Best New Technology

by Paul Miller, posted May 29th 2008 at 12:26PM

As always, Apple is busy at the patent office this week, with two recently uncovered filings to make life just a little bit easier for Mr. Joe Person Man. The first of these is a system to track how far away you are from a cell tower, and to warn you via your phone when you’re about to drop your call — with similar applications for GPS and WiFi devices. The other patent is a Bluetooth-based system to track down lost objects like keys or your Bluetooth headset via the age old method of “you’re getting hotter” and you’re getting colder.” Sure, Apple’s version might have a fancy readout on the phone display, but it’s the same basic principle — no triangulation going on here. Of course, Apple patents all sorts of crazy stuff that never makes it to market, but at least these two have a semblance of possibility.

[Thanks, Mark]

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Filed under: cellphones, Wireless

Most Macs I’ve seen so far are things of beauty, making this DIY Corkboard Mac look rather out of place with the rest of its brethren no thanks to the way it was constructed. Most of the innards consist of an older PowerBook, all held together by a series of colorful push-pins. Well, this is way too fragile for me to display openly whenever there are kids around, so I think it would be better off enclosed in a transparent glass case and placed in a museum instead. Creepy.

FROM GAMERTELL - We finally know what we’ll be playing Street Fighter IV on, as the game has been confirmed for the PC, PS3, and 360. MORE »

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by Darren Murph, posted May 29th 2008 at 10:52AM

With just days remaining before MSI’s Wind becomes available in the US, wouldn’t you like to know as much as humanly possible now to better form your potential purchasing decision? Great, we had a feeling you would. According to CNET’s UK branch, MSI’s promising subnote will ship with 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, a trio of USB ports, 4-in-1 multicard reader, VGA output and a 3-cell battery that will theoretically provide 3- to 4-hours of life. You’ll also find a 10-inch 1,024 x 600 resolution panel, and just like the TurboBook GX600, a dedicated button to activate TurboDrive and overclock the CPU by “about 20-percent” (wait, what?). Check out the read link for all the gory details.

[Thanks, T.I.]

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Filed under: Laptops

iRiver has a spanking new portable media player known as the L-Player, but this will probably be confined to Korea only it seems. The L-Player takes a minimalist approach to its design, featuring a D-click user interface as well as a minimal amount of visible buttons so as not to interfere with the overall design. In addition, iRiver has also developed a pretty interesting transparent speaker dock for the L-Player itself that is pretty nifty. Features include :-

• 2″ LCD display
• SRS WOW
• MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF, MPEG-4, WMV and XviD file format support

It will come in black, chocolate, pink or white colors, and you will be able to choose from 2GB, 4GB or 8GB capacities.

Here at Geek.com we normally focus on smartphones, but lately there have been quite a few non-smartphone handsets hitting the market that are worth a second look, even by a geek like me. One of those is the Katana LX by Sanyo.

What makes the Katana LX geeky is its slim design and mirrored finish, complete with a translucent OLED display on the front cover, which shows the time, the date, signal strength, battery status, and more. It’s actually one of the cooler implementations I’ve seen since when it’s not active you’d never know there was a screen there. In addition to the OLED display, the Katana sports an internal 2.0-inch 65k color LCD, VGA camera, speakerphone, Bluetooth, and integrated GPS, just to name a few.

For my first test I snapped a picture using the camera on the phone and then tried to e-mail it, figuring this is the most common usage scenario. To my surprise I was told that I needed to add Sprint Picture Mail for $5 a month if I wanted to send it. I did, but I think Sprint should offer some way of emailing a photo, even without an extended plan. I also sent a text–which went through–to a phone based on AT&T in seconds.

I then played around with the demo games included in the phone and the built-in calendar, scheduler, and other applications. Overall, it has a very nice user interface and I found the performance of the phone and feedback of the keys to be pleasant. I also enjoyed the music tones being played while I typed and found it easy to change sounds, ringers, input type (to T9, for example) and a variety of other options on the phone.

I spent the majority of my testing in the web applications area. I first tried to download Opera Mini so that I could enjoy the full experience. I was able to access Opera.com and even start the download but for some reason it wouldn’t complete. I’m left wondering if Sprint blocks this ability on this particular phone?

