Boost Mobile
(Credit: Boost Mobile)
Just in time for this troubled economy, Boost Mobile (one of the few MVNOs still standing), has announced a new unlimited monthly plan.
It costs a flat rate of $50 a month, and it includes unlimited daytime, evening, and weekend calls; unlimited texts; unlimited wireless …
As if we didn’t have enough already, here comes some more bad tech news.
Tech research company Gartner said Wednesday that during the fourth quarter of 2008, the worldwide PC industry suffered its slowest growth rate since 2002. Gartner reported that worldwide shipments of PCs totaled 78.1 million units, which was just a 1.1 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2007.
The region most affected by the recession in terms of PC growth was Asia/Pacific, which “recorded the worst shipment growth since Gartner started its PC statistics research,” said Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner’s Client Computing Markets group. Comparatively, in the U.S., the PC market declined 10 percent, which is the worst shipment decline since the last U.S. recession in 2001.
The biggest winner in this time period was Acer, which continued to show incredible growth with PC shipments growing 31.1 percent worldwide and 55.4 percent in the U.S.
The biggest loser was Dell, which declined 16.4 percent in the U.S., where it leads the region for computer shipments.
Post by Sean Ludwig
Kiss your blistered fingers and headaches goodbye–tangled cords are a problem of the past as long as you use Flexicords. If you’re someone who sets up and breaks down your television, home theater kit, laptop, or desktop computer, Flexicords’ coiled design eliminates the need to measure exactly how much cable you’ll need to hook up your gear.
The cables come curly and extend out up to 10 feet, ensuring that you have just enough slack without any excess clutter.
Flexicord offers cables for just about any application, including USB, phono jacks, S-video, networking cables, and HDMI. Once extended, the coils retain their shape thanks to a thick pipe cleaner that bends alongside the cable itself.
Finally, each wire comes with its own “recoiling tool,” aka an inanimate plastic rod that helps you coil it back up. Prices vary depending on size and maximum length, but they all generally cost around $20, with the exception of the 10-foot HDMI cable that goes for $34.
More pictures after the jump!
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(Credit: Northrop Grumman)Remember how Tom Cruise’s flyboy character in Top Gun seemed as at home riding the roadways on a motorcycle as he was jockeying an F-14 in the air?
Maverick is probably the kind of guy Northrop Grumman had in mind when it came up with the “…
Sony’s VAIO P may or may not be a netbook (or even fit in a pocket), but there’s no denying that it’s an incredibly sexy piece of hardware — it’s hard not to be immediately taken with it, at least until you see how slowly it runs Vista. (Windows 7 is a different story, obviously.) Of course, there’s a story behind the unique form factor and crazy 1600 x 768 screen resolution, and designer Takuma Tomoaki shared some choice tidbits recently in an interview with Chinese site cool3c. Of particular note, the P was inspired by the Mini Cooper, which Tomoaki called “small and sophisticated,” and the entire design was dictated by the size of the “smallest usable keyboard.” Tomoaki also said that the insane screen res was aimed at HD movies, since it can play back 720p content natviely, and that Sony’s looking towards integrating the P with both the Walkman and PSP families — something it’s already kinda-sorta doing with the XMB interface on the machine. Plenty more quotes after the break and tons of pics at the read link, like this early VAIO TT-esque mockup that likely launched a thousand Photoshops. Read on!
[Thanks to Andy Yang of Engadget Chinese for the translation!]
Continue reading The VAIO P’s designer spills some secrets
Filed under: Laptops
The VAIO P’s designer spills some secrets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A 35-year-old man in Sweden stole a batch of prototype phones from Sony Ericsson’s Lund offices earlier this week, and was then promptly arrested, Engadget Mobile reports.
Police apprehended the suspect on Wednesday at his home after they found the stolen prototypes, plus about 100 other handsets, on the premises. “According to Sony Ericsson, the man was not an employee but had a ‘working relationship’ with the company,” the report said, “and apparently used a pass card to gain entry to the building.”
