GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Airfoil Speakers Touch does one thing, and it does it well. The iPhone application receives audio wirelessly from your computer and plays it either through its built-in speakers or via the headphone jack. To owners of Apple Airport Express users, this might seem familiar. Thats because it is. Essentially, this application turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into an Airport Express. Im a heavy user of Apples Airtunes, the magic which lets me stream music to multiple speakers around the house. I have a couple of airport express units hooked up and either I or the Lady can send tunes to them. The trouble is, this only works with iTunes. Get your music from anywhere else and youre back to running cables.

This is solved by an application called Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba (OS X and Windows), which takes the audio from any application and streams it to the remote speakers, or even another computer on the network. It even does video, something even Apple cant manage from iTunes. Enter Airfoil Speakers Touch, an iPhone version of the free Airfoil Speakers app which turns a Mac, Windows or Linux box into an audio receiver. Fire the application up and the iPhone is immediately recognized by the mother ship, like this:

As you can see, it looks just like any other receiver on the network. Heres what you see on the iPhone:

If I pick Melocotron (the name of my iPod its like a peach, only more robotic), then the music starts transmitting:

Thats pretty much it for the basic functions. Notice, though, the neat touches that start even here. The picture shows the correct model of the computer sending the audio and even a snap of the screen (here you see Spotify running). Theres also an icon to show you which application is sending audio (again, in this case its Spotify). Those bars you see are level-meters which jump up and down, 1980s-style, in time with the music. They can be switched off in the preferences, here:

You can control the volume using the on-screen slider and, if the iPod is in a dock you can use the Apple remote to control the iPods master volume, too. Thats it for controls, and thats where the annoyances start to creep in.

If you are using the Apple Remote, make sure you dont press anything but the volume switch. If you do, Airfoil Speakers Touch will quit and the music will start blaring from your laptops speakers instead. Worse, the iPod will start playing the first track in its library. This is a problem caused by Apple, not by Rogue Amoeba all apps do this when the remote is used but that doesnt make it any less annoying.

Next, if you usually use the Apple made Remote application for your iPhone, you cant use it and Airfoil at the same time. Airfoil will quit out as described above. Again, annoying, but a consequence of the inability to run background processes on the iPhone.

Gripes aside, Airfoil Speakers Touch is a wonderfully simple and useful little application. You can use it to hook up an extra set of speakers indoors, for instance, or send audio outside to battery-powered speakers where there is no power and, therefore no way to use an Airport Express. You can even use it to listen to a new, un-synced podcast with headphones while you cook. You, know, for example. Best of all, its free, although youll need the $25 Airfoil software to use it.

Product page [iTunes]

Product page [Rogue Amoeba]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Baskets on bikes are very useful, and so are handlebars. Unlike handlebars, baskets are pretty easy to steal. The Bike Porter from Danish designer Goodmorning Technology mashes the two together into something that looks like it could be used for mobile cage-fights. Between very small opponents.

The concept is a good one the basket is built into the handlebars themselves, making stealing it hard even on the brakeless fixie in the photo, which has no cables to deter thieves. Being metal, its also tough. Sure, small things will fall through the gaps but for slinging shopping bags in there and carrying them home this would be ideal.

It also has another advantage for the aesthetically-minded fixed-gear rider. As this is technically just a fancy handlebar, you can add it to your bike safe in the knowledge that you havent corrupted the clean, spare, simple lines of your ride.

Product page [Goodmorning via Noquedanblogs]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

One place where film can still score over digital is in the medium format realm, especially for hobby photographers. With the fairly specialist, big-sensor camera bodies going for $1,500 and up, savings on film only become apparent if you shoot a lot of pictures. The best way is to pick up a cheap, second hand model, but if you can’t stand pre-fingered goods, you could try Voigtlnder’s new Bessa III, due in stores in May.

The camera can switch between two aspect ratios, 6×6 and 6×7, on either 120 or 220 roll film. The most obvious feature is those bellows, which fold out to put the lens in place but also allow a fairly compact box — compact for medium format, at least, as this thing won’t be fitting in any regular pants pocket.

The specs are decidedly old school: a shutter speed of 4 1/500 sec, center-weighted metering, manual and aperture priority modes and, and that’s it. You even have to turn the dial to wind the film yourself.

