive and it looks like HTC has a winner with this one.
Download: Read: [Product Page] Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:22 pm Facebook: Want To Keep That Update Private? Go Ahead - ChannelWeb
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:22 pm UPDATE 1-Seabridge Gold to sell Red Mountain stake to BonTerra* To use funds to advance KSM, Courageous Lake propertiesSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:21 pm Long Tail of iPhone Apps Is Extra Long and Not In a Good WayOnly 19 percent of iPhone/iPod Touch applications in the AdMob network had more than 10,000 users in May, and a mere 5 percent had more than 100,000 users, according to the mobile ad networks latest Mobile...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:20 pm Playback turns Mac into media server for Xbox 360, PS3
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 MiamiHerald.com | Google's AdSense Goes Mobile, Developers Wanted ChannelWeb By Jennifer Bosavage, ChannelWeb Putting Google's AdSense on mobile phones provides on-the-go consumers with advertising information they (hopefully) want when they are on the move. Mobile Apps Draw Marketers, As Well As Google's Attention Google brings (Ad)Sense to mobiles |
When the economy cratered last fall, even mighty Google was forced to pull back on spending: The company stopped growing its workforce, and put several big expensive projects on hold.
But that’s likely to change, predicts Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay. He says that while Google is on track to shell out $1.4 billion on capital expenditures this year, that number will shoot up up more than 40% next year, to $2 billion.
That’s because even though ad dollars may have slowed down, Google’s search queries haven’t — they were up 50% in April. And while casual observers don’t think about it, running a search company is a capital-intensive business: More queries = more servers. Lindsay estimates that a new data center built in the U.S. costs Google $600 million; one built offshore runs around $300 million.
Interesting side note: Lindsay predicts that Google’s endless growth will eventually force it to rethink the way it runs YouTube, and may end figuring out a way to charge users who upload video, or at least limit them. YouTube processes more than 13 hours of a video per minute, and number that’s only going to increase — particularly as mobile video uploads pick up courtesy of devices like Apple’s (AAPL) new iPhone 3GS.
Strategically, we expect that the rising costs of hosting limitless video may encourage the company to consider positive changes with YouTube. Ultimately, we believe the company will need to find a way to charge for uploads or for viewing clips (or both), or begin to confront the reality of retaining a business where costs continue to outpace revenue growth.
But for now, YouTube is still a free-for-all, which is why we can all enjoy this clip of Michael Llodra bowling over a ballgirl at Wimbledon yesterday (she’s ok, but he ended up bailing on his match).
MetroPCS: Ring Up 100 Countries For Five Bucks A Month ChannelWeb It sounds too good to be true, but it's legit: MetroPCS Communications is offering a $5-per-month plan that provides unlimited phone calls to 100 countries. MetroPCS Offers $5 International Calling Plan MetroPCS offers $5 unlimited international calling |
AP - Britain is hiring former computer hackers to join a new security unit aimed at protecting cyberspace from foreign spies, thieves and terrorists, the country's terrorism minister said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The HTC Ozone might just be one of the best deals at Verizon Wireless. Check out everything you get for only $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate: QWERTY, Winmo 6.1, global roaming, Wi-Fi, and teathering. I don’t think you could ask for a better value out of a brand new Verizon phone.
Sure, Verizon does have BlackBerrys on the cheap, but those are old models. The HTC Ozone brings the goods on a new model. Don’t worry about the Winmo interface as HTC has its quality skin loaded on top. This is also one of the only phones that Verizon sells that has Wi-Fi and doesn’t have its GPS locked onto VZ Navigrator, which makes it even more a steal.
The HTC Ozone will be online beginning June 29 and in-stores July 13.
HTC OZONE BRINGS VERIZON WIRELESS’ SMARTPHONE LINEUP TO NEW HEIGHTS
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and BELLEVUE, Wash. – Verizon Wireless and HTC today introduce the Verizon Wireless HTC Ozone™. This easy-to-use smartphone combines a simple design with a host of connectivity options that include the nation’s largest wireless 3G network, global roaming and Wi-Fi, making it a smart option and, at $49.99*, a great value for first-time smartphone users or savvy business professionals.
Available color: Black
Key features:
· Ergonomically-designed QWERTY keyboard for fast and easy typing
· Flexible connectivity options with Verizon Wireless’ 3G network, global roaming capabilities and support for Wi-Fi
· 1500 mAh battery delivers extended operating time
· Includes international charging adapters to stay powered up while abroadLifestyle features:
· VZ NavigatorSM – get audible turn-by-turn directions to more than 15 million points of interest and share the directions with others
· Visual Voice Mail – view, delete, reply, listen to and forward voice mail messages without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions
· Mobile IM – connect with friends on AOL® Instant Messenger, Windows® Messenger and Yahoo!® Messenger
· Mobile Email – access to popular e-mail services such as Yahoo!®, Hotmail®, AOL® and Windows® Live Seamless Microsoft® Exchange synchronization with Microsoft® Office Mobile for maximum productivity
· Access to most frequently used features with a simplified “sliding panel” user interface
· One-touch messaging key for quick connection to friends and family* Price and availability:
· The HTC Ozone will be $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.
· VZ Navigator is available for $9.99 monthly access, and Visual Voice Mail is available for $2.99 monthly access.
· Customers can purchase the HTC Ozone beginning June 29 online at www.verizonwireless.com, by calling 1-800-2 JOIN IN, or through business sales channels. It will be in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on July 13. For additional information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.(EDITOR’S NOTE: Media can access high-resolution images of the HTC Ozone in the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.)
About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless operates the nation’s most reliable and largest wireless voice and data network, serving more than 86.6 million customers. Headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with more than 86,000 employees nationwide, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD). For more information, visit www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.About HTC
Founded in 1997, HTC Corporation (HTC) is a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design. Since its establishment, HTC has developed strong R&D capabilities, pioneered many new designs and product innovations and launched state-of-the-art mobile phones for mobile operators and distributors in Europe, the US, Asia and around the world. HTC is one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile device market. The company is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under ticker 2498. For more information about HTC, please visit www.htc.com.HTC Ozone from Verizon Wireless
The HTC Ozone™ from Verizon Wireless has everything customers need to take care of business – whether out of the office or out of the country. This easy-to-use smartphone offers the power of Windows Mobile® 6.1 Standard, access to the nation’s largest wireless 3G network, global roaming and Wi-Fi, making it a great option for first-time smartphone users and savvy business professionals alike.
Customers can purchase the HTC Ozone on June 29 online at www.verizonwireless.com, by calling 1-800-2 JOIN IN, and through business sales channels, or in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on July 13. The HTC Ozone is available for $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.
Features
· Supports Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard
· Supports Microsoft® Office Mobile that allows customers to view and edit Excel® and Word® documents; view PowerPoint® presentations; and create notes with OneNote® Mobile
· Supports Adobe® Reader® LE PDF viewer
· Browser: Internet Explorer Mobile
· Windows Media® Player Mobile
· Bluetooth® (version 2.0) capabilities include A2DP for stereo support
· 2.4” display: 320 x 240 pixels; QVGA resolution; 64K color support LCD
· Full-QWERTY with five-way navigation keypad
· 2.0 megapixel camera with auto-focus and video capture
· microSD™ memory slot with support of up to 16 GB (microSD card sold separately)
· Voice command, voice notes/recorder capabilities
· Speakerphone
· Security locking features
· Text, picture and video messaging
· Instant Messaging capabilities: AIM, WL Messenger, Yahoo!® Messenger
· ActiveSync®-capable (version 4.5) and Windows Mobile Device Center®Connectivity
· CDMA 2000 1xRTT/1xEV-DO (Revision A) 800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
· Pre-installed SIM card
· Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11 b/g)Verizon Wireless Services
· VZ NavigatorSM-capable – customers can get audible turn-by-turn directions to more than 15 million points of interest and share the directions with others
· Visual Voice Mail – delete, reply, listen to, and forward voice mail messages without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions
· Mobile Broadband Connect-capable – allows customers to use their HTC Ozone as a modem to connect to Verizon Wireless’ high-speed network with a qualifying Nationwide plan
· Wireless Sync-capable – allows customers to send and receive personal or corporate e-mail, calendar, contacts and moreSpecifications
· Dimensions: 4.5” (h) x 2.5” (w) x 0.5” (d)
· Weight: 3.7 ounces
· Memory:
o Flash: 256 MB
o RAM: 192 MB
· Standard battery usage times: 1500 mAh
o Usage: 290 minutes
o Standby: 324 hours
· SAR: Head: 1.03 W/Kg
· Hearing Aid Compatibility = M3/T3
The HTC Ozone might just be one of the best deals at Verizon Wireless. Check out everything you get for only $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate: QWERTY, Winmo 6.1, global roaming, Wi-Fi, and teathering. I don’t think you could ask for a better value out of a brand new Verizon phone.
Sure, Verizon does have BlackBerrys on the cheap, but those are old models. The HTC Ozone brings the goods on a new model. Don’t worry about the Winmo interface as HTC has its quality skin loaded on top. This is also one of the only phones that Verizon sells that has Wi-Fi and doesn’t have its GPS locked onto VZ Navigrator, which makes it even more a steal.
The HTC Ozone will be online beginning June 29 and in-stores July 13.
HTC OZONE BRINGS VERIZON WIRELESS’ SMARTPHONE LINEUP TO NEW HEIGHTS
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and BELLEVUE, Wash. – Verizon Wireless and HTC today introduce the Verizon Wireless HTC Ozone™. This easy-to-use smartphone combines a simple design with a host of connectivity options that include the nation’s largest wireless 3G network, global roaming and Wi-Fi, making it a smart option and, at $49.99*, a great value for first-time smartphone users or savvy business professionals.
Available color: Black
Key features:
· Ergonomically-designed QWERTY keyboard for fast and easy typing
· Flexible connectivity options with Verizon Wireless’ 3G network, global roaming capabilities and support for Wi-Fi
· 1500 mAh battery delivers extended operating time
· Includes international charging adapters to stay powered up while abroadLifestyle features:
· VZ NavigatorSM – get audible turn-by-turn directions to more than 15 million points of interest and share the directions with others
· Visual Voice Mail – view, delete, reply, listen to and forward voice mail messages without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions
· Mobile IM – connect with friends on AOL® Instant Messenger, Windows® Messenger and Yahoo!® Messenger
· Mobile Email – access to popular e-mail services such as Yahoo!®, Hotmail®, AOL® and Windows® Live Seamless Microsoft® Exchange synchronization with Microsoft® Office Mobile for maximum productivity
· Access to most frequently used features with a simplified “sliding panel” user interface
· One-touch messaging key for quick connection to friends and family* Price and availability:
· The HTC Ozone will be $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.
· VZ Navigator is available for $9.99 monthly access, and Visual Voice Mail is available for $2.99 monthly access.
· Customers can purchase the HTC Ozone beginning June 29 online at www.verizonwireless.com, by calling 1-800-2 JOIN IN, or through business sales channels. It will be in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on July 13. For additional information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.(EDITOR’S NOTE: Media can access high-resolution images of the HTC Ozone in the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.)
About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless operates the nation’s most reliable and largest wireless voice and data network, serving more than 86.6 million customers. Headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with more than 86,000 employees nationwide, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD). For more information, visit www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.About HTC
Founded in 1997, HTC Corporation (HTC) is a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design. Since its establishment, HTC has developed strong R&D capabilities, pioneered many new designs and product innovations and launched state-of-the-art mobile phones for mobile operators and distributors in Europe, the US, Asia and around the world. HTC is one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile device market. The company is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under ticker 2498. For more information about HTC, please visit www.htc.com.HTC Ozone from Verizon Wireless
The HTC Ozone™ from Verizon Wireless has everything customers need to take care of business – whether out of the office or out of the country. This easy-to-use smartphone offers the power of Windows Mobile® 6.1 Standard, access to the nation’s largest wireless 3G network, global roaming and Wi-Fi, making it a great option for first-time smartphone users and savvy business professionals alike.
Customers can purchase the HTC Ozone on June 29 online at www.verizonwireless.com, by calling 1-800-2 JOIN IN, and through business sales channels, or in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on July 13. The HTC Ozone is available for $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.
Features
· Supports Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard
· Supports Microsoft® Office Mobile that allows customers to view and edit Excel® and Word® documents; view PowerPoint® presentations; and create notes with OneNote® Mobile
· Supports Adobe® Reader® LE PDF viewer
· Browser: Internet Explorer Mobile
· Windows Media® Player Mobile
· Bluetooth® (version 2.0) capabilities include A2DP for stereo support
· 2.4” display: 320 x 240 pixels; QVGA resolution; 64K color support LCD
· Full-QWERTY with five-way navigation keypad
· 2.0 megapixel camera with auto-focus and video capture
· microSD™ memory slot with support of up to 16 GB (microSD card sold separately)
· Voice command, voice notes/recorder capabilities
· Speakerphone
· Security locking features
· Text, picture and video messaging
· Instant Messaging capabilities: AIM, WL Messenger, Yahoo!® Messenger
· ActiveSync®-capable (version 4.5) and Windows Mobile Device Center®Connectivity
· CDMA 2000 1xRTT/1xEV-DO (Revision A) 800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
· Pre-installed SIM card
· Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11 b/g)Verizon Wireless Services
· VZ NavigatorSM-capable – customers can get audible turn-by-turn directions to more than 15 million points of interest and share the directions with others
· Visual Voice Mail – delete, reply, listen to, and forward voice mail messages without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions
· Mobile Broadband Connect-capable – allows customers to use their HTC Ozone as a modem to connect to Verizon Wireless’ high-speed network with a qualifying Nationwide plan
· Wireless Sync-capable – allows customers to send and receive personal or corporate e-mail, calendar, contacts and moreSpecifications
· Dimensions: 4.5” (h) x 2.5” (w) x 0.5” (d)
· Weight: 3.7 ounces
· Memory:
o Flash: 256 MB
o RAM: 192 MB
· Standard battery usage times: 1500 mAh
o Usage: 290 minutes
o Standby: 324 hours
· SAR: Head: 1.03 W/Kg
· Hearing Aid Compatibility = M3/T3
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Apple has finally allowed pornography into the iTunes App Store. The application, called Hottest Girls, costs $2 and includes “2200+ images of topless, sexy babes and nude models”.
Why has Apple, a company which banned an e-book application from the same store because it could be used to download the Kama Sutra, suddenly started selling smut? Because the 3.0 iPhone software update now allows age restrictions for applications. Also, when I downloaded the application to test it, a new alert popped up asking me if I am over 17. I said yes.
The application itself is terrible. Four photos are shown on screen at once and tapping one will pull a full sized version from the server. From here you can look at it or save it to your photo-roll. There is no slideshow to display a progressive striptease of the same model, so you are limited to one picture at a time before you have to navigate back to the main screen, which shows a lack of understanding as to how a porn app should work. You could of course just use the application for downloading and view the pictures later in the Photos application.
You can, however, pick a category. On offer are Popular, Asian, Blonde, Brunette and Swimsuit. This is a little less specialized than what you will find on most porn sites, and it is also distinctly softcore: while there are nipples to be seen, that’s about it. A smartly-worded Google image search would do better if you’re looking for titillation.
The most interesting part is the social media aspect, or at least a crowd-sourcing one. When you view a picture full-size you are asked to rate it as either good or bad. Supposedly these ratings will steer future updates, which will be free and pushed directly to buyers.
This is certainly an interesting move from Apple. One of the main reasons for not buying porn on the internet (apart from the vast range of free content) is fear that the purveyors will rip you off if you give them a credit card number. With the Apple Store, your stimulation is just an easy, automatically-billed click away. This first foray is quite awful, but you can be sure that there will be more, and better, very soon.
Product page [iTunes]
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Mobile, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Lifestyle, Transportation
RFID is the future. It is if you listen to Ericsson’s vice-president of systems architecture, Håkan Djuphammar. Mr. Djuphammar expects every new cell phone to contain RFID chips by next year and these phones will usher in a whole new ecosystem of creative uses of the technology. Could RFID be a win-win for everyone?
From the RFID Wiki:
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.
One customer Ericsson is working with is an electric company with hundreds of unmanned stations that have a combined total of 15,000 access keys. The customer is not exactly sure where all those keys are and who has them. The solution Ericsson provided is RFID locks and enabled phones allowing the phones to act as a key and unlock these stations based on the workers proximity. Even cooler, these RFID codes can be set to allow temporary access by specific RFID enabled phones allowing the company to control who can get where.
“All sorts of things will be enabled by [RFID] — a small piece of technology, but with an ecosystem around it that opens up tremendous opportunities for innovation,” Djuphammar added. The Ericsson executive went on to outline things like traffic information by monitoring all the RFID information via highways. This info could be sold to GPS operators and then sold to consumers as an advanced service. Another concept included credit card fraud: by tying the phone to the proximity of the credit card, card issuers suggest the chance of fraud is reduced.
No doubt by now you are curious how much privacy you’ll be giving up. Will you have a choice to get a mobile without RFID? Or will non-RFID phones from 2009 run up in price on eBay and become a form of currency in the future? Should we be worried?
InformationWeek’s senior vice president Bob Evans, says we are paranoid. “In a world jammed with surveillance cameras, cell phone cameras and imminent smart-grid brains that will scold you for using more electricity than some bureaucrat thinks you should, this paranoia over RFID goes beyond silly to absurd,” Evans wrote on the company’s blog.
Privacyrights.org says this, “Used improperly, RFID has the potential to jeopardize consumer privacy, reduce or eliminate purchasing anonymity, and threaten civil liberties.”
Technology boon or privacy bust? The answer, as usual, probably lies somewhere in between.
Source: [ZDNet]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Let’s be honest–even with the sassy stylings of CEO Carol Bartz, who will be appearing at her first Yahoo annual meeting this morning–there are few of these affairs that are even remotely exciting.
Last year’s Yahoo meeting did have a frisson of possibility, since billionaire investor Carl Icahn and Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer were fixing to put the double squeeze on the board and, especially, its then-CEO and Co-founder Jerry Yang. Also, major Yahoo (YHOO) shareholders threatened a revolt.
But, no. In the end, Carl gave in and took a Yahoo directorship, Microsoft wandered off in a corporate huff and Yang and the board managed to get dinged by angry investors, but not donged.
This year, the stock has improved, hovering in the $15 a share range, although it is still been pretty moribund.
“I am too tired of Yahoo stock to be angry any more,” said one major shareholder. “It is just wait-and-see what Bartz will do now for a lot of us.”
This year, most of the same 12-member board, now including Bartz, is up for reelection and it is unlikely they will get even a bad grade. Yahoo will also ask for approval of its accounting firm (yaaaaawn).
As to other stuff going on in the ballroom of the Santa Clara Marriott–yes, it is that boring!–in Silicon Valley, there are several important votes before the shareholders tomorrow.
One is a standard proposal regarding executive compensation or a “say on pay” proposal, which will be introduced by an outside stockholder.
Yahoo’s board is recommending against it, natch, because it would apparently be a horror show if actual owners of a company got to weigh in on what execs are paid in a significant way.
Another proposal, put forward by the company and thought of internally as an uphill battle, regards changes to be made to a 1995 stock plan and also a 1996 employee stock purchase plan.
The latter is most important, a request to authorize more shares for future employee options grants, which will be a large addition to the pool–30 million more shares–if authorized. The stock will be used to keep valuable Yahoo talent in place.
Frankly, with departures continuing, Yahoo could use the share ammo.
Lastly, you can read all the good stuff–like about salaries and bonuses, deserved or, more typically, otherwise–in Yahoo’s proxy statements here.
I've mentioned my beloved Kitchen Aid espresso machine here before, but I need to mention it again. Last week, I noticed that the enamel had started to flake off, peeling away in big strips the size of business-cards. Dreading a bureaucratic runaround, I dug out my Amazon receipt, then called up Kitchen Aid's warranty number. Apart from a small problem getting the correct number (the number listed on their site is out of service), it went amazingly.
The operator asked for my serial number, asked me to describe the problem, then asked if I could be at some address the next day to receive my replacement unit and ship back the defective one. I gave her my office address, and yesterday at around 2PM, a DHL guy showed up with a brand new espresso machine in its package. I lifted it out, replaced it with the defective one, watched as the DHL guy slapped a return sticker on it, and then he left, leaving me a shiny new coffee machine that I brought home in a cab (two people on the street and the cabbie all stopped me and asked me about this beautiful coffee machine and whether it worked as good as it looked and where they could get one of their own). This morning, I enjoyed a perfect cappuccino with breakfast, and ruminated on just how damned good the customer service from Kitchen Aid had been, and I figured, man, that deserves some public approbation.
Update: Canadians beware! Multiple commenters to this post have weighed in to describe nightmarish treatment from the Canadian Kitchen Aid service department, who seem well and truly awful. My experience recounted above was with Kitchen Aid UK.
Team Fortress 2 has a huge following. And it should. It rocks. But it might be getting a tad stale to those that play it hours everyday. (me) That’s why developers crank out killer mods like these two.
The video above (might be NSFW - lots of up-skirt, panty shots) shows a nearly completed female Scout mod that will soon have everything from custom taunts to an appropriate voice. The video after the jump shows Sleuth, a clever mod available on www.team-viper.com servers where a spy can turn into a dispenser or sentry gun. Now where is that petition to have Valve release these officially…
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
Dylan's post about the Eisinga Planetarium, a 225-year-old ceiling-mounted orrery in Holland, reminded me of the weathervane at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello that made such an impression on me as a child. Jefferson, ever the clever tinkerer, connected the weathervane on his roof directly to a compass rose hanging on the ceiling of Monticello's entrance portico. Instead of having to trudge outside to find out which way the wind was blowing, he could simply look out his front window.
