Welcome to this week’s edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! If you are a PC hardware geek an AMD spokesman causally showed off an unannounced video card on Monday called the HD 6990. The card has dual GPUs and should be very fast. We heard a bit of early detail on the PSP2 from Nikkei that claimed the new portable would have an OLED touchscreen, 3G and a new CPU. That would make for a very impressive portable indeed.
NVIDIA will be sampling its new Tegra 3 T30/AP30 mobile quad core processors by the end of 2011. These things will bring a whole new breed of portable devices and more with loads of power. One of the coolest DIY projects I saw last week was the pedal-powered snowplow that a guy built. He used a couple old bikes and some wood to build the plow that appears to work pretty well.
The 10 billionth app was downloaded last weekend and Apple called the person who made the download to give the $10k gift card price that was offered. The catch was that the winner hung up on them. Luckily for her an Apple rep called again and she ended up with her gift. Samsung conducted a strange experiment early in the week where they launched a bunch of paper airplanes in space. They launched 200 paper planes from 36,500 meters above Berlin and each plane had a card with a text message that the folks who found it could enter online for others to read.
The Verizon iPhone 4 will cost the off-contract user $50 more on Verizon that it does on AT&T. The upside is that that extra $50 should let you talk without your call dropping if you hold your face wrong. The Acer Aspire One E100 Android netbook turned up this week and the thing dual boots Android and Windows. The netbook has a 10.1-inchscreen and is your basic netbook.
Notion Ink issued an update for the Adam tablet that was bricking some of the tablets that installed the update. The update was later pulled and only a few users were affected. It was confirmed this week that Verizon will offer a $30 unlimited data plan for the iPhone 4. The catch is that it’s a limited time offer and will go back to the normal tiered plan after a while.
NVIDIA unveiled a new video card this week called the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. The card promises to be 46% faster than the Radeon HD 6950 that is already on the market and the new GTX 560 Ti sells for about $250. Ben Heck took a flashlight with a crank, a USB charger, and some geek mojo to create a cool kinetic charger. The charger puts power into the battery of your phone as you turn the crank.
The tiny Compulab Trim Slice nettop turned up this week with Tegra 2 inside for desktop PC use. This thing would make a really good HTPC; it looks more like a memory card reader than a computer to me. Details on several new Samsung smartphones turned up this week including the Samsung Galaxy Ace, Fit, Gio, and Mini. The Ace is the coolest of them all with a 3.5-inch screen, 800MHz processor and more.
The HTC Facebook phone that we keep hearing about has been tipped to land at MWC next month. The phone will reportedly use the Facebook color scheme, branding, and push the Facebook news feed. An awesome 12-foot long DIY LED matrix display turned up mid-week. The thing is really cool and uses 512 blue LEDs to show your text message.
A Verizon BlackBerry outage rolled on mid-week and to start with the blame was placed on an update by Verizon. Apparently the outage spanned a number of states and users that were affected only received email in batches an hour or so apart. The Sony Xperia Play was the subject of a pre-release preview video this week. This is the PlayStation phone and the thing looks really cool.
Thursday the Sony PlayStation Suite and PS Store for Android devices landed. The store is for Android 2.3 and up devices and has a lot of cool games for mobile gamers to download and enjoy. The Sony NGP “Next Generation Portable” went official this week. The device is the PSP2 we have been hearing about for a while and has an ARM Cortex A9 processor, 5-inch OLED screen, and a lot more. This should be one seriously cool portable game console.
A “secret” AT&T unlimited data plan is available to keep iPhone users from migrating to Verizon. One user is claiming that when he called AT&T and threatened to go to Verizon they moved him to an unlimited data plan. Hulu is reportedly in talks within the video streaming site to change from a free offering that it is right now to a virtual cable operator where we would all have to pay to use the streaming service.
Scosche shipped its new version of the flipSYNC called the flipSYNC II this week. It is available for USB charging devices and Apple gear for about $20 and the new version has a larger USB plug. The dorkiest iPad accessory ever turned up late in the week called the Assero Defender. It’s like one of those reverse backpacks parents use to carry babies, but the Defender is for your iPad.
Details for pre-orders of the Verizon iPhone 4 were offered Thursday. Verizon is going for AT&T’s throat and is offering some big discounts if you trade in an AT&T iPhone. A 16GB iPhone 4 from AT&T will get you $280 off your Verizon iPhone. Thursday we heard that the Sony NGP console would come in both 3G and WiFi only versions. That is good news since many people have no desire for 3G if they will only use it in the house.
The FCC posted up the teardown pics of the Notion Ink Adam Friday. The Adam the FCC had used what appear to be handmade connections leading some to wonder about build quality. We know the specs on the Sony NPG, but we still don’t know the price. Some speculation has been that the console might cost around $600. Sony has said the NGP won’t be $599, but still hasn’t offered pricing yet.
Microsoft is reportedly working towards 16-core Atom processors. The 16-core Atom would apparently be an alternative to traditional CPUs inside servers. Thanks for reading this week’s edition, see you next time!
Welcome to another edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. Moneaul Labs pulled a cool new chassis out of the shadows for people that are building up an HTPC for the living room. The chassis has LCD on the front so you can see widgets and other content from the PC called the Dual Screen PC case. We had a lot of news about the iPad two this week with the tidbit surfacing that the new tablet will have a multicore SGX543 GPU. That GPU claims to deliver twice the graphics power that the original iPad GPU has.
