Saddened by the fact that the Apple logo on the rear-shell of the iPhone is just a dead, un-illuminated entity, a bunch of Russian modders have taken a dremel and soldering iron to one—or is it a replacement back shell? Either way, they brought the sexy (glow) back. Apparently “the battery doesn’t suffer a lot, you can adjust the glow level in Settings menu.” Hmmm. Are they hacking into the screen back-lighting circuit? If you’re not convinced by the photo: check out the video, it looks pretty real. Updated: A reader has sent us some shots of the mod really in action.
This tiny GPS system from Kapten shuns the current preoccupation for large, high-detail touchscreens… it has, in fact, no screen at all. There’re a bunch of led-lit icons at the top, indicating car-, pedestrian-mode and so on, but that’s it. All navigation requests and instructions are made by you talking to the Kapten and it talking to you. It’s apparently aimed mainly at pedestrian users, and measuring 7.4 x 4.3 x 1.3 cm is small enough to slip onto a key ring. Somehow there’s a Bluetooth chipset in there, alongside an MP3 player and FM radio, and it packs 4GB of internal memory. Sadly, the only instructions it’ll utter will sound like “Tournez à droite, dans 100 metres” since it’s being released in France next month for around US$220, and there’s no info on whether it’ll move outside the land of the moody pout. [Navigadget]
Here’s a fantastic way to waste enjoy half an hour of your Friday: To coincide with Stephen King’s upcoming short story collection, Just After Sunset, his publishers have teamed with the folks at Marvel to create a online webcomic series of one of stories in the book called ‘N‘.
The series, which consists of 25 separate episodes between 90 seconds and 2 minutes long, will have a new episode released every US weekday until August 29. So far, they’re up to Episode 14, and it’s a catchy little story.
The voice acting is pretty good, although the implementation is a bit annoying – the episodes automatically play in reverse order, and there are video ads that interrupt the clip on occasion. Still – It’s fantastic in typical King fashion, I’ll be watching keenly to see how the story ends.
The Gadget: GirlTech Stylin’ Studio, a drawing pad with built-in webcam and bundled PC app to give virtual makeovers to yourself, your friends, your enemies and even—as you can see below—Gizmodo staff co-workers.
Sony took the radical step of renaming their “Mylo Personal Communicator” the “Mylo Internet Device.” Though it’s unlikely to affect the five of you that actually bought a Mylo, you have to wonder if it’s a last ditch effort to generate interest in a product that didn’t exactly set the gadget world on fire. [Pocketables via Gadgetell]
We saw the Sony HDR-CX12 back in June, but at a recent session with Sony I managed to have a quick look at the new Handycam. Aside from being tiny, recording exclusively to Memory Stick Pro (there’s an 8GB and a 4GB stick in the box) and in Full 1920 x 1080 resolution with a 12x optical zoom, the coolest feature was the Smile Shutter.
Essentially, when switched on, the Smile shutter uses a variation of face detection to record photographs of your subject’s face whenever they smile. The photos are taken at 7.6MP resolution, too, so there’s no problem with quality. There’s also some customisation, which lets you choose between Smile Shutter for kids or adults.
Considering how hard it can be to take photos of kids while they run around at a million miles an hour, if you’re collecting photos just while you film them, then this has the potential to be a great camera for parents.
The camera costs $1699, which includes the 12GB of storage in the box.
[Sony]
Sure we know about some of Windows 7′s more eye-catching features like multitouch and sweet maps, but Microsoft hasn’t reveal a whole about what’s under the hood, other than that it’ll use Vista’s foundation. According to the new Windows 7 dev blog, we’ll get our first peek at the Professional Developers Conference on Oct. 27 and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference the week after. Make it good is all I’ve got to say. [Engineering Windows 7]
TechCrunch found a virtual world service (think Second Life) called LivePlace, which aims to render very realistic environments in real time by rendering it first, then pushing image data to devices. The service is supposedly working off of a service from OTOY which specialises in server-side graphics. In the case of LivePlace, you’ll be using that pre-rendered “massive” cityscape to walk your avatar around in.
One of the more popular theories behind Michael Phelps zooming past records with every stroke–besides his US$500 LZR super suit and daily regimen of 12,000 calories composed mostly of mermaid babies–is that the Olympic pool itself is turning swimmers into Aquamen, but you know, not totally lame. But the pool’s designer, John Bilmon says, it’s really just because the Water Cube is really pretty and inspiring. They actually left out the two changes that would’ve granted swimmers superhuman speed.
If, for some unknown reason, you did want to jump on board the new Sanity music store, you’d need an MP3 player that supports DRM WMA files and sports Microsoft’s Plays For Sure badge. Sony’s latest Walkman, the NWZ-B130F would be a very good place to start.
For just $69 of your hard-earned dollars, you get a device with 2GB of memory (there’s also a 1GB model for $49), 16 hours worth of music playback, an OLED screen, FM radio with recording, voice recording, drag and drop music interface and Sony’s awesome 3-minute charge for 3 hours’ playback.
Considering a 2GB iPod Shuffle costs $89, this is actually a really good value piece of kit and well worth the look for those seeking a budget MP3 player.
[Sony]