Video of the weathervane in action
More than 7.3 million Americans are confined in U.S. correctional facilities or supervised in the community, at a cost of more than $68 billion annually. Given our country's enormous investment in corrections, we should ensure that these environments are as safe and productive as they can be. Sexual abuse undermines those goals. It makes correctional environments more dangerous for staff as well as prisoners, consumes scarce resources, and undermines rehabilitation. It also carries the potential to devastate the lives of victims. The many interrelated consequences of sexual abuse for individuals and society are difficult to pinpoint and nearly impossible to quantify, but they are powerfully captured in individual accounts of abuse and its impact.National Prison Rape Elimination Commission - Publication - Report - Executive Summary (via MeFi)Former prisoner Necole Brown told the Commission, "I continue to contend with flashbacks of what this correctional officer did to me and the guilt, shame, and rage that comes with having been sexually violated for so many years. I felt lost for a very long time struggling with this. . . . I still struggle with the memories of this ordeal and take it out on friends and family who are trying to be there for me now."
Air Force veteran Tom Cahill, who was arrested and detained for just a single night in a San Antonio jail, recalled the lasting effects of being gang-raped and beaten by other inmates. "I've been hospitalized more times than I can count and I didn't pay for those hospitalizations, the tax payers paid. My career as a journalist and photographer was completely derailed. . . . For the past two decades, I've received a non-service connected security pension from the Veteran's Administration at the cost of about $200,000 in connection with the only major trauma I've ever suffered, the rape." ...
Victims and witnesses often are bullied into silence and harmed if they speak out. In a letter to the advocacy organization Just Detention International, one prisoner conveyed a chilling threat she received from the male officer who was abusing her: "Remember if you tell anyone anything, you'll have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life." Efforts to promote reporting must be accompanied by policies and protocols to protect victims and witnesses from retaliation. And because some incarcerated individuals will never be comfortable reporting abuse internally, facilities must give prisoners the option of speaking confidentially with a crisis center or other outside agency.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Vizio just took the wraps off of its hot Internet-connected HDTVs the other day, but the company has a new Blu-ray player coming soon too. The $188 MSRP will probably get price cuts and sales to bring it down to a more “Walmart” level seeing as Blu-ray players have breached the $100 mark. But even around the starting price, this player might not disappoint.
The Vizio VBR100 is coming to market as a Profile 2.0, BD-Live player. That means it will sport an Ethernet jack for easy updates and can display all the interactive goodies that BD-Live brings. Plus, users can plug in USB flash drives to add additional content. We wish we had more deets on this spec, but expect a music player and photo viewer - DIVX playback is a possibility too. Expect the player to also the standard assortment of A/V jacks including HDMI, component, and digital audio out.
There is no reason why the player will stay at $188 for very long. The VBR100 should hit shelves just before the pre-holiday blitz, with a second, similar model launching right before Christmas.
Something tells us that we could be seeing one of Walmart’s Black Friday items: a $99 Blu-ray player. No, no, a $79 Blu-ray player. That’s more like it.
AdMob has released its metrics report for May 2009 (PDF download link), and looked closely at the actual distribution of users of the iPhone apps in their network this time. The main take-away? There may be tens of thousands of applications available for the iPhone, but a whole lot of them simply never actually make it onto the device.
Out of 2,309 tracked applications (representing 15.1 million unique iPhone and iPod Touch users), no less than 54% are actively used by south of 1,000 persons. That’s a very long tail there, and not an economically interesting one at that. Only about 20% of the tracked apps have more than 10,000 active users, and only 5% (or 116 apps) boasts more than 100,000 active users. For the record, an active user is considered to be someone who used the app at least once in May.
Two caveats: the AdMob network evidently doesn’t cover all applications available for the platform in its entirety, and the large majority of those it tracks are free of charge. That means two things: there’s no indication that these findings can correctly be extrapolated to the entire iPhone app universe, and it’s likely the curve is less steep with paid applications (usually, you’d be more actively engaged with an app you paid for than a free app you downloaded just for testing).
The report also correctly points out the App Store ranking system feeds the success of top applications, particularly when they are featured on the Apple website in combination with getting rave reviews.
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Google’s (GOOG) mission, to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, has once again run afoul of the Chinese government, which has a similar goal, but would much prefer certain information be inaccessible. And so on Wednesday evening Chinese citizens found themselves once again unable to use Google, Gmail, and YouTube as their government condemned Google as a purveyor of porn. “According to complaints from many residents, Google’s English language search engine has spread large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and pornographic, seriously violating China’s relevant laws and regulations,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regularly scheduled news conference. “I’d like to stress that google.com, as an Internet enterprise providing services in China, should earnestly abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”
The disruption follows a widely criticized mandate from Beijing requiring all computers sold in the country to include Green Dam, an application designed to prevent citizens from viewing “offensive” content, which in the Chinese government’s case includes all manner of material. From a report by the Open Net Initiative, an academic consortium dedicated to the study of censorship and surveillance:
The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.
… The deeply intrusive nature of the software opens up several possibilities for use other than filtering material harmful to minors. With minor changes introduced through the auto-update feature, the architecture could be used for monitoring personal communications and Internet browsing behavior. Log files are currently recorded locally on the machine, including events and keywords that trigger filtering. The auto-update feature can used to change the scope and targeting of filtering without any notification to users.
Less than a week after its release, three quarters of all iPhone owners had already updated to the latest 3.0 version of the operating system. These figures come from Tapbots, maker of iPhone software. Tapbots’ unit conversion application, Convertbot, calls home on each launch to get up-to-date currency conversion rates. It also reports which version of the OS the iPhone is running. As the graph above shows, in the five days from launch the adoption rate is huge, ending up at 75% for the new OS.
We understand that these figures come from just one application, and from a small sample size (around 3250 hits per day on the Tapbots servers), but the jump is so clear as to be astounding. It helps that the update is free and that iTunes prompts owners to upgrade, but again, it’s a large figure by any measure.
Even more interesting are the numbers for the iPod Touch. The adoption rate is lower, most likely because the 3.0 upgrade costs iPod owners $10 (don’t get me started). But even given this barrier, the OS still accounts for 50% of users already.
If we somewhat shakily extrapolate these figures, let’s see what we get. Back in March, Apple reported having sold 13 million iPod Touches. Let’s take that as our number for sales to keep things conservative. If the 50% upgrade rate is true for all Touch owners, that’s 7.5 million times $10 in Apple’s pocket. $75 million in less than a week. It makes Apple’s Sarbanes-Oxley accounting claims look a little thin, huh?
To be sure, there are plenty of holes in my numbers. I used my $10 update on both mine and the Lady’s iPods, which is allowed by iTunes. Still, these figures are still pretty astonishing.
One of the reasons that developers like the Mac is that there is a similar adoption rate of OS X upgrades. Where Microsoft still has to struggle to get people off XP and on to Vista, Applecan sell a $130 OS upgrade and have the majority of users running it within a year. This means that it’s relatively easy to drop support for older OS versions and for the developers to concentrate on the new dev-level goodies Apple adds to these updates, which in turn makes the newer OS more compelling for buyers.
Again, that’s not quite fair: Microsoft sells software, and Apple is all about the hardware. This is, we presume, why you never need a serial number to activate an OS X install. Sure, Apple want to sell the discs, but it also wants to get as many people as possible on the newer, faster, better software. F2F piracy (friend to friend, which I just made up) can help.
What this does show, with surprising clarity, is that iPhone users are a bunch of neophiles.
iPhone OS 3.0 Adoption Rate [Tapbots]
Graph graphic: Tapbots
Tidiness is supposedly a virtue. It could also be viewed as a disease, an obsession with order at the expense of utility. I firmly disagree with this second statement: I’m a Virgo, and therefore everything must be in place at all times lest I am thrown into an OCD-stoked rage.
I am also too lazy to actually tidy up, which is why this stool from Berlin design team LLot Llov, cutely named Todd, is ideal. A useless stack of twisted metal out of the box, it only becomes a comfy stool when clothes are tossed and strewn across its top. What could be more perfect? Everyone, and I mean everyone, throws their laundry, dirty or clean, onto a chair or stool out of sheer lackadaisical lethargy. Bonus: Put a burner below, and a paella pan on top, and you have the making of a great picnic. Or you would, if Todd could be bought. I’d urge you to write an convince the folks at LLot Llov to produce them but, like you, you lazybones, I really can’t be bothered.
Product page [Lot Llov via Architonic and Noquedanblogs]
A group of Movable Type specialists - some of them former Six Apart employees - wanted to speed up the development of the open source version of the popular publishing platform and decided to group together in a quest to build an independent, community-driven CMS for bloggers and other publishers.
The platform is dubbed Melody and will be managed by a non-profit named The Open Melody Software Group, which has Anil Dash (Six Apart’s outspoken VP and Chief Evangelist) on its board.
From what we can gather reading about the project on the website, its founders are passionate about Movable Type but see more value in forking it, community-style, “to see it flourish as a platform”. According to the FAQ section, the team is working together with Six Apart to some degree - which isn’t surprising considering Dash’ presence on the board - and strives for as much compatibility with Movable Type’s core APIs as possible. However, you can also read that the team is inspired by successful open source initiatives such as WordPress (a Six Apart rival), Apache, Linux and Firefox.
“While at its onset Melody will have a great deal in common with Movable Type from a feature perspective, we believe that by listening to and empowering our community we will unlock the true potential of open source and begin to advance the platform at a more rapid pace. To that end we intend on decoupling features that add complexity to the product, yet only a minority of users use, e.g. TrackBack and Postgres support, and increasing the level of investment in those areas that will help people become more efficient and successful in designing and building web sites using Melody, like theme building and distribution.”
As for the product, it’s not ready yet, even for beta testing. The first release (Melody 1.0) is scheduled for ‘Fall 2009′, but if you’re a developer and you can’t hold your horses than you should check out the latest development snapshot from Melody’s source code repository on Github.
Behind Melody: Tim Appnel, Jesse Gardner, Dan Wolfgang, Mark Stosberg, Jay Allen, Su, Arvind Satyanarayn and Byrne Reese.
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 Straits Times | Photos: Cassini to explore Saturn's equinox CNET News Having completed its original four-year mission in June 2008, the Cassini orbiter is now extending its reach during the new Cassini Equinox Mission, which is scheduled to last through September 2010. Cassini spacecraft finds evidence for liquid water on Enceladus "Geyser" Moon Sprinkles Salt on Saturn's Rings |
 Sky News | Who Knew? Buzz Aldrin, Hip Hop Legend Wired News By Lonnie Morgan All my life, I've worked to reconcile my two worlds, hip hop and ubergeekery. But for me, never the twain shall meet. Apollo on rewind Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, 79, Raps in New Video |
 China Daily | Could Devices Like Hohm Increase Your Energy Bill? ChannelWeb Microsoft's announcement that it would join Google and some other players in the home energy management market with its Hohm monitoring offering could be the foundation for utilities to begin budgeting electricity. The Future of Home Energy Management Lies With Consumers, Analyst Says Microsoft unveils smart grid application |
By Nick Wingfield, Staff Writer, The Wall Street Journal
There’s more evidence Microsoft (MSFT) is about to offer people who buys PCs over the next few months a free upgrade to Windows 7, the forthcoming version of the company’s operating system. Computerworld has discovered a Web site registered to Microsoft called Windows7UpgradeOption.com.
The barebones Web site says simply: “Thank you for your interest. Please return to this site on June 26, 2009.”
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Worried about bumping into your boss on a social media service, then having to explain some indiscrete comment you made in cyberspace? If you work for the world’s biggest companies, you can relax: Your CEO isn’t spending time on the social Web.
A survey of Fortune 100 CEOs finds that almost none of them are using Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn. Reuters:
The study found only two CEOs had Twitter accounts and 81 percent of CEOs did not have a personal Facebook page.
Only 13 CEOs had profiles on the professional networking site LinkedIn. Three CEOs stood out with more than 80 connections but they were all from technology companies — Michael Dell from computer maker Dell (DELL), Gregory Spierkel from technology products distributor Ingram Micro Inc., and John Chambers from Cisco (CSCO),
Three quarters of the CEOs did have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those had limited or outdated information such as incorrect titles, or lacked sources.
The survey is the work of something called Uberceo.com, which describes itself as a blog about CEOs, not for CEOs. Which is good, because according to Uberceo, most CEOs aren’t paying attention to blogs.
Uberceo says that it’s dismayed to learn that CEOs are too busy to install TweetDeck or play Mafia Wars, and insists they are missing “a fabulous opportunity to connect with their target audience.” It suggests “that every CEO examine their online image and reputation.”
The author of that survey, by the way? Sharon Barclay, whose Linkedin profile describes her as the sole employee of Blue Trumpet Group, a “corporate and executive visibility firm.” If only she knew of a way to advertise her services…
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
It was not all that long ago when we were celebrating the App Catalog reaching 700,000 downloads and now it has reached that magical one million mark. Of course, as our own JG Mason asked the other day, “Just 7 apps per Palm Pre downloaded is impressive?”
Which means to me that adding an extra 300,000 apps is not going to bring up that average of 7 apps per Pre much higher, still one million sounds like a cool number. That said, one million is a nice milestone especially when you consider the limited availability in the App Catalog. In other words I think it goes without saying that if there were more available apps that number would be increasing at a much quicker rate. It should be interesting to see what happens once the SDK is available later this summer.
In a simple and to the point message, Sprint (via Twitter) has announced that the Palm Pre is now available through telesales.
“Palm Pre now available through Telesales! - (800) SPRINT1.”
Unfortunately, even with a call to telesales, you are still going to have to wait a little while before a Pre will arrive at your house. According to a rep with telesales, it could be up to seven business days.
Still, it is nice to have an option other than having to go into the store. Hopefully soon Sprint will allow for Internet orders as well, that way those looking to not have to deal with a human at all can also place their orders.
Read [Twitter @sprint] Read [Medialets]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Apple has updated the software for both Apple TV (v2.4) and the iPhone Remote App (v1.3). Users will see little, though, unless they use both together. When used in conjunction, you can now control the Apple TV by using swipe gestures on the iPhone (or iPod Touch).
As befits a remote control, the gestures are easy and unobtrusive: flick right or left to skip tracks and do the same and hold for fast-forward and rewind. Touch to play/pause and swipe down to access chapter markers. Dragging two fingers to the left will skip video back ten seconds. These gestures work in both audio and video playback and effectively give the Apple TV a remote, multi-touch trackpad. Combined with the already useful search from the iPhone, these free updates make the already killer Remote App even better.
Product page [iTunes]
About Apple TV software updates [Apple]
See Also:
AP - Swedish wireless equipment company L.M. Ericsson on Thursday said its financial chief Hans Vestberg will become the new CEO when Carl-Henric Svanberg moves to head the board of BP Group PLC.
Poor Pentax. The company puts out great cameras, but they suffer from an image problem. A public image problem. Pentax makes the sensible but dull cameras none of the cool kids want. Which is a shame as the new Optio W80 is a camera that only the cool kids will need.
The 12 megapixel W80 is rugged, with a capital arrrrr. Cold-proof (14ºF), waterproof (16 feet) and drop-proof (three feet), it is designed for outdoor and sporty use, and the features are cleverly tuned to this purpose. Auto-macro and auto-ISO shift (up to 6400, although the pixel count then drops to 5MP) are dead handy for shooting underwater. Face detecting auto-focus and shake reduction help, too (the anti-shake is actually done at the processor level instead of using a moving sensor). And the ability to shoot two hours of HD video underwater is surely a winner.
In fact, the only thing that doesn’t seem to fit the outdoor lifestyle is the LCD screen. Pentax tells us that it is “large”, but 2.5″, although fine, is not “large” anymore. And the 230,000 dot-count looks a little low (and a little fuzzy) in these days of 900,000+ pixel screens.
Then there are the gimmicks, some good and some just, well, gimmicky. An AF assist lamp is certainly useful and the Digital Wide mode stitches two pictures together to make a snap from the equivalent of a 21mm lens (the real zoom range is 28-140mm, 35mm equivalent). Less important is the Decorative Frame mode which can put some frilly edges on your extreme gliding pictures. The very best part though is the name of Pentax’s PC software: ACDSee. Genius.
The W80 will cost $300, and looks to be a very capable camera, wrapped in a tough body. The trouble is… well, look at it. That’s camera design circa 1982, and not in a good way.
Product page [Pentax. Thanks, Martin!]
 Straits Times | Intel & Nokia Partner on Mobile Devices TrustedReviews Having failed to convince the world to join its promised MID revolution - if poor MID sales are any indication - Intel has teamed up with Nokia with a view to creating yet another new class of portable devices. What does Intel-Nokia deal mean for Symbian? Intel and Nokia to Rattle Mobile Landscape |
“If I have any serious illness, or something coming up of an important nature, an operation or anything like that, I think the thing to do is just tell the…the Berkshire shareholders about it. I work for ‘em. Some people might think I’m important to the company. Certainly Steve Jobs is important to Apple. So it’s a material fact. Whether he is facing serious surgery or not is a material fact. Whether I’m facing serious surgery is a material fact. Whether (General Electric CEO) Jeff Immelt is, I mean, so I think that’s important to get out. They’re going to find out about it anyway so I don’t see a big privacy issue or anything of the sort.”
– Warren Buffett says Apple has been too secretive about CEO Steve Jobs’s health issues
Mochi Media continues to quietly build out monetization and reporting tools for Flash game developers. In May we reported on the big growth in their ad network - over 100 million people a month now play games that include their ads. You can find their games on big sites like Hi5, RockYou and Meebo. We’ve heard that games that include Mochi Media stats or advertising products are played over 1.5 billion times a month.
These games are embedded on publisher sites and are very often “borrowed” by other sites who just lift the Flash files. So it’s important that the game files generate revenue directly. Ads served by the publisher around the game aren’t reliable. Mochi Media puts the ads directly into the games, so even if they are ripped off, the ads still show and create revenue.
The problem is these ads don’t make a whole lot of money - the industry average is around $0.50 per 1,000 game plays.
To fuel revenue growth to developers (and therefore Mochi Media), the company has launched a payments platform called MochiCoins with a handful of game developers. MochiCoins lets developers charge for game upgrades - users can pay for coins via credit card, PayPal or SuperRewards, and the coins that then be used to purchase upgrades in games.
The early results, we’ve heard from someone close to a game developer on the platform, are stunning.
SAS: Zombie Assault 2 is killing it. The game has normal Mochi Ads, but users can also purchase better weapons and other stuff to kill zombies faster and better. It’s addictive. I spent over an hour “testing” the game earlier this evening and spent $5 in upgrades in an astonishingly short period of time. Try it - you can log in via Facebook Connect and be spending money like a drunken venture capitalist in no time.
In early testing, says our source, users are buying stuff and lots of it. The average revenue has increased dramatically to $6.50 per thousand game plays.
Users are paying for upgrades and subscriptions on the iPhone, Facebook and other platforms already and proving that good apps and games can generate a lot of easy money. But what Mochi is doing is completely decentralized. The game I embedded on that page, without the developers permission, is making money for that developer and for Mochi Media.
In other words, go ahead and steal these games. They’d love nothing more.
Mochi Media has raised $14 million over two venture capital financing rounds.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
When does a disposable barbecue grill, with toss-away tray, rack and stand, become an eco-friendly, recyclable barbecue grill? When the PR people say so, that’s when. The trouble with anything recyclable is that the user needs to actually recycle it and, if we know people, the EZ Grill will be tossed in the trash after its single-serve use.
That’s not to say these disposable cookers aren’t handy. I have used something similar many times, and they’re perfect to pick up from a supermarket along with some food for an instant BBQ picnic. The EZ Grill consists of an aluminum tray, wire legs (so it doesn’t scorch the grass) and of course a grill top. The charcoal comes under a lighting sheet (the UK versions I have used have the charcoal in an ignitable bag.)
And the charcoal is the one true “green” part here. Instead of burning hardwood, you’ll be burning carbon from corn, wheat and rice stalks, bound with corn starch. Icky sounding maybe, but a lot better than the glued-together briquettes you usually buy.
The grill costs $5 or $10, depending on size. Or you could do what I do, and take an old $0.99 turkey roasting tin and a shelf from the oven out on the trip with you.
Product page [EZGrill. Thanks, Jenny!]
Tokyo-based electronics company Lancerlink has announced the iJector [JP] today, an LCOS projector that you can use with your iPod or iPhone. Shaped like a dock, the device makes it possible to watch video stored on your iPod on the go via its built-on stereo speakers (3W×2ch).
The iJector weighs just 120g and measures 195×145×96mm. It produces images sized up to 50 inches from 2.3m away and features a resolution of 557×234 pixels. Lancerlink says the projector also features 20 lumens brightness and comes with a lamp that has a life span of 30,000 hours.
The iJector is compatible with the following Apple products: iPod nano generation 1/2/3, iPod Video generation 5 (30 and 50GB), iPod Classic (80GB, 160GB), iPod touch (8GB, 16 GB and 32 GB) and iPhone 3.0. Lancerlink isn’t listing the iPhone 3GS.
The iJector is licensed by Apple and costs $700 in Japan. In case you don’t want to wait for it to become available outside Japan, ask the Japan Trend Shop or Geek Stuff 4 U to get one for you when it becomes available July 17.
In this Richard Dawkins Foundation video, Skeptic Magazine's Michael Shermer explains the ten criteria we can use when confronted with claims about how the world works that serve as a "baloney detection kit."
RDF TV - The Baloney Detection Kit - Michael Shermer
(via 3 Quarks Daily)
Source: Boing Boing | 25 Jun 2009 | 9:36 am
Stock music and sounds effects marketplace AudioMicro has overhauled its web service to make it easier for users to discover and license stock audio material.
In addition, the startup is announcing a partnership with online presentation software maker SlideRocket, which basically means its library of stock music and royalty-free sound effects will now be included in the SlideRocket marketplace.
The revamp of the site consists of both a cleaner design and more functionality. One of those new features is the addition of promotion codes you can pass to friends, and of course we requested some for you. The first 100 TechCrunch readers to sign up for AudioMicro using the promotion code “TECHCRUNCH2” get access to 2 free audio downloads credits (an $8.99 value).
