Mobile Devices

USB Humping Dog

You can have this for ?6.95

According to estimates based on carrier’s numbers, only 2/3 of iPhones are “legally” activated, which means 1/3 of all iPhones sold are SIM unlocked and being used sans carrier contract. Here’s how they arrived at this number.

First, AT&T put out a press release saying that 2 million iPhones were subscribed on their service by the end of 2007. The three European carriers with iPhones (O2, Orange and T-Mobile) don’t have official numbers, but iLounge rates them at about 300-400k, which means the total is only around 2.4 million. This, with Apple’s announcement that 3.7 million iPhones were sold in 2007, makes put the number at about 1/3 of all iPhones being unlocked.

Even if the European iPhone numbers are low and AT&T customers haven’t activated their Christmas phones yet, that still puts unlocked iPhone numbers somewhere around 1/3 to 1/4, which is extremely high by any count. [iLounge - Thanks David!]

Posted Jan 24th 2008 4:36PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Digital Cameras
Our mediocre efforts at “photography” are bad enough with a full-on viewfinder, so we shudder to think what might come out at the other end of a session with this here artsy EazzzY USB camera stick concept — which is exactly why we’re so interested. Designed by Sungwoo Park and featured over on Yanko Design, EazzzY probably hasn’t a chance at ever making it to market, but we can imagine quite a few hipster types that’d jump at the chance to do some shooting-from-the-hip with this colorful thing. And that’s really what matters.

Posted Jan 24th 2008 10:57AM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Laptops
It’s taken a while, but it looks like folks in Japan can now finally get their hands on Asus’s diminutive and eminently-hackable Eee PC, although not exactly the same models we have ’round these parts. Dubbed the Eee PC 4G-X, the Japan-centric laptop is apparently identical to the regular 4G model, with the notable exception that it now comes pre-loaded with Windows XP Home Edition as standard instead of the usual Linux OS. That, of course, takes up a hefty chunk of the 4GB of internal storage, so Asus has thoughtfully 4GB SDHC card with the laptop as well. Look for it to be available in your choice of black or white for ¥50,000 (or about $468), with free access to NTT’s WiFine hotspot network thrown in for good measure.

Posted Jan 24th 2008 2:04PM by Steven Kim
Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment
If you thought that only digital cameras were getting treated to biggie-size rollouts in the leadup to PMA next week, check out the announcement of 17(!) new AQUOS LCDs from Sharp. First up, there are 13 new models in the D series. You guessed it, folks: customers get to mix and match a rainbow of colors across the 20, 26 and 32-inch sizes. Other than the sheer number of choices available, nothing really catches our eye in these units: 1366×768-pixels and 1500:1 contrast; the 26V and 32V models get the addiiton of AQUOS Familink (CEC). If you need a little bigger display, move on down the cereal LCD aisle and check out the four new E series AQUOS models. No color choices here, which we guess means at these sizes you’re more interested in looking at the images than the casing. There are four new models coming in at 37, 42, 46 and 52-inches. Bigger means better in these 1080p panels, with a contrast of 2000:1, 120Hz frame rates and low reflectivity glass. Initially available in Japan, with no prices announced yet.

What’s that? You want another tradeshow? CES and MacWorld wasn’t enough? Well we’re out of ideas…oh wait how about something involving cameras. Yes cameras that’s it!

Next week Gadget Lab scribe and all around photo nut Dave Bullock will be down on the floor of the Las Vegas convention center reporting on all the camera news that matters. Don’t worry though — we won’t burden you with a bunch of mindless regurgitated press releases or banal refreshes of some no name point and shooter. What we will do is bring you the breaking news on new, innovative cameras that you’ll actually care about. Insightful commentary, expert reporting, sprinkles of hilarious jokes. It’s PMA 2008 and it’s brought your way by Gadget Lab.

Spaceship 2, bigger, faster, and now available for modding! Unbind Digital Photo Album goes green Human Touch Zero-Gravity Massage Chair Choro-Q remote control car Women targeted by Disney Cell phone service Wrong Number Generator Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism unleashed AT&T lets you forgo the purchase of a new phone with your contract CarShield helps keep you safe Freeplay Companion announced Belkin announces Neoprene MacBook Air Sleeves Linktropy Mini from Apposite Technologies Disney testing another HiTech guide for the Magic Kingdom Turntable Watch WEE WILLY Professional Faceshield Cleaning System Apple adds pink iPod nano to lineup Thumbnail gallery plugin by SoftSift

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newVideoPlayer(”n95spot.flv”, 475, 376,”");The Pitch Nokia ramps up its N95 8GB campaign with this lyrical-yet-baffling spot, featuring an array of international archetypes absorbing media in ways that may soon be obsolete: sitting in darkened cinemas, listening to battered boomboxes, watching interference-addled TVs. The narrator’s ghostly voice spills forth from the various antiquated devices on display, warning the actors that their worlds are about to be turned upside down—no longer shall they be tethered to the clock radios, opera houses and coin-op games of yore. Thanks to the N95 8GB, the mobile-entertainment future is now—at least for consumers willing to part with $779. Is Nokia about to give Apple a run for its money in the high-end cellphone market, something the Finnish giant has been hankering to do for a while? Or has Nokia picked precisely the wrong N95 8GB virtues to tout?

