Hasta La Gadget!

A showroom in Ginza recently displayed a giant banana on its facade. Now how about a Christmas present in time for the holidays?

The Mirraza building near Shinjuku station is currently lit up like a seasonal gift, a nice and fairly modest twist on the usual department store illuminations you see around Japan at this time of year.

The tall glass of the Mirraza is decorated in four colors (red, green, blue and white) by LED lighting and resembles a present wrapped up with a ribbon.

Passers-by who take a picture of the lit-up building and send it in to the campaign get a chance to win a Topshop coat and other giveaways.

The illumination has been organized Tokyo FM and Topshop, which opened its Shinjuku store in the building in September. Numerous other restaurants, shops and salons are also set to open there over the winter.

Bringing this up with your local AT&T rep is liable to get you laughed out of the store, but things are a little different up in Canada where one of the major carriers is now offering an unlock service — for a fee. If you’re on Rogers (or its budget subsidiary, Fido) and you’re a customer in good standing with an iPhone that you’ve previously purchased from them and you’re not currently in a contract, you can pay $50 Canadian — that’s $50 US, for those of you not up to speed on current conversion rates — to have Rogers’ customer service reps flip a switch that’ll cause the phone to magically unlock the next time you restore it while connected to iTunes. Considering the restrictions, they should probably be offering the service for free, but it’s a start.

Rogers, Fido offering iPhone unlocks for $50 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CNET editor Dong Ngo’s preview on what consumers should expect from CES 2011 in the realm of home networking.

Originally posted at CES 2011

We’re still coming down from that rush of adrenaline that accompanied the launch of the dual-core Optimus 2X last night, but we’ve had a hunch lately that LG is planning on taking Android very seriously in 2011 — seriously enough to have something even sexier than the 2X up its sleeve. Looks like that sexiness could be delivered in the form of a device codenamed “B,” shots of which have been delivered to Phandroid in a direct comparison with the iPhone 4 and the Galaxy S — two handsets we’re sure LG would love to embarrass. As you can see up there, the screen’s looking pretty insane, especially when you consider that those other two phones in the picture have arguably the best displays in the mobile business right now; it’s claimed to offer 700 nits of brightness, a 40 percent improvement over the Galaxy S. Oh, and if that doesn’t impress you, Phandroid‘s tipster has also sent in a shot of the edge that appears to make the 9.3mm iPhone 4 look downright chubby. No word on a release date for the B just yet.

Update: LG’s decided to dispense with the mystery and has shot out a tweet confirming the B’s existence and inviting us all to come check it out at CES 2011. We’ll be sure to do just that.

Continue reading LG ‘B’ Android phone caught in the wild, looking thin and ready to spank S-AMOLED (update: confirmed)

LG ‘B’ Android phone caught in the wild, looking thin and ready to spank S-AMOLED (update: confirmed) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the coming years, Blu-ray production will only increase. In fact, FutureSource believes 2 billion Blu-ray discs will be produced and shipped in 2014 alone.

Originally posted at The Digital Home