The lens is also fairly pedestrian, at 3.5 and 80mm (the “standard” length for this film size), but, as with any decent medium format cam, the pictures will be stunning. The price will be around 2000 in the UK, 2000 in Europe and ver likely $2000 in the US.

Product page [Voigtlnder via AP]

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Amazon has done the right thing at last, and made an honest application of iPhone e-book reader Stanza (our favorite iPhone reader here at the Lab). Amazon has bought Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza. It now joins the Kindle (in the US at least) as one of two Amazon-owned readers for the iPhone. So what will change? From the Lexcycle blog:

We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners.

That’s good news for Stanza fans — the app is our favorite for a reason: While it has powerful options, when you just want to read it gets out of your way, just like a real book (only with poorer battery life). We’d fully expect to see some integration with the Kindle Store coming soon though, which is great — who doesn’t want more ways to buy books? No mention, of course, is made of the sums passing between the two companies, but it’s interesting to see Amazon slowly moving to dominate e-readers across the whole market. Lexcycle has been acquired by Amazon.com! [Lexcycle blog] See Also:

• Hands-On With Stanza Update: iPhone E-Books
• Interview: Stanza Brings Online Bookstore to the iPhone
• Stanza Updated With Cover Flow, Online Libraries

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Here’s the wildest iPhone rumor we’ve heard in a while. According to BusinessWeek, two sources “familiar with the matter” say Apple and Verizon are working to offer two new iPhone-like devices: a smaller, less-expensive calling device (perhaps an “iPhone lite”), and a higher-end, unnamed media pad, which can place calls over Wi-Fi, display photos, and play music as well as high-definition video.

When will we see these? One of the devices might come as soon as summer, one source told BusinessWeek.

As always, take rumors with a grain of salt, folks. We doubt either of these products will be available for Verizon customers this year. Verizon’s CEO said just two weeks ago that Apple would be more likely to partner up with Verizon when the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution networks start rolling out in 2010. And Apple last week implied it was planning to stick with AT&T as its exclusive partner.

However, we’re not ruling out that there are two new devices. ArsTechnica last month reported that a system configuration file made references to two new iPhone models. Could these be the new iPhone models?

Let’s keep in mind if these two rumored products are indeed real, we won’t necessarily have to wait for Apple to buddy up with Verizon. Apple would likely offer the same phones through AT&T so yes, we might see one as soon as June, but we don’t believe it’d be on the Verizon network.

New Gear from Apple and Verizon Wireless? [BusinessWeek]

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Picture a single disc large enough to store your entire DVD collection. GE Global Research has done just that with its latest breakthrough that can put 500 Gigabytes of storage capacity in a standard DVD-size disc.

GE researchers said Monday that by using a micro-holographic storage material they can create capacity of 20 single-layer Blu-ray discs or 100 DVDs in a standard disc. GEs micro-holographic discs will also be able to read and record on systems similar to a typical Blu-ray or DVD player.

“Our technology will pave the way for cost-effective, robust and reliable holographic drives that could be in every home,” said Brian Lawrence who leads GEs holographic storage program in a statement. “The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3-D television is closer than you think.”

Holographic storage differ from current optical storage technologies in that it uses the entire volume of the disc material. DVDs and Blu-ray discs store information only on the surface of the disc.

In case of holographic storage, three-dimensional patterns are written into the disc and can be read out. Micro-holographic players using GE’s technology can play back CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray disc.

GE has been working on the technology for about six years, said the company. For now it is still in the labs but the GE has plans to commercialize it. It will initially focus on the commercial archival industry for the technology and then offer it to consumers.

[via The New York Times]

Photo: Overlapping blue lasers record holograms in a GE disc/GE

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Is hacking a netbook to run Mac OS X really worth the trouble? Two tech journalists today expressed grief with their Hackbooks, so I felt like chiming in with my thoughts about my somewhat controversial MSI Wind Hackintosh. In short, my Hackintosh and I have been pals for six months, but it’s been a pretty bumpy ride.

When I first bought my Wind in October, I was thrilled after successfully hacking it to run Mac OS X Leopard. I loved the netbook so much, in fact, that I almost stopped using my first-generation MacBook Pro altogether. To express my delight, I even made a custom wallpaper for my netbook featuring my favorite childhood ice cream flavor (Superman). The Wind was a great companion device: I use an iMac in the office, so when I got home the dumbed-down, lightweight netbook was great for web surfing, chatting and general unwinding.

