Gadgetstronics

by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 29th 2008 at 3:36PM Korean manufacturer TG Sambo has seen a few of its products released ’round these parts, but it looks like that won’t be the case with its latest PMP, at least as long as it packs some of that mythical T-DMB mobile TV we keep hearing about. If that doesn’t preclude you, however, the unit certainly looks to be decent enough, with it boasting a 4.8-inch WVGA touchscreen, built-in WiFi for some supposedly full-fledged web browsing, 16MB of flash memory, and Windows CE 5.0 for an OS. No word on a price, unfortunately, but you can at least get a good look at its 15mm-thick form factor by hitting up the read link below.

[Via Slash Gear]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Gizmodo reader Patrick sent in a video and photo gallery of the new Psystar Open Computer, pre-loaded with OS X Leopard. The video shows a feature that the original Apple hardware lacks: Hit the “on” button and the thing goes off like a leaf-blower. Nice touch. Also, check the guts of the machine (the Psystar box is on the left, in case you weren’t sure). Sure is pretty, huh?

Exclusive Video: Psystar in the Wild [Gizmodo]

Exclusive Photos: Psystar’s Case, Shipping Contents [Gizmodo]

Nokia is showing why it remains the top vendor in unit shipments. Simply put, the company continues to crank out new phones for consumers. Nokia this week added three new handsets to its product line. The handsets include the Nokia 6600 fold, Nokia 6600 slide and the Nokia 3600 slide.

The Nokia 6600 fold includes a nice 2.13″ OLED screen which offers up to 16 million colors. The phone features a high-gloss surface with an outer display which can “wake up” when the user taps it twice to receive time, incoming messages, missed calls and other information. Double tapping can also snooze alerts and silence incoming calls. A 2 megapixel camera is included with double LED flash. The camera also easily integrates with online services including Flickr or Yahoo! Go. The Nokia 6600 fold will retail for 275 EUR.

The Nokia 6600 slide features the double tap convenience of its fold cousin to snooze alerts and silence calls. Instead of a 2 megapixel camera a 3.2 megapixel camera is offered in addition to a larger 2.2″ QVGA display. Nokia Maps is integrated into the phone and is compatible with the optional Nokia Bluetooth GPS Module LD-4W. The Nokia 6600 slide will retail for 250 EUR.

Finally, the Nokia 3600 slide features a contemporary style making it look good while its features make it very functional. The phone comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera and a double LED flash. The phone also has a TV-out feature allowing photos and video to be displayed on television sets. The Nokia 3600 will also feature the Nokia Maps application. The thing that makes the phone stand out from other Nokia handsets is that it is the first to feature background noise cancellation. This technology is complimented nicely by the phone’s built-in music player and support for an optional 4GB microSD card. The Nokia 3600 slide will retail for 175 EUR.

Read more from the Nokia press release.

Brian’s Opinion

Why is Nokia on top? Just look at the diversity of features offered within these three phones alone. Motorola can learn a lot from the products Nokia offers and the diversity of features within them.

Nokia seems to have a phone for whatever the market seems to be demanding. Some phones feature powerful cameras while others feature built-in music players. Some phones fold while others slide. Certain models are stylish while others are more functional.

The company just seems to know what consumers want. That explains why they not only continue to be the top handset manufacturer, but they also continue to gain market share while companies like Motorola lose it. Honestly, mobile phones are a little like journalism. In journalism you are only as good as your last great story. Manufacturers are only as good as their last great phone. That explains why Motorola is rebuilding and why Nokia continues to be successful.

Photo [3dnatureguy/Wikipedia]

Some of science fiction’s predictions have passed fitfully into the present; video phones and geostationary satellites for example. Others seem destined to remain forever in the hereafter, despite being almost universal in movies and literature. The list will be familiar: jetpacks, food pills, silver clothes with giant collars.

