Thanks to a mysterious user by the name of deuxani, we now have a better look at Sony Ericsson's forthcoming P700i smartphone. The phone will come with a 2.6-inch QVGA screen and 3.2-megapixel camera with duplex LED light.

It'll have three flavors of wireless including 3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. As you can tell by the image, it'll also have a two-letter-per-key keyboard, which kinda ruins it for me ( I could never get used to that style of texting). Otherwise, it looks pretty solid. No word on availability yet. – Louis Ramirez

Sony Ericsson P700i Smartphone News [Unwired View]
Image via Esato

Here's something that could be a godsend for the hard of hearing who feel they are not getting their money's worth in the movie theater. A nifty little idea thought up by some clever people at Madrid's Carlos III University for the Spanish Center for Subtitles and Closed Captions, this gadget fixes onto a person's glasses to give them access to subtitles—even in a subtitle-free showing.

The technology is simple: There is a computer in the cinema that emits the subtitles to within 50 meters, and also deals with their synchronization. A receptor in the glasses captures the signal and projects it onto the microscreen, which fits over the right-hand lens. It's easy as pie to use—one button turns the gadget on and off and another one restarts it. – Ad Dugdale

Gafas con subtitulos a la carta [El Mundo]

Either your cat will go nuts for this Cat Cocoon or will completely ignore it altogether. But its cardboard box-like corrugated material looks just right for sinking a claw or two into, and if I were a cat, I would certainly dig this thing with its variously sized peepholes.

But I'm a dawg, and don't feel like paying $249.99 for a glorified cardboard box. But that's just me. Check out larger versions of these shots of the kitty playing in this beehive-shaped oddity, after the jump.

Read More »

Xilt, a mod for an Xbox 360 controller, will be available in about a week, letting you tilt forward and back or left and right with your wired or wireless Xbox 360 controller using an accelerometer similar to the one in the Nintendo Wii. It's a do-it-yourself kind of thing, and its creator says it takes just 10 to 15 minutes to install its seven wires.

Its hardware and software are created by an Xbox 360 modder who calls himself GreenGiant, who hasn't determined exactly what the price of this modification will be yet, but he says it might range somewhere between $35 and $45. Check out one more graphic, the Advanced View screen of the the Xilt Mod configuration manager, after the jump.

Read More »

G-Phone rumors are making headlines this morning as DigiTimes reports that HTC has begun manufacturing the mysterious Google phone with shipments to begin late 2007.

The phone will support 3G Edge, but not HSDPA nor will it have GPS. It will, however, have built-in GMail and Google search. DigiTimes isn't the most reliable source (as we've seen in the past) so I wouldn't buy this just yet. – Louis Ramirez

HTC to Ship Google Handsets by Year-End [DigiTimes via Mad4Mobiles]

This is a post that Gizmodo's resident hops philosopher Travis should have written, but as he's sleeping one off it's been left up to me. Charlie Bamforth, a British academic who holds the most fabulous of titles—the University of California's Anheuser Busch Endowed Professor of Brewing Science—claims that without beer, we would be without computers, the iPod, Silicon Valley and the space program.

It's not exactly the newest of sentiments—British artist Hogarth depicted the good and bad side of 18th-Century London life with his cartoons Beer Street, all ruddy-cheeked prosperity, and Gin Lane, where booze-addled sots let their babies slip to their death, and all for another G&T— but it's a belief that's always good to hear. Find out Charlie's theory after the jump.

Read More »

Intel has officially presented the Intel Ultra Mobile Platform 2007 (formerly known as McCaslin) and announced the new Menlow architecture with Silverthorn processors for 2008. They have also given us a peek and poke over Redflag's MIDinux Linux distribution, which apparently has been designed for those mobile devices that can't decide if they want to be an iPhone or a PSP when they grow up.

But despite the obvious ripoff interface inspiration, MIDinux is quite interesting because it marks a departure from the Microsoft-based UMPCs, of which the 7-inch HTC Shift is going to be one of the 2007 platform flagships. In fact, it opens a new category of consumer entertainment-oriented, more compact UMPC called MID (yet another acronym that means either "Mobile Internet Device" or "Those Cupertino Rascals May Be Onto Something Again—Let's Try to do the Same Before It's Too Late." Not sure which, but one of the two). More details after the jump.

(And kudos to APC for grabbing that first tasty pic up top. -ed.au)

Read More »

Before you get all over-excited and think that the German carmaker is about to team up with Vertu, à la Ferrari, think again, because the Porsche people are far too cool to do that, preferring to redeploy their technology to the kitchen toward sleek toasters and kettles.