The PlayStation phone landed on another video preview this week. If you are really looking forward to the device the new video may be worth a watch. You may be familiar with aerogel, which is hailed as the world’s lightest solid material. Scientists used carbon nanotubes to make that material even lighter this week.
A crazy Taxi concept for NYC that is split with a tunnel down the middle was shown for a contest to find future taxi designs for the city. The taxi has split seats and the tunnel in the middle is to allow bicyclists to go through without changing lanes. The HTC 7 Pro finally went on sale in Germany last week. The smartphone hit O2 and carried a retail price working out to $39 with a new 2-year agreement or $796 without a contract.
Consumer Reports has no love for the iPhone 4, they have already pulled their recommendation for the AT&T iPhone before. The publication is now “cautious” on the new Verizon iPhone 4. We reviewed the Lenovo U260 IdeaPad Notebook early in the week. We really liked the machine and it starts at a very nice price, lacks tons of crap ware, and performs well.
An interesting app surfaced for the iPhone this week that is called iCar Black Box. The app is a recording program that comes on automatically when an accident is detected to record what happened. A cool new Swiss Army Knife with a secure SSD inside was spied. The new device is from Victorinox and has a 256GB SSD inside. A really cool concept Mercedes turned up this week that looks like the car Tron might drive if he had lots of money. It’s called the Blackbird Mercedes and it’s really cool.
A special BMW edition of the Lexia X1 camera turned up this week. The camera has nothing new to offer but a different finish and BMW stamped on it along with an extra $1000 tacked onto the price. The Sony PSP2 is set to land on January 27 and the PlayStaiton Phone will hit at MWC 2011 according to tips from insiders that were offered mid-week. The renders of the PSP2 I have seen look a lot like the PlayStation Phone.
Starbucks rolled its mobile payments solution out to all stores in the nation this week. You can now get the official Starbucks app and pay for your coffee using your Blackberry or iPhone. Verizon is offering some of its subscribers $200 back if they upgrade to the iPhone 4. The user had to buy a new phone in the month leading up to the iPhone 4 announcement and then has to pay full price and get $200 back on a Visa gift card.
The Nintendo 3DS has been talked to death and now we know that the console will hit the US on March 27 for $249.99. That seems really expensive to me for a portable game system. The Nintendo 3DS has hit pre-order on Amazon as well. The pre-order price is the $249.99 that I just mentioned.
A really cool Andorid Flip Phone with three flexible OLED screens turned up in concept from mid-week. The phone has a triangle design and was designed by Kristian Ulrich Larsen. Facebook for feature phones launched this week with free data use on some carriers. None of the free data carriers are in the US though.
The wholesale price of the Nintendo 3DS turned up in the UK this week. The portable console has a 1/3 markup meaning it has some profit built-in for sure. Google co-founder Larry Page is going to replace Eric Schmidt as the CEO of Google starting on April 4. Schmidt will be taking the Executive Chairman position within the company.
A hack for the Apple TV XBMC turned the cheap STB from Apple in to a 1080p media center. The hack uses the official Apple VideoToolBox API allowing 1080p for non-Apple streams. The Notion Ink Adam tablet finally started shipping last week and it turned up on an official unboxing. The box converts into a desk stand to prop the new tablet up.
Some evidence turned up in the latest iOS SDK that points to the rear camera on the iPad 2 having only 1MP resolution. That really makes no sense considering the much higher resolution cameras out there. The Razer Onza Xbox 360 controllers hit pre-order this week. The $49.99 Tournament edition sold out for pre-orders already but the normal version for $39.99 was available late last week.
The Holocube grew to have a much larger screen than the original. The new version was spied Friday with a 70-inch screen large enough to project a full size holographic human. Duke Nukem Forever has taken…forever… to get an actual launch date. The official trailer for the game was released Friday and it looks really cool.
The Ferrari FF was unveiled with four-seat design and a weird style that looks a lot like the four-seat Porsche Panamera. The car is ugly to me, but the four-seat Porsche has sold very well in the US making the Ferrari offering likely to be popular with the rich needing four seats. The App Store officially hit 10 billion apps downloaded. The lucky soul that made the magic download has $10K coming in a gift card from Apple.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. CES is over, but one of the biggest announcements in a long time was made this week and I bet you can figure out what it is, read along to find out. That sweet Motorola XOOM WiFi tablet that we saw at CES will reportedly ship in April. The tablet is expected to ship about 800,000 units.
Alienware outted the cool looking and powerful M18x notebook computer. It can be packed with dual NVIDIA or AMD GPUs and will have a price to match the impressive specs. The Notion Ink Adam hit a bit of a snag this week after the FCC was backed up and had a delay in issuing the labels the devices needs to ship. The backlog was expected to be cleared the same week.
Kevin Rose of Digg fame announced this week that the iPad 2 was coming soon according to sources that spilled the beans to him. Rose was told that the new tablet would launch in the “next few weeks.” That PlayStation phone that we keep hearing about showed up on video this week running PS1 ROMs. The phone looks really cool and I hope the thing doesn’t suck when it finally lands.
On Monday Verizon Tweeted from the Twitter for iPhone app as CES. We all knew the iPhone was coming at this point so few were surprised I think. AMD kicked its CEO, Dirk Meyer, out of office last week and the chip giant is looking for a new CEO. As of now, there is no word on a replacement.
Intel agreed to pay NVIDIA $1.5 billion in licensing fees this week. The deal marks a 6-year cross-licensing agreement between the two firms and allows both firms to drop the legal proceedings between the two. Pioneer showed off a new prototype cycling computer powered by Android. The little thing is cool and proves Android really is heading everywhere.
