Gadgety News

Great news for those awaiting the new touch-screen crackberry - bad news for those that are saying the Blackberry Storm isn’t coming to the UK!

Vodafone UK has launched a microsite giving readers the chance to win their own touchscreen BlackBerry. 

This sly site comes after several months of leaked photos and spy-shots showing up across the interweb.

Funny thing is that neither party has actually formally announced the touchscreen model, however Vodafone’s microsite is the closest I’ve seen that confirms it.

You can also register for news updates about the handset, however there’s no details on the site giving away further information such as pricing, availability or even hard specs.

Teleconferencing.

It’s such a very impersonal way of conducting meetings isn’t it?

All the people back in the conference room get is a screen with a window showing another window that contains your beautiful visage.

Just like being there - it isn’t!

RoboDynamics, on the other hand, wants to popularise what they call “telepresence,” and it necessitates inhabiting a robotic body in the room.

Ok, so it doesn’t really look like you - or anyone else for that matter.

So what if the TiLR looks like a proto-Dalek with a flatscreen for a face?  The idea itself is fab and a little scary.

You’d be able to scoot around, tilt and pan its camera, and talk face to face with people in the remote environment……….I’d rather be the one controlling the droid and not the one being faced with it to be honest!

Although I can’t see a boss cruising down the office halls “in” this thing, waving virtually to employees and stopping into cubicles to check in I can see some positives

I’m guessing it’s a helpful idea if the CEO works from the HQ in another continent but still would like to have a presence at the Christmas party or hand out awards and such as well as roaming around the conference table.

Why don’t we all just work from home and have these back at the office?…………….

Crunch Gear

When I saw Sony’s new all-in-one desktop lineup spotted at CEDIA 2008 even I could see that Sony’s designers must have worked long and hard.

The reviewers over at CNet managed to grab a VAIO VGC-JS190J (near the lower end of the range) and put it through the paces.

It seems that it pleased the critics who exclaimed that it was the “best deal” going for an all-in-one desktop with an inbuilt Blu-ray drive.

They were also rejoycing over the fact that they found it “relatively free of software clutter.”

One point that they brought up was that 20″ is not enough to be watching Blu-ray on.

To finish they underlined the review with ”no other all-in-one, including Apple’s iMac, could do as much, as fast, for the same price.”

Sounds impressive to me.

CNet Review

iRex Technologies have now officially launched the iRex 1000 series Digital Reader.

iRex currently offers the iLiad and iLiad Book Edition for regular folks but this new bad-boy is aimed at “business professionals”.

The iRex 1000 series is said to offer “superior functionality” and a 10.2-inch screen size for easy reading and referencing of documents from A4 Powerpoint presentations to PDF files and from HTML to TXT and JPEG.

Weighing less than 570 grams and 1.2cm deep the 1000 series is an open system which is said to synchronise easily with a PC via mini USB.

The display has 16 grey tones storage capacity is delivered via a changeable 1GB SD card while the built-in battery is claimed to have sufficient power to last for several days.

Three models will launch, the DR1000 base version, the DR1000 S equipped with a stylus and the DR1000 SW with stylus, plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity due at a later stage.

Go and have a gawp at their site

Asus’s Eee Box mini desktop is a sweet mini PC but it is missing that optical drive.

If you love the spinning silvers then shout hurrah! for Acer is about to launch its own mini PC - and this one’s got Blu-ray!

The X3200 is a mini desktop with lots packed into that small frame: in addition to the hi-def compatible drive, there’s an HDMI for lashing it up to a TV or projector, a quad-core AMD processor, Nvideo GeForce 8200 graphics chip, up to 4GB of memory and up to a terabyte of storage.

I can’t help but suspect that the price is gonna be a tad more than the £200 asking price of the Eee Box.

Acer (via TechRadar)

Twas only a matter of time.

Kodak have released a new picture frame based on CMEL’s new mass-produced, 7.6-inch OLED panels out into the wilds!

This ultra-thin wireless 800 x 480 pixel frame shall sport 2GB of internal storage, integrated audio, a 30,000:1 contrast, 180-degree viewing angle, and photo service compatibility with Flickr and such.

I just think the tiny matter of requiring to part with $999 may slow sales down a tad.

OLED-Display

If someone asked, “would you want your own supercomputer?” chances are you’d say “…err….yeah, why not?”

Well, that seems to be the thinking behind Cray’s ‘domestic’ offering as they appear to want One Supercomputer Per Home (kind of an upgrade to the OLPC).

The Cray CX1 Supercomputer comes loaded with Windows HPC Server 2008 and incorporates up to 8 nodes and 16 Intel Xeon CPUs (dual- or quad-core); additionally, it boasts up to 4TB of internal storage, 64GB of memory per node and interoperates nicely with Linux. The CX1 is said to be the most affordable supercomputer offered by Cray (not to mention the “world’s highest-performing computer that uses standard office power”).

