Just like they did at last year’s ceremony, Motorola is gifting 2008′s Oscar nominees with personalised versions of its as-yet-unreleased ROKR E8. Yeah, yeah, you probably think we are turning into a celebrity website, but, given the past few weeks of will they, won’t they? speculation as to whether they are getting out of the handset market, this announcement means, IMO, one thing.
These MP3 players grab on to every single lovey-dovey Valentine’s cliché: a separable pair of players for you and your other half, that look like kissing lovers when they’re stuck together in a cutesy heart shape. We don’t know where you can buy them, but we do know they’ve got touch controls, have 1GB memory each, cost the equivalent of $61 in China and are absolutely sick-makingly hideous. [Zol, New Launches]
Toshiba has upgraded and updated the Gigabeat T401. Now known as the T802, the slimline PMP now has wireless network connectivity, 8GB of flash memory, and claims 16 hours of MP3 playback or five hours’ video use with WMV support. Price is $300, available in Japan from February 15. [Impress through Google Translate]
The new Toshiba’s Gigabeat V81 portable digital TV has a 320 x 240-pixel 3.5-inch screen, fitting 40 hours of recorded TV into its internal 8GB memory, which is double the previous version, expandable with an SD card. They claim 10 hours of broadcast viewing, and 13 hours of playback video viewing with WMA, WMV and MP3 compatibility. Too bad the TV reception only works in Japan, where it will be out for $350 this month. [AV Watch and Akihabaranews]
This Magno radio is simplicity with knobs on, very retro-toytown, if you ask me. Designed by Singgih Kartono, it is made from sustainable wood instead of nasty non-biodegradable plastic like every other audio gadget out there. It’s “MP3 player compatible,” (which we guess means it’s got a line in) has AM/FM and shortwave reception, and is available for a whopping US$275 from April 1. [Areaware via LikeCool]
Modu’s tiny mobile phone could be inserted into multiple “jackets” to change its function. Or better said, the Modu phone carries your data, giving your personality to whatever gadget you insert it into, GameBoy cartridge style. After seeing all the pictures of the different jackets and the announced prices, the video and the idea makes a lot more sense now.
Unwired View points out the weirdness in this Motorola M990 Smart Rider GSM phone. Yes, it’s got an integrated GPS, EDGE and quad-band GSM, but its description makes it seem like it’s tailored for 1993, not 2008.
io9 found this great concept by Danish design architects BIG which places a hotel against the side of a mountain with the idea that hotel patrons can finish off a ski or snowboard run by riding directly to their floor. The hotel looks absolutely epic, and I like the way the wavy lines of the hotel match the tracks left on snow by skis and snowboards. [BIG via io9]
Sixteen years ago, after watching too many MC Hammer videos, Paul Lyons decided to patent the sleaziest thing he could think of (imagine taking that guy from Dual Action Cleanse infomercial’s face and turning it into an equivalently sleazy product): A condom that plays music with every thrust.
One obvious way to speed up continuous shooting bursts on DSLRs is to drop the image format down to JPEG, which takes less processing power to deal with than RAW. But, since JPEGs are compressed, you lose a lot of info, which doesn’t cut it for a lot of photo folk. Canon and Casio think Microsoft’s JPEG XR (formerly HD Photo) might be the middle-ground solution, especially for cheaper DSLRs.
