Archive for November 5th, 2008
Philips has introduced goLITE BLU, a new clock that offers light therapy to people suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD), or what is commonly known as the winter blues. It sits by your bedsides and emits a blue light designed to lift your mood and soothe you. For $279, it doesn’t come cheap and only offers a basic array of clock functions besides the light. It’s still cheaper than a few sessions of therapy. Regardless, I think I might know what would make me and my wallet happier than buying this clock—stop pretending I’m a crime-fighting hero by the name of Batman and actually turn on the lights? Halloween is over. [Philips via Boing Boing]
This bunny USB webcam looks just like a normal stuffed bunny at first glance (if you ignore the USB cable coming out of his ass), which is perfect for whatever clandestine recording opportunities you’re setting up in front of your computer. Of course, there are much easier ways of secretly documeting things than putting a stuffed bunny on your desk or monitor, many of which our own Sean Fallon is intimately familiar with. Sixteen bones and shipping gets you this 1.3-megapixel furry creature—which actually looks more like a dog than a rabbit. [Sourcing Map via Shiny Shiny]
Magic Tap, a 99-cent iPhone application, lets you send fake calls to yourself on command, just in case you ever need an excuse to get out of an awkward situation such as a horrible blind date, or having “that talk” with your girlfriend. To make this application more realistic, it lets you customize the caller’s name, number and photo I.D. to anyone you choose. However, keep this in mind: setting the caller I.D. to “Shakira” with a steamy photo of the diva probably wouldn’t be too convincing, so you better stick with using Jason Chen’s sexy mug instead. We’ve even provided one for you after the cut. [PC World]
The AT&T Quickfire will be heating up the competition with the T-Mobile Sidekick when it is released on November 10 this year. This tri-band cell phone will only cost $99 with a 2-year contract—$299 without—and doesn’t seem like a Windows Mobile phone, or any other OS we’ve ever seen. The Quickfire includes a touch screen, full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3G, a music player, and GPS, and will come in orange, lime and silver. [Engadget Mobile via cnet]
We already caught sight of one early review of Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic handset a little while back, but if you’re looking for something more to whet your appetite you may want to head on over to All About Symbian, which has an expectedly exhaustive look at the touchscreen phone. That naturally includes plenty of pics of the device and its interface, although the site is reserving its final conclusion for part two of the review, which is promised “soon.” That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of impressions to be found though, including word that the device’s build quality seems solid despite its plastic construction, and that the device’s resistive touchscreen is “extremely good” compared to other resistive touchscreens (it also seems to have been improved compared to earlier Tube pre-production models). Still on the fence? Then hit up the read link below for more.
Steve Ballmer definitely gets around, last month taking a trip to the UK just to mock Android, this month heading all the way to Korea to praise Samsung’s new T*Omnia. He says it’s “at the forefront of this new generation of mobile devices,” and digs how it “brings together communications, productivity, multimedia, and entertainment in a way that meets the needs of both consumers and mobile professionals.” We think he’s most fond of its operating system (WinMo 6.1), but must admit we’re smitten by the handset too — especially its 800 x 480 screen. That’s more than twice the resolution of the older Omnia, which by the sounds of it will be released in the US sometime this month. Samsung didn’t actually say which Omnia, but since it’s the older one that’s been FCC approved don’t go holding your breath for WVGA goodness. Lucky Koreans, meanwhile, can expect the T*Omnia to start being served up by SK Telecom on November 20.
If you’re one of those people always complaining about the iPhone keyboard (the lack of one, that is), then this is probably a vital piece of news, even if it’s not totally practical. Or practical in any way, actually. Some very enterprising citizen of the world seems to be running a chunk of Ruby code on his jailbroken iPhone 3G, which allows it to recognize what appears to be a Palm / Visor external keyboard connected via a custom cable. The results of this intense bit of modification? Well — not much, honestly, but it’s still kinda cool. “Hello Keyboard,” indeed. Check out the video of it in action after the break.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Sprint beat ‘em with the Touch Pro, but that doesn’t mean a throng of AT&T customers aren’t going to be delighted to hear that the Fuze is now shipping to stores — sort of. Retail locations are receiving dummy Fuzes now, which don’t do much good if you’re trying to store contacts, make appointments, or place calls, but at least give us a solid indication that retail availability ain’t too far off. Sorry, Tilt — you had a good run, but our lust definitely lies elsewhere at this point.
Oh, goodie! SEMCBlog has it that Sony Ericsson is priming a fall announcement for tomorrow, the 6th of November. Certainly enough, it was this day last year when SE introduced a trio of new handsets, so we’d say the timing sounds just about perfect. Curious as to what’s coming? A little birdie has dropped off signs that a W705 (pictured) will be the star of the show, with a Orange-exclusive W705u and a mysterious MBS-900 accessory tagging along. As for February-bound W705 slider, we’re told it’ll boast a 2.4-inch 320 x 240 resolution display, 3.2-megapixel camera, 120MB of internal memory, a 4GB M2 card (included), Walkman 3.0 UI, Shake control and two motifs to choose from (Luxury Silver and Passionate Red). All’s that needed now is a dash of official and a pinch of expected pricing.
Stock downgrades are nothing new for the boys and girls at Palm, but analyst Tavis McCourt of Morgan Keegan (which certainly sounds like an important and all-knowing firm) has painted a particularly bleak picture of the company’s books today — so grim, in fact, that it set off a 20 percent drop in the company’s market cap. Apparently the big concern is Palm’s cash burn rate, which has left a cash reserve of just under a quarter billion dollars through a series of delays and setbacks that have been partially offset by moderate successes like the Centro. McCourt figures that’ll be down to a mere $75 million by the time Palm OS 2 launches, and that’s assuming they don’t run into any more slips in the schedule. He notes that Bono can always just flip ‘em a few more mil out of his Joshua Tree earnings, but it’ll end up diluting existing shareholders’ stakes, hence the massive drop in value today. No pressure, Palm.
We’re getting mixed results here, but the word on the street is that Best Buys around the colonies will start taking pre-orders for the BlackBerry Storm tomorrow for a stiff $50 deposit — a pretty good indication that they’re expecting elevated (if not outright insane) demand when it finally launches this month. At least one store we’ve called has corroborated the claim, so you might want to drop by your friendly local big box tomorrow and see what’s what if you’re keen on being the first kid on your block with one of these monsters.
Alongside the W902 plus (pictured), Sony Ericsson has officially launched its PlayNow Plus music service. Currently, the unlimited music download service is only being offered through Sweden’s own Telenor, but we suspect more carriers (and compatible handsets) will be added on in due time. For now, however, everyone outside of Sweden will have to rely on insider reports to see how the service fares, not that we’re suggesting any Swedes drop us a bone in comments or anything. Ahem.
