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Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time Tough editor Josh Quittner, Captain of Business 2.0, tells us a fable of the iPhone launch. It’s a little grim…and very biblical. But I agree with how most of it goes down. And on the 29th day of the sixth month, when the sun was at its lowest point in the sky, the Phones appeared, one after another, each in its tasteful white box without any adornment whatsoever. And the People rejoiced, for they had been waiting a long time and could wait no longer.
OK, all of it. Sure, it’s a little akin to being sad that we’ll all die one day, but it’s got some fresh perspective on how this whole thing is going to go down and JUST HOW POINTLESS MY WHOLE LIFE IS.
I’ve seen some dumb noise maker keychains over the years, but this one could actually generate some laughs, not just a few smirks when you see it in the shop. It comes with six popular ringtones on board, so with a sneaky button press you’ll have a good chance of having at least a few people in a room diving to check their handset.
Or, if you want to get pummeled, why not use it in a movie theatre just to be annoying? I know I’m always eager to slap people who leave their phones on – how many times must they show the “switch that shit off” sign? And don’t get me STARTED on people who think some quiet txting is okay… Hello! Bright bloody phone screen!!
Yeah, anyway. US$9.99. -Seamus Byrne
Product Page [via Shiny Shiny]
That gorgeous , top line, 8GB, Walkman phone, the W960 is one of the most incredible handsets out there, and Sam from Mobileburn got his hands on one. He paid a lot of attention to the background’s animated bubble effect, and the video shows off the backlit buttons, as well as a scroll wheel on the left side. But he largely ignores the touchscreen and its music controlling capabilities. Behold! –Brian Lam Video of Sony Ericsson W960i Walkman phone – with bubbles! [Mobileburn]
We thought the BW900 Bluetooth headset from headphone company Sennheiser was available last year, but apparently it took another year for it to actually make it to maker. Reader Jonathan got one and unboxed it.
Jon says the unit has a 100 meter range (it’s Class 1, Class 2 is only 10 meter) that can connect to multiple devices simultaneously. This means your desktop phone, your cellphone, and your PC can be toggled between. Lots of ports, and has “24 hour operation”.
Sure, it’s almost $300, but if you need a heavy duty Bluetooth headset this seems like the way to go. – Jason Chen
galleryPost('sennheiserbw900', 6, 'Sennheiser BW900');
Sennheiser Communications BW900 Unboxing [Schalliol]
Thanks Jonathan!
It was called the iPod effect, but maybe now it should be dubbed the iPhone effect. The force compelling people to switch from PCs to Macs was doing something this past May, though it’s not exactly easy to spot on a pie chart.
You knew the Novint Falcon 3D haptic joystick was finally shipping, but now we’ve got confirmation from customer number one, Tristan George. Tristan says he’s played the Half Life 2 mod with the Falcon and “it’s amazing, very fun to play.”
If you don’t remember, the Falcon is a 3D joystick that actually lets you “feel” textures and surfaces by moving the ball around. We’ve been hearing about it for years now (I tried it at the last E3), but it’s good to know that this thing is definitely solid and shipping, and not vapor. We never doubted ya, Novint. – Jason Chen
Thanks Tristan!
Product Page [Novint]
Fair use? What’s that? It’s something you’ll someday be telling your kids once existed at the rate things are going. That’s because there’s a proposed amendment to current copy protection licenses that would ban any and all DVD copying, including for fair use.
Want to rip your DVDs to a Media Center PC so you can watch movies without putting a disc in? Too bad. Anything other than watching a movie right off the disc would be against the rules, much to the chagrin of companies such as Kaleidoscope, who make media centers loaded to the gills with (perfectly legal) movies. Well, at least this has been put up to a vote twice before only to fail, so there’s hope that a third strike is imminent. –Adam Frucci
If you asked us what DC superhero we’d love to be and said we couldn’t be Batman, Superman, the Martian Manhunter, Robin, Nightwing, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Power Girl, or the Flash, we’d probably choose Green Lantern. Instructables has a step by step guide on how to make your own glowing ring.
The only downside is you’ll have to actually carve your own ring out of resin, something that’s pretty tough for us nerds to do. But the good news is that when you’re done, the fingers to ring ratio will probably be closer to 1:1 than when you started. Still, beats the old guide of Step 1: Find the Lantern Corps. – Jason Chen
Instructables [via MAKE]
CTI Miami got their hands on HTC’s latest roadmap for their upcoming phones. Among them are the Kaiser, which is along the same lines as the Sprint Mogul (GSM), and the Vogue, which is like the HTC Touch. Some of the more interesting ones are the Nike, which is a WM6 Professional (that’s the touchscreen one) that slides up to reveal a regular keypad; the Iris, which is a CDMA EV-DO Rev. A phone that looks like the T-Mobile Dash; the Polaris, which looks like an update to the GPS-enabled Artemis, and the Sedna, which actually has a fingerprint reader and both CDMA and GSM.
The Shangri-La, which is the HTC Shift, is also listed, and sports both CDMA and EDGE and has a 800MHz processor, 30/40 GB hard drive, VGA camera for video calls, and fingerprint recognition. We’re looking forward to all of these.
AU: HTC has sent out invitations for a local launch event set for early July. So it looks like we’ll be seeing them here in their own right very soon (not just as badged O2 and Dopod devices). -SB
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– Jason Chen
HTC phones galore [CTI Miami via Boy Genius Report]
Sky Dayton, who has been quoted several times in the last week in iPhone critique pieces, is officially putting a more powerful set of YouTube features on his 3G phones. Here comes the blood bath. This is going to be complicated to explain, so sit down and listen up.
AU: Another good story on how much better we have it here when it comes to phone networks. YouTube mobile looks pretty good on 3, by the way. -SB
