(Credit: MoMA Store)It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… a bowl?
No, this beautiful piece of artwork isn’t meant to be used as a weapon to threaten your enemies–it’s a bowl created for the MoMA Store’s Destination: Brazil collection. The collection celebrates designs, …
Originally posted at Appliances & Kitchen Gadgets
The day you’ve been waiting for is here. Sprint just announced that the Pre will cost $199.99 after $100 mail-rebate and 2-year contract and will launch on June 6th as rumored this morning. The phone will go on sale nationwide (US-only for the moment) at Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and select Wal-Mart stores. The Pre will be available under Sprint’s Everything Data or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plans. Accessories include the optional $69.99 Touchstone charging dock kit that includes the $49.99 dock and $19.99 Pre back cover. June 6th, that’s two days before the WWDC keynote. Poor Apple.
Note: Looking more info? Check out our giant Palm Pre hub!
Filed under: Cellphones
Palm Pre on June 6th for $200: It’s official! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 May 2009 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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(Credit: Bonnie Cha/CNET)Sprint Nextel and Palm announced on Tuesday an official release date and pricing for the Palm Pre.
The Pre will be available nationwide on June 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract on Sprint’s Everything Data plan or …
“World’s Lightest*,” says so right in the Panasonic press release. What’s that? It’s a qualified statement? Oh we see it now, it’s the world’s lightest Full-HD AVCHD camcorder. Well, that’ll make Sanyo’s lawyers happy. Anyway, the new Pannys bring SD/SDHC card support, touch-screen control, intelligent auto scene selection and AF tracking along with Panasonic’s optical image stabilization to keep the shake under control while zooming in at a 16x optical max. The TM10 differs from the SD10 in that it records to 40GB of internal storage before automatically switching to SDHC/SD cards of up to 32GB. The cameras also feature a 3 second Pre-Rec function that continuously pre-records content into an internal buffer which is then added to the beginning of the clip as soon as you hit record — never miss a goal again. Pricing in the UK is set at £529.99 for the HDC-TM10 and £499.99 for the HDC-SD10 with June availability.
[Via Pocket-lint]
Filed under: Digital Cameras
Panasonic’s HDC-SD10 and HDC-TM10: nearly the world’s lightest Full HD camcorders originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 May 2009 06:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Albatron is a Taiwanese computer maker that has so far flown under our radar, but its new netbook has gotten our attention. Netbooks are, almost by definition, a generic bunch of machines differentiated by only keyboard/trackpad quality and style. And the Albatron, despite its seventies-style name, has bags of style.
It’s slim, sure, but look at that hinge, which gives the screen some extra height without increasing the folded-up size of the computer. It’s almost the exact opposite of Apple’s low-profile displays which actually sink the bezel down behind the body of the machine, and with a smaller netbook the extra height is a good thing.
The internals are, as we said, boringly normal. Atom N270 (the standard 1.6GHz chip), 10.2-inch screen, 1GB RAM and the choice between a regular hard drive or an 8GB or 16GB
SSD. The slimline looks come with a penalty, though. The Albatron comes with a tiny, underpowered 3600mAH battery, usually enough for less than two hours of use. Price and availability should be revealed at the upcoming Computex show in Tokyo
The mysterious Slimline Netbook [Netbook News via Laptop Mag]
Photo: eeepcnews/Flickr
Sprint has formally announced that the Palm Pre will be available on June 6th for $199.99 on a two-year contract, after rebates. Interestingly, that’s two days before Apple’s next big event and probable product launch.
Also announced were the stores that’d be carrying it: far from a Sprint Store exclusive, the Pre will be sold in Best Buy, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart from launch day (a Saturday, oddly enough). You’ll have to opt for an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan (both of which start at $70) to get one, and you’ll have to send off a $100 mail-in rebate to knock the price down to the advertised $200, but otherwise, no surprises here.
Update: From Palm’s Twitter feed:
@marek_k: @palm_inc Any international release dates yet? (Europe) [Not yet]
In case the presence of Tweetspeak caused you to instinctively look away, that just means that they haven’t made any announcements for availability outside the US, but that they probably will, eventually. [Press Release]
Sprint to Offer Palm Pre Nationwide on June 6
Digital-age-defining Palm webOS phone is built for consumers and businesses alike, powered by America’s most dependable nationwide 3G network, with the best price plan value
OVERLAND PARK, Kan.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced pricing and nationwide availability for the highly anticipated Palm® Pre™ phone, offered exclusively from Sprint. Palm Pre will be available nationwide on June 6 in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate. Running on the new Palm webOS™ mobile platform, Pre brings together your important information from where it resides – on your phone, at your work or on the web – into one logical view.(1)
For those who juggle life circa 2009 – bouncing from conference call to car pool schedule, from doctors’ numbers to doctoral thesis data, from social calendars to social networking – Pre marks a new wireless crossover standard. Before Pre, you had to compromise when selecting a wireless phone. To get the business features you needed, you had to sacrifice the personal entertainment features you wanted. Pre consolidates your important information – professional, social and personal – into one revolutionary device using an operating system that redefines the experience of living and working wirelessly.
