Note to self: don’t ever send an email or text message that you would not want to defend in court. Apparently, that imaginary legal and mental procedure was lost on an Oklahoma resident last year and now a Kentucky middle school teacher has similarly mis-texted. Ann Greenfield, 34, wanted to get her paws on some Mary Jane but sent a text message not to her dealer — but to a Kentucky state trooper by accident. A mass o’ cops was waiting for her when when arrived to meet up with her “dealer.” We suspect this middle school teacher will probably set up a phone contact in her cellphone next time to avoid a rather embarrassing mistake — or maybe she’ll ditch the habit entirely.
QWERTY fans need not apply — your phone hasn’t quite hit yet — but folks in search of a slick-lookin’ little slider on Helio have another solid choice. Just like its big sib, the Drift, the Heat comes to Helio courtesy of Samsung, but gains touch-sensitive controls and a lower price point. The new model serves up Bluetooth, 136MB of internal memory (though no external — advantage Drift), 1.3 megapixel cam, Helio Music compatibility, and the full suite of GPS goodies including Google Maps and Helio’s “Buddy Beacon” service atop a 2-inch QVGA display. Look for the Heat to go on sale today for $150 in your choice of Gold and the always-fashionable “Onyx” (alias “black”). Follow the break for a shot of the Heat doing its slide thing in both shades!
Multitouch, it’s all you bloody hear about these days. If another person stops me in the street or blocks my car in just to shout “Apple have invented a multitouch cellphone!” into my, I’ll scream. Okay, so a huge company spent over two years developing a compact screen that could respond to more than one finger jabbing at it. So what? What’s far more impressive to my mind is this four-day project to make a multitouch table:
Earlier on this month those people who get quiet shivers of glee from fancy-schmancy cellphone concepts had another rendered thrill with what was said to be a design from ASUS’ studios. Called the Aura, the most striking thing – aside from a deeply slender pop-out keyboard – was a sliding control bar that could be positioned at various points along the display.
Modeo hosted a little shindig tonight to unveil some of its future DVB-H plans and show off some kit. The big news is that the FCC has approved Modeo’s request to boost signal power by 10 times in urban markets and 20 times in rural areas, giving the company a much easier path to coverage rollout and better signal quality. Modeo also mentioned that while it’s currently testing service in NYC only, it has designs already in place for moving into the top 30 markets in the US. We also got our hands on upcoming DVB-H SD and mini-PCI cards, with the SD cards up and running in a myriad of Pocket PC devices, and the mini-PCI card running smooth — though rather pixelated — video on a Dell laptop. The next move for Modeo is to get channel changing time under 2 seconds, continue to improve video quality, add PVR and mediacasting capabilities, and stick interactivity into the programming. Modeo’s software partner Penthera already had most of those capabilities up and running on demo units, as you can see in the gallery below, so it looks like most of this stuff will be all ready by the time a commercial launch happens. When that might be is anyone’s guess. Modeo is still looking for a retail partner, and they made it pretty clear that Qualcomm’s MediaFLO model of hitching onto mobile providers is exactly what Modeo would like to be doing — unfortunately for Modeo, nobody’s signed up yet.
Perhaps years of being warned by the media of the “Paedophile Menace” has made me overly twitchy, but when UK kitchen retailers brand their latest high-tech intrusion into the room of food a “kiddy cam” then I start to wonder who exactly is peeping at your children.Â
While I had to send back the Treo 750v I reviewed in January, it looks like Mitchell over at Gear Diary is keeping his. Sounds like we shared more than just the same handset, though; one of the concerns I had, and that Mitchell echoes, was that relying on the cellular data rather than having any sort of WiFi option would be a) slow and b) expensive. In my own experience it turned out to be plenty fast enough, and the convenience of not worrying about whether I was in router range made it all worthwhile; Mitchell on the other hand has been looking at other ways to get his 802.11 fix.
Malaysian startup Gupp Technologies is prepping its baby (and by baby we mean ugly baby, that only mommy could love) — the Phreedom — for Q2 release this year. This dual-mode VoIP / GSM abomination little fella will be running a la Mobile’s Convergent Linux platform, so fiddlers, start your engines because Linux anything means open source! It’s good news for Gupp that this handset is also partially redeemed with a solid feature set, packing 802.11b/g, push and pull mail, 312MHz CPU, 320MB memory, VoIP with seamless handover to GSM, and a 2200 mAh battery to supply the juice for it all. Billed as a VoIP device first and a GSM handset second, this may be an interesting notion, but until we get our greasy hands on it, the jury is out — and so far the looks are hurting its case.
BARCELONA, Spain (AVING Special Report on ‘3GSM World Congress 2007′) — SAGEM of France presented its mini handset ”my200C” during 3GSM World Congress 2007. It measures 79×42x21mm.
GOYANG, Korea (AVING Special Report on ‘KHF 2007′) — Best(www.bestenc.co.kr) presented its all-in-one home network system ”ibest” during Kyung Hyang Housing Fair 2007 in Seoul, Korea. According to the company, the system works with consumer electronics products from LG and Daewoo Electronics.
Note to self: don’t ever send an email or text message that you would not want to defend in court. Apparently, that imaginary legal and mental procedure was lost on an Oklahoma resident last year and now a Kentucky middle school teacher has similarly mis-texted. Ann Greenfield, 34, wanted to get her paws on some Mary Jane but sent a text message not to her dealer — but to a Kentucky state trooper by accident. A mass o’ cops was waiting for her when when arrived to meet up with her “dealer.” We suspect this middle school teacher will probably set up a phone contact in her cellphone next time to avoid a rather embarrassing mistake — or maybe she’ll ditch the habit entirely.
