Hasta La Gadget!

Remember the Gesundheit Radio, a sneezing wireless manufactured back in 1972 by the fictional Attenborough Design Group? The radio would sneeze twice a year to expel dust that had built up around its tubes and dials, a spring (and autumn) clean which would help it live a longer (imaginary) life.

Well, that wonderful whimsy has been joined by more anthropomorphic gadgets from the same designers (actually a pair named Chambers and Judd). First is the Antitouch Lamp, a tall wisp of a standard-lamp which shies away when a person comes near, using cables and pulleys to bend like reed in the wind. This stops you from touching the halogen bulb at its top and leaving your greasy, life-reducing fingermarks thereon.

Better, and way cuter than a snooty lamp, is the 3.5-inch disk-drive called “Floppy Legs” (above). This sits on your desktop, wary but serene, waiting for the inevitable coffee-spill. When it comes, four legs pop out and it leaps back and stands on tiptoe, out of harm’s way.

Wouldn’t these gadgets be great in real life? A floppy drive may not be the most handy of items, but a water-fearing keyboard or even cellphone would be. Imagine your poor iPhone throwing out its tiny limbs and trying desperately to gain purchase on the shiny porcelain as it slides, slowly and inevitably, down toward the fetid toilet water. Forget the oleophobic coating. We want hydrophobic legs.

Floppy Legs [Chambers Judd]

Antitouch Lamp [Chambers Judd via Core77]

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Barbie is promoting its Video Girl doll with a Foursquare-powered scavenger hunt, but will the campaign translate into sales?

If you’ve been following the ongoing saga of Dell’s Streak, you’ve probably already read our review of O2 UK’s version — thing is, the British perspective can be very different from the Yankee one (we didn’t see eye-to-eye during the War of 1812, for instance). To that end, we wanted to circle back now that the gargantuan Android beast is finally coming close to a US release and get another quick take.

As a refresher, this thing matches or exceeds the specs you’d expect to find on any modern high-end smartphone in most respects, starting with a 1GHz Snapdragon core, a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, 850 / 1900MHz 3G for use on AT&T, Rogers, Bell, and Telus, and 2GB of internal storage coupled with a bundled and pre-installed 16GB microSDHC card. Where the Streak sets itself far, far apart from the crowd, though, is with an absolutely enormous 5-inch capacitive touchscreen at 800 x 480 resolution. Needless to say, it’s a polarizing feature — and for many, it’ll singlehandedly determine whether the phone is a buy or a no-buy.

Our original review ultimately concluded that the Streak was a promising device in need of an update from Android 1.6 to Froyo. On second look, does our American reviewer agree? Read on.

Continue reading Dell Streak review redux: thoughts from the New World

Dell Streak review redux: thoughts from the New World originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chances are you’re a little sick of different carriers having different qualities of service in different areas of the country, and have probably wondered at some point: “Can’t we all just get along?” The answer is no, we can’t, but LightSquared is looking to launch something of an alternative. It’s starting a multi-billion dollar wholesale LTE deployment that will run coast-to-coast in the United States, covering 90 percent of the population by 2015. It will also mix that in with satellite connectivity somehow, pledging true nationwide coverage. Nokia Siemens Networks will be laying the groundwork, a $7 billion project that will surely be aided by that company’s recent acquisition of Motorola’s networking bits, and the total rollout is estimated to create 100,000 jobs — good news regardless of your carrier allegiance. Anyone who wants to offer connectivity to their customers can buy some bandwidth and pass it along, meaning we could see the rebirth of the MVNO. After watching the inspirational video after the break, we’re firmly sure that anything is possible.

Continue reading LightSquared does LTE and satellite connectivity wholesale, Nokia Siemens to do the heavy lifting (video)

LightSquared does LTE and satellite connectivity wholesale, Nokia Siemens to do the heavy lifting (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The name may sound like something out of a Final Fantasy game, but we hear it stands for Music On the Go, and today MOG is doing the name proud by bringing a wide swath of streaming music to Android and iPhone. $10 a month gives you access to over 8 million songs, and during a completely unscientific impromptu testing session, that number actually included a reasonable amount of most everything we’d want. Of course, you don’t get to keep any of the 320Kbps MP3 files, merely store local copies on your phone for as long as you pony up, and even on Android (where we take task switching for granted) the merest jump to web browser stops those tracks cold. (MOG says it’s working on it, at least for the iOS 4 version.) We were also disappointed to find out the MOG Radio feature is nothing like we were told — rather than a Pandora you can tune to specific artists, the feature just seems to filter your existing queue. Playback options were also lacking in this early version (like volume and jog sliders) but at least MOG’s got a slick, robust discovery mode, and with this many songs to choose from that’s a very good thing. Both versions should be live immediately with three-day, no commitment trials, and there’s a press release after the break if you still need more info.

Update: It turns out our difficulties with MOG Radio were due to a buggy preview build; downloading a fresh version of the app this morning, the Pandora-like functionality worked just fine.

Continue reading MOG arrives on iPhone, Android with 8 million songs but no multitasking mode (update)

MOG arrives on iPhone, Android with 8 million songs but no multitasking mode (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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