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Continue reading iPhone 4 and TomTom Car Kit brought together with velcro

iPhone 4 and TomTom Car Kit brought together with velcro originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember Que, Plastic Logic’s large screen e-reader that debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year? It’s increasingly looking like vaporware.

Plastic Logic isn’t shipping the Que e-reader, though the company is officially calling it a “delay.” Plastic Logic has canceled all pre-oders and is no longer offering a date as to when we can see the Que in the real world. It has also stopped taking pre-orders for the device.

“We need to let you know that since your unit will not ship on June 24 as planned, our automated ordering system has automatically canceled your order,” Plastic Logic sent in an e-mail to its customers.

Billed as an e-reader for business users, the Que had an 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen display and the ability to handle Microsoft Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, digital books, PDFs, magazines and newspapers. The device could also synchronize with Microsoft Outlook to display e-mails and calendar.

A 4-GB version of the Que with Wi-Fi and storage for about 35,000 documents was priced at $650. The company also announced a $800 8-GB version that includes Wi-Fi and 3G capability from AT&T.

It was an ambitious move and one out-of-sync with the trend in the e-reader market. Amazon’s large screen Kindle DX is priced at$490. Meanwhile, Apple has launched its iPad tablet with iBooks, an iTunes-like book store. Starting at $500, the iPad offers readers access to e-mail and books with a large color touchscreen. So far, Apple has sold 3 million iPads. About 7 million e-readers are expected to sell this year, estimates Forrester Research.

Not surprisingly, Plastic Logic has failed to get off the ground. A month before it promised to to ship the Que reader in April, the company announced to customers that it is delaying the launch to “sometime this summer.” In an e-mail  then, Plastic Logic said it needed the time to “fine-tune features and enhance the overall product.”

This time around, it is offering the same reason.

“Plastic Logic wants to make sure that the product they deliver is the right one for their target business customers in the rapidly changing marketplace,” a spokesperson for Plastic Logic wrote in an e-mail to us. “They are continuing to refine the product, technology and features, and are anxious to get in the marketplace as soon as possible.”

Unless Plastic Logic can bring the price of the Que down significantly and offer greater value than the iPad or the Kindle DX, it is likely to be a product that will be dead on arrival–if it ever makes it to market.

See Also:

• Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users
• Plastic Logic Delays Que E-Reader
• Plastic Logic E-Book Reader to Use AT&T Wireless
• Gallery: E-Readers Push Boundaries of Books

Photo: Que/Priya Ganapati

Some have noticed that Google Voice won’t ring their iPhone 4. Are you experiencing the same problem, too? pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20008861-233.html” class=”origPostedBlog”iPhone Atlas/a/p

pspan class=”noAutolink”a rel=”enclosure” href=”http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/1pcast.the404/http://podcast-files.cnet.com/podcast/cnet_the404_062510.mp3″/abr/pp

div class=”cnet-image-div image-REGULAR float-none” style=”width: 570px”
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pThe show title for today’s episode of CNET’s The 404 Podcast actually refers to two stories in the rundown. The first, of course, refers to the masses of a title=”iPhone 4 is out, complaints are in — Thursday, Jun 24, 2010″ href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20008749-260.html”complaints from early Apple iPhone 4 adopters/a. As if a title=”Long lines mark the arrival of iPhone 4 in stores — Thursday, Jun 24, 2010″ href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20008729-260.html”yesterday’s heatstroke line nightmares/a weren’t bad enough, some owners are experiencing a title=”iPhone 4 is out, complaints are in — Thursday, Jun 24, 2010″ href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20008749-260.html”disappearing signals/a when the steel bands antennas are covered by gripping the phone in use./p

pIronically, the external antenna band was supposed to increase reception bars, but many feel jilted that Apple and Steve Jobs failed to mention the glaring design error during the keynote earlier this month. In response to several angry e-mails, Jobs’ response reads, “Non issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.”/p

pIf you own an iPhone 4 and don’t feel like checking your hand position every time you pick it up, Apple sells a rubber bumper case for $29 that solves the problem, but even Wilson is upset at what seems like a sneaky ploy to sell more accessories./pp

div class=”cnet-image-div image-MEDIUM float-left” style=”width: 270px”
img class=”cnet-image” src=”http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim//2010/06/25/sexdriveiphone_01_270x408.jpg%3Ft%3D1277488933″ alt=””
width=”270″ height=”408″ /
/div/p

pa href=”http://gizmodo.com/5555853/the-apple-app-stores-scams”iPhone app scams/a certainly aren’t new, but a recent addition to the store deserves your attention. Called a title=”Apple approves erectile dysfunction app — Wednesday, Jun 23, 2010″ href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20008634-71.html”Fire Up Your Sex Drive/a, the app promises to cure your erectile dysfunction using a 6-minute daily audio clip of “high-frequency alpha wave to synchronize with your own brain wave.” That sentence barely makes sense, but neither does the technology behind it. Despite the questionable description, we’re sure that a couple dummies out there will shell out the $2.99./p

pIt’s a big day for the Web! The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization in charge of overseeing the Internet for the government, will vote today to a href=”http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65N4UP20100624″add a .xxx suffix for Web sites that contain pornographic content/a. Sites now use domains like .org, .net, and .com, but some Webmasters are worried that the new suffix could censor traffic from popular search engines./p

pAdult content companies fear that legislation will force them to move to .xxx, and that parents and libraries will filter out the domain, but the suffix has been shot down before by groups like the Family Research Council because it would “expand the industry’s evil empire on the Internet.” We actually think the addition of .xxx would be a good idea because it would alleviate any confusion plaguing current .com sites./p

pFor more stories like this from the weird world of tech, be sure to check us out everyday LIVE at 11 a.m. ET. You can also subscribe to our a href=”http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=272216090″iTunes audio/a and a href=”http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=315423594″video feeds/a. Thanks for listening and have an awesome weekend!/p

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/b/liliba href=”http://twitter.com/jeffbakalar”Jeff Bakalar/a
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/b/liliba href=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-404/9285896730?ref=ts#/group.php?gid=7797981637amp;ref=ts”The 404 Group/a
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/spanEnjoy the pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-13952_1-20008856-81.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The 404 Podcast/a/p

Continue reading The iPhone 4: it blends

The iPhone 4: it blends originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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