As for the new site: the search process, which was below par before, has been completely redesigned and looks and feels much better now. You can now also take audio files with you on the web, meaning that there’s now an embed code that you can use to embed tracks on your blog, social network account, etc. (example below). AudioMicro also introduced some type of ‘lightbox’ feature that lets you create favorite lists and buy the audio material on there at a later time.
Finally, there’s an API available now that allows approved partners to create applications using the AudioMicro library. The SlideRocket partnership is a first result of the new API: utilizing it, SlideRocket users can now license tracks from the AudioMicro archive and incorporate them directly into their SlideRocket presentations.
Last month, AudioMicro announced the availability of its second iPhone app, AudioMicro Lite (iTunes link). The app includes over 50 royalty -ree sound effects as well as a “Sneak Attack” feature, which sets the iPhone to play a specified sound effect when the device is moved by an unsuspecting person (lots of fun). For 99 cents, users can upgrade to the full AudioMicro app, which includes over 500 professional sound effects.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
The majority of laptop computers come with removable batteries. This approach allows you to pop in a fresh spare when your battery runs out of juice between charges, and to easily replace a battery when its lifespan is over.
But there’s a dirty little secret about removable-battery laptops owned by average consumers: Hardly anybody buys extra batteries. Research firm NPD estimates that fewer than 5% of consumers buy a spare. So, a small trend has begun in the industry: More electronic products are being designed with their rechargeable batteries sealed inside. For instance, Dell’s new high-end laptop, the Adamo, has a sealed battery, as does the excellent Flip pocket video camera.
The leading proponent of this idea is Apple, which has often led the industry in introducing or removing components from computers. This month, Apple unveiled two revised MacBook Pro laptops with higher-capacity, sealed-in batteries. In fact, Apple’s entire line of laptops now uses sealed batteries, except for one low-end MacBook model from last year’s series.
Apple says this makes sense because sealing in the batteries lets the company make them larger, without adding heft to the laptops. Apple says the two models are the same size and weight as their predecessors, yet their battery capacity has grown by 33% and 46%, respectively.
And, Apple asserts, it has come up with some software technology that allows these sealed batteries to last up to five years in typical use. The company claims that is almost triple the industry average for removable batteries and is longer than the typical time consumers keep the computer, thus making it far less likely you’ll need to replace a dead battery. Apple says it is able to seal in bigger batteries without making the machines larger because the company can compensate by shedding the casings, internal housings and other components needed by replaceable power packs.
I’ve been testing these two new Apple laptops, the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 15-inch MacBook Pro, using my own harsh battery test, which I apply to all laptops I review. The results were excellent. These two new Apple laptops scored among the highest battery lives between charges of any laptop I have ever tested with a battery that fits entirely inside the machine’s dimensions, without sticking out of the back or bottom and adding weight.
The smaller of the two machines lasted a few minutes shy of five hours in my test. And the larger one lasted five hours and 21 minutes. I estimate that, in a more normal usage scenario, both machines would come close to Apple’s claim of around seven hours between charges—essentially a full workday of unplugged use. Those numbers are likely to obviate the need for spare batteries for the majority of average consumers.
There are some important caveats. I was unable to verify Apple’s claim that these sealed batteries can be fully recharged up to 1,000 times, and thus, last around five years. Second, if and when the sealed batteries do become unable to hold an adequate charge, the entire computer must be returned to Apple for a new battery. The company says that, if you do this at an Apple store, it’s a same-day process and, at least on the 13-inch model, the price of a new battery is the same as what Apple formerly charged for a new removable battery. But it’s still more of a hassle.
Also, there are users—like people who work on very long flights—for whom replaceable batteries will always be a necessity. These users will want the option, unavailable on the new Macs, to pop in an extra-strength battery.
Finally, while Apple has cut the prices of these two new laptops, they are still pricey compared with similar-sized models from other companies. The 13-inch model starts at $1,199, and the 15-inch model starts at $1,699. Like all Macs, these computers have, in my opinion, a better operating system, better built-in software and better security than their Windows competitors. But you can get competing machines for hundreds of dollars less.
In my battery test, I turn off all power-saving features, leave the Wi-Fi network on, crank up the screen to 100% brightness, and play a continuous loop of music. That maximizes some of the biggest power hogs on a laptop. In normal use, a typical owner would likely use the power-saving features, turn the screen down a bit, have Wi-Fi off some of the time, and wouldn’t be running the hard disk constantly.
Neither of my test machines used the energy-saving, but costly, solid-state drives that are slowly replacing mechanical hard disks. And my test models both used integrated graphics chips, which suck less power than the more potent discrete graphics offered on the 15-inch model.
Still, I believe that these new MacBook Pros prove that sealed batteries can result in a very good experience for average users.
Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.
By Rich Miller, Founder, Data Center Knowledge
Can a single HTML tag really make a difference on a corporation’s financial results? It can at Google, according to Marissa Mayer, who says Web page loading speed translates directly to the bottom line.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
A Panasonic Toughbook vs a tiger and elephant
Kodak wishes to reunite Megan Fox and the boy with the yellow rose
HTC introduces Sense, the first customized Android installation on its new Hero
Cool home project: DIY shelves from steel piping
Very subtle - spell things with icons in your dock
In the online reservation space, you probably know about OpenTable. The restaurant reservation service’s IPO in a time of drought for IPOs, made big headlines. Now imagine OpenTable for just about everything besides restaurants. That’s BookFresh.
Who might need such a service? A lot more services and individuals than you may realize. While most services have some sort of scheduling system, many aren’t optimized, and can’t adapt on the fly to openings/changes. Massage therapists, dentists, doctors are all perfect examples of who could use such a system, founder Ryan Donahue tells us. He notes that health and beauty has been a particularly hot area.
He knows that because the service has actually been around for a little while, but it was formerly know as HourTown. But BookFresh is a much better name for the service because, “appointments are much like produce items in a grocery store, it’s a perishable thing,” Donahue says.
And a name change isn’t all that in-store for users. BookFresh wants to be the main platform for all online appointment booking on the web. As such, they’ve created APIs to let developers of sites take advantage of their tools. But you don’t have to be a developer to implement the service, anyone can do it with a simple line of code added to their site. This is important because a lot of people BookFresh is targeting are one-person or small operations, that probably don’t have a web development team.
Donahue likens the idea of BookFresh as an appointment platform to PayPal as a payment platform. (And he should know, he used to work at PayPal — incidentally with Jeffrey Jordan, the CEO of OpenTable.) He notes that just like a lot of sites out there don’t want to go through the hassle of building their own payment system, they also don’t want to have to make an online booking system. Sure, it’s not as complex, but it’s still a hassle — and might as well be impossible for little shops/services.
And BookFresh offers some nice things with its platform. One is the ability for businesses that use it to get calls when a customer is requesting an appointment time. From your phone, you can opt to accept or decline the request. That’s perfect for someone like a plumber, who may be always on the go and not able to get to a computer to confirm appointments. And the offers easy integration with Google Calendar and iCal to place appointments in your own personal calendars automatically when you accept them.
Alongside the name change, BookFresh is announcing a partnership with Webs.com, one of the largest sites for building free websites out there. A lot of small business owners are already using it, and now they’ll have one click access to install BookFresh if they choose to.
In terms of monetization, the service is free for the end user, but businesses/individuals who wish to use it will pay a month fee that starts at $19.95. If larger sites choose to sign-on, there are other deals such as revenue sharing that can take place.
In terms of competition, there is Appointment-plus, but their service forces you back to their servers to handle everything. BookFresh’s platform allows users to stay on the page they are already on to set everything up, Donahue says.
One service that BookFresh won’t be competing with is OpenTable. They have no interest in getting into the restaurant space, Donahue says.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Google has just debuted the latest entry to its fleet of Labs products, introducing the search giant to the travel space. Dubbed City Tours, the new site can build itineraries for brief trips to locations around the globe in a matter of seconds. At this point details on the new product are fairly sparse — it looks like Google hasn’t written its customary blog post yet, but given how basic the product is it’s pretty easy to figure out how it works.
Getting started is incredibly easy — just type in where you’re visiting (say, San Francisco or London), and Google will present a suggested itinerary spanning a three day trip, with around a dozen attractions per day depending on the city. From there you can change the number of days you’ll be staying (Google will show more attractions the longer you stay), and you can also manually adjust the list of places you’d like to visit. You can add a new attraction by entering its name in a text field, and Google will try to find it in its database. All attractions include a star rating, along with its hours operation and location.
For the most part adding attractions works pretty well (which is going to be key given that you can’t expect Google to predict everything you’ll want to see). It managed to find the London Eye perfectly, and it even figured out that Platform 9¾ was located at the King’s Cross Rail Station. That said, it isn’t perfect: a search for Hyde Park directed me to a nearby hostel, which I suppose would have gotten me there but probably isn’t the ideal result.
Perhaps the coolest part of the new product is the way it uses Google Maps to figure out which locations are closest to each other. Rather than simply present a list of places Google thinks you might want to check out, the site will logically order them according to where they’re located, minimizing the travel time between each.
Given its status as a Labs product this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but there are still a few kinks in City Tours. For one, I am apparently unable to remove events from my suggested itinerary (I’ve tried in both Firefox and Safari with the same issue). Likewise, sometimes when I click on the name of a location nothing happens. And it badly needs support for Google Transit, which can automatically route you across town using public transportiation — my London tour included a 99 minute walk that would have only been a couple minutes away had I ridden on the Tube.
In the mean time, there are plenty of other travel sites that offer similar (and in many cases, more robust) functionality than Google’s City Tours, including TC50 finalist GoPlanit, Offbeat Guides, and Zicasso.
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Lucas sez, "Wax MP3 is my new player for the Creative Commons music at the Magnatune netlabel. It's a slick experience for open music, like what Ubuntu brings to Linux. Says a commentor on [ed: Magnatune founder] John Buckman's blog: "I''ve already listened to 3 great new songs; normally I never would've thought to choose their respective 'genres'. What a great idea.'"
Magnatune Radio -- Independent music to listen, download, or license
Source: Boing Boing | 25 Jun 2009 | 6:39 am
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Some of you may be growing tired of hearing about companies described as the “Kayak of _____” but if the analogy fits, we might as well abuse it. So without further ado, I give you DoNanza, the Kayak of online freelance project search. With 70,000 projects on offer, there’s a high chance there’s something for you as well so you should consider giving it a whirl if you’re looking to make some extra money on the side in these tough times.
The one thing you have to keep in mind about DoNanza is that it keeps clear of offline gigs, so if you’re looking for an office job, DoNanza isn’t for you. It does however have 70,000 projects available right now, with 30,000 new projects added each week, or about 4,000 a day. There are 12 main categories with more than 400 sub-categories. The most active in terms of user-interest are (in the following order): Writing, Web Development, Graphic Design, Virtual Admin. Support, Translation, Marketing, SEO, and Programming.
DoNanza currently aggregates its freelance and crowd-source projects from 300 websites, with another 300 sites to be added in the coming months. Amazingly (or maybe not, really), 99% of the projects are indexed via scraping, with only a handful added manually.
There are a couple of main features I really like about DoNanza. First, its filtering tools are very clear and effective—nothing innovative, but often common-sense discovery tools are misguidedly cut from a public launch for some reason. On DoNanza, searches can be fine-tuned wit sliders on several levels, from Budget/Reward (Fixed/Hourly/Revenue-Share), to Project Type (Contest/Bidding/Other), to Time Left and Date Posted. The second useful feature is that each project’s details are displayed in an easy to skim form (see screenshot below). Again, not rocket science, but it makes the sometimes cumbersome chore of going through a myriad of search results a breeze.
DoNanza is also jumping on the ever-growing Twitter bandwagon by tweeting out new project notifications. Handles include: @dnzSEOfor SEO, @dnzWriting for Writing, @dnzPHP for PHP, @dnzDataEntry for Data Entry and more.
Demonstrating that it believes in freelancers, the DoNanza team outsourced much of its site development, including the UI, search engine, crawlers, as well as the indexing and data evaluation mechanisms. The company has yet to start making money but is planning on introducing sponsored links and projects in a couple of months. In the meantime, it’s pretty much a traffic and retention game.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Behind the scenes: How Tetris blocks are made
You didn't think they just popped up on screen themselves, did you? Commercial animation by South Korea's WooDUS, who are also behind this vaguely Bubble Bobble-esque title animation.
Discuss this on Offworld
Source: Boing Boing | 25 Jun 2009 | 6:10 am
More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com
Source: Boing Boing | 25 Jun 2009 | 6:10 am
The industry, Potter says, is driven by "two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical-benefit ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits..."The Truth About the Insurance Industry (via Making Light)The best way to drive down "medical-loss," explains Potter, is to stop insuring unhealthy people. You won't, after all, have to spend very much of a healthy person's dollar on medical care because he or she won't need much medical care. And the insurance industry accomplishes this through two main policies. "One is policy rescission," says Potter. "They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment..."
The issue isn't that insurance companies are evil. It's that they need to be profitable. They have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit for shareholders. And as Potter explains, he's watched an insurer's stock price fall by more than 20 percent in a single day because the first-quarter medical-loss ratio had increased from 77.9 percent to 79.4 percent.
The reason we generally like markets is that the profit incentive spurs useful innovations. But in some markets, that's not the case. We don't allow a bustling market in heroin, for instance, because we don't want a lot of innovation in heroin creation, packaging and advertising. Are we really sure we want a bustling market in how to cleverly revoke the insurance of people who prove to be sickly?
Toronto Public Library>Unique Collections > Merril - What's New?:
I'm really pleased about having the staff from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory do a day long presentation on the Chandra Mission. The programming is meant for teenagers as well as adults.Join us on Friday, July 17th and Saturday July 18th, 2009, when the Merril Collection will present a galaxy of exciting events in conjunction with NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory Mission. Course material is intended for teen and adult patrons.
Schedule of Events
Unless otherwise stated, all events will take place in the lower level programme room of the Lillian H. Smith Building, 239 College Street.
Highlights of the Chandra Mission Friday, July 17, 2009, 6:00 - 7:30 p.m.
Author Julie Czerneda launches her new book Rift in the Sky Friday, July 17, 2009, 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. in the Merril Collection reading room, 3rd floor
A Voyage Through Art-Space by Donna L. Young. Saturday, July 18, 2009, 9:30 - 10:45a.m.
Workshop: Stellar Evolution - Cosmic Cycles of Formation and Destruction. Saturday, July 18, 2009, 11:00 - 12:00 a.m.
Workshop: Alien by Design with Julie Czerneda, Sci-Fi Author Saturday, July 18, 2009, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
Illustrating Space with Jean-Pierre Normand, SF / Fantasy Artist Saturday, July 18, 2009, 3:00 - 4:30 p.m.
As space is limited, interested members are asked to phone and register attendance with Merril Collection staff at 416-393-7748.
Just as we were speculating a couple nights ago, Apple has apparently decided that with the new parental controls now built into the iPhone 3.0 SDK, nudity is now okay in iPhone apps. The first such app, Hottest Girls, has actually been around for a little while. But an update today “upgraded” the pictures from girls in bikinis and lingerie, to topless and completely naked girls.
“We uploaded nude topless pics today. This is the first app to have nudity,” Hottest Girls’ developer Allen Leung tells Macenstein. Quite an accomplishment.
While some will undoubtedly see this as a bad thing, I think this is actually a good thing. First of all, allowing mature content like this should free up the App Store screeners to be able to focused on finding apps that are actually malicious or out of line, rather than being prude-police.
Second, as we all know, porn is a big industry and as long as the kiddies can’t see it, there’s nothing wrong with adults being allowed to get it on their iPhones. It should make developers a lot of money. And it should make Apple, with its 30% cut, a lot of money. Still, I’d be surprised if we see hardcore pornography in the App Store anytime soon, but who knows.
Lastly, this is the App Store opening up a bit more once again. It did a bit last year when it started letting in cartoon violence NC-17 games, and this is the next step. A more open store, is a better store. Yes, even if it means a flood of crappy soft porn apps. Options are good, download what you want. Though I still believe there needs to be a better sorting and highlighting mechanism from Apple for apps.
It’s possible that this is another case of Apple letting an app slip through that shouldn’t have, but given that the developer is playing up the nudity on the app page, I doubt it. And it looks like Apple has a new rating sub-heading: Rated 17+ for “Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity.”
Hottest Girls is $1.99 in the App Store. Find it here.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Gateway’s got a new line of student-friendly notebooks in the NV Series. There’ll be a myriad of configurations available starting at $499, most or all of which will feature a 15.6-inch LCD with 1366×768 resolution, 4GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, six-cell battery, DVD burner, integrated webcam, HDMI, and Vista Home Premium.
The NV5214u will have an MSRP of $499 and come outfitted with a 2.1GHz dual-core AMD Athlon 64 CPU and ATI Radeon 3200 graphics while the NV5807u will carry and MSRP of $599 and feature a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and Intel’s 4500MHD graphics chipset.
The NV series notebooks will be available soon in four colors: black, blue, red, and brown. Full press release below:
NEW GATEWAY NV SERIES AFFORDABLE ENTERTAINMENT NOTEBOOK DELIVERS ENHANCED FUNCTIONALITY
Affordable Entertainment Notebook Offers Exceptional Performance, Style and New One-Touch Buttons; MyBackup Quickly and Easily Protects Data; PowerSave Enhances Battery Life
IRVINE, Calif., June 25, 2009 – Gateway today debuts its new Gateway NV Series notebook, a workhorse entertainment notebook that pairs the latest notebook technologies and important one-touch buttons with excellent style at an affordable price.
Packed with premium performance features that deliver a stellar entertainment experience, the new Gateway NV Series is ready to deliver multitasking performance to take on the most popular everyday tasks with the latest technology including processors and graphics from either Intel or AMD. At the same time, the notebook’s incredibly affordable price points, starting at $499.99, make the Gateway NV line ideal for anyone on a budget.
Designed for Entertainment, Staying in Touch
A cinematic entertainment powerhouse, the Gateway NV Series has a 15.6-inch High Definition LED-backlit TFT Widescreen display that gives customers a true cinematic viewing experience thanks to its 16:9 aspect ratio and 1366×768 resolution. As a result, it’s perfect for watching HD movies and video, viewing digital images and enjoying digital media content. The notebook’s Dolby Sound Room complements the video with spectacular surround sound from the two built-in stereo speakers. The HDMI port delivers crisp high-quality visuals and high-fidelity audio to a home theater or external LCD via a convenient, single cable connection.
The latest WiFi b/g Draft-N Certified connectivity will keep customers attached to the Internet to check email, websites, and other social networks like Twitter via convenient hot spots and wireless home networks. Connectivity on the go can be further enhanced by using the integrated webcam for video chats and video emails. The Gateway NV Series features communication buttons to turn the WLAN and Bluetooth functions on or off. The WLAN on/off is exceptionally convenient for customers who need to shut-off wireless operations but want to continue using their notebook, such as on a flight.
One-Touch MyBackup and PowerSave Keys Ease Customer Concerns
To help ease the concerns of mobile customers who want to protect their precious data, the Gateway NV Series includes a convenient MyBackup Button, a simple one-touch way to quickly and easily back-up all the important files and information stored on it, such as music, photos, video, contacts, emails and Internet favorites. The MyBackup Button gives customers a simple, convenient way to backup files to another location such as a USB drive, external hard disk drive, or another hard drive partition. Also, customers can set the MyBackup function to schedule a regular time to back-up data automatically or simply press the button for an immediate back-up.
“The need to back-up data has never been greater, since consumers have a greater quantity of important digital content than ever before – such as photos and video,” said Ray Sawall, senior product marketing manager for Gateway. “With the Gateway NV notebook, customers have the MyBackup Button to conveniently protect their precious data to make sure its available to enjoy and share more readily with friends, family, and online via social networks like Facebook and MySpace. All the additional features make it notebook the ideal to enjoy their digital media, stay connected and productively handle projects for home, work and school.”
Gateway designed a conveniently located PowerSave Button on select models of the new Gateway NV notebook line. Located above the keyboard, the PowerSave Button allows consumers to easily prolong battery life to extend uptime for customers. A simple press of it activates the advanced power saving settings, traditionally a tedious procedure accessed through numerous software-based steps. This one-button approach simplifies the process, saving time while extending battery life.
Stylish Design, First-Rate Technologies
With a stylish and streamlined design, the Gateway NV Series notebook line is both eye-catching and comfortable to use. The smooth notebook case is covered with a subtle Honeycomb pattern that gives additional interest to the four vibrant, yet classic, color options that won’t go out of style: NightSky Black, Midnight Blue, Cherry Red and Coffee Brown. Additional elements, such as the refined silver trim, rounded edges and classic barrel hinge that cleverly houses the power button, team up to give the NV Series a sleek, modern appeal.
Additional design elements boost productivity. The wide size provides room for the widescreen display and dedicated numeric keypad. The widescreen display helps customers stay productive by letting them view multiple windows at once, while the dedicated numeric keypad is ideal for students and professionals that need to quickly and efficiently input numbers. Plus, the Touchpad Lock prevents accidental cursor movement.
The Gateway NV line delivers a great combination of technologies that boost the digital media experience. With an integrated media card reader, DVD burner and up to 320GB of hard disk drive storage, customers will be able to easily and quickly view, download, store and share their digital media content. The NV notebook line also supports up to 4GB of DDR2 memory.
