November 25, 2007

Ars Technica has posted an unboxing and first impressions of the new Nokia N810 internet tablet device. The reviewer was very impressed with the device, stating that the device is smaller than the N800, and has more features, including built-in GPS, the new NS2008 operating system, better performance, improved battery life, and more applications, including Skype.

November 22, 2007

The Kindle eBook reader from Amazon.com is on sale now. It is a "sleek, thin electronic reader that connects wirelessly to the Internet at broadband speeds and allows users to download e-books, or subscribe to magazines and blogs directly from Amazon.com. Unlike the Sony e-book reader, it does not ever need to be hooked up to a PC."

November 22, 2007

According to Crave, the newest Samsung Blackjack, the BlackJack II, will be available for sale on tomorrow.

Crave.CNET.com writes:
"The newest edition of the Samsung BlackJack officially will become available on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. The Samsung BlackJack II for AT&T sports a revamped design that comes in two color schemes: black or burgundy. Improvements include a larger display and more shortcut buttons while a front jog wheel replaces the side-mounted scroll wheel. On the feature front, the BlackJack II offers everything we saw on its predecessor but adds integrated GPS and support for AT&T Video Share. Only the black version will go on sale this Friday, November 23. You'll have to wait until December 6 to snag the burgundy model. Both are $149 with a two-year contract."

June 15, 2005

JVC announced the launch of new Everio G camcorders featuring 20 GB and 30 GB internal hard disks. The new Everio GZ-MG20 and Everio GZ-MG50 camcorders are able to record up to 7 or 10.5 hours of high-quality video, respectively. Movies are recorded using the MPEG-2 format, which makes DVD burning of recorded video that much easier. The devices are also able to function as 1.33 megapixel digital cameras.

June 13, 2005

Today both Nokia and Sony Ericsson announced a dozen new cell phones. Nokia announced seven mobile phones, including the 6280 3G slide phone with 2-megapixel camera, the 6270 quadband slide phone with 2-megapixel camera, the 6111 camera slide phone, the 6060 GSM clamshell phone, the 6265 CDMA 2-megapixel camera slide phone, the 2255 clamshell phone, and the 2125 candy bar-shaped phone. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson announced five new phones, including the sleek K608 3G UMTS media phone, the W600 Walkman phone, the S600 super play phone, the Z520 clamshell phone, and the J210 basic messaging phone.

June 10, 2005

DAPReview stumbled onto information about Creative's forthcoming Zen Vision portable media player. The Zen Vision is reported to have a 3.7" 640x480 65,535-color display, a 1.8" 30 GB hard drive for storage of MP3, WMA, WAV, MPEG 4, WMV, DivX and XviD audio and video files, as well as JPEG and TIFF pictures. There is also a microphone for voice recording, a built-in FM tuner, an eight-preset equalizer, a USB 2.0 port for PC connectivity, and a CompactFlash slot for memory cards. According to sources, the device will be announced near the end of June.

June 4, 2005

Sharp Corp. has said that it will begin selling the world's largest liquid crystal display television set, containing a 65-inch LCD screen. The Aquos LC-65GE1 is full-spec high definition LCD panel with new back-lighting technology that enhances color output, and is priced around $15,000.

May 18, 2005

O'Reilly Digital Media has published a review of the Olympus DS-2 Stereo Voice Recorder. Features include stereo recording at sampling rates of up to 44.1 kHz, support for WMA compression, up to 22 hours of audio in 64MB of onboard flash memory, five recording modes, backlit LCD screen, 18 hours of battery life on 2 AAA batteries, USB connectivity, and much more. The article also shows you how to import and edit audio from this device on your computer. This may very well be the perfect recording device for conducting podcasts on the road.

May 18, 2005

Nintendo unveiled their new Game Boy Micro at E3 on Tuesday. The game device is about the size of an iPod mini, plays all the same games as the Game Boy Advance SP, but is lighter and has a much brighter screen than previous devices. In addition, the Game Boy Micro also supports standard headphones. According to Nintendo, the Game Boy Micro will be available in the Fall of 2005.

May 17, 2005

GameSpot has published photos and specifications for Sony's new PlayStation 3 game console. Features include a Cell Processor running at 3.2 GHz with 8 SPE processing cores, an RSX graphics unit running at 550 MHz, full HD video output at 480i/480p/720p/1080i/1080p, Dolby 5.1 channel sound with DTS, 256 MB of XDR RAM at 3.2 GHz, 256MB of GDDR3 VRAM at 700 MHz, 2.5" HDD slot, 6 USB 2.0 ports, MemoryStick port, SD port, CompactFlash port, three Gigabit Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, up to 7 wireless game controllers, full PS2 game compatibility, dual HDMI video ports, media compatibility with Blu-Ray/DVD/CD/SACD, and more. There are several video clips from the Sony press conference at E3, including clips of game demos. See the bottom of the GameSpot article for links.