But over time the problems started surfacing. Like Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel, I grew to despise the Wind’s dinky trackpad: Whoever designed it had in mind an infant’s hands; navigating grew so tiresome that I started carrying around an external mouse to make it tolerable.

Second, the software issues. Seeing as this netbook was hacked to run OS X, of course it didn’t work perfectly. I accepted that, and with some tweaks I got most software utilities working properly. But while I was traveling in Europe, my netbook’s Wi-Fi suddenly stopped working. The Airport utility simply wouldn’t light up, and I discovered a few fixes that worked temporarily, only for the connection to fail again. As you can imagine, a netbook without the net in a foreign country was a huge drag a piece of useless plastic added to my luggage. I ended up barely using my netbook during my trip, and I instead heavily relied on my problem-free iPhone.

When I returned home, I completely reinstalled OS X, and Wi-Fi worked once again. And then the hardware issues kicked in. Minor ones, actually: Screws at the bottom of the clamshell kept falling out, even after I screwed them in as tightly as possible. I inspected the case more closely and realized it no longer clamps all the way shut, which is why the screws aren’t staying in. This issue was probably a result of cheap plastic or shoddy clamshell design. Unfortunately this created another annoying problem: The battery kept popping out of the case ever so slightly just enough to shut off the computer whenever I nudged the netbook. I eventually resolved the problem with some double-sided tape, but I wasn’t happy about it.

Given all these issues, I became pretty jaded about my netbook hence my lack of mentioning it here at Wired.com in recent months. I ended up selling my MacBook Pro and buying the latest unibody model refurbished, and now I rarely use my netbook. So unfortunately, I have to agree with Dave “MacSparky” Sparks and The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Steven Sande, who both grew frustrated with their Dell Mini 9 Hackintoshes. It’s a fun hacking project, but it’s like the fixed-gear bicycle you built but left sitting in the garage, because over time you realized it was too impractical.

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Two London marathon runners documented their cardiovascular treks in real-time, and they didn’t need a camera crew to follow them.

CNN news producer Peter Wilkinson and Latitude Group CEO Alex Hoye stood out among 35,000 runners at Sunday’s London Marathon in the digital world, at least, where they tweeted their progress with their cellphones.

“To you’se enjoying marathon w/ a beer, a) chers! b) cam u shield your beverage as I pass for 9 more mls? Mi 17 http://twitpic.com/4173o,” tweeted Hoye with his iPhone.

Launched in 2006, Twitter is quickly gaining momentum in the Web 2.0 universe. Though its core premise is simply to answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less, many Twitter users have thought outside the box when answering that question. One of the most significant incidents involved November’s deadly Mumbai attacks, which were documented tweet by tweet.

Wilkinson and Hoye’s “tweet-a-thon” is a light-hearted example of creative tweeting; the two even managed to raise money for charity via Twitter. Both runners’ tweets were ridden with typos and juvenile abbreviations, but could you do any better during a 26-mile marathon?

“Raising the pace now nearly there twittering really given me something to take mind off running feels more like a car journey are we there yet?” tweeted Wilkinson near the end of the race. “One mile to go”

Hoye, whom Twitter fans dubbed “the Twunning Man,” told Wired.com he wasn’t even planning to tweet his run; the idea occurred to him when he saw amusing spectacles from the race that he thought would be interesting to share, such as a runner dressed up as a rhino.

“My biggest fear was it would be boring mile 1: running; mile 2: still running,” Hoye said. “But I gave it a try and people were talking about it on mile 9, retweeting it, and I said fuck it. And the great thing is, every mile you have to get your milestone of what you’re going to tweet. You have to think of something mildly amusing every mile.”

Wilkinson completed the race first at 3 hours and 30 minutes, and Hoye finished at 5 hours and 12 minutes. However, it’s worth noting Hoye’s tweets were more entertaining thanks to his pictures so at least he wins the “Twunning” race.

Photo: Alex Hoye/Twitpic

Via Susan MacTavish’s Best Tweets [Twitter]

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This week’s Gadget Lab podcast kicks off with a sad note about writer Brian Chen’s drowned iPhone, and his pathetic attempt to resurrect it by sprinkling rice on it. Then we jump right into a discussion of the consumer robotics industry, which is running into some hard times: Ugobe, the company that made the Pleo robot dinosaur, is going out of business. Even iRobot and WowWee have canceled plans for upcoming robot toys, as it appears U.S. consumers just aren’t interested in these expensive gizmos.

