Aug 07

LG’s GD910 watchphone cheaper than expected, still worth more than your Dick Tracy collection

Posted in: LG, Today's Chili
LG's GD910 watchphone cheaper than expected, still worth more than your Dick Tracy collection
We’ve been tracking LG’s G910 pretty closely since it was announced late last year, because as you can clearly see it’s a videophone in a watch and if that concept doesn’t get your gadget senses tingling you’re probably dead inside. But, we were somewhat afraid when early reports indicated that the couture-phone’s exclusive partner in Europe, Orange, was going to be engaging in a bit of price gouging, selling the thing at a whopping £1,000 / €1,144 (about $1,500 at the time — now well over $1,600 thanks to our flimsy currency). The official price has finally been confirmed, and it’s an ever so slightly more palatable figure of €899 ($1,290) when signing up for a 12 or 24 month contract. That’s still too rich for our blood, or wrists, but hopefully you fabulously wealthy commenters will give us some real-world impressions free of marketing inanity.

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LG’s GD910 watchphone cheaper than expected, still worth more than your Dick Tracy collection originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 07

3D Printing, Now in Stainless Steel

Posted in: R&D and Inventions, Today's Chili

Shapaeways, the 3D printing shop, has added stainless steel to its lineup of materials, meaning you can now design spare parts for machines and have them made up and sent to you in the mail. Here’s how it works:

Stainless Steel printing is a completely new technology – stainless steel powder is deposited in thin layers, combined with a binding material, and built one layer at a time to the specifications of its designer. The final product is infused with bronze and oven-cured, and a variety of finish and color options are available.

Essentially, it’s like an inkjet printer, only instead of making a 2D image by laying down ink line-by-line, it makes a 3D object by laying down powdered metal one layer at a time. What could you use this for? Almost anything. The video shows a couple of ants on a Möbius Strip, but you could just as easily make low-stress parts for bikes and cars, or — well, come on, you can make anything. Have some imagination here. And add this to a 3D scanner and you can duplicate just about anything, except, sadly, tea, Earl Grey, hot.

Product page [Shapeways. Thanks, John!]


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Aug 07

Samsung’s WiMAX-packin’ Mondi sized up against brothers, cousins and enemies

Posted in: 4G, MID, samsung, Today's Chili, WiMAX, xperia

It’s one thing to see a Samsung Mondi and just imagine how sweet it’d feel between your palms, surfing on the blazing WiMAX superhighway whilst providing an almost dangerous level of satisfaction. It’s another to see just how chunky / slim / ostentatiously lofty it is when sized up against its greatest competition. The good folks over at Pocketables took the time to disconnect for a few brief moments in order to photograph the 4G-capable MID alongside a few other mobile internet devices, smartphones, UMPCs and defunct wannabes. Heck, there’s even a side-by-side with a stapler. Yeah, it’s a can’t miss piece, and it’s all there for the taking in the read link.

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Samsung’s WiMAX-packin’ Mondi sized up against brothers, cousins and enemies originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 07

Crave giveaway of the week: HP Mini 110 Netbook

Posted in: Today's Chili
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)

For this week’s installment of the weekly Crave giveaway, we’ve got a hot one: the HP Mini 110 Netbook. That’s right, you’re looking at your very own Netbook. Not that it’s all that expensive to go out and buy one, but hey, it’…

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Aug 07

iRex readying wireless e-reader while Plastic Logic’s own snags $299 price point

Posted in: e reader, e-book, e-book reader, E-bookReader, price, pricing, reader, Today's Chili, Wireless

Who says the world stopped reading decades ago? With CES 2010 looming ever closer, it looks as if 2010 may end up being the year of the e-book reader. Amazon’s got a few Kindles out, Sony’s now vying to compete on price, Hearst is doing whatever it’s doing, Plastic Logic is jumping in early next year and even iRex is purportedly hoping to issue a consumer-centric alternative. Speaking of those last two, we’re hearing that Plastic Logic’s long-awaited entrant into the e-book reading world will “be launched in the US at the beginning of next year at a similar price to the Kindle, which starts at $299,” while a UK launch is expected in late 2010 or early 2011. As for iRex, the mockup you see above portrays a wireless device with an expansive 8.1-inch display, inbuitl 3G, a full touchscreen and a fall 2009 release date. ‘Course, we’re also hearing that this one will hover well above the $300 mark, so it’s certainly not aimed at the budget-minded bookworms. So many syllables, so little time…

[Thanks, Tom]

Read – iRex reader
Read – Plastic Logic pricing

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iRex readying wireless e-reader while Plastic Logic’s own snags $299 price point originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 07

Smart Measuring Jug is Digitally Accurate

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

smartmeasure

This lovely pair of jugs updates the measuring cup, although they’ll end up being a rather useless investment. Why? Batteries. The SmartMeasure Cup weighs whatever is inside and gives the readout on an angled LCD screen on the handle. This makes it essentially a usefully-shaped weighing scale.

But when the battery runs out, it’ll be just the same as every other jug in the cupboard, and you probably won’t ever get around to buying a replacement button-cell. The evidence: I have an excellent glass and metal digital scale from Salter. I have owned it for many years, and yet I almost never use it, despite its convenience, accuracy and good looks. The batteries died long ago and the only time I ever remember this is when I need to weigh something. I will never, ever remember to buy new ones when am out shopping, so I may as well toss the thing.

