Saturday, October 4, 2008
Gadgets
Amazon’s Kindle 2 Suddenly Appears
10:57AM Wilson Rothman | Boy Genius just unveiled shots of what is very likely the Kindle 2. Notice the follow-up to the snowspeeder-like original Amazon e-book reader is more rounded, more early-iPod in its proportions, but still white with the same basic screen. The cool sparkly LCD status bar seems to be gone, a joystick has replaced the clickwheel, and the other buttons are smaller for fewer accidental page turns. No word on the availability of this baby, of course. As you might expect, Boy Genius has quite a few more pictures, and more details too, so feel free to drop on over there to have a look. We’ll be here when you’re ready to comment. [BGR] More »
Phones
DoCoMo DLP Phone Projects TV, Makes Butt Look Big
10:40AM Wilson Rothman | The NTT DoCoMo prototype phone shown in the video above has an embedded DLP projector, presumably using an LED light source in order to project a respectable 20- to 25-in. video image on the wall a few feet away. The downside, as you can hear from the dude asking questions (AOL Switched’s Tom Samiljan if I’m not mistaken) is that the phone is large, or at least small but strapped to a real brick of a projector. I guess we’re supposed to admire the image, and wait for the actual mini-projector technology to catch up. [TechPertPanel - YouTube] More »
Phones
G1 Pre-Sale Madness: T-Mobile Triples Production, Sells Them All
10:10AM Jesus Diaz | According to a T-Mobile spokesperson, pre-sale demand on the Android G1 is so big that they have already sold all their units. She says that this is specially impressive because it happened after they tripled the amount of available G1 mobile phones. Of course, this could mean anything without knowing actual shipping numbers, but it seems there’s plenty of interest despite its many shortcomings. If you want to pre-order yours, however, you can pre-order now through October 21 to get it at a later date: More »
Computers
Linux Netbooks Returned 4X More Than XP Editions, Says MSI
9:59AM Wilson Rothman | Netbooks were supposed to be this great inroad for Linux development, but it turns out that the XP side of the netbook business is doing a lot better in the area of customer satisfaction: MSI today told Laptop that, according to internal studies, “The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.” More »
Entertainment
Music Based on Pi Keeps Bodies Movin’ Forever
9:30AM Wilson Rothman | I’m starting to believe in those Apatow movies about nerds suddenly becoming popular without having to shed their nerdiness: A dude name Paul Slocum—who I’m picturing looks exactly like Michael Cera of SuperBad/Juno/Nick & Nora fame—hooked a crappy old amp to his little laptop, told the laptop to continuously calculate the digits of the magical constant pi, digits that run to infinity to the right of the decimal point, and turned those digits into synth commands for surprisingly danceable house music. More »
Screens
Sony’s Bendy Organic Screen Means Video Clothes, Animated Cereal Boxes At Last
9:23AM Wilson Rothman | OLEDs are pretty much awesome, but the coolest application, the bendy one, is still tricky, because flexible plastic is more porous than stiff glass, and OLEDs get really upset when they come in contact with oxygen. Apparently, though, Sony and Germany’s Max Planck Institute have cooked up a flexible and transparent organic display that will do alright, when it is released in the undisclosed future. More »
Toys
Baseball Bat Can Break Lego Minifig Legs
9:20AM Jesus Diaz | Believe it or not, there are no baseball bats in the Lego universe. Why? Probably because a minifig could use one to break another minifig’s plastic cranium. And we all know that you can’t use weapons in Lego’s universe, much less break minifig craniums. This is why Brickarms, the dealer of All Things Violent for Lego minifigs, has released the baseball bat weapon, including a psychopath minifig posing with it for their publicity shots: More »
Phones
Blackberry Bold’s US Debut Delayed Yet Again
9:12AM Adrian Covert | Say it ain’t so, Joe AT&T. According to RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis, the communications giant has delayed the release of the Bold on their network due to testing, possibly to safely avoid epic, bug-related fails. AT&T did go on record, only saying the phone is still scheduled to drop this year. But the longer you keep the BB faithful from the Bold, the more time they have to consider that other phone on AT&T. [AP via Phonescoop] More »
Weapons
Osprey Gatling Gun Uses Xbox 360-like Controller
8:45AM Jesus Diaz | Christian from Defence Tech is at the Modern Day Marine Expo, where instead of having girls in mini-bikinis caressing speedboats and yachts, they have girls in mini-bikinis caressing torpedoes and gatling guns. Like this one on board the Osprey, which uses a controller with the same shape and functionality of an Xbox 360 gamepad. More »
Computers