Police also confiscated a laptop and pinned the total value of the theft at around $90,000 US. It’s unclear what the man planned to do with the stolen prototypes, although they would certainly be valuable to competing cell phone makers. A related IT World report said that news of the theft came directly from the police; Sony Ericsson is staying quiet on the matter.
Id Software, the video game developer behind Doom, announced Thursday that it has tapped British author Graham Joyce to write Doom 4. The fantasy novelist has won numerous awards for many of his 14 novels and 26 short stories.
“I can say that Id has hired me to help develop the storyline potential,” Joyce said in an interview with CVG. He chose not to offer any more comments about the pending release of Doom 4.
Regardless, I’m looking forward to Doom 4 even though Id first announced the game back in 2007 and has made no mention of it since. The original Doom became an iconic franchise that helped start this whole anti- video-game-violence nonsense, but more importantly, it set the tone for gaming today. It brought first-person shooters to the mainstream and left an indelible mark on the entire industry.
Doom was an important part of my formative years, as well. Maybe that’s why my love for Doom, even through rough patches (I’m looking at you, Doom 3), has ever diminished.
Remember when Doom first hit store shelves in 1993? It wasn’t like any other game on the market. It included off-color remarks, a gun named BFG (the “F” stood for… you can guess that yourself), and unprecedented violence. Unfortunately, it was that violence that got all the media attention.
But for the rest of us, Doom was something special. It was the graphical king of its time and we marveled at Id’s ability to bring it to life. More importantly, it led to the 1990s gaming boom that changed the industry (and its consumers) forever.
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Originally posted at The Digital Home
This news comes with nary a hint of specifications, launch date, design or price, but the words came straight from the mouth of Jonney Shih, chairman of Asustek.
Shih says that Asus is planning yet another Eee, this time a smartphone. In an interview with the New York Times, he said that the phone will be the command center at the heart of "the digital home", kind of like the way the iPhone works as a remote for iTunes, only it will control the whole house. Shih:
That Eee phone may become an interactive control. The whole digital network is the key.
We’re interested to see what Asus comes up with. The company already knows how to pack a whole computer into a tiny package. It is also familiar with Linux. We’d expect – and this is only speculation – that an Eee Phone would run Google’s Android. Why not? It’s free, open source and works great on low-powered hardware.
The only problem might be battery life. Google’s OS is notoriously thirsty, and netbooks don’t have a reputation for wall-wart independence. Like we said, we’ll see, but we’re certainly excited.
C.E.S. Interview: ASUSTek’s Jonney Shih on Computer Displays [NYT via]
LG and SanDisk have developed a new content protection system that will let carriers distribute music and other media content onto removable memory cards for cell phones, according to Phone Scoop.
The content would not be playable on cell phones from another carrier’s network, however. “In other words, if content is pushed from T-Mobile, it could be used on other T-Mobile phones, but not phones from AT&T. It works by allowing IP connectivity to the memory card in the handset,” the report said.
So far no carriers have come forward to say they’re going to use the technology. SanDisk has gone to some pretty interesting extremes as of late to promote its flash memory card business, but this one is particularly odd—and the timing is certainly unfortunate.
Motorola plans to hand pink slips to 4,000 workers, 3,000 of which will come directly from the handset unit, according to Engadget, confirming an earlier story from Tuesday.
The report said that the news comes along with a preliminary fourth quarter earnings estimate of a 7 to 8 cent per share loss. The current word is that Motorola plans to focus on Google’s Android operating system as a platform for future smartphones, in lieu of Windows Mobile (which currently powers the Q9m, Q9c, and the Q9h).
Motorola hasn’t had a hit cell phone since the original RAZR in 2004; since then, the company has focused on churning out dozens of varieties of RAZRs and RAZR-like models, and produced a somewhat revamped successor. The Q line was modestly successful but not a home run for the company.
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