Electronic Toy World

Posted Mar 21st 2008 5:40PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Laptops
After a minor outcry at Sony’s new “Fresh Start” option to skip the crapware on TZ laptops for a hefty $50 charge, the company has seen the error of its ways and is going to start offering the option for free as of tomorrow. Sure, it would’ve been nice to have it like that from the start, and there’s no word yet if there will be refunds for those who did fork over the $50, but we got the impression from the Sony spokesperson who spoke to us that Sony Japan was just as surprised as we about the charge, and quickly asked for it to be removed. We’re still waiting for word as to whether this option will hit other VAIOs, but we’re cautiously optimistic.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the latest in technology news, you may not know that the big FCC auction has come to an end. The winners of the various 700 MHz spectrum blocks have been announced, and there is one name missing on the list of winners which is quite surprising.

Last year Google promised that they would place a bid for 4.7 billion for the larger C block, provided that the spectrum would be open to all applications and devices. They held true to their word, and while that does mean that the spectrum will be open, Verizon was the one that walked away with the victory. Their high bid came in at $6.6 billion.

This was a brilliant move by Google. They forced the spectrum to adopt an open standard without actually having to spend billions on it. Well played Google, well played indeed.

Source: Gearlog

Posted Mar 21st 2008 5:15PM by Ariel Waldman
Filed under: Features, Misc. GadgetsAriel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

In honor of the loss of one of our greatest sci-fi heroes, Movie Gadget Friday is paying homage to the inimitable Arthur C. Clarke with a two-part series that explores the future of 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact. This week we’ll be diving into the luxurious exploration of deep space. Everyone knows HAL, but 2001 also takes an extraordinary amount of time to study the intricate details of each spacecraft — as such, this week we’ll focus on the Orion III and Space Station V.

Space Station V
Serving as a meeting point between Earth and the Moon, Space Station V is a space structure of massive proportions. From the inside looking out, the view might be slightly disorienting, as the station constantly rotates, its rings providing a grounding effect, allowing travelers to enjoy the extravagance of Earth’s gravity in space. Upon arriving at Space Station V, visitors are greeted with a standard reception area where they are asked to move through to documentation, which involves a wall-embedded voice print identification system for each visitor. The interior design of each room stays true to its circular exoskeleton, while the furnishings appear to hold closer ties to the 1960s than the early oughts — just the way we like it. More after the break.

PicturePhone
Located in Space Station 5 are multiple PicturePhone stations via Southwestern Bell, for those wanting to video chat with the family back home. (Hey, give ‘em a break, Skype doesn’t get invented until 2003.) All PicturePhone stations are private with chairs and tactile numeric dialing keys for convenience. The video quality definitely leaves something to be desired, but seems to maintain an transmission stream uninterrupted even by the antsy-button pressing of a little girl. By inserting your credit card vertically into the dock, a brief video call will cost you approximately $1.70 (pretty good considering calling from space is cheaper than most mobile roaming fees). Be warned, though, as the PicturePhone contains paragraphs full of illuminated fine print similar to pretty much every device on deck — including the Zero Gravity Toilet.

Orion III
A spacecraft with a strong plane-design influence, the Orion III takes the comforts of the friendly skies into space. Pilots are able to make the jump between jet-jockey to space cowboy thanks to the familiar, easy to use plane-like cockpit and controls. Passengers relax in style, traveling in rich leather seats which feature an embedded widescreen display for both entertainment and business needs. The controls appear to be directly beneath each display, so travelers need not worry about fighting for elbow room to reach those primitive armrest-embedded controls. Lined with futuristic velcro technology, the aisle floors are strong enough to hold down the weight of a person when the shuttle reaches zero gravity (also useful for unexpected turbulence). The suspiciously all-women space-flight attendants are also outfitted with white leather apparel and gripped shoes so as to easily serve passengers; we can’t help but wonder if anti-discrimination laws still hold up in space.

Next week in our two-part series, we’ll jump ahead to two years from now to check out the the gadgets found in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. For more on the spacecraft of 2001, check out 2001: A Scale Odyssey.

Ariel Waldman is a social media insights consultant based in San Francisco. Her blog can be found at http://arielwaldman.com.

Posted Mar 21st 2008 1:37PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Media PCs
OK, perhaps not so sneaky, there’s a nice big BitTorrent logo right up front, but Myka seems to be quite the end-to-end solution for getting those torrents up on the big screen. The box hooks up to the internet via LAN or WiFi, includes a 80GB, 160GB or a 500GB drive for storage and runs a torrent client on Linux. Outputs include HDMI, composite, S-Video and SPDIF, and codec support is substantial. You can add storage via USB, and pull video off your computer if you’re not in a downloading mood. Prices range from $299 to $459. Let’s keep it legal out there, kids!

[Thanks, ARZ]

I remember seeing this ad in a newspaper that claimed: “Now there is an easy answer. Laser Hair Removal!” It showed a pretty woman with great legs, and I can only assume that her bikini wax was somehow done with lasers.

Well, I have no idea how lasers can remove hair, but apparently they can restore hair. This is exactly what the X5 HairLaser is designed to do. This little gadget is designed to fit in your hand like a tiny scalp massager, and can blast “15 distinct points of coherent laser light directly to your scalp at the optimum power and wavelength”.