Gateway NV Series Availability, Price and Sample Configuration
The well-equipped NV Series will be available in a variety of configurations to meet a range of budgets, starting at $499.99. Details on two of the many configurations that will be selling in the line follows:
Model Number: Gateway NV5214u
MSRP: $499.99
· AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 QL-64 Dual Core Processor (2.1 GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
15.6″ HD Ultrabright™ LED-backlit display with 16:9 ratio and 1366 x 768 pixel resolution
· 4GB Dual-channel DDR2 Memory
320GB hard disk drive(1)
· AMD RS780MN Chipset
· ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 Graphics
Integrated webcam
DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive
802.11a/b/g/Draft-N WiFi Certified
Digital media card reader: Secure Digital™ (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick® (MS)Memory Stick PRO™ (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card™ (xD)
· Ports and connections: HDMI™ port with HDCP support, Four USB 2.0 ports, External display (VGA) port, Headphone/speaker/line-out jack with S/PDIF support, Microphone-in jack, Ethernet (RJ-45) port and Modem (RJ-11) port and DC-in jack for AC adapter
· Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (Service Pack 1)
· MyBackup Button
· 6-cell Li-ion battery (4400 mAh)Model Number: Gateway NV5807u
MSRP: $599.99
Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor (2.10 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB)
15.6″ HD Ultrabright™ LED-backlit display with 16:9 ratio and 1366 x 768 pixel resolution
· 4GB Dual-channel DDR2 Memory
320GB hard disk drive(1)
· Mobile Intel® GM459 Express Chipset
· Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
Integrated webcam
DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive
Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 5100/5300 (dual-band quad-mode 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N
Digital media card reader: Secure Digital™ (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick® (MS)Memory Stick PRO™ (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card™ (xD)
· Ports and connections: HDMI™ port with HDCP support, Four USB 2.0 ports, External display (VGA) port, Headphone/speaker/line-out jack with S/PDIF support, Microphone-in jack, Ethernet (RJ-45) port and Modem (RJ-11) port and DC-in jack for AC adapter
· Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (Service Pack 1)
· MyBackup Button
· 6-cell Li-ion battery (4400 mAh)
The Obama administration's most radical idea may also be its geekiest: Make nearly every hidden government spreadsheet and buried statistic available online, all in one place. For anyone to see. Are you searching for a Food and Drug Administration report that used to be obtainable only through the Freedom of Information Act? Just a mouseclick away. Need National Institutes of Health studies and school testing scores? Click. Census data, nonclassified Defense Department specs, obscure Securities and Exchange Commission files, prison statistics? Click click. Click. Click.
The man in charge is the US government's first-ever chief information officer, Vivek Kundra. Previously CTO of the District of Columbia, Kundra, 34, knows that the move from airtight opacity to radical transparency won't be a cakewalk. Until now, the US government's default position has been: If you can't keep data secret, at least hide it on one of 24,000 federal Web sites, preferably in an incompatible or obsolete format.
The goal of Kundra's new Web site, Data.gov, is to create a place where all the information is easy to find, sort, download, and manipulate. He wants to put as much data out there as possible, then sit back and let the private sector come up with great ways to use it. He envisions a future in which well-designed spreadsheets, charts, and graphs are embedded in applications for phones, Facebook, and blogs. In DC, someone combined several of the data sets released by local government—maps, liquor license info, crime statistics—into an app called Stumble Safely, which shows users the safest way to walk home when drunk. He doesn't know what people will build with all the federal data, but he's confident it will be cool.
The Library of Congress alone holds more than 300 terabytes of data — just a sliver of all federal information stores.
Since Barack Obama took office, Wired has been running its own public wiki, on which scores of people have posted suggestions for how Kundra should proceed—which data sets to open first, what mashups might yield interesting results, and what existing Web sites to use as models. The response suggests a real appetite for what Kundra is proposing, so we paid a visit to the White House just prior to Data.gov's launch to see how his plans are developing.
Wired: Where do you start?
Vivek Kundra: One, we're going to look at which feeds are most popular and which the public are demanding. Two, we want to advance the president's agenda around health care, around energy, around education.
Wired: But won't people say you're releasing one feed because it makes Obama look good but not another that includes something embarrassing to the administration?
Kundra: Well, look at health care. As the president said, it's one of the most urgent problems affecting our economic future. So it makes sense to get the most innovation in that space.
Wired: Give me an example.
Kundra: There's a lot of data out there—from the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, the FDA—concerning outbreaks and pandemics. And there's lots of Census Bureau data right now. For the first time, the bureau is going to be noting GPS coordinates for addresses across the country. There are privacy issues, obviously. But if you release that data at a national level, all of a sudden you've got a new layer of information that has never existed before. Imagine if you could build an iPhone app that combined the GPS info with addresses and then combined that with data about outbreaks.
Wired: You'd know precisely where outbreaks were occurring? Sort of like Google flu trends except better, because instead of search data you're using real medical data?
Kundra: Exactly. And the government doesn't even have to create the applications.
Wired: What do you mean? You'll release the data and just hope people do interesting things with it?
Kundra: Yes. Think about the Department of Defense. When satellite data was made available, you had this explosion in the private GPS market. Now GPS is available on your iPhone, so if you're lost you can navigate. The car rental industry uses it. Google and Facebook use it to help you get real-time information on where friends are and where the closest restaurant is. The key is recognizing that we don't have a monopoly on good ideas and that the federal government doesn't have infinite resources. We're even thinking about running competitions for people making applications. What wired was able to do with that Data.gov wiki, frankly, would have cost the government a fortune and taken much longer.
Wired: Given how complicated this effort will be, are there some simple rules you're going to follow?
Kundra: The core principles are using open standards, presenting raw data, and distributing it in as many formats as possible. Public policy decisions are made using the data anyway, but the raw data is important because if it is massaged too much, you can lose the big issues.
Wired: Sometimes more data confuses rather than clarifies, especially if it's raw or presented in some clumsy spreadsheet, which is typically how government data has been released in the past, if at all.
Kundra: But we now have the ability to use data in ways we couldn't before, and to do it in a machine-readable way where we can not only spot trends and make intelligent decisions but make applications that create value and economic opportunities. The perfect example at a local level is in DC, where you can download an application that lets you know—based on where you're standing—what the closest Metro station is, when the next train is coming, and, if you like Mexican food, where the closest Mexican restaurant is. That's built on one subset of data feeds, and there are hundreds of others.
Wired: Will people be able to rate the usefulness of the data feeds?
Kundra: Not only that, they'll also be able to provide feedback on quality. And one of the most important things—and this is where the wired community can help—is to tag the data feeds. Once you tag them, you'll be able to put them in the right context.
Wired: You mean, like tagging photos on Flickr or Google Image Labeler? So if I notice that a feed from the FAA is actually surprisingly helpful to bird-watchers, I could just note that. And then an ornithologist who's not finding what he wants through the National Park Service could see that tag?
Kundra: Right.
Wired: Do you worry that all this data will come out and benefit only the few elite or tech-savvy groups that know how to use it?
Kundra: Some people would say that historically there has already been asymmetrical access to the government. The key is to have debates and analysis and discussions that are fact-based. And for everyone to have access to that raw data, the raw facts. I would go back to 1776 and the model of the public square. Democratizing data enables comparative analysis of the services the government provides and the investments it makes, leading to a better government.
Wired: I can think of a hundred ways this might backfire and create terrible problems for you and Obama. What keeps you up at night?
Kundra: Well, a lot of stuff keeps me up. There needs to be a balance between privacy and security on the one hand, and ensuring that we have a participatory democracy.
Wired: But if the wrong data falls into the wrong hands ... couldn't some clever hacker in Ukraine use IRS data to empty our bank accounts?
Kundra: Obviously, you want to be sensitive about what you make public. We don't, for example, want to expose all of our cybersecurity information. We have to be sensible. It's a noble cause to release demographic data for research. But if you release health care data with ages and zip codes, someone may be able to triangulate and figure out who the people are. Still, the default option is to make public as much information as possible.
Wired: What about, say, nonclassified research by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency?
Kundra: My view is that we should assess these data feeds case by case. Unclassified Darpa research sounds innocuous, but the agency may know a reason why innocuous data, combined with another feed, might be harmful.
Wired: But if the default position is open, shouldn't it be Darpa's job to argue otherwise?
Kundra: Right, that's what we're looking for.
Wired: Choosing what to open up seems like a huge task.
Kundra: It is a huge task.
Wired: As CTO of Washington, you moved tens of thousands of employees from Microsoft Office to Google Apps to save money. Part of your new agenda is shifting the government to cloud computing and using free software. How will that happen?
Kundra: We've got a committee working on cloud computing, and we're looking at issues like privacy, cookies, and security policies. But it makes no sense to spend billions down the line when we can get these technologies for free.
Wired: What's your bottom line. How should your agenda be judged?
Kundra: Performance. By democratizing data, the American people will be able to hold their government accountable, based on evidence rather than talk.
Obama's Geek Squad
The new CIO isn't the only member of the White House tech team. Here are five other key players.
| Julius Genachowski 
A former executive at Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, as well as Obama's law school classmate and tech-industry confidant, Genachowski has been nominated to chair the Federal Communications Commission. Once confirmed, he'll be in charge of developing an ambitious national broadband strategy. The Internet runs 12 times faster in Japan than in the US—at almost half the cost. Genachowski's job is to help America catch up. |
Aneesh Chopra 
The secretary of technology in Virginia, Chopra is Obama's nominee for CTO. He'll work with Kundra on using technology to make the administration more efficient. In Virginia he won points for helping create an online scorecard to evaluate government performance, a social network for rural medical clinics, and an open source physics textbook. And he's known for doing something rarely seen in government: punishing failure. |
Susan Crawford 
A onetime law professor and board member of Icann, Crawford is now Obama's special assistant for science, technology, and innovation policy. She's also the most powerful geek close to the president. A prolific blogger before November 5, Crawford wrote passionately about NASA, net neutrality, and Neal Stephenson. Now she's helping to oversee the expenditure of stimulus package funds dedicated to broadband deployment. |
Lawrence Strickling 
Tapped as the new head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Strickling will be in charge of managing the federal government's use of the public airwaves. Right now huge swaths of spectrum—usable for everything from Wi-Fi to cell phones to garage door openers—are locked up and hardly used by government agencies. Strickling may be able to open up some of this potential cornucopia to the public. |
Alec Ross 
A close associate of Genachowski during the transition, Ross now works in the State Department, looking for ways technological tools can aid diplomacy and development. Can State use mobile phones with video to monitor human rights abuses? Can social networking get Israeli and Palestinian youth to work together? Can text messaging boost HIV education in rural Africa? Ross is the person being paid to find the answers. |
Senior editor Nicholas Thompson (nickthompson.com) wrote about Google in issue 17.02.
: The T400s has performance that is simply outstanding: While graphics are a tad weak due to the lack of a video card, the high-end CPU (the newest Core 2 Duo SP9600, running at 2.53 GHz), 2 GB of RAM and 128-GB solid-state drive give the T400s plenty of juice to power through general apps, running rings around nearly all other notebooks we've benchmarked this year. The screen, now backlit by LEDs, is also dazzlingly bright — one of the brightest on the market, especially in this size class. Netbook and MacBook Air users, take a back seat: There's also a DVD burner.
ThinkPad geeks will most enjoy the little tweaks that Lenovo has given the T400s: The Esc and Delete keys are now double-sized for easier access, and though the speakers still suck, at least the unit features better volume controls, including a dedicated microphone On/Off button. A 2-megapixel webcam with dual microphones rests atop the LCD, and then there's the textured, multitouch touchpad — now flush with the palm rest — that is possibly the most comfortable touchpad we've ever used.
WIRED Unparalleled performance from a 14-inch laptop. Nearly as thin as a MacBook Air — including an optical drive. Killer touchpad (plus TrackPoint for old-schoolers). Plus: Caps Lock LED!
TIRED Only three USB ports. Fn key where the Ctrl key goes. Unbelievably tinny, distant audio. So-so battery life (2 hours, 11 minutes). No ExpressCard slot.
$2,000, lenovo.com
Read our full Lenovo ThinkPad T400s review.
Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.
: The act of boiling water hasn't changed much since your cave-dwelling ancestor Og heated fetid H2O in a mammoth skull.
That's why the Chef's Choice SmartKettle is an enormous evolutionary leap forward for teakettles — and for tea nerds. The device adds a geeky element to the mundane task of stoking liquids by letting you punch in the exact temperature you want.
Operation is dead simple: Just enter a temperature on the unit's recessed front panel. We set ours to 185 degrees Fahrenheit for green tea, filled it to its max capacity of 1.5 quarts, and in five minutes the solid stainless steel kettle produced agua caliente at exactly the desired temp. (We checked.)
WIRED First electric kettle to quickly heat water to the exact temperature you specify. Handsome and sturdy stainless steel pitcher. Alarm sounds just like a teakettle's whistle.
TIRED Safety/power-saving features over-complicate the act of boiling water.
$100, edgecraft.com
Read our full Chef's Choice SmartKettle Model 688 review.
Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.
: The awkwardly-named w995a is a solid-feeling slider. At 4 ounces it sits comfortably in the hand, and the mechanism for sliding up the screen and exposing the keypad felt solid even after repeated use. Since Sony conceived of the w995 as a media player, its button layout is relatively stripped down and geared towards multimedia playback. In addition to the typical "call" and "end" buttons, the face of the handset sports four somewhat flimsy multi-purpose softkeys and a decent four-directional D-pad.
It's clear that Sony wanted to craft a fun, functional phone, and they've largely succeeded in that endeavor. We can think of a few other devices that do a better job of nailing specific features. But Sony at least is on the right path when it comes to producing a very capable, versatile phone.
WIRED Standard headphone jack FTW. Slick animated menus and overall presentation. Sports a mini-kickstand for propping the phone up to watch video. Brilliant and colorful 2.6-inch 320x240 display. Decent audio clarity when using headphones. Decent data speeds with both 3G and Wifi connections. Supports MPEG4, WMV, RealVideo, 3GPP, and H.264 video playback.
TIRED Low volume for music and calls. Music or voice, it doesn't matter — the speakerphone just sucks. E-mail client is both chintzy, web-based. Mediocre call quality. Buttons so recessed they need a government bailout.
$600, sonystyle.com
Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.
: The iPhone 3GS combines two sets of advances. The first group is available only to purchasers of the new hardware. The rest of the features are part of Apple's iPhone 3.0 software upgrade, which is offered free to those with earlier iPhones. (iPod Touch users can get the new software for $10.)
I'll talk about the hardware-based features first. As promised, Apple has indeed ramped up the speed with which the new phone performs tasks like launching apps, loading web pages, and displaying graphics. Apple claims speed boosts of up to two times of what the 3G delivers, and in some benchmarks cites even better performance. I haven't done scientific measurements, but you don't need a stopwatch to notice the new phone is zippier than its predecessor. I appreciated getting box scores faster and videos playing sooner in the MLB.com At Bat application, and it was clear that web pages loaded faster. In the case of a game like Tiger Woods Golf, the boost is significant enough to make me more likely to play when I don't have much time.
Photos were a weak spot in previous iPhones — they weighed in at a measly 2 megapixels — but the iPhone 3GS has a 3-megapixel, autofocusing camera that's more sensitive and allows you to choose an object to focus on by tapping on it. (No zoom, though. Bummer.) Better yet, the camera also records quite creditable video. After you shoot your clip, there's a dead-simple function for instant editing, after which you can send your masterpiece to YouTube or Mobile Me with a single tap.
WIRED Faster. More storage. Better camera, with video recording capability. Search encompasses more data, not just one app at a time. Voice navigation. Feature-rich iPhone 3.0 software is free to current iPhone users.
TIRED Multitasking still limited. No tethering or MMS support yet for AT&T users. Recent iPhone 3G customers must pay a fortune to upgrade.
$300 (32-GB version, with 2-year contract), apple.com
Read our full iPhone 3GS review.
Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.
:
TomTom's Go Live 740 is a new breed of web-ready GPS in which web access seems like a well-integrated enhancement, not a useless afterthought.
At almost half a pound it sits comfortably in hand, and its colorful 4.3-inch 320 × 240 touch screen is both bright and responsive to repeated pokes. And with its 2GB of memory, microSD port, and integrated Bluetooth we were able to smoothly navigate between a number of tasks, such as listening to music and using the integrated speaker for hands-free calls while paired with a cell phone.
WIRED Svelte, smooth-to-touch design and construction. Decent signal acquisition times (average of four minutes on a cold start). Sports both Bluetooth audio and file exchange capabilities. Intuitive, touch-based interface and menu tree. Allows instant messaging with other TomTom users. Comes with car charger, dash mount, USB cradle charger. It feels ... sexy.
TIRED Navigational interface displays waaay too much information at one time (speed, distance, current time, arrival time, current street, next turn, distance to turn, etc.). Sketchy voice recognition doesn't cut it. Web-enabled services are only free for the first 90 days ($10/mo. afterwards). Speaker would occasionally sound garbled, mispronounce common street names.
$370, TomTom.com
Read our full TomTom Go Live 740 review
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:
The coolest trick the Alias 2 can pull off is changing from a number pad to a text keyboard as you flip it open. It's a cool trick and makes the Alias 2 somewhat like the Optimus Maximus of phones. This keyboard beats a touchscreen any day of the week; the little mounds offer tactile feedback not found in any iDevice.
In stark contrast to the phone's E Ink deftness other parts of the Alias 2 are decidedly girlish and silly. An included theme for the phone evokes a she-teen boudoir that counts colorful Trapper-Keepers, potted plants and a rainbow peeking in the window among its touches. Access the menu, and the room comes alive, with menu items as knick-knacks, recent calls as a dorm message board and utilities in a toolbox on the floor. Fortunately, you can change this, if you dig around in settings long enough. The preinstalled ringtones are laughable, ranging from cheesy period pieces, to earsplitting high-range electronica, to faux hip-hop distilled somewhere in Seoul's equivalent of 8 Mile. Anyone with a shred of self-respect would be wise to immediately hop on the internet and download a decent Black Sabbath riff for a ringtone.
WIRED E Ink keyboard morphs button layouts when switching from phone to messaging device. Voice quality is high. Battery life is nearly six hours. Reasonably priced.
TIRED The Dear Diary feel of the interface is at odds with anyone over 13. My Room Menu theme is embarrassing. Lack of dedicated buttons leave you hunting and pecking for even the most common tasks.
$130 (with a two year contract), samsung.com
Read our full Samsung Alias 2 review.
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:
Size seems to matter to the folks at Amazon. While the Kindle 2 has a 6-inch (measured diagonally) e-ink screen — roughly the area of a mass-market paperback book — the DX's 9.7-inch screen resembles a page from a typical hardback. Put another way, the DX flaunts 2.5 times more display space. More text on a page means more lines and, if you prefer, a bigger font, without having to turn the page as often. What does that mean for you? It's easier to read using the DX.
By elegantly super-sizing the Kindle — and ramping up its ability to read files — Amazon has improved the best all-around e-reader available. But the hefty price tag doesn't fit Jeff Bezo's stated philosophy of getting the best value for his customers.
WIRED Big-screen device that's even more readable than the original Kindle. PDF support is a welcome addition.
TIRED High cost of admission. Pivot mode has hair trigger. Southpaws will find the reader cumbersome.
$490, amazon.com
Read our full Amazon.com Kindle DX review.
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: Shaped like a small bar of shower soap, the dense, ebony Pre matches many (if not all) of the features of its chief competitor, the iPhone. But in one key aspect, the Pre does the iPhone one better. While a lot of the Pre's features — a bright 3.1-inch touchscreen manipulated by taps, swipes and pinches; apps sold by third parties in an open online bazaar; integration of e-mail, contacts and calendar — are now standard in 3G smartphones, Palm also lets users keep multiple applications running simultaneously.
Its long-term prospects, though, hinge on whether or not all those third-party apps will show up, whether Sprint can satisfy users, and whether Apple has something up its sleeve that counters the Palm's gambits. Also, of course, the Pre has to prove stable and reliable. (Our test unit occasionally suffered opening-day jitters, including a crash that was fixed only by taking out the removable battery.)
WIRED Great look and superb feel. Well-conceived OS with multitasking and instant notification. Physical keyboard. Utilizes iTunes to load and refresh content.
TIRED Multitasking puts a big suck on the battery. Sprint exclusivity will be annoying to Palm-philes on a contract with AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile. Keyboard is puny. If Apple blocks the handset's access to iTunes, Pre users are hosed.
$200 (with two year contract), palm.com
Read our full Palm Pre review.
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: Demonstrating that it's serious about making a run at the top-end offerings from Canon and Nikon, the K-7 bows with a spankin' new 14.6 megapixel, 28.1mm (diagonal) CMOS image sensor and an updated Prime II processor. This enables HD-video capture, built-in high dynamic range shooting, a 77-segment metering system, pre- and post-production filtering and distortion correction, all in a form factor more than 10 percent smaller (and actually easier to handle) than its predecessor, the K20D.
By and large, it's a super quick focusing compact image-maker — once you learn how the menu system works. But it's just a step or two behind Nikon and Canon in ease of use. In spite of that, Pentax has nearly hit a home run with the K-7. It's svelte, sturdy, fairly easy to operate, has a great range of available lenses and a feature set that's unmatched at this price. Think of it as a solid double off the wall, with an RBI.
WIRED Speedy 5.2 frames per second. Super-sturdy construction. Lots of pro features at a prosumer price. Improved battery life and 100 percent field-of-view viewfinder. Faster, more robust processor. Live View with contrast focus and face detection. Shoots 5.2 frames-per-second with shutter speed up to 1/8000. The 77-segment metering system and 11-point AF system are quick and spot on. Internal mechanical shake reduction.
TIRED User interface needs to be simpler and more unified.
$1,300 (body only), pentax.com
Read our full Pentax K-7 DSLR review.
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: The A600's 21.5-inch screen (1920 x 1080 pixels) is big and dazzlingly bright — so much so that Lenovo includes an automatic screen-dimming system designed to prevent eyestrain. Inside its bowels, this 25-pounder offers substantial specs: 2.13-GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, and a terabyte hard drive. The ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card may be getting a little long in the tooth, but it's powerful enough to make the A600 more than acceptable to play all but the very latest gaming titles.
That's a lot of stuff for the price — $1,150 — and stripped-down versions of the IdeaCentre run considerably less. If you don't need the power but dig the design and screen size, the budget rendition might be an even better bet.
WIRED Very small footprint. Single-cable design is a blessing for technophobes. Swivel base makes adjustments to viewing angle easy. Six USB ports and 802.11n Wi-Fi, plus FireWire, SD and coaxial connectors.
