Gadgets Base

Trusted Reviews has a review of the T-Mobile Sidekick Slide and writes, “The built in camera is woeful, shooting at 1.3 megapixels and lacking video support. MMS and SMS are supported, and a key selling point of the Sidekick Slide is its IM service. You are limited to Yahoo IM though, which is pre installed. There is also a calendar, to-do manager, notes application and a couple of games and you can download a couple more over the air.”

Read more about the T-Mobile Sidekick Slide.

Posted Jan 23rd 2008 2:01AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Portable Audio From iriver and the house The Mouse built comes this limited edition Mplayer. Gold plating and a Philips PNX0103ET audio processor create what iriver calls an “assassin’s mace” of a device. Sure, Cute. Simple. Friendly. Now add Opulent to the tagline too — at ¥888 (about $123) you’ll be looking at a 100% or so markup over their standard 1GB Mplayer.

Posted Jan 23rd 2008 7:02AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Transportation, WirelessAs you know, American Airlines is prepping in-flight WiFi in addition to, uh, anti-missile systems. Good news on the former, pricing is set. Good if $10 WiFi for flights less than three-hours or $12.95 for longer flights excites your fiscal sweet-spot like it does American’s. Rollout will begin this summer on AA’s 767-200 jets before rolling out across its entire fleet.

[Via WNN]

Despite Sony Ericsson not actually having announced the Z660i yet, it’s obviously official, as it has its own official video. Oddly, Sony Ericsson put it up on their own official site, which the Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog managed to upload onto YouTube just in time before the official Sony Ericsson (still with me here?!) took it down again!

So now we get to see the new Sony Ericsson Z660i in action, as well as getting official confirmation that it’s on its way, without actually getting an official confirmation! Don’t you just love rumours!

Anyway, looking rather sleek and designery, the vid makes it clear that the Z660i is being pitched as a man’s phone for men, so don’t expect it in pink anytime soon.

The video shows the Z660 off in all its finery, and also shows how well it uses Google Maps to find various services in your neighbourhood, such as restaurants. Certainly looks super-responsive, which is what you need from a good location-based service.

[Source: Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog]

As predicted Facebook have already got off to a bad start in 2008, with news that in the UK the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is to look into how easy (or not as the case seems to be) it is to delete your information off Facebook once you have deactivated your account. The fear is that people will think that once they deactivate their account that will remove all their information but that isn’t the case.

“Those who wish to wipe out all information are advised to “log in and delete all profile content”, which involves manually removing everything from messages to pictures.

Facebook will then remove all the information from its server but only if a user has contacted the site and told it to do so.”

The investigation comes on the back of an ex-users complaint that their information is still held by Facebook even though they had deactivated the account. “One of the things that we’re concerned about is that if the onus is entirely on the individual to delete their own data,” said Dave Evans, the senior data protection practice manager at the ICO.

Facebook is defending the policy as it is allowable under UK law, but that isn’t really the point. Not the best of starts PR wise for Facebook in 2008!

Via [Telegraph]

Posted Jan 22nd 2008 8:57PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Transportation
The Trev look might be a bit love-it-or-hate-it, but there’s no arguing with the specs: 0 to 60 in about 10 seconds, top speed of 75 mph, and a range of 100 miles per charge. Trev is being built by staff and students at the University of South Australia, and costs less than an Australian dollar per 100km to run — about 86 cents for every 62 miles. The car seats two comfortably in tandem, with room for a pair of overnight bags. No word on a production version.

[Via TreeHugger]

At CEs 2008, Sony Ericsson announced that a new GPS phone was on its way in the form of the Sony Ericsson W760. However, that’s not all the company has up its sleeve. Here are a few leaked pics of a new Sony Ericsson GPS phone that currently has no model number (although it will be a K series Cyber Shot phone)

The specs on this new device seem quite tasty. Although it comes with only a 3.2 megapixel camera, as it’s a Cyber Shot phone you do get auto focus for money. The icing on the cake, though, comes from the built-in GPS device, which should help you geo-tag your photos.

More pics of the mystery Sony Ericsson phone after the jump.

Sony Ericsson really seem to have caught the GPS bug, which is a surprise given how reluctant they seemed in joining Nokia and others on this particular location-based bandwagon. We’ll start to see more and more phones with built-in GPS coming out throughout the year, which means that soon GPS will be come to be as common on a mobile phone as a digital camera.

