Gadgets Base

The slide-out, QWERTY keyboard endowed LG Rumor will be available in a special edition green version very soon from Sprint, just in time for the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Currently, the LG rumor is available in two different colors: white with silver and black with blue. Green will be the third color option, as it becomes Sprint’s official wireless phone for St. Patrick’s Day this March.

Apparently, there have been no changes to its feature set, aside from the color on its casing and the material from which its packaging is constructed. That means the LG Rumor will still have the same 1.3-megapixel camera, expandable MicroSD card slot (up to 4GB), Bluetooth connectivity and GPS-enabled turn-by-turn driving directions via Sprint Navigation.

Available for only $49.99 with a two-year service agreement from Sprint.

Read [Business Wire]

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While we saw the details for the Sansa Fuze emerge yesterday, which came courtesy of Amazon, SanDisk have since confirmed the details with an official press release.

While Amazon had most of the details, there are a few additional items to note. The Sansa Fuze will be available in a 2GB model in black, a 4GB model in black, blue, red or pink and an 8GB model which is only available in silver. They will retail for $79.99, $99.99 and $129.99 respectively and hit the stores in “early April.” The Sansa Fuze will have support for music services to include Rhapsody To Go, Napster and eMusic. Music playback will support MP3, WAV, Audible and both unprotected and protected WMA files, video playback will support MPEG-4 and the Fuze will also be able to view JPEG photos.

Read [Business Wire]

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At CeBIT, one of the biggest Information Tech events in the world, a text-to-speech program named IVONA made quite a splash.

IVONA is made by IVO Software, and the demonstration at CeBIT had four voices in three different languages. “Ewa” and “Jacek” spoke fluent Polish, and “Carmen” was Romanian. One of the most popular speakers was “Jennifer” who spoke fluent US English.

This demonstration is still going online. If you go to www.ivona.com, you can have a chance to try IVONA in the aforementioned three languages. The best part is you can type in any text you want, and then have it spoken back to you. I tried typing a few select phrases on Jennifer, and I found that “she” was able to speak with some interesting tonal inflections.

I thought that Jennifer sounded like an artificial Uma Thurman, so I took the liberty of inputting a few choice lines from Pulp Fiction. Jennifer almost did Mrs. Mia Wallace’s description of “Fox Force Five” pretty well, but there was still a distinct ersatz automation to IVONA that will probably take a few years before it is completely hammered out.

The purpose of the IVONA is to be used on such programs such as presentations, audiobooks, announcement systems, and other artificial prompts. It appears that IVO Software has taken another step closer to creating an artificial voice that is as close to a human as possible. One can’t help but wonder what is next.

Source

It seems to me that the more gadgets I acquire, the more USB cords that I am collecting. Is it just me, or are we steering away from charging our mobile devices with traditional electronic outlet plugs to charging exclusively to USB power.

I suppose that is all right if you have your computer on the whole time, or if you travel by laptop, like most businesspeople. However, what if you are in a situation where you have a gadget that powers only by USB charging and there is not a USB port to be found?

Fortunately, Belkin, a company known for PC peripherals, has a solution. You will notice that the power strip in this picture has a few outlets on it, but also has some USB ports on it as well. Now you don’t have to go crazy trying to find a USB port whenever you need to recharge your ipod, cell phone, or other mobile gadget.

I think that the Belkin powerstrip shows what kind of world we live in, and what world we are heading toward. I predict that, in the near future, every outlet will have at least one USB port, located right in the middle of the two plugs.

Source

Posted Mar 11th 2008 8:22AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Handhelds
If you hadn’t heard, 9.7-inch e-ink displays are the new hotness, and now Netronix is getting in on the action with the EB-300. Netronix is part-owned by PVI, a major manufacturer of e-ink displays, and they seem to be putting them to good use here. The EB-300 has a 1200 x 825, 170 dpi, 4 grayscale screen, and measures a mere 14mm (0.55-inches) thick. There’s 4GB of NAND storage on board, along with 64MB of SDRAM and some SD card expansion. There’s also WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity for good measure. EB-300 runs Windows CE 5.0, while little brother EB-100 runs Linux and a 6-inch 800 x 600 screen — and loses most of the other connectivity and storage perks as well. No word on price or availability for either of these.

