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NEC N905i Sports 5MP Face-Detecting Camera, Everything Else We Love in Japanese Phones
Posted by Matt Buchanan at 9:00 PM on November 13, 2007
As enthralled as I'm not with the Japanese mobile market, I'm kinda geek-jonesin' for the smoking red and black flavor of the NEC 905i. The headline-grabber is its 5MP camera with face detection, which can lock onto three grills simultaneously for optimal vogueing—a feature usually reserved for bigger, badder shooters.
The W-CDMA and GSM-packing clamshell is also loaded up with a crispy 3-inch, 480x854 resolution screen and H.264 video recording in VGA resolution, HSDPA, GPS, plus the usual support for a bunch of media formats, and a Yamaha sound engine for decent audio playback. Dropping in Japan only Nov. 26, but you can ogle the pretty pictures anyway.
Pillows are very useful, but when they are not offering support or cushioning, they may as well be plushie Star Wars characters. Think Geek's reversible Yoda and Vader cushions are from that very same school of thought. For $29.99, you can procure a pillow that will ensure you do not suffer from any form of lumbar discomfort following a night's rest, and on waking, you can then turn the glorified bedding inside out, revealing either Yoda or Vader. You choose. Hell, why not go nuts and get them both? You could even fashion them into friends/partners that care about you! Wow—a friend and an essential bedroom furnishing item, all wrapped up into one product. These truly are crazy times. [
Font talk isn't exactly stimulating (unless you're scary weird), but it's worth giving the fonts Ascender's developed for Android's system UI a close look since you'll be looking closely at them in Android's app menus, web browser and other texty situations. Overall, they seem pretty clean with a nice smoothness to them, and if they're being accurately represented size-wise, definitely readable from a decent distance away. More specifics, and your thoughts, this way:
Succeeding the 3007WFP, Dell's latest 30-inch deskbuster LCD, the 3008WFP, packs the much-ballyhooed 
The petite Venture Mini Bluetooth car hub is a combination FM transmitter, speakerphone, A2DP streamer and 12V charger. It can pair with up to four devices simultaneously and features in/out audio ports to connect your DAP. There's also a standard USB port for charging. For an improved speakerphone experience, there's a noise isolating mic. Its coolest trick is the ability to display incoming call info on your car's radio display using RDBS technology. Look for it in December for $130. [
If you are the type that enjoys listening to some quiet music when drifting off to sleep, keep in mind that your partner may not share that characteristic. Perhaps it is time to stop being selfish and pick up one of these Sound Asleep Pillows. By hooking an iPod or other MP3 player into the jack, you can listen to soft music from a speaker buried deep within the pillow. In fact, the sound is so gentle, only you will be able to hear it. You will be happy and your partner will be happy —which could save you from an untimely death by smothering in the middle of the night. [
Gene Munster predicts that the iPhone's next major update will come in February 2008, and along with the long-awaited SDK the iPhone will get spotlight-like search functionality. That would make searching mail a lot better than it is now*. [
Never mind that the colour scheme looks like it was designed by Ronald McDonald—this Gravity Zero bed is packing some serious features, like a 150-watt sound system, 2 sleep system motors, 2 powerful massage systems with 12 programs, four-joint adjustability, flexible shoulder comfort zone, pneumatic hand control, and a ventilated Talalay latex mattress for added comfort and support. 
Zune 2 and its batch of new features are finally upon us, bringing new players and an entirely new experience. On the device side, there's 4/8GB flash-based and 80GB hard drive-based Zune with fancy form factors and increased storage, as well as new firmware for your old first-gen 30GB players. On the software side, the functionally rich (but somewhat clumsy to use) Zune suite is gone and is replaced by a beautiful, but hollow successor. Read on to find out how Microsoft has managed to change a lot on the one hand, and very little on the other—then see how the Zune stacks up against iTunes and iPod.
Rolling along in 2009, this Russian robot suitcase, oddly named Tony, will follow its owner's footsteps, tracking a card you slip into your pocket like a dog following a stick of jerky. It's loaded up with a gyroscope, light detectors, sound and infared sensors so it doesn't bump into old ladies or tumble down stairs while carrying up to 30kg of your junk in LAX. It'll also truck nonstop for two hours on a single battery charge. If that sounds fantastic, Robotronic.ru will be glad to take your pre-order for around 2 grand. Hey, the future's expensive. [
Imagine being able to download a movie or album to your media player by simply touching a promotional poster or exchanging contact information with a potential client via a handshake. KDDI's new Intra-Body Communication technology could make this a reality by using the human body as a conduit to transmit high-volume data. In the image above, the video is being transmitted from the girl's hand, through her body to the glasses, and out to the monitor. 