TIRED Keyboard and mouse frequently fall asleep; difficult to awaken. Remote control overly complex and rather homely. Included games feel like an engineer on Quaaludes designed them.
$1,150 (as tested), lenovo.com
Read our full Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 review.
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: Its glossy black finish and polished Darth Vader design makes Samsung's newest Blu-ray box, the BD-P4600, stand out from every other player on the market. Well, it actually doesn't stand anywhere at all -- it comes with the metal brackets to mount it on a wall or plant it on a desktop pedestal. And like Lord Vader, this model packs some serious force with its built-in streaming for Pandora music and Netflix.
For $100 less, you could pick up Samsung's BD-P3600 a player that has all the same features as this model but comes in a non-wall-mountable chassis. But really, would you want to watch The Empire Strikes Back on a Blu-ray player that didn't look like it was made in a dark corner of Coruscant?
WIRED High-end, spacey designed Blu-ray player is loaded with features include ability to wall mount, loads Blu-ray discs exceptional fast and offers exceptional playback.
TIRED Complicated initial setup for its feature set. Cramped underside port-connection compartment. Competitively over priced for what it delivers.
$500, samsung.com
Read our full Samsung BD-P4600 review.
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: Let's cut to the chase and hit you with the sell: The MSI X340 is a MacBook Air at half the price. Interested? Read on.
For starters, the X340 (aka the X Slim) is considerably better muscled than your typical netbook, featuring a glossy 13.4-inch (1366 x 768 pixels) screen, 320-GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM. Like Apple's ultralight, it's incredibly thin — about 0.8 inches at its thickest — and it actually weighs slightly less than the Air, just 2.9 pounds.
Before you start salivating over the prospects of a half-price Air, note that Apple's laptop does trump the X340 in a few significant ways. The Air includes Nvidia graphics, while the X340 is stuck with Intel's integrated chipset.
The screens are night and day: The Air is renowned for having one of the brightest LCDs available, while the X340 is merely average in this department.
WIRED Gorgeous design; slap an Apple sticker over the MSI logo and no one will ever know. Performance bests most netbooks, though it's hardly top-notch. Surprisingly good graphics and responsiveness. Includes the usual goodies: 1.3-MP webcam, Bluetooth, 802.11n.
TIRED Flaky touchpad. Disappointing battery life.
$900 (as tested), us.msi.com
Read our full MSI X340 review.
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: The first day we took the car for a spin we kept the front-mounted 5.9-liter 470 BHP vehicle on a strict diet of city driving: no freeways, no tightly coiled back roads. Trudging through heavy traffic almost felt sadistic — kind of like taking a thoroughbred racehorse and giving it polio. But after exiting the city limits and tearing down a stretch of asphalt connecting San Francisco with Napa Valley, the DB9 snapped up, greedily devouring 90-degree curves with just a hint of oversteer.
WIRED Fast like a sports car, more refined than a quart of 40-weight. Gorgeous; induces whiplash in head-turning bystanders. Zippy acceleration for a GT — you can't front on a 4.6-second zero-to-60 time ... unless you're armed with a Ferrari or a Bentley.
TIRED Hood-release switch located in impossibly hard to find/reach nook (as if an Aston owner would ever do that). iPod access tres difficult to set up. Chugs gas like an ASU freshman rips beer-bong hits. Back seat harder to get into than MIT.
$209,000 as tested, astonmartin.com
Read our full Aston Martin DB9 review.
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: If you don't mind looking like an extra in a 1-800-Dentist commercial and have no reservations about looking like a crazy person yammering to yourself, the Plantronics Voyager Pro may be the perfect Bluetooth headset for you.
This headset is big, bulky and (surprise, surprise) silly looking. The 3-inch boom extending out toward your mouth is the main culprit of these crimes against style. But despite being tacky, the Voyager Pro delivers strong performance. It's easy to use, withstands drops, bumps and haphazardly tossed laptops, has decent battery life and pairs effortlessly with a range of smartphones, including the iPhone.
WIRED Easy to use. Super sound quality. Stays attached to your ear. You will look like a telephone operator from the '50s.
TIRED You will look like a telephone operator from the '50s.
$100, plantronics.com
Read our full Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth Headset review.
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: After a few grim years ceded to the iMac, PC-based all-in-one desktops are making an LL Cool J-esque comeback. Their next move: Make the switch from semi-luxe gear designed for highly aesthetic environments to the megacheap world that the netbook has built.
Specs look exceedingly promising at first: 250 GB of hard drive space, 2 GB of RAM, integrated Wi-Fi, DVD burner, an SD card slot and a very bright 19-inch touchscreen display. If nothing else, it's one of the best-looking touchscreens (non-capacitive; a stylus works better than your finger) we've seen at this screen size.
But the Achilles' heel of the Wind Top is its baffling choice of an Atom 330 processor to power these guts. Although the dual-core 330 is known as the "fast" version of the Atom (it draws 8 watts instead of the 2.5 watts used by the netbook standard Atom N270 and has double the L2 cache), it's still woefully inadequate for a computer this ambitious.
WIRED Amazingly affordable and loaded to the gills. Touchscreen makes this a perfect kiddie computer. Slim profile lets it fit just about anywhere. Cuter than a box of puppies.
TIRED Performance problems dog the user at every turn. Flashing blue hard-drive activity light is front and center, terribly distracting and impossible to cover up. Bundled keyboard and mouse are beyond cheap. Webcam aim can't be adjusted.
$590 (as tested), us.msi.com
Read our full MSI Wind Top AE1900 review.
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: The new Chrome Soyuz is an ambitious (if slightly crazed) reimagining of the urban commuter backpack. It's a weird hybrid of a river-rafting drybag and laptop case, all contained within a stylish wedge of black and red nylon.
It sits comfortably behind your back, letting you weave through traffic on your fixie without fear of snagging on the projecting mirrors of double-parked delivery trucks. It can ride between your knees on a crowded train. And it tucks neatly below an airplane seat, leaving just enough space on either side to squeeze in your feet so you can stretch your legs.
WIRED Wedge design keeps load balanced, trim and compact. Expandable waterproof compartment shrinks down to nothing when empty. Heavy-duty 1,000-denier cordura nylon withstands abuse. Main compartments are completely waterproof. Heavy-duty metal strap locks make adjustment easy. Glorious enameled metal "Chrome" logo.
TIRED Narrow openings + deep compartments = where the hell did my keys go? Not quite big enough to contain a six-pack (unless you put the bottles in one by one). Padding traps heat, steaming your back on long rides. No hip belt. Pricier than a metric ton of pig iron.
$180, chromebags.com
Read our full Chrome Soyuz Backpack review.
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: The pristine fidelity these headphones deliver is the result of a dual-armature layout, which bathes your tympanic membranes in accurate audio reproduction. The earpiece's dual drivers have the added benefit of propping up the typically flaccid base that seems to plague many other in-ear monitors.
The only major downside is that great sound comes at a considerable price — $230 to be precise. For most people, that's likely to be as much (or more) than you spent on your MP3 player. But as my neglected Audio Technicas can attest, in this case, you undoubtedly get what you pay for.
WIRED Exquisite sound reproduction in an insanely small package. Handy in-flight attenuator saves you from Captain Blowhard's eardrum-exploding announcements. Fuller, richer base and wider frequency response than previous UEs.
TIRED Spendiferous. Cable noise will distract joggers or anyone planning to use the headphones while exercising. Despite its redesign, the pocket case is still too small to fit all the accouterments.
$230, ultimateears.com
Read our full Ultimate Ears 700 Noise-Isolating Earphones review.
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: Digeo's Moxi HD DVR sports a slick, Emmy-winning (seriously) user interface and all the commercial-skipping accouterments of competitors like TiVo. It even ditches a monthly bill in favor of flat pricing and grants access to online video and music.
The Moxi's stunning high-def UI is full of slick transitions and responsive performance. Unfortunately, sleek visuals don't conquer all. Basics like surfing through the program guide (or accessing a previously recorded show) took a lot of hunting and pecking through a menu tree. Finding pre-recorded shows and getting them to play took searching, highlighting, selecting Play, confirming that you selected Play, and then finally watching.
WIRED No monthly bills. Sleek high-def interface has nifty animations and transitions. Hard drive expandable to 1 TB for power recorders. Dual tuners let you watch one show while recording another. Offers a whopping 1.5-hour buffer time per HD channel.
TIRED Hefty entry fee. Online video chops not quite up to snuff. No dedicated Guide button on the remote?! Unnecessarily complicated menus. Programming schedules are displayed in cramped vertical list instead of friendly grid.
$800, moxi.com
Read our full Digeo Moxi HD DVR review.
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: We're a little dismayed by the E71x. The device is almost identical to the E71: same 3.2-megapixel camera, same .04-inch profile, same vibrant 320 x 240 QVGA display, same business apps and multimedia functionality. The operating system is slightly tweaked so there are some differences in transmissions and page loading. But as a whole, the phone is relatively unchanged.
These are the key differences: a new $100 price tag (good), a black paint job (badass) and the omission of our favorite feature from the original E71 (ugly). We're talking about the two separate, customizable home screens, something we absolutely loved about the O.G. E71. One screen was designed for business, the other for personal use. It was a great function: You could literally edit spreadsheets from 9 to 5 on one screen, then toggle over to the other and watch a couple of episodes of 30 Rock on the media player.
WIRED Windows interface means you don't have to learn a new menu convention to browse your old files. Dumping the data of only one (or all) of your multiple PCs takes less than five mouse clicks. You can set up a password in the toolbar.
TIRED Dock and multi-PC backup capability only provided with 500-GB version. Full hard-drive recovery requires booting from a CD. Windows-only means it fails to bridge the gap in inter-OSial households.
$100 with 2-year contract, att.com
Read our full Nokia E71x Smartphone review.
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: The Replica comes with bare-bones software and strikes a good balance between peace of mind and individual-user control.
After the hard drive is plugged in, the Replica starts mirroring your computer's content. The startup process is short, taking only a couple of minutes, though the actual backup is a time-gobbling endeavor. (It took us about four hours to transfer 130 GB of data). A blue light on the top of the Replica's case blinks continuously while data is being transferred. It's also stealthy for a hard drive, emitting only a quiet whir when working at full speed.
WIRED Windows interface means you don't have to learn a new menu convention to browse your old files. Dumping the data of only one (or all) of your multiple PCs takes less than five mouse clicks. You can set up a password in the toolbar.
TIRED Dock and multi-PC backup capability only provided with 500-GB version. Full hard-drive recovery requires booting from a CD. Windows-only means it fails to bridge the gap in inter-OSial households.
$200, seagate.com
Read our full Seagate Replica 500GB review.
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: Panasonic's new HDC-TM300 shoots in "Full HD," marketing speak for 1080p — aka 1080 x 1920 resolution with progressive-scan video. Translation? Stunning Blu-ray-level video that should more than lives up to the most critical expectations of prosumers and video enthusiasts.
The highlight of this shooter is the high-def footage. Not only does the phenomenal zoom reel in distant objects, but thanks to the triple sensors and quality lens, it nails far-off details perfectly. The architectural features of distant buildings we shot in downtown San Francisco showed up like we were standing on the window ledge -- not in a park three blocks away.
WIREDReproduces colors like a Crayola factory. Closeups pop with sharp, clear details. Nice performance in low light. Einstein-smart automatic shooting features are like having your own DP built into the camera. 32-GB onboard memory is expandable via SDHC slot. Great zoom tackles action better than Jason Statham.
TIRED Fast pans in bright daylight turns up more artifacts than a Mayan ruin. May require second mortgage.
$1,300, Panasonic.com
Read our full Panasonic HDC-TM300 HD Camcorder review.
Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.
: In the aftermath (heh heh) of the bass-heavy Beats by Dre Studio headphones, Monster decided to pack the Doctor's finicky sound quality specs into two tiny earbuds. Naturally, audiophiles (including myself) were skeptical. Sure the Beats suffered from shoddy construction and fell apart after a few months of ownership, but they also provided some of the best bass we've ever heard in a set of cans.
Sure enough, the bass response from these things is rich and full. The lowest frequencies rumble with a force akin to the thud of a decent subwoofer. Keep in mind these are not miniaturized 12-inch Kickers designed to blow your eardrums out. But for a device that is essentially a tiny speaker with no auxiliary power, they're superb — especially when compared to the white earcruds doled out by Apple with every iDevice.
WIRED Excellent all-around frequency definition and particularly impressive bass response. Monster’s durable, ingenious anti-tangle cable means jumbled cords are a distant unpleasant memory.
TIRED The bright red cable is slightly ostentatious. Peak bass only hits at earwax shattering volumes.
$150, beatsbydre.com
Read our full Monster Beats By Dre Tour High-Resolution In-Ear Headphones review.
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: The UE-11 Pros are packed with four, count 'em, four drivers: There's a double dose of bass, one for the midrange and one chiming the highs. If you're looking for the most precise, separated sound possible, then this is the earphone for you. Throughout the play list I heard clarity and detail in the music I'd never heard before. This rang especially true with classical tunes — it literally feels like sitting in a symphony hall and having every instrument speak directly to you. To get that kind of superior fidelity you'll certainly have to pay the piper. But you'll really love the music while Rome — or your bank account — burns.
WIRED Most clear, separated and detailed sound.
TIRED Try convincing your spouse you need a $1,150 set of headphones.
$1,150, ultimateears.com
Read our full UE-11 Pro review.
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: The slate-gray, high-impact polymer body houses three LEDs capable of blasting out a peak 270 lumens for 15 minutes, or a more useful and long-lasting 90 lumens for 60 minutes. Both settings have an emergency low-power 25-lumen mode (equivalent in brightness to most common household D-cell flashlights) for an additional 60 minutes.
WIRED High-power pro flashlight pumps out awesome illumination and recharges ridiculously fast. Flashlight will outlive you. Seriously brilliant, blinding — a boon for flashlight junkies.
TIRED Pricy front-end investment. Comes with a 12-volt car charger.
$170, 511tactical.com
Read our full 5.11 Tactical Light review.
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: In our tests, we threw all things digital at this 68-pound slab. And while it does not perform as superbly as its higher-price brethren from Sony, Samsung and Sharp, it still shows off a completely acceptable high-def image and above-average sound.
So where has Westinghouse cut corners? Oh, let's see. How about the borderline embarrassing 1000:1 contrast ratio? In a well-lit room, the screen looks more washed out than a warehouse full of Maytags. And even though the set offers the 120-Hz spec, fast motion still looks a bit blurred.
WIRED High resolution and decent sound at incredible rock-bottom price. Convenience features integrated into menu. Quality remote not found in higher-priced TVs.
TIRED Displays some pixelated speckled noise in darker and mid-hue images. Analog-station reproduction is downright blurry. No worries though — analog TV has flatlined.
$700, Westinghouse.com
Read our full Westinghouse TX-42F450S review.
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: It's not quite a netbook, not quite an ultralight PC. Whatever it is, Samsung's NC20 is a dazzling feat of engineering: an extremely usable 12-inch laptop with epic battery life, impressive specs and a downright mystifyingly affordable price tag.
But the NC20 doesn't make depressing tradeoffs to achieve those scores. Battery life is three hours, 40 minutes (22 percent longer than the S10) and weight is just 3.3 pounds, comparable to the Asus Eee PC 1000H. All that and you get a 12.1-inch LCD, too, instead of the usual 10.2-inch netbook display.
WIRED Everything a netbook should be: Offers the best performance available from a computer this portable and inexpensive. Very usable keyboard. Good quality audio. Includes three USB ports, 1.3-megapixel webcam, and SD card slot.
TIRED LCD could be a touch brighter and quality sharper. Chassis design is a bit boring.
$550, samsung.com
Read our full Samsung NC 20 review.
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: Pure Digital's Flip has proven that it's possible to build a super-small flash memory camcorder and offer it up for fewer than two hundred bucks. But there are tradeoffs with going small and cheap, like optics and battery life. Canon takes a completely different tack with its newest solid-state cam, the Vixia HF S10, which delivers some fantastically brilliant moving pictures, but at a stiff cost.
Out in the field, auto focus and auto exposure were both very impressive in a wide range of situations, from the intense brightness of the beach to shady and contrasty venues. Every camera suffers indoors, thanks to low light, and everyone complains about it, but the S10 did a credible job with low-light shots and it's clearly better than previous cams of this ilk.
WIRED Improved audio quality. Big, bright lens. Speedy processor. Lots of creative control options. More intuitive menus than previous generation Canon camcorders.
TIRED Loose lens cover noisier than cutlery caught in a garbage disposal. Still images come off looking a bit overexposed.
$1,300, canon.com
Read our full Canon Vixia HF S10 review.
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: Dry your eyes, plasma junkies. The untimely demise of Pioneer's Kuro line doesn't mean you'll have to forgo those deliciously deep blacks and theater-perfect colors for long. In fact, even as the last of the Pioneer Kuro Elites make its way into a few lucky U.S. homes, a new lineup of HDTV sets are already poised to seize the plasma king's vacant throne.
Key to this plasma's visual appeal is its integrated THX mode. In addition to blessing various audio components, the home-theater ninjas at THX began bestowing plasma and LCD certification a few years back. Each set is subjected to approximately 400 individual tests, ranging from evaluations in signal processing to luminosity. Basically, the idea behind G10's THX mode is to recreate the precise color gamut filmmakers use during the in-studio post-production process.
WIRED Mind-boggling blacks with tons of detail. THX mode is a godsend for movie buffs. Integrated SD card slots transform your plasma into a giant digital photo frame. Amazing color saturation.
TIRED THX mode is bit dim for brightly lit rooms. Ethernet connectivity is nice for VieraCast, but Wi-Fi would've been better. Three HDMI ports (two in the back, one on the side) don't cut it. More power-hungry than LCD TVs. Where's the PiP?
$1,300, panasonic.com
Read our full Panasonic TC-P42G10 Viera G10 Series Plasma review.
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: The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.
But the PogoPlug isn't without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We're still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.
WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.
TIRED No wireless mode ... yet. Poor security — it's a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.
$100, pogoplug.com
Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.
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: NatureMill's Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).
Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn't, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn't seem to affect compost production. NatureMill's Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.
WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin' Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it's available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).
TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that's hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D'Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn't fun.
$400, naturemill.com
Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.
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: You can get away with a lot if you're beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P'9522 phone. In some ways, it's a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it's dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.
Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone's scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P'9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.
WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.
TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you're likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?
$800, porschedesign.com
Read our full Porsche Design P'9522 Phone review.
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: Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we've ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.
Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.
WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.
TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don't want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.
$500, samsung.com
Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.
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: As the successor to Logitech's G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.
In the end, the G19's main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It's freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you'll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.
WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.
TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.
$200, Logitech.com
Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.
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: Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend's house? The Mini 10 is your machine.
But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we've seen. Dell's decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.
WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook's video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.
TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can't deliver HD video without fits and starts.
$470 (as tested), dell.com
Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.
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: The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan's engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.
Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don't posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don't fret. The Z's abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.
WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You'll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.
TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don't fool anyone.
$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com
Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.
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: Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you're relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.
Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don't really do anything, and you can't customize the dictionary to alter Jill's interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.
WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.
TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it's a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.
$600, plustek.com
Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.
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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.comApple's newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.
The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it's completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don't have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What's worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you're totally hosed — you'll have to endure the 'buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you're prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.
WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we'll admit, it's another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.
TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.
$80, apple.com
Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.
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: Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of "actuator lugs" just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don't return it.
WIRED So cozy they're like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.
TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.
$175, newtonrunning.com
Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.
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: The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.
As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn't without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it's huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird's streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.
WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.
TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can't put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.
$2,100 (as tested), hp.com
Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.
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: I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.
You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.
WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.
TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It's actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love 'em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown
$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com
Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.
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: The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won't have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.
Looking over the horizon, it's clear that Amazon's biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren't compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.
WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.
TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.
$360, amazon.com
Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.
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: The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more "immersive" sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you're listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting's "Fragile," a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.
But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck's "Cold Brains") the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device "dynamically locates and restores audio detail" and creates a more natural sound. We're not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.
WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.
TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won't work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.
$70, srslabs.com
Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.
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:
Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir's not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone's 100 MB of storage (and it's an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).
But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn't a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it's pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.
WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.
TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn't close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.
$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com
Read our full Samsung Memoir.
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: From the outside, the 1000HE doesn't look much different from other netbooks. But it's the machine's heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.
Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It's not lying. This is the fastest netbook we've tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.
WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.
TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it's one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.
$400 as tested, asus.com
Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.
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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.
WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.
TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn't super pricey, but then it's not the cheapest universal remote out there.
$150, universalremote.com
Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.
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: Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it's water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500's body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.
We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn't. It's got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.
WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn't blare "nerd," "Swatch-wearing poser" or "too lazy to take off my gym watch." Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say "solar" and "atomic" in the same sentence.
TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that's much fancier, albeit not atomic.
$500, casio.com
Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.
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: The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It's the touch-based kitchen computer that won't put you out of house and home. Don't go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.
The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top's sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.
WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.
TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would've been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.
$600 (as tested), asus.com
Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.
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: This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).
But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.
WIRED The smallest video camera we've seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.
TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.
$120, swannsecurity.com
Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.
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: Kodak’s Theatre HD's raison d'être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it's not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.
What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you've downloaded Kodak's EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player's USB ports and you're ready to go.
WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.
TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.
$300, Kodak
Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.
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: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm's mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.
On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.
WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.
TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.
$3450, Ohm Cycles
Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.
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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.
Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel's torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won't run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.
WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.
TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It's cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?
$800 as tested, Gateway
Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.
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: It's no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.
WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you'll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.
TIRED Even beer goggles won't pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.
$500, Polar
Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.
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: The pocket rocket we've been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It's also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.
Styled like a '40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it's not size that matters to us, it's the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq's gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it's remarkable.
WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.
TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours' use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin' hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can't project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.
$400, Optoma
Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.
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: Are you the schlemiel who's always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you're the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you're looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.
About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.
WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.
TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it's dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.
$300, Olympus
Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.
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: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.
Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM's revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn't as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.
WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we've seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.
TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don't perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.
