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If that headline made no sense to you, no worries. Carry on with your cushioned world of neutered iPhone apps. If it did, then you may be pleased to know that SlingPlayer Mobile is now available on Symbian phones running the UIQ interface. And just because we're so thoughtful, we pasted the currently supported phones after the jump.
Everyone who has owned a mobile phone over the last 10 years should at some point pour one out in thanks to Cliff Kushler, one of the inventors of the T9 text entry system that knows you mean "DONKEY" when you type 366539 in an SMS. Now Cliff is smartly shifting his focus on touchscreens with Swype--a way to type blindingly fast on a touchscreen by tracing your finger or stylus over the letters you want without lifting up, connect-the-dots style. It looks frankly amazing in a demo--so amazing that we remembered we've seen it somewhere before. Thankfully, it could be heading to the iPhone and Android really, really soon.
When The New Xbox Experience update hits at an unspecified time this fall, gamers will be able to install full titles to their system hard drives. And there's no doubt—every game will load faster because of the faster transfer times compared to DVD. But some will see marked improvements while others will be moderate to unnoticeable. Microsoft Germany explains:
Freedom isn't free, my friends, so sooner or later you knew that you'd be paying for iTunes. In iTunes 8, Apple has disabled the option to turn off those little arrow links that point your music tracks to the iTunes Store. Upon upgrading, one of our readers suddenly found himself inundated with arrows, lost in a sea of sales icons. Luckily, there's a 5-second workaround for Mac users.
This is the first groovy image produced by the Large Hadron Collider, showing some of the first protons accelerated today at 1028h Central European Time (0428h Eastern Time), the exact time when CERN scientists successfully fired up the LHC for the first time. As we told you earlier this morning, this wasn't the heads-on collision experiment, which will come later in the year.
Aircell, the company behind American Airlines and later Delta's in-flight Wi-Fi services, has just signed up Air Canada to be the next airline to offer its passengers the web in the air via Gogo. They'll soon begin fitting their Airbus A319s with the necessary gear, and the service will begin on select flights that cross the border to the south starting in the spring of 2009, guaranteeing no Canuck is without live NHL score updates and news about their bad-arse socialised health care for more than a few minutes at a time. Phew.
If you tuned into Giz yesterday, you may have noticed, if you looked really hard, that Apple released a few new iPods. And if you are a college student, maybe you realised that since the new iPods were available as of yesterday, they slipped right in for Apple's Back to School promotion (buy a new Mac, get an 8GB nano/touch free) that goes through Sept 15th. Unfortunately, a call to Apple retail revealed that Apple will not be honouring new iPods in this deal despite similar pricing. Sorry, college kids, I guess you'll just have to be happy with copious amounts of casual sex and inexpensive beer instead. [robreed]
The FitBit's just been unveiled at the TechCrunch 50 event, and it's an interesting gizmo: it's designed to clip to your clothing where it tracks your exercise activity, a bit like Nike+. But unlike the iPod/Nike combo, it wirelessly connects to its charger/basestation which sends data to an online database that tracks your performance. And it comes with a wrist-strap so you can wear it at night. Apparently as you slip into REM sleep your wrist will tremor slightly, and the FitBit uses this to work out your sleep quality. These prototypes have no screen, but the final product will have an OLED one that includes a Tamagotchi-style avatar that'll symbolise your health status. It's due in December for US$99. [Gearlog via BBG]
New York City fashion week may be a strange place to debut the average new laptop, but it's very fitting for HP's Vivienne Tam Special Edition machine. She was approached by HP to design them a new laptop, and she came up with something that's apparently a "true reflection of the needs of a modern woman who cares about fashion but is also passionate about her technology." Updated: More data has emerged on the machine
Sony Ericsson's upcoming Xperia X1 smartphone is due to go on sale at first in Europe in just 20 days. It'll hit the streets in the UK, Germany and Sweden then, followed by many other countries throughout the remainder of 2008. To "start the countdown" SE will be launching a live global webcast on September 15 at 1PM London time, demonstrating the handset's fucntions. That's fab news, and confirms that rumour the phone would go on sale this year... just not in the US. Dates for North America and other countries will be out "in the coming months" apparently. Press release below.
AU: Apparently, we're still on track for a Q1 2009 Release here in Australia.
Yes. It looks like we are still alive. The first ignition of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, is now underway and nothing has happened yet. But there's a simple reason for that, one that I realised two days ago and I didn't have time to actually write about until today: we got it all wrong. Everyone got it wrong.
