New Home Gadgets

Trusted Reviews reviews the Samsung i640 and writes, “There is a front-facing camera for video calling. The 2-megapixel main camera is not much to write home about but it has a self-portrait mirror, and its back facing lens is hidden behind the slide when it is not needed, which should help with protection against scratching…The side-mounted camera button has long and short press functions; with a short press taking you to the Windows Mobile ‘Quick List’ profile switcher and a long press activating the camera itself…With the camera active, pressing up and down on the navi button accesses zoom while pressing left and right controls white balance. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung i640 Review - Trusted Reviews’…)

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by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted May 24th 2008 at 11:41AM
In the latest of what’s becoming a long history of tweaks to the Meizu M8 interface, Meizu CEO Jack Wong unleashed some new shots of the upcoming UI to his adoring fans. The new interface is designed by eico design — who have also worked with Google, Lenovo, and Philips — and looks to have a visually-satisfying sparkle animation for selected items (unless the battery above is just leaking). Another addition appears to be LED-styled status updates to applications, like number of missed calls and unread messages. (Read the full post about ‘Meizu M8 interface redesigned yet again, gets all sparkly’…)

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by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted May 24th 2008 at 2:03PM What this? Best Buy finally released the Insignia NS-BRDVD blu-ray player for an affordable $349.99. The design, like other in-house Insgnia-branded products, is questionable, but if you were looking into the PS3 as a player, this could be a $50 cheaper option if games aren’t your thing. The unit outputs at 1080P, decodes Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD, and decodes 2-channel Dolby TrueHD. Outputs include stereo audio, composite video, component video, optical Toslink, digital coax, and HDMI. (Read the full post about ‘Best Buy unleashes Insignia NS-BRDVD Blu-ray player for $349, PS3 yawns’…)

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The Spotlight Torch is definitely nifty to have in an emergency, and being of such a diminutive size, it makes perfect sense to carry one in the car at all times just in case of an emergency. While it is waterproof, make sure it doesn’t stay underwater for over half an hour.

Best of all for outdoor types, the Spotlight is fully submersible in water too. From changing a tyre during a monsoon to executing elaborate James Bond-style aquatic stunts, it won’t let you down when the going gets wet - which is more than we can say for your car insurance when they hear about your 007 underwater antics.

(Read the full post about ‘Spotlight Torch’…)

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by Ryan Block, posted May 24th 2008 at 10:16AMSo according to El Reg, it turns out ASUS is selling its Eee 900 laptops in the UK with 4400mAh batteries — quite a bit smaller than the 5800mAh batteries that come in the US version. It’s insult to injury when you consider that the larger screen necessarily sucks down more juice than on the 700 series, but ASUS explains that overseas users get a tradeoff in exchange: UK warranties last two years, supposedly longer than their US counterparts (although to be fair, we’ve heard of retailers listing the US Eee’s warranty at two years as well). (Read the full post about ‘UK ASUS Eee 900s come with stunted battery, longer warranty’…)

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by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted May 24th 2008 at 3:29AM
Remember when the Wrightspeed X1 electric car beat both a Ferrari 360 Spyder and Porsche Carerra GT off the line? Well, ex-Cisco and DEC engineer Ian Wright is back with his SR-71 that he says will do 0-60 in a brain-numbing 2.5 seconds. The new electric speed dart should show up in about 18 months and could even get a street-legal version in 36 months. (Read the full post about ‘Wrightspeed SR-71 electric car will do 0-60 in 2.5 seconds’…)

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by Ryan Block, posted May 24th 2008 at 12:25AMWe’ve been hearing for years of that certain elusive breed of human that is extra-sensitive to certain radio frequencies and electromagnetic fields, so it was only a time before those wire-tethered folks took shot across our wireless-loving bow. According to a local NBC news affiliate, Sante Fe resident Arthur Firstenberg (not pictured right) has organized a group of electro-sensitive citizens to rally against WiFi and cellphone use in public space, claiming it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Read the full post about ‘Santa Fe group allergic to RF wants WiFi banned’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted May 24th 2008 at 4:42AM
Go ‘head Oppo — get down with your bad self. This S11 portable media player may not be the most easily recognized on the streets, but it sure has a lot going for it. Aside from the sleek (dare we say sexy?) enclosure, the unit packs a 3-inch 400 x 240 resolution touch panel, video out port, integrated photo viewer / calender / stopwatch / calculator, a couple of games, file search capabilities and support for MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, AAC and APE audio files. On the video front, it’ll play nice with AVI, DivX, XviD, RM, RMVB and FLV formats. If the 4GB of internal memory just isn’t enough, there’s also a microSD slot for loading in additional media. (Read the full post about ‘Oppo offers up sleek S11 portable media player’…)

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by Nilay Patel, posted May 24th 2008 at 2:06AMWe hadn’t heard from struggling content-delivery service Akimbo in over a year, so it’s not really surprising that the latest news isn’t exactly cheerful: the company is shutting down, leaving only a “skeleton crew” behind to find a buyer for its remaining assets. Akimbo seemed like it was searching for a viable business model from the start (eventually leading the company to drop its hardware offerings entirely), and like other would-be set-top box vendors, it looks like the economics of content delivery were simply too skewed to wrestle into profitability. Any bets on who’s next?[Via GigaOM]Read PermalinkEmail this4 CommentsFiled under: Home Entertai (Read the full post about ‘Akimbo streams out of business’…)

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According to a Sony report straight from its Japan headquarters, its young OLED TV-display production unit will be funded with a $210-million investment in larger screens (over 16-inches at least) and will ramp-up by the end of 2008. This will put it in place for a full-line release of TVs in late 2009 or early 2010. Sony was the first manufacturer to launch a legitimate (if very expensive) OLED TV option, the XEL-1, late last year.

But Sony isn’t alone in testing out its OLED chops. Among a few others, Samsung is on record with their testing of their own OLED blend and has promised a few of these sets within the next two years.

(Read the full post about ‘Sony To Accelerate Production of Larger OLED TVs By Year’s End’…)

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