Hasta La Gadget!

Design firm Pilotfish has unveiled plans to make an advanced music phone, Reuters reports, in an effort to see whether or not consumers want to edit music on the go.

Actually, there’s a bit more to it than that. Pilotfish explained that its concept–which is at least a few years away from mass production–will enable “good quality recording of
three separate sound tracks and allow editing of the music by
physically twisting and bending the phone,” something that is sure to void the warranty of that LG Shine in your pocket.

The control scheme is actually pretty cool: the report said that the phone’s main touch-screen consists of three ‘sticks’ that can be removed and separately
clipped onto a musical instrument or a person to capture live sound. But is there a market? “In a fast moving market niche specifications and applications can
rapidly become standard features. We’ve seen that with cameras,
positioning and a host of other features,” said Geoff Blaber from CCS
Insight in the article.

NASA originally projected that the Mars Exploration Rovers would last 90 days once on the surface of the red planet. Today, both rovers are still doing science five years after their arrival. Spirit is now driving on a plateau called Home Plate in the
Inner Basin valley, according to the Washington Post, while Opportunity has left
Victoria Crater on the other side of the planet, and is motoring toward
a much larger crater called
Endeavour.

Spirit, the less-healthy of the two, has a bunch of minor to moderate issues. They include a broken wheel, some flaky sensors and software, and enough dust on its solar panels to limit its power to 30 percent of normal, the report said. Each night, the two rovers sleep to conserve energy since there is little sunlight–but from April 9th to 11th, Spirit wouldn’t wake up. It’s working again, though scientists working on the program may never find out what happened.

That’s not necessarily a problem. When Spirit’s wheel broke three years ago, the other five wheels dragged the broken one across the surface, which gouged a trench along the way–revealing a silica that proved to be evidence of ancient hot springs, according to the article. “When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade,” said John Callas, project manager for the Mars rovers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in the report.

Verizon Wireless today put out their first round of specs for their upcoming 4G LTE network, and they want to remind folks: “Initially, Verizon Wireless will be providing packet data service over the Verizon Wireless LTE 3GPP Band 13 network.”

T-Mobile announced their new Sidekick LX today, and I got some hands-on time with it to appreciate the great screen and improved software. You can read about that in my hands-on article on PCMag.com.

But one thing they didn’t demo was the LX’s new, welcome Microsoft Exchange support. Exchange ActiveSync, including e-mail, address book and calendar, will be coming soon, according to T-Mobile. That makes the Sidekick for the first time a truly viable smart phone for people with jobs.

There may still be one snafu, though: the Sidekick’s famously stingy 6MB mailbox. If the new device still only allocates 6MB for email, folks may feel a bit claustrophobic with all their personal and Exchange mail flowing in. That’s something I intend to check out when the new Sidekick arrives here soon.