If you are struggling to keep up with all the twitter updates from your friends, there’s a little robot that can help you out.
The ‘Guardian Robot’ is an adorable machine that monitors your twitter feed for “happy” or “sad” updates from friends and then alerts you of the tweets by either raising its hand for a high-five or lowering its head, reports U.K. publication The Guardian. The robot… Read More
Dell has reportedly been working on a smartphone for more than a year. But so far, the device has been a bit of a mythical beast often written about but never seen.
Now, the first blurry pictures have leaked. According to the fairly trustworthy mobile rumors site Boy Genius Report, the Dell smartphone will have a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, 3-megapixel auto focus camera with 8x digital zoom and 30 fps video shooting mode. It will also have GPS capability.
As Wired.com had reported in April,… Read More
The netbook stemmed from the need to offer a cheap, low powered computing solution for kids in classrooms. Now Dell has come out with an Atom powered portable aimed squarely at the academically minded. Reviewer Priya Ganapati explains:
The 2100’s most striking feature is the matte, rubber-like coating that envelops the netbook. Its grainy texture lets tiny, slippery fingers get a firm grip. It also repels dirt, grime and the occasional candy collision. When one Wired editor put… Read More
After Gizmodo’s Brian Lam posted the most eye-opening inside tip yet about Apple’s rumored tablet, DaringFireball’s John Gruber poopooed on Lam’s source because of one detail the ship date.
Im almost certain theres no tablet coming this year. Its a 2010 thing.
Based on his own piece of hearsay that the ship date is 2010 rather than this fall, Gruber continues to strip Lam’s source of credibility,… Read More
How do you turn a $1000 PC into a $30,000 machine without changing its innards? It a trick that calls for a good alchemist. So say hello to German company, Gaiser High End PCs. Gaiser offers bespoke PCs dipped in 24-carat gold for the bling-bling crowd.
The company’s Tricolor Gold PC, for instance, offer a choice of processors ranging from Intel Atom to Core 2 Duo, solid state drives and Blu-ray player but those are pedestrian details. The real… Read More
Color us surprised. After hearing endless complaints about AT&T, especially in discussions of the iPhone, we had a hunch that the big A must be the most hated telecom company in the United States. A survey suggests otherwise.
Global marketing firm J.D. Power on Thursday released results of its wireless customer care survey, which graded telecom companies based on responses from 12,000 customers who contacted their carriers customer… Read More
Stock up on coasters. A new technology combines the coffee table with a universal remote so that people sitting around the table can tap on a screen to change the channel, turn up the volume or dim the lights.
CRISTAL (Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces) is a research project in user interface that attempts to create a natural way of connecting with devices. The system… Read More
It’s not a hybrid and it’s not a cyclocross either. But Swobo’s Crosby is an undeniably awesome bike. Recently Wired.com senior editor and human powered transportation proponent Dylan Tweney took the two wheeler for a series of spins. His take? The beef-cake of a bike is equally at home on unpaved dirt paths or freshly laden asphalt roads. Additionally awesome is a wheel hub that lets you switch from single speed to fixie mode. From Dylan’s review:
As it… Read More
The Palm Pre has been regarded by reviewers and analysts as possibly the best challenger to Apple iPhone but Apple is still ahead. Pre users seem to be not as enthralled with their phone as iPhone users, according to a recent survey which took a closer look at the satisfaction… Read More
Good news, everyone! If you’ve been stuck in a time loop using Windows XP, which is nearing eight years old, or Windows Vista, which is just annoying, you can finally break free: Windows… Read More
Apple is planning to hold a September keynote event, multiple music industry sources have told MediaMemo. To launch what? It’s time to start guessing.
The event will be held the week of Sept. 7, MediaMemo’s sources say. Apple declined to comment on the event.
Taking into account Apple’s past events, it’s easy to deduce that this event will likely revolve around upgrades for the iPod family. In previous years, Apple’s… Read More
Palm Pre users watch out. Palm may know a lot more about you than you would like to share.
