Hasta La Gadget!

The Nokia X1-00 has a large back speaker for sharing audio with friends and family

Gadget Lab Notes is an eclectic roundup of gadget news briefs and intriguing products that catch our eye.

Nokia’s Bright Orange X1-00 Is Designed For Developing Markets
Retailing for a mere $48, the Nokia X1-00 is built for music fans and communities in entry level growth markets. It’s got a large, powerful speaker on the back that can play audio over the noisy sounds of traffic and other loud ambient noise, and a 3.5mm jack allows it to be plugged in to headphones or speakers. It features five phone books, so the phone could be shared among folks with differing contacts, and also has a built-in flashlight and an impressive 61-day battery life.

Nokia X1-00 Is Here [Nokia Conversations via Slashgear]

Private Conversation in a Public Place? Use the Yamaha VSP-1
For the James Bonds and Jason Bournes of the world, privacy is key when engaging in phone conversations (or just about any conversation). Yamaha has developed the VSP-1, a speaker-like Sound Wall device that can make your dialogue up to 89% less audible to passersby. The VSP-1 works by playing different sounds to cover your voice, such as beach, forest or river.

Yamaha Releases VSP-1 System [Akihabara News]

Pioneer Adds A/V Receivers to VSX Line, Including an AirPlay Compatible Model
Pioneer added four new A/V receivers to their VSX line today. With an optional Bluetooth adapter, they become smartphone compatible and can stream audio. The highest end model, the VSX-1021, also features AirPlay compatibility. The receivers range in price from $249 to $549 and include internet radio and DLNA. For controlling the system and your music playlists, custom Pioneer iOS apps such as Air Jam can be downloaded.

Pioneer Announces New Receivers [Crunchgear]

Wheel Around On The Barebones EX Trike
If you’re looking for a little more adventure than your traditional two or three-wheeled vehicle provides, perhaps The EX is right for you. The EX is nothing but a metal frame, modified bike parts, 3 wheels, and some custom CNC milled joints. Oh, and dual 18-volt screwdrivers as an engine (bringing along some spare batteries on your ride would probably be prudent). Speeds top out at about 18mph.

The EX [Nils Ferber via Oh Gizmo]

Easy, Endless Poking With the SNAK Social Keyboard’s Facebook Hotkeys
If you need this keyboard, you really, really have a Facebook problem. It’s got 19 Facebook-specific hotkeys that let you quickly jump to your photos, events, inbox, and more. What if someone else uses your computer and keyboard? No worries: When you sign out, they keys become disabled. The Windows-compatible Social Network Access Keyboard (SNAK) can be yours for $30.
SNAK [Social Keyboards via Engadget]

You know that Android 2.3.3 update that’s trickling out to Nexus S smartphones right now? Google’s decided to take this opportunity to push its data portability agenda with regards to Android. Simply put, the feature of the Facebook for Android app to provide the social network’s stored contact information to your Nexus S has been revoked from here on out, and as soon as you get the update all that contact information will disappear from your contacts app on your phone.

We’ve spent a while chatting with a Google rep, and they explained that the company is actually just reinstating the official rules — typically, apps have to use Android’s contacts API, but Facebook was granted an exception which allowed its contacts to remain in the cloud. In effect, what Google’s claims it’s doing here is the same thing that would happen if you uninstalled the app, or deleted your Facebook account — your contacts created and stored in the network would no longer be visible in your contacts app. In other words, Google’s attempting to push Facebook into making that data available to itself, which would be handy (think of the other apps that could use your Facebook data on the go) but potentially worrisome in terms of privacy as well. Either way, the argument is not likely to directly affect many individuals in the short term — Google tells us that Facebook’s sync privileges will only be revoked in the Nexus S (not the Nexus One) and other “lead devices” yet to come. Read the company’s full statement after the break, and decide for yourself if this is worth arguing about.

Continue reading Google disables contact sync in Facebook for Android, but only Nexus S for now

Google disables contact sync in Facebook for Android, but only Nexus S for now originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

The Internet Explorer 9 beta pleasantly surprised us with Microsoft’s renewed competitiveness in the web browser wars, and the pinnable, hardware-accelerated experience is getting even better today — you can download the IE9 release candidate right now, which streamlines and beautifies the tabbed browsing layout considerably, adds those previously promised, fully customizable tracking protection lists for privacy and freely toggled ActiveX filters, as well as an updated Javascript engine, geolocation support via HTML5, the ability to pin web apps to the taskbar, and a host of assorted speed and functionality improvements. Find the files you need at our source link below, and let us know if the Beauty of the Web captivates you this time around.

Update: We spoke to Microsoft IE9 privacy guru Andy Ziegler, and learned to our dismay that tracking protection lists won’t actually be included in the browser per se; rather, the company’s created a feature where you can generate your own lists or download ready-made one from providers like TRUSTe. The thing is, IE9 won’t suggest one for you, or even curate a group of them when you install — you’ll need to put on your power user hat and do the legwork there yourself.

Internet Explorer 9 RC now available to download, tracking protection in tow (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  Microsoft  | Email this | Comments

Ever been freaked out by an online ad that seemed to know you that little bit too well? It’s the result of good old advertisers tracking your net-navigating habits and delivering targeted commercials to your eyeballs, but it can be prevented. Both Google and Mozilla have stepped up (or perhaps been pushed by the FTC) to try and tackle this issue of pernicious tracking cookies, but they’ve gone about it in different ways. The Chrome solution is a Keep My Opt-Outs browser extension that remembers the sites you don’t want personalized information from, while Firefox will start beaming out a Do Not Track HTTP header that should be respected by advertisers and result in you receiving generic, repetitive ads. The important commonality between the two is that they don’t rely on you preparing a cookie file with all your anti-advertiser bile contained within it (which was the FTC’s original, somewhat impractical idea). Google intends to open-source its extension and bring it to other browsers as well, though obviously it’s taking care of Chrome first, which can benefit from the add-on right now.

Chrome and Firefox adding new opt-out features to prevent third-party advertisers from tracking you originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink New York Times  |  Google Public Policy Blog, First Person Cookie  | Email this | Comments

Wouldn’t it be nice if photos you uploaded to Facebook, MySpace and Flickr just stopped being accessible after a while, saving you the almighty hassle of having to delete them yourself? Well, a few good Germans have come together to produce the X-pire! software, which promises to do just that — make online imagery inaccessible after a given period of time following their upload. It’s been around in prototype form as a Firefox extension, but next week should see its proper launch, complete with a subscription-based pricing model costing €24 per year. Yes, the observant among you will note that this does nothing to prevent others from grabbing those images and re-uploading them, but this software’s ambition is humbler than that — it just aims to give the less tech-savvy (or simply lazier) user a tool for controlling at least part of his or her presence on the web.

X-pire! software will add digital expiration dates to your photos, photo-related embarrassment originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 22:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AFP (Yahoo! News)  | Email this | Comments