After that, we discuss Stanford University’s iPhone development class — it’s available for free through iTunes — and we review a THX-certified plasma TV from Panasonic, as well as a roundup of four inexpensive 15-inch laptops.

This week’s podcast features Danny Dumas, Brian Chen and editorial assistant Maren Jinnett, with audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso.

If the embedded player above doesn’t work, you can download the Gadget Lab podcast #72 MP3 file.

Use iTunes? Subscribe to the Gadget Lab Audio Podcast in iTunes. Do it now!

Like video? Aim your browser at the Gadget Lab Video Podcast available on iTunes and right here on the Gadget Lab blog.

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The I7500 is Samsung's first Android phone

Nearly six months after the first Google Android mobile operating system powered device made its debut, a second Android phone has been announced.

Samsung showed off an Android-based mobile device, the I7500. The I7500, Samsung’s first Android phone, features a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen (ctive matrix organic light emitting diode screen known for its luminosity and lower power consumption), 7.2Mbps HSDPA and WiFi connectivity. The device will also have a 5-megapixel camera, full keyboard and 8 GB of internal memory.

“Samsung seems to have put everything it could have into that phone,” says Brad Akyuz, senior analyst for mobile devices at research firm Current Analysis. “From Android’s perspective it is a major win to get a vendor like that behind it.”

Despite its big launch last year, Android has been in danger of losing its momentum. In the last few months several major handset makers have claimed they have Android devices in the works, but phones running the OS have been largely missing at wireless industry conferences. Now Samung and HTC are the only two to have an Android phone in the market though analysts expect to see three more models in the market. The majority of Android phones are expected to be available in 2010.

Meanwhile, with the I7500 release Samsung could help shine the spotlight again on Android. “Despite all the hype around Android so far we just have the G1, which is not as revolutionary as the Apple iPhone,” says Akyuz. “Samsung’s commitment with a high end device is a major step forward for the platform.”

Similar to the HTC T-Mobile G1 Android phone, the Samsung I7500 will include easy access to Google’s services such as search, maps, YouTube and email.

The Samsung I7500 is scheduled to be available in some European countries starting June. For the U.S. market, Samsung will have to find a U.S. telecom carrier–T-Mobile or Sprint– to back the device, which it is yet to do.

As for success among consumers who do buy the I7500, much will depend on how well Samsung has been able to customize Android, says Akyuz. “It is going to all come down to usability,” he says.

Photo: Samsung

Posted under Gadget Reviews

More premature unboxulation today, this time for the video-shootin, screen-flippin Nikon D5000, which has been stripped of its cardboard shell and poked, preened and, well, twisted for lucky recipient Kadaths Flickr set.

First, isnt is a little odd how many camera unboxings there are on Flickr? Its not just the quantity, though the sheer quality of them makes us wonder if the buyers actually needed a new camera after all (these were, ironically, taken with a Nikon D300).

In this case, though, were happy, as we get to see the first in-the-flesh photos of the new D5000; product-verit rather than the primped, powdered and photoshopped primadonna we saw pictured in the press pack.

The build looks nice, with the flecked metal finish much closer to the pro bodies than the cheaper D60. The flip-screen looks very solid, too, and we get a good look at the little speaker that is needed to play back the audio on movie clips (back panel, bottom-right). Nikon has a certain set of design cues that mean the seasoned watcher can spot models fairly accurately from afar. The D5000 has, as mentioned, the sturdy flecked finish. It also has a higher-end viewfinder and flash housing, the one which is tempting to hook a finger underneath.

On the other hand, it has the single, rear command dial, no top LCD panel and a top-mounted dial for mode selection. Finally, the pro models have the drive mode and ISO switch off on the top-left panel, where the ISO dial would have been on a film camera. Master these cues and youll be a nerdy Nikon-spotter in no time.

Lastly, that sturdy LCD box looks to be a handy screen protector when flipped shut way better than the plastic screen that comes with the D700, and which you have to actually buy for the D3.

Check the whole show out on Flickr, including a few test shots taken with the camera itself.

Gallery [Flickr]

Photo: Kadath/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

This fantastic video pits the text-to-voice abilities of the iPod Shuffle and the Kindle 2 against each other in an amazingly appropriate contrivance the two machines re-enact the Voight-Kampff interview from the movie Blade Runner.

