Let’s face it: Nokia release so many phones that sometimes you just get overwhelmed by the sheer weight of new models hitting the market. And as the tech elite, many of the lower-end phones that they sell to people like your Nanna just don’t interest you.
But when Nokia do a high-end phone well, they do it really well. Like the N78, for example. This piece of black art doesn’t feature a whole heap of buttons, instead opting for a touch-sensitive surface with raised ridges to give you some feedback. And depending on which function you’re using, the keys will change, making it easy to take photos, listen to music and use the phone. At least in theory – we’ve got one sitting at our desk that we’re about to crack open to review.
At the same time that we’re excited by the potential of this phone, you should be excited by the potential of winning one. You see, the guys at Nokia have generously given us two of these gorgeous handsets to giveaway to Giz readers.
We’re going to give one away each week for the next two weeks. If you want one, you’ll need to tell us in 25 words or less: “Which feature of the new Nokia N78 do you think is the best and why?” Pop your entries in the comments section below.
If you need some guidance, check out this post for ideas. While you’re busy pondering the best use of 25 words to win (I’ll give you a hint – I like to be entertained), I’ll be playing around with an N78 here to give you a full review in the coming week or so.
So what are you waiting for?
Telstra just keeps rolling out those extra services to NextG customers. After the QR codes the other week, they’ve backed it up with some location-based software that uses A-GPS to locate where your friends and family are, making stalking your ex-girlfriend monitoring your kids whereabouts incredibly simple.
And once you get past the obvious nefarious uses, there are also some pretty useful practical applications for this. Like if you lose your phone (or it’s stolen), you can use a friend’s phone to locate yours. Or if you’re meeting up with some mates and they’re not answering their phone – you can just use this to find out roughly where they are.
The software itself is a free download, but getting the location of your mates has a fee (of course) – it’s 50 cents for a one-time thing lookup, plus 30 cents to actually receive the location alert. Alternatively, you can pay $2.95 each month and get unlimited searches (although it will still cost you 30 cents for each alert you receive.)
And even though we joked about stalking, you do need to have the person you’re trying to stalk you’re locating to accept your invitation before you can receive their location updates, and that may be kind of hard. I mean, you could always try and do it yourself, but that restraining order just keeps making things difficult, doesn’t it?
[Telstra]
In Dubai, they’re doing things big these days. Big hotels, big palm tree islands, big wallets, and very soon, big US$281 million fountains. The biggest one in the world, in fact, and it will be large enough to give the famed fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas an inferiority complex. At 250 metres long, the unnamed fountain will be 25% larger than the Bellagio fountain. Powering the fountain will be pumps capable of shooting columns of water approximately 135 or so metres into the dry Middle Eastern air. A light and sound show produced by a network of 6,600 lights and 50 projectors will illuminate the burgeoning Dubai skyline at night. About 83,250 litres of water are expected to cycle through the fountain at any given time when it is completed in 2009. Now, if you’ll excuse me, nature calls.[Luxury Launches]
Careful what kind of digital camera you give your kids from the Disney Store these days, otherwise the spawn of your loins could end up putting a goatse right up against their chubby cherubic faces. Then, their virgin innocence robbed from them, they’ll probably go around leaving this 8MB camera in the darker places of your house, hoping to catch a few nether region images of their own (of poor quality, btw, this is actually a pretty poor camera to begin with). You’ve been warned. – Thanks, Chris, we think? [The Disney Store]
In a Nikkei article set to publish Monday, it was revealed that Toyota has green lit plans to offer solar panels on its popular Prius hybrid vehicle. The solar panel option will be available on the high-end Prius model when it receives a redesign in 2009. Strangely, the Japanese business newspaper also reports that the power generated by the solar panels will be used for the air conditioning system. The solar panels are being manufactured by Kyocera Corp. Previously, Gizmodo has covered some DIY solar panel options for the Prius, but the news today confirms that an official offering is now forthcoming from Toyota. It’s a start, right? [Reuters]
If Blu-ray had actually done the job right, it would have marched on after its bloody victory over HD DVD and taken the battle to the armies of DVD with the goal of vanquishing the last-gen technology to the Hades of the tech world. Instead, it stood around cheering and big-noting itself. Now, DVD is preparing to take the next-gen format by surprise with a stealth attack in the form of the Samsung F1080 upscaling DVD player.
Okay, so it isn’t that stealthy, and it isn’t that violent, but the F1080 is a very attractive piece of kit, especially for a DVD player. It features Samsung’s AnyNet+ technology and touch sensitive controls, which is always a nice addition to home theatre kit. Plus it will upscale your DVDs, bringing a pseudo-HD experience to your loungeroom.
And the price? $199. That may seem a bit pricey for a DVD player these days, but that’s the price you pay for style, I guess.
[Samsung]
Hey girls, can’t decide whether or not to wear that midriff-bearing shirt out to the bar tonight? No worries, simply don this Venetian blind t-shirt and yank on the fully functional string when Joe Hotty walks by. Sure it’s ridiculous, but it’s also one-of-its-kind, and available only at art museums for the time being. Just don’t be too peeved when some drunk mistakes your shirt for an actual window and pukes all over your chest. [Shikisai via I New Idea]
It’s been about six months since we first saw Sony’s new Alpha a300 DSLR. You know, the one with the freakin’ awesome liveview? Well, Sony Australia have finally announced that the a300 will be launching on Australian shores in early August.
The unit will set you back $999 with an 18-70mm lens, while the twin lens kit (featuring the same 18-70mm lens and a 55-200mm zoom lens as well) will cost just $1149.
If you’re after an entry level SLR, Sony’s Alpha range is a good place to start – the fact that the image stabilisation is in the body, not the lens, makes it much easier for beginners to get a better shot. Plus, for that price (those are RRPs, remember. You can almost certainly get it cheaper in store or online), it’s a fantastic opportunity to take that next step up.
The full press release is below:
The folks behind the Roomba robot vacuum appear to have another robotic helper up their sleeves. In this case, it’s of the lawn mowing variety, but the final design is anything but final if the wide variety of shapes, configurations and features are any indication. A lawn-mowing Roomba-like robot… Lawmba? Loomba? Mowba.
IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices, are a sad fact of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you’ll see the influence of these deadly weapons in this list of the US Army’s top inventions for 2007. Every year the Army selects the top refinements, outright new inventions, or streamlined weaponry, and pumps out a list. This year’s list features several new types of Humvee armour, GPS-guided artillery rounds, and a wheeled contraption for vehicles called SPARK (above), which sniffs out IEDs before they have a chance to do any damage.
