I have spent every day since the iTunes App Store launched fighting with iTunes tech support to get them to believe the fact that I couldn’t download anything from anywhere in the store wasn’t related to the amount of traffic the store was getting with the new iPhone. It seems that wait until later and try again was the best answer they could give me for 3 days until someone finally bothered to actually check my account and fixed it within 5 minutes.
With my account fixed I downloaded all sorts of cool apps today including the free game called Tap Tap Revenge. The game is sort of along the lines of Guitar Hero, but with tracks nowhere near as good. The game has a red, blue and green beams that have orbs of light and the occasional arrow that slide down them. The object of the game is to tap the orbs as the hit the bottom like you would do in guitar Hero. Read the rest of this entry »
When you were a kid, did your parents ever use a giant phone book as a booster seat? If you lived somewhere like New York, there’s a good chance that a single set of yellow pages was enough to help you reach the table. Of course if you’re from a small town like me, you were better off finding a large dictionary, as it took several phone books to do any good.
This booster seat looks a lot like a giant phone book. It is made from plastic and is contoured to comfortably seat your child. You’re bound to get a few laughs when friends come over for dinner. Best of all, it’s just $20.
Remember this tiny little Bluetooth headset? Compared to the Bluetooth toothset (?) it’s ginormous. Now, I should point out that I’m writing about this on the March 31, but until told otherwise, I’m going to assume it’s legit… It is, after all, from China. The Dentacom Bluetooth “dental insert” includes a tiny microphone, tiny transmitter (10m range), tiny battery, and tiny solar panel (!) to run it all. It supposedly transmits very clear sound, although you’ll have to use a regular earpiece to hear anything. The kit comes with “installation tools,” and I should point out that this is not something you put in your mouth, it’s something you install in your tooth, permanently. And when I say you, I mean your dentist, whether or not the installation tools are included. Pricing info not yet available.
Oh, and Bluetooth? It’s named after Harald Bluetooth, a 10th century king of Jutland (Denmark+Germany). The Bluetooth logo are the merged Germanic runes for H and B, Harald’s initials. Now you know.
Shoes and technology aren’t generally two things that go hand-in-hand. However, since the inception of Nike + iPod, it has been a little more common to hear people talking about both in the same breath. As far as I’ve seen, Nike is really the only shoe company trying hard to cross-brand their products with tech gear. Well, they’re at it again, only this time they’ve decided to team up with Japan’s KDDi Communications.
When Nike teamed up with Apple, they created a very useful product. This recent partnership is not nearly as exciting. In fact, they’re apparently just shoes that bear some sort of resemblance to the KDDi Infobar 2 phone. I’ve heard of people buying shoes to match a particular coat or dress, but don’t you think buying a pair to match your phone is a bit much? They’ll be on sale in December in Japan for around $155.
It’s common for people to misplace their cellphone. It’s also common for people to misplace their keys. And while it still happens to the more distracted of us to misplace both at the same time, it’s somewhat less likely. That’s why the “I Call Me” keychain is a compelling concept. Lose your keys? Call them, and they’ll beep loudly so you can find them. Lose your phone? Press the button on the keychain, and it calls the phone. Just hope it’s not on silent.
Yeah, it’s just a concept for now, but it would be great seeing someone putting this in production.
One would have thought after the invention of speed dial that we had pretty much made dialing the phone as easy as possible. However, a quick look at the T-Phone will make you think otherwise. The idea is that you have a few small discs with pictures on them stored inside the phone. When you want to make a call, just open it up, select a disc based on the picture and place it on the large dial button.
The T-Phone is aimed at the elderly, as they tend to have trouble seeing the numbers to dial, or even remembering the number to dial. Unfortunately this is only a concept for now. However, it’s a great idea, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see something similar being sold in the future.
A few days ago at 3GSM in Barcelona, Iqua (in partnership with Suntrica) showed off their solar-powered bluetooth headsets. Modeled on their existing Vogue headset (pictured above), I assume it’ll have some solar panels on the outside, which can be used to charge the internal battery. The only hard numbers available say it’ll weigh 14 grams (no details about talk time, charge time, or battery life), and if it’s got the same specs as the Vogue, it’ll be a pretty typical headset otherwise. From the press release:
Imagine sailing with friends – most of them have mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and laptops on the boat. When there is an opportunity to charge the batteries, everyone rushes to get their device plugged. With the new elegant Iqua headset, you can just relax, sunbathe and let its battery charge. With the BHS-603 SUN, you not only look stylish, but save energy at the same time.
Yeah, my friends and I go sailing (?) with our laptops (??) all the time. What concerns me most, though, is the serious dilemma that this will pose for techno-hippies everywhere: you can have either long hair, or solar power. Not both.
Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG, and Nokia, which together comprise some 85% of the GSM hardware market, have all agreed to standardize their cell phone chargers to Micro-USB. This is great news for consumers, but why are companies making the change when it cuts in to their accessories market? According to Nokia, “with the reduction of cables needed for mobile data connectivity, we can further enhance user experiences in our devices while reducing the burden to the environment.” Forgive me, Nokia, if I don’t believe that you and your buddies are doing this just to be nice to us and the planet. What they might actually be referring to is that in the EU, manufacturers have to pay for part of the cost of recycling electronics that they manufacture, and a common standard might cut down on the number of useless chargers floating around. But I guess whatever the motivation, it’s a good thing.
Back in January, the Pico Projector seemed borderline too good to be true. Then, Motorola signed up for the hardware, and finally we get a look at a bright, svelte, preproduction version stuffed into something about the size of a cellphone. According to Sean Captain from Popular Science, “seeing really is believing with this tech. Point the Pico at any even vaguely flat surface–a wall, someone’s back, the palm of your hand–and it’s movie time.” The version in the video below is a prototype that uses red, green, and blue lasers and a digital micromirror array (ultraminiaturized DLP technology, basically) to pump out a bright picture. The production version will probably rely on LEDs which are cheaper, cooler (in the thermal sense), and more efficient, but most likely a bit dimmer.
You should see this in some sort of production cellphone sometime next year, believe it or not. Take that, iPhone.
Maybe it’s not actually edible, but the Lobster multimedia concept is still quite tasty, as far as I’m concerned. It’s called Lobster because of its segmented design (resembling a lobster tail, I guess), which is the heart of the functionality of this device: each segment is a quasi-independent module, and by clipping them together the Lobster can take on whatever configuration you desire. The core of the device is a base module (the big bit with the screen) containing a cell phone. Other modules clip onto the base module, and could include an MP3 player, a GPS, a digital camera, and even a cardiometer. Another obvious module might be an extended battery, or a bluetooth module. And according to the designer, each module can also be used completely independently. Of course, it’s easy to say all sorts of things since it’s a concept, but I don’t care, I’m hooked anyway. The renderings do have a teeny little LG logo, but it’s too much to hope that there’s an actual prototype on the way. More pics after the jump.
Related Tags: iPhone, iTunes App Store
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