If you have seen the movie or have read the novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, youre in for a treat. If you havent, stop reading immediately and go do your duty.

The purpose of the video to check out the quality of the artificial speech, is satisfied with a clear winner the Kindle. This may be because it is based on the voice of a real person, and not a replicant voice like that of Alex in the shuffle. Are you seeing how clever this video is yet?

Talking Gadget Theater: Blade Runner, starring the Kindle 2 and iPod Shuffle [DVICE]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Is trimming body-hair an acceptable enterprise for the male? Sure, hairy backs are gross, and my old high-school art teacher had fur jostling twixt the buttons of his shirt and crowding over the collar not sexy. But is the alternative smooth, oiled bodies free of frolicking follicles how to say this, a little too feminine?

If you really must go this way, you need a manly named gadget with which to trim. Sadly, the Braun bodycruZer isnt it. Where I come from, cruising has a very different meaning, and simply adding a capital z wont change that. Even the ad is suspect: Check the Web site and see for yourself. Our hero, now hair-free, is also testosterone-free. Witness the women around him aggressively growling, taking the male role. Hell, one even turns into peacock to attract him. Thats peacock, not peahen.

From a gadget point of view, the bodycruZer is notable in that it departs from the razor blade model, wherein you get the handle almost free and then pay a fortune for the blades. It does this not by eschewing replaceable blades like the usual electric razor (those will cost you around $6 apiece) but by selling blades and charging a fortune for the handle $70 in this case.

For the excessive hirsute male (or female, we guess) this may be something youd like if only as an alternative to the horribly named waxing procedure, the back, crack and sack. Available May 5th.

Product page [Braun via Uncrate]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Orange has released a tiny, cheap touch-screen cellphone in the UK. Curiously, given that it is everything that its namesake city is not small, tasteful and understated the handset is called Vegas.

The 50 ($73) phone doesnt pack too many features, but it has the essentials a 1.3MP camera, an FM radio, an MP3 player, a paltry 64MB internal memory (expandable to 4GB) and Bluetooth. That 50 is not a contract price, either thats the full whack for a pay-as-you-go tariff.

This got us thinking. Once you have a touch screen, is it easier and cheaper to add features? After all, once you have the internal in place, its just software, right? You can churn out all manner of handsets at different prices and differentiate them with functions. A smartphone no longer needs to be made with a keyboard, just a better OS inside.

Orange has made one concession to the Vegas name, however. The phone is not only available in black. It also comes in pink, which we like to imagine is really neon flamingo pink.

Product page [Orange via the Reg]

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Cosina, the maker of my first ever 35mm SLR and current owner of the prestigious Voigtlnder brand, has announced a rather exciting accessory. Its an adapter to attach M-mount lenses onto Micro Four Thirds cameras.

What does that actually mean? It means that you can buy one of the burgeoning range of modern m4/3 digicams and slip on a lens from Leica, Voigtlnder or Carl Zeiss. Essentially this means you can use some of the best lenses ever made on some pretty cheap and full featured bodies (the Panasonic G1, for instance).

There are some limits. The adapter is mechanical only, which means that there will be no communication between the camera and lens. This could mess with some advanced metering features, and also leave gaps in your photos metadata, but for older, non-chipped lenses this wont matter anyway.

This product alone actually makes the Micro Four Thirds system much more enticing, and until Leica comes out with a proper digital M-series camera, why not save some money and use this instead? 19,800 or around $200.

Product page [Cosina via DP Review]

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The presidential CrackBerry is undergoing final testing before being handed back. The NSA is hammering on the SecurVoice software which has been loaded onto the Obama-phone and is in the last stages of testing just how secure it might be.

The BlackBerry is an 8830, the standard business handset, but the added software encrypts both calls and messages. Cellphone calls are encrypted anyway, but there are some back doors if you know where to find them (and of course, the NSA knows exactly where they are).

The company behind the SecurVoice software is Genesis Key, which is handily based in Washington DC. Be careful not to confuse this with spam-alike secure-voice.com, whose site reads, rather unconvincingly, thus: The development of the Secure Voice lasts from 2001 and we have now a wide range of devices as well as Landline version of the solution.

