New Home Gadgets

by Paul Miller, posted Jun 5th 2008 at 3:12PM
We just got our hands on Nokia’s sexy new N78, which it’s bringing to us previously Nokia-starved North Americans in full-fledged, unlocked 3.5G. The phone boasts Nokia’s new maps 2.0 app, along with photo geotagging, and of course all those N-series trimmings like WiFi and dual cameras. There’s no N-Gage support yet, but a firmware update is forthcoming. Unfortunately for us, we had trouble getting geotagging or even online photo uploads in general to work at all — we didn’t stoop so low as to look at the manual, but Nokia certainly has some interface kinks to work out here. (Read the full post about ‘Nokia N78 for North America hands-on’…)

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by Ryan Block, posted Jun 5th 2008 at 11:58AM Just a quick bit of math and you can see that today’s news doesn’t bode well for AT&T, which has been enjoying its position at the top of the heap in major US cellphone carriers for quite some time now. While AT&T has a solid 71m subscribers under their belt, number two Verizon has 67m and number five Alltel has 13m — which means this merger could potentially put 80m customers under the same roof. Clearly being able to claim the “most reliable” AND most widely used network in the US makes it a tantalizing deal for VZW, but the ~$2,100 they’ll be paying per subscriber isn’t lightyears away from the notoriously overinflated amount Sprint paid in their heyday for Nextel. (Read the full post about ‘Verizon Alltel merger would form largest carrier in the US (by far)’…)

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by Nilay Patel, posted Jun 5th 2008 at 8:31PM First Voodoo’s home page had that little fire problem, and now this super-dramatic teaser video’s making the rounds — we’d say there’s probably a new Voodoo desktop and laptop in store for us on June 10, by the looks of things. Vid after the break. (Read the full post about ‘Voodoo PC teaser video hints at new machines’…)

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Asus not only makes tiny notebooks, they also do play a role where audio is concerned. The Taiwanese company will be rolling out its Xonar HDAV1.3 HDMI-ready sound card pretty soon, helping you offload audio processing from high-definition video. It is capable of decoding lossless audio formats from Blu-ray films (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio at 24-bit, 96-192 Khz included), delivering 7.1 surround sound (assuming you have the necessary audio system in place) when running on a PCI Express x1 slot.

(Read the full post about ‘Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3′…)

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We’ve covered the Samsung Instinct in the past, and with its launch date of June 20th getting closer, Samsung is ramping up its “how-to” videos.

This latest one features a demonstration of the Instinct using the “Speech to Action Button”. What I find most impressive is how you can go from saying “coffee” to being navigated to the coffee shop. For example, push the button and say “coffee” and the phone will find the nearest coffee places based on your current location. From that list you can just click on the navigation button and in seconds you’re navigating there.

(Read the full post about ‘Samsung Instinct goes from voice recognition to GPS navigation’…)

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Just like avoiding bad neighborhoods might be a good rule of thumb, there are also some domains you should avoid online. The domains to avoid come in a report by McAfee which lists the most dangerous domains to surf. The report found that the most dangerous country domain was Hong Kong while on the flip side Finland had the safest domain. 19.2% of websites ending with the Hong Kong domain, “.hk”, were found to pose a security risk to web users. In comparison, Finland, “.fi”, only had .05% if its website pose a security risk.

The 2008 report called “Mapping Mal Web Revisited” also found that the chance someone could download adware, spyware, viruses or other unwanted software increased 41.5% from 2007.

(Read the full post about ‘McAfee reports on domains to avoid while online’…)

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Those who have been waiting anxiously for the Tony Hawk Sidekick LX will soon see their patience pay off, as the device will hit retail stores sometime in the middle of next month onwards with an aggressive ad campaign to commence from tomorrow. The phone will apparently have a “skateboard look and feel with a grip-tape-texture and his well known hawk graphic.” The device has confirmed video recording capability, stereo Bluetooth connectivity, a plethora of themes and background personalization options. Are you saving up for one already?

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It isn’t all work if you’re rewarded with the UMPC, you know. This model not only focuses on the gaming experience, it even adds to it with a 3D display! A proof of concept conjured by Masterimage, it throws 3D images right at you without the need for puke-inducing 3D glasses. Some of the features include :- 4.3″ display at 800 x 480 resolution 512MB RAM 30GB/60GB hard drive Via C7-M 1.2GHz processor Windows XP operating systemI wonder what kind of games would be good with this? Emulated SNES classics? You can forget about PC gaming without a dedicated graphics card inside. (Read the full post about ‘UMPC with 3D Display’…)

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Sharp and VMJ are collaborating to come up with the largest commercial 3D display in the world - measuring 65″ and featuring 1,920 x 1,080 resolution to wow passers-by in retail stores. It comes with a 120-degree viewing angle which is definitely lower than other monitors as well as LCD TVs, but those can’t have vivid images that jump right at ya. Not to mention the insane high price of $30,000 each, strictly placing this in the domain of shopping centers and high-tech companies who want to wow their clients. (Read the full post about ‘Sharp and VMJ 3D Display’…)

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Canonical are using the Computex 2008 show in Taiwan to demonstrate a new version of the Ubuntu Linux OS for portable devices. More specifically, the new version will be called Netbook Remix and is aimed at portable Internet-centric devices, or netbooks for short.

Netbook Remix is designed for portables running on the Intel Atom processor and will offer all the open source software and functionality you would expect for communications an entertainment.

(Read the full post about ‘Ubuntu demos Netbook Remix for portable netbooks’…)

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