This, my friends, is a cellphone embedded in the model of a Porsche 911 (although, perhaps in an attempt to confuse the Porsche people on the copyright front they have called it the Cayenne (oh dear, Ad... the Cayenne is a type of Porsche - ed.au)). And admit it, that's some wheeltrim on the phone.

There's a 2-megapixel camera buried in the windshield, the 262K color screen has an MP3 and MP4 player, it supports micro SD up to 1GB and runs on Dualband GSM. Apart from the kitsch value, there's a great reason for having this if you have kids. You'll never need to buy them a mobile, as they'll always be happy to emulate you by sticking a Matchbox car next to their ear. There's a picture of it business-side up after the jump.

Read More »

The Fat Duck, one of the restaurants in the celebrated UK gastronomic town of Bray, Berkshire, is to take its customers' enjoyment of food up a notch. Diners who choose a dish called Sound of the Sea, a mixture of seafood and edible seaweed served on a sand-like tapioca mixture, will listen to the sounds of crashing waves on an iPod in order to enhance the taste.

The man behind all of this is Heston Blumenthal, the Doctor Bunsen of the British cooking world, and the man who gave us Snail Porridge, Nitro-Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream and Mango and Douglas Fir Purée. "I did a series of tests at Oxford University three years ago which revealed that sound can really enhance the sense of taste," he told a magazine. "We ate an oyster while listening to the sea and it tasted stronger and saltier than when we ate it while listening to barnyard noises, for example." – Ad Dugdale

Fat Duck dons an iPod [Manchester Evening News]

This is Slaudiolab's SRS-200BD, an audio transmitter for the iPod. Connect it to the base of any iPod dock connector and in return you get high-quality stereo audio as if by magic thanks to Bluetooth and its SRS WOW HD audio enhancement technology. The device has been FCC-approved, so expect to see it winging its way here soon. As for the price, I'm afraid I can't enlighten you. – Ad Dugdale

SRS-200BD bluetooth audio transmitter for iPod [New Launches]

In a demo that was a cross between a waiting room at a dentist's office and a frat party aboard a gigantic limousine, Samsung proved to us that its latest Advanced-VSB (A-VSB) system to bring mobile TV to North America kicks serious ass. As the luxo-bus rambled all over Las Vegas for more than an hour, we watched TV. That's right.

Placed side-by size in the back of this party bus was one screen showing the old-style 8-VSB system now popular in Korea, next to another screen with Samsung's A-VSB video playing on it in half-stream and quarter-stream varieties. They were receiving their signal over channel 22, broadcast by a Vegas TV station using existing facilities. Of course, the A-VSB was actually watchable, looking sharp and reasonably clear while the old-timey 8-VSB was nothing but a series of frame drops and pixelization. Good demo.

The Samsungians also passed around a few porto-TVs, too, to show us the quarter-rate Mobile Stream, which also looked crispy-clean albeit with a frame drop or two. Look for this tech soon on an iPod near you. When? Samsung hopes we'll see it here in the States by the time that analog TV cutoff happens in February, 2009. – Charlie White

This morning, we wrote about a stat that Europe's HD-DVD title sales had spiked and surpassed Blu-ray sales. That's wrong. That writer actually used US data. But what about that US spike? It didn't have anything to do, actually, with the fact that HD-DVD has over 100k non-Xbox players in the field. That would have revealed itself with a more gradual climb in the charts.

Apparently, the spike occurs the same day that HD-DVD fanboys at AVSForum, the AV enthusiast site, had organized an mass buy of HD-DVD titles. For an immature format, even a few individuals can make a difference, if only on a day.

This post lays down their gameplan for the buy on April 15th, the one year anniversary of HD-DVD's launch:

Read More »

It may sound like a game show for accountants, but Claim Your Content is actually the name of YouTube's new content monitoring tool. As near as we can figure, it's an automated feature that accompanies every user-uploaded video. Content owners, including such publicly announced Claim Your Content charter members as the NHL and the NBA, will have the right to log in and yank any content that they feel is an infringement of copyright.

Now, we will be eager to see exactly how this yanking process works, and if there is any room in it for protest, deliberation or out-and-out legal confrontation. Frankly, an automated censoring product seems a little bit scary. What is clear at this point is that this is Google's way of appeasing some of the angrier content owners who have already taken action. According to a wire report, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said today that the tool may at least help play down the allegation that YouTube encourages copyright infringement. "As that product rolls out, the issue becomes moot," said Schmidt.