We knew for sure that today was not the actual End of the World Day. Nothing--nothing according to Stephen Hawking--is going to happen when the the Large Hadron Collider tries to actually make those pesky particles to collide. But the fact is that today, you, my dear hadronmongers, it is not the day the collision was supposed to happen.
Today it's just the first beam test, not the actual first collision. That's programmed to happen on October 21, 2008. So all those stupid morons writing to us and CERN scientists will probably keep rambling for two more months.
As for the normal people, you can think about it as another extension to your life. In other words: You have two more months to find Uma Thurman/Brad Pitt/Richard Simmons and 1) convince her/him/it that the world is going to end and 2) you are the best lay there is to have before that happens. [Large Hadron Collider in Gizmodo]
A New York City school teacher that went missing almost two weeks ago was recently spotted at the 5th Ave Apple Store. Looks like 23-year-old Hannah Upp was just as obsessed over the Let's Rock event as we were—only instead of pulling a disappearing act three days before the start of the school year, we channelled our anxiety into non-stop Apple blogging and reviewing.
Upp's friends and family have informed all major New York publications (and Facebook) of her disappearance. According to her roommates, she had left her apartment on Sunday and then never came back. When she didn't return, they entered her room and found her keys, her phone, her wallet and ID still there. Random Apple store appearance aside, she's still nowhere to be found.
So, Upp, it's great to see that you're healthy and well, but all joking about Apple fandom aside, please get in touch with your loved ones! They're no doubt worried sick about you! And if any of you New York Gizmodo-ers spot her around, please contact the 30th Precinct. [ABCNews]
Gearheads at Carnegie Mellon University are partnering up with tractor-maker Caterpillar to build the world's largest robotic dump truck, a 700-tonne ground mover capable of hauling 240 tonnes of earth. In case you can't wrap your head around that amount, that's like 33 African bull elephants worth of dirt.
Looks like iTunes 8 is really not playing so well with Windows. Users of both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista are reporting getting the blue screen of death whenever they plug in an iPod or iPhone. Downgrading back down to 7.7 appears to solve the problem, but not without some weird, but easily fixable, app-erasing hijinks.
The BlackBerry Storm / Thunder, which should be coming to Verizon sometime in November for US$199, has finally been caught on video! At roughly 2:55, BREW Ninja whips out the touchscreen-y smartphone and shows off some of its apparently underwhelming (to him, at least) features--an accelerometer, a screen that functions as a button, and an ugly-as-sin on-screen keyboard. [BREW Ninja via Crackberry]
Apparently some Vudu beta testers are being asked to check out new HD downloads that are supposed to match Blu-ray quality. These new HDX flicks are so data heavy, you've gotta wait two to three hours just for the flick to start. This actually jibes with what we heard a few months ago--that Vudu was looking at offering two tiers of HD movies, though there's no guarantee that this is anything more than market research. That's a long time to wait for a quality (and likely, price) bump that your average Joe probably wouldn't be able to tell distinguish from their standard HD stuff. [Engadget]
China's HiVision has debuted a Linux-based laptop that makes the OLPC seem ridiculously expensive. For US$98, you get a MIPS-based processor, 1GB flash storage, 3 USB ports, Ethernet, an SDHC card reader, WiFi, audio in and out, voice-chat and Firefox browser support on a Linux user interface. No word who this is being marketed towards, but with a price tag that low, maybe this will end up being the device that fulfils Nicholas Negroponte's much criticised mission. The video above is Tech Video Blog's review of Hivision's miniNote (hmm, naming conflict with HP in the near future?) at IFC 2008. [ Tech Video Blog via The Earth Times]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 1:56 PM on September 10, 2008
I'm confused by the Asus strategy here - after naming everything small and cheap they can possibly come up with as "Eee", from ultraportables to monitors and desktops, they then go and produce another Netbook, but drop the Eee branding. It's confusing, that's for sure, but what isn't confusing is that we've been tipped off from a very reliable source that the N10E (a version of the N10 we saw the other day) will be launching in Australia by the end of the month for an RRP of $1,099.
It's much more expensive than the other Eee PCs, so that's probably the biggest factor in the naming scheme, but considering its 10.2-inch screen, Atom processor, 802.11n wireless, 120GB HDD, 1GB DDR2 RAM, and XP Home OS, it's not too expensive.
What do you guys reckon? Is this an Eee killer or Eee fodder?
