When it comes to leaks in the gadget world, when it rains, it pours. In just shy of 20 days, the HTC Supersonic — an absolute beast of a phone — went from non-existent to exhaustively detailed and fully photographed.
Whether you’ve missed a screenshot or two or just had no idea the Supersonic existed, don’t sweat it – we’ve got your back. Hop behind the jump, where we’ve rounded up all the details that have leaked thus far on what is quite possibly one of the most exciting Android handsets yet. → Read More
The 2010 Ford Taurus SHO is quite possibly the geekest car to ever wear the blue oval. It’s packed with nearly every technology option that Ford has available. Let’s call it the working-nerds Audi A8 because while it doesn’t have an NVIDIA Tegra-powered entertainment cluster with Google Earth and handwriting input, there are more than enough gadgets and gizmos to keep most people confused and overwhelmed for months. Check out the pics and video after the jump to see most of them in action. → Read More
The last person you’d expect to speak out against the Google Book settlement with the Authors Guild which will make available the contents of millions of orphan books in digital form is Harvard law professor and free-culture advocate Lawrence Lessig. In a lengthy essay in The New Republic he calls the settlement a “path to insanity” that will be “culturally asphyxiating,” but not for the reasons you might think.
Lessig believes the problem lies not so much with the settlement itself or Google, as it does with copyright law. But after pouring over the complex language of the 165-page settlement, he believes more than ever before in the need to overhaul copyright law for the Internet era (a theme he’s hit on before). Here is the gist of the problem as he explains it: → Read More
Newsflash: Sending text messages while driving is dangerous. There’s really no safe way to send a text while behind the wheel unless you’re at a stoplight or pulled over.
And while there’s no nationwide texting ban for regular drivers, Uncle Sam has just decreed that anyone driving a large commercial truck or bus anywhere in the country can be fined up to $2,750 if caught texting while in motion. → Read More
This isn’t a rumor, it’s just a wish. I’m hoping that the Apple Tablet that is announced tomorrow will have a capacitive touch interface that extends past the screen and to the actual case. Particularly the back of the device where the fingers will naturally rest during two-handed use.
Touch interfaces are something I’m sort of obsessed with. Like most people, the iPhone was what really opened my eyes to what it could do. I was one of the first individuals to actually buy a Microsoft Surface computer, happily paying $17k, including delivery and warranty. And I joyfully tested the Microsoft TouchWall, and still beg them to actually ship that OS and touch kit. I’ve also bought at least one of just about every touch computer out there, just to see how they perform.
Touch is awesome as a user input mechanism. But there are problems. One problem is that it doesn’t work well at all on machines sitting on a desktop because of arm fatigue. → Read More
Geez, not to sound ungrateful but it’s like hey wallet industry, what took you guys so long? I’ve been sitting on this dirty wallet of mine for years with no obvious way to clean it.
Thanks to the miracle of carbon fiber (it’s seriously a cool material, I’d wear a carbon fiber sweatsuit if I could), this $50 wallet from Hammacher Schlemmer “will never stretch, fade, or develop cracks like a leather billfold.” → Read More
GuestofaGuest found some pix of Bill Gates rocking out at Robert Redford’s party at Sundance. Curious as to what he was dancing to, we ran “ENHANCE” in Windows 7 and were able to pull the audio by sensing the vibrations in each person’s hair as well as a reflection of someone’s Zune in the blond woman’s right eye. → Read More
Man, these HTC Bravos are floating around everywhere. A semi-decent shot of this oh-so-Nexus-One-esque handset leaked just yesterday, and today another (markedly better) shot has found its way to the interwebs.
Not only that, but it brought a friend! → Read More
We knew Nokia was preppin’ something for launch today, thanks to some loose lipped execs – but what would it be? Announcing something just one day before a much hyped Apple announcement is always risky; either Nokia thought the product was a big enough deal to overshadow Apple’s goods, or it was small enough that they weren’t too worried about it. Looks like it’s closer to the latter. → Read More
Wanna get a Nook but can’t stand the sight of its drab exterior? Colorware has your back. It’s the latest gadget that paint shop is doing up → Read More
The FCC has just sent letters inquiring about Early Termination Fees to each of the major wireless carriers in the United States — AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless — and one outlier: Google. We’ve embedded all five letters below. The inquiry is the first action taken by the FCC’s recently formed Consumer Task Force. The inquiry comes only a few weeks after the FCC questioned Verizon about its high $350 ETF for “advanced devices” and deemed Verizon’s response to be “unsatisfying, and, in some cases, troubling”.
The text of the letters to each of the carriers is very similar, explaining that the FCC is looking to ensure that customers are being fully and transparently informed about any ETFs they may face. But the letter to Google includes some interesting passages explaining why the company is being questioned alongside the carriers:
Google’s introduction of the Nexus One handset presents consumers with new
options for obtaining mobile wireless service, from a new entrant in the wireless phone
market. The Commission welcomes new choices for consumers and new entry into the
market because it recognizes that robust competition benefits consumers by
accommodating the wide variety of consumers’ communications needs.
Since mid 2007, Weebly has offered an intuitive and powerful drag-and-drop website building tool that makes it easy to build rich sites websites with no technical know-how required. Up until now, the company has marketed its product directly to consumers, generating revenue by offering some premium features and services. Today, the startup is bringing its technology to a new market: web hosting customers. The company is announcing that it has been integrated with Endurance International Group, a company that owns a number of hosting providers. Endurance has over 700,000 paid customers across all of its properties, and all of them will get Weebly integration.
Weebly has provided Endurance with a dedicated set of servers that will be running the service. By keeping the Weebly machines on site, Endurance will be able to keep access speeds high to its customers, and can better control reliability and data storage. But while Weebly won’t be directly in control of the servers, they’ll still be pushing regular updates as Weebly proper gets updated. → Read More
Pageonce has quietly built a solid business by aggregating its user’s various online accounts into one place. They’ve got over 1.3 million registered users and recently raised a $6.5 million Series B round. And though Pageonce hardly gets neither the fame nor the fortune of its competitor (Mint), it is still a very solid way to manage your online accounts. Unlike Mint, which focuses on personal finances, Pageonce’s goal is to provide you with a one-stop view of all of your online accounts, including financial, travel, e-mail and social networking. Though a single web interface for all of those accounts may be unnecessary, it is a perfect service for mobile devices. Specifically, the Pageonce iPhone App – “Personal Assistant” – is done extremely well, and I still use it to this day. It blows Mint’s iPhone App out of the water. Today, Pageonce launches TripTracker [iTunes Link]. This is a free iPhone App ($1 removes the ads) that enables you to keep track of all of our trip itineraries – hotels and flights specifically – on the go. → Read More
Need a TV for the bedroom, rumpus room, or home office but don’t want to spend a penny more than $129.99 plus $5 for shipping? Then this is the perfect deal for you. Sellout.Woot! is selling a choice of one of three Philips/Magnavox 19-inch HDTVs for the aforementioned price of $129.99 plus $5 shipping. → Read More
FunMobility’s picture messaging app for the iPhone, called FunMail, has a seen a fair amount of traction, with 100,000 downloads since its launch in November. Today, the developers are rolling out a similar app for Android phones. You can access the app here.
Similar to the iPhone app, FunMail for Android allows users blasts their text into the application, which then breaks down whatever the user typed for context. FunMail’s learning technology “Media Brain” will return a handful of context-related graphics (pulled from Creative Commons sources and their own user-generated library), with your original text. The user picks the graphic they want, and off it goes via SMS, Facebook, or Twitter. In addition, FunMail leverage’s Google’s voice-recognition and transcription technology, enabling consumers to turn spoken messages into images that can be shared. → Read More
We can all stop innovating now. It’s here. The double patty breakfast sandwich. If you’re an inventor, you can lock up your workshop and go home. There’s officially nothing left to improve upon as a society. Unless someone comes out with a triple patty version, that is. → Read More
Apple isn’t the only company with tablets. HP and Dell showed off its slate concepts at CES ’10, but their demo’s left us with so many questions. HP’s CTO Phil McKinney at least reveals a bit more about his company’s offering. But hopefully he’s out of the loop a bit and HP actually has more planned for the device. Otherwise, the HP Slate will be about as successful as the HP TouchSmart iMac clones.
Phil gives the background about the Slate’s development at HP. He explains that the company has been working on the unit for about five years and it started out as an ereadering device. But then as many things do, it evolved into what he’s showing off in the video.
But this slate is plagued by the same fundamental flaw as the vast majority of the current tablets: Windows. Phil states that the device will run plain-jane Windows 7. That’s a problem because even Windows 7 with its added touchscreen capabilities is not suited for extended tablet use without a stylus and Apple/Palm/RIM/HTC has proven to the world that we don’t need styluses. (stylii?) → Read More
Mobile application platform HipLogic is rolling out a consumer version of its smartphone interface for non-smartphones. HipLogic Live is a free downloadable application will deliver content—including Facebook, Twitter, CBS news, CBS sports, and weather—to select Windows Mobile or Symbian devices.
Founded by three veterans from Sun Microsystems, HipLogic brings sophisticated applications to the simplest cell phones by keeping all the complexity in the network. In essence, HipLogic is trying to bring the quick, easy interface of a BlackBerry to more simple, lightweight phones that are available for the mass market. Consumers can toggle between the original mobile operating system and an always-on smartphone-like interface for instant access to a collection of apps. HipLogic Live features a variety of apps, widgets, realtime notifications (Facebook updates and Twitter), and a search bar. The interface and applications are not as sleek and powerful as those of the iPhone and Android, but draws more similarities to the apps and OS of BlackBerry devices. → Read More
Hello Kitty, dream cartoon cat of millions of teenage girls and women around the world, gets another portable music player. We had a device fully covered with Swarovski cystals in October last year. We had another one, all in black, in December. And today, Japan-based Mouse Computer, in cooperation with iriver Japan, announced [JP] a player that’s kind of the combination of the two previous ones. → Read More