At least the jug will still work manually, but why go to the expense for a few months worth of digital action? Available this fall.

Really Really Smart [Yanko]


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Aug 07

Panasonic Pen-Style Camera Pictures Leaked

Posted in: rumors, Today's Chili

panasonic-gf1This rumor is brought to you by Xitek, a Chinese photography forum. It shows a Pen-style interchangeable lens camera from Panasonic, apparently called the GF-1.

The pictures come from a PDF detailing the camera, and are either a rather good fake or the real deal. There’s nothing odd in the specs, for example, and the camera follows Panasonic’s Lumix design style perfectly. Standout differences between this and Olympus micro four thirds camera are a lack of in-body stabilization and the addition of a pop-up flash (it slides out whole from the type, just like the LX-3).

panasonic-gf1-rumor

Those lenses are from Leica, by the way, which gets us very hot and bothered — the will fit on the Pen (EP-1) too, remember. In fact, we have a feeling that unless Leica can knock one out of the park with the M9 body, it should do a semi-Sega and give up on cameras, concentrating on kick-ass lenses for MFT. After all, the Pen is essentially to today’s DSLR what the original Leica was to the unwieldy Speed Graphics of its time.

All links to the original forum page now go nowhere, but the discussion lives in the DP Review forums and some details are preserved by Photo Rumors. It will have a 12.1 effective megapixels sensor, a three-inch, 460,000 dot screen, 720p video mode and dust removal. Size is 119mm x 71mm x 36.3mm, almost exactly the same as the Pen (120.6mm x 69.9mm x 36.4 mm). One odd thing to note is that little mini-USB shaped hole on the back, below the hotshoe? Is it for an optical add-on viewfinder? I sure hope not.

Panasonic GF1 (Micro Four Thirds) [Photo Rumors]

Panasonic new M4/3 GF1 [DP Review]


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Aug 07

Astak’s $199 EZ Reader Pocket PRO wants to give Kindle ‘a run for its money’

Posted in: adobe, e ink, e reader, e-book reader, E-bookReader, reader, Today's Chili

Last we heard from Astak, it was quietly peddling some off-the-wall Mentor e-book reader based on a drab OEM model that every other no-name reader manufacturer uses. Now, however, it seems the company has a bit more pep in its step (though it’s still copying others, this time the BeBook), as it has proudly proclaimed that the new 5-inch EZ Reader Pocket PRO is primed to “give Amazon’s Kindle a run for its money.” With Adobe’s blessing, the device is able to support over 20 open file formats along with DRM-laced PDF files; also of note, a sure-to-be-controversial text-to-speech feature can read back documents aloud. The six-ounce device will be available in a half dozen hues, and within you’ll find a 400MHz processor, 512MB of memory, an SD expansion slot, 8-level grayscale E-ink screen, a replaceable battery good for 8,000 page turns per charge and an MP3 player that can operate in the background. Sadly, no wireless connectivity is baked in, but the $199 price point is definitely tantalizing. Anyone looking to get in on a pre-order before it ships later this month?

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Astak’s $199 EZ Reader Pocket PRO wants to give Kindle ‘a run for its money’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 07

AgfaPhoto intros beginner-friendly Optima 1, 100 and 102 cameras

Posted in: digicam, point and shoot, PointAndShoot, Today's Chili

AgfaPhoto might want you to believe that its Optima range of cams is “perfect for the ambitious photographer,” but in truth they’re entry-level shooters with a slant toward helping the less technically gifted. The new cameras come with 28 automated functions, such as a ‘beauty mode’ that masks skin imperfections, and a quirky 1920 x 1080 picture format for making widescreen photos that match your 1080p display. The Optima 1 and 102 (pictured) share a 12 megapixel sensor, but diverge on optical zoom (5x versus 3x) and LCD size (2.7 inches versus 3 inches), while the 100 is essentially a 102 scaled down to 10 megapixels. Shaping up as a decent proposition for the often overlooked untrained photographer, the trio will be available in Europe come September at prices between €129 and €179 ($186-$258) [Warning: PDF read link].

[Via ZDNet]

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AgfaPhoto intros beginner-friendly Optima 1, 100 and 102 cameras originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 07

Garmin-Asus nuvifone finally coming to America in Q4 (or so they say)

Posted in: ASUS, gps, launch, Linux, nav, navigation, release, smartphone, Today's Chili, Windows Mobile, WindowsMobile, winmo

With Garmin-Asus’ nüvifone G60 already on sale in Asia, it makes sense to hear that said smartphone will soon make its way over to North American soil. Of course, it also made sense to think that this thing would be launching on AT&T about forever and a day ago, so we’re not holding our collective breath just yet. At any rate, Garmin recently made abundantly clear on a quarter-end conference call that the GPS-infused handset is in the final testing stages with an undisclosed amount of US carriers, and if all goes well, it’ll hit the streets in Q4. What’s crazy is that every last specification remains unchanged from when it was announced back in January of 2008; meanwhile, Apple has shipped two new iterations of its iPhone, Android has blown up significantly and even Motorola and Palm have seemingly resurrected themselves from the grave. Knowing all that, will anyone even bother to show up to snag one in “just a few months?”

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Garmin-Asus nuvifone finally coming to America in Q4 (or so they say) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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