Gadgets Blog News

by Paul Miller, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 7:14PM Here’s a sure sign of unpopularity: SanDisk stopped selling its TakeTV device, and shut down TakeTV’s Fanfare content portal, on May 15th… and nobody noticed. Originally inspiring fond sentiments with its sneakernet approach to getting videos from your computer to your PC, SanDisk’s TakeTV just never got much traction. Faced with competition from the likes of Microsoft and Apple — not to mention the oodles of networked devices that offer up more content and more convenience which have been cropping up recently — we’d be surprised if TakeTV sold enough units to fill a briefcase. Anybody out there have any fond memory’s of TakeTV’s short stint?Read PermalinkEmail this33 C (Read the full post about ‘SanDisk kills TakeTV dead’…)

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by Donald Melanson, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 1:27PM OCZ wasn’t exactly forthcoming about pricing or release details when it announced its DIY gaming laptop last month, but it looks like those intrigued by the idea of (partly) building their own system can now get their hands on one courtesy of Buy.com, which is offering up the barebones system for $670 (after a $50 rebate). That’ll get you the base 15.4-inch laptop complete with an Intel PM965 chipset, a 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card and a DVD burner, but you’ll have to supply your own processor (any Core 2 Duo is supported), memory (up to 4GB of DDR2-667), and hard drive, not to mention an OS and other “options” like WiFi or Bluetooth. (Read the full post about ‘OCZ’s DIY gaming laptop now available’…)

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Ok, this is pretty amazing and somewhat scary in how much Sci-Fi today’s scientists and engineers are turning into reality. RiSE is a robot that can literally climb walls. RiSe adjusts its shape to deal with the curvature of the surface it’s on, and has multiple sensors on each of its six feet as well body to sense and compensate for inertia and surface material.

Boston Dynamics is developing RiSe with funding from DARPA in conjunction with a number of universities. Take a look at the amazing video over at the Boston Dynamics website.

Posted in Miscellaneous

Tags: home theater, M4A, DAB, mobile devices

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With the official launch not scheduled until June 20, it seems Sprint would like everyone that may be interested ready and able to use the Instinct as soon as it hits their hands. In order to help potential users they have released a collection of how-to style videos on YouTube. The videos cover topics that include Shooting & Sending Video, Live Search, Favorites, Speech To Action Button and of course The Basics. Watch [YouTube] Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed → Tags: ipod, amps, cable, plasma (Read the full post about ‘Sprint offers up some how-to videos for the Instinct’…)

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Here we go again: a new survey about security and devices that is brought to you by a company with a vested interest in providing companies security for their devices. Nevertheless, it’s probably true that if you’re using a blackberry cell phone, Windows mobile phone or other smartphone for your work, you’re not using the same kinds of password protection you have for your company laptop. Credant, which provides “endpoint data security and encryption software,” surveyed 300 IT managers and found that most of them saw phones and PDA’s as bigger security threats than company-issued laptops. (Read the full post about ‘Smartphones now a greater security risk than laptops’…)

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by Donald Melanson, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 12:21PM Apparently unfazed by his recent egg attack, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has now gone out on a limb and made some pretty bold predictions in a recent discussion with Washington Post editors, the biggest of which, by far, is his proclamation that he thinks there’ll be “no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network.” So as not to leave any doubt about that, he also went to further clarify that that means there “will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.” He did add, however, that if it was 14 or 8 years, it’s “immaterial” to his fundamental point. (Read the full post about ‘Ballmer sees the end of print media in ten years’…)

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by Thomas Ricker, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 8:19AMAt long last and a full year and a half after Samsung first touted a 64GB Compact Flash card, Microdia steps onto the scene with the world’s first product. Almost. By the end of June, Microdia will begin shipping its 64GB XTRA ELITE CF card to the photog masses. The UDMA card brings a sustained read / write speed of 300x or 45MBps making it perfectly suited to high-burst rate DSLRs. Now if only we had a price to calculate the cost of our new 192GB SSD. Full press release after the break.[Via PC Authority]PMA, Brisbane, Australia, June 6, 2008, - MICRODIA Ltd. (Read the full post about ‘Microdia beats Samsung to market with world’s first 64GB CF card’…)

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by Paul Miller, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 10:18AM We unboxed this little N-series wonder yesterday, but if you’ve still got a hankering for more N78, there’s a video after the break that should uncover all its magical wares. Or maybe it just shows us messing around with the phone for a few minutes with no real purpose or direction. One of those. (Read the full post about ‘Nokia N78 video hands-on’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 9:54AM Really, Clarion? You couldn’t find it in your heart to just settle on UMPC or MID? Instead, what we’ve got is yet another combination of letters that really means nothing at all — the MiND (Mobile internet and Navigation Device) is little more than a rather awkwardly-shaped UMPC with built-in GPS, which by our estimation, doesn’t deem it worthy of its own moniker. All angst aside, the Linux-based machine will reportedly roll out in America later this year (and Europe the next), and while the standard version will come equipped with Bluetooth and WiFi, a premium iteration should be available with WWAN. (Read the full post about ‘Clarion to introduce GPS-equipped MiND, acronym guidebook lands another’…)

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by Paul Miller, posted Jun 6th 2008 at 1:56PM Intel is no stranger to antitrust problems, the company just got nailed with a $25 million fine in Korea, Europe’s been breathing down its neck for years, and AMD has been trying to drum up antitrust accusations against Intel since time immemorial, but the FTC just embarked upon what could be Intel’s biggest headache yet. The Federal Trade Commission has opened up a formal antitrust investigation of Intel, and has subpoenaed Intel, AMD and other smaller competitors for dirt on the company. Intel is being accused of using pricing policies designed to maintain a near-monopoly on the market, and while the company has been protected from a formal FTC inquiry by former head Deborah Majoras, the new chairman William Kovacic seems to see things a bit differently. (Read the full post about ‘Intel antitrust investigation officially launched by FTC’…)

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