Sure, but then what's to become of TIME's Person of the Year??? – Wilson Rothman

Google's copyright-protection tool unveiled [CNNMoney.com]

KeySpan gave its TuneView remote a sexy upgrade today. The remote, which uses 2.4GHz frequency to control your docked iPod from afar, now comes in piano black. The remote is also a little faster, thanks to an upgrade that allows for smoother navigation on its 1.4-inch screen. It's a little pricey at $179, but the set up is as hassle-free as it gets. – Louis Ramirez

Press Release [via Gadgetell]

The AJA IO HD is a miracle box for video jockeys dealing with huge HDTV files. Without it, getting all kinds of video into and out of Macs for Final Cut Pro video editing is cumbersome, and viewing your results takes a while. AJA IO connects via FireWire 800 to even a MacBook or Mac Pro, and is the only box that can read Apple's new ProRes 422 codec in hardware. That means this sucker is fast, fast, fast.

It's also adept at converting one format to another, and can up-rez, down-rez and even cross-convert files in all their 10-bit glory. And look a that gallery below—you'll see there are XLR audio inputs and outputs, too, and what's that? HDMI I/O ports? Yep. Watch your show in real time on an ordinary 1080p TV set. HD editing just got a whole lot easier, and cheaper, too. It's $3495, a pittance for what you get. It's a world changer for vid-wizzes. – Charlie White

Courtesy of Lee Brimelow.

–Noah Robischon

Controversial Microsoft Silverlight Ad Campaign [theWPFblog]
Microsoft Silverlight [Product Page]

A handful of college have come together and will be working with Simbex and their Head Impact Telemetry system. The HIT is a helmet-system that can be commercially purchased and will monitor head acceleration (impact), rotational acceleration, duration, location, time and more for monitoring the noggin of a football player. It will then shoot the information wirelessly to a computer that can analyze the data and monitor the players. It will even warn when an impact could be injurious. The overall goal of the HIT system is to discover the causes of mild brain injuries that are often suffered in contact sports such a football, but keeping check on the student-athletes in college football programs is definitely another perk. –Travis Hudson

Wireless Helmets Monitor Head Injuries [Medgadget]

Locked up in your cube filling out TPS reports when you would much rather be in a lab looking at crazy shit under a microscope? Yeah, me too. New this week at ThinkGeek is the USB Digital Microscope that will at least get us started on my path to becoming a jacket-clad scientist. This USB-powered microscope can zoom in on your office supplies up to 200x and even record the images and video on your computer. Too bad it is $180. Being a faux scientist is expensive. –Travis Hudson

Product Page [ThinkGeek]

We asked Pandora's co-founder, Tim Westergren, if he would like to discuss the decision of the Library of Congress's Copyright Royalty Board to uphold its decision to charge new crippling rates to Web-based broadcasters like Pandora. Tim responded: "I think there are two main points that would be great to make, both regarding dangerous perceptions floating around right now."

Two misperceptions about Internet radio, according to Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren:

First:

...higher rates mean more money for artists. The reality is that the few Internet radio companies that opt to continue (and it will be VERY FEW) will be forced to license directly from labels. In this scenario, the artist share of the revenue will shrink to almost nothing as the monies will go directly to the label and be subject to the usual artist royalty rate (post-recoupment) of single digit percentages. So not only will this eliminate the vast majority of online stations that are the ONLY source of indie music exposure, it will take what little revenue is left from the artists.

Secondly:

Read More »

If you didn't believe me the first time, well here it is. See those icicles? Yeah, hell is freezing over. Here is an actual picture of the Sony Compact Flash (yes, you read that right) memory card. They actually gave in! It is now available in sizes up to 4GB. *head explodes* –Travis Hudson

Sony unveils CompactFlash range [Pocket-Lint]

The name of this product sounds like the e-mails the usually fill up my spam folder, but The Floppy is actually an indoor-use golf ball. It is made out of a soft core and woven outer shell, but still feels like a real golf ball so that short game can still be practiced indoors—no chance in hell I'll be hitting the links with the downpour of rain that is sweeping the nation. $10 for a pack of three or $35 for a dozen. –Travis Hudson

Product Page [Via OhGizmo!]

While the rest of the world continues drooling over the iPhone, designer Michael Laut has crafted his own touchscreen cellie dubbed the Radia. The oval-shaped phone will have an outer rim made of brushed aluminum with large, easy to hit buttons embedded in the center of the phone. No signs of a camera or any smartphone capabilities, but when your phone looks this good that doesn't matter. – Louis Ramirez

Radia Cell Phone [Yanko Design]

San Bernardino Country wants to start a new program that would tag gang members with GPS locators upon release from prison. They say that this would help tackle the on-going issue of gang violence, but it seems a little too Big Brother to me. I'm all about trying to prevent violence, but how about rehabilitation while they're in prison, rather than waiting until they are out so they can easily be busted again with GPS? It also reminds me of the fact that my mom wants to tag her prized rag-doll cat with a similar thing in case he runs away, except the cat is a lot more fluffy and cuddly than a gang-banger (maybe). –Travis Hudson

California county tags gang members with GPS [Arstechnica]

After a post yesterday about Adobe's newly announced Media Player, we were intrigued with its possibilities and got a firsthand demo of the technology from Adobe at its booth at NAB. What the Adobe Media Player amounts to is a downloadable desktop application that plays back Flash video files. But what it really is is an RSS reader, giving you TiVo-like capabilities such as a "Season Pass" -like capability to download and view your favorite online programs.

