Hasta La Gadget!

A few weeks after Nokia canceled its high-profile, WiMAX-capable N810 tablet, Nortel has announced that it is canning its mobile WiMAX business, ending a joint venture with the Israel-based Alvarion, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

The report said that WiMAX, a next-generation mobile Internet technology we profiled several months ago during its rollout in Baltimore, hasn’t taken off the way some of its backers had hoped. Sprint is behind the technology, but the three major competing carriers in the U.S.—AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless—are all betting on LTE instead.

At the same time, Nortel isn’t doing all that well lately as a whole, so this may or may not mean anything about the future of WiMAX.

Earlier today I visited the annual LegalTech Show at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan. For the most part, there wasn’t really all that much there that would have been of much interest for Gearlog readers, save for those of you who have some interest in dictation services and court stenographer typewriters. One piece of gadgetry did catch my eye, however–the extremely cool and fairly terrifying Paraben CSI Stick.

The device plugs into a cell phone and lets the user pull off all the phone’s “forensic data”–the phone book, text messages, cameraphone images, call logs–everything. The Stick can even retrieve text messages that have been deleted by the phone’s owner. Like I said–terrifying.

The CSI Stick comes with replaceable heads that can be used with a number of cell phone models. It starts at $199 on Paraben’s site.

When was the last time your iPhone made you coffee? And no, I don’t mean “pointed you toward the nearest Starbucks”—I mean actually brewed a cuppa joe.

Introducing the Pomegrante Phone, the first smartphone to offer e-mail, Internet browsing, an MP3 player, and GPS navigation in addition to such atypical “extras” as a harmonica, an electric shaver, and a coffee brewer.

What? Is this for real? Well, no. But it is a pretty clever, albeit expensive, viral ad campaign.

The L.A. Times explains:

The Pomegranate Phone is part of a $300,000 ad campaign put together by Nova Scotia. Yes, that Nova Scotia, the small province in southeastern Canada.

Indeed, clicking the “release date” link in the upper right-hand corner of the Pomegranate Phone’s microsite reveals the truth:

“Someday you’ll be able to get everything you want in one device,” reads the text that appears on-screen as you’re redirected to Nova Scotia’s tourism site. “Today you can get everything you want in one place.”

I only wish that more of yesterday’s Superbowl ads had been this clever.

[via SwissMiss]

I just got an invitation to a press lunch that Motorola is holding on Feb. 10, with the theme “experience style and simplicity.” The last time they threw a lunch like this it was to introduce the H15 noise-cancelling Bluetooth headset, but I suspect something bigger is afoot this time. I noticed Sprint and Boost logos in the corner of the invitation, which pretty much guarantees that the topic will be new iDen phones for the Nextel and Boost networks.

Boy Genius Report recently reported that Boost’s promotional fliers are featuring a new phone, the i9, so that may be the one we’ll hear about. You’ll get a full story when it happens.

iVOICE Technologies (www.theivoice.com) has announced the R1 Bluetooth Handsfree Kit , a new hands-free mobile speakerphone for the car. The R1 claims to offer up to 30 hours of talk time on a single charge, and 800 hours of standby time (which is about a month, give or take).

The R1 also features dual-microphone noise-cancellation, with one mic optimizing speech intelligibility while the other works to remove background noise—that’s a similar arrangement to what Aliph, Plantronics, and Motorola use in their latest high-end Bluetooth headsets. The R1 also has a 3-watt speaker, so you can hear callers over the sound of your Subaru WRX STi with a cat-back exhaust at 5000 rpm.

The R1 comes with a carrying pouch, a visor mount, a mini-USB power adapter, a car charger adapter, and a wall adapter. No price or release date has been announced as of yet.