We wondered this week if the iPhone that hit Verizon would hurt Android device sales. Consider that AT&T has 15 iPhone users for every Android device user it’s a valid question. I think Verizon will still sell lots of Android devices. Once the Verizon iPhone surfaced on Tuesday, we learned that the buttons are slightly different from the AT&T iPhone thanks to the CDMA nature of Verizon’s device. That means that some cases for AT&T iPhones won’t fit the Verizon offering, but some will.
We went hands on with the Verizon iPhone Tuesday and it’s the AT&T device with button and antenna tweaks. The biggest improvement is that the Verizon network isn’t a crappy in most areas as the AT&T network. A really cool case for the iPad surfaced this week called the US+U Swivel Pro with a rotating handle. Each of the cases also gets a 3% donation to one of the charities the company supports.
All iPhones no matter the carrier will get personal hotspot feature in the iOS 4.3 update. That is assuming AT&T doesn’t block it as they always have blocked tethering. A cool guitar tuner was unveiled this week called the Capo tuner from OnBoard Research. The turner has a big screen and makes tuning your guitar easy.
We spend some hands on time with the Eee Slate EP121 tablet. The tablet is a 12.1-inch machine that has more notebook DNA than iPad inside. Sprint has announced a big event for February 7 and is promising another industry first. The event will have the Sprint CEO on hand an illusionist David Blaine.
Verizon axed its New Every Two program right before the iPhone launched. The move was undoubtedly to help keep some iPhone users from upgrading so quickly since subsidies are going to eat up billions for the company. A cool wireless video card surfaced from KFA2. The card sends the video from your computer out wirelessly to your screen using a receiver and five antennas on the back. The video card is an NVIDIA GTX 460.
HorodronHD-01 concept Watch surfaced and it’s really cool. The thing has an E-ink screen and is easy to read unlike other designer watches with high-tech designs. A geek took a Kinect, Wii controllers, and a PC version of Black Ops and hacked the works to operate together. The Wii controllers handled movement, aim and firing while the Kinect recognized gestures for other commands.
Analysts are reporting that since the iPhone launched Apple may have sold as many as 90 million iPhones. Considering the device was only on one carrier in many places for a lot of that time the number is very impressive. BAE Systems is working on an e-ink system of camo for tanks. The system uses sensors to project the landscape around the tank onto the surface of the tank to hide it Predator style.
A new line of Angry Birds plush toys surfaced at Firebox. Some of the stuffed toys make noises and they will all ship in March. Liquid Image has a new set of goggles for the off-road rider that wants to record their antics. It can record in 1080p 30 fps or 720p 60 fps and stores to microSD cards.
Korg outted a new nanoSERIES2 USB controller this week. The thing comes in black or white colors and gets power and connectivity from the USB port. Apple has announced that the App Store is nearing the 10 billion download mark. The person who downloads the 10 billionth app will get a $10,000 gift card.
Some leaked iPad 2 cases have surfaced that show what the new tablet might look like. The things have the case shows the same square design as the current iPad with a larger speaker and more. A few rumors have been floating around on the specs of the iPad 2. The rumors point to a higher resolution screen, SD card slot, and more . I just don’t see Apple offering a SD card slot on anything, but I would love to be wrong on that. Thanks for reading this week’s edition!
Welcome to the second edition of the Week in Review of 2011. This week was CES 2011 so we have tons of cool new gear to talk about. One of the coolest DIY projects I have ever seen is the Return of the Jedi lightsaber made by Bradley Lewis. He made the thing out of machined aluminum parts and it has a removable blade.
WallWizard showed off its new line of motorized wall mounts that have a cool iPhone app for control. The app allows you to control the mount from across the room using your iPhone. Angry Birds hit the PSP and PS3 consoles this week as a mini game. The game offers 63 levels and will land on other game consoles later in the year.
An interesting MID called the OCOSMOS OSC1 landed at CES. The tablet has an Intel Oak Trail processor inside along with a 5-inch touchscreen, a slide out keyboard and it runs Windows 7. I bet there are some of you out there that didn’t wake up on time last weekend thanks to the iPhone alarm bug. That bug was supposed to fix itself on January 3 and didn’t. We still don’t know exactly what caused the alarm issue to start with.
AMD made its cool Fusion APUs official this week. These little gems pack in support for DirectX 11, 1080p HD, and 10 hours of battery life. Angry Birds for Windows Phone 7 won’t launch for months apparently. The game is on most other mobile platforms, is very popular, and has even made its way to some game consoles this week.
The Garmin StreetPilot app for the iPhone landed this week. The app is on the App Store right now for $39.99. The Tesla Model S and BMW vehicles are getting NVIDIA Tegra inside their vehicle infotainment systems. The Tegra chip will run the gauges and the large 12.1-inch touchscreen in the Tesla Model S.
50 Cent is the latest rapper to get in on the branded headphone market, but his set is much cooler than others I have seen. Fity calls his headphones the Sleek by 50 Cent and they have carbon fiber in the design. Asus went official with the EeePad Slider at CES. The tablet runs Android and has a cool slide out keyboard and a 10.1-inch screen.
We laid eyes on the cool Toshiba 3D TV at CES that needs no glasses. This is the sort of TV all people looking to go 3D have been waiting for. Toshiba says the set isn’t ready for the market yet, and we agree, but the tech has some promise. Qualcomm purchased Athros this week for a massive $3.1 billion. the purchase will get Qualcomm into computing, networking, and consumer products in a big way and branch Qualcomm into some new categories.