One technology, though, resurfaces every few years and makes it to market, only to disappear into the morass of nostalgia soon after. These are 3-D displays, attempts to turn boring old flat telly into a depth-charged experience. Some products failed because they were junk, others just fade from view and resurface years later. This is a list of the most notable flops.

3-D Spex

We see in three dimensions because we have two eyes. Our brain compares the images, works out the differences and presents us with in depth information. Try it: Close one eye and then try to touch your index fingers together. Tricky, huh? Until we achieve a true holographic display, all 3-D tech works by presenting the brain with two images. 3-D spex do this using anaglyphs, which combine two images from different cameras into one, but coloring the two images differently. By wearing the corresponding colors over our eyes, each eye sees a different picture.

The original green/red split works for black and white images, and red/cyan is OK for color. The problem is, you end up feeling seasick. Another version uses polarized lenses which flicker on and off, revealing one frame onscreen to one eye at a time. Fine if it is in sync, and free of color casts. If the setup isn’t good, though, you’ll be running straight to the bathroom.

Viewmaster

This one was a shock. To anybody who remembers the original Viewmaster, or at least its non bake-lite incarnations which used the same design, a quick trip to the official Viewmaster site is in order. Somebody has taken the classic stereoscope and turned it into a piece of plastic tat. The stereo viewer was never the classiest of toys, and usually featured reels of movie tie-ins or theme parks, but why did they have to mess with the iconic case?

Virtual Reality Helmets

This simple equation should tell you why VR failed commercially:

Amusement Arcade + vision-impairing helmet = pickpockets’ paradise

Tomytronic and Nintendo Virtual Boy

The Tomytronic, big in the 1980s and Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, released in 1995, share more than a little DNA. Aside from the shape, both were capable of turning the stomach of a healthy schoolboy in minutes. While Tomy’s little box confined itself to simple racing, shooting and flying, Nintendo was a whole lot more ambitious, with full first-person 3-D titles like Mario Tennis.

The big difference was in credibility, though. Owning a Tomytronic meant instant schoolyard kudos. Owning a Virtual Boy, along with the ridiculous stand, was nothing more than a badge of nerdism. Combined with the red-on-black graphics, high price and lack of third party games, the VB was a rare rare flop amongst Nintendo handhelds. But then, perhaps it wasn’t a handheld at all.

Autostereogram

Unique in this list in that it doesn’t use any kind of viewer, the autostereogram will be familiar to you from the cheap posters sold alongside the "Pope Smokes Dope" T-shirts at your local shopping mall head shop.

They combine two repeating images which are photographed (or computer generated) from different angles. The most common type is viewed "wall-eyed", or by trying to focus your eyes slightly behind the picture. This tricks your brain into thinking it is seeing two different images and they get recombined into a 3-D picture. Amusing exactly once, these are best hung on the back of the bathroom door where they can be viewed in peace after morning coffee.

Special Mention: The Holodeck

The holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation is the holy grail of 3-D. Fully immersive and utterly convincing, it combines 3-D with touch, sound and smell. In the squeaky-clean Star Trek future, it is used for learning and innocent recreation. In the real world, it would have but one purpose. Sex.

In order to complete Jedi training and become a full-fledged Jedi you must build your own lightsaber. This is just how it is done. If you lived long ago and far away and had just finished your Jedi-learning, you would be stopping by the local W’Al M’artt and buying yourself an Adegan crystal. Then you’d cram it into your saber hilt along with a power source, add a little bit of loving care, and voila: a lightsaber fit for a Jedi. Alas, there are no more Adegan crystals for sale. But don’t cry - we have the next best thing. The Star Wars DIY Force FX Lightsaber Kit.