[Via MobileRead]

Posted Mar 11th 2008 9:31AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Desktops, Media PCs, StorageRemember that tiny little Windows Home Server glitch that was causing files to become corrupt for no apparent reason? Well, Microsoft has stepped up to bat with a fix… for June! That’s right, all you have to do is hang on to your data-shredders for a few more months and the boys in Redmond will have this one sealed up tighter than a drum. The company has changed this issue’s Knowledge Base article to reflect the new target, and suggests that users can avoid problems for the time being by using a command-line tool to move files, setting shared folders on WHS to read-only, and not using things like WMP to import to a home server — certainly not the solutions most people are after. The company has also posted a note about the KB article on its WHS Team Blog, which we wouldn’t call a straight-up apology, though it definitely has apologetic overtones. On the bright side, Microsoft says only a small number of users are having this issue, so in all likelihood, you don’t even know what we’re talking about! Lucky you.

[Thanks, Brian]

Read - Knowledge Base article
Read - An update on KB #946676

Just as quickly as the “official” word came through yesterday, it seems that was not quite as “official” as we would have hoped. According to even more recent reports The Beatles tracks will not be heading to iTunes just yet.

“There is no deal for the music of the Beatles to go to iTunes or be sold anywhere on the Internet for downloading,” Roger Friedman reports for FOXNews.com.

So as of now both Apple and the current music rights owners have denied that The Beatles tracks will be appearing on iTunes anytime soon. While we here at Gadgetell are excited about the Beatles hitting iTunes, we will try and limit our next report to when the tracks are actually available for purchase.

Via [MacDailyNews]

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If you cannot get enough of Lego in your life, carrying around thousands of bricks in your pocket is not an ideal option. Play-Nyc decided to put the multi-touch screen of the iphone to good use by creating a “concept” where you to carry millions of Lego bricks in your pocket. This cool little concept named LEGO Touch, uses a cover-flow type interface to scroll through every Lego brick you can imagine and it allows you to build up any Lego model you want by dragging pieces around with your fingers. You can zoom in and out by moving two fingers apart in the same way you would zoom or rotate an image. All bricks on the iPhone are in what Play-Nyc call a “Brick-Bin” and are ready at the touch of the screen.

Please note that this is concept at the moment unfortunately although it does represent what you might see in the coming months.

Other features of LEGO Touch is the ability to email your friends new creations either via email or SMS. For those with a gaming side to them a “build-off” competition is available where you can battle out your Lego building skills with your friends.

The best part of LEGO Touch for the iPhone is that you now no longer need to spend 10 minutes tidying up at the end. Just close out the application and your done I just wish it was an application and not concept right now. No doubt with the Apple SDK launch, this app could be available soon.

Play-nyc Source - markpascua

Guest Post by Matthew of Gadget Venue.

At present the tendency to draw inspiration from the nature is quite popular. So wise designers like Haishang Deng try to find innovational solutions by studying what nature has already done. An absolutely new Chameleon truck was designed just in the same way.

His invention represents a bionic cargo transport that uses an innovative segmented body remarkably like that of a centipede. This enables the truck to adjust its size to the cargo load. In addition to the fact that the resilient soft tarpaulin shelled body is strong enough to protect its cargo, it also absorbs impacts in case of accidents. Moreover due to the materials used in its production the weight of this truck is twice smaller than that of its counterparts, and as a consequence it saves a lot of fuel. Another innovative design feature is the driver cockpit which can be lifted upward, i.e. over its cargo, instead of being built into the frame like in most vehicles today. This feature enables automated front loading without the need for additional support.

As far as the design of this truck is concerned I would say that it is as modern as possible. Yet some long-distance truck drivers may say that it’s too innovate. Nevertheless I think that just in 5-10 years trucks like this will make up the majority.

After selling out of the linux-driven machines, Wal-Mart is sending the gPC packing to the online store.  From the looks of it Wal-Mart got a lot of returns and/or complaints from folks not savvy enough to deal with the uniqueness of a linux machine.  The company will continue to sell them online, where according to a company spokesperson, they continue to sell well.

“This really wasn’t what our customers were looking for,” said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien.  The company will not be restocking the retail stores. The gPC was made by Everex.

For a computer novice looking for a bargain, I am sure the eccentricities of a Linux machine were just too much to bear.

Read [Yahoo!] via [Engadget]

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