$200 with a two year contract, RIM
Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.
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: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I've ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.
The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone's address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone's calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.
WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.
TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States ... yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.
$112 (estimated), Three
Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.
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: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull's eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP's first multitouch convertible tablet, it's got a lot of potential.
Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.
WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.
$1550 (as tested), HP
Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.
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: Nero's LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain't no TiVo.
Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.
Ironically, that's where you're gonna get pissed. The remote can't launch the software, so you'll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can't put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.
WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it's a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.
TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn't, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.
$125, Tivo
Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.
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: The T400s has performance that is simply outstanding: While graphics are a tad weak due to the lack of a video card, the high-end CPU (the newest Core 2 Duo SP9600, running at 2.53 GHz), 2 GB of RAM and 128-GB solid-state drive give the T400s plenty of juice to power through general apps, running rings around nearly all other notebooks we've benchmarked this year. The screen, now backlit by LEDs, is also dazzlingly bright — one of the brightest on the market, especially in this size class. Netbook and MacBook Air users, take a back seat: There's also a DVD burner.
ThinkPad geeks will most enjoy the little tweaks that Lenovo has given the T400s: The Esc and Delete keys are now double-sized for easier access, and though the speakers still suck, at least the unit features better volume controls, including a dedicated microphone On/Off button. A 2-megapixel webcam with dual microphones rests atop the LCD, and then there's the textured, multitouch touchpad — now flush with the palm rest — that is possibly the most comfortable touchpad we've ever used.
WIRED Unparalleled performance from a 14-inch laptop. Nearly as thin as a MacBook Air — including an optical drive. Killer touchpad (plus TrackPoint for old-schoolers). Plus: Caps Lock LED!
TIRED Only three USB ports. Fn key where the Ctrl key goes. Unbelievably tinny, distant audio. So-so battery life (2 hours, 11 minutes). No ExpressCard slot.
$2,000, lenovo.com
Read our full Lenovo ThinkPad T400s review.
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: The act of boiling water hasn't changed much since your cave-dwelling ancestor Og heated fetid H2O in a mammoth skull.
That's why the Chef's Choice SmartKettle is an enormous evolutionary leap forward for teakettles — and for tea nerds. The device adds a geeky element to the mundane task of stoking liquids by letting you punch in the exact temperature you want.
Operation is dead simple: Just enter a temperature on the unit's recessed front panel. We set ours to 185 degrees Fahrenheit for green tea, filled it to its max capacity of 1.5 quarts, and in five minutes the solid stainless steel kettle produced agua caliente at exactly the desired temp. (We checked.)
WIRED First electric kettle to quickly heat water to the exact temperature you specify. Handsome and sturdy stainless steel pitcher. Alarm sounds just like a teakettle's whistle.
TIRED Safety/power-saving features over-complicate the act of boiling water.
$100, edgecraft.com
Read our full Chef's Choice SmartKettle Model 688 review.
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: The awkwardly-named w995a is a solid-feeling slider. At 4 ounces it sits comfortably in the hand, and the mechanism for sliding up the screen and exposing the keypad felt solid even after repeated use. Since Sony conceived of the w995 as a media player, its button layout is relatively stripped down and geared towards multimedia playback. In addition to the typical "call" and "end" buttons, the face of the handset sports four somewhat flimsy multi-purpose softkeys and a decent four-directional D-pad.
It's clear that Sony wanted to craft a fun, functional phone, and they've largely succeeded in that endeavor. We can think of a few other devices that do a better job of nailing specific features. But Sony at least is on the right path when it comes to producing a very capable, versatile phone.
WIRED Standard headphone jack FTW. Slick animated menus and overall presentation. Sports a mini-kickstand for propping the phone up to watch video. Brilliant and colorful 2.6-inch 320x240 display. Decent audio clarity when using headphones. Decent data speeds with both 3G and Wifi connections. Supports MPEG4, WMV, RealVideo, 3GPP, and H.264 video playback.
TIRED Low volume for music and calls. Music or voice, it doesn't matter — the speakerphone just sucks. E-mail client is both chintzy, web-based. Mediocre call quality. Buttons so recessed they need a government bailout.
$600, sonystyle.com
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: The iPhone 3GS combines two sets of advances. The first group is available only to purchasers of the new hardware. The rest of the features are part of Apple's iPhone 3.0 software upgrade, which is offered free to those with earlier iPhones. (iPod Touch users can get the new software for $10.)
I'll talk about the hardware-based features first. As promised, Apple has indeed ramped up the speed with which the new phone performs tasks like launching apps, loading web pages, and displaying graphics. Apple claims speed boosts of up to two times of what the 3G delivers, and in some benchmarks cites even better performance. I haven't done scientific measurements, but you don't need a stopwatch to notice the new phone is zippier than its predecessor. I appreciated getting box scores faster and videos playing sooner in the MLB.com At Bat application, and it was clear that web pages loaded faster. In the case of a game like Tiger Woods Golf, the boost is significant enough to make me more likely to play when I don't have much time.
Photos were a weak spot in previous iPhones — they weighed in at a measly 2 megapixels — but the iPhone 3GS has a 3-megapixel, autofocusing camera that's more sensitive and allows you to choose an object to focus on by tapping on it. (No zoom, though. Bummer.) Better yet, the camera also records quite creditable video. After you shoot your clip, there's a dead-simple function for instant editing, after which you can send your masterpiece to YouTube or Mobile Me with a single tap.
WIRED Faster. More storage. Better camera, with video recording capability. Search encompasses more data, not just one app at a time. Voice navigation. Feature-rich iPhone 3.0 software is free to current iPhone users.
TIRED Multitasking still limited. No tethering or MMS support yet for AT&T users. Recent iPhone 3G customers must pay a fortune to upgrade.
$300 (32-GB version, with 2-year contract), apple.com
Read our full iPhone 3GS review.
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TomTom's Go Live 740 is a new breed of web-ready GPS in which web access seems like a well-integrated enhancement, not a useless afterthought.
At almost half a pound it sits comfortably in hand, and its colorful 4.3-inch 320 × 240 touch screen is both bright and responsive to repeated pokes. And with its 2GB of memory, microSD port, and integrated Bluetooth we were able to smoothly navigate between a number of tasks, such as listening to music and using the integrated speaker for hands-free calls while paired with a cell phone.
WIRED Svelte, smooth-to-touch design and construction. Decent signal acquisition times (average of four minutes on a cold start). Sports both Bluetooth audio and file exchange capabilities. Intuitive, touch-based interface and menu tree. Allows instant messaging with other TomTom users. Comes with car charger, dash mount, USB cradle charger. It feels ... sexy.
TIRED Navigational interface displays waaay too much information at one time (speed, distance, current time, arrival time, current street, next turn, distance to turn, etc.). Sketchy voice recognition doesn't cut it. Web-enabled services are only free for the first 90 days ($10/mo. afterwards). Speaker would occasionally sound garbled, mispronounce common street names.
$370, TomTom.com
Read our full TomTom Go Live 740 review
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The coolest trick the Alias 2 can pull off is changing from a number pad to a text keyboard as you flip it open. It's a cool trick and makes the Alias 2 somewhat like the Optimus Maximus of phones. This keyboard beats a touchscreen any day of the week; the little mounds offer tactile feedback not found in any iDevice.
In stark contrast to the phone's E Ink deftness other parts of the Alias 2 are decidedly girlish and silly. An included theme for the phone evokes a she-teen boudoir that counts colorful Trapper-Keepers, potted plants and a rainbow peeking in the window among its touches. Access the menu, and the room comes alive, with menu items as knick-knacks, recent calls as a dorm message board and utilities in a toolbox on the floor. Fortunately, you can change this, if you dig around in settings long enough. The preinstalled ringtones are laughable, ranging from cheesy period pieces, to earsplitting high-range electronica, to faux hip-hop distilled somewhere in Seoul's equivalent of 8 Mile. Anyone with a shred of self-respect would be wise to immediately hop on the internet and download a decent Black Sabbath riff for a ringtone.
WIRED E Ink keyboard morphs button layouts when switching from phone to messaging device. Voice quality is high. Battery life is nearly six hours. Reasonably priced.
TIRED The Dear Diary feel of the interface is at odds with anyone over 13. My Room Menu theme is embarrassing. Lack of dedicated buttons leave you hunting and pecking for even the most common tasks.
$130 (with a two year contract), samsung.com
Read our full Samsung Alias 2 review.
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Size seems to matter to the folks at Amazon. While the Kindle 2 has a 6-inch (measured diagonally) e-ink screen — roughly the area of a mass-market paperback book — the DX's 9.7-inch screen resembles a page from a typical hardback. Put another way, the DX flaunts 2.5 times more display space. More text on a page means more lines and, if you prefer, a bigger font, without having to turn the page as often. What does that mean for you? It's easier to read using the DX.
By elegantly super-sizing the Kindle — and ramping up its ability to read files — Amazon has improved the best all-around e-reader available. But the hefty price tag doesn't fit Jeff Bezo's stated philosophy of getting the best value for his customers.
WIRED Big-screen device that's even more readable than the original Kindle. PDF support is a welcome addition.
TIRED High cost of admission. Pivot mode has hair trigger. Southpaws will find the reader cumbersome.
$490, amazon.com
Read our full Amazon.com Kindle DX review.
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: Shaped like a small bar of shower soap, the dense, ebony Pre matches many (if not all) of the features of its chief competitor, the iPhone. But in one key aspect, the Pre does the iPhone one better. While a lot of the Pre's features — a bright 3.1-inch touchscreen manipulated by taps, swipes and pinches; apps sold by third parties in an open online bazaar; integration of e-mail, contacts and calendar — are now standard in 3G smartphones, Palm also lets users keep multiple applications running simultaneously.
Its long-term prospects, though, hinge on whether or not all those third-party apps will show up, whether Sprint can satisfy users, and whether Apple has something up its sleeve that counters the Palm's gambits. Also, of course, the Pre has to prove stable and reliable. (Our test unit occasionally suffered opening-day jitters, including a crash that was fixed only by taking out the removable battery.)
WIRED Great look and superb feel. Well-conceived OS with multitasking and instant notification. Physical keyboard. Utilizes iTunes to load and refresh content.
TIRED Multitasking puts a big suck on the battery. Sprint exclusivity will be annoying to Palm-philes on a contract with AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile. Keyboard is puny. If Apple blocks the handset's access to iTunes, Pre users are hosed.
$200 (with two year contract), palm.com
Read our full Palm Pre review.
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: Demonstrating that it's serious about making a run at the top-end offerings from Canon and Nikon, the K-7 bows with a spankin' new 14.6 megapixel, 28.1mm (diagonal) CMOS image sensor and an updated Prime II processor. This enables HD-video capture, built-in high dynamic range shooting, a 77-segment metering system, pre- and post-production filtering and distortion correction, all in a form factor more than 10 percent smaller (and actually easier to handle) than its predecessor, the K20D.
By and large, it's a super quick focusing compact image-maker — once you learn how the menu system works. But it's just a step or two behind Nikon and Canon in ease of use. In spite of that, Pentax has nearly hit a home run with the K-7. It's svelte, sturdy, fairly easy to operate, has a great range of available lenses and a feature set that's unmatched at this price. Think of it as a solid double off the wall, with an RBI.
WIRED Speedy 5.2 frames per second. Super-sturdy construction. Lots of pro features at a prosumer price. Improved battery life and 100 percent field-of-view viewfinder. Faster, more robust processor. Live View with contrast focus and face detection. Shoots 5.2 frames-per-second with shutter speed up to 1/8000. The 77-segment metering system and 11-point AF system are quick and spot on. Internal mechanical shake reduction.
TIRED User interface needs to be simpler and more unified.
$1,300 (body only), pentax.com
Read our full Pentax K-7 DSLR review.
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: The A600's 21.5-inch screen (1920 x 1080 pixels) is big and dazzlingly bright — so much so that Lenovo includes an automatic screen-dimming system designed to prevent eyestrain. Inside its bowels, this 25-pounder offers substantial specs: 2.13-GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, and a terabyte hard drive. The ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card may be getting a little long in the tooth, but it's powerful enough to make the A600 more than acceptable to play all but the very latest gaming titles.
That's a lot of stuff for the price — $1,150 — and stripped-down versions of the IdeaCentre run considerably less. If you don't need the power but dig the design and screen size, the budget rendition might be an even better bet.
WIRED Very small footprint. Single-cable design is a blessing for technophobes. Swivel base makes adjustments to viewing angle easy. Six USB ports and 802.11n Wi-Fi, plus FireWire, SD and coaxial connectors.
TIRED Keyboard and mouse frequently fall asleep; difficult to awaken. Remote control overly complex and rather homely. Included games feel like an engineer on Quaaludes designed them.
$1,150 (as tested), lenovo.com
Read our full Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 review.
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: Its glossy black finish and polished Darth Vader design makes Samsung's newest Blu-ray box, the BD-P4600, stand out from every other player on the market. Well, it actually doesn't stand anywhere at all -- it comes with the metal brackets to mount it on a wall or plant it on a desktop pedestal. And like Lord Vader, this model packs some serious force with its built-in streaming for Pandora music and Netflix.
For $100 less, you could pick up Samsung's BD-P3600 a player that has all the same features as this model but comes in a non-wall-mountable chassis. But really, would you want to watch The Empire Strikes Back on a Blu-ray player that didn't look like it was made in a dark corner of Coruscant?
WIRED High-end, spacey designed Blu-ray player is loaded with features include ability to wall mount, loads Blu-ray discs exceptional fast and offers exceptional playback.
TIRED Complicated initial setup for its feature set. Cramped underside port-connection compartment. Competitively over priced for what it delivers.
$500, samsung.com
Read our full Samsung BD-P4600 review.
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: Let's cut to the chase and hit you with the sell: The MSI X340 is a MacBook Air at half the price. Interested? Read on.
For starters, the X340 (aka the X Slim) is considerably better muscled than your typical netbook, featuring a glossy 13.4-inch (1366 x 768 pixels) screen, 320-GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM. Like Apple's ultralight, it's incredibly thin — about 0.8 inches at its thickest — and it actually weighs slightly less than the Air, just 2.9 pounds.
Before you start salivating over the prospects of a half-price Air, note that Apple's laptop does trump the X340 in a few significant ways. The Air includes Nvidia graphics, while the X340 is stuck with Intel's integrated chipset.
The screens are night and day: The Air is renowned for having one of the brightest LCDs available, while the X340 is merely average in this department.
WIRED Gorgeous design; slap an Apple sticker over the MSI logo and no one will ever know. Performance bests most netbooks, though it's hardly top-notch. Surprisingly good graphics and responsiveness. Includes the usual goodies: 1.3-MP webcam, Bluetooth, 802.11n.
TIRED Flaky touchpad. Disappointing battery life.
$900 (as tested), us.msi.com
Read our full MSI X340 review.
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: The first day we took the car for a spin we kept the front-mounted 5.9-liter 470 BHP vehicle on a strict diet of city driving: no freeways, no tightly coiled back roads. Trudging through heavy traffic almost felt sadistic — kind of like taking a thoroughbred racehorse and giving it polio. But after exiting the city limits and tearing down a stretch of asphalt connecting San Francisco with Napa Valley, the DB9 snapped up, greedily devouring 90-degree curves with just a hint of oversteer.
WIRED Fast like a sports car, more refined than a quart of 40-weight. Gorgeous; induces whiplash in head-turning bystanders. Zippy acceleration for a GT — you can't front on a 4.6-second zero-to-60 time ... unless you're armed with a Ferrari or a Bentley.
TIRED Hood-release switch located in impossibly hard to find/reach nook (as if an Aston owner would ever do that). iPod access tres difficult to set up. Chugs gas like an ASU freshman rips beer-bong hits. Back seat harder to get into than MIT.
$209,000 as tested, astonmartin.com
Read our full Aston Martin DB9 review.
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: If you don't mind looking like an extra in a 1-800-Dentist commercial and have no reservations about looking like a crazy person yammering to yourself, the Plantronics Voyager Pro may be the perfect Bluetooth headset for you.
This headset is big, bulky and (surprise, surprise) silly looking. The 3-inch boom extending out toward your mouth is the main culprit of these crimes against style. But despite being tacky, the Voyager Pro delivers strong performance. It's easy to use, withstands drops, bumps and haphazardly tossed laptops, has decent battery life and pairs effortlessly with a range of smartphones, including the iPhone.
WIRED Easy to use. Super sound quality. Stays attached to your ear. You will look like a telephone operator from the '50s.
TIRED You will look like a telephone operator from the '50s.
$100, plantronics.com
Read our full Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth Headset review.
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: After a few grim years ceded to the iMac, PC-based all-in-one desktops are making an LL Cool J-esque comeback. Their next move: Make the switch from semi-luxe gear designed for highly aesthetic environments to the megacheap world that the netbook has built.
Specs look exceedingly promising at first: 250 GB of hard drive space, 2 GB of RAM, integrated Wi-Fi, DVD burner, an SD card slot and a very bright 19-inch touchscreen display. If nothing else, it's one of the best-looking touchscreens (non-capacitive; a stylus works better than your finger) we've seen at this screen size.
But the Achilles' heel of the Wind Top is its baffling choice of an Atom 330 processor to power these guts. Although the dual-core 330 is known as the "fast" version of the Atom (it draws 8 watts instead of the 2.5 watts used by the netbook standard Atom N270 and has double the L2 cache), it's still woefully inadequate for a computer this ambitious.
WIRED Amazingly affordable and loaded to the gills. Touchscreen makes this a perfect kiddie computer. Slim profile lets it fit just about anywhere. Cuter than a box of puppies.
TIRED Performance problems dog the user at every turn. Flashing blue hard-drive activity light is front and center, terribly distracting and impossible to cover up. Bundled keyboard and mouse are beyond cheap. Webcam aim can't be adjusted.
$590 (as tested), us.msi.com
Read our full MSI Wind Top AE1900 review.
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: The new Chrome Soyuz is an ambitious (if slightly crazed) reimagining of the urban commuter backpack. It's a weird hybrid of a river-rafting drybag and laptop case, all contained within a stylish wedge of black and red nylon.
It sits comfortably behind your back, letting you weave through traffic on your fixie without fear of snagging on the projecting mirrors of double-parked delivery trucks. It can ride between your knees on a crowded train. And it tucks neatly below an airplane seat, leaving just enough space on either side to squeeze in your feet so you can stretch your legs.
WIRED Wedge design keeps load balanced, trim and compact. Expandable waterproof compartment shrinks down to nothing when empty. Heavy-duty 1,000-denier cordura nylon withstands abuse. Main compartments are completely waterproof. Heavy-duty metal strap locks make adjustment easy. Glorious enameled metal "Chrome" logo.
TIRED Narrow openings + deep compartments = where the hell did my keys go? Not quite big enough to contain a six-pack (unless you put the bottles in one by one). Padding traps heat, steaming your back on long rides. No hip belt. Pricier than a metric ton of pig iron.
$180, chromebags.com
Read our full Chrome Soyuz Backpack review.
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: The pristine fidelity these headphones deliver is the result of a dual-armature layout, which bathes your tympanic membranes in accurate audio reproduction. The earpiece's dual drivers have the added benefit of propping up the typically flaccid base that seems to plague many other in-ear monitors.
The only major downside is that great sound comes at a considerable price — $230 to be precise. For most people, that's likely to be as much (or more) than you spent on your MP3 player. But as my neglected Audio Technicas can attest, in this case, you undoubtedly get what you pay for.
WIRED Exquisite sound reproduction in an insanely small package. Handy in-flight attenuator saves you from Captain Blowhard's eardrum-exploding announcements. Fuller, richer base and wider frequency response than previous UEs.
TIRED Spendiferous. Cable noise will distract joggers or anyone planning to use the headphones while exercising. Despite its redesign, the pocket case is still too small to fit all the accouterments.
$230, ultimateears.com
Read our full Ultimate Ears 700 Noise-Isolating Earphones review.
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: Digeo's Moxi HD DVR sports a slick, Emmy-winning (seriously) user interface and all the commercial-skipping accouterments of competitors like TiVo. It even ditches a monthly bill in favor of flat pricing and grants access to online video and music.
The Moxi's stunning high-def UI is full of slick transitions and responsive performance. Unfortunately, sleek visuals don't conquer all. Basics like surfing through the program guide (or accessing a previously recorded show) took a lot of hunting and pecking through a menu tree. Finding pre-recorded shows and getting them to play took searching, highlighting, selecting Play, confirming that you selected Play, and then finally watching.
WIRED No monthly bills. Sleek high-def interface has nifty animations and transitions. Hard drive expandable to 1 TB for power recorders. Dual tuners let you watch one show while recording another. Offers a whopping 1.5-hour buffer time per HD channel.
TIRED Hefty entry fee. Online video chops not quite up to snuff. No dedicated Guide button on the remote?! Unnecessarily complicated menus. Programming schedules are displayed in cramped vertical list instead of friendly grid.
$800, moxi.com
Read our full Digeo Moxi HD DVR review.
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: We're a little dismayed by the E71x. The device is almost identical to the E71: same 3.2-megapixel camera, same .04-inch profile, same vibrant 320 x 240 QVGA display, same business apps and multimedia functionality. The operating system is slightly tweaked so there are some differences in transmissions and page loading. But as a whole, the phone is relatively unchanged.
These are the key differences: a new $100 price tag (good), a black paint job (badass) and the omission of our favorite feature from the original E71 (ugly). We're talking about the two separate, customizable home screens, something we absolutely loved about the O.G. E71. One screen was designed for business, the other for personal use. It was a great function: You could literally edit spreadsheets from 9 to 5 on one screen, then toggle over to the other and watch a couple of episodes of 30 Rock on the media player.
WIRED Windows interface means you don't have to learn a new menu convention to browse your old files. Dumping the data of only one (or all) of your multiple PCs takes less than five mouse clicks. You can set up a password in the toolbar.
TIRED Dock and multi-PC backup capability only provided with 500-GB version. Full hard-drive recovery requires booting from a CD. Windows-only means it fails to bridge the gap in inter-OSial households.
