Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has been working hard to get Places into Firefox 3, and they are making some good progress. Back in September we saw a nice mockup of what to expect from the Places Organizer, and about a week after that Oropher pointed out in our forum that the first major UI change occurred.

At the time the only modification was the move away from the classic Menu Bar that resides in the current Firefox 2 bookmark organizer, but just today another new feature landed in the latest nightly build. It’s one that I have been anticipating for quite some time … “smart folders” (I made up the name). There are 6 smart folders that come with Firefox 3, and the bookmarks listed in each are generated on-the-fly like the Smart Playlists in iTunes. Here are the six folders that you’ll see in the latest nightly build:

• Recently starred pages
• Recently visited starred pages
• Most visited starred pages
• Recently used tags
• Most used tags
• Most visited pages

Below is a screenshot of what the smart folders and redesigned Places Organizer look like. What’s left to do in Places? They still have to add the history and downloads to it, but other than that they just need to add some polish. Oh, and they need to get the “Preview” feature working as you can see in the screenshot below. It’s supposed to show a thumbnail of the bookmark you have selected, but right now it is just a place holder.

Overall things are looking pretty good for the next milestone that’s due out on October 30th.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

• Restore Firefox 3 Smart Bookmarks
• Firefox 3 Places Features & Mockups
• Mozilla Drops ‘Places’ From The Firefox 2.0 Release
• So What’s Going On With Firefox 3.0 (Minefield)?
• Mozilla Gets Places Back in Firefox 3, Prepares for Tagging

With all signs (and by “all,” we mean “all”) pointing to a new Storm joining Verizon Wireless’ lineup in the not-too-distant future, it’s just about the perfect time to start discounting the current model in hopes of working that inventory down before the inevitable launch of numero dos. Starting today, VZW customers can snap up the SurePress-equipped Storm 9530 for $99.99 on contract, which is a full Benjamin less than it has been since debuting last November. If you’re looking for a word of advice on the situation, here’s ours: hold out for the next revision — you’ll thank us later.

[Thanks, Cara]

Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon drops BlackBerry Storm price to $99.99 on contract originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Even back then, there were computers for people who couldn’t afford the more expensive stuff. Take this Tandy, which costs little more than a upgraded Netbook today. From Core Memory, photographed by Mark Richards and written by John Alderman.

TRS-80 Model 1 (and Model 100)
Year created: 1977
Creator: Tandy Corporation
Cost: $399 ($599 with monitor)
Memory: 4KB ROM
Processor: Z-80

Despite Apple’s marketing message of personal empowerment and freedom, they weren’t giving away those Apple IIs. A computer—especially one with a price tag of $1,300 or more—was beyond the comfort range of most people in the country, and few parents considered such a thing necessary to child development. As far as business went, it would be a while before a “killer app”—a must-have application—would be developed for machines available at an affordable price.

The TRS-80 was in part an antidote to this. If parents were convinced of a computer’s necessity, but their pocketbooks couldn’t support an Apple, then $399, or even $99, was worth considering. For a business that wanted to experiment with computing, that was a reasonable asking price.

The system was developed by the Tandy buyer Don French and Homebrew Computer Club leader Steve Leininger, who was quoted by Creative Computing magazine at the time as saying he had rejected a company plan to sell a computer kit because “too many people can’t solder.” This was an interesting admission from the company that owned Radio Shack, famous at that time for selling electronics parts to hobbyists. Nevertheless, the TRS-80 was actually rather sophisticated. Four kilobytes of RAM were matched with 4K of ROM holding Radio Shack’s proprietary version of BASIC. The silver-and-black color scheme—even more than a beige box—evoked a kind of futuristic proletarian chic. Like other, similar systems, the TRS-80 used a cassette tape player as a storage device.

The early portable TRS-80 Model 100, designed by Kyocera and released in 1983, was evidence that, by that time, beige was winning the color war. Rugged and able to start up immediately, the Model 100 as utilitarian and much-beloved by traveling reporters.

Core Memory is a photographic exploration of the Computer History Museum’s collection, highlighting some of the most interesting pieces in the history of computers. These excerpts were used with permission of the publisher. Special thanks to Fiona!

The above photographs were taken by Mark Richards, whose work has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Fortune, Smithsonian, Life and BusinessWeek. The eye-candy is accompanied by descriptions of each artifact to cover the characteristics and background of each object, written by John Alderman who has covered the culture of high-tech lifestyle since 1993, notably for Mondo 2000, HotWired and Wired News. A foreword is provided by the Computer History Museum’s Senior Curator Dag Spicer.

Or go see the real things at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

Gizmodo ’79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

It’s been a few months since Navigon ceased doing business Stateside, and already the company’s back on our radar with a device that made us wish they’d stuck around these parts a while longer. The Navigon 8410 features a 5-inch touchscreen, a polished steel frame, and a righteous assortment of features, including: DVB-T digital television tuner, City3D’s photo-realistic 3D mapping software (only for select cities on the continent), and a media player for all your fave tunes, flicks, and pics. Available only in Europe, we don’t have a ship date for you yet, but we do know it’ll cost €449 ($630). Now, if you excuse us, we were due in Bonn hours ago.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Filed under: GPS

Navigon 8410 GPS debuts, packed full of features for the trendy Euro jet-set originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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And you thought those self-driving whips in DARPA’s Urban Challenge were hot stuff. As the mighty Hokies look to prove their dominance in the field of engineering, a student team from Virginia Tech has assembled what amounts to a vehicle that can actually be driven by blind individuals. In short, the specially equipped dirt buggy is outfitted with an array of laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and a few other related systems that enable drivers to respond to whatever the vehicle “sees.” Best of all, the project is far beyond the drawing board, with a blind driver (Wes Majerus) already singing praises about the vehicle and deeming it a “liberating” experience. Regrettably, there’s no information on what the team plans to do with the vehicle going forward, but we do know it hopes to pass along the same technology to more street-legal motorcars.

[Thanks, Trisha]

Filed under: Transportation

Laser-equipped Virginia Tech dirt buggy can be driven by the blind originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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