Posted by Nick Broughall at 12:13 PM on September 10, 2008
You guys must have done something right. Remember that Sony media event we mentioned yesterday, UCHI? Well, it's exclusively for media (and Sony people of course). Oh, and five of you guys.
That's right. Sony are offering five Gizmodo readers the chance to win a double pass to the (very) exclusive UCHI party night on Thursday September 25. You can't get these tickets anywhere else - you can't even buy them (although I am open to bribery*).
There'll be food, drinks and a live performance by a Sony BMG artist - I know who it is, but I can't tell you. However, I can guarantee that it's not John Mayer.
Unfortunately though, it's only open to Sydney residents (or people prepared to travel to Sydney for one night's entertainment during the middle of the week.
How to enter:
Posted by Nick Broughall at 10:42 AM on September 10, 2008
Sony's new full-frame DSLR has a spec list to make any photographer salivate with anticipation. There's the whole 24.6-megapixel sensor, for a start. But there's also the in-body image stabilisation and the whole new image processor.
But surprisingly the Australian version will have some extra features that the US model seems to lack when it lands in mid-October. Like a $4,499 price tag for the body-only model, as opposed to the US$3000 ($3,700) you can pick the camera up for in the US.
Sure, we're pretty used to being charged a premium for gadgets here in Australia, but if you really want to pick up the new a900 from Sony, it might be a good idea to head online and try and get an overseas retailer to ship to you here in Australia. With the money you save you might be able to buy a lens or two.
[Sony]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 10:08 AM on September 10, 2008
One of the things I was planning on chasing up in the wake of the Apple devastation from overnight was whether or not Australia would be getting the HD versions of TV shows like the US. Turns out Gus over at Lifehacker did all the hard work for me though (thanks Gus!).
HD fans will be disappointed to learn that no, we won't be getting high-def versions of our favourite TV shows through iTunes. And while there's a part of me that cries out at the injustice of it all, another part thinks that it's probably a good thing, simply based upon the standard of internet speeds and data caps in this country.
If you need high-def TV shows, there are plenty of options for downloading from the US iTunes store. Just make sure you've got plenty of data included in your internet plan.
The second iteration of the iPod touch equals or improves upon its predecessor in almost every physical facet. Slimmer, lighter and more functional, the v.2 also gets new volume control buttons, full Nike+ integration and a built-in loudspeaker. It's not a radical change, but it's better.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 9:46 AM on September 10, 2008
Okay, so after the overnight feed the last thing some of you guys really want to see is more Apple coverage. Well, too bad. There are also some of you who want the lowdown on Aussie pricing. So for those readers, here it is:
Apple's decision to transition from the fat third-generation iPod nano to the new svelte fourth-generation iPod nano must have been an easy one. The latest version has the same size screen (just rotated vertically) and the same video support as before, but adds a much more comfortable (sorta) oval shape, a curved screen, an accelerometer, a 16GB version and most importantly, a much improved user interface that aims to solve some of the limitations the Clickwheel has compared to the iPod Touch and iPhone UIs. This evolution succeeds beautifully.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 8:12 AM on September 10, 2008
I hope you're in the mood for iPods... But first:
Sony Ericsson Planning to Offer Unlimited Music Service
As much as it sounds good in theory, I don't think it will really compete with iTunes.
Plastic Logic Reader Looks Like Kindle Killer
Attention Plastic Logic: Release this in Australia. Or else.
Sony a900 24.6-Megapixel Full-Frame DSLR Official, Only US$3000
24.6-megapixels? That's bordering on the obscene!
Microsoft BlueTrack Mouse: Laser Precision On Any Surface
I wonder if it really works on any surface?
Now, Apple stuff:
NBC returns to iTunes, iTunes 8 Launches and we have a look, new iPod nanos, new iPod Touch, colours for the Shuffle, death of the 160GB Classic, and Jobs isn't dead.
Today, right after Steve J. rolled out a "thin" 120GB iPod classic, Toshiba announced its 120GB 4200rpm 1.8" drive, a new high for that slimmer single-platter config. Everybody knows that's the drive for classic iPods. But Toshiba also showed off a fatter 240GB that would fit snugly in the spot where that 160GB drive fits in today's classics. So, tell us, Toshiba or Apple, where's the damn 240GB classic? What good is the classic line if it isn't the most storage you can get? [Press Release]
RIM just got official with its BlackBerry Pearl Flip (