Adobe showed the way Media Player will enable ad-supported programming to be downloaded, and you don't even need to be online to watch it because the ads will be cached. This lets content creators monetize advertisements for downloadable materials, too, approximating the business model of broadcast television where advertisements pay the freight for otherwise-costly programming. That's why Adobe introduced it at NAB.

Sure, there's DRM involved, where you are able to tell the application what sorts of products you're interested in, and then it will show those kinds of advertisements to you. Then the application reports back to the content creator on which ads were viewed. Some viewers may not be willing to do that, but others may think it's a small price to pay to get free content. There's another big piece of news with this announcement, too:

Read More »

Remember the pendulum executive desk toys that were so popular in the '80s? Then you'll be familiar with Mrs. Newton's Knockers. A few questions though.

Does Mrs. Newton herself have five breasts? More than five breasts? Are these someone else's breasts? Did she take one each from five women, or are there two women walking around breastless and one with just half a breast? All pertinent questions. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Find me a gift via Nerd Approved]

If you're a video shooter who uses a tripod. then you know how important a fluid head can be. It makes all the difference in the world in the smoothness of your pans and tilts. Here's an improvement on the art of fluid heads from Manfrotto, the 503HDV introduced here at NAB. It brings a number of new features to the already-sweet 503. For one, the fluid drag knob was moved to the left side and combined with the release mechanism.

Other welcome improvements are the backlight for the level bubble, a replaceable lock-rosette, and a four-step counterbalancing mechanism. They've refined the profile of the unit as well, so that it has the sleeker lines of the 501 heads. No pricing was available yet, but the 503HDV's predecessor, the 503, is $274.

Get yourself a good fluid head like this one, vid-shooters, and your camera moves will be smooth as a baby's butt. – Charlie White and Curtis Walker

Product Page [Manfrotto]

Thanks to the magic of technology, soon you won't have to rope one of your friends into feeding your fish when you go on vacation. Mohamad Abou El-Nasr, an assistant professor at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology in Egypt, has developed the Wi-Aquarium, a Wi-Fi–equipped fish tank that allows you to feed your fish, control the lights, filter, and temperature, and even see your fish over the internet using a webcam. It'll even send you an email daily on the status of your precious aquatic friends. Now you'll never have to come home to a floater again — at least not one you weren't ready for because you saw it a few days ago via the webcam feed. –Adam Frucci

Broadband Wireless Exchange [via The Raw Feed]

Holophone was displaying a pair of new surround sound mics that looked more like alien spacecraft than microphones. The H3-D pictured here is the follow-up to the $6K H2. But dang, these things aren't cheap. The company's managed to get the price point down to a more palatable $1600 by using its own microphones inside this bulbous enclosure.

But those prices are no big deal to the pro broadcasters who'll be using the things—they're primarily designed to be used for recording crowds at sporting events and concerts. They're described by their makers as the easiest way to capture surround sound.

The yet-to-be-released H4 Super Mini is designed to be used as a camera-mounted mic, runs for five hours on four AA batteries, and comes with an analog-to-digital converter. Pricing for that one should be around $2600. – Charlie White and Curtis Joe Walker

H3-D Product Page [Holophone]

[UPDATE: Amazingly, this writer at Game World Network used the US data, not the European data. The EU data actually shows Blu Ray kicking the piss out of HD-DVD in terms of title sales. Plus this stat has now been attributed to a co-ordinated sales spike. See our further coverage above.]

Hot news in the Battle of Who Could Care Less: HD DVD is back on top in Europe! Yes, while Sony valiantly tried to convince people that their Blu-ray format was totally kicking HD DVD's ass with it's hundreds upon hundreds of sales and figures inflated by discs given away with PS3s, it looks like HD DVD isn't going down without a fight.

What's amazing about this "war" is how few HD discs of either format are selling. It's tough to say one is winning over the other when they're both losing so, so badly. Hell, as of March 18, the cumulative number of Blu-ray titles sold was 844,000 units versus HD DVD at 708,600. Seriously, those are the numbers.