Somehow, all these lasers are supposed to promote hair growth. However, it doesn’t work all at once, but it is a treatment that requires 10-15 minutes, three times a week. Anyone know if that is better than Rogaine’s program?

To me, this item seems like snake oil, but I have to admit that I don’t know a dang about hair restoration, and I’m not at the stage where I really need it. However, given a few more decades, and I may discover how much hair I can lose in my old age. Perhaps this technology will have greatly improved by the time I do need it.

But if you need this now, the X5 HairLaser is available for about $300, and it has a six-month return policy.

Source

Mozilla had just released beta 4 of Firefox 3 a few weeks ago, and have already announced they feel its ready to go. While Firefox will remain as beta 4, the team behind the browser feel its now safe enough for just about everyone to begin using.

“In many ways it (Firefox 3) is much more stable than anything else out there,” Mozilla Corp Vice President of Engineering Mike Schroepfer said in an interview.

Even with the approval from the Firefox team, the download website still has the “It is intended for testing purposes only” statement, but seriously does it not seem like everything is either currently in beta or remained in beta well after it had been adopted by the public. The full and final version of Firefox 3 is expected to be released before the end of June.

Read [Reuters] Via [Gizmodo]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →

Nokia’s ”Comes With Music” offer sounds real nice up front, but it does have its limits, most notably the DRM, which a lot of current services seem to be moving away from. The service was originally announced last December and is still expected to launch in mid-2008, but an official date has not been announced.

Joining Universal, EMI has just jumped on board as the second major label. So now with two major labels on board the service seems to be shaping up, but there is another key item that still needs some clarification, the “Comes With Music” service is reported to be paying $80 per handset per year for the unlimited download account. The details that we need, and most likely will make or break the deal will be whether or not Nokia plans on adding that $80 onto the cost of the device or if it will be built-in to the current cost.

Via [CrunchGear]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →

In what seems like a strange story, Opera has announced they are now including a direct link to the AccuWeather mobile website from the Opera Mini start page. While Opera Mini seems to be the favorite mobile browser right now, and I do appreciate their effort to make my weather checking ability quicker and easier, couldn’t I just bookmark the weather site of my choice?

Nonetheless both Opera and AccuWeather seem pretty pleased with the announcement.

AccuWeather’s Senior VP of New Media saying: “We’re very pleased to offer our weather directly to Opera Mini users from their start page.”

Opera’s Senior VP of Consumer Products said: “Offering fast and convenient access to pertinent information is part of that experience and is even more critical on a mobile device. Partnering with AccuWeather.com provides timely and useful weather information to our users wherever they are.”

Its almost funny to see two companies so happy over a what amounts to a simple link, but seriously if you have not yet checked out Opera Mini, assuming you have a compatible phone, you should go ahead and download it. In addition to having quick and easy access to AccuWeather you will also get a solid mobile browsing experience.

Via [IntoMobile] Read [Opera Mini]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →

In what seems to be the hot handset of the moment, the XPERIA 1 from Sony Ericsson has had some more details revealed courtesy of a recently released white paper, which came courtesy of the Sony Ericsson website.

The XPERIA X1 has not had any shortage of available information leaked up till now, but these are the official details. Its hard to even begin, the official white paper is a 40-page PDF document that is just full of goodies. Some of the highlights include:

• Information on the pre-loaded panels for the XPERIA interface, which will include a Sony Ericsson Panel, Media Experience Panel, Slideshow Panel, Microsoft Today Panel, 3D Fish Panel and some user customizable panels.
• Media Sharing using ActiveSync or Wi-Fi.
• Video recording options include MPEG-4: 30fps @ VGA, H.263: 30fps @ VGA except the U.S. model is only at 24fps and H.264: 15fps @ VGA but it is not supported on U.S model.
• Sadly Opera will not be pre-installed, opting for IE instead.
• Location services will include a pre-installed Google Maps.
• Email to include automatically configured POP3, Exchange Direct Push and wizards to set up Gmail, Yahoo, Live Hotmail.
• Pre-insalled Java ME.
• Sadly, as pointed out by inxperia, support for 1700MHz is missing.

While this is just a very brief summary of the details, if you are at all interested in this phone then check out the read link below for a link to the White Paper. It seems we have just about all the details that we can handle on the XPERIA X1, now we just need to get some in the wild and see some actual user reviews.

Read [Sony Ericsson Official White Paper] Via [inxperia]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →

Posted Mar 21st 2008 9:10AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: LaptopsPushing pixels is great and all, but sometimes we’ve just got a hankering to see how far those dollars can stretch, and Averatec’s 2575 laptop mostly satisfies those urges. For $1100 you get Vista Home Premium running on an AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual Core chip, with 2GB of RAM, ATI RS690 integrated graphics, 250GB of HDD and a Super Multi DVD drive. The 12.1-inch screen runs at 1280 x 800, and sports a 1.3 megapixel webcam. There’s even ExpressCard 34 / 54 and a 4-in-1 memory card reader, and the whole shebang weighs in at 3.9 pounds and 1.5-inch thick. It’s available now.