The Kyocera Echo is the strangest phone I've ever seen. Inside, it's just mundane—but on the outside, it's a batshit bizarre, morphing, dual screen stab at DS form with iPad function.
Where it could have reveled in its strangeness, it's entirely weighed down by it. If you're adding a second full-size screen, it sure as hell better do something worthwhile. Extra space for your email. More space for contacts. It's slow. It's wasteful. It's essentially two average Androids stitched together.
It's just more glass. Multitasking—a term Kyocera and Sprint are hawking like a child who just learned a swear word for the first time is important. What's not important? Hypertasking and simultasking, two made up non-terms that Kyocera is flinging around.
Who woulda thunk it? Half a year ago, finding a conventional point-and-shoot with integrated GPS was a chore, but these days, it's growing tougher and tougher to find one without it. Pentax is joining thegeotagging frenzy this evening with its Optio WG-1 GPS, a rugged 14 megapixel shooter that's waterproof up to 33 feet, shockproof in nature and engineered with a "crushproof" body that can withstand weight force of up to 220 pounds (but not another Black Eyed Peas halftime show).
You'll also get integrated face detection technology, the ability to snap in sub-freezing temperatures, a 5x optical zoom lens and a 2.7-inch rear LCD. There's also a 720p movie mode, HDMI output, IR control compatibility and support for Eye-Fi's wireless SD card. It'll ship this April in black or yellow-green for $399.95, and if you're uncomfortable remembering where you took each and every photograph, the GPS-less Optio WG-1 will also be available (in black or purple) for $50 less.
The smartphone that Nokia has been touting as its new "flagship" business model will finally reach consumers this week.
Nokia's announcement was mum on a number of launch details. However, a Nokia representative said that the E7 will be released first in Finland, the company's home turf.
The E7 includes the Symbian 3 operating system, a 4-inch AMOLED ClearBack touch screen designed to improve outdoor visibility, a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, an 8-megapixel camera with a dual LED flash and HD video capture, USB and HDMI connections, and 16GB of flash memory.
Geared for the business crowd, the phone offers built-in synchronization with Microsoft Exchange and comes with Office Communicator Mobile, a corporate instant messaging app developed by Microsoft specifically for Nokia smartphones.
Although still the world's leading mobile phone maker, Nokia has watched its dominance slowly slip over the past couple of years. Losing market share and sales to Apple and Android devices, the company reported lower earnings yet again in the fourth quarter of 2010. The E7 costs 495 euros ($674).
The folks at Inner City Bikes put a fixie and a unicycle into a dark, sexy room, played some light jazz and let nature happen. Out popped this minimalist, chain-less bike. Practical? We'll see, but she's certainly a looker.
Now, whether that look you're giving is one of love or disgust probably depends on your propensity toward wearing a suit, Pumas and a beard while riding a bike.
She lacks the mechanical gear-shifting apparatus of her 21-speed cousins, and even the chain of her more closely related fixie brethren, but her bicycle heritage is unmistakable.
The iPhone isn't ideal for watching videos for a long period, it drains battery and is uncomfortable. The iKit Nu Charge's built-in battery and kickstand fix that.
It gives you 1400 mAh of power that can be switched on when needed. LED lights on the front show you how much power is left too.
The Nu Charge ships in March for $65 for both Verizon and AT&T iPhone 4.
The Sensation Urban lounger, by designer Alexander Christoff, looks ridiculously relaxing. That is, until you realize that looking at a 4-inch display from 6-feet away is basically the antithesis of comfort.
The humble unlock screen gets ever fancier, and Nokia Bubbles is one of the fanciest yet. Like a variety of aftermarket lock screens it enables you to control your media player or initiate calls before you even unlock your handset, but does so in an interesting way. You just grab the bubble for what you want and drop it on what you want to do. A simple unlock entails dragging the key onto the lock, and if you have a missed call you can grab that person's bubble and drag it to a phone to call them right back. Grab the music bubble to go straight to the music player and, well, you get the picture. Okay, so it's not quite as much fun as playing Puzzle Bobble, but it is ever so slightly more useful.
Inside the JVC GX-PX1's gigantic barrel and thin, slim body is a promising camera and camcorder hybrid. There's a 10x optical zoom, 10-megapixel camera, 1080/60p HD video recording at up to 36Mbps, and can shoot at 60fps at 5.7-megapixels.
The 3-inch LCD swivels and the camera comes with 32GB of internal memory. No price or release date out yet, but it's supposed to release by the end of the month.
A big part of success on the slopes is confidence, right? And what better way to feel confident than by knowing every deft downhill maneuver (or horrible, ankle-shattering spill) will be remembered in HD? Liquid Image's goggles do just that.
The Impact HD 1080p will be exciting for anyone with the least bit of coordination, providing a 136 degree field of view video at 30 fps. It'll hold an SD card of up to 32 GB, which should keep you stocked for your trip to the bottom of the mountain, whether you ski or tumble down.
Aluminum cans are convenient! So why would we need a better soda can? Well because even though they're recyclable, they're not really reusable. This soda can is not only reusable, it's also biodegradable. Better for everybody!
It's humorously called the TIN CAN though its made from PLA (poly-lactic acid), which means some sort of corn starch that can retain some plastic properties (and also, one of the better eco-friendly materials around).
Oyule Light Bulbs are filled with paraffin and use a wick instead of a filament, so basically they become what the light bulb replaced: A paraffin lamp.
To ensure they stay upright, there's a magnet placed in the base of the bulb that corresponds to one in the acrylic base.
Facebook recently announced that they're adding full HTTPS support for the site, to keep you protected from attacks like Firesheep. The feature's finally rolling out, and here's how you can turn it on. To enable it, just hit "Account" in the upper-right hand corner of any Facebook window and go to "Account Settings".
Under "Account Security", hit the change button and check the box that says "Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible". Hit save and exit that window. From now on, whenever you connect to Facebook, it will default to an SSL-encrypted connection, keeping you safe on open Wi-Fi networks from Firesheep-like attacks. If you don't have it yet, you should have it pretty soon—so check back frequently to see if it pops up.
Columbia's Electro Amp jacket is arguably as teched out as a jacket can get really. Designed by a former Intel engineer, the jacket warms itself through the carbon-fiber threads woven into the coat. And even it recharges via USB.
According to GearJunkie, the carbon fiber threads feel like yarn, and they can keep your warm for five hours straight on it's lowest heat setting. But slick tech such as this comes at a premium, and that premium is $1200 dollars. So, how cold are you?
Ifyour grandmother's Facebook account wasn't a tell-tale sign that the internet has come of age, here's another: after this week, the internet will run out of new IPv4 addresses. But don't fret, because we're moving on up to IPv6!
For those unfamiliar with what IP addresses do, they serve