AT&T, who currently has a thing for cheap, underwhelming messaging phones, has teamed up with Samsung for an advertising campaign to promote their Propel QWERTY slider phone. This isn’t some budget spot either — it’s got Ozzy Osbourne. Two things we can learn from this commercial: 1.) Osbourne’s most marketable asset is currently his senility and 2.) apparently ‘QWERTY’ has joined general public’s jargon lexicon. So yeah, in other words, SABBBBATTHH!! Anyone? [Crunchgear]
Paper shredders are usually simple and utilitarian-designed boring boxes, which may be why Bluelarix Designworks went to town on this reimagining of the machine. Paper2Dust is bizarrely sculptural, and works by having a “fast turning cord” spinning inside the top that literally rips the paper you slide into it into dust. The glass lid of the machine lets you see how pulped the paper’s getting—when you’re satisfied you simply release the power button, and the dustified paper slips down into the machine’s leg. There’s the usual safety features of course, but if it ever made it into a real product I think its selling power would be the therapeutic value of seeing hated paperwork being vaporised. [Yanko Design]
Why Honda took a few days to seed a video of their potentially emasculating robotic legs is beyond me, but here it is: a faceless man running the “Walking Assist Device” through its strides (ha, ha). My fears of testicular danger are only partially mitigated, and the fact that the legs have a hilariously feminine gait doesn’t offer much comfort. That said, they do seem to work: the demonstrator never falls down, and appears to exert very little energy, even during deep squats. [Akihabara]
In a bid to set themselves apart from their increasingly inevitable competition, Vudu made a bold claim: , with 1100 HD movies, including about 150 in the fantastic HDX codec, they’ve got the largest HD movie library in the world, physical formats included. This sounds suspect until you consider that Netflix, Xbox Marketplace and Apple TV all offer under a thousand HD films, and that Blu-ray.com, which lists all available titles, only contains ~1030 discs, including some television shows.
In July there were some strong rumours that Dell would be bringing out a Zing-based MP3 player that would be a “Zune killer“: but now it looks like those plans have been canned. According to the Wall St Journal, Dell had been as close as this Autumn to making at least one Zing-device, but the prototypes are being “indefinitely” shelved. Instead Dell will turn its concentration to the software aspect of Zing, and busy itself incorporating that into its upcoming PCs as music and video management software. I’ll leave it to you in the comments to work out if Dell’s being sensible or not. [WSJ via Electronista]
newVideoPlayer("/sony200hz_gizmodo.flv", 520, 410,""); 100 Hertz, 100 Schmertz. If you really want smooth motion in your fast-moving action scenes, you need a TV with 200Hz technology. Apparently. Fortunately for you, Sony is bringing the goods, so all you need to do is bring the cash, and a transaction can be made. The Z Series Bravia includes three models: a 40-inch, 46-inch and a 52-inch, going for $3,399, $4,099 and $5,099 respectively. We’ve seen the MotionFlow 200Hz in action, and it looks the goods, especially for fast-moving games, so if you’re into that kind of thing, you might want to get into this kind of thing. Or you might want to wait until next year when the ZX1 lands, which brings 200Hz and a 9.9mm thin body – Your call.
[Sony]
Remember Chumby? That Wi-Fi enabled beanbag widget thing that hit the US back in February? Well it’s launching in Australia on Wednesday. Awesome, right? The surprising thing is that it’s coming to us not through a regular retailer, but through ISP Internode.
That doesn’t mean you need to be an Internode customer to get one though - they’ll be completely ISP-agnostic. It’ll cost you $299 for the squishy, linux-based device, plus you can pick up a variety of “outfits” for it for $39 each from Internode’s website.
At the moment, all the widgets for Chumby are pretty US-centric, but according to APC, Internode are hoping that Australia’s tech elite (that’s you!) start writing relevant Australian widgets. For its part, Internode will be releasing some Internode-specific applications like Internet radio channels that make the most of their unmetered content.
We’re trying to get our hands on a review unit, but if you happen to pick one up before us, let us know what you think. If you’re really keen, you can register your interest in the product on Internode’s Chumby page.
It’s been coming for what seems like a very long time, and now, thankfully, Samsung’s Omnia Windows Mobile smartphone has hit retail shelves in Australia.
It’s available through Vodafone’s $79 cap and Three’s $69 cap, for those of you looking for a non-Apple touchscreen smartphone. And considering that Samsung announced this phone on the same day that Apple launched the iPhone 3G, you can expect a few direct comparisons between the two handsets as reviews start hitting the Australian interwebs. Of course, if you can’t wait for that to happen, remember that Jesus had a hands on back in August and was not impressed. So hopefully it’s been tweaked a little since then, although it is running Windows Mobile – and we all know how hard it is to polish that…
[Samsung]
Poor Optus. It seems they can’t go a full week without getting slammed for the shoddy state of their 3G network. The latest blow comes from Dan Warne at APC, who’s reporting that Virgin Broadband (which uses Optus’ 3G network) has had to pull their wireless home internet service from retail shelves due to the sheer volume of complaints they were getting about the quality of the service.
The product is still available to purchase from their website, which enables them to be a lot more thorough when checking coverage areas for potential customers.
Hopefully Optus will sort their network out before Virgin’s broadband solution disappears completely – it’s a good idea for people who don’t really need a lot of bandwidth or speed from their internet.
[APCMag]
A couple of lucky ducks at genius factory MIT have been chosen by NASA to create the planes of the future. The future in this case is the year 2030, to be precise, and they’ll have $US2 million with which to do it. The Seaquest DSV-inspired image above is one of the initial designs pumped out by the team, led by MIT professor Edward Greitzer. In addition to designing sleek planes that will probably never see the light of day, the team will also be studying ways to make tomorrow’s big metal birds quieter, greener and more energy efficient. And MIT, let’s work on *insert lame leg room joke here* too, ok? [MIT]