Sounds fantastic until you see the price tag fluttering between $25,000 to well over $60,000.

NetworkWorld

Imagine waking up to find that you were without a connection to the interweb?

This horror was real life for thousands of Londoners after thieves broke into a BT exchange in Mayfair and stole £2 million worth of equipment. 

Apparently the swines entered the premises on Farm Street, off Park Lane, between 8pm and 9pm before grabbing servers, routers and network cards.

Thus leaving homes and businesses were without the Internet on Thursday.

Police would not say whether the raid was being connected with similar raids over the past year.

BT issued the following statement:

“We can confirm there was a break-in at our Mayfair Telephone Exchange last night (Wednesday), this is a now an ongoing police investigation and therefore we are unable to comment further.”

“BT apologises for any disruption caused to our customers. Our engineers are working around the clock to ensure that full service is up and running as soon as possible.”

The Evening Standard suggests that the thieves could have used the 40th birthday party of Mr Madonna/director Guy Ritchie in a pub nearby as a distraction.

Timesonline

I preferred it when it was called KickStart but Pearl Flip it is.

The new BlackBerry flip phone from RIM is finally here.

It weighs a modest 3.6-ounces and boasts a 320 x 240 internal display, Bluetooth 2.0, built-in multimedia player, 802.11b/g WiFi and a SureType keypad.

The battery will last for four hours of talk time / over a fortnight of standby life but pricing and exact release details are still unreleased.

Those over in the states are said to be able to get it “this fall” on T-Mobile.

According to The Telegraph the HTC Dream Google Android handset will be arriving to this fair isle thanks to T-Mobile in November.

To my knowledge this is the first sign that we’ll be getting this much lauded handset in the UK.

The Telegraph has this to say:

Its arrival in Britain will mark the next phase of Google’s attempts to dominate new areas of the technology industry. Today is the 10th anniversary of its launch, since when it has grown into a $139bn behemoth that dominates the internet search industry.

Android has been designed to support a vast suite of new internet applications and aims to replicate Microsoft’s success with its Windows desktop software.

Have a goosey at the full news piece in The Telegraph.

By the way - happy 10th birthday Googs!!

Say hello to the now officially titled Inspiron Mini 9 which is set to be Dell’s Eee PC botherer.

While we’ve seen various pics and specs before we now have prices to go with them along with an October release date.

The XP version starts at but £299 or you can save £30 by opting for the Ubuntu version which is set to retail at £269.

The official spec list reads: 1.6GHz Intel Atom chip, 1GB memory, Intel GMA 950 graphics, 8.9in 1,024×600 display, up to 16GB SSD, three USB, Ethernet, VGA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 1.3 megapixel webcam and 4-cell battery. It measures a titchy 232×172×32mm and weighs in at just over 1Kg.

No news about the red or (red) version so at the moment you can get in any other colour as long as it’s black.

There’s more than one player in the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) game.

Here comes Project Inkwell, their colourful Spark PC and their goal to “increase the size and effectiveness of the K-12 education technology market by managing the synthesis of functional specifications for a ubiquitous computing platform”………..

Aimed at the under-12 market (and probably will be bought by hip young thangs), the Spark is a working concept, offering everything for the mobile net addict in a package around the size of a PSP.

There’s a zipped pocket designed for a spare battery and even a Bluetooth wireless mouse.

It includes a folding-out, hyper slim keyboard, scrolling switch to help you read stuff on that skinny screen, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

The main thing is that it’s gonna have to be able to take some playground style bullying and occassionally being used as a football or at least one of the goal posts!!! 

No news of a price or official launch just yet.

In theory it shouldn’t cost much and be out in time for the new term.

Tuvie (via Coolest Gadgets)

Logitech have just announced a trio of new keyboards starting with its thinnest keyboard ever.

The 9.3-mm thin Illuminated Keyboard (pictured) is said to retail at $80 from October.

It features an adjustable backlight, soft-touch palm rest and dedicated multi-media keys for hot, one-handed night typing alone in the dark. No, that’s not a euphomism!!

They also mentioned the portable, 2.4GHz wireless DiNovo Keyboard for Notebooks ($100 also out in October) that boasts an incredible 3-year battery life and then they outed the Cordless Desktop S520 ($60 buy it this month) keyboard and optical mouse combo.

The latter features more of that same impressive power management capable of squeezing out 8 months of usage for the mouse and 15-months for the keyboard.

The Samsung X360 is pretty impressive.

Its size and weight (very light and very thin) and is ready to taunt the MacBook Air.

It has a 13.3-inch, 1200 x 800 pixel screen and by all reports is also very good.

It’s also all ported up, more so than Apple’s notebook: direct HDMI out, three USB ports, Express Card slot, 7-in-1 flash card reader, external optical unit included, and fingerprint reader for security.

For Windows users the Samsung X360 looks like a great choice but Apple fanboys will argue that a revision of the MacBook Air is just around the corner and that the Sammy wont play OS X.

For me though on the surface of it all the winner is the Samsung X360.

The only drawback for me is the lack of colour choices - you get the usual ‘Piano Black’ but even for an ardent fan of black such as me - it would be nice to have a choice.

Sammy aint pulling any punches either as it’s being branded it as “lighter than air” and say it’s the “lightest notebook in its 13.3 inch class” since it weighs just 1.27 kg.

Under the hood there’s a 45nm Core 2 Duo mobile processor and it comes with an external DVD drive.

The battery life is claimed to be 10 hours, by Samsung.

It’ll be available in September in some European countries, and Russia, China and Hong Kong, but there’s no info on the US release or pricing.

Just check this out.

Take the idea of the iPhone-style touch navigation and then times that by two.

This totally cool dual-sided transparent touch display from Teraokaseiko is definitely on the right track.

Perhaps someday it will develop beyond wicked games of, Naughts and Crosses, Battleship and Connect 4.

At the moment it’s just a monochrome 256 x 120 EL-panel prototype for now, but it recognises those multitouch gestures like pinching so there’s plenty of promise in the idea.

Via Techon

Ooooo………sparkly!

Harman-Kardon have released these very fetching cut glass speakers that will sit nicely with the whisky glass that generally sits atop my leather bound bureau. Yup, that’s where I am working right now; in the library in the east wing of my manor house……..

Nuff dreaming!

In reality they have the standard 3.5mm mini-jack connection to pump out the choonz from puter or player.

They produce 56 watts of tunage and they’ll be available some time in the autumn for the usual undisclosed price.

Love what they’ve done with the name - GLA-55 = Glass.  Very clever huh?

Those people over at Phone Report have listed all the specs of the upcoming HTC Dream and even popped their own comments afterwards.

They also seem to have got artist Neo Carlo Magno, from Neoworxspace to work on a ‘perhaps this is what it will look like’ rendering - looks kinda tasty if you ask me

Here are the highlights but for the full dirt go right over to Phone Report

Ok, so in no particular order……….

• 64MB Internal RAM - Only?
• 128MB Internal ROM - Also very low
• 1GB MicroSD card - Very low
• 5 Row QWERTY keypad - We’ll see how that works
• Trackball - Nice
• Dedicated camera button - Needed
• 3.1MP camera (no flash) 2048 x 1536 - Not a breakthrough camera
• Video playback files - H.264, streaming, 3GPP, MPEG4, and Codec 3GP - It better have that
• Audio playback files - MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, REAL AUDIO, OGG - Nice
• HTTP, WAP Push, xHTML - the usual
• SMS and MMS support (Take that Apple!) - needed
• POP, IMAP, and SMTP, AOL, and GMAIL email - needed
• 3G - which bands?
• 802.11b & 802.11g - nice
• UMTS (1,4), HSDPA, SUPL  - WiFi?
• Screen size is 3.17? with HVGA (480  x 320) - nice
• Handset 117 x 55 x 16mm - we’ll see
• Downloadable content via Android Marketplace - nice
• Google Streetview with built-in compass - well done, where’s the GPS?

TheElectricPig have a very cool article and listed their favourite 5 iPhone applications for all you Londoners.

Some I’ve already mentioned before but there’s some other great gems.

They cover all from helping you select a restaurant, GPS tagging your ride so that you can find it again through to weather reports (how very British).

Nip over here to see their reviews and rundown :)

First thing that has caught my eye is this tiny puter.

I do have a soft-spot for the little micros that you can hide away and still are usable if you’d prefer a desktop when at home.

This two-inch-square Space Cube computer has apparently been making the rounds in Japan for quite a while but PC Pro have finally managed to sneak one into the UK!

The little stow-away is packing a 300MHz NEC VR5701 processor, 64MB of RAM, a 1GB CompactFlash card, and a special version of Red Hat Linux, along with a single USB port, VGA out, built-in Ethernet and, most importantly for its target market, a SpaceWire port, which is used by the likes of NASA and the European Space Agency.

The bad news is that the initial price was quite a reasonable $325 looks as though it may be heading more to the region of £1,500 (or over $2,700)!

Slashdot

Just have a gander at Fujitsu’s latest lappy. 

To say it’s small……it makes the EeePC look like it could do with some exercise!

The Loox U/B50N has a 5.6in screen blasting out that 1,280×800 res and measures just 171×135×33mm when folded up.  Ahhhh - bless!

Also known as the Lifebook U820 in the Good ol’ US and U2010 everywhere else it is powered by a 1.6GHz Atom chip and sports a 1GB of RAM and 60GB hard drive.

The colourways are quite varied from the conservative black or silver, to a more outgoing pink or beige (what is it with brown these days?).

My choice would be the tokidoki version