Best New Technology

European gadget maker Binatone has come up with a new GPS unit supposedly designed for women and inadvertently proved that feminism is not dead. What makes the Carrerra S350 ideal for the estrogen-blessed? It’s small enough to fit in a handbag, has a pink case and comes with a stylus to protect delicate nail jobs. Binatone also notes that map-reading skills are optional.

At least one female gadgetophile has responded with understandable offense, and we look forward to more as the press release makes the rounds with its implied message of, "Don’t you worry your pretty little head about reading no maps, missy."

Carrera S350: most patronising gadget ever? [TechRadar]

For just $660, Colorware PC will make your beautifully designed and finished MacBook Air look like the one above. To be fair, you needn’t choose the nastiest colors or throw so many of them on there: Colorware will finish the whole thing in sleek, glossy black if you prefer. If you opt for the case-only option, it will cost $500, or you can order a brand new macbook air, pre-painted, for $2500.

Product page [Colorware via Engadget]

This R2-D2 cake might not be able to salvage you from a threatening situation against the Sith, but it is capable of saving you an earful for getting your other half a birthday/anniversary cake late, especially if she is a massive Star Wars fan. Created by master pastry chef Mark Randazzo who hails from Brooklyn’s Mark Joseph Cakes, this edible R2-D2 features his signature domed lid and lots of blue and silver icing that will send any dentist running scared.

Posted Feb 19th 2008 8:32AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Portable Audio

It’s turning into quite the day for shuffle aficionados. Apple just slash the price on its 1GB ipod shuffle this AM to a very palatable $49, and now the company is pushing a brand new 2GB version out the door for $69. The color selections will be the same as little brother, including a (PRODUCT) RED version. It’ll be available later this month.

Posted Feb 19th 2008 4:03AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

At all curious to find out just how rare that HD DVD player of yours really is? Well, we hate to tell you, but it’s probably not rare enough to fetch anything special on eBay in a couple of years — but still every bit rare (read: discontinued) enough to justify taking up space in your home theater. The numbers, according to Nishida-san, at this morning’s press conference:

• Xbox 360 drives (worldwide) - 300k
• US - 600k units
• Europe - 100k units
• Japan - 30,000 units

Add it all up, and that’s about a million customers that got boned on hd dvd. Thanks, Toshiba and Sony!

TDK has been around long enough for the average consumer to associate it with cassette tapes and other recording media such as floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-ray optical media. They’ve finally jumped onto the USB flash memory bandwagon though, but don’t expect anything new other than color-coded capacities on the outside. Choose from 1GB, 2GB and 4GB models. These’ll run on USB 2.0, so they ought to be average performers all in all without breaking any performance records anytime soon.

John Sculley is famous among Apple fans for wresting control of the company from Steve Jobs in the mid-1980s.

That his Wikipedia article is written in a somewhat unencyclopedic tone should be forgiven. After all, how else would we know how he saved Apple from Steve’s futile visionary ideas?

The boardroom coup, we learn, was a matter of making real businessmen out of the valley boys:

"People joked that the difference between Apple Computer and a Boy Scout troop is that the scouts have adult supervision. Well, Apple now did."

The denouement of the man-child Jobs’ career was deserved and apropos:

 

"Jobs became non-linear: he kept meetings running past midnight, sent out lengthy faxes, then called new meetings at 7 am. After one such meeting in 1985, the Board of Directors lost patience and stripped Jobs of all operational responsibilities, three months after Jobs’ 30th birthday"

Daring stuff for a wikipedia article, but the truth will out! Sculley even knew how to hang with the casual Cupertino crowd:

 

"Sculley was visibly dressed-down from the Pepsico days: he often wore plaid shirts, loden-green cords, and penny-loafers without socks: straight from The Official Preppy Handbook, which explains the ways insiders dress down."

But what of Apple’s project bloat and empire-building of the early 1990s? These were, as Wikipedia reveals, a "strategy" which backfired: when he was gotten rid of, it was due not to any concrete reasons, but merely his apparent inability to "manage the product line."

He also invented the internet:

 

"Some of his ideas for the Knowledge Navigator would eventually be fulfilled … by the Internet and the World Wide Web during the 1990s."  

Funny stuff. In reality, by the time Sculley’s reign at Apple ended in 1993, the company was a shambling mess, wasting money on futuristic fancies like the Newton Messagepad while trying to market actual computers the way Dupont markets industrial chemicals.

Sculley went on to become the CEO of a company that he claims not to know was under SEC investigation, and ultimately to hocking a snake oil scam gadget called the "Wine Clip."

Unbesmirched by his own failures, he now is a partner in Sculley Brothers, a private investment firm — assuming Wikipedia is to believed.

Toshiba announced Tuesday that it will no longer manufacture HD-DVD hardware. From its press release:

"Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products."

Gizmodo’s man in Japan, Ichiroo, reported that the press release was "in the wild" before the company’s press conference had even begun.

The BBC has its version up. So does Bloomberg and the AFP.

There’s no nonsense, no big show, no morbid preliminaries: just the final truth in black and white, seemingly pre-empting its own schedule of events. Perhaps some still wondered if it would be too "proud" to act quickly, and would somehow drag it out for days, or even weeks.

Even the AP works this thought into its coverage, saying that the format’s demise is a "possible blow to Toshiba’s pride," as if the corporation itself—or even the very technology—has emotions. But really, isn’t it all just business?

Toshiba Kills HD DVD, Official [Gizmodo]

Tokyo—Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba’s commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of hd dvd.

Everex’s $400 Cloudbook comes in a neat little green box. It makes clear that the Google Appl-routing, gOS-branded Linux distro doesn’t actually have anything to do with Google: the G is for Green!

It’s small, but not as tiny as UMPCs. About the same size as Asus’s EeePC, it has better specs (such as a 30GB hard drive) at the same price, but our first look at a preproduction model suggests that it isn’t quite as polished.

Based on Via’s Nanobook reference design, the Cloudbook ain’t pretty. But it ain’t supposed to be, either. It’s supposed to be a cheap workhorse of a subnotebook.

The gappy lid-hinge won’t appeal to everyone, but I know at least one person who likes the durable, no-nonsense look.

The Cloudbook keyboard is a little smaller than full size, but quite usable. No risks are taken with the design. Rubbery chiclets, of which UMPC makers are so fond, are no-where to be seen.

The trackpad is on the top-right shoulder of the keyboard, and the left and right buttons on the top-left. It works better than you’d think, but the trackpad is so small it can be hard to make precise movements. You won’t be editing photos on the Cloudbook without a steady, small-tipped thumb.

Two USB ports, the power cord and audio I/O lie on the right-hand side.

And on the other, a card reader and DVI-out. It’s a minimal loadout — enough to make it worth your while? Read our first impressions.

Sprint is now selling the Samsung Ace, a Blackjack-like smartphone. The main difference with the blackjack is that the Ace can connect to both GSM and CDMA networks, making it usable in GSM countries like Europe, while still being compatible with Sprint’s U.S network. The phone might also work in Japan, although that’s not yet clear.

Specifications

• 2.3” display (320×240)
• QWERTY keyboard
• CDMA and GSM compatible
• 64MB of user memory
• 1.3 Megapixel camera
• Bluetooth 2.0
• 4.65×2.32×0.46”, 3.9oz
• 4.3 hours of talk time
• $200 with a 2-year contract