We spent a bit of hands on time with the Notion Ink Adam at CES. We think the Adam is a very impressive Android tablet and its Eden UI is one of the coolest parts about the tablet. We also ran some benchmarks on the Adam at CES and some Flash testing. We loaded Quadrant Advanced on the Adam, it scored 1,836, and we point out that Froyo isn’t optimized for multithreading so real world performance will be different.
Samsung has unveiled a new Sliding PC 7 Series that looks interesting. The machine is a combination of a notebook and a mobile PC skirting the land between tablet and netbook. It runs Windows 7 and weighs in at 2.2 pounds with up to 64GB of storage, a 10.1-inch screen, and an Atom Z670 CPU at 1.66GHz. What appear to be parts for the Verizon iPhone have been spotted online. The parts could also be for the next iteration of the iPhone, but the Verizon version is more likely if these pics aren’t fake.
Motorola has unveiled the Atrix 4G smartphone at CES hailed as the most powerful smartphone in the world. The thing is very impressive sounding on paper and is the first smartphone to ship with real RAM inside. Apple retail workers learned this week that there were no vacation days coming the last three weeks of January. This usually happens when new gear is coming and the Verizon iPhone is what is expected.
The Apple Mac App Store launched this week with about 1000 apps to start with. The store ended up moving a huge number of apps in the first few days it was available proving the store is very popular. Verizon went official with the HTC ThunderBolt smartphone. The device is the first LTE smartphone in the country and has nice specs like Android 2.2.1, 8GB of storage, and a microSD card slot with a single core 1GHz CPU.
JVC unveiled a cool new 3D camcorder at CES that records 3D in full 1080p resolution. It is the first camcorder for consumers to do 1080p 3D and it will cost you with a retail price a touch under $2000. A Chinese auction site has 50,000 stolen iTunes accounts up for auction with 12 hours of access offered to the accounts for about 15 cents here in the US. The site refuses to pull the auction until it gets an official request from Apple.
We ran into Mike Lazaridis at an event at CES and he whipped out the BlackBerry PlayBook and showed the thing off. We liked the bright and clear screen along with the capacitive controls in the bezel; the thing is pretty darn cool. Steve Jobs took only a buck in salary from Apple in 2010 according to documents filed by Cupertino. The board at Apple also asked for a clear succession policy for Steve is he was unable to continue at CEO of Apple.
Reports are coming in that the iPhone on Verizon may launch on February 3. That makes me wonder if the phone is coming on February 3, why the blocked vacation days for the three weeks in January? The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Verizon iPhone is going to launch on January 11. That fits in with the days workers can’t take off at Apple stores and makes that February 3 date more questionable.
After all the gear was unveiled at CES, the item voted best in show was the Motorola Xoom tablet. I admit the thing looks really cool with its Tegra 2 processor, HDMI output, 10-inch screen, and LTE data access. I want one. Thanks for reading this week’s edition, see you next time!
Welcome to the first Week in Review of 2011! I hope your hangover is gone and you had a good time this weekend! Last week was an eventful one leading up to CES 2011 kicking off this month and lots of cool stuff turned up. A British DJ created a cool set of records that when overlapped form the CMYK logo. I want them and I don’t even know what kind of music the artist makes.
A lady took a set of nesting dolls and painted them to look like Dr. Who and they are epic. The dolls have the outer one painted like the Tardis and the other dolls are made up to look like all the people who played Dr. Who. BAE created a concept for war fighting robots that look a lot like the Batman tumbler. The vehicle is dubbed The Raider and is one of seven concepts that are being developed.
I have kids that like to color a lot and they like to break crayons for no apparent reason. The Crayola Crayon Maker will take those broken Crayons and melt them into a new color for your kids to use and give them a reason to break Crayons too. Comcast is considering offering low-cost broadband if the merger with NBC goes through. The access would be offered to homes that fall into a certain demographic, presumably for the poor, if they decide to.
An ex RIM worker posted a tidbit on a website this week that was since removed. The person stated in the comment that when the original iPhone was unveiled RIM didn’t think the device was going to meet the claims Apple made and would have a horrible battery life and then RIM went into chaos when they realized the iPhone did what it promised. Asus is set to slash prices for netbooks and MSI may be leaving the netbook market completely according to DigiTimes. Sources claim that tablets are hurting the netbook market so badly that some changes are coming for some of the major brands in the market.
Asus’ EEE Pads have been teased in some photos ahead of the official release at CES 2011. One of the tablets has a convertible form factor making it more a netbook in my eyes than a tablet. The Sony PlayStation phone is rumored to be launching in the spring of 2011. The device is said to be based on the PSP Go that failed so badly for Sony.
Quirky has a new accessory for geeks in cold climates that wear gloves and use a touchscreen device. The new accessory is called Digits and are like hatpins that are pinned though a glove and allows the touchscreen on the iPhone and other gear to be operated. A successor to the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone is expected to debut at MWC 2011. All we know about the device right now is that it will have a dual-core processor.
A new app called PhoneGuard surfaced this week that blocks the user from being able to text when the phone is going faster than 10mph. The device is aimed at keeping kids and workers safe when driving, but will keep passengers from texting too. Scientists were able to capture the first x-ray image ever of lightning and it looks freakin’ awesome. The bolt was apparently traveling at about a sixth of the speed of light and the camera was still able to capture the image.
Gresso has unveiled a cool new iPad that is probably more than most of us can afford. The thing has a wood back made for 200-year-old wood and a gold Apple logo. France announced that it wants to enact a tablet tax on the iPad and Android tablets, but leave Windows tablets exempt. The tax would apparently add the equivalent of $16 to the cost of the iPad.