$100 with 2-year contract, att.com
Read our full Nokia E71x Smartphone review.
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: The Replica comes with bare-bones software and strikes a good balance between peace of mind and individual-user control.
After the hard drive is plugged in, the Replica starts mirroring your computer's content. The startup process is short, taking only a couple of minutes, though the actual backup is a time-gobbling endeavor. (It took us about four hours to transfer 130 GB of data). A blue light on the top of the Replica's case blinks continuously while data is being transferred. It's also stealthy for a hard drive, emitting only a quiet whir when working at full speed.
WIRED Windows interface means you don't have to learn a new menu convention to browse your old files. Dumping the data of only one (or all) of your multiple PCs takes less than five mouse clicks. You can set up a password in the toolbar.
TIRED Dock and multi-PC backup capability only provided with 500-GB version. Full hard-drive recovery requires booting from a CD. Windows-only means it fails to bridge the gap in inter-OSial households.
$200, seagate.com
Read our full Seagate Replica 500GB review.
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: Panasonic's new HDC-TM300 shoots in "Full HD," marketing speak for 1080p — aka 1080 x 1920 resolution with progressive-scan video. Translation? Stunning Blu-ray-level video that should more than lives up to the most critical expectations of prosumers and video enthusiasts.
The highlight of this shooter is the high-def footage. Not only does the phenomenal zoom reel in distant objects, but thanks to the triple sensors and quality lens, it nails far-off details perfectly. The architectural features of distant buildings we shot in downtown San Francisco showed up like we were standing on the window ledge -- not in a park three blocks away.
WIREDReproduces colors like a Crayola factory. Closeups pop with sharp, clear details. Nice performance in low light. Einstein-smart automatic shooting features are like having your own DP built into the camera. 32-GB onboard memory is expandable via SDHC slot. Great zoom tackles action better than Jason Statham.
TIRED Fast pans in bright daylight turns up more artifacts than a Mayan ruin. May require second mortgage.
$1,300, Panasonic.com
Read our full Panasonic HDC-TM300 HD Camcorder review.
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: In the aftermath (heh heh) of the bass-heavy Beats by Dre Studio headphones, Monster decided to pack the Doctor's finicky sound quality specs into two tiny earbuds. Naturally, audiophiles (including myself) were skeptical. Sure the Beats suffered from shoddy construction and fell apart after a few months of ownership, but they also provided some of the best bass we've ever heard in a set of cans.
Sure enough, the bass response from these things is rich and full. The lowest frequencies rumble with a force akin to the thud of a decent subwoofer. Keep in mind these are not miniaturized 12-inch Kickers designed to blow your eardrums out. But for a device that is essentially a tiny speaker with no auxiliary power, they're superb — especially when compared to the white earcruds doled out by Apple with every iDevice.
WIRED Excellent all-around frequency definition and particularly impressive bass response. Monster’s durable, ingenious anti-tangle cable means jumbled cords are a distant unpleasant memory.
TIRED The bright red cable is slightly ostentatious. Peak bass only hits at earwax shattering volumes.
$150, beatsbydre.com
Read our full Monster Beats By Dre Tour High-Resolution In-Ear Headphones review.
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: The UE-11 Pros are packed with four, count 'em, four drivers: There's a double dose of bass, one for the midrange and one chiming the highs. If you're looking for the most precise, separated sound possible, then this is the earphone for you. Throughout the play list I heard clarity and detail in the music I'd never heard before. This rang especially true with classical tunes — it literally feels like sitting in a symphony hall and having every instrument speak directly to you. To get that kind of superior fidelity you'll certainly have to pay the piper. But you'll really love the music while Rome — or your bank account — burns.
WIRED Most clear, separated and detailed sound.
TIRED Try convincing your spouse you need a $1,150 set of headphones.
$1,150, ultimateears.com
Read our full UE-11 Pro review.
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: The slate-gray, high-impact polymer body houses three LEDs capable of blasting out a peak 270 lumens for 15 minutes, or a more useful and long-lasting 90 lumens for 60 minutes. Both settings have an emergency low-power 25-lumen mode (equivalent in brightness to most common household D-cell flashlights) for an additional 60 minutes.
WIRED High-power pro flashlight pumps out awesome illumination and recharges ridiculously fast. Flashlight will outlive you. Seriously brilliant, blinding — a boon for flashlight junkies.
TIRED Pricy front-end investment. Comes with a 12-volt car charger.
$170, 511tactical.com
Read our full 5.11 Tactical Light review.
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: In our tests, we threw all things digital at this 68-pound slab. And while it does not perform as superbly as its higher-price brethren from Sony, Samsung and Sharp, it still shows off a completely acceptable high-def image and above-average sound.
So where has Westinghouse cut corners? Oh, let's see. How about the borderline embarrassing 1000:1 contrast ratio? In a well-lit room, the screen looks more washed out than a warehouse full of Maytags. And even though the set offers the 120-Hz spec, fast motion still looks a bit blurred.
WIRED High resolution and decent sound at incredible rock-bottom price. Convenience features integrated into menu. Quality remote not found in higher-priced TVs.
TIRED Displays some pixelated speckled noise in darker and mid-hue images. Analog-station reproduction is downright blurry. No worries though — analog TV has flatlined.
$700, Westinghouse.com
Read our full Westinghouse TX-42F450S review.
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: It's not quite a netbook, not quite an ultralight PC. Whatever it is, Samsung's NC20 is a dazzling feat of engineering: an extremely usable 12-inch laptop with epic battery life, impressive specs and a downright mystifyingly affordable price tag.
But the NC20 doesn't make depressing tradeoffs to achieve those scores. Battery life is three hours, 40 minutes (22 percent longer than the S10) and weight is just 3.3 pounds, comparable to the Asus Eee PC 1000H. All that and you get a 12.1-inch LCD, too, instead of the usual 10.2-inch netbook display.
WIRED Everything a netbook should be: Offers the best performance available from a computer this portable and inexpensive. Very usable keyboard. Good quality audio. Includes three USB ports, 1.3-megapixel webcam, and SD card slot.
TIRED LCD could be a touch brighter and quality sharper. Chassis design is a bit boring.
$550, samsung.com
Read our full Samsung NC 20 review.
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: Pure Digital's Flip has proven that it's possible to build a super-small flash memory camcorder and offer it up for fewer than two hundred bucks. But there are tradeoffs with going small and cheap, like optics and battery life. Canon takes a completely different tack with its newest solid-state cam, the Vixia HF S10, which delivers some fantastically brilliant moving pictures, but at a stiff cost.
Out in the field, auto focus and auto exposure were both very impressive in a wide range of situations, from the intense brightness of the beach to shady and contrasty venues. Every camera suffers indoors, thanks to low light, and everyone complains about it, but the S10 did a credible job with low-light shots and it's clearly better than previous cams of this ilk.
WIRED Improved audio quality. Big, bright lens. Speedy processor. Lots of creative control options. More intuitive menus than previous generation Canon camcorders.
TIRED Loose lens cover noisier than cutlery caught in a garbage disposal. Still images come off looking a bit overexposed.
$1,300, canon.com
Read our full Canon Vixia HF S10 review.
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: Dry your eyes, plasma junkies. The untimely demise of Pioneer's Kuro line doesn't mean you'll have to forgo those deliciously deep blacks and theater-perfect colors for long. In fact, even as the last of the Pioneer Kuro Elites make its way into a few lucky U.S. homes, a new lineup of HDTV sets are already poised to seize the plasma king's vacant throne.
Key to this plasma's visual appeal is its integrated THX mode. In addition to blessing various audio components, the home-theater ninjas at THX began bestowing plasma and LCD certification a few years back. Each set is subjected to approximately 400 individual tests, ranging from evaluations in signal processing to luminosity. Basically, the idea behind G10's THX mode is to recreate the precise color gamut filmmakers use during the in-studio post-production process.
WIRED Mind-boggling blacks with tons of detail. THX mode is a godsend for movie buffs. Integrated SD card slots transform your plasma into a giant digital photo frame. Amazing color saturation.
TIRED THX mode is bit dim for brightly lit rooms. Ethernet connectivity is nice for VieraCast, but Wi-Fi would've been better. Three HDMI ports (two in the back, one on the side) don't cut it. More power-hungry than LCD TVs. Where's the PiP?
$1,300, panasonic.com
Read our full Panasonic TC-P42G10 Viera G10 Series Plasma review.
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: The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.
But the PogoPlug isn't without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We're still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.
WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.
TIRED No wireless mode ... yet. Poor security — it's a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.
$100, pogoplug.com
Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.
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: NatureMill's Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).
Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn't, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn't seem to affect compost production. NatureMill's Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.
WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin' Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it's available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).
TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that's hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D'Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn't fun.
$400, naturemill.com
Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.
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: You can get away with a lot if you're beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P'9522 phone. In some ways, it's a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it's dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.
Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone's scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P'9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.
WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.
TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you're likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?
$800, porschedesign.com
Read our full Porsche Design P'9522 Phone review.
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: Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we've ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.
Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.
WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.
TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don't want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.
$500, samsung.com
Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.
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: As the successor to Logitech's G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.
In the end, the G19's main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It's freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you'll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.
WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.
TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.
$200, Logitech.com
Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.
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: Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend's house? The Mini 10 is your machine.
But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we've seen. Dell's decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.
WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook's video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.
TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can't deliver HD video without fits and starts.
$470 (as tested), dell.com
Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.
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: The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan's engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.
Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don't posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don't fret. The Z's abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.
WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You'll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.
TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don't fool anyone.
$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com
Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.
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: Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you're relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.
Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don't really do anything, and you can't customize the dictionary to alter Jill's interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.
WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.
TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it's a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.
$600, plustek.com
Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.
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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.comApple's newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.
The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it's completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don't have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What's worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you're totally hosed — you'll have to endure the 'buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you're prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.
WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we'll admit, it's another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.
TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.
$80, apple.com
Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.
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: Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of "actuator lugs" just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don't return it.
WIRED So cozy they're like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.
TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.
$175, newtonrunning.com
Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.
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: The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.
As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn't without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it's huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird's streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.
WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.
TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can't put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.
$2,100 (as tested), hp.com
Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.
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: I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.
You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.
WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.
TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It's actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love 'em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown
$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com
Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.
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: The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won't have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.
Looking over the horizon, it's clear that Amazon's biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren't compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.
WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.
TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.
$360, amazon.com
Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.
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: The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more "immersive" sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you're listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting's "Fragile," a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.
But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck's "Cold Brains") the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device "dynamically locates and restores audio detail" and creates a more natural sound. We're not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.
WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.
TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won't work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.
$70, srslabs.com
Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.
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:
Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir's not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone's 100 MB of storage (and it's an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).
But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn't a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it's pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.
WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.
TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn't close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.
$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com
Read our full Samsung Memoir.
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: From the outside, the 1000HE doesn't look much different from other netbooks. But it's the machine's heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.
Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It's not lying. This is the fastest netbook we've tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.
WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.
TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it's one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.
$400 as tested, asus.com
Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.
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: The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.
WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.
TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn't super pricey, but then it's not the cheapest universal remote out there.
$150, universalremote.com
Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.
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: Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it's water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500's body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.
We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn't. It's got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.
WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn't blare "nerd," "Swatch-wearing poser" or "too lazy to take off my gym watch." Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say "solar" and "atomic" in the same sentence.
TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that's much fancier, albeit not atomic.
$500, casio.com
Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.
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: The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It's the touch-based kitchen computer that won't put you out of house and home. Don't go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.
The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top's sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.
WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.
TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would've been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.
$600 (as tested), asus.com
Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.
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: This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).
But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.
WIRED The smallest video camera we've seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.
TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.
$120, swannsecurity.com
Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.
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: Kodak’s Theatre HD's raison d'être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it's not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.
What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you've downloaded Kodak's EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player's USB ports and you're ready to go.
WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.
TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.
$300, Kodak
Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.
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: Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm's mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.
On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.
WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.
TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.
$3450, Ohm Cycles
Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.
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: For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.
Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel's torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won't run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.
WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.
TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It's cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?
$800 as tested, Gateway
Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.
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: It's no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.
WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you'll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.
TIRED Even beer goggles won't pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.
$500, Polar
Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.
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: The pocket rocket we've been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It's also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.
Styled like a '40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it's not size that matters to us, it's the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq's gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it's remarkable.
WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.
TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours' use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin' hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can't project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.
$400, Optoma
Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.
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: Are you the schlemiel who's always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you're the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you're looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.
About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.
WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.
TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it's dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.
$300, Olympus
Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.
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: Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.
Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM's revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn't as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.
WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we've seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.
TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don't perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.
$200 with a two year contract, RIM
Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.
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: This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I've ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.
The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone's address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone's calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.
WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.
TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States ... yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.
$112 (estimated), Three
Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.
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: HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull's eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP's first multitouch convertible tablet, it's got a lot of potential.
Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.
WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.
TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.
$1550 (as tested), HP
Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.
Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.
: Nero's LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain't no TiVo.
Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.
Ironically, that's where you're gonna get pissed. The remote can't launch the software, so you'll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can't put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.
WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it's a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.
TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn't, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.
$125, Tivo
Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.
Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.
Queasing n. British slang for "quantitative easing," the UK's policy of printing money to stimulate the economy. The US is doing much the same thing, but Fed chair Ben Bernanke calls it "credit easing"—and so far pundits haven't spun "creasing" into the vernacular.
Predator X n. Paleontologists' name for a recently discovered marine dinosaur with foot-long teeth. Its bite, four times stronger than T. rex's, could have crushed a Hummer.
Greenfinger n. A rogue environmentalist who endangers ecosystems with risky projects aimed at reducing global warming. Proposed schemes include dumping iron filings into the ocean and injecting a chalky substance into the arctic stratosphere.
Grass mud horse n. Wildly popular on YouTube, this mythical, alpaca-like creature was conjured by Chinese citizens to protest Internet censorship. Though the grass mud horse looks innocent, its Chinese name—Cao Ni Ma—sounds like "fuck your mother" in Mandarin.
—Jonathon Keats (jargon@wired.com)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Imaging, Digital Cameras
Pentax has just released information on their new digital camera, the Optio W80. Continuing with their quality digital cameras, the W80 is no different as it should please both casual photographers and serious photographers. To begin with, it is waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, and weather proof in the sense of handling extreme cold temperature (such as 14 degrees Fahrenheit).
As for “shockproof,” it can withstand a fall from three feet (which will definitely be a nice feature to those with shaky hands), and in terms of waterproof, it can go underwater at a depth of 16 feet. Basically, you can take pictures in the rain or underwater, without worrying about possible water damage. In addition, it is a 12MP camera, with 5x optical zoom, wide angle 28mm lens, and a “Super Protect” coating which protects the device and lens from fingerprints and oil.
It features a 2.5-inch LCD screen with anti-reflective technology, HD movie capture, Fast Face Detection Technology, Anti-Shake technology, and super close focusing, which allows very close objects to be in clear focus. It is set to be available in July 2009. The Pentax Optio W80 will be available in several versions including a cardinal red, gunmetal gray, or azure blue for $299.
For more information, check out the press release below.
PENTAX ANNOUNCES ITS MOST SHOCK AND WATERPROOF DIGITAL COMPACT CAMERA EVER: THE OPTIO W80
GOLDEN, CO (June 24, 2009)…The manufacturer that builds digital cameras to go boldly where none have gone before has announced the PENTAX Optio W80. More adventure-proof than ever, this latest PENTAX digital camera is waterproof, dustproof, coldproof, and now shockproof enough to withstand impact from a fall of more than three feet (one meter).
PENTAX first introduced dunkable digital cameras in 2003 to the delight of outdoor enthusiasts, travelers and families everywhere. Today, the PENTAX Optio W80’s waterproof design withstands depths of up to 16 feet (5 meters) to protect from rain and spills, as well as allowing full underwater photos and video for up to two hours. On dry land, the rugged, shockproof design protects against drops of up to 3.3 feet to protect the camera from hard use and occasional spills. Also featuring 12.1 megapixels, a 5X internal optical zoom (equivalent to 28-140mm), a slim one inch body, and a wide angle 28mm lens, the Optio W80 offers an expanded perspective that is ideal for landscape, group and more confined shots. With a PENTAX-developed imaging engine and a high-performance PENTAX zoom lens, the Optio W80 delivers brilliant, high-quality images with well-defined details. A Super Protect (SP) coating applied to the mineral crystal cover of the internal zoom lens helps repel water, grime and finger marks.
Other important features in the Optio W80 include a:• Coldproof design that allows the camera to be used in sub-freezing temperatures of 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 degrees Celsius), ideal for cold weather activities such as skiing and snowmobiling.
• 2.5 inch LCD monitor that features anti-reflective coating, making it easy to view, even in bright sunlight.
• Widescreen, HD movie capture that records resolutions up to 1280x720 pixels at full-speed 30 frames per second.
• Fast Face Detection technology that sees up to 32 faces in 0.03 seconds, with Smile Capture and Blink Detection, for perfect portrait shots.
• Pixel Track Shake Reduction (SR) that ensures sharp images in any lighting condition, without adding high ISO noise. Digital SR and Movie SR are also available.
• Close focusing, Super Macro mode that brings out the details in even the smallest subjects as close as 1 cm (less than one inch).
(more)
PENTAX
2-2-2Available in Cardinal Red, Azure Blue and Gunmetal Gray, the Optio W80 will be available in July 2009 for $299.95 USD. To help keep the Optio W80 fresh and at hand, PENTAX offers a custom designed clear protective skin ($16.95 USD) and a comfortable floating wrist strap ($19.95 USD). More information about the Optio W80 and these accessories is available at: www.pentaximaging.com *
and preorders may be placed now at www.pentaxwebstore.com .* Product images are available here: http://www.pentaximaging.com/press/pressfiles.html .*
*After the embargo date/time.
PENTAX Imaging Company is an innovative leader in the production of a variety of digital cameras including weather resistant digital SLRs and compact, waterproof cameras, as well as lenses, flash units, binoculars, scopes, and eyepieces. For 90 years, PENTAX has developed durable, reliable products that meet the needs of consumers and businesses. With headquarters in Golden, Colorado, PENTAX Imaging Company is a division of PENTAX of America, Inc.
# # #
Media contact:
Michelle Martin
303.728.0224
Michelle.martin@pentax.com
Consumer contact:
pentaxinfo@pentax.com
1-800-877-0155
http://www.youtube.com/pentaxian1
OPTIO W80 FACT SHEETEnhanced rugged performance
With the most water and airtight external joints ever, PENTAX has improved the Optio W80’s underwater performance to more than 16 feet for up to two hours of continuous operation. Along with this outstanding JIS Class 8 waterproof rating, the Optio W80 provides JIS Class 6 dustproof and coldproof performance for reliable operation at temperatures as low as 14 degrees F (–10 degrees C).New shockproof performance
With shock-absorbent material positioned throughout the Optio W80’s rigid and durable interior design, the Optio W80 will withstand impact from a fall from a height of more than three feet (one meter)* without damage to the body for reliability even in harsh shooting conditions.
* Measured under PENTAX-original testing standards (from a height of one meter, onto a surface of 5cm-thick plywood), conforming to MIL-STD 810F Method 516.5-Shock.Optical 5X zoom lens for excellent zoom coverage from wide angle to telephoto
The Optio W80 features an optical 5X zoom lens covering focal lengths from 28mm wide angle to 140mm telephoto. With this wide zoom range, the Optio W80 may be used for a variety of challenging subjects and scenes including landscapes, architecture, large group shots and tight snapshots from a distance. For a tighter zoom on subjects, an Intelligent Zoom function extends the zoom range to approximately 31.3X.High-quality HD-Widescreen movie recording
The Optio W80 captures beautiful, flawless, high-definition movie clips at 16:9 TV proportions (1280 x 720 pixels)* at a frame rate of 30 frames per second. The camera also is equipped with advanced features designed to facilitate high quality movie recording:
• Movie SR (Shake Reduction) mode automatically compensates camera shake during movie shooting
• Underwater Movie mode automatically optimizes color for underwater movie shooting.
*When the Optio W80’s AV output terminal is used, movie clips are output as NTSC/PAL data. If the user wishes to play back movie clips at high-definition-TV proportions (1280 x 720 pixels), the data must be transferred to a personal computer for playback.Triple anti-shake protection
Pixel Track SR mode
When recording still images, the Optio W80’s Pixel Track SR (Shake Reduction) mode effectively compensates for camera shake by processing the amount of image blur with a dedicated ASIC. Pixel Track SR tracks motion blur at the pixel level and calculates blur volume in real time. After exposure, the recovery filter centers the motion effect around each pixel to compartmentalize the blur. Then, an adjustment filter sharpens the pixels to help remove the blur effect. Pixel Track SR results in sharp images without adding high ISO noise.High-Sensitivity SR mode*
The Optio W80 automatically raises the sensitivity setting to as high as ISO 6400 when it detects low-lighting conditions in still-image shooting so that a higher shutter speed may be used. This effectively minimizes adverse effects of camera shake and subject blur under poor lighting conditions.
* When the High-Sensitivity SR mode is selected, the recorded size is fixed to 5M (2592 x 1944 pixels).(more)
OPTIO W80 FACT SHEET (continued)Movie SR mode*
During movie recording, the Optio W80 prevents blurry images by effectively minimizing annoying camera shake.
* When the Movie SR mode is selected, the angle of view becomes narrower than normal shooting.Auto Picture mode for automatic selection of eight different shooting modes
The Optio W80 features the PENTAX-original Auto Picture mode, which automatically selects the most appropriate shooting mode for a given subject or scene by detecting the subject’s lighting and other conditions. This user-friendly feature chooses the best mode choice for the photographer (from Landscape, Portrait, Night Scene, Night Scene Portrait, Flower, Sport, Standard and Candlelight modes).Automatic Face Detection of up to 32 faces in a mere 0.03 seconds
The Optio W80 features the advanced Face Detection AF & AE function for more accurate people shots. This function automatically detects up to 32 faces in the image field, and then optimizes focus and exposure settings in about 0.03 seconds. The Optio W80 is also equipped with the Smile Capture mode, which automatically releases the shutter the moment the camera detects the subject’s smile and a Blink Detection function, which warns the photographer if a subject’s eyes close at the time of shutter release.Large LCD monitor for effortless outdoor viewing
The Optio W80 features a large 2.5 inch high-brightness color LCD monitor with approximately 230,000 dots. This monitor is treated with a special AR (Anti-Reflection) coating to cut the glare of external light and minimize annoying reflections, making it easy to view recorded images even in bright sunlight.Additional features
• An Auto Macro mode records dramatic close-up images of a subject from close as one centimeter.
