Its Electronica

Posted Feb 7th 2008 2:20PM by Chris Ziegler
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm’s GSM Centro has been about the worst-kept secret in the entire smartphone industry for the past few weeks, and indeed, it’s now official — for Europe, anyway. The unlocked handset features a quadband GSM / EDGE radio with nary a trace of UMTS in sight (this is still Garnet, after all), 64MB of user-available storage, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and a QVGA display — in other words, the same Centro we all know and love (or tolerate, or despise, depending on your point of view) with just a little bit less CDMA and 3G data to its name. It’ll hit the British market on the 14th of the month and the remainder of Europe by the end of February for €299 or £199 (roughly $440 or $392); no word on when the official AT&T version will be available yet, but US folks desperate for one of these unlocked versions in the meantime shouldn’t have a lot of trouble importing it, we’d imagine.

[Via Treonauts, thanks Andrew]

T-Mobile has a new update available for their Shadow. This update comes as a nice surprise as it adds some new features and enhancements instead of just being a security update. New items will include:

• Support for audio postcards.
• Free music and album wallpaper from the Dave Matthews Band and Avril Lavigne.
• Free Ringtones from movies to include Top Gun, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and School Of Rock.
• Free wallpaper selection made just for the Shadow’s display.
• Enhanced myFaves and menu graphics.
• Improved text entry experience.

While the free music and wallpaper selection may not be for everyones individual tastes, the myFaves and text entry improvements should make it a worthwhile download.

Read [Shadow Update]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →

We all saw the white Touch, and it looks like Verizon customers should be able to get the VX6900 in their hands as early as late-February or early-March. While that alone is reason to get excited, the lineup does not stop there. The Samsung U940 is expected in Q1, with a possible launch in March. The U940 will be followed up by the Motorola W755, that is expected to be available during the spring. Then lastly a follow up to the V710 is expected to hit in the late spring, the new handset will be the Motorola V750 which is also being called the Utopia. Unfortunatly there are not many details yet on the Utopia. Looks like a good year phone wise for Verizon customers.

Via [Engadget Mobile]

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →

We have shown show interesting rear-view mirrors in the past, but none of them had a video-recording function. Of course, it’s not for TV shows – the Car Camera Recorder Pro records what’s it “sees” from the windshield, so everything that happens in front of the car will be recorded, which might (or might not) be useful for an insurance claim.

It uses a wide-angle lens and records the video on a simple (removable) SD card. Now they don’t say we hope that it automatically deletes the older videos when space is needed. The camera activates/de-activates itself when the car starts/stop. Video in the full post.

Posted Feb 7th 2008 12:04PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Transportation

It’s taken a while, but it looks like we could soon be seeing a new batch of Detroit Electrics roaming the roads, as ZAP has just announced that its reviving the hundred-year-old brand for some of its own all-electric vehicles. According to the company, those will be developed in a joint venture with the China Youngman Automotive Group, and will include the Zap Alias (pictured above), which we’ve seen previously under slightly more mysterious circumstances. Other details are expectedly light at the moment, but ZAP will apparently have plenty more to say about its new retro ways at the NADA 2008 auto show, which gets underway in San Francisco next week.

While this ‘toy’ meets all US Federal toy safety standards, this pump-action, pneumatic gun can shoot sweet but deadly marshmallows (or handfuls of mini-marshmallows) up to 40′. While the Geeks have featured another Marshmallow Blaster, the older Blaster doesn’t have near the power to shoot 40′. The easy-to-refill bolt action design ensures fast, nonstop action. Front grip is detachable for easy cleanup.

Don’t just join the cubicle farm weapons race, go ahead and win the race… for now.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $39.95

A pillow for the St. Valentine’s Day.

Feb 07, 2008 The St. Valentine’s Day is coming so soon. Let’s remember about this sweet holiday. Dear girls, have you already decided what to present to your boyfriends? Play a joke on him! Give him a funny pillow as a gift.

