newVideoPlayer("/qosmiowave_gizmodo.flv", 520, 410,""); To be honest, I was going to headline this article “Toshiba Magic Waving Handy-Spanky-Fingery Gestures Are Perfect for Harry Potter and Online Porn Users,” but I decided against it at the last minute for obvious reasons, even when I had two powerful arguments in favour. You will understand them when you watch Helga–the Good Toshiba Witch of West Berlin–and myself in the video:
Bang bang, he shot me down Bang bang, I hit the ground Bang bang, that awful sound Bang bang, my baby shot me down.
Close-up and obligatory NSFW shot from the designer ahead.
Taking inspiration as well as construction cues from the massive NES controller table built in May, SCAD Inc., which I will charitably call a garage-based novelty enlargement collective, set out to build a giant-sized SNES controller, complete with functioning buttons. A few months later the build is complete, and it looks, well, huge. galleryPost('giantsnes', 6, '');
Always a microcosm of the greater world, the App Store this week focused on two things us Americans have been thinking about a lot recently–the upcoming election, and tossing back a few this Labour Day weekend. And with this week’s apps, there’s no reason for your iPhone to be left out.
Just a few days after the Dev Team released its jailbreak tool for the 2.0.2 firmware to Mac users, WinPwn 2.5 and the QuickPwn Tool for Mac have both appeared at about the same time, offering the ability to QuickPwn the latest iPhone and iPod Touch firmwares. In other words, not only can you jailbreak your iPhone or iPod and enjoy sweet, sweet Cydia and Installer action, but you also don’t have to go through the irritating process of building a custom firmware and carrying out a lengthy restore in iTunes.
When I complained on Twitter about a 2 hour iPhone sync, Giz reader Brandon Lusk told me I was lucky. He had a much longer sync, sometimes over 6 hours. I called bullshit. And so, he provided me with two videos, time-lapsed; this one is over 8 hours. That’s a full night of sleep. That’s a full day of high school. That’s longer than it takes to fly cross country, or drive from SF to Los Angeles. After seeing this video, I stopped complaining and tried to figure out what caused Brandon’s problem with him.
In the last few months car navigation systems have seen a variety of enhancements, from aerial photography to 3d city modelling to live traffic data and internet connectivity. None, however, have done live video. The Travel Pilot N700 has a small camera stuck on the back of the windshield-mounted unit that feeds live video on which navigation instructions are superimposed. The unit also features voice control, live traffic info, WLAN and Bluetooth connectivity and the ability to read and warn of traffic signs with the integrated camera. The price is expected to be about US$740, but the N700 is exclusive to Europe, for now. Video demo after the jump. [Motor Authority via Navigadget]
The Gadget: Sony Eriscsson’s TM506 is the first phone to be sold by T-Mobile that supports its still-rolling-out HSDPA network on the 1700/2100 MHz band. galleryPost("tm506review", 6, "");
newVideoPlayer("/samsungultrathin_gizmodo.flv", 506, 423,""); Scratch one more notch for Apple design influence, because next year’s top-of-the-range Samsung Ultrathin All-In-One looks like an oversized iPhone 3G, down to the finish in black or white. The 52-inch TV–which is 1-inch at its thickest point–includes all the circuitry and ports in its ultra-slim body, with no breakout boxes or hunchbacks. The result is the slickest TV we have seen in the whole of IFA 2008, beating the Sony ZX1. And the best looking so far this year.
The other day I walked into a coffee shop where I witnessed a man—a grown man—hunched over a tiny laptop. He wiggled with cautious, uncertain movements like a fat guy squeezing his way into an old pair of pants. His hands, too wide for the keyboard, made him look klutzy and a bit stupid. His face, in almost erotic proximity to the tiny screen, squinted to either see more clearly or repress the eyestrain. And to top off this scene of sleek convenience, a long, mismatching wire complete with power brick connected the computer to a nearby outlet. After all, such a small machine could never be expected to run off battery power alone!