Since winning the election, President Obama has been limping along with two devices a standard BlackBerry and a secured handset called the Sectera Edge, an unwieldy device that not only offers encrypted communications but is also so ugly that nobody would ever want to steal it. Both machines need to be tethered to each other to work, making every presidential e-mail look something like a game of Wii Boxing.

If the NSA tests come up clean, he could have his customised BlackBerry in his hands soon, which in governmental terms means a couple of months. And of course, secure communications arent much good if the person you are talking to is an open and easy target. To this end, Mrs. O should be getting one, too.

The odd fact is that the NSA usually likes everybody else to be locked out but itself. Giving the SecurVoice such a big endorsement will either mean that the encryption is indeed unbreakable (and therefore fit for the president) or that it wants everybody to think that it is unbreakable, therefore giving the NSA back-door access to every single SecurVoice customer. Paranoid conspiracy theory? Hell yes. Accurate speculation? Maybe.

Inside the Ring: Obamas BlackBerry [Washington Post]

Photo: BohPhoto/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Last night I lost something very dear to me. While I was making my bed, my comforter bumped over a glass containing a tiny amount of water, which seeped right into my iPhone’s weak spot the dock connector. The screen turned white followed by a series of fluorescent colors, as if my iPhone were seeing its life flash before its eyes. Then it shut off and wouldn’t turn on again. Just a year and a half old, my iPhone was dead.

I began treading through the five stages of loss and grief. First, I was in Denial that the damn thing was borked. I quickly immersed the phone in a container of dry rice a moisture-pulling method many nerds preach about when it comes to reviving soaked electronics and in the morning I checked to see if my poor iPhone would show any signs of life. No dice.

Then I succumbed to Anger. I cursed at the handset, shaking it accusingly as if it had purposely swallowed the deadly H2O to commit suicide. “Work, dammit, work!” I shouted.

After that failed, I slipped into Bargaining. “If only I owned a longer night stand so the water wouldn’t have reached the phone,” I thought. “Or if only it were wearing protection.”

I quickly sank into Depression and self-pity. “What lousy timing,” I complained to Wired.com science editor Betsy Mason. “I’m flying to New York next week for business, and right now would be an incredibly stupid time to buy a new iPhone since the third-gen is probably coming out in two months. My life is a greek tragedy.”

“Stop whining,” she replied. “It’s just a phone.”

“It’s not just a phone!” I cried. “It’s an iPod, a phone and an internet mobile communicator. It was my life in my pocket!”

“Oh, shut up.”

Hours later, I circled around to Acceptance and started thinking of ways to move on. I reached out to my Twitter followers asking if anyone had a spare iPhone lying around. Fortunately Jason Snell, my former editor in chief at Macworld, was able to loan me an iPhone for a few days until I find a permanent solution.

And now that I’m done mourning, I’m reaching out to Wired.com readers so we can all learn something from my loss. What would you do with a hydro-murdered iPhone? I’m thinking selling it through the e-junk trader Gazelle is an option, though it won’t earn me much. Add your suggestions in the comments below.

Or, if you’re feeling super optimistic, feel free to post any kooky methods you used to revive your soaked iPhones, and I might consider trying it and documenting my experience. I’ll leave mine buried in rice for a few more days, but I’m not going to get my hopes up.

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The Earth Angel Wind-Up Vibrator is typical of green, wholemeal, tree-hugger penitence. The “worlds first 100% eco-friendly wind-up sex toy” builds the punishment into the pleasure you need to work for your thrills.

The vibrator is made from 100% recycled plastic and parts a do-gooders dream and requires you to do four minutes of furious cranking for every half hour of use. It does store your juice, though, so you can put in the wrist-power now and enjoy the fruits at your leisure.

You get four speeds and easy three button up-down-off control. For those of you for whom size still matters, the length is just 8.5 and the circumference 5.3 (a diameter of 1.7).

We actually like the battery-saving design, although not because its eco-friendly. No, I like it because I now have one more task which I can thrust upon my subservient gimp. Chenll love it. $69 (of course).

Product page [Love Honey via Shiny Shiny]

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If you wanted a Flip camcorder andhigh-definition video, you had one choice — the Mino HD, a $230 pocket camera at the top of the Flip range. And according to Flip and its website, that’s still the only option.