This Saber Kit is just what you need to build your custom saber. One main saber unit with a tri-color blade (flip a switch and choose red, green, or blue - each with corresponding and different sound effects) and a slew of parts let you assemble the saber you’ve dreamed of. All the parts are based on actual screen-seen components, so your saber will look like an awesome mashup from the movies. And the coolest part is, you don’t have to choose between the Jedi and the Sith - because you can switch back and forth with the flip of a . . . well, switch.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $99.99

Posted in Gaming & Toys, Gizmo of the Day

by Joshua Topolsky, posted Apr 29th 2008 at 8:34AM
It seemed like it would never happen, but the impossible has occurred: Apple’s iPhone is coming to Canada. The news was quietly slipped into telecom giant Rogers’ latest earnings report, with the simple statement that the company was “thrilled to announce” a “deal with Apple to bring the iphone to Canada later this year.” Apparently, lips are sealed on all other details, but we’ll keep you posted as news gets our way.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: cellphones

Attention wet people: Sealife has released the DC800 Underwater digital camera. This modular unit — it drops into a waterproof case or will operate as an out-of-water point-and-shoot — includes an 8-megapixel camera with 2.7-inch display, wide-angle lens, SD/SDHC card support, and 4x optical zoom. So what makes this camera diver-friendly? Its menus and modes are designed for sub-surface snappers with five underwater modes to deal with the various water bodies’ muck, grime, and color. The DC800 will function at 200 feet, weighs about 17 ounces and will set you back $549. Sure, you could get another point-and-shoot and waterproof case, but prepare to suffer the ridicule of your diver friends.
[ Source ]

by Nilay Patel, posted Apr 29th 2008 at 1:46AM
Sending electrical shocks into the brain via a “brain pacemaker” has already led to dramatic breakthroughs like the revival of a man trapped in a vegetative state for six years, but new research may mean that the technique is soon a common treatment for disorders like depression and OCD. Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic, Mass General, Harvard Medical School and Brown Medical School implanted the Medtronics brain pacemaker into 17 people suffering from depression and tracked them for a year, finding significant improvements in mood as well as social and occupational functioning, while 26 patients suffering from OCD were followed for three years and also showed “marked improvement.” Findings will be presented to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons this week in Chicago, and clinical trials are scheduled for later this year — in other news, sales of “The Terminal Man” to neurosurgeons recently skyrocketed for unknown reasons.

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Filed under: Misc. gadgets

by Darren Murph, posted Apr 29th 2008 at 12:19AM
Four months is just too long to go without an all new ReadyNAS, so we suppose that’s why Netgear is kicking out an all new 6-bay unit (6TB RNDP6610; 3TB RNDP6310; 1.5TB RNDP6350) for those obsessed with storage. The box can handle up to 6TB of HDD space and features an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM (up to 4GB supported), 128MB of embedded flash for the OS, a pair of gigabit Ethernet ports, three USB 2.0 sockets and support for RAID 0/1/5/6 and Auto-Expandable X-RAID2. As expected, Windows / Mac / Linux clients can all tap in, and the unit streams all sorts of media on the side. Of course, acquiring the industry’s first 6-bay small-form-factor NAS drive won’t come cheap, with the ReadyNAS Pro starting at around two large.

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Filed under: Storage, Networking

by Nilay Patel, posted Apr 28th 2008 at 9:48PM
The stumbling blocks keep piling up as white space networking struggles to get off the ground: it looks like the manufacturers of healthcare equipment are set to join NAB in opposing the technology. Wireless medical telemetry devices like heart monitors have been operating in broadcast white spaces since the late 80s, and manufacturers like GE Healthcare say that the Microsoft- and Google-backed white space networking initiative could potentially “directly interfere” and “prevent patient monitoring.” For its part, the FCC has set aside all of channel 37 for medical telemetry devices in 1998 after interference from a nearby TV station shut down the system at Baylor University Medical Center, but it wasn’t mandatory, and hospitals that haven’t made the switch could face millions of dollars in upgrade costs. That’s not say that medical telemetry concerns are a problem that can’t be solved — the new Google push includes a channel 37 exception, for example, and there are some other compromise solutions on the table — but it seems like there’s no end of issues for a technology that hasn’t really even been demonstrated working yet.

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking