Gizmodo Australia » vapour

‘Top Secret’ Zumba Voice-Controlled Phone Looks Like Spy Gear, Smells Like Vapour

John Herrman — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:27:20 +0000

In this video, the BBC takes us inside the top secret headquarters of IA Technology, where the former ejector seat company is working on the “world’s first fully accurate voice recognition phone,” the Zumba.

Accompanied by a card-like carrying case/base station, the Zumba slips out into an earpiece shaped like one of those old fossilised spiral shellfish. The entire assembly sits on your head, and operates all functions, including texting, through voice commands.

Our lovely presenter can’t tell us anything interesting about how this technology works (or more realistically, will one day work), other than that it is linked to some kind of cloud system, much like Google’s iPhone voice app. She enthusiastically blames this on extreme secrecy, but it sounds more like second-hand PR speak to me. Also, her demonstration unit appears to be a dummy, and there’s no sign that the touted speech recognition capabilities exist yet either.

The Zumba will apparently ship before next year. Or, IA Technology will explode into a massive cloud of unsent patent applications and investors’ £100 notes. Either way, we have our eyes on you, Zumba. [BBC]

MSI Wind Laptop to Make Eee PC Cry, “Eeek!”

Haroon Malik — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:50:00 +0000

Check out the latest entrant in the UMPC race, the MSI Wind, which we missed at CeBIT earlier last week. Toting a 10-inch display, Intel Shelton’08 platform, with variable processor speeds from 1.0GHz – 1.6GHz; 2.5-inch HDD or SSD, 1GB RAM, a reported 7-hour battery life and running either Linux or Windows operating systems, it seems MSI’s offering holds a lot of promise.

As we have yet to see an active screen shot from the MSI Wind we expect that it is still at prototype stage, but that has not stopped MSI churning out blue, silver and pink iterations. The styling is certainly a step up from the Eee PC, but perhaps that Eee body rework we heard about earlier will throw off the new competition. The Wind is expected to be priced between €299 (US$458) – €699 (US$1072), depending on options chosen. All in all, the sizable keyboard, price point and decent display size have our attention for sure. There is no word on a release date as yet, but we’ll keep you posted. [PC World Italia via Notebook Italia]

HP’s Fantasy Portable Gamer Is Actually Real… Vapour

Wilson Rothman — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:04:44 +0000

If you ever saw the HP video Roku’s Reward where a kid walks around with a PSP-ish handheld, playing a real-life video game, you might have wondered if HP will ever release the said gaming device. It is real, at least that’s what HP Personal Systems CTO Phil McKinney claimed as he held it aloft. (Looked fake from here—what do you think?) Anyway, the Mscape may be real, but he says HP has no plans to introduce a handheld gaming platform. Not yet, at least. We’ll be here when you do, Phil.

Zenum Smartphone Slated to Debut This Month

Seamus Byrne — Fri, 11 May 2007 15:00:34 +0000

The sexy Zenum Opus smartphone has been making its way around the Interwebs for quite some time, and today it’s finally getting a release date. According to the gang at Unwired (who checked in with Zenum), the smartphone will be out later this month. It’ll come with a 2-megapixel camera, Windows Mobile 6, a 2.5-inch display and both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (sorry, no 3G). Sounds really enticing, but considering their last project never came to be, I have a sinking feeling this phone will forever be a concept too. â€“ Louis Ramirez

Zenum Opus PDA Phone in May [Unwired via Slash Gear]