Gadgets Base

Posted Feb 9th 2008 4:10PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Laptops
It might be a bit early for us to be talking Windows 7 feature cuts, but that said, isn’t it a bit early for Microsoft to be talking Windows 7 feature cuts? If The Inquirer’s “reliable sources” are to be believed, Microsoft is giving DirectX 11 the boot from its next version of Windows to keep hardware requirements down — apparently the DirectX 10 requirements of Vista were enough of that sort of trouble for one decade. Obviously there’s no official word on Microsoft at the moment, so we’ll reserve judgment for the time being — and hey, maybe no DirectX 11 wouldn’t ruin our year — but with the endless quantity of features cut from Vista still fresh in our memory, this is certainly not an encouraging sign if true.

[Thanks, Isaac]

For the first time since its launch, controversial social networking site Facebook is now befriending non-English users with the launch of its own Spanish language version. Kick off is on Monday. Facebook users situated in Spanish-speaking countries will view the site in their native tongue. In case you prefer Spanish, visit your account page, click on the “language” tab, and set it to be Español.

Today, more than 2.4 million active users are living in Spain and Latin America. By breaking the language barrier, it can attract new users and convert users of other social networks in Spanish version such as MySpace, hi5 and Orkut. This is just the beginning of the company’s expansion to international territories. Facebook’s strategy and operations vice president Matt Cohler confirms that French and German versions will be launched in April. All these efforts are geared towards expanding its audience and keep up with its archrival MySpace which is already available in 13 different languages such as Japanese, Italian, German, French and Spanish.

via [Mashable]

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Posted Feb 9th 2008 1:58PM by Chris Ziegler
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
Given the sheer bulk of press Meizu’s M8 has received over the course of its young, controversial life, it’d seem likely that even the slightest trickle of units onto Chinese store shelves would lead to unboxing shots, videos, and reviews within hours, wouldn’t it? Reports are starting to flow across the ‘nets that M8s are now being made available through several of Meizu’s suppliers, but without a single in-the-wild picture of a fully functional, final spec unit — from Meizu, much less a paying customer — we’re not buying it. For one thing, there aren’t any “zomg I just picked up my m8!” posts on MeizuMe; secondly, MeizuMe’s Err0r says that his site will be the “first place” we read about a release (and frankly, we believe him); and third, after the trials and tribulations the handset has gone through on its long journey to retail, you’d think that we’d at least see it at a trade show before it hit the streets. So, anyone want to prove us wrong by posting shots of their M8?

All of us attending lectures wish to possess such a device that would be able to store and reproduce the information given by professors. Of course it’s possible to use a simple voice recorder for this purpose, yet it will not help you much, because both aural and visual memories should be involved in the process of memorizing in order to ensure its high efficiency.

But now you can stop worrying about this because Livescribe has just presented its new product. Pulse Smartpen represents a pen with embedded computer that captures handwriting and simultaneously records audio, synchronizing it to the writing. Users simply tap on the word to replay what was recorded while writing this word. The Pulse Smartpen has an ARM 9 processor and a high speed infrared camera with a Dot Positioning System (DPS) that works with the Dot paper Notebook. The micro dots printed on the paper tell the Pulse Smartpen where a user is writing or taping. The Paper Replay Notebook costs around the same price as a regular notebook, and users can print their own dot paper for free on their personal printers.

The pen comes with a 3D recording headset especially designed for far-field recording. Moreover each earbud has an embedded microphone to record in large room or noisy environment. The goal is to record exactly what’s coming into both ears.

Each registered user has 250 MB of online storage and can share notes and audio as interactive Flash movies or PDF files. Livescribe is also launching the Livescribe Developer Program to invite programmers to develop applications for the Pulse Smartpen. Some applications will be available soon, handwriting and audio conversion into digital text, Spanish translator, games, books, and special education tools for visually-impaired people.

The Pulse Smartpen comes in two versions: the 1GB model with 100 hours of audio storage and 16000 pages of digital notes, priced at /9, the 2GB model doubles the storage and /$ 199 USD. It will be available in March and the Apple version will ship in September.

Thus, this gadget will perfectly fit to students and business people as well. Yet, despite the fact that it’s a very useful device, some may be enough happy with the option of writing with a simple pen.