“The argument that you need one phone for work and another phone for play, or that you have to make compromises between business and lifestyle productivity, is over,” said Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint. “With Pre, compromises of the past are history.”
Palm Pre will run on America’s most dependable 3G network and come with Sprint’s industry-leading, value-oriented Everything Data plans that offer savings of up to $1,430 over two years vs. comparable AT&T and Verizon plans for smartphones and PDAs.(2)
“The Palm Pre takes full advantage of Sprint’s Everything Data plans,” said Avi Greengart, research director for Consumer Devices at Current Analysis. “The Pre has been expressly designed for multitasking among multiple web pages and applications. It also builds on Palm’s heritage in PDAs by managing your digital information – whether that’s on a corporate server or on the web.”
“The Pre’s dynamic ‘activity cards’ approach to handling and navigating multiple applications is a great advance, but the core breakthrough is the integration of information across multiple applications on and off the phone,” said Andy Castonguay, director of Mobile & Access Devices Research, Yankee Group. “With social networking and messaging being so important to consumers, the device’s new ‘Palm Synergy’ functionality – which gives Pre the ability to automatically pull friends’ contact details, messaging addresses and personal calendars from different applications online and on the phone – will greatly simplify people’s ability to communicate with their friends and colleagues the way they want.”
Pre: A New Kind of Phone
The new webOS platform introduces Palm Synergy™, a key feature that brings together your personal and professional calendar, contacts and e-mail into one centralized view, making transitions between work and personal life smooth and easy to manage.
With Palm Synergy, users get:
* Linked contacts – With Synergy, you have a single view that links your contacts from a variety of sources, so accessing them is easier than ever. For example, if you have the same contact listed in your Outlook(3), Google and Facebook accounts, Synergy recognizes that they’re the same person and links the information, presenting it to you as one listing.
* Layered calendars – Your calendars can be seen on their own or layered together in a single view, combining work, family, friends, sports teams, or other interests. You can toggle to look at one calendar at a time, or see them all at a glance.
* Combined messaging – Synergy lets you see all your conversations with the same person in a chat-style view, even if it started in IM and you want to reply with text messaging. You can also see who’s active in a buddy list right from contacts or e-mail, and start a new conversation with just one touch.Palm webOS lets you keep multiple activities open and move easily between them like flipping through a deck of cards. You can move back and forth between text messaging and e-mail, or search the web while you listen to music. You can rearrange items simply by dragging them, and when you are done with something, just throw it away by flicking it off the top of the screen.
Finding what you need is also easy with universal search – as you type what you’re looking for, webOS narrows your search and offers results from both your device and the web.(4) WebOS crushes the barriers to true mobile computing.
“Pre is truly a new phone for a new web-centric age,” said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer. “We’re a mobile society, and we want our people, calendars and information to move with us. With Pre’s exquisite design and the unique webOS software, running on Sprint’s fast broadband network, we’re changing the perception of what a wireless phone can be.”
Pre comes with a charger in the box, but for anyone tired of plugging a cord into their wireless phone, Palm introduces the Touchstone™ charging dock, the first inductive charging solution for phones, available exclusively for Pre. Simply set Pre down on top of the dock without worrying about connection, orientation or fit. Pre is active while charging, so you can access the touch screen, watch movies or video, or use the speakerphone. Set Pre on the charging dock when you’re on a call, and the speakerphone automatically turns on; when you take a ringing Pre off the dock, Pre automatically answers the call. Other mobile operating systems allow multitasking, but Palm has developed an intuitive method of switching between “cards,” which resemble clicking different tabs on a Web browser. New applications can be launched easily using the “Launcher” software button at the bottom of the home screen, and users navigate between different applications.
With nearly every wireless device today you have to exit one application completely before you can use another. That’s not what people are accustomed to; think of your PC and all the applications you can have open at one time.
Pre: The latest NOW Network milestone for Sprint
Pre also lets you access feature-rich Sprint content on the Sprint Now Network, including exclusive applications such as:
* Sprint Navigation(5)
* Sprint TV
* NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live“Sprint’s Now Network brings you America’s most dependable 3G network, the largest push-to-talk community, and in selected markets Sprint is the only national carrier bringing 4G to life in 2009,”(6) Hesse said. “The Now Network is more than just a physical network – it’s also data plans that are all-inclusive, eliminating fear of data overages and a perfect fit for Palm Pre users.”