One thing that’s a great addition to any phone, especially one catered towards casual users is the “My Favorites” area. The user can configure 12 favorites and the phone comes pre-populated with Facebook, Sprint Mobile Alerts, Bluetooth Devices, My Account, and News as the first five. The favorites are essentially one touch access to either websites or specific applications on the mobile device.

One final geeky thing I discovered is the ability to update the firmware over the air. I checked and a new one wasn’t available, but it warmed my geeky heart.

Overall, the phone is definitely a sleek piece of kit, coming in Pacific Blue, Elegant Pink, and Liquid Graphite.

If you’re looking for a solid performing, sweet looking phone, give the Katana LX a try.

Read more about the Katana LX by SANYO at Nextel.com

by Thomas Ricker, posted May 29th 2008 at 5:28AM

Look out Microsoft, Pioneer’s Linc series of in-dash and “on-dash” systems have their sights set on your voice controlled Sync. The first thing you’ll notice is Pioneer’s pixy-dusted UI which easily trumps the Sync’s rather staid presentation. The videos show off Pioneer’s real-time data feeds and natural speech recognition with the help of some smarmy actor-slash-models who’ll probably be serving you lunch today if you live in LA. But we digress. Videos after the break… which, let’s be honest, is the best we can do until the DivX-happy, SD-friendly AVIC-F900BT, F700BT, and F500BT (pictured) are released in June.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video, Transportation

Back in April 2006 the Belgian newspaper group Copiepresse filed a lawsuit against Google for re-printing their articles online and caching their web pages. Google and Copiepresse went into negotiations to try and formulate a solution, but it now seems those talks have broken down.

Margaret Boribon, secretary general at Copiepresse said:

We entered in negotiations with Google to reach an agreement, but they have now failed … All we want is to reach a fair agreement with Google, but if that fails we will go on with every possible procedure.

Now the group are asking Google to pay up to US$77.5 million in damages for the use of their work. A summons has been issued and the court case will resume on September 18 to decide if the infringements are valid and then whether the damages payment is reasonable.

Google believe their news and search activities, including reprinting the Copiepresse material, is within the law and a spokesperson for the company said:

This is why we are appealing the February 2007 ruling. We consider that this new claim for past damages is groundless and we intend to vigorously challenge it.

Google can either choose to settle the lawsuit and work with the group going forward, or face possible server log requests to garner detailed information on how many web users actually viewed the Copiepresse material.

Read more at IDG.no

Matthew’s Opinion

I think the main concern of Copiepresse is the fact users can choose to see the articles they have written on Google. That means they lose out on any potential ad revenue generated on their own site where the work originated. It also means users aren’t visiting their site and therefore there is no opportunity to keep them there with further news and links of interest.

Looking at this from Google’s point of view they are just providing a service. They link to the original articles, but provide the information on their site for convenience. As far as they are concerned the work is referenced and linked to and users can follow that link if they wish.

The courts have already ruled in favor of Copiepresse twice and therefore I think it will go their way again. Copiepresse want to work with Google though, and therefore I think we will continue to see their articles listed in some form, but with the consent of the group and after a fairly large damages payout.

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted May 28th 2008 at 8:34PM

It’s about time 360 owners get some rechargeable Nyko love via the Charge Base 360, which is shipping to stores at a $34.99 clip. So why should you care? This charger / controller storage solution comes with two NiMH drop-in (i.e. shaped for your 360 controller) rechargeable batteries that promise to make your gaming downtime a lot less extant. Nyko says a single charge will provide “up to” 25 hours of play time while charge time takes about 2 hours per controller. If you act quickly, you could get one of the limited 80s coffee table-friendly Black & Gold-colored units which go on sale June 2.

[Via IGN]

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Filed under: Gaming

We’ve seen plenty of gear co-branded by high-end automakers, but only Ducati’s really putting out bike-themed gear, and the latest gadget to get dressed up in cycle gear is the Sony Ericsson Z770 flip phone. Due out in Italy this June, the Ducati Z770 isn’t anything particularly special apart from that paint job and a special Ducati-themed HBH DS-220 headset, but if you’re into tri-band GSM non-smartphones with slightly better browsers, it’s not a bad piece of kit.
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