Skype blamed the wide-ranging outage of its service on a Windows app bug that killed one of the supernodes it uses. The bug was apparently in IM server and 50% of the people on the service were running that version of the software. Netflix is looking at a wider ranging international push in 2011. Apparently the company is already talking with ad agencies about ad placements for new markets.
The Archos 70 internet tablet with Android debuted this week. It is the first Android tablet to get a 250GB HDD and it uses a 1GHz processor all for $349.99. Apparently, a man on an airline flight punched a 15-year-old boy in the arm for not turning off his iPhone when the flight crew said to. The man was arrested for misdemeanor battery once the plane landed and the kid reportedly had a mark on his arm from the punch.
Sharp announced that its Galapagos Android tablets would be coming to the US in early 2011. The tablets will also be coming to China and India as well. ABI Research has predicted that in 2011 there will be 7 trillion SMS messages sent. That is a lot of messages and included text, MMS, email, and IMs. A video turned up that shows the crazy expensive and cool Leica M9 digital camera getting built on video.
A hacker group called fail0verflow has unvield a new hack that completely bypasses the software security on the PS3. The hack will allow the user to run any software on the console be it pirated games, Linux, or home brew apps no matter the firmware version by generating its own keys. Kindle users gained the ability to loan out eBooks this week. The loan period is only 14 days and the books can only be loaned once if the publisher allows loaning at all.
A cool new accessory for the iPhone that is perfect for anyone with heart issues is debuting at CES 2011. The device is an iPhone 4 case that turns the smartphone into an ECG machine and is called iPhoneECG. The FBI raided ISPs in California and Texas this week looking for details on the DDoS attacked launched by the Anonymous group. Anonymous ran the attacks against big websites like Mastercard.com and PayPal as retaliation for the sites not sending funds to WikiLeaks.
NASA discovered more cracks in the tanks on the Discovery this week. The cracks are being repaired and for now the flight remains on schedule for launch in February. Thanks for reading this week’s edition, see you next week!
Welcome to the first post Christmas Week in Review! I hope you had a great Christmas, let’s get right to it. We heard Monday that wireless carriers were openly looking at ways that they can charge users a fee per service. It seems like a scheme to get user to take advantage of the sponsored services that the carrier offers rather than using third party services. Carrier services are expected to be offered free while things like YouTube would cost 50 cents monthly.
A doctoral candidate student has written a dissertation over the effects that MMORPG games have on college students. The study found that some students lose sleep and don’t eat to play their games and a large portion admits that games interfere with studies and work. A really sweet electric racing motorcycle surfaced this week called the Mission R. The bike is capable of 160mph and has a 141hp electric motor.
We reviewed the Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type mobile phone this week. We figure the thing isn’t perfect but it will satisfy most mainstream users. We reviewed the Google Cr-48 Chrome OS notebook computer early in the week. This is a strange rig where the hardware will never be sold and the software is what the story is about and we figure there is a lot to do before the OS launches next year.
Pioneer unveiled a set of white DJ gear this week. The hardware is a pearl white version of the CDJ-350 and DJM-350 that debuted in black back early in 2010. They FCC voted to enact some net neutrality rules this week and the vote was commented on by Woz, Verizon, and others. Naturally, the carriers hated the rules and others loved the new regulations.
A pic of a dude holding what appears to be a mini iPad surfaced this week. The guy holding the supposed mini iPad is some sort of racecar driver. I call shenanigans. Elliptic Labs showed off a cool touchless iPad dock that uses gestures to control the dock. The gesture interface of the dock will be shown off at CES next month.
We were sent some pics of what is supposedly some shots of a new HTC smartphone. The pics are suspected to be the HTC Incredible HD and would be a 4G device. GM announced early in the week that it is recycling the oil booms used to clean up the oil spill in the gulf in the production of plastic parts for the Volt. The plastic is being used to make the radiator covers for the car.
Chinese researchers devised a way to store data inside bacteria this week. The catch was that the bacteria could mutate and lose data and getting the data out was expensive and tedious. A crazy app for the iPhone launched called NoseDial. The app lets you dial the smartphone using your nose for folks in areas where they have to wear gloves.
The Nokia N900 got its own port of Android 2.3 this week. The port came from a dude going by DrunkDebugger and isn’t quite 100% functional but offers core features like WiFi, Audio, and others. A great tragedy happened when the infamous and uber geeky Tron Guy was barred from watching Tron: Legacy in his Tron suit. Apparently, the theater thought it would be distracting.
Skype went down leaving hoards of users without the ability to make calls and video chat mid-week. The outage started at about 3:30 on Wednesday and affected users in the US, Asia, and Europe. Skype was still having issues on Thursday, but was back online with 30% of its normal user base having access to the service. The downtime was blamed on a supernode issue.
Logitech stopped the production of its Revue Google TV box this week. The device will apparently go back into production when a new version of Google TV software lands. The Nokia N900 got the ability to control the sweet Parrot AR.Drone flying machine that was an iPhone only controlled device until now. I still think the AR.Drone is the coolest accessory for a smartphone ever.
A patent app from Canon surfaced this week that shows a really cool way the company is looking to take advantage of NFC equipped smartphones. Canon wants to use the NFC device as a display screen for your DSLR when shooting pics. High-end and crazy expensive home theater and audio gear maker Bang & Olufsen unveiled a new home theater remote this week called the Beo6. Apparently, it adds some new controls along with WiFi.
