Best New Technology

If after reading CG you still find yourself craving for even more gadget news check out gadgets.alltop.com, an aggregation of all the top gadget blogs.

Along with gadgets Alltop has sections for other popular blogging niches (Gaming, Politics, Photography etc.). Though why you’d want to stray away from gadgets and tech I don’t know.

This post maybe somewhat on the biased side, as Alltop is a project by Guy Kawasaki and I’m currently sat in a room listening to him.

Nokia 2680 slide makes history by being Nokia’s first slider phone for the entry-level market. Along with the Nokia 5000, the Nokia 2680 slide was presented during the Growing Together 2008 conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. The phone focuses on its music features and internet access. The model is a slim digital camera phone, equipped with a music player with FM radio capability, MP3 ringtone feature, and an expanded phone book. The low end Nokia 2680 slide cell phone will be available starting this second quarter of 2008 with a MSRP of $118.
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Dart Coat Hooks
These stainless steel lovelies, straight from the design stable of Anthony Crisp meld together both retro styling and innovative construction in one oh-so-clever fusion.

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Trapster is a new mobile phone application that may subliminally encourage drivers to speed. Why subliminal? Well Trapster comes under the guise of being a speed trap sharing system, which means they, or actually the other users are helping you in not getting caught while driving fast. Using Wi-Fi or GPS, Trapster lets drivers report the location of speed traps, red light cameras and other locations that may be of interest to other drivers. Once you get into the Trapster system, you’ll automatically get an audio alert when you’re approaching a location with existing ticket threat. Then it’s up to you how you can avoid that threat. Likewise, Trapster users can also customize the alerts that they receive, say just the existence of red light cameras on specific locations or just the speed traps currently present on certain locations.

Although Trapster works best on GPS enabled phones such as Nokia’s Symbian based handsets, Windows Mobile and Blackberries. Users who don’t have any of those models can still take advantage of the Trapster service using Jott’s voice to text service. Finally, the Trapster site did not mention pricing for the service. But I suspect that charges will be incurred by users depending on their network providers.

So, if you are ready to become traffic enforcement’s public enemy no. 1, why not take Trapster for a spin and see how it goes. While I am not sure how much I agree with this system, I am also not sure this could be considered as anything other than a “Web 2.0 style” radar detector.

Via [Switched] Read [Trapster]

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Logitec’s Bluetooth 2.1+EDR adapter retails for $22, and at that price you get signal range of up to 300 feet along with all the other features that accompany 2.1. It is capable of supporting up to 15 different Bluetooth profiles in Windows (9 on Macs). Certainly there isn’t much to argue about when it comes to price, and Bluetooth 2.0 seems like a distant memory all of a sudden.
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160Mbps is a peak theoretical number of course, but still, it should be significantly faster that any consumer connection when it comes out. At the moment, only Mineapolis and St-paul residents can benefit from a 50 Mbps offer that could eventually reach 160Mbps. It doesn’t come for cheap ($150 per month), but I guess that there is a good niche of customers who would sign up.

It always bugs me to see that we’re in @#$^ Silicon Valley and that I am stuck with a 6Mbps DSL connection and a 16Mbps cable one.

This stripe projection 3D sensor from Fraunhofer IOF helps compose a 3D model, simply by projecting a stripe pattern onto the subject, using the couple of “eyes” to capture slightly distinct angles of the image based on the deducted geometry. While this technology isn’t exactly the newest on the block, it is the first of its kind to be crammed into such a small, pocket-friendly form factor.
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Posted Apr 3rd 2008 6:28PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: cellphones, Wireless

The same week that Nokia Siemens Networks unveiled its LTE solution for North America comes a little nugget from Ericsson: the M700. Hailed as the “world’s first commercially available LTE-capable platform,” it promises peak data transmissions of 100Mbps down and 50Mbps up, which will undoubtedly be the next best thing since sliced bread. Reportedly, initial devices based on the unit will be ExpressCards, USB modems, etc., and of course, it supports bandwidths between 1.4 and 20MHz and the oh-so-exciting 700MHz bands. Unfortunately, a commercial release isn’t set to happen until 2009 — with products “based on the platform” not scheduled until 2010 — but to its credit, samples of ASICs will be ready to roll sometime this year.

According to the All About Microsoft blog, Microsoft has officially confirmed that you will no longer be able to purchase a copy of Windows XP after June 30th.

This was the original date set in the Windows Life-Cycle Policy, and the only exceptions are shipping in Ultra Low-Cost PCs, like the Asus Eee, or shipping preloaded on new machines. The ULPCs exception ends on June 30, 2010, or one year after the next version of Windows is available, whichever comes first. As for pre-installed machines, their time is up on January 31, 2009.

We previously reported on a petition to save XP, and it looks like Microsoft has decided to go with its original plan, despite more than 100,000 people asking Microsoft to not stop OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of XP.

If you love XP go buy some copies now because after June 30th, you’re stuck with Vista.

Read more at All About Microsoft.

Posted Apr 3rd 2008 5:40PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Misc. gadgets

We’re never going to give up the dream of wireless charging, but it looks like the high costs of developing the technology plus the battle to build it into portable devices has claimed early wireless pioneer Splashpower. We’ve been following the company since 2004, but we never really saw any commercial-ready products emerge from its labs, while companies like WildCharge and eCoupled have managed to at least produce demo-quality gear. Here’s hoping an interested investor picks up what’s left of the R&D and runs with it.

[Thanks, John]