The worst part of losing a cellphone, is also losing all the contacts saved on the SIM card. To solve that situation, you must do back-ups often, and using the USB Phonebook Flash Drive is one of the options.

The working mode is very simple: connect the USB Phonebook to the cellphone, and press a button to save all the data of the phone memory + SIM card, into the flash drive. After the transfer is done, just connect the Phonebook to the USB port of your computer/laptop, and review all your contacts, or convert them to a different format.

The USB Phonebook Flash Drive costs $20,50 and there are different versions that work with various cellphone models, such as Nokia 7250i, Sony Ericsson K700i, Samsung E800, and many others.

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…and quite literally at that too. Check out this newest broken-heart MP3 released especially for the upcoming season of hearts.

Newman is releasing this funny little thing in China for Valentine’s. This is one of those very, very few times I wish I lived in the country. That is, if this MP3 player actually breaks into two. All we know for now is that this device uses the Ali M5667 chipset, allowing it to play both MP3 and WAV formats.

via

Back at CES, Leadertone - a chinese GPS company, had on display a new GPS that seemed to be a pretty interesting high-end GPS unit. It comes with a really long model name of LT-GPS9100C, but it features a Innolux 4.3-inch touch screen. It also comes with 64MB of memory, USB port, SD memory expansion, and built-in speakers. Furthermore, it comes with Bluetooth capability for hands free calling and the battery is replaceable. Unfortunately, it probably won’t make its way to the States, but it has already been released in Saudi Arabia, although, the price is unknown.

Via [NaviGadget]

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Posted Feb 9th 2008 9:03AM by Chris Ziegler
Filed under: Cellphones
That alleged leak of Moto’s 2008 lineup last year in Amsterdam is looking more and more legit pretty much by the minute. First, we got a glimpse of what appears to be the Skarven — a phone that’ll probably become the Z12 kick slider at retail — a few days ago, and now an alleged shot of the TEXEL candybar has turned up. As much flak as Motorola has taken recently for yawnfest industrial design, we’ve gotta say that we’re sort of digging what they’ve thrown together with the TEXEL here (assuming it’s real, of course). The striped keypad is vaguely attractive, the display looks plenty big, and we’ll always take a few touch sensitive controls to turn up the sexy factor a notch or three. If the originally leaked specs on this one turn out to be accurate, it’ll be a ROKR-branded piece with a morphing keypad in the same vein as the E8 and should break cover in the first few months of the year. We’re going to cautiously — nay, very cautiously say that you’re headed in the right direction here, Moto.

[Thanks, deuxani]

Earthlink has begun to shop their citywide Wi-Fi business around, but until now no buyers have stepped forward. The business that has been scaled back drastically since the original plan is now officially on the auction block, but no mention pricing has been noted.

The citywide Wi-Fi plans seem to have just not taken off, we first heard of Earthlink considering selling this off back in last November. While a larger scale of these citywide plans seem to have not worked well for the larger cities such as San Francisco, it may still have some good traction with smaller cities or smaller projects. Recently there has been success with similar but smaller scale setups in Phoenix, Arizona where they used Wi-Fi-enabled IP video cameras downtown to help control the crowds for this years Super Bowl.

Via [CNET]

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Sometimes looking at the great variety of all those high-end cell phones it seems that nothing more can be designed. However the creativeness of modern designers and engineers shows that the previous statement has nothing common with the reality. Thus, according to the latest news NEC will produce absolutely innovative liquid-powered cell phones in the near future.

At present given gadget is just a prototype, so there is no possibility to mention all the novelty’s features. Yet, this NEC liquid flask cell phone seems to be the combination of being liquid-powered and touchscreen. It means that the liquid inside will drain as you are using the phone, allowing you to see just how much power left. It sounds incredibly, isn’t it? As usually, nothing said about the future price of the concept, but as NEC informs it is going to be released sometime in 2008. Of course it’s hard to imagine what functions this phone will be able to perform but according to the given picture it won’t have even a usual digital camera. If so, this will be a “slight” disadvantage of this gadget.

In case all the mentioned features are true, the demand for this flask phone will be very impressive, because quite a significant amount of people will want to buy such an original and unusual device. At the same time all those who like this concept should hope that it will not be a Japan-only release.