This gizmo from Handlink is clearly aimed at hotels, coffee shops and other places where you may need net access, and you can’t argue with the thinking in its design. Simply pop in some coins, grab the printout with your time-limited access codes, and then connect up your notebook, or phone to its 802.11b/g service. Kind of the retro-future public payphone of the internet era, it saves time from all that messing about you sometimes have to do in internet cafés. Shame it just takes coins though. No info on price or availability. [RegHardware]
Today is D-Day: Steve Jobs will announce the Second Coming of the iPhone, just 20 days before its first anniversary. Think about it. It has been less than a year, and the iPhone is in the minds of everyone, getting almost-sickening front page treatment in every newspaper, magazine, and blog all around the world. Even if it’s not the best selling phone or the one with the most features, the impact has been so big that it has permeated popular culture and language itself. Here’s one of many examples.
This hirsute-yet-handsome Iberomacho is Rui Pereira, creator of an instrument for non-musicians (no, chaps, it’s too early for such smuttiness.) The TUIST, or Tranformable Uber Interface for STardom, is basically a tube with sensors that measure finger pressure that can act as either guitar, bass or drums. Developed at NYU (Pereira is on the Interactive Telecommunications Program). Aimed at “people who don’t know shit about music,” the TUIST is for Guitar Hero fans who want to take their “fretwork”/”"string-plucking”/”tub-thumping” skills to the next level—without learning a thing about music. Rather than just parroting the riffs, the TUIST lets you be creative on it, and lets you record your attempts to put Yngwie /Bernard Edwards/Buddy Rich in the shade on its built-in loop controller. [Wired]
Tonight at 3AM Giz AU will be refeeding the US team’s liveblog in real time, adding our own expert analysis and Australian relevance to the impending 3G iPhone announcements.
To follow the Liveblog coverage, point your browsers at www.gizmodo.com.au/wwdc08
Grab a coffee and pull up a chair!
It’s not that the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional-based 3G Samsung Omnia is not a good phone. In fact, we already knew that it looks very good. It’s just that today, dear Samsung people, today is just not the right day to announce any mobile phone, even if you think that telling us official details of an already-leaked model—like the face and smile detection on its 5 megapixel camera, or the DivX, XviD, H.264, WMV, and MP4 video support, or the nice-looking GPS—is going to make any difference. But still, we like the new pictures of the interface and the full feature list.
We’re here in San Francisco, trying to get a few hours sleep in what could be described as the worst hotel we’ve ever stayed at, before heading down to Moscone Centre tomorrow morning to cover Apple’s WWDC event. Plan on hitting up our Liveblog, before the event starts for play-by-play coverage of what’s going on outside. Then stay along for our usual fast and furious work during the Stevenote, which will be followed up by in depth coverage of the day’s announcements. See you soon! AU: We’ll be refeeding the liveblog through our own liveblog page, complete with Aussie notes and analysis. If you’re up at that ungodly hour of the morning, make sure you check it out!
Joel gave me a preview of this song, written about Apple product launches, a few months ago. It’s even better in its final form. “Best not make any plans today. The Apple store is down, new shit is on its way.” Give it a listen! [Boing Boing Gadgets]
newVideoPlayer("iphone_sling.flv", 506, 305,""); After much speculation, Sling stopped by to show us they have indeed been working on a native app for the iPhone, and gave us a quick hands-on with the proof-of-concept. The demo, which also runs on the iPod touch, offers the ability to connect to your Slingbox and control it using the iPhone’s touchscreen.
Despite what we and other media have hinted at, despite what Sprint itself is spending a lot of money trying to convey, the Samsung Instinct is not an iPhone killer. To be sure, Samsung and Sprint borrowed liberally from the iPhone playbook when it came to look and feel. But the comparison itself isn’t fair: The iPhone is a software platform that is growing every day, soon to have a host of applications that put it squarely in the smartphone category along with BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile. The Samsung Instinct will never be mistaken for a smartphone. Then what is it? It’s the best carrier-centric feature phone I’ve ever seen, a delight to use for many—though not all—of its intended purposes.
