Snapture offers editing software designed to run on the iPhone and it has now announced a new polycarbonate case that not only protects the iPhone from damage, but also adds a bright Xenon powered flash.
The case has a rechargeable battery that offers enough power for 1000 flashes or more. A low-light detection sensor automatically activates the flash when needed. I will say that the iPhone needs a flash, but the optics also need work before the iPhone is really a camera replacement.
It’s a pretty cool looking phone. I think the only thing they could have done was to make the dragon’s eyes glow red when there’s an incoming call. Sadly, it doesn’t breath fire either, but it will burn a hole in your pocket with it’s enormous cost.
Yes those are jewels in the dragon’s body.
OCZ introduced a new flash drive this month called the Throttle that does away with one of the common threads in the flash drive world — the USB connector. Rather than the comparatively pokey USB port, OCZ grafts a full-blown eSATA connector onto the Throttle.
The use of an eSATA connector allows the Throttle to offer blazing fast read and write speeds for a flash drive. OCZ claims a read speed of 90MB/sec and a write speed of 30MB/sec. The Throttle is also available with up to 32GB of storage space. With a much faster interface and high capacity, this flash drive might actually be useful to me.
The most significant item for us on this particular MP3 player was the storage capacity. This little device now comes with the ability to pack as much as 8GB of music which is really a lot of songs. Connect it to your computer through the included USB cable and quickly transfer music or even use the device as mass storage to go. Also as we had mentioned when the 8GB Clip first came out, the clip provides 4x the storage of the iPod Shuffle for just a small more in price. But the storage is not all you get.
The Sansa Clip measures just 2.17″ x 1.35″ x .65″, weighs under an ounce and houses an FM radio tuner, microphone, equalizer and the ability to visually navigate your music, stations and settings through a surprisingly easy-to-see 1″ landscape display.
Using the Clip was easy and pretty intuitive. It has sliding power button on the left which is used to turn the device on and off and to lock the controls. The little sliding button was a little loose and rattled some when we would move around on our sample model, however other than that the player felt very solid. On the opposite side of the player is the volume and I have to say that compared to other MP3 players I’ve used, having separate buttons for the power and the volume was nice and made it easy to manage without even having to look at the player.
But, looking at the player is actually one of the nicest features. Sandisk has somehow created that small one-inch display to be big enough to easily read the songs that are playing, menu options and tune in radio stations. In fact, there is multiple lines of content on the display which is relatively easy to navigate.
The center buttons control the main navigation and I did find myself trying to rotate the circular button multiple times, but the navigation basically uses the outer circle for pushing up, down, left or right on the corresponding side. The center button is for selecting and there is a small “Home” button on the front that brings you back to the beginning which made it pretty easy to get around.
Tuning in radio stations was quick and easy as the player has a feature to quickly scan through and find all the stations available within range and has up to 40 preset stations. You can use the recording feature as well to easily record songs on the radio without any ambient noise from the microphone. The recording can be set for a predetermined amount of time or started and stopped at will, and the result is an MP3 file that you can transfer onto your computer and edit or move anywhere you would like. The device also has a microphone that allows you to record the sounds around you from class, personal notes or friends, and with an 8GB capacity you can record a lot.
The player comes packaged with a decent set of headphones (not great, but decent) some brief instructions that are mostly unnecessary and an installation disk with free one month subscription to Rhapsody. The Clip also has an internal battery with 15 hours of continuous playback ability which in our case actually lasted longer. With a combination of perusing the menu, playing the radio and MP3 music we hit almost 17 hours before the battery gave out.
In conclusion we were presently surprised with the Sansa Clip. The device is small and convenient, holds a relatively large capacity of data and has a larger feature set than it’s competitors for a comparable price. The 8GB Sansa Clip goes for $99.99, but you can get the same features with smaller capacities (and different colors) for as little as $34.99.
Get it? SongView? It comes with the usual remote for controlling all the features, line out and line in jacks for external speakers and will take a non-iPod MP3 player as well. Not too bad for $99.99.
It even looks fairly decent design-wise. The main thing is you won’t have to squint to read the scrolling info.
According to iDealsChina sources, the phone will feature EDGE data, but otherwise is pretty identical in specs to its predecessors. Well, it has a smaller screen. According to them, Apple plans to sell tons of these for low prices in places like Walmart, and that the company will be unveiling the new handset in January during Macworld.