I always thought those tubes that they use at banks for sending things through the drive through were cool. A concept tube travel system for people and equipment called ET3 has been unveiled that would allow you to travel from New York to Beijing in two hours at 4000mph and it reminds me a lot of those bank drive though systems. This sounds really out there to me. Thanks for reading this week’s edition!
Welcome to this week’s edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! This is the last edition before Christmas; I hope you have your shopping done! Last Sunday we went hands on with the LG VL600 LTE modem and it was really cool. We like the service, but the scant data limits of 5GB and 10GB will keep many from adopting if they plan to use it as a broadband alternative. Monday some really cool cases for the iPhone 4 surfaced from Gear 4 that fans of Angry Birds will like. The cases come in three styles with colors and characters from the Angry Birds game.
More rumors swirled about a half-size iPad that suggest Apple may be working on a smaller version of the iPad. That would be no surprise even if Jobs did already say 7-inch tablets are DOA. A geek took some sticky notes and a string of Christmas lights and hacked them into a way to show which of his pals were online. The lights the geek used are the GE Color Effects GE-35 LED sting and the LED data bus was hacked to create the IM status device.
Coloud has been making headphones that are sports and super hero branded for a while now and those were cool. The company has now rolled out an epic R2-D2 themed set that is really cool and sell for a tick under $50. The rumor that will not die made another round this week with the Verizon iPhone said to be coming right after Christmas. The device is also said to be an LTE handset.
A phone design concept popped up by researcher Fabian Hemmert that has tactile feedback. The phone could hold your hand, blow on you, and kiss you. This will single handedly bring new meaning to phone sex me thinks. One analyst is saying that a new HP webOS tablet is set to hit the market in March 2011. BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman cites sources in Asia for the tip.
A group of Japanese guys got together and created cool skydiving simulation using Google Earth, a projector, and some fans. The result looks pretty fun and more realistic than you might expect. German doctors made a claim this week that the world has been waiting to hear for decades. The doctors claim to have cured a patient of AIDS using stem cells and other techniques.
GNU Founder Richard Stallman stated this week that the Google Chrome OS is careless computing. He points out that when your data is stored on a company machine rather than your own machine you lose some of your legal rights. An awesome DIY Tron Skatecycle was spied early in the week and the thing has glowing wheels that look like the new lightcycles. The device started out as a device skate cycle called the Freerider.
A cool map of the world that highlights Facebook relationships shows just how connected we are globally. The map shows 10 million pairs of friends out of the 500 million people on the social network. Analysts said this week that they think a Verizon iPhone will gain users mostly at AT&T’s expense. That would mean that the number of new users to the iPhone with Verizon offering one would be less than some might expect.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was named the Time Person of the Year for 2010. The magazine says that the site founded by Zuckerberg has changed the way people relate to each other. Tablet sales in the business world are predicted to double according to a ChangeWave survey of businesses. Most of the businesses want to use the iPad and 7% of the businesses surveyed say they already give employees iPads.
A cool new way to raise money for charity has been unveiled by Google. Money for each opened tab on the Chrome browser will be given to charity with a new “Chrome for Cause” program. A wild looking stringless guitar from Misa Kitara has surfaced. The guitar uses a touch screen for strings and can be pre-ordered now for $849 on a normal plastic version of $2899 for an aluminum version.
A crazy self-sterilizing door handle won a Concept Design Award. The thing is really cool and kills off germs on its own. Door handles transmit more germs and illness than I care to think about. Geeks and Lego never fail to impress and this cool T-800 bust made from Lego is no exception. The statue even has glowing red eyes and base has tiny Lego skeletons inside.
For most of us, the largest utility bill is electricity. A concept home has debuted that is square and covered in solar panels to generate electricity. The panels power the hot water, lights, AC and all else in the concept and might even have power to sell back to the electric company. I have never seen a house key that was cool until the Keybrid turned up. The key has a ring integrated into the design and can be used as a money clip or clipped to other things. You can pick up a pair of the things for about $17.
Word Lens for the iPhone is an app that can translate signs in a foreign language so you can read them. The app is cool and it only works for printed text (naturally). PDP is showing off its cool Tron: Legacy controller that is licensed by Microsoft for the Xbox 360. The controller has glowing orange lines and sells for about $50.
EA has some of its coolest iPhone and iPad games on sale right now for the holidays at 99 cents. There are a bunch of different games available from Tetris to Madden NFL and more. A live video demo of the Notion Ink Adam tablet surfaced from the company for us all to drool over. The tablet looks pretty cool to me, check out the video for yourself here. Thanks for reading this week’s edition and have a Merry Christmas!
Welcome to this week’s edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! As always, there was a lot going on this week so let’s jump right in. Verizon announced the first cities that will be getting LTE service. Many folks have been waiting for the blazing fast 4G LTE service and if you are lucky enough to live in one of the initial areas, you can get your 4G fix now.
We spotted the world’s largest floating Christmas tree early in the week that is on display in Rio de Janeiro. The giant tree has 105km of lights on it and stands 85 meters tall. Early in the week Radio shack announced with discounts and trade-in you could get a new iPhone 4 for $25. If this is the first time you are hearing about the deal, you are too late to take advantage.
Analysts announced that they believe Verizon might pay Apple to block other carriers from getting the iPhone. That will really suck if it’s true, a bunch of iPhone fans have been waiting for the thing to hit all carriers in the US as it has in the UK. Google officially announced the Nexus S smartphone this week. The thing has some nice specs like a 4-inch screen 1GHz processor, 16GB of storage and a lot more.