May 10, 2005

A few Japanese programmers have released a Game Boy emulator for the Sony PSP. Several videos of the program in action have also appeared on the web.

May 5, 2005

O'Reilly Digital Media has published a very informative review of the new Motorola MPx220 camera phone. The features include: Windows Mobile Smartphone 2003 Second Edition operating system, 64 MB of ROM and 32 MB of RAM, a 1.3 megapixel camera with flash, Java application support, playback of MP3 and WMA audio files, recording and playback of WMV video clips, speech recognition and voice dialing, a miniSD slot for an optional 1GB of storage, GSM Quad-band 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, Bluetooth, an internal 176 x 220 screen supporting 65536 colors, an external 96 x 64 screen supporting 4096 colors, a 1000 mAh Li-Ion Battery for up to 7 hours of talk time and 260 hours of standby, and support of up to eight POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail accounts.

April 25, 2005

Tom's Hardware has published a long and very informative review of the Sony PSP game system. The article takes a close look at the device itself with special attention paid to USB, Wi-Fi, third-party accessories, and movie playback functionality. In addition, a number of top selling PSP games are also reviewed, including Ridge Racer, Lumines, Metal Gear Acid: Solid Snake, The Lone Wolf, Twisted Metal: Head-On, Wipeout Pure, Untold Legends: Brotherhood Of The Blade, and Spider-Man 2.

April 23, 2005

Supposed pictures of Microsoft's Xbox 360 have hit the web. Some sites are claiming that they are fake, while other sites claim validation by developers who have seen the real Xbox 360. You be the judge.

April 13, 2005

Today palmOne released the new Tungsten E2 PDA. This sequel to the Tungsten E has many improvements and enhancements over the original. Although the device looks identical to the previous version, it offers a much better 320x320 pixel screen (30% brighter with 40% better color saturation), Palm OS 5.4, a 200 MHz XScale processor, 32MB of non-volatile NVFS memory, Bluetooth wireless networking, and a much better battery. The Tungsten E2 also comes with a full copy of Documents to Go 7.0 Professional Edition, software that allows viewing and editing of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files in their native formats. The retail price for the device is $249.

April 9, 2005

According to GameIndustry.biz, Microsoft and Sony are both set to announce their new consoles on May 16th, only hours apart. According to news reports and speculation, the PS3 will use a Cell CPU, an NVIDIA graphics processor, and Blu-Ray discs, while the Xbox 2 will use a PowerPC CPU, an ATI graphics processor, and DVD discs. The official names of both consoles have yet to be announced.

April 7, 2005

Nokia has announced a premium high-end camera phone, the model 8800 (8801 in the US). The phone features a 208 x 208 pixel active matrix TFT color display (262K colors) covered by reinforced scratch-resistant glass common in luxury watches, a stainless steel body, a pop-up mechanism that reveals a keypad, GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 MHz network support, an 800 x 600 pixel camera that also supports recording of short video clips, playback of MP3 and AAC music files, integrated FM radio, integrated hands-free speakerphone, WAP 2.0 microbrowser, Java MIDP 2.0, and Bluetooth connectivity. While the European version of the phone costs slightly less than $1,000, no price has been announced on the U.S. version.

April 6, 2005

SiliconValleyWatcher is reporting that Apple has contracted with a small British company to use a powerful video processing chip designed for mobile devices. The chip can perform 3D rendering, play video on a 3.5 inch color LCD, and capture 8 megapixel images. The speculation is that Apple is working on a video player iPod that is also a gaming device, 8 megapixel digital camera, and possibly a cell phone.

April 6, 2005

Sony has unveiled a new Walkman digital music player, the 20-gigabyte NW-HD5. The device supports MP3, ATRAC3, WMV, and WAV file formats. A significant feature of the player is up to 30 hours of battery life, compared to 8 hours on previous models.

April 5, 2005

Tom's Hardware has tested and reviewed a number of portable in-car GPS navigation units to find the best one. Units tested included the Magellan Roadmate 500/700 series, the Garmin StreetPilot 2610/2650 series, the Lowrance iWay 500c, the TomTom Go, the Cobra Nav One 3000, and the Navigon PNA. In the review, the two units that went through the most rigorous testing were the iWay 500c and the Roadmate 700.