Read More »

NAB's North Hall was home to all of the microphone manufacturers, and a few of them had vintage-looking mics with modern dynamic internals, standard XLR connectors and no phantom power required. Check out that Heil Deco Series Heritage Mic pictured here, a PR20 dynamic mic housed in an "Elvis Style" body. Neat stuff.

Combine one of these with an XLR/USB setup (like the LightSnake) and you'll be podcasting in style for about $200-$250. – Charlie White and Curtis Joe Walker

Product Page [Heil Sound]

At NAB Gefen displayed a couple of long-overdue technologies for transmitting HDMI over longer distances, one wireless and one using coaxial cable. The first method is wireless using a frequency band between 3.3ghz to 3.5ghz, transmitting HDMI video over a distance of about 60 feet. We actually saw it transmitting over a distance of about 10 feet, but the video looked clean without any visible artifacts. Booth reps said that the maximum rez is 1080i, but the company's working on a 1080p version that may use a pair of transmitters to pump the higher resolution through the air. That's vapor so far, though—Gefen didn't have that 1080p version at the booth.

How did that second device, pumping HDMI over coax work?

Read More »

The Boy Genius, everyone's favorite clandestine phone informant, just tossed out a few crumbs of info on the upcoming BlackBerry 9900. The new model, due either at the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008, will come loaded with a larger screen than previous models. Its 384x288 resolution is the same aspect ratio as the 320x240 that previous devices such as the 8800 have come with, so that means the screen should be crisper and easier to read.

Other than that, there's not a lot of info… it'll run OS 5.0.0 and will be aimed more at the businessman market rather than the trendsetter market that the Pearl went after. Whatever else it's going to come loaded with is anyone's guess. What's on your wish list for a new BlackBerry? –Adam Frucci

BlackBerry 9900 exists? [The Boy Genius Report]

Aluratek's new photo frame may not transfer images wirelessly nor does it sport a honkin' big screen, but what it does have (that most of its competition doesn't) is the ability to play all kinds of media, like MP3s, MPEGs and AVI files (in addition to displaying your photos of course).

The 10.5-inch frame comes with a built-in memory card reader, 256MB of onboard memory, and a USB 2.0 port. The display even has a sharp 1,024x768 resolution. The do-it-all frame is out today for $199. – Louis Ramirez

Product Page

This huge entertainment center from Tank Audio has a DVD player, speakers and a subwoofer loaded inside of it, allowing you to keep your home theater setup consolidated and clutter-free. It also has a card reader and USB port, presumably to load up music on the speakers. It looks pretty great, but to be honest I don't know if I'd want to place my fancy new HDTV on top of a table that's going to be shaking and vibrating whenever I crank up an action movie. Having it shimmy its way onto the floor while I'm watching Top Gun would really ruin the movie for me.

No word on pricing or availability as of yet. –Adam Frucci

Aving [via BornRich]

Weirdo Japanese company Solid Alliance is no stranger to weird USB gadgets, but this USB FoodHub is the best thing they've ever done. By far.

If you take a close look, you'll see that the rice is a 4-port USB 2.0 hub, and the four other things (pudding, chicken, and two bits of seafood) are USB sticks. Together, they form something so awesome that the USDA changed its name to the United States Department of Awesome just to regulate the import and export of it.

Way to go, Solid Alliance. We salute your handmade goodness. – Jason Chen

Press Release [Solid Alliance via Akihabara News]

Samsung is bringing a new phone equipped with Mobile TV to South Korea, the SCH-B710. While Mobile TV is just taking its first baby steps here in the States, in South Korea it's been going strong for some time now, so they're already on to a second generation of phones capable of streaming DMB signals.

This new phone actually offers picture-in-picture viewing on the phone. Yes, on a screen so small you can barely watch one show you're now able to watch two at the same time. Generally speaking, the South Korean consumer electronics market is a look into the future of our own tech landscape, so it's not out of the realm of possibility for us to be able to watch both 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on our phones simultaneously at some point. Finally! –Adam Frucci

Samsung to present a new phone at the KIS [Akihabara News]

Nokia's newest candybar Series 60 phone brings combines two things that people enjoy: HSDPA and thinness. At only 15mm (0.59 inches) thick, it's not quite the thinnest HSDPA (that's the Samsung Z720 at 13.8mm) but it's pretty darn close.

Other features are the front video camera for calling, a 2-megapixel camera on the back, Bluetooth 2.0, MicroSD slot and a 2-inch screen. That video calling will be cool if Cingular and/or T-Mobile ever get around to allowing it. – Jason Chen

Press Release [Nokia via Ring Nokia]