Hasta La Gadget!

FIRST!!!

In 2008, some media outlets started publishing their “best of” lists by June. For 2009, we didn’t want to come in second. So here are our predictions for the best gadgets of 2009.

Premium Netbooks
We’ve seen the first wave of unusable netbooks with tiny screens. Then they got an upgrade to 8.9, 10 and even 12-inch screens. Now it’s time for netbooks to get WiMax and HSDPA connections as a standard. Hopefully they can still stay half-way affordable…

Wii MotionPlus
When I tested the Wii MotionPlus attachment at E3, I felt that Nintendo had fulfilled the promise of the Wii, finally offering a motion controller as accurate and responsive as we’d all hoped the Wiimote to be originally. If Nintendo can coax developers to support Wii Motion Plus, we can expect some killer Wii titles in ’09 (on top of Wii Sports Resort in spring), but it might be 2010 before we see all that many compatible games.

Windows 7
Microsoft can do better than Windows Vista. And with Windows 7—expected sometime before the year is up—they will. Whether it’s the new features or the less taxing system requirements, Windows 7 promises to be a vast improvement on Vista, and hopefully enough to coax most of us still clutching XP for dear life to finally upgrade.

$99 Blu-ray Player…That Does More Than Play Blu-ray
The $99 part is only slightly wishful thinking, but if LG’s recent announcements are any indication, we can expect more players with expanded services like Netflix, YouTube, CinemaNow…and who knows, maybe even Amazon VOD, Hulu and Rhapsody. Let’s watch as these companies compete for our digital download dollar.

A New iPhone
Whether it’s the iPhone 3G Part II or the rumored iPhone nano, it’s not hard to imagine Apple releasing another new iPhone this year, maintaining their trend of releasing an iPhone per year to stay competitive in the everchanging post-RAZR cellphone market. It’s no secret that most of Gizmodo loves the iPhone, so we’re pretty excited to see what’s next. (Juicy rumors of a new Mac mini and iPod Touch XL are going strong, too.)

4G Networks
3G is alright but we’re looking forward to even faster 4G wireless networks soon. Intel-backed WiMax launched in a few locales by carriers Sprint and ClearWire. The wide-area network currently promises peaks of 10 megabits per second but on paper it’s capable of over 70. We will likely see slow but steady expansion of the service through 2009. Meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon (and eventually T-Mobile) are gearing up LTE technology. The Nokia-driven GSM-based “Long Term Evolution” may actually whomp WiMax with download speeds of over 300Mbps—though its presence probably won’t be felt in the US before 2010.

A Decent-Sized OLED TV
The Sony XEL-1 OLED television rocked our world when it was released this year, but there was a catch. Its screen size was a measly 11 inches. And while we can’t expect 50-inch Kuro killers just yet, we do anticipate a very expensive mid-sized set—27 to 32 inches—to hit the market in some form this year. (Sony actually showed off a prototype that was 27 inches at CES 2008. Stay tuned for what we see at CES this year.)

Wireless HDMI
A multitude of companies have various wireless HDMI technologies, but there’s no set standard (two warring factions need to settle the fight before we can have interoperable products). The technology is there, now it’s just a matter of logistics and handshaking. With luck, by next Christmas, you’ll be able to add it to a sub-$2000 1080p projector for the ultimate no-mess home theater.

USB 3.0 Devices
Wireless HDMI may not be quite cooked yet, but the eSATA-crushing USB 3.0 standard is ready to roll. Look for a multitude of products announced within the next week with blazing transfer speeds of 4.8Gbps (moving a 25GB file in under a minute). They’ll also benefit from USB 3.0’s higher electrical power output. [Image]

A Great Android Phone
The T-Mobile G1 was the necessary first step, but with Google amping up their Android development staff and interest coming from other major phone makers like Motorola, we assume we’ll see a truly great Android phone soon. Motorola promises that their own offering will be better and cheaper than the G1, but it’s not hitting before next Christmas, so we assume HTC’s own follow-ups will come first.

And Your Best Guesses
These picks for 2009 are pretty sure things, but what wilder guesses do you have for best of 2009 products? A new PSP? A BlackBerry with a touchscreen that isn’t crap? Real light sabers? Ketchup and mustard in one container?? Dogs and cats living in harmony??? If you don’t offer up some kind of prognostication in the comments, you can never tell everyone, “I told you so.”