This should all make for some interesting new web services, as camera phones that can also GeoTag their pictures are the perfect compliment to sites such as Flickr, which already let you search for pics by their location.

You can just imagine the mash ups that will emerge from this. If you want a new house, but aren’t sure of the area, just search for photos by location on Flickr. Although you can do this already, the feature is fairly limited, as not many cameras let you GeoCode their pictures. Once GPS phones take hold, though, there’ll be a torrent of new photos all with their locations embedded within them.

As for the new Sony Ericsson phone, there’s no more news on it yet, but we expect an announcement possibly as soon as February, so sometime during the 3GSM conference would seem likely. Unfortunately, though, the rather gaudy colour scheme looks set to stay!

[Source: GSMArena]

Nokia has announced a couple of new low end phones for emerging markets that actively embrace the concept of sharing. In stark contrast to the music industry, which sees sharing as equivalent to terrorism, the new Nokia 2600 and Nokia 1209 are designed to be shared by up to five people.

To facilitate this, both phones come with multiple phone books (one per person), and a cost-tracker application that lets each person see how much they’ve spent on calls.

More details of the new Nokia 2600 and 1209 after the jump.

Although not particularly innovative in and of themselves, the 2600 (top) and 1209 (left) show how in tune Nokia is with emerging markets. According to a Nokia survey, more than 50% of respondents in India, Pakistan and nearly 30% in Vietnam indicate that they share, or would share, their mobile phone with family or friends. Hence the emphasis on sharing from the new phones.

“Phone sharing is a logical trend - more and more families are purchasing a mobile phone for the entire family to use, not just the head of the household,” said Alex Lambeek, Vice President, Entry Devices, Nokia. “In addition, digital cameras are quickly becoming more popular in these markets, and as such taking and sharing digital images is becoming more common. In response, Nokia has developed a number of innovative features like the multiple phonebook to support phone sharing, and we have added technologies like Bluetooth to some models to make transferring images and ringtones easy and affordable.”

The new Nokia 2600 even comes with a VGA camera, MP3 player and FM radio, but what’s most impressive is the price: the Nokia 2600 will retail for just 65 Euros, while the Nokia 1209 will retail for a jaw dropping 35 Euros.

To put that in context, that’s just £26 for a mobile phone - no wonder LG decided to leave the emerging market alone!

Now here’s a watch that will definitely turn heads, and for once, it doesn’t have to come adorned with jewels and diamonds.

Flud Watches brings us a replica of the classic Technics 1200… in wrist watch form! It features a smooth black leather strap. It even comes in a miniature flight case. Vinyl DJs and turntablists rejoice, for here is a watch that’s a perfect reflection of you and your musical stylings.

One of these classic looking Turntable Watches will retail for $59. I think it is great that such creativity still abounds without having the consumer to fork out an arm and a leg to own one.

Product Page via Technabob

<!– ch_client = “gadgets”; ch_type = “rpu”; ch_noprice = “1″; ch_width = 468; ch_height = 90; ch_color_title = “#B40505″; ch_non_contextual = 1; ch_nosearch = 1; ch_default_category = “89″; ch_font_title = “Arial”; ch_font_text = “Arial”; ch_sid = “Coolest Gadgets RPU”; ch_alternate_css_url = “http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/rpu2.css”; ch_target = “_blank”; var ch_queries = new Array( ” Turntable Watch” ); var ch_selected=Math.floor((Math.random()*ch_queries.length)); if ( ch_selected

Fujitsu has just intro’d the F705i, a new handset that is only 13.7mm thin, which makes it the “slimmest waterproof phone ever made.” The F705i is fully waterproof and can handle anything from that heavy downpour you may get caught in to being submerged in water. The F705i is capable of being submerged in up to one meter of water for a full 30 minutes.

As for voice quality, the handset features the Super Clear Voice and Super Clear Mike which work automatically to adjust the volume of a caller depending on noise levels in the room. The F705i also features a 1.3-megapixel camera, text-zooming and offers up to 170 minutes of talk time. Of course this model is still only available in Japan, which means that we here in the US will still have to keep our phones away from the water.

Via [AkihabaraNews]