The Spin A viewer unfamiliar with the N95 8GB might be forgiven for walking away from this ad unaware that the device is, indeed, a phone, rather than Nokia’s souped-up answer to the Archos 605. Yeah, there’s a brief shot of the keypad at the end, but the hype’s exclusively about the media capabilities (”Play movies/play games/play music” sayeth the copy). So goes Nokia’s strategy to get the N95 8GB to filter down to non-geeks— the early adopters went ga-ga over the third-party apps, but the next tier of consumers (Nokia hopes) will be dazzled by the audio, video and N-Gage games. Oh, and note the lack of speaking parts for the actors. Nokia must be going for that vaunted all-in-one international approach—you can be sure that voice-over artists from Malaysia to Mexico will be enlisted to tailor the spot for their home markets. (In fact, here’s an edited version in Italian.)

Counterspin Tough to see how Nokia is going to capture mainstream hearts and minds without offering a serious price reduction on the N95 8GB. Remember, Apple slashed the iPhone’s price pretty early on, despite (debatedly) gangbuster sales to early adopters; the company knew it had to ratchet down the cost-of-entry to reach the fat part of the consumer bell curve. Nokia seems oddly confident that quality alone will convince a new class of consumers to buy the N95 8GB, an assumption that doesn’t seem justified given the legitimate gripes about the phone’s shortcomings (most notably the lack of a QWERTY keyboard). All due respect to the company for its policy of openness toward application developers, but built-in basics are going to be more important to the majority of users.

Mission Accomplished? It’s a little hard to tell what Nokia has in mind for the N95 8GB this year, as the company prepares to go full-bore in North America. Based on its past ads trumpeting the N95 8GB’s third-party apps—ads which were explicit swipes at Apple—Nokia would seem to have the iPhone in its sights. But then why the accent on multimedia instead of productivity tools? What wowed so many people about the iPhone was the ability to access the (*groan*) “real Internet.” The N95 8GB can do likewise, and it even works with Flash. Nokia is going to have to do a much better job of highlighting those features, because few people will want to drop nearly eight hundred bucks on a glorified Archos 605 (which retails for well south of $350). Still, all the handsome hype in the world may not be able to mainstream the N95 8GB—the lack of a QWERTY combined with the lack of a touchscreen is very 2005. (If only this video wasn’t a hoax…)

Hype-O-Meter 4 (out of 10). A gorgeous and clever ad in many ways, but a puzzling message for a $779 phone looking to break beyond the monied geek elite.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired, a columnist for Slate, and author of the forthcoming Now the Hell Will Start. His Hype Sheet column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Via’s Isaiah CPU platform, as efficient as its older C7 lineup but more than twice as fast, marks a line in the sand for the longtime maker of low-power chips.

"People used to say that if you’re not making 3GHz processors, you’re not real men," said G. Glenn Henry, president of Via subsidiary Centaur. "What everyone is now doing is very rewarding … what they’re doing suggests what we’ve done is right."

The new chips are 64 bit, will offer clock speeds of up to 2GHz, have front side busses of up to 1.3Ghz, two 64KB L1 caches and a 1MB L2 cache. Via’s especially proud of its floating point unit performance, which it says is the world’s fastest, and its "aggressive" power management features.

They don’t replace the C7 series, however, and are pin-compatible with them. In effect, C7 chips become a lower-performing budget model at the foot of the refreshed lineup. Manufacturers will be able to use both without retooling factories or redesigning their existing Via-based products.

In the last few years, chip giants Intel and AMD have moved in on the turf Via’s been tending for over a decade, thanks to the rise of tiny computers and little corresponding progress in battery technology. Ultramobile PCs and similar handhelds often can’t run for more than a few hours in real-world use, and everyone in the industry wants to make the most power-sipping chips possible.

Henry said that Via’s successes in making such chips and the motherboards that house them — recent customers include Samsung, OQO, WiBrain, Everex, Packard Bell and others — shows that it’s in the right place.

Richard Brown, Via’s director of international marketing, said that while it’s much smaller than its rivals, this gives is more agility and responsiveness in the marketplace.

"It’s a major achievement when you think of the thousands of people who work at Intel and at AMD."

Added Henry: "Development cost matters, and our development costs are low."

Candle Table - romance in your room. Jan 24, 2008 Do you want anything romantic? Candles - what else can be more romantic? All these little candles, even really beautiful and amazing, aromatic and multicolored are almost nothing in comparison with Candle Table.

This table can become a perfect surprise for a party, or any other holiday. The necessary atmosphere is guaranteed. The biggest advantage of this Candle Table is that you have the possibility to set the amount of time it burns before it automatically extinguishes itself. It means that you may fall asleep while the candles will be burning and nothing terrible will happen to them and your room. Rather handy function, don’t you think so?

All you have to do is to feed up to 3 inches (about an hours worth) of the pliable unscented beeswax coil through the patented candle clip and enjoy yourself. Nothing complicated, but a lot of attracted attention and amazement are guaranteed.
The Candle Table can become the only thing to surprise your lover and create an unforgettable evening.