Programmer Joey Hess found that Palm Pre’s operating system webOS sends his GPS location back to Palm every day. Hess also found code that sends Palm data on which WebOS apps he has used each day, and for how long he used each one.
“Since Palm has lawyers, they have a privacy policy, which covers their ass fairly well regarding all this without going… Read More
Considering iPhones are made in China, and they’re already being counterfeited there, you would think that an authentic Apple iPhone would have been available in the country long ago. But it appears carrier China Unicom and Apple are just finally sealing the deal to begin selling iPhones in September.
The carrier has paid Apple 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) for 5 million iPhones, according to International Business Times. An 8GB model of the… Read More
Wired.com’s good friend Brian Lam of Gizmodo tells the most riveting tale about the rumored Apple tablet yet, in which a “deep throat” of sorts spills the juicy details.
In summary:
Another analyst is stepping up to bat with his predictions on the rumored touchscreen tablet from Apple. Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research claims hearing the tablet will sport an 8- to 10-inch OLED screen and an ARM Holdings dual-core Core9x chipset. He believes the device will cost $900 and ship first quarter of 2010.
That differs a bit from past rumor reports where anonymous sources have told other publications that the rumored tablet would cost between… Read More
Rumors around the upcoming Zune HD have flying fast in the last couple of weeks. And now it seems like official confirmation is not far away. Microsoft is expected to announce the pricing and the launch date for Zune HD tonight.
A leak from Amazon.com Tuesday pegged the 16 GB Zune HD player at $220 and the 32 GB version at $290. The Zune HD is expected to available starting September 8.
Zune HD has a 3.3-inch capacitive OLED screen with multi-touch… Read More
Apple’s secretive M.O. can get pretty annoying to us journalists, but we have to admit sometimes it makes things more fun. Take for example a report today claiming Apple shot a TV ad at Jax at the Tracks, a 1940s-style diner in Truckee, Calif. Jax at the Tracks owner Bud Haley told Truckee publication Sierra Sun that a scout found his restaurant for the shoot. No details on what the product was, of course. What could it be based on the setting?
The… Read More
The Backpack is an ingenious, gravity-secured shelf that sits on the rear stand of an iMac or an Apple Cinema display. The punched-aluminum platform pushes against the rear stand and a couple of clips reach around to grab the back, and the shelf just hangs there. And dont worry: Theres no metal-on-metal action. The clips are protected by non-scratch inserts.
This is clearly a home-makeable product, but we love the smooth lines and Apple-like finish to this commercial… Read More
This story is so wonderfully pragmatic and stiff-upper-lipped that it could only come from sun-challenged England, the home of people who will go to a beach on a planned day trip even though the day turns out to be cold and wet.
Many Brits are holidaying in their own Isles this summer, caught between a devalued currency and a recession. But when they get to holiday camps and caravan parks and the heavens open, what do they do as the… Read More
Is it possible to squeeze the line My cardiovascular fitness levels right up there with Lance into a rap and have… Read More
Things are a little backwards on this one. We love the company, but we certainly dont love the product, a small, portable camera tripod. It starts with the name Digidudes. Then, the rather nasty plasticky look of these dudes further repels us, in the way that only a colorful, novelty keychain item can. It reminds us of the girl back in school who would constantly have to show how whacky and individual she was by hanging almost every keychain known to man off the back of her… Read More
Do you remember your first Walkman? I do, although it was a personal stereo, not a real Walkman, and it came from Lloytron. Fast forward only, no rewind, but awesome all the same. I remember it as being tiny, but it was probably huge.
Over at Oobject, there is a gallery of 12 early Sony Walkmen (Walkmans?) A kid in our school had the one above, the TPS-12, way back in 1979 or shortly after. The orange button killed the music and activated a microphone, piping the sound into the headphones.… Read More
In a brilliant move which will catapult it into the realms of Apple-like profit margins, Dell has teamed up with Nickelodeon to bring us the Inspiron Mini Nickelodeon Edition. Apparently, it takes personalization to new heights.