Your boyfriend has a nice possibility to amuse his leisure without you even with pleasure and with thoughts about you. Such unforgettable moments will bring Girlfriend Pillow. Amusing ‘girlfriend’ wears a polka dot bikini top, a bracelet and bright red fingernails. Does she look like you do? The toy even vibrates, creating the feeling of a real girl.

Such present and your sense of humor will be definitely highly appreciated. You shouldn’t be jealous of it. Dear girls and women, you are much better. But this Girlfriend pillow has its own advantages. At first, it is very soft. Then, it always keeps silence and never objects. It is a great gift for any holiday.

If you don’t really like the first pillow, I can recommend you the second variant. It is Zebra Boot Pillow. Interesting and unusual design makes it a great thing as well. This gift is more neutral. But it is not as hilarious as the previous one.

Of course, it is also smooth. But, actually, it seems to me that the form of this pillow is not very comfortable. It looks like it will be more pleasant for a guy to sleep on the Girlfriend pillow, than on her ‘Boot’.

Finally, I’d like to say that stylish present for the St. Valentine’s Day is a very important and pleasant thing. Turn on your fantasy, because these pillows can be presented in a very funny way.

Is it a real spy camera?

Feb 07, 2008

The creators say that Spy Button Camera is almost invisible. With its help you can secretly make videos of your friends and, maybe, enemies. Let’s find out if it is true..

If the camera is called spy, then it is implied that it must be very small or disguised like it is any usual object. But this camera is not as small as you might expect from a spy gadget. Then, there is one more big inconvenience. In order to use it you should hide somewhere PMP/MP4 player beforehand. It is not very compact and the size is not very small, so I’m not sure you’ll be able put it in your pocket, for example. In this case it is necessary to have a special accessory for it.

Generally, the camera has 1 GB of internal memory. I consider that a modern camera needs more memory. The spy camera is just to have fun, to distract a little, to treat your friends, to make funny video.

If you need a nice camera of good quality, I’d not recommend you to buy it. All the latest and the newest cameras have better features than this one. But if you have already a nice one, you may have this gadget to create unexpected videos or to spy on somebody.

But be careful, because if your child, for example, finds it and decides to spy on you, I bet, you won’t be very pleased.

If you, like us, have been wondering whether all the fuss about the Solid State Drive in the MacBook Air was, well, just a fuss, wonder no more. Ars Technica has run benchmark tests on the new machine and found that, with the exception of random disk reading and writing, there isn’t much difference between the SSD and a regular hard drive, and in fact the SSD air did poorly on sequential writing and reading.

This is to be expected. The advantage of a solid state drive is that there are no moving parts. Whereas a mechanical drive has to keep the read/write head moving to access data, the SSD doesn’t. This should also translate into longer battery life (no moving parts, remember?) It doesn’t. Ars got the same two and a half hours from both models.

Visit the site for the full and very in depth review. There are also the results for CPU and memory tests, but as the SSD equipped Air has a faster processor, these are slightly skewed.

What does $1,300 extra really get you? [Ars]

Light Wedge Mini - your helper in necessary moments.

Feb 07, 2008
If you are a thief or just a nice student, if your hobby is reading or you just often have to read something in darkness, then this article is for you.

A little, compact and rather useful gadget was invented. It is called Light Wedge Mini. It is portable light for reading. Actually, the device was created some time ago, but now it was perfected. The main advantage of the Light Wedge is its size, because it is the most suitable for such gadget.

If you like reading books and it is time to go to bed at the most interesting moment, this small gadget will help you to solve this problem. Then, it can be very useful for you in a trip. It will be easier for you to see all the details and names on a map, for example. I can continue speaking about a lot of other situations where this gadget might help you. But I want to mention that your eyes won’t really like this gadget if you use it for a long time.

Anyway, even taking into account all the advantages of the Light Wedge, it is harmful to strain your eyes. So, don’t make excessive use of this gadget