Thanko offered up a crazy office chair that might get you fired called the AnyChair. The chair looks normal enough, but folds flat to make a bed for taking some naps on company time. A crazy custom iPhone 4 surfaced this week hat has diamonds and a T-Rex tooth on it. The price of the special iPhone 4 was $62,700.
Macy’s is moving 85 of its locations around the country to green LED lighting. The move is expected to save the company millions over the coming years. Insiders are hinting that the iPad 2 will ship in April of 2011. According to the rumor, Foxconn is making the new iPad and 400,000 to 600,000 units are said to be in the initial shipment.
Scientists have announced that the famous sonic screwdriver used by Dr. Who may in fact be possible to make. Engineers think that it is possible to move small objects using ultrasonic waves. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 launched this week with a MSRP of $349. The video card has 480 CUDA cores, 732MHz graphics clock, and a 1464MHz memory clock.
Google announced the chrome OS officially this week and along with it revealed the chrome notebook program as well. The first of the notebooks is the CR-48 and Google has partnered with Verizon, Samsung, Acer, and Intel to bring notebooks to market. We spent some hands-on time with the Google Nexus S smartphone this week. We think from our time with the device that it has a lot of cool to it, but right now the smartphone is a bit hard to judge.
I always wondered what they do with all those old movie posters at the theater. One geek is taking them and making some really cool iPad sleeves out of them. The Notion Ink Adam Android tablet hit pre-order on December 9. If you have been waiting for the cool Android tablet to land you might want to order yours up right now.
Monster has created a special edition Daft Punk Tron Legacy headphone set. The headphones are white with glowing blue LEDs and look really cool even if they are expensive at about $350. Insiders are pegging the launch of the PlayStation Phone to start in March of 2011. The device is still pegged to be seen officially for the first time at MWC.
Apple is reportedly testing Sandy Bridge parts from Intel tipping a big CPU and GPU refresh for Mac fans. If you have your eye on a new Mac, you might want to wait a few months lest you be stuck with hardware that will soon be replaced by better stuff. Intel is expecting 35 Android tablets to land in 2011. At the same time Dell’s Android tablet plans were offered up making 2011 a good year for Android tablet fans.
A dude named Andrew Chase has built a really cool mechanical steampunk horse that gallops. The thing looks like the Trojan horse to me. When the Notion Ink Adam tablet hit pre-order this week the price was lower than expected. The entry-level tablet with WiFi landed at $375.33 rather than the expected $399 with the 3G version going for $425.33.
A software engineer from Apple built an awesome creation from Lego this week. The guy reproduced a working model of the Greek Antikythera Mechanism with 1500 different Lego pieces. What may be the world’s coolest coffee table surfaced called the Rock Paper Robot Float. The tablet can be purchased for a cool $2000 and uses magnets to make the individual blocks float.
A cool 3D printer called the Thing-O-Matic surfaced that can create 3D objects by carving the from a block of MakerBot ABS plastic. You can get your own for $1225. That’s all for this week’s edition, have a great week and Happy Holidays!
Welcome to the latest edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! Apple rejected an app for inclusion on the App Store this week because it was a magazine app about Android. The publisher of the app said that the person at Apple he spoke with said, “You know… your magazine. It’s just about Android…. we can’t have that in our App Store.” A report came in early in the week that Windows Phone 7 was outsold by Android devices 15:1 in the UK. The revelation came by way of an aggregator of store deals in the UK called MobilesPlease.
A sweet new Tron flash drive surfaced that is in the shape of a Lightcycle. The thing glows when you plug it into the USB port of your computer and there are styles that look like the bikes from the old flick and the new one. A woman has claimed ownership of the sun and had the document notarized. The woman even wants to charge for use of the sun apparently, what a moron.
The new Tegra 2 smartphone from LG called the Star was leaked this week and the thing is said to be a benchmarking demon. The device runs Android and is going to be one of the first Tegra 2 smartphones to hit the market. Microsoft has announced that it sold 2.5 million Kinect devices in the first 25 days the thing has been on the market. That is a lot of folks that are playing and hacking the cool accessory.
Verizon offered up details on the roll out of its long anticipated LTE network. The details were offered at an event that was held on December 1. NASA offered up a very cryptic press release on Tuesday that hinted at a major discovery in astrobiology. The event was packed with scientists that specialize in organisms that live in high concentrations of arsenic.
Samsung Mobile Display was showed off a new type of screen tech this week called Super PLS. The new screen is brighter and has better viewing angles than IPS screens while being cheaper to make. A rumor surfaced mid-week that claims Microsoft is working on a new HD remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. The title is rumored to be in development at 343 Industries where future Halo titles will be made. However, Microsoft said that it plans to work on supporting Halo: Reach right now with no new title to announce.
If you recall a few months back the real replicas of the Tron Lightcycles surfaced on eBay that were street legal. Those bikes didn’t all sell and if you wanted one you can still get one for a cool $55k and you can now see a video of the makers riding the thing. SuperTalent tossed a new flash drive on the market this week using USB 3.0 and having Creedo Personal installed. The drive lets the user run any software they want in a secure environment.
A patent app from Apple surfaced outlining a new 3D display tech that needs no glasses. Not only does the patent app show a screen needing no glasses, but it needs no parallax tech either. NASA offered more details on Thursday on that press release about a new discovery. NASA has found microbes on Earth that can live in high concentrations of arsenic making it much more likely to find other life in the universe.
Angry Birds Seasons expansion landed on the App Store this week. The game has the Halloween and the Christmas version of the game and upgrades to the app will be free. Google has agreed to pay $1 in compensation to a couple who sued them for violations of privacy with Street View. The attorney for the couple said the buck is “one sweet dollar of vindication.”