Sprint’s networks are now performing at best-ever levels, and Sprint’s high-value Everything data plans consistently beat AT&T’s and Verizon’s comparable plans in savings by hundreds, even thousands, of dollars over two years. With the revolutionary launch of Ready Now, which Sprint pioneered, customers leave the store educated, comfortable and confident about the phones they’re about to take home. As a result of these measures and more, Sprint customer satisfaction indices – from first call resolution to billing satisfaction, from customer care response time to service and repair – have all significantly improved during the past year.
Pricing and Availability
The Palm Pre phone will be available from Sprint on June 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year service agreement on an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan. An array of compelling accessories also will be available for Pre, including the Palm Touchstone charging dock. The Touchstone™ Charging Kit, which includes the Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover for Pre, will be available June 6 for $69.99. The Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover also are available separately from for $49.99 and $19.99, respectively.
More information is available at www.sprint.com/palmpre.
Apple is finally testing the long-delayed push notifications promised back at the very beginnings of the App Store. The notifications are what will allow third-party applications to offer updates to their home-screen icons and display status messages without the actual application continuing to run in the background, something forbidden by Apple.
The problem has been that all the data has to go through Apple’s servers. Imagine — every single person that uses an instant messaging client, say, would have their updates piped through to Apple and then pushed to their iPhone. And that’s for every single message. If you remember the disastrous launch of Apple’s web-centric Mobile Me service, you’ll see the problem.
The test is going to be “large scale” according to an e-mail sent to iPhone developers. They can’t yet add push notification to their own apps, but instead can download a special pre-release version of the Associated Press application. If enough developers do this (and of course they will — developers are inveterate tweakers) then it should provide a good pressure-test of the system. The other advantage of using software developers to test things is that they know how to file proper bug reports.
This brings us one step closer to iPhone OS X 3.0, and hopefully a few moths later to the third iPhone itself.
Apple begins stress testing iPhone 3.0 push notifications [Apple Insider]
Image: TUAW
8 megapixel cameras and 3-plus-inch wide VGA displays are the order of the day in NTT DoCoMo’s 18-strong summer 2009 range of phones from Panasonic, LG, Fujitsu, NEC, Sharp, HTC, and Toshiba, but a few are definitely standing out for us. First would be the unforgettable N-09A from NEC, integrating patent leather right into the phone’s case; it’s not often that you need to condition your handset with saddle soap, so that one definitely caught our eye. Next up, we have a couple smartphones (not to say that anything in this lineup can be labeled “dumb” by any stretch) from HTC and Toshiba — the expected HT-03A and T-01A, respectively, which are localized rebrands of the Magic and TG01. Only a Japanese carrier lineup oozes enough machismo to make a TG01 look like a 16-ounce can of weak juice, so our hats go off to you, NTT DoCoMo — thanks for ruining one of 2009’s most promising devices for us. Hey, at least they’re offering the Magic in both white and black.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
NTT DoCoMo counters SoftBank with 18 new handsets of its own originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 May 2009 05:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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After getting hounded out of town by outraged Brits wielding metaphorical pitchforks, burning torches and yelling “Not in my back yard!” the Google Street View team has turned to a lower-profile form of transport for its 3D camera arrays: Trikes.
The Google Street View tricycle will be arriving in Britain this summer (this year the summer in the UK is predicted to fall on a Tuesday in July). The real reason is not to avoid angry villagers (who seem curiously oblivious to the millions of CCTVs that watch them every day) but to gain access to places that cars can’t reach — in this case sports arenas, coastal paths and the like.
This is a splendid piece of lateral thinking. I live in a warren of very old, narrow streets in Barcelona and while the surrounding, car friendly parts of the barrio are already Street Viewed, our smaller alleyways are not. Saying that, the Street View Trikester should bring a heavy chain with him, or risk ending up yet another victim of the neighborhood’s bike stealing junkie.
For more on the trike, including video, check out Autopia’s post on the Google trike.
Press release [Google]
See Also:
No Google Street View, Please — We’re British [Epicenter]
Carry On, Google Street View, Britain Rules [Epicenter]
Picture credit: Google UK
Awww, isn’t Europe quaint? Those gas guzzling Google Street view cars in America have become tricycles on the twisted, cobbled streets of Europe. And by the looks of this rig, we wouldn’t be surprised to find Google handing out gelato in order to placate the local luddites. Video and another picture after the break.
[Via Engadget Spanish]
Continue reading Video: Google Street View tricycle searches for Anita Ekberg
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Transportation
Video: Google Street View tricycle searches for Anita Ekberg originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 May 2009 04:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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