Nokia has signed an exclusive deal with News Corp., Sony Pictures and CNN, allowing them to distribute content directly to Nokia handsets. That cuts the carriers straight out of the deal, and they are unlikely to be pleased by the arrangement.
Sony pulled the cover off their new PRS-505 Reader today, which features a new body, a few new tricks, and a few dressed up old ones. Instead of black, the Sony Reader now comes in silver or dark blue. In addition to the colour change, Sony is touting the redesigned button layout, claiming a more intuitive experience—but it mostly looks like they rearranged the existing buttons of the PRS-500 to make them more accessible.
And though Sony claims the screen has a higher contrast and faster refresh rate, no exact specs were given. Other new features include a doubling of the internal memory to hold 160 eBooks instead of 80, and a new USB mass storage mode. Old features: battery life still lasts for 7,500 page turns and the Reader also displays PDF, RTF, TXT and JPEG formats like before. SD and Memory Stick slots are also provided for memory expansion.
Of course, the PRS-505 works with the Sony Connect store, where there are over 20,000 eBooks available for download. The Sony Reader will hit stores later this month for $300 (cheaper than the initial release of the PRS-500 by $50).
There’s a cool feature on the Popular Mechanics website on the science of everyone’s favourite Aboriginal hunting stick. There is a lot of talk with Eric Darnell, maestro of the boomerang and inventor of the Tri-Fly form. He’s also designed this LED version, which might look cool in flight but definitely looks brilliant in this night shot.
The story is well worth a look if you’ve ever wanted to learn how to throw a boomerang like that kid from Mad Max 2. -Seamus Byrne [Neatorama]
Not all of you loved the Kaws Darth Vader when it was first announced, but for those of you that did, Toys R Evil dug up some great new shots. According to the toy blog, only 500-1,000 were made, and they were selling for $150 exclusively at Kaws’ Original Fake store in Tokyo. In any case, the final product came out looking pretty slick. More pics over at InstincToy and Tomm’s Blog. [Toys R Evil]
If you like the idea of the Philips Aurea and it’s new lounge colour mode, but you don’t have the $6k to drop on one, this could plug the gap. Colorlight is a DVD that just plays flat colours on your TV as a kind of mood lighting for when you throw a party that isn’t about sitting around the TV watching football finals, Idol, or The Daily Show. It’s on the high side of typical DVD price range ($US25), but I’m thinking that many people could have just as much creative fun with a DVD calibration disc if they really wanted to. -Seamus Byrne [OhGizmo!]
newVideoPlayer("redoneunbox_gawker.flv", 475, 286);The Red One Camera, which we saw in person back in April at NAB, just got unboxed. Yes, it’s the same camera that Peter Jackson used to shoot the Crossing the Line short film proof-of-concept, but he seemed to like it enough that maybe, just maybe, he’s buying a crapload to shoot the Halo movie with. Watch the clip to see what you can expect when you grab a Red One for yourself. [HDForIndies via Crunchgear]
The other pentax launched today is this 8mp slim that is about 2cm thick. Not bad, but a quick google shows that Sony’s had thinner Cybershots, even if at lower MP ratings. (Not sure if that’s counting the big lens cover slides that most T series cams have.) The back has a 3-inch LCD.
Hitachi has come up with a new idea in display technology to deliver stupidly high contrast ratios. Dubbed “hybrid monitor technology”, the screen puts an LCD panel together with an LCD projector – the projector delivers the backlight to the panel, and the contrast level is achieved through the multiplied contrast across the two origins. Sounds interesting, though I’ve no idea (a) if the panel is deep like an old school rear projection system and (b) if we’re really going to notice additional blackness beyond OLED’s million to one… until we get to true abyssal darkness, perhaps? [Far East Gizmos]
newVideoPlayer("walle.flv", 475, 286); The second trailer for Pixar’s Wall-E hit the french movie site Allocine late last friday (it officially came out at 5pm today) and the movie looks like it will be nothing short of awesome. While I could have done without Cars, and thought Finding Nemo was overrated, I absolutely loved Toy Story, Ratatouille and now this trailer. Wall-E revolves around a robot living in a future world who aspires to be more than a lowly worker bot. And he presumably sets out to achieve his dream. What also makes this film interesting is that it will be sans-dialogue according to the director. Robots in the future with a slight avant-garde twist? Consider me excited. [Allocine via Kottke via Daring Fireball]
This is hilarious. I just hope they didn’t do any permanent hearing damage. I get the feeling you could get yourself arrested for doing this to the wrong person, or in the wrong place. Actually, the ‘wrong place’ could get you shot for doing this.