The geeks at iFixit took the Parrot AR.Drone iPhone controlled flying device and tore the thing apart for use to look at. I still think that the AR.Drone is one of the coolest accessories for the iPhone. We posted up our review of the Sony Ericsson LiveView display Friday. The thing promised a lot and wasn’t that great ultimately with lots of connectivity issues.
A cool new bar of soap that glows in the dark surfaced late in the week. The little bar of soap has the periodic table markings for Uranium on it. A professor of photography in New York had a camera installed in on the back if his head at a piercing shop and it takes a picture every minute and sends the pics to a photography exhibit called “The 3rd Eye.”
The prosecution in the Xbox 360 modder case has dropped the charges against Matthew Crippen. Crippen faced ten years in prison if he was convicted, but as it turns out the key video evidence in the case was obtained illegally. Congress passed the CALM Act this week and the act is on its way to Obama’s desk to be signed into law. The CALM Act will force commercial makers to set the volume for the commercials to the same level as the show you are watching.
Google is set to have a Chrome event on December 7. The event will be in San Francisco and will be broadcast on YouTube as well. It will be next Tuesday at 10:30 so check it out. Thanks for reading this week’s edition of the SlashGear Week in Review!
Welcome to this week’s edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! I hope you had a good Thanksgiving and all those irritating family members you really didn’t want at your house have finally gone home. Early in the week Cox Communications unveiled a new whole home DVR solution that was sure to make fans of TV and movies with packed DVRs happy. The service lets you watch and play DVR programs on any TV in your home.
Apple iSO 4.2 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch landed this week. The update adds some really nice new feature to the iPad like AirPrint, AirPlay, Game Center and more. Audi unleashed its sweet TTS autonomous racecar to attack Pikes Peak. The car went up the legendary mountain racecourse in 27 minutes. A car with a driver is expected to make it in at least 17 minutes.
The NVIDIA dual GPU GTX 595 video card leaked and the thing looks very impressive. The leak claims that the card may be using dual GF110 GPUs inside. We grabbed some hands on time with the cool Dell Inspiron duo convertible tablet. First impressions are that it’s a heavier tablet than we are used to and we figure it’s more for the at home user than the mobile type.
Microsovision unveiled another of its tiny pico projectors early in the week called the SHOWWX+ laser projector. The thing is able to directly connect to Apple devices. Google Chrome OS notebooks have been delayed according to Google’s Eric Schmidt and won’t land for a “few months”. However it appears that the beta version of the OS is set to land soon.
The official website for the Notion Ink Adam tablet has gone live. The site gives you an easy to navigate area that tells all about the machine for those interested in getting hands on one. If you updated your iPhone to iOS 4.2 this week and want to jailbreak, Dev-Team has the steps you need to take. The bad news is that iPhone 4 users need to tether each time you reboot or turn the device off.
A really cool Acer 4.8-inch screen Android smartphone was unveiled with a screen resolution of 1280 x 480 and we are excited about the thing. It has a 1GHz CPU, 8MP camera, and a lot more. Acer also debuted a cool dual-screen laptop called the Iconia that is really awesome. The thing runs Windows 7 and I want one pretty bad.
We posted up our official review of the Droid Pro this week. We really liked the thing and think it has one of the best keyboards on any Android device but the small screen will leave gamers wanting more. Flash Rods took a model of that awesome Delorean from Back to the Future and crammed a 500GB HDD inside. The final product is one of the coolest external HDDs ever.
If you like to take your iPad with you everywhere and want to keep it dry and safe from dust and more the Drycase was revealed this week. The Drycase is sort of like a big zip lock baggie for your iPad and will keep liquids and more at bay. Scientists have devised a special food that can be fed to pigeons. Once the birds eat the food, their poo is sort of like soap that will clean your car and the things they crap on. This is cool and really gross all at once.
Moshi has unveiled a cool iPhone dock called the MM03i that has a Bluetooth phone attached that you can use for making and receiving calls. It reminds me of one of those old phones from back in the day. Google TVs from both Toshiba and Vizio are expected to surface at CES 2011 according to some rumors. That really is no surprise that the offerings are coming, whether or not people will be interested since networks have killed the best features of Google TV remains to be seen.
We posted up our review of the Logitech Revue Google TV box this week. The device promises lots of potential and at least for now that potential isn’t fully realized. Microsoft unveiled a new Christmas theme for Windows 7 users this week that has some really cool holiday lights images. They also promise an interesting Halo Reach theme for next week.
Russia is planning to spend about $2 billion to clean up some of the space junk in orbit around the Earth right now. The plan is for a pod that will knock stuff out of orbit where it would crash into the ocean or burn up in the atmosphere. Tokyoflash unveils a new watch called the Kisai RPM that looks really cool. The watch has a black stainless steel case and blue LEDs, and I can actually read the thing.
The TSA is the source of a lot of ire over their security practices and the penchant for fondling people. If you want to show them what you think on that full body scan you need these 4th Amendment underwear. Rumors are circulating that the long talked about Sony Ericsson PlayStation Phone will land at MWC 2011. If the thing does land then it had better be more interesting than the PSP or the PSP Go.
Some awesome space tires surfaced Friday that were granted a 2010 R&D Award and were designed by NASA and Goodyear. The tires are built out of 800 interwoven load-bearing springs and look like they were stolen off the lunar lander from the 60′s. That’s all for this week’s edition, have a great weekend!