And it does, if you consider new heights to be slapping a slime-green paint-job on an existing netbook (the Mini 10v) and pre-loading the hard drive with some games, widgets… Read More
OK, really. How do these people even get jobs in advertising? First there was Microsoft’s repulsive “Oh… Read More
A judge has granted Mac cloner Psystar’s motion to dismiss its bankruptcy filing under the stipulation that the company could not file for bankruptcy again for six months, which would stall Apple’s lawsuit.
Psystar in May filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy protection with the Florida courts. The move temporarily put Apple’s legal case on hold while the bankruptcy court began proceedings. Then Psystar moved to drop the bankruptcy saying… Read More
3-D printers can take blobs of plastic and shape them into almost any object you desire. Now, thanks to open-source hardware designs and enthusiastic do-it-yourselfers, these printers are becoming increasingly popular and accessible. People are using them to fabricate iPod docks, plastic bracelets, hair clips and miniature… Read More
Zune HD, Microsoft’s answer to Apple iPod Touch, is likely to launch in less than a month and it promises to be much cheaper than its rival.
Amazon, which has started taking pre-orders for the device, has listed the 16 GB Zune HD player for $220 and the 32 GB version for $290. Compare that to $275 for the 16 GB iPod Touch and $370 for the 32 GB version. Microsoft is yet to confirm the pricing for Zune HD or the launch date.
Microsoft’s move will… Read More
Unless youre suicidal, when you ride a fixed-gear bike, youll want to strap your feet in. Traditionally, this has been done… Read More
If you dont like shiny, glossy screens on notebooks, but have just bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro despite this, then its time to start whining about how Apple hates you. The company has just reinstated the option to choose a matte-finish on the 15-inch MBP, bringing it into line with its big 17-inch brother. The option to kill reflections will cost you an extra $50 on top of the regular price.
You still dont have the choice on the slightly… Read More
CourseSmart is a provider of e-textbooks, or textbooks converted to a format that can be viewed on a computer. Now, it has brought students everywhere something even more useful: an iPhone application.
CourseSmart is free, but requires an account with the company. If you already use the service you just sign in and have immediate access to all the books you have bought. Browsing the reviews in the App Store, it looks to be a rather well focused first effort… Read More
Tilt-shift photography is all what all the cool kids are doing right now. Originally (and still) used to control the plane of focus by tilting the front part of the lens, or shifting it up and down, the tilt-shift lens finds use in architectural and high-end product photography.
It also makes some amazing special effects, enabling you to make a real-life scene look like a tiny model, for example, and is so popular that there is even an iPhone app to apply the effect in post. But the real lenses… Read More
This is an oldie, but most certainly a goody, and if you have never heard of the Topeak PropShock, youre going to like it. The pump is designed to re-pressurize the shock-absorbers in your bike, and can deliver pressure of up to 300 psi.
So far, so normal. But there is a secret function, too. See the eyelets on either end? If your rear shock fails, those holes let you swap in the PropShock and limp home. The pump won a Eurobike award a few years back, but as the folks… Read More
This drill-powered rubber-band gun can spit hundreds of stretchy, stinging projectiles in a few seconds. The rather weak rubber-bands it is… Read More
Phone design creativity has pretty much gone straight downhill since the 1980s.
Sure, your Palm Pre may look like a futuristic Zen pebble, and your iPhone can run any one of 60,000 individual apps (no more than 10,000 of which make fart sounds), but really: Can you top the saccharine cuteness that is the Kermit the Frog phone? Does your BlackBerry look like a football? We think not.
Wired… Read More
The top comment on Gadget Lab last week was posted by senor_demasiado, on my post about the Zune HD.
“Whats with the smug comments about microsoft?” senor_demasiado asks. That’s a response to my question about what kinds of video you’d want to store on your Zune, then display on your hotel room’s widescreen TV. What kind of video, you ask? Think of the children, he says: Such videos are indispensible for entertaining the wee ones on long trips.
And then… Read More