Whenever an automaker develops a new model, it tests it on both private tracks and public roads. The latter case exposes the company to spy photographers, who can have a field day while snapping blurry shots of heavily disguised (or not-so-heavily-disguised) prototypes, as company engineers are caught unawares—much to the chagrin of the automaker in question. Now car companies have a new enemy: Google.

Since Google deployed Street View a few years ago, the company’s mapping teams have caught all manner of questionable things happening in various photos—many of which become viral hits on the Internet once discovered. Recently Garage419, while looking for places to drive in Colorado, found photographs of several facelifted Porsche prototypes under testing.

The photos included mildly refreshed Boxsters, Caymans, and even a 911 Carrera. It’s tough to make out many details, but regardless, it looks like automakers have to be even more careful than before. (Via Autoblog)

This article was written on September 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

It seems like the rumors of a Google Phone have been going around and around the web for years now.  Really, it’s only been about a year and up until recently, I wasn’t convinced that Google even had a Phone in mind. I’m beginning to think that it’s actually a possibility though, especially after reading what Om Malik had to say today in his article titled “Five Facts About Google Phone.”

In his article, he said that all of the recent news/rumors were “enough to get me dialing-for-dirt over the big holiday weekend,” and then he went on to list five “facts” about the Google phone. I’m still going to call them rumors, but he says the info he found is from a reliable source. The “five facts” are as follows:

1. Google Phone is based on a mobile variant of Linux, and is able to run Java virtual machines.
2. All applications that are supposed to run on the Google Phone are java apps. The OS has ability to run multimedia files, including video clips.
3. The user interface is similar to a UI typical of mobile phones, and the image (with red background) floating around isn’t representative of the Google Phone UI. The entire UI is said to be done in Java and is very responsive. The UI, of course has a “search box.”
4. There is a special browser which has pan-and-browse features that are common to modern browsers such as browsers for iPhone and Symbian phones. The entire browser is apparently written in Java. But then others have told us that the browser is based on the WebKit core, the same engine in Safari and in iPhone, and Google has been making optimizations to speed it up. This is one aspect of the Google Phone I am not sure about.
5. Initially there was one prototype, but over past few months Google has the mobile OS running on 3-to-5 devices, most of them likely made by HTC, a mobile phone maker, and all have Qwerty apps. The model that folks have seen is very similar to the T-Mobile Dash. Around 3GSM, there were rumors that Google, Orange and HTC were working together on mobile devices.

While it’s interesting that it could potentially be based upon a variant of Linux, I’m more curious which wireless network(s) would be behind it. We all know the frustrations that have come from the 5-year exclusivity agreement that Apple made with AT&T with the iPhone. I have a hard time believing Google would take such a route, but it’s possible.

The thought of a Google phone may sound exciting, but I still don’t know if this is something Google would be able to be successful with. And as others have pointed out, those five “facts” listed above aren’t all THAT impressive.  It still makes more sense for them to develop software for mobile devices and stick to that aspect of the mobile world instead of developing their own phone. It’s been about one year since Google Phone rumors surfaced, and while I’m still skeptical, I’m more convinced today than I was yesterday. Of course, only time will tell us if there really will be a GPhone.

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High Tech Computer is projecting that sales of the Google Android-powered T-Mobile G1 smartphone will exceed one million units in 2008—maybe. At least that’s the word from HTC CEO Peter Chou, who just said as much in an interview with the Chinese-language Economic Daily News, according to DigiTimes.

The blogosphere has gone around on this topic before, though. Several credible reports back in October stated that the T-Mobile G1 already had 1.5 million pre-orders racked up. But the term “pre-orders” is vague and doesn’t necessarily apply to end-customer sales. Chou’s recent quote of one million confuses matters more, not less. (For comparison’s sake, the iPhone hit its sales goal of 10 million units before the end of ’08, and BlackBerry numbers tend to hover in a similar range.)

Either way, in two weeks, CES 2009 will likely bring some new Android device announcements, HTC-related or otherwise. It’s an open OS, and it seems to be off to a strong start.