Gadgets Base

Posted Feb 29th 2008 5:23PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: cellphones
Nice going RIM, you’ve successfully filed for a patent on a device that companies like HTC have been making since 2005. That’s right folks, your friends at Research In Motion have just thrown an application in the direction of the US Patent Office which should look painfully familiar. The company is calling it a “Hybrid Portrait-Landscape Handheld Device With Trackball Navigation and QWERTY Hide-Away Keyboard,” but we’re calling it the Wizard. We suppose it’s possible that the BlackBerry-maker has something up its sleeve that goes beyond the typical functionality of a phone like this, but nothing in the application seemed to indicate such a scenario. Did RIM even check out the competition before issuing this paperwork? It seems unlikely given the obvious and commonly used shape and design of this particular handset… oh, wait, this one has a trackball. Okay, our bad.

[Via blackberry Cool]

Great news for myself and the other 400,000 Sky HD subscribers in the UK, with Sky adding three new HD channels to it’s line up, brining the number of total HD channels to 17, and access to 6,500 hours of HD programming.

In March we should expect to see Sky Sports 3 HD, FX HD and Sky Movies Premiere HD. Sky Sports HD 3 will bring a total of three Sports channels, and will start off with Monday Night Raw and PGA Euro Tour in March.

FX HD will be a “bespoke” custom channel, and we hope it will be similar to Sky One etc. Sky Movie Premiere HD will be a straight simulcast of the already existing SD channel. Personally I am very much looking forward to an extra movie channel, there isn’t anything much better than watching a great movie in supreme HD quality with no adverts.

Lookout for my upcoming Sky HD review!

Posted Feb 29th 2008 1:28PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Features, Wireless, Storage
Okay, so we’ve got our Time Capsule up and running here — we’ll be back with a full review once our full 516GB backup is completed, but here are some quick first impressions:

• You can definitely hear the disks spin up and access. It also sounds like there’s a fan in there, but there are no obvious vents for one and we can’t feel any air coming out, so the drives might just be that loud.
• The top is getting quite warm during the backup — we’ll see if it cools down once we stop hitting the drive this hard, but if there really isn’t a fan we’re a little concerned. Hope those server-grade hard drives like being cooked.
• You can’t transfer an existing Time Machine backup to Time Capsule. Sure, it’s easy enough to switch back and get at your old data, but it’s still a pain — and now we have a 1TB drive sitting here with months of backups on it that we can’t erase and reuse.
• Time Machine doesn’t prioritize network activity on your machine, so it’s slamming our network connection right now as it backs up. That’s not a huge problem since we’re backing up over Ethernet, but we’ll see what happens when we try this over WiFi later.
• We tried to back up a second machine while the first was in progress, and not much happened — it created the disk image and got to “Preparing…” and then did nothing. We’re assuming these can only happen one at a time.
• The wireless side of things is basically the same as the Airport Extreme, nothing shocking there, although the setup assistant has been substantially revised to make things easier.
• The setup assistant now asks if you already have a 2.4GHz network and offers to create a 5GHz secondary network, which is interesting.

That’s about it for now — there’s not much we can try out while this backup is in progress. Anything else you guys want to know?

There comes a time in every cube-dweller’s life, when he or she has to take the law into his or her hands. Maybe it’s finding out that stooge from marketing has stolen your last pencil…again! Or perhaps you’re tired of having your office moved repeatedly. Well, it’s time to draw a line in the low pile carpet. “No more,” you’ll cry as you stand your ground. With a Nerf Maverick by your side, you will prevail.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $9.99