Unless you head down to Bestbuy, where a brand new Flip Ultra HD can be had for just $200. This stillunofficialcamcorderwas picked up by a fellow named Gary Cannon, and he has posted the unboxing pics to prove it. We’re not sure if the new Ultra HD picks up some of its big brothers functions such as fast forward and rewind, or h.264 compression, but we do know that it will shoot for two hours (twice that of any other Flip), it has a supplied rechargeable battery which can be removed and replaced with a coiuple of AAs.

It also has an HDMI-out, which means that — if that is an uncompressed signal — this could be used as a very cheap front-end for a big video capture setup. We’ll be keeping an eye on the Flip site for the official details.

Flip Ultra Hd Unboxing [Gaxonline via Engadget]

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This is Noteboek, a short film by Dutch artist Evelien Lohbeck. It is also the product promo for the best multipurpose gadget that ever lived, a little notebook whose pages bring drawings to life. Geeky life.

Many of our childhoods were filled with such things. Im old enough to remember drawing pretend computers into my school notebooks, which, when not ignoring geography lessons to work on my comic book Extreme Team, was my main school pass-time.

Lohbeck actually has a computer, though, so he was able to make his fantasies real. This meta rabbit-hole, using a computer to make a notebook into a non-computer, continues in the short film. YouTube becomes the portal through which real-life enters, only to be corrupted again by paper machines, including an amazing pop-up toaster.

Check Lohbecks site for more Noteboek actually contains some other shorts made separately. In all, a fantastic little movie. And is it just me, or do you all want one of these magic books?

Movie page [Evelien Lohbeck via the Giz]

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According to USA Today, Apple is in late-game talks with Verizon about the iPhone. Specifically, the iPhone could be coming to Verizons network as soon as next year, lending some credence to the excited claims made by Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg in the WSJ last week.

This comes, you will remember, barely a week after Apple made an official statement that it would be remaining faithful to AT&T (in the US, at least) for the foreseeable future.

We dont know which way to jump on this one. It makes sense for Apple to make the iPhone as widely available as possible, and making a CDMA version will open up new markets. And the iPhone is so ridiculously successful that pretty much any carrier would jump at selling it.

On the other hand, multiple carriers in the same country would probably bring at least some small differences in pricing and contracts, which is certainly not the Apple Way. Likewise, unless there was a hybrid GSM/CDMA handset, confusion would ensue at the Apple Store:

Apple employee: Yes sir, an iPhone. Which network will you be using that on?.

Customer: Wait. What? Is the the Microsoft Store?

We still dont know for sure when the Apple/AT&T contract expires, or if it even will maybe it was inked in blood in a Faustian pact. One thing is sure, though this would be good for the consumer. Multiple carriers means competition and, seamless brand message be damned, the carriers wouldnt be able to stop themselves from entering a price-war.

Apple and Verizon consider iPhone deal [USA Today. Thanks, all powerful John!]

Photo: GlennFleishman/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Last night I lost something very dear to me. While I was making my bed, my comforter bumped over a glass containing a tiny amount of water, which seeped right into my iPhone’s weak spot the dock connector. The screen turned white followed by a series of fluorescent colors, as if my iPhone were seeing its life flash before its eyes. Then it shut off and wouldn’t turn on again. Just a year and a half old, my iPhone was dead.

I began treading through the five stages of loss and grief. First, I was in Denial that the damn thing was borked. I quickly immersed the phone in a container of dry rice a moisture-pulling method many nerds preach about when it comes to reviving soaked electronics and in the morning I checked to see if my poor iPhone would show any signs of life. No dice.

Then I succumbed to Anger. I cursed at the handset, shaking it accusingly as if it had purposely swallowed the deadly H2O to commit suicide. "Work, dammit, work!" I shouted.

After that failed, I slipped into Bargaining. "If only I owned a longer night stand so the water wouldn’t have reached the phone," I thought. "Or if only it were wearing protection."

I quickly sank into Depression and self-pity. "What lousy timing," I complained to Wired.com science editor Betsy Mason. "I’m flying to New York next week for business, and right now would be an incredibly stupid time to buy a new iPhone since the third-gen is probably coming out in two months. My life is a greek tragedy."

"Stop whining," she replied. "It’s just a phone."

"It’s not just a phone!" I cried. "It’s an iPod, a phone and an internet mobile communicator. It was my life in my pocket!"

"Oh, shut up."

