Last week, case maker Speck announced new colors, styles, and enhancements for its nascent line of laptop bags. They stopped in to show me some samples in person, and I’m impressed with the thought going into the design. While many bag companies are now going beyond the basic (some might say boring) black nylon that categorized laptop cases for years, Speck’s designs stand apart: The colors and fabrics are subtle yet eye-catching, and the bags are sturdy and beautifully crafted.
Above is a snazzy new look for the PortPack bag (reviewed by Gearlog earlier this year); this design is called Velocity Plum Stripe and also features a bright-blue interior. Speck’s TuckBag (after the jump) also comes in this same colorway.
AT&T iPhone owners have been waiting over two years for a feature that almost every other cellphone has had for ages: multimedia messaging. That day is almost here. MMS lands on the iPhone tomorrow.
AT&T posted the following message on its Facebook page:
MMS Update: We know you’ve been eager for this service so we wanted to offer a quick update on the launch plans for MMS on Friday, Sept. 25. Late morning, Pacific Time, on Friday, the new carrier settings update enabling MMS should be live and ready to download through iTunes. We’ll provide the steps and all of the details you need right here at that time.
That sounds like a painless upgrade: You won’t have to download a huge iPhone software update just to gain MMS. Updating the carrier settings usually involves flashing the firmware, which takes a matter of seconds.
Now, let’s see if AT&T can handle the huge amount of data traffic tomorrow when thousands of iPhone users send their “O.M.G. I FINALLY HAVE MMS!” messages, toothy-grinned self-portraits attached.
Intel’s CE3100 media chip has been behind some of the coolerdemos they’ve done here at IDF, and it’s just gotten a big brother, the Atom CE4100. As you’d expect, the big change is the replacement of the CE3100’s Pentium M core with an Atom core, but this thing is actually kind of a monster — it can decode two 1080p video streams with various high-end audio codecs, it adds MPEG-4 support and 3D graphics capability, and it can even capture uncompressed 1080p video. Of course, it’s up to manufacturers and cable companies to actually put all this power to use, but Intel’s promised us some hardware demos from partners — stay tuned.
A clever press pitch crossed our desk recently that takes interest in music and rhythm video games and uses them to push the age-old business of selling sheet music.
Sheet Music Plus sells sheet music and songbooks for guitar, piano, and other instruments, …
Oh, brother. TomTom just hit us up with the real details on its iPhone car kit slip this morning, and we’ve got a feeling you won’t like what it has to say. It confessed that the posting was indeed a mistake, and thus, the pricing was also incorrect. If you’ll recall (c’mon, it wasn’t that long ago), the Apple store listing explained that the £99.99 car kit included the iPhone app, when in reality, that price definitely does not include the app. Jump on past the break for TomTom’s official statement, which now curiously states that the “iPhone 2G” will be compatible with the car kit, yet doesn’t mention the iPod touch at all.
When Samsung introduced the Instinct S30 earlier this year, we hoped the company didn’t seriously consider the stripped-down handset to be a worthy update to the satisfying Instinct M800. At the time, we heard rumors of another Instinct model, but Samsung kept us hanging …
Finally, our friends in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany are getting their moment with the Palm Pre, as Palm and European carrier O2 announced pricing details and availability dates for the GSM version of the WebOS smartphone.
We had originally assumed that Lenovo’s IdeaPad S12 would be the first netbook to ship with NVIDIA’s Ion platform, but since that rig was delayed until Windows 7 could make its retail debut, HP decided to swoop in and claim the honors. You heard right — the recently introduced Mini 311 has just become the first netbook in the universe with NVIDIA’s Ion to actually ship to end users, and it’s up for order right now starting at $399.99. ‘Course, you’ll be asked to pay extra for a white chassis ($20), Atom N280 ($25), Bluetooth ($25), 802.11n ($25) and integrated WWAN ($125), but at least that 1,366 x 768 resolution display comes standard.
Like most social-networking sites, Twitter isn’t immune to lurkers, fakes, and creeps. The 404 Twitter account received over 600 followers in the last 24 hours, which leads us to believe that we’re either becoming wildly popular or more likely, the new adds are demonized accounts; in other words, people that had their accounts taken over by a spam bot. This has to stop, Biz–stop teasing our egos!
In other ridiculous news, the CBS video print ad we picked apart in Episode 411 is fetching up to $400 on eBay–what the what? If we’d known that prices would skyrocket on the black market, we would have ganked a few more copies from our parent company, CBS! This is a great example of how you can buy practically anything online, including an 800 thread count Egyptian Cotton duvet cover or a set of custom-made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle drapes from your humble host’s childhood…don’t ask, just watch the show.
October 19th may be under a month away, but that’s still an eternity in “waiting years.” Thankfully, Motorola has posted up a handy guide that spells out exactly what kind of pre-loaded software comes with the CLIQ, and we’ve got to say — the list is fairly impressive. For starters, users will get access to LastFM, an array of Google features, Yahoo! Mail (funny, real funny), Digg, Mint, Facebook, Twitter, Travel Channel, MTV and Amazon’s MP3 Store. On top of all that, Moto’s throwing in QuickOffice — a piece that demands $9.99 on the iPhone — as well as TeleNav Navigator, which has also found itself on a few other Android-based smartphones over the centuries. Hit the read link for the full list, but only if you don’t mind the tease.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
