Hasta La Gadget!

Datawind hasn’t had much luck here with the PocketSurfer and PocketSurfer2, but that’s not stopping the company from trying again–and this time with two devices.

Datawind has confirmed to Gearlog that the UbiSurfer will be available in the U.S. this coming October, for a list price of $199. The unit includes an embedded CDMA module, along with a year of free usage anywhere in the U.S. at 30 hours per month. Essentially, the UbiSurfer (short for “Ubiquitous Surfer”) is a netbook-sized, always-on device with a proprietary UI for accessing the Web and tapping out documents.

In addition, the company will also sell the smaller PocketSurfer3 (pictured) here around the same time for $249–again with the same usage plan. That’s a big drop from the PocketSurfer2, which cost $299 but also required a $20 or $30 monthly data plan. The PocketSurfer3 is a flip device with a membrane keyboard and touchpad, an updated UI, and a new TFT active matrix screen that should address the old model’s washed-out colors and dithered graphics.

Oh sure, we joke about rogue AI all the time, and we’re aware that we’ll probably pollute ourselves to death well before the robots get us, but who really thinks flesh-eating machines are a good idea? Has Morpheus taught us nothing? The (patently evil) scientists behind the EATR project — no fair, they’re making their own jokes now too — say the reconnaissance bot is powered by foraging for and consuming biomatter, which to you and us simply means soft, pulsating, yummy humans. They call it fuel versatility, as gasoline, diesel, and solar power may also be used if available, yet we’ll offer no prizes for predicting which energy source these chainsaw-equipped robots will prefer.

[Via Switched]

Filed under: Robots

EATR robots are coming, this isn’t funny anymore originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

It may have already been teased, poked and prodded, but the TG01 from Toshiba still insisted on making a big splash on its arrival to the UK and we were only too happy to oblige and join in on its launch event in London. As you should know by now, this is Toshiba’s most significant attempt to date at penetrating the consumer smartphone market, and it’s coming equipped with a battering ram named Snapdragon. Head over to Engadget Mobile for the juicy details on the UI, construction and general feel, as well as a neat stash of images and videos of the phone in action.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Video: Toshiba TG01 gets UK launch, we handle it again originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Chris over at Photography Bay writes on touch-screen DSLRs: “Would You Want a Suped-up Touchscreen DSLR?” he asks. This got me thinking. The iPhone 3GS has that rather neat touch-to-focus feature, wherein the camera focuses and calculates both white-balance and exposure based on what part of the picture you point out.

The iPhone, of coure, is entirely touch controlled, but the whole interface would be welcome on a compact camera. There are already touch-screen compacts, but so far SLRs have escaped the treatment. Why? Well, for one, they are usually used held up to the eye — live-view can be useful sometimes but I’d bet that most DSLR users compose and shoot with the viewfinder. This would, it would seem, make touch-to-focus almost useless, something which could slow things down more than speed them up.

What about for setting controls: white balance, custom settings and the like? Surely this is a perfect option for the touch-screen? As Chris says, one of the advantages of the higher-end DSLR is that “many pros like these buttons because they allow for quick access to their favorite settings.” and touch-screens mean lots of digging through menus. You can also use buttons with the screen off, and with your eye to the finder. This saves both time and battery power.

On the other hand, browsing and deleting images is perfect for this tech. Swipe to switch images, hit a delete button and then choose the pictures you want to toss by touching them. This works because you are using the screen anyway.

It’s probably inevitable that touch will come to the DSLR, just as live-view and video percolated up from consumer cameras. Do we need it? Maybe. Do we have a choice? No.

Would You Want a Suped-up Touchscreen DSLR? [Photography Bay]
Photo Illustration: Photography Bay

If you visit Barcelona, Spain, don’t drink the tap water. Depending on which part of town you are in, water from the faucet either tastes of chlorine, gives you cancer, or both. This is why almost everyone buys giant eight-liter (541 tablespoons) bottles of water and drags them up the stairs of their seven-story, elevator-free apartment buildings.

Yes, yes, the environment would be better if only I used a water filter. The problem is that they are so frikkin’ ugly. And plastic. Here, though, is a glass and steel beauty, a jug so fine it doesn’t use boring old everyday charcoal cartridges but real lumps of Binchotan charcoal and louseki stones, all the way from the “mountains in Kanazawa, the capital city of Ishikawa Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan coast.”

This is, clearly, the home-made equivalent of Fiji bottled water.

The cost is a not unreasonable $85, fine for something used several times daily. The refills come in at $25 each, which – even if one lasts just half the promised six months – is a whole lot less than the money spent on water, plus the environmental costs of trasport and plastic bottle disposal.

The best part? The refill is called “Purifying Sticks and Stones”, with which you can also, presumably, break somebody’s bones.

Product page [Design Within Reach via Uncrate]