Hasta La Gadget!

Robocalling is considered a plague in the modern phone world, especially during an election year — and while you likely won’t get rid of all the pitches from political candidates anytime soon, most of the commercial calls are outright illegal. The Federal Trade Commission has devised a unique contest to help cut back on those law-breakers without having to chase down every shady debt relief offer. It’s offering a $50,000 reward for the cleverest solution to blocking the banned variety of robocalls. The only requirement is that you be an adult US resident: if you can invent a surefire remedy in your basement, the FTC wants to hear from you. Entries will be open between October 25th and January 17th, with word of a winner around April 1st. We’re hoping that the champion has a truly effective cure in use before long, because we’ll undoubtedly have reached our breaking point on robocalls by… oh, around November 6th.

[Image credit: SarahNW, Flickr]

Filed under: Misc

FTC offers $50,000 prize for stopping illegal robocalls, we could have used this a few months ago originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few days ago, we did take a look at some spy shots of the upcoming Huawei W1 which runs on the Windows Phone 8 operating system, and this time around, we have the official press images of said smartphone hitting the Internet. Of course, some might say that the Huawei W1 does resemble one of the blue colored Lumias from Nokia, but you can also say that the vibrant colors of the Huawei W1 is also inspired by Windows Phone’s Live Tiles. Apart from blue, there will be black, white and pink versions of the Huawei W1.

Needless to say, the Huawei W1 will not be a high end smartphone, as it treads the entry level to mid-range segmentby offering the smooth user experience of Windows Phone in addition to maintaining a sense of affordability. Hey, the world’s economy is not exactly going gangbusters now, is it? Some of the hardware specifications for the Huawei W1 include a 4″ WVGA display, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, a VGA front-facing camera with a 5-megapixel camera at the back, 512MB RAM and 4GB of internal memory. It is tipped to arrive in China sometime next month or in December for approximately $310 after conversion, and that would be for an unlocked device.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Photos of Huawei’s W1 Windows Phone 8 handset leaked, Canada could drop banhammer on Huawei due to security worries,

Peter Olt nearly got into an accident when a car suddenly cut into his lane, unable to hear – or perhaps ignoring – his honking and cussing. The incident prompted him to make some noise, so to speak. Olt invented a loud vehicle horn called the Screaming Banshee. Now he’s raising money to produce a smaller variant, the Whining Siryn the Plug & Play Screamer.

When installed, the Plug & Play Screamer gives you two horns. Tap your car or motorcycle’s horn button and you’ll get the standard sound. But if you hold it down you’ll get a 120dB sonic attack and your headlights flash for a split second.  The Screamer is quieter than the Screaming Banshee, which can go as loud as 139db, but it’s also easier to install. It has four wires – two connect to the stock horn, one to the battery and one to the high beam lights. Olt will also make easy to follow video instructions for newbies.

Pledge at least $79 (USD) on Olt’s Indiegogo fundraiser to reserve a Plug & Play Screamer. The only thing I don’t like about this invention is that it could be abused in the wrong hands. We have enough obnoxious drivers as it is.

[via Autoblog]

I registered designskunkworks.com, thinking it would be a good name for an Internet product company, not realizing that Skunkworks was a real, trademarked facility run by Lockheed Martin—or that you can now threaten to sue people just for registering a domain name. More »

Check out the rubber speaker in the video above, where it is touted to be the first of its kind in the world, where it is made out of rubber which forms artificial muscles, while maintaining a thin profile with a softness that is previously unheard of. The company behind the world’s first all rubber speaker would be Tokai Rubber Industries, where the material of choice is known as Smart Rubber, where it can conduct electricity while freely expand or contract in order to generate the necessary sound.

This is just the next logical step in Tokai’s research and development stage, considering how they did come up with flexible, all-rubber touch sensors in the past using Smart Rubber. Tokai shared, “Until now, thin speakers have been piezoelectric and film types, as used in smartphones and tablets. But those don’t produce low-frequency sounds. By contrast, the rubber speaker we’ve developed does produce low frequencies. It’s the first speaker of this kind in the world.”

Whenever a voltage is applied between the rubber electrode, there will be static electricity that causes the sheet to expand. Sound waves will then be generated via the repeated expansion and restorative force of the rubber sheet, even as the speaker comprises of a piece of non-conductive rubber that is sandwiched in between a couple of rubber electrodes. There is no confirmation as to whether the rubber speaker will ever become a mass consumer product, but who knows?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Jarre Aeroskull speakers play nice with the iPhone 5, TDK Wireless Charging Speaker: A Neat Way To Charge Your Phone While Playing Music,