Hasta La Gadget!

Remember the Pet Rock discussion in Office Space where Tom Smykowski explains his Jump To Conclusions Mat to Michael Bolton, Peter, and Samir? The scene goes a little something like this:

Tom Smykowski: There are people in this world that don’t have to put up with all this sh*t. Like that guy that invented the Pet Rock. You see, that’s what you have to do. You have to use your mind, and come up with some really great idea like that, and you can make millions—never have to work again.

Michael Bolton: You think the Pet Rock was a really great idea.

Tom Smykowski: Sure it was! The guy made a million dollars! You know, I had an idea like that once…. It was a Jump to Conclusions Mat. It would be this mat that you would put on the floor, and it would have different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.

Michael Bolton: That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life, Tom.

Samir: Yes, this is horrible, this idea.

The Cassette Tape Dispenser brings that scene to mind, but for a much smarter idea: It’s a CASSETTE TAPE, and it DISPENSES TAPE. And while it may not make a million dollars anytime soon, it’s one of the better looking tape dispensers I’ve ever seen. It’s nerdy. It’s nostalgic. And it definitely counts as a piece of desktop flair.

The Cassette Tape Dispenser is available at Firebox for $20 and comes in either red or green.

Of course, you’ll likely want it in red to match your stapler.

It’s here (almost) — the “smooth as butter” multi-touch Latitude XT2 with 12.1-inch LED backlit, capacitive touchscreen is up for grabs on Dell’s retail site. Prices start at $2,399. For that you get a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo SU9300 processor, 1GB DDR3 memory, 80GB disk spinning at 5,400RPM, Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics, and a 4-cell battery. The price quickly shoots to $3,783 when configured with a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400 CPU, 3GB of memory, 128GB SSD, 802.11n WiFi, WWAN data card, Bluetooth, and optional XT2 Slice battery for up to 10 hours of untethered power. Consider it, that’s how we’d roll. Now the catch: while Dell’s teaser page says that the XT2 is available for “free 3-5 Day shipping,” you’re greeted with a “preliminary ship date” of April 9th once you click through. Oh Dell.

[Thanks, Ron M.]

Filed under: Laptops

Dell Latitude XT2 multi-touch tablet now shipping… April 9th originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Make no mistake, the all-black HTC Magic is for real. Separated here at CeBIT from its glistening white counterpart by an equally white G1, this near-final Magic looked just stellar in its glossy dark coat. We chatted it up with an on-hand representative who confirmed that the handsets on display weren’t absolutely finalized, and that when launched exclusively on Vodafone in Europe (you read that correctly), the Voda logo would be proudly plastered on. He stated that there were no immediate plans for selling an unlocked one in Europe or abroad, but that’s just the standard line given when a carrier has yet to get their special toy. He also affirmed that HTC “believed deeply” in Android, and that the world at large would be seeing a lot more where this came from in the near future. Have a look at what these lucky Europeans will soon have access to in the gallery below.

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC black Magic (Sapphire) hands-on: a Vodafone exclusive originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NASA announced that its Cassini spacecraft has found within Saturn’s G ring a small moonlet that shows up in photographs as a “faint, moving pinprick” of light. Scientists now believe the moonlet is one of the main sources of the G ring and its single ring arc.

The report said that Cassini imaging scientists studied about 600 days worth of images and found the tiny moonlet embedded within a partial ring. NASA estimates that the moonlet is about a third of a mile across (or about 1700 feet).

“Before Cassini, the G ring was the only dusty ring that was not clearly associated with a known moon, which made it odd,” said Matthew Hedman, a Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., in a statement. “The discovery of this moonlet, together with other Cassini data, should help us make sense of this previously mysterious ring.”

The discovery brings the total of Saturn’s known moons to over 60. Cassini launched back in 1997, employed two really cool slingshot-like maneuvers around Venus to gain thrust for the long trip, and arrived at Saturn in 2004. It’s been taking photographs and doing science out there ever since. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Smartphone sales will account for 20 percent of all cell phones worlwide by 2013, doubling their current market share, according to a new study by research firm In-Stat, MediaPost reports.

In North America, smartphone sales will increase by 15 percent every year, eventually more than doubling to over 62 million in 2013. Already, 36 percent of cell phone subscribers own one in the U.S., and a third of regular cell phone users said in 2008 that they’d upgrade to a smart device the next time around, according to the article.

In an interesting twist, while the iPhone reigns supreme for now, In-Stat predicts that phones powered by open mobile operating systems like Android will surpass the iPhone over the next few years. This certainly wasn’t evident at Mobile World Congress a few weeks ago, but my hopes remain high for Android, given how good the T-Mobile G1 already is.

“Google and its partners have the potential to aggressively enter the smartphone segment of the market by creating a development environment that is to be the most convenient for mobile applications development,” the In-Stat report said. “This will lead to even greater interest in the smartphone market segment.” The study also cited how other carriers have scrambled to introduce iPhone-like handsets, none of which have done as well as the iPhone but are serving to dilute the market and give consumers more choice.