• A Digital Wide function to compose extra-wide-angle images (equivalent to an image taken with an approx. 21mm lens in 35mm format) from two images.
• An AF-assisting spot beam projector (ON/OFF switchable) assists auto focusing operation in the dark.
• A new D-Range setting to prevent overexposed (washed-out) and underexposed (blacked-out) areas in an image.
• A decorative frame composite function to shoot or compose images with 90 photo frame selections stored in the camera.
• 20 digital filters, including Toy Camera and Retro, add distinctive visual effects to recorded images.
• ACDSee for PENTAX 3.0 image viewing, editing and filing software included (compatible with Windows VistaTM).PENTAX and Optio are trademarks of HOYA CORPORATION.
All other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
This product supports PRINT Image Matching III. PRINT Image Matching enabled digital still cameras, printers and software help photographers to produce images more faithful to their intentions. Some functions are not available on printers that are not PRINT Image Matching III compliant.
Copyright 2001 Seiko Epson Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Print Image Matching is a trademark of Seiko Epson Corporation.
The PRINT Image Matching logo is a trademark of Seiko Epson Corporation.
Design and Specifications are subject to change without notice.
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Computers, Security, Features, Originals
We see it everyday. It’s everywhere - in our mailboxes, our blogs, even on our phones. I’m talking of course about unsolicited bulk email, better known as spam. Spam, named after a classic Monty Python skit about a couple who goes to a restaurant that turns out to serve nothing but Spam and ends with the waiters chanting over and over “Spam spam spam spam,” has been around since the 70s.
In 1978 an employee at DEC sent out a message inviting inquiries about a new computer model to 383 people, creating the first piece of spam. The net hasn’t been the same since. That was followed by the infamous “Make Money Fast” chain letter that was spammed all over USENET in the late 80s and early 90s, and then by the “Green Card” spammers.
When email became popular, spammers left USENET behind. Some of the products spam hawks include shady Internet pharmacies, sexual aids, mortgages, stocks, credit repair, fake watches and designer goods, porn sites, and more. While spam started out being annoying but harmless, today it often includes malware or links to malicious sites or tries to lure the recipient into the clutches of a scammer.
The 419 or Nigerian spam is the most common type of scam spam. Millions of messages attempting to convince people they’ve received a huge inheritance from a long lost relative or that a member of some obscure country’s Royal Family really does need their help. The unfortunate people that do fall for it usually end up being asked to pay fee after fee until their bank accounts run dry.
Another popular type of scam spam is dating spam. It arrives as a message from someone claiming to have seen the recipient’s profile on an unspecified site. They lavish them with compliments and claim they want to get to know them better. If they fall for it, a “relationship” begins. Once they feel they’ve gained the victim’s trust the scam begins. The victim is told they’d really like to come and visit or move to see them (the scammer is almost always overseas) but need to clear up some financial obligations first, or is given a sob story which can only be resolved with money. Thinking they’ve found the love of their life the victim sends money. As soon as the money runs out or the victim becomes suspicious, the scammer disappears.
So with all this spam around, how do you protect yourself? Here are some simple tips.
Next time we’ll take a look at what to do if your spam solutions are working too well and blocking messages you actually want to receive!
Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
I slapped some hair jelly on and a big blast of cologne and joined Popular Mechanics' Seth Porges (friend of the show) and host Randall Bennett to talk about the HTC Hero and the future of HTC on today's episode of TechVi.
Disney, in partnership with Asus, is set to launch a new netbook called Disney Netpal that will be targeted at kids ages six to 12 and will come with features such as parental controls and a customized Disney user interface.
“This is not a toy,” says Thompson Richmond, director of consumer electronics for Disney Consumer Products. “It’s a real product with features that you can put safely into the hands of kids.”
It just happens to come in pink, with lacey curlicues and a big Disney logo right in the middle.
The $350 netbook will be available in August. Here’s a quick hands on with the Netpal and its key features.
Design
The Disney netbooks are rebranded Asus Eee PCs so if you are familiar with the Asus look and design, there’s a sense of deja vu with the Disney Netpal.
The Netpal will be available in two colors: “blue for boys and pink for girls.” The pink is a Pepto-Bismol pink and has floral patterns on the netbook cover, while the blue is more muted.
The keyboard is built to be “spill-proof,” says Richmond, and the corners of the netbook have been reinforced to ensure it doesn’t crack easily.
The netbook has a 8.9-inch display, Wi-Fi connectivity and comes with the option of a 160 GB hard drive or a 16 GB solid state drive.
In terms of hardware alone, there’s little to distinguish the machine from its peers. In that respect Dell’s latest netbook targeted at kids, which has a rubber-like case and an anti-microbial keyboard, surpasses the Netpal.
User Interface
Where Disney hopes to score over rivals like Dell is in the user experience. Like most netbooks, the Netpal runs Windows XP Home, but it offers two modes on start up: a standard desktop, which turns it into a run-of-the-mill netbook, and a Disney desktop option, which is where all the action is.
The Disney desktop mode allows multiple profiles to be created and the profiles can be customized with icons from the Disney stable such as Mickey Mouse or Snow White.
In the Disney desktop mode, the netbook includes programs such as Disney Pix, a software application that lets users customize photos; Radio Disney, which endlessly belts out music from Taylor Swift and Jonas Brothers; games; and a customized Disney browser.
There are also Disney desktop themes, with choice that ranges from Cars to Hannah Montana.
Parental Controls
Parental controls are the netbook’s cornerstone for Disney. Since the Netpal is for children, the parental controls are a must and Disney’s netbook integrates the software well into the device.
For instance, in the Disney desktop mode with parental controls running, all emails sent and received by the kid need to be approved by the parent. The customized browser also creates a list of restricted and approved sites.
“We wanted to create a user interface that’s fun, easy and safe to use,” says Richmond.
Overall
Adult users are confused between netbooks and notebooks and dissatisfaction with these pint-sized machines runs high, according to a NPD survey. Performance and ease of use of the keyboard remain key issues.
But Disney seems to have its target audience neatly carved out. The netbook will retail at Amazon.com and Toys’R'Us.
If you can get past the incessant Disney branding and the heavy gender stereotyping, the Netpal has some kid-friendly features that just might make this a good netbook for tiny tots.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Ugh. Don’t you hate when you get yourself all psyched about a new product and then you use it and realize it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to? That was kind of my experience with Gokivo, the first turn-by-turn GPS app for the iPhone, released on the heels of the iPhone OS 3.0 launch. Unfortunately, despite having some cool features, Gokivo just didn’t work as a turn-by-turn GPS solution. Though it did occasionally get me from point A to point B, there were so many bumps on the road that I found it better to simply use printed Google Maps directions.
Gokivo costs $0.99 to put the app on your phone, but $9.99 per month to actually use the turn-by-turn functionality of the app. Basically, its $10 a month. This confused many of the early adopters, who lambasted Networks in Motion for misleading them with a $0.99 GPS app on the App Store. Personally, I think the entire fiasco was overblown–the problem with Gokivo was not the monthly pricing (most GPS apps will charge some per-month fee for use). It was that it didn’t work.
The first problem was that it used Yahoo! Local Search to locate your destination. When I went to type in an address into the search bar, it returned nothing. Literally, I typed in my home address and I got “No Results Found.” Dazed and bewildered, I closed the app. Eventually I went back and realized that you have to actually select what type of location you are typing in - a business or an address. Wow; being a Google Maps user, I found this 1990’s technology to be the first among a long list of flaws with Gokivo. Of course, having to click “Address” or “Business” was by no means a deal-breaker: if everything else worked, this review would have been fantastic.
But it didn’t. The next step was to tap “Go!” on the marker next to my final destination, and start my engine. However, between the time I pulled out of my driveway and got onto the main road, Gokivo still hadn’t loaded my directions. OK, no problem, I thought - many GPS devices are slow. So, I stopped on the side of the road and waited. Soon, something popped up on the screen and it said “Left turn on Mission Boulevard.” Wait - I was already on Mission Boulevard. And Gokivo revealed yet another flaw: it didn’t always know where you were and it computed directions far too slowly.
The imperfect GPS caused more problems: sometimes I would be cruising along 880 (a highway in Silicon Valley) and all-of-a-sudden Gokivo would announce “re-calculating route.” Whaa? I’m on the right route. No, Gokivo didn’t know this and thought that I had taken an exit when I didn’t. So, not only did it mistake where I was, it changed the on-screen and vocal directions accordingly and so I missed my exit. It was still telling me to get on 880 when it was time to exit onto 237. This happened at least 3 times during the day. I frequently had to call my brother to give me directions to my destination.
Many of Gokivo’s flaws were related to the iPhone’s own limitations: the GPS isn’t pinpoint accurate, the iPhone doesn’t have a compass, and the speaker on the iPhone is so soft that I could barely hear Gokivo’s vocal directions. It became abundantly clear why TomTom is creating a full-blown accessory for its GPS app and will only release its app once that periphery is available. In fact, I re-watched the TomTom portion of the Apple’s WWDC keynote to find out what TomTom was putting in its TomTom car kit. Oh, and will you look at that: “securely dock your iPhone,” “enhance your GPS signal,” “built-in loud speaker” and a “microphone for hands-free calling.” They solved every problem with the Gokivo turn-by-turn experience. Can’t wait to get my hands on one.
In fairness, Gokivo wasn’t all bad. If they fixed the whole making-it-do-what-it’s-supposed-to-do part, it may have been a good app. It warns you when traffic incidents were forthcoming, it has clear turn-by-turn voice instructions (just remember to plug it into your car stereo or wear some headphones), and it has a detour feature so you can avoid the aforementioned traffic incidents. So, it comes with all of the extras that make a good GPS application, but the fact that it doesn’t do its job of getting you from point A to point B means it isn’t worth the hefty $9.99 per month price tag.
And, frankly, there will be many GPS apps to come. AT&T has already come out with their own GPS app. We’re reviewing it now and will let you know what we think. Until then, I’d recommend holding off on a turn-by-turn navigation app.
What we like:
What we didn’t like:
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
After much leaking and speculation, HTC has finally given up the goods on the new Android phone, the Hero. Those details offer some nifty peeks at their new interface, which appropriately enough, is called “Sense.” Did I mention it is the first Android phone with Flash? Yeah. Nice.
Granted, some of the hardware is a little bit more impressive on the Hero than what we had with the Dream or the Magic, but the real catch is the software. Sense not only has a new widget interface, but even more impressive is the fact that it brings Android up to speed with some of the features on the oh so touted iPhone and Palm Pre. For example, you’ve got system-wide search and social network integration built in including Flickr and Facebook.
The phone itself comes with a 3.2-inch HVGA screen, which is coated with an anti-print Teflon treatment (there’s a bonus in and of itself!). Inside is Qualcomm’s MSM7200A processor running Android at 528MHz, 512MB/288MB ROM/RAM. Also included is a generous five megapixel camera, AGPS, a gravity sensor, a digital compass, a dedicated search button (to go with that system-wide search), and even a 3.5 mm headphone jack.
As for the Flash, it is going to come with Flash Lite 3.1. So, it will be able to deal with anything written with ActionScript 2.0 and be able to cope nicely with interactive content and streaming online video and audio. Now, since Adobe says about 80% of all online videos are delivered in Flash, this is kind of important. And yet, the iPhone still doesn’t support Flash. Wonder what they are waiting for? If you’d like to see a demo of the Hero working with Flash, you can check it out here.
As for availability, we won’t be seeing the Hero in the States until “later this year,” although Europe can expect it in July, and Asia later this summer.
Read: [Product Page]
Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
A benchmark test conducted by an iPhone analytics company indicates the new iPhone 3GS is three times faster with web browsing than the iPhone 3G and the Palm Pre.
Conducted by Medialets, the test involved running a JavaScript benchmark called SunSpider using the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1 and Palm Pre. (SunSpider tests the core JavaScript language only, and it’s designed to compare different versions of the same browser, or different browsers with each other.)
In summary, the results are as follows:
Here’s what we find interesting:
Medialets used a MacBook as the baseline (i.e., the fastest performer for the phones to be compared to). The MacBook took only 1.36 seconds to complete the same test. The iPhone 3GS led the smartphone race, taking only 14 times longer than the MacBook to complete SunSpider.
Given these results, perhaps the iPhone 3GS will quell complaints about issues connecting to AT&T’s 3G network: From my own experience, it makes the slower EDGE network feel much speedier, too.
For full details of the benchmark test, see Medialets’ summary of results.
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Image: Courtesy of Medialets
I've just flown from LA to San Francisco on one of Virgin's WiFi-equipped planes. It was for Google's "Day in the Cloud" event, which we'll have more of at Boing Boing Video presently: passengers on our flight competed with those on the concurrent SF to LA flight in a Pub Quiz game of such difficulty that one is obliged -- haha! -- to use Google calendar, search, maps and so on to find the answers.
We defeated the fools on the other airplane. Or, rather, the best player on ours scored marginally higher than the best player on theirs. My personal score is irrelevant.
Virgin let us on free of charge. Unnecesary travel in coach, bookended by the leering of latex-gloved TSA personnel, has doubtless corrupted my judgment. That said, the following conclusions can be made concerning Virgin's high-tech cabins.
- Having the web in-flight is an escape, and a connection to reality. Zoning out on the web is a spiritual refuge from the boredom of air travel, just as it is from the boredom of work.
- Before you get online, you have to get pass a third-party authentication proxy thing. Once past it, all is well, but it is the sort of thing that IT people call "a single point of failure."
- Virgin passenger cabins' lighting and fixture design is modeled on the interior of a Cylon basestar. This is a superior atmospheric to Southwest's fixed-grin comedy routines, but you have to like neon pink.
- You can play Doom and chat with other passengers on the back-of-chair display, but the keyboard on the handset is extremely hard to type on.
- Google apps run just as well in a plane as they do anywhere else: there's nothing to say about it beyond acknowledging that they work. It'll be a boon to those who already organize work around them.
- A cartoon Sir Richard Branson welcomes one to one's flight. He couldn't be with us today as he is jet-skiiing to Mars.
Update: From the organizers on the login woes: "the WiFi delays you might have experienced were related to on the ground issues with the web login for Gogo on the Aircell server in Illinois. Right now Aircell is working on the issue and the delays were not related to bandwidth constraints on the airplane (we have had up to 65 guests logged on at a time, and we did not have near this number on flights today). These delays were not Virgin America-specific - they occurred across Gogo's in-flight network."
As commenter TechDeviant notes below, it's $10 -- would it be better if Virgin simply billed it into the fare for everyone, added web access to the built-in chair units, and had an open WiFi network for those with laptops? Gogo's broken and pointless turnpike system was a real pain.
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
Take this about as far as you can throw it, but analyst for RBC Capital, Mike Abramsky says Palm sold 150,000 Pre devices since launch in the USA. These numbers are in stark contrast to the over a million iPhone 3GS units sold worldwide over the first weekend. Is 150,000 units enough to save Palm?
Abramsky goes so far as to put forth some speculation on:
Another phone so quick is an interesting move and more carriers is a no-brainer to get more interest behind developing 3rd party apps. Would a cheaper phone flop if the Palm App Catalog stays so small? My money says it might.
With the full force of the Android storm just off the coast (there are many units inbound from overseas as I type this), can the WebOS strut its stuff enough to capture some mindshare from consumers and developers alike? Is there time?
Source: [Fortune]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Smartphone maker HTC is on a roll with the Android operating system. The company introduced its third Android-based device, called the HTC Hero, on Wednesday. It’s a touchscreen phone that will come with a newly designed user interface.
The phone has a 3.2-inch display, GPS, digital compass, a 5-megapixel auto focus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. The HTC Hero also features an anti-fingerprint coating on the screen for smudge resistance and a Teflon coating on the exterior.
HTC’s latest release adds momentum to Google’s Android operating system, which was introduced last year. The first Android phone to hit the market was the HTC-produced T-Mobile G1 phone in North America in October. Since then, HTC has also launched Magic, a touchscreen phone that eliminates the physical keyboard of the G1.
While other manufacturers have announced plans to release Android phones, HTC is currently the only handset maker that has actually delivered one to the market.
The HTC Hero will be the first Android phone to support Flash, says Adobe. Apple iPhone does not support Flash, while Palm has said the Palm Pre will be Flash-friendly through firmware updates towards the end of the year. HTC also said it will integrate the upcoming Flash Player 10 for smartphones into their next generation phones.
HTC Hero’s user interface also evokes some of the principles of the Palm Pre webOS interface that tries to organize the phone around contacts and other information. The HTC Hero will allow users to add widgets to bring the information they want to the surface. That includes twitter feeds, weather data, email or calendar. HTC will also have a profile feature called ‘scenes’ that lets users create different customized content profiles around specific functions or times.
And as in the iPhone and Palm Pre, the HTC Hero will include an universal search functionality that looks through emails, contact list and other information.
The HTC Hero will be available in Europe in July and in Asia later in the summer.The North American version is expected later this year. No word on pricing yet for the phone.
More photos of the HTC Hero
See Also:
Photos: HTC Hero/HTC
Way back when 2009 was still somewhat fresh, Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo dropped the news that the world’s favorite Finnish handset maker was getting into the laptop biz. With a bit of algebra, logic, and other voodoo, we figured that what he actually meant was netbooks. Some commenters called us crazy, citing a weak economy and low-margins. Turns out, we were right.
Yesterday, Nokia and Intel announced announced a partnership “to create an open standard for a new mobile computing platform built upon Linux-based operating systems.” Today, IntoMobile spotted the following passage from Bloomberg:
Nokia Oyj ordered netbook computers from Quanta Computer Inc. and Compal Electronics Inc., the Commercial Times reported, without saying where it got the information.
The Quanta netbook will use Intel Corp.’s Atom chip and will go on sale in the third quarter at the earliest, the Taipei-based, Chinese-language newspaper said.
Compal will make the so-called smartbook computer for Nokia using Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) Inc.’s Snapdragon chip, the newspaper said.
Nokia is the world’s biggest mobile phone maker. Taiwan- based Quanta and Compal are the world’s two-biggest makers of laptop computers.
So, we’re looking at one Quanta-made netbook and one Compal-made smartbook. What’s the difference between the two “_____book” monikers? Intel prefers the netbook name for Atom-based portables, while Qualcomm prefers the smartbook name for those running Snapdragon. Either way, it looks like we’re one step closer to little tiny Nokia-branded laptops.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Coming in 2009 across the globe, the attractive HTC Hero. The whole thing is covered in Teflon, making it perfect for frying. And in a first for an Android phone, it includes a proper 3.5mm headphone jack.
Irradiating a beam of electrons from a 5 million volt particle accelerator into a block of acrylic causes the electrical "treeing" you see above. This particular hunk costs $175.
[via Scoutmaster]
Section: Computers, Software / Applications
Boxee has long been the up and coming media center for Linux computers and Macs, with its support of almost any major file type and Internet apps. It’s been stuck in alpha for a while and was limited to invite-only status. In one meeting last night not only did Boxee announce some new apps, it also solved those major issues that some people had, namely its Windows availability.
While Boxee has been available to Windows users previously, it was an invite-only alpha. The alpha is still hanging around for now, but now anyone can sign up and download Boxee. In downloading the media center software everyone gets to benefit from the four major new app partnerships Boxee announced.
Among the approximately 120 apps in the Boxee App Box are apps from MLB.tv, Current, Digg, and Tumblr. Digg will allow users to view all the videos that pass through the site. Tumblr can stream music and show photos shared on the service. Current is offering streaming of some of it’s programming like “SuperNews” and “Vanguard Journalism.”
MLB.tv is one of the more interesting apps, in that it has the full features of MLB.tv. Members of the service will be able to watch live streaming baseball games through Boxee either on their computer or on their TV (provided the set up is there), which for premium members could be full HD games from anywhere in the country on their TV, which is quite nice.
That nasty “alpha” modifier is also due for an update. In September “alpha” will change to much more accepted and familiar “beta.” While Boxee currently looks to work great either way, the upgrade to beta will mean it is a bit more stable, so maybe it won’t freeze for a moment when quitting. Either way, Boxee is a very good media center that should be considered for the apps and sheer format compatibility alone.
Read [Gizmodo]
Read [TechCrunch]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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The parental controls included in iPhone 3.0 have opened up a a rich and fertile frontier in Apple’s (AAPL) App Store: porn. An app called “Hottest Girls,” which previously featured pictures of women in their skivvies, this week began featuring ones of ladies wearing quite a bit less. “We uploaded nude topless pics today,” 
Microsoft has announced the pricing for Windows 7, due to be released on October 22. The Home Premium upgrade version will cost $119.99 — ten bucks cheaper than the comparable version of Vista! Other news outlets are trying to spin this as “8% less”, but we know you, dear readers, aren’t fooled by such sleight of hand. Windows 7 Professional upgrade will run $199.99. The full Home Premium version is $199.99; and the full versions of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate editions will be $299.99 and $319.99 respectively. Does the Ultimate edition really offer $20 more in terms of functionality? I don’t know!
With all the chatter about Yahoo’s impending roll-out of a completely overhauled brand - see 
Wait, what? There's pornography on the Internet? When did this happen? It must be, like, a new thing, otherwise I cannot understand the curiosity over a newly updated iPhone app called “Hottest Girls”. It's $1.99, and includes pictures of women, some of whom are topless. It's almost like living in Europe, where topless women can be found on magazine covers and advertisements.
