Hasta La Gadget!

Honda demonstrated a dog-friendly Element at the New York auto show.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET")

Honda and Mitsubishi showed off dog-friendly concept cars at the 2009 New York auto show. The Honda version, built on its Element model, is slated to be offered as a trim option this fall. …

Originally posted at The Car Tech blog

Hot on the heels of XCM‘s Dominator joystick comes an even more irresistible iteration, making those that took the plunge in January inevitably jealous. The newfangled Rumble Joystick for PlayStation 3 isn’t terribly different from the original… save for the fact that this one shakes, rattles and rolls, of course. Described as the world’s first PS3 joystick to rumble natively, this bugger also packs four memory buttons for programming all sorts of sick, twisted macros alongside independent Rapid Fire and Turbo buttons. Moving on, we’ve got the all new XO Adapter for PS3, which adds support for macros, Rapid Fire and Turbo to any vanilla Dual Shock or SIXAXIS controller. There’s no mention of pricing for either, but we suspect that’ll change in the near future (like, real soon, given that they’ll be shipping in under a month).

Read – Rumble Joystick for PS3
Read – XO Adapter for PS3

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

XCM introduces Rumble Joystick and KO Adapter for PlayStation 3 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We didn’t think the LG Arena KM900 was any great shakes when we briefly got to play with it at Mobile World Congress, and it sounds like our initial impression was right on the money — GSM Helpdesk just reviewed the touchscreen handset and more or less called it a weak iPhone clone. Ouch. The S-Class 3D UI drew particular scorn for being “cumbersome,” and the browser was “sluggish” and “uncomfortable,” taking some 30-40 seconds to render pages. There were some positives, though: the camera was solid, and the Dolby Mobile-enabled media player impressed, but overall the phone scored a 7 out of 10 on potential alone — let’s hope LG can improve things next time around.

[Via Slashgear]

Filed under: Cellphones

LG Arena KM900 gets reviewed, called an iPhone clone originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The folks over at Porsche Designs make drills, luggage, and now apparently phones. Its newest attempt, the P’9522, is a touchscreen enabled, world roaming, GPS touting, beauty milled from a solid piece of aluminum (just like a new MacBook). But all is not well in Porsche-town. From the mind of reviewer Joe Brown:

If you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot, you’d be better off mugging some blogger
for his MacBook than surfing the web using the horribly inaccurate
touchscreen and knife-thin keys. And that touchscreen? It’s worse than
any other touch-sensitive display we’ve ever used. You can’t tap an
item in a list — you have to scroll to it. Just like the phone’s
automotive namesake, the highlighting bar goes waaaay too fast, almost
always passing the option you want. Really, even the vivid colors on
the 2.8-inch, energy-efficient AMOLED screen don’t help the browser’s
case.

There’s even more to gripe about this device. You can read the rest of the review of the Porsche Design P’9522 Phone right here.

Nokia fulfilled its part of the bargain by rolling out its NFC-enabled 6212 cellphone last year, and it looks like Visa is now finally making the phone a good deal more useful — in Malaysia, at least. That’s where the company has launched its first commercial NFC (or Near Field Communications) payment service for point-of-sale transactions, which will let folks simply wave the phone in front of a reader to make a purchase instead of going to the hassle of swiping a card. What’s more, it doesn’t look like this is simply a limited trial, with 1,800 stores in the country ready to accept the magical payments out of the gate, and Maxis and Maybank on board to let folks easily access their credit account. Better still, Visa has also said that this move finally signals the shift from pilot programs to actual roll-outs, although it’s unfortunately not being all that specific about the next few markets on tap just yet.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Visa rolls out its first commercial NFC payment system originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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