Hours later, I circled around to Acceptance and started thinking of ways to move on. I reached out to my Twitter followers asking if anyone had a spare iPhone lying around. Fortunately Jason Snell, my former editor in chief at Macworld, was able to loan me an iPhone for a few days until I find a permanent solution.

And now that I’m done mourning, I’m reaching out to Wired.com readers so we can all learn something from my loss. What would you do with a drowned iPhone? I’m thinking selling it through the e-junk trader Gazelle is an option, though it won’t earn me much. E-mail your suggestions to bchen [at] Wired [dot] com. (Our comment system is temporarily disabled due to a system upgrade.)

Or, if you’re feeling super optimistic, feel free to send in any kooky methods you used to revive your soaked iPhones, and I might consider trying them and documenting my experience. I’ll leave mine buried in rice for a few more days, but I’m not getting my hopes up. 

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The presidential CrackBerry is undergoing final testing before being handed back The NSA is hammering on the SecurVoice software which has been loaded onto the Obama-phone and is in the last stages of testing just how secure it might be.

The BlackBerry is an 8830, the standard business handset, but the added software encrypts both calls and messages. Cellphone calls are encrypted anyway, but there are some back doors if you know where to find them (and of course, the NSA knows exactly where they are).

The company behind the SecurVoice software is Genesis Key, which is handily based in Washington DC. Be careful not to confuse this with spam-alike secure-voice.com, whose site reads, rather unconvincingly, thus: The development of the Secure Voice lasts from 2001 and we have now a wide range of devices as well as Landline version of the solution.

Since winning the election, President Obama has been limping along with two devices a standard BlackBerry and a secured handset called the Sectera Edge, an unwieldy device that not only offers encrypted communications but is also so ugly that nobody would ever want to steal it. Both machines need to be tethered to each other to work, making every presidential e-mail look something like a game of Wii Boxing.

If the NSA tests come up clean, he could have his customised BlackBerry in his hands soon, which in governmental terms means a couple of months. And of course, secure communications arent much good if the person you are talking to is an open and easy target. To this end, Mrs. O should be getting one, too.

The odd fact is that the NSA usually likes everybody else to be locked out but itself. Giving the SecurVoice such a big endorsement will either mean that the encryption is indeed unbreakable (and therefore fit for the president) or that it wants everybody to think that it is unbreakable, therefore giving the NSA back-door access to every single SecurVoice customer. Paranoid conspiracy theory? Hell yes. Accurate speculation? Maybe.

Inside the Ring: Obamas BlackBerry [Washington Post]

Photo: BohPhoto/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Cosina, the maker of my first ever 35mm SLR and current owner of the prestigious Voigtlnder brand, has announced a rather exciting accessory. Its an adapter to attach M-mount lenses onto Micro Four Thirds cameras.

What does that actually mean? It means that you can buy one of the burgeoning range of modern m4/3 digicams and slip on a lens from Leica, Voigtlnder or Carl Zeiss. Essentially this means you can use some of the best lenses ever made on some pretty cheap and full featured bodies (the Panasonic G1, for instance).

There are some limits. The adapter is mechanical only, which means that there will be no communication between the camera and lens. This could mess with some advanced metering features, and also leave gaps in your photos metadata, but for older, non-chipped lenses this wont matter anyway.

This product alone actually makes the Micro Four Thirds system much more enticing, and until Leica comes out with a proper digital M-series camera, why not save some money and use this instead? 19,800 or around $200.

Product page [Cosina via DP Review]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Orange has released a tiny, cheap touch-screen cellphone in the UK. Curiously, given that it is everything that its namesake city is not small, tasteful and understated the handset is called Vegas.

The 50 ($73) phone doesnt pack too many features, but it has the essentials a 1.3MP camera, an FM radio, an MP3 player, a paltry 64MB internal memory (expandable to 4GB) and Bluetooth. That 50 is not a contract price, either thats the full whack for a pay-as-you-go tariff.

This got us thinking. Once you have a touch screen, is it easier and cheaper to add features? After all, once you have the internal in place, its just software, right? You can churn out all manner of handsets at different prices and differentiate them with functions. A smartphone no longer needs to be made with a keyboard, just a better OS inside.

Orange has made one concession to the Vegas name, however. The phone is not only available in black. It also comes in pink, which we like to imagine is really neon flamingo pink.

Product page [Orange via the Reg]

Posted under Gadget Reviews