They even say that leaked photos of the device should be surfacing in the next few days. Pretty bold claims. I guess we’ll see.
Rockstar has announced that free download content will be coming for owners of the game. The DLC is called the South Central Upgrade Map and will include a new area of the city that is about 1/3 the size of the entire original map. The pack includes Exposition Park, USC campus, Crenshaw Plaza, and more.
Along with the new and free map will also be a pay update that adds new races, cars, and music along with character competitions to the new map. The new vehicles will include cars, SUVs and a new motorcycle. Pricing is unknown for the pay content and availability is set for early 2009 release.
| |
The news is that Project Pink may include Zune Mobile support, which may render into a Zune Mobile software package for Windows Mobile that could well be more robust media support than any previous Microsoft powered mobile phone, and could also predict a mobile downloads store.
It becomes available on December 26th, and the laptop features a 16-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1,366×768 with a 2.40GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600, 2GB of memory, 320GB of HDD, an Intel GM45 Express Chipset, a Blu-ray drive, digital TV tuner, four USB ports, WiFi b/g/n, and HDMI output. The secondary display offers a resolution of 480×272. You can purchase this notebook for 250,000 Yen or about €2000.
| |
The ultra fast booter is powered by a Core 2 Quad Q9650 CPU with a P45TS Intel motherboard, 2GB of DDR2, 500GB of SATA II HDD, and nVidia GeForce with 512MB of VRAM. The Fortission Q96500XN DVR-4S retails for 119,800 Yen in Akihabara, or you can purchase it online in Japan for around €990.
1. Force-quit an application. Now that the iPhone is a real handheld computer, it's not immune from the occasional misbehaving application. If one freezes up on you, force-quit by pressing and holding the Home button for 6 seconds.
 |
| Make reservations the easy way. |
3. Double-down with scrolling. Many Web pages contain separate text boxes with their own scroll bars. If you're trying to move around in one, try this: Zoom in, and then scroll with two fingers instead of one. That will let you scroll just inside the box and not affect the position of the entire page.
4. Maximize battery life, part 1. iPhone and iPhone 3G models have more sensors than just the
 |
| Maximize battery life, part 2 |
6. Grab a screenshot. The latest iPhone software lets you easily take screenshots of just about anything. To grab one, hold down the Home button and press the Sleep/Wake button. The iPhone will deposit a photo of the current screen in the iPhone's Photo application.
 |
| Get a bigger keyboard in Safari. |
 |
| Keep Safari's address bar handy. |
9. Enter punctuation quickly. To enter a period while using the on-screen keyboard, hold down the Punctuation key and slide your finger over to the Period button. Then release it. (This works for all punctuation, of course.)
 |
| Ride the dot-com wave. |
Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, and trade shows have become a very small part of how Apple reaches its customer base. Also, the increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores factor into it as well. More than 3.5 million people visit them every week. Plus the Apple.com website lets Apple reach more than a hundred million customers around the world.
We’ll still have the technology, just not the event.
We knew that the chassis was going to be limited to 500 worldwide already. Pricing for the limited edition case, cooling fan, and PSU bundle will be $599. The complete bundle will include the Cosmos Black chassis, Hyper Z600 Black Label Cooler, and a Cooler Master UCP 700 or Real Power M850 PSU depending on the region.
The non functioning prototype features a rear facing 3.2 megapixel camera with 2x optical zoom and a flash, a front-facing webcam, and it measures about 6.3 x 3.3 x 1.3-inches with a 4.5 or 5-inch screen. The processor, as well as OS and storage capacity are unknown. So there’s still some mystery here. We have no idea if it’s on track for release or just a prototype. We may learn more at CES.
It certainly likes to tease.
It’s got an 8x SuperDrive, a few I/O connectors, a high-quality hard drive and a CPU similarly to the MacBook. I’m guessing the screens fold into the main screen without scratching themselves somehow or they detach. Pretty sweet design. Let’s hope Apple is paying attention. I don’t know about the huge trackpad though.
As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.
Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.
Why Google's patented PigeonRank™ works so well
PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.
By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.
When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.
Integrity
Google's pigeon-driven methods make tampering with our results extremely difficult. While some unscrupulous websites have tried to boost their ranking by including images on their pages of bread crumbs, bird seed and parrots posing seductively in resplendent plumage, Google's PigeonRank technology cannot be deceived by these techniques. A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.
Data
 |  |  |
 The Star Wars stage show will get its premiere at the O2 in London in April |
Star Wars fans are to feel the force of the seminal sci-fi films and their iconic soundtracks on stage in a major new show, which will launch next year.
In Star Wars: A Musical Journey, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will play a live score as excerpts from the six films are shown on a cinema screen.
The show has been put together by director George Lucas' company Lucasfilm and composer John Williams.
It will premiere at the O2 arena in London in April before a European tour.
It will not be a traditional musical with actors playing characters from the films, but will feature live narrators.
The six Star Wars films have been edited down to two hours for the show, and Williams has "painstakingly rewritten" the music he wrote for the movies, a statement said.
Pantech and AT&T have announced a new handset called the Pantech C630 that could be perfect for those wanting a simple phone with a good feature set for a low price. The C630 will be available to purchase starting tomorrow for only $39.99 with a 2-year agreement.
The S9 also supports a touchscreen user interface, gravity sensor, zoom in and out flash menu and video clip preview function. The battery will give you up to 55 hours of music playback, 11 hours of video playback, and up to 350 hours of standby time. The Cowon S9 will be available in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB storage sizes. The DMB model will be released next year.
They also feature a special YouTube capture mode that allows you to record YouTube-friendly videos that won’t need to be converted later, helping you save some time. Both models feature 42x optical zoom with image stabilization. The GZ-MG840 will retail for about $757, while the GZ-MG860 will go for about $811.
Only new accounts and new line activations apply. Those who want to upgrade from where they are at the moment will still have to put some clothes on and head toward a store. But this does make things a whole lot more convenient for everyone. Especially nudists, WoW players and shut-ins.
The most significant item for us on this particular MP3 player was the storage capacity. This little device now comes with the ability to pack as much as 8GB of music which is really a lot of songs. Connect it to your computer through the included USB cable and quickly transfer music or even use the device as mass storage to go. Also as we had mentioned when the 8GB Clip first came out, the clip provides 4x the storage of the iPod Shuffle for just a small more in price. But the storage is not all you get.
The Sansa Clip measures just 2.17″ x 1.35″ x .65″, weighs under an ounce and houses an FM radio tuner, microphone, equalizer and the ability to visually navigate your music, stations and settings through a surprisingly easy-to-see 1″ landscape display.
Using the Clip was easy and pretty intuitive. It has sliding power button on the left which is used to turn the device on and off and to lock the controls. The little sliding button was a little loose and rattled some when we would move around on our sample model, however other than that the player felt very solid. On the opposite side of the player is the volume and I have to say that compared to other MP3 players I’ve used, having separate buttons for the power and the volume was nice and made it easy to manage without even having to look at the player.
But, looking at the player is actually one of the nicest features. Sandisk has somehow created that small one-inch display to be big enough to easily read the songs that are playing, menu options and tune in radio stations. In fact, there is multiple lines of content on the display which is relatively easy to navigate.
The center buttons control the main navigation and I did find myself trying to rotate the circular button multiple times, but the navigation basically uses the outer circle for pushing up, down, left or right on the corresponding side. The center button is for selecting and there is a small “Home” button on the front that brings you back to the beginning which made it pretty easy to get around.
Tuning in radio stations was quick and easy as the player has a feature to quickly scan through and find all the stations available within range and has up to 40 preset stations. You can use the recording feature as well to easily record songs on the radio without any ambient noise from the microphone. The recording can be set for a predetermined amount of time or started and stopped at will, and the result is an MP3 file that you can transfer onto your computer and edit or move anywhere you would like. The device also has a microphone that allows you to record the sounds around you from class, personal notes or friends, and with an 8GB capacity you can record a lot.
The player comes packaged with a decent set of headphones (not great, but decent) some brief instructions that are mostly unnecessary and an installation disk with free one month subscription to Rhapsody. The Clip also has an internal battery with 15 hours of continuous playback ability which in our case actually lasted longer. With a combination of perusing the menu, playing the radio and MP3 music we hit almost 17 hours before the battery gave out.
