Hasta La Gadget!

Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

On our last visit, we examined the computer hacking fantasies of 1980’s adolescents in Weird Science. Skipping on from software-engineered babes to a bio-engineered society, this week we investigate the gadgets in the human-clone-saturated cities of Code 46. Though most of the futuristic technology in this 2003 film is in the form of mind-altering viruses, the everyday devices used by Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton slightly stretch today’s technical specs in true sci-fi form.

Memory Videobook

Preventing scrapbooks from being left behind as primitive forms of experience archiving, this gadget combines the cheap plastic form of photo-books with a relatively thin interactive screen. The device captures first-person memories from a user in the form of lossy video (alas, the specs behind memory capturing have yet to be released, much to our irritation). Playback and fast-forward/rewind are enabled through basic scrolling gestures on either the corner of the video or the opposing soft-acrylic, touch-sensitive finger pad. Similar to Americhip’s video-in-print technology, the memory videobook appears to use a TFT LCD, but with a far more outstanding resolution. While this memory scrapbook device is far from chic, we kind of respect that it stays true to its historical laminated, cutesy form despite the high tech modifications. More after the break.

Continue reading Movie Gadget Friday: Code 46

Filed under: Cellphones, Displays, Portable Video

Movie Gadget Friday: Code 46 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’re not how much money you have in the bank, you’re not the car you drive, you’re not the contents of your wallet, you are not your freaking khakis – oh, who are we kidding, if you’re reading a site such as this, you’re all about your khakis. To sate that “look good, feel good” need in all of us, LG has brought out the ultimate in techie chic: a watchphone. This is not just any watchphone though, this is a £500 ($808) droplet of Orange-tinted exclusivity that straddles your wrist and demands onlookers’ attention. Do the consumer in you a favor and come along past the break where we have the full scoop on the GD910.

Continue reading LG GD910 Watch Phone review

Filed under: Cellphones

LG GD910 Watch Phone review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Bora (from Turkey, he’ll have you know), who is sick and tired of waking up to bleeps, wails and static-filled tunes not on his iPhone.

“I own an iPhone 3G and I’m looking for a decent speaker / alarm clock for it. I am going to listen music in a mid-sized room, so I want nice quality speakers with solid bass. I also want to use it as an alarm clock, so it would be great if there is such a feature. The price can be low-mid to mid-high range. I was looking at the Klipsch iGroove SXT; it’s powerful, slick and the reviews are good, but it doesn’t have an alarm clock feature. It’s no deal breaker if I can set it up from the iPhone, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m open to recommendations. Thanks!”

Don’t front — we know a big swath of you loyal iPhone owners out there also have some sort of docking alarm clock / radio, so why not share your experience(s) with yours? It’s easy, we promise.

Filed under: Ask Engadget

Ask Engadget: Best iPhone 3G (3GS) alarm clock / radio? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been the story of the week. T-Mobile Sidekick customers were told that all of their data might be lost and warned not to turn off their devices to prevent losing what’s already on them. It’s about the worst case nightmare scenario for any vendor and it underscored the weakness and vulnerability of cloud-based computing with no other means of backup and storage.

The Sidekick story is complicated, and there’s much rumor and speculation as to what went wrong and how. To be clear, Sidekick is a T-Mobile branded-and-sold device and service, but the Sidekick technology comes from Danger, a former startup now owned by Microsoft, which T-Mobile pays to keep Sidekick going. Trust me, there’s going to be lots of finger pointing and perhaps a few class-action lawsuits before this all comes to an end. While finger pointing is fun, it’s not the issue. (And, as grandpa used to say, when you point your finger at someone else, three fingers point back at you.) Some argued with me last night that cloud computing is perfectly safe, it’s the company deploying that you need to look to. OK. I accept that. Only thing is that Danger’s been doing this pretty well since 2002 and at no point did I ever see a single warning from anyone that dealing with T-Mobile, Danger or Microsoft might be a bad idea when it comes to personal data solely living in the cloud.

Continue reading Entelligence: Cloud’s illusions I recall

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc. Gadgets

Entelligence: Cloud’s illusions I recall originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm and Motorola have taken very different paths to get where they are today; one began life as a scrappy Valley start-up founded by a tablet computing pioneer, the other traces its roots to all the way back to the early days of consumer electronics and the automotive industry. Yet somehow, through years (decades, even) of adventure, success, and misfortune, they’ve found themselves in exactly the same situation here in 2009: it’s do-or-die time. Palm, of course, has elected to try its hand at resurrecting the very thing that took it to superstardom in the first place — an elegant, tightly-controlled software platform of its own with hardware to match — while Motorola has thrown virtually all of its remaining weight behind Android in the hope that it can catch a little mojo from Google’s ecosystem.

For Motorola, it’s the wireless equivalent of stepping up to the roulette table, putting what’s left of your depleted life savings on red, and letting it ride just as you see security guards off in the distance coming to throw you — penniless — off the premises. It’s a gamble of the highest order, but it’s also a gamble Motorola’s painfully aware that it needs to take. North America’s only top-five handset manufacturer needs nothing less than magic (and a little luck) to earn its way back into the world’s wireless elite — and that risky play starts right here, today, with the CLIQ / DEXT.

So does the CLIQ pave the way to a New Motorola, or did the RAZR’s checkered legacy ultimately dig a hole too deep to escape? Read on.

Continue reading Motorola CLIQ review

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Motorola CLIQ review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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