Gadgets Connect

by Nilay Patel, posted Jul 21st 2008 at 11:06AMLooks like that agreement between Nokia and Qualcomm to postpone the dozen or so lawsuits they’ve filed against each other worldwide while an arbitrator tries to help sort out the mess is starting to bear some fruit — the two cellphone giants are headed to court in Delaware on Wednesday to start the healing. In essence, Qualcomm says that Nokia still owes license fees on a CDMA agreement that expired in 2007 since it’s been using the patented tech, and Nokia says that it doesn’t owe anything because it’s shelled out over $1B since 2001 and giving Qualcomm any more cash would be unfair. (Read the full post about ‘Nokia and Qualcomm patent arbitration begins: millions at stake, still boring’…)

Share This

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 21st 2008 at 10:45AMThe world already knew of Toshiba and Matsushita’s separate plans to barrel into the OLED realm, but Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology is all set to become the first in Japan to “mass produce organic electroluminescent, or OEL, display panels.” Reportedly, the two outfits will establish manufacturing lines in the Ishikawa Prefecture in fall of 2009, with plans to churn out one million 2.5-inch EL displays. Granted, the products will be rather minuscule in nature, with the idea being to fit them into cellphones, PMPs and other handheld gadgetry. Better hurry — Samsung’s pulling away over in South Korea.[Via CNET]Read PermalinkEmail this8 CommentsFiled u (Read the full post about ‘Toshiba and Matsushita to jointly manufacture small OEL displays’…)

Share This

If you have had a rough day at the office, sometimes it’s nice to kick back at home and have yourself a cold brew. But what if you are stuck pulling an all-nighter at that very same office and can’t break away to get to your favorite adult beverage? We’ll, you could pretend to pound down a few with the iphone app known as iBeer 2.0.

This clever little iPhone app takes advantage of the tilt sensor in the mobile phone and lets you perform amazing beer tricks like brewing, drinking, shaking, and what brew wouldn’t be complete without the belch.

(Read the full post about ‘Drink down a virtual cold one with iBeer’…)

Share This

The Alibaba NPX-9000 computer wants to be the cheapest laptop in the world, and it really is hard to argue against that claim with a $130 price tag. Of course, the only catch is you will need to find another 49 friends who want one of these since a minimum bulk order of 50 units is required before that price can be offered. Other than that, it is interesting to note that the specifications are even more shabby than the first generation Asus Eee PC.

• 7″ LCD display
• 1GB flash memory
• 128MB RAM
• 400MHz MIPS processor
• SD memory card slot
• Two USB ports

Tags: electronic toys, M4A, Ogg, gadgets

Share This

The iPhone Dev Team has released its Pwnage tool to jailbreak both iPhones and iPod Touches running the 2.0 software, and we fearlessly used a sacrificial iPod to test it out. The first version was released yesterday and was quickly followed by a minor update. Right now, this is Mac only, but we are sure the open source project will end up ported to Windows soon enough. The tool will jailbreak your iPhone but will not unlock it from your mobile carrier. This is likely more useful for owners of the original iPhone — 3-G buyers will have already signed up for a contract so changing carriers is a little pointless. A future unlock should, though, allow you to pop in a local SIM card when traveling. (Read the full post about ‘Pwnage 2.0 Released: Gadget Lab Jailbreaks iPod Touch’…)

Share This

Credit: Donald J. Lindler, Sigma Space Corporation/GSFC; EPOCh/DIXI Science Teams NASA has released images and a vides of a planet which looks very alien to the observer. In reality, it’s our own Earth as seen by the Deep Impact spacecraft from 31 million miles away. Deep Impact’s primary mission was to travel to comet Tempel 1 to release an impactor directly into its path. When the impactor collided with the comet on July 4th, 2005 the Deep Impact spacecraft examined the material ejected to determine what the comet was made of. Now the Deep Impact mission has been extended to include two new mission components including the search for alien (extrasolar) planets and a fly-by of another comet called Hartley 2. (Read the full post about ‘Earth looks different 31 million miles away’…)

Share This

Saying sorry doesn’t mean you’ll change. Less than a week after Apple apologized for problems with its recently launched online service MobileMe, more issues arose. This time, some users are experiencing  inaccessibility to e-mail, while European free trial users were hit with an accidental credit/debit card charge of over 100 British pounds. MobileMe’s support web site displays a status message reading, "1% of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. We apologize for any inconvenience." However, one percent may be a generous estimate. A quick Twitter search reveals that several users are unable to access Mail; in an Apple support forum thread,  some users have reported experiencing Mail downtime since July 18. (Read the full post about ‘Apple Apologizes for MobileMe — Again’…)

Share This

FROM APPLETELL - The iPhone Dev Team finally announced that the iphone/ipod Touch PwnageTool 2.0 is available for download. MORE » Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed → Tags: gps, CD, gadgetry, gprs (Read the full post about ‘iPhone Dev Team finally releases PwnageTool 2.0 for iPhone, iPod Touch’…)

Share This

A new trojan has been found by security analysts that uses the music and video you download to infect your machine with a trojan.

The trojan is transported via the Advanced Systems Format (ASF), used for the popular WMA, WMV and MP3 formats. The trojan is executed by way of a request to download a codec. Most users are used to being asked to download a new codec for file playback, but in this case you download malware instead.

Once the malware is installed the system is updated to no longer request the codec download and the user believes everything is fine as their media is now playing.

(Read the full post about ‘Music trojan infects when you play a song’…)

Share This

Verizon has just unveiled the brand new Motorola Adventure V750 clamshell handset that boasts the virtue of being the first phone based on the QChat push-to-talk network from the carrier. It utilizes EV-DO Rev. A cellular data to offer a somewhat similar experience as Sprint’s iDEN service, although in theory, it will be of better quality due to the 3G network. This tough handset complies with US military-grade specifications, offering protection against dust, drops and other shocks, temperature, and water splashes. Some of the other features include external music controls, multimedia support, a microSDHC memory card slot as well as navigation services.

(Read the full post about ‘Verizon introduces Motorola Adventure V750′…)

Share This