We've 
The new Zune firmware is bringing new functionality to even old Zunes (
The iPhone 1.1.2 firmware update was previously available via manual download, but it is now available to all US customers through iTunes. The update includes a TIFF Exploit patch (meaning jailbroken iPhones will not work), foreign language support, and a custom ringtone section. As always, there are a few things you should know before you upgrade so make sure to educate yourself. This goes for the iPod Touch firmware as well, which was also released today. [
Panasonic's newest Toughbook Y7, T7 and W7 are designed to combat the Homer in you: that is, they're for people who work with sensitive data yet are prone to dropping laptops, spilling drinks and generally messing stuff up. Forget accelerometers, the hard drives in this can take a serious hit at 2.5 feet and on 26 different axes. The LCDs, typically shatter-prone glass, can survive a one-foot drop without cracking. As far as proofing against the inevitable beverage malfunction, the Toughbook can take over six ounces of liquid continuously, meaning if you spill half a can of soda on that sucker, you can pour an equal amount of water through there to flush out the bad stuff. Just pour slow: if the drain backs up, you can still cause damage. Here's how the three different systems fall into place:
This dude, for some unholy reason, owns every Super Soaker ever. Every. One. I mean, are these things even valuable? I don't see how they could be because I can't imagine anyone else being insane enough to care about some 1988 special edition Super Soaker. How does he explain his "hobby" to dates, assuming he's ever gone out on one? "Yes, I am a grown man and I collect water guns. I have enough to fill up an entire garage, and I'm seriously in debt because of it. But hey, it's totally worth it, right? Perhaps you'd like to come over and… hey, where are you going? You didn't finish your Quarter Pounder!" Click for a bigger version of the picture. [
Need to kill the data on a hard drive you have lying around but don't wanna bother hooking it up to a PC? Wiebetech's pocket-sized eRazer plugs directly into lonely hard drives and genocides whatever naughtiness you have have etched into it at a rate of 35MB/s, leaving a 250GB hard drive scorched earth in under two hours. 
We posted a 
While Bluetooth headsets are a dime a dozen, ones powered by the sun like Nuclear Man from Superman IV aren't. Orange claims that its Iqua Sun is "the worlds first" [sic, italics theirs] solar-powered Bluetooth headset. Fancy! The green half-ouncer gets 200 hours of life on standby and nine hours of talk time in darkness, like in an elevator on the moon. It'll run you £49.99, which is about 105 American clams. [
The OLPC's Christmas initiaive, also known as 
Boy Genius reports that Sidekick Slide users are getting sudden restarts after flippign the screen up and down a few times. The cause? Apparently a build flaw that has too big of a gap between the contacts for the battery and the connector on the phone. Telstra, an Australian company, seems to be having similar problems on their version of the Motorola device called the Hiptop Slide. A temporary solution is to shove a piece of paper—maybe a business card—between the wall and the battery. This happening to any of you? [
The Skinny: Like the 
We usually try to look for the good in everything, but this cre8txt keyboard looks to us like a pretty bad idea. It's essentially a keyboard that lets you type like you do on a cellphone, but on a computer. You can plug it into any PC, Mac, Xbox 360 or PS3 and type away, pretending that you're actually texting your BFF Jill instead of trying to compose a 30,000 word essay. We suppose it might be useful as a one-handed keyboard for, we don't know, presentations? Or some other activity you do that occupies one hand? [
The Gadget: The Dragon, a dual-microphone, class 1 Bluetooth headset is made by Callpod, the folks who brought you the 
Coolermaster, a big name in DIY enthusiast PC cases, has just announced that their Cosmos line of chassis will conform to the Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) initiative. ESA is supposed to allow more components to communicate with each other so people who build their own PCs can monitor exactly what's going on inside the system. The ESA Cosmos looks pretty much the same as the previous Cosmos chassis, but has a thermal control board with four sensors to monitor and adjust fan speeds. The upside? You get the same nice case but improved warning when something melts down. 