In conclusion we were presently surprised with the Sansa Clip. The device is small and convenient, holds a relatively large capacity of data and has a larger feature set than it’s competitors for a comparable price. The 8GB Sansa Clip goes for $99.99, but you can get the same features with smaller capacities (and different colors) for as little as $34.99.
Earlier this week I reported on the leaked sales flyer that claimed RadioShack would be selling an AT&T 3G equipped version of the One for $99 with a 2-year agreement for mobile broadband service. RadioShack has officially announced the $99 deal and confirmed the story just as we ran it on the 9th.
This mod is the work of a clever high school modder who completed the project one night, instead of chasing girls and boozing it up. See kids, a clean life will yield great Lego geek toys. Looks like this kid basically just gutted his PS and inserted the innards into a custom Lego case. Which doesn’t make it easy, just simple.
Each driver of a car will have a separate key device. When the key is extended from the device, it emits a signal that puts the teenagers phone in “Driving Mode,” so that they can’t use it and kill you. In driving mode the phone will display a stop sign and hopefully the death loving teen will get in the habit of leaving the phone alone while driving.
UK - Orange has achieved the number one position in customer experience in the mobile broadband market according to an in-depth report commissioned by independent research and consulting organisation, YouGov.
The report highlights that Orange has bolstered its customer satisfaction ratings, winning customers over with its outstanding network performance. Specific emphasis is placed on Orange network reliability at any point during the day or night, its network coverage reach, and its ability to deliver a continuous mobile broadband connection.
“Being awarded the best mobile broadband network by our customers across the UK is a real honour. We have taken significant measures to improve the quality of our network for both voice and data, and are so glad that our customers are really starting to see the benefit,” commented Paul Tollet, vice president, Orange Business. “Orange is not only committed to improving our overall network coverage but we also go that extra bit further and develop the right tariffs, services and devices so everyone can get the benefit of mobile broadband wherever they are, whenever they want and at the right price.”
Orange is continuing to improve and invest in its network for both voice and data to further improve customer experience:
Yahoo! oneSearch is specifically designed for the needs of a mobile user, intuitively returning results directly in the first screen, removing the need for consumers to navigate through thousands of links to find the information they want.
* For instance, when a search for a football team is entered, Yahoo! oneSearch returns the latest scores, fixtures, team profiles, news, images and a link to the team's Web site.
* Alternatively, if a user searches for a film, Yahoo! returns showing times at local cinemas, reviews, news articles and information on the cast.
Yahoo! oneSearch will provide Virgin Media’s mobile consumers with relevant information on virtually any topic –- from news, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr™ photos and lottery results, to Web and mobile web sites, travel information, integrated information from Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, and much more. Yahoo! oneSearch will also display relevant ringtones, wallpapers, games and other content within search results.
Nokia tannounced the latest addition to its Eseries range, the Nokia E63, designed for people who need to manage their business and personal lives equally well. Building on the success of the Nokia E71, the company's flagship messaging device, the Nokia E63 brings the QWERTY keyboard form factor to a broader audience at a great price. The Nokia E63 is expected to begin shipping in the coming weeks for an estimated retail price of EUR 199, before taxes and subsidies.
People use mobile devices to share their lives with friends and family and with this in mind, Nokia introduces the Nokia 6260 slide. The phone call is the most obvious way to use the new handset to connect with people, but it will also be used to share photographs and videos, check on a friend's social network status or be guided to a restaurant to meet up with a loved one. For this, the Nokia 6260 slide features quick access to search engines and points of interest straight from the home screen and the new 360° navi-key allows a great mobile Internet experience.
Motorola announced the arrival of MOTO VE66 with enhanced CrystalTalk™ audio technology, a 5-megapixel camera and MP3 player-like navigation for a 1-2-3 punch of great call quality, sharp pictures and an enjoyable music experience. The sleek, slider device also boasts the first widgets integration on a Motorola mobile device, which means you receive easier, more seamless access to what matters most – whether you crave sports scores, stock tickers or RSS feeds from your favorite blogs.
Powered by the Windows® Mobile 6 operating system, the Traveler 619 comes pre-loaded with Microsoft® Outlook® Mobile (Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Inbox), Word Mobile, Excel® Mobile, PowerPoint® Mobile, Internet Explorer Mobile, Picture, Notes, ActiveSync, Calculator, Game, Voice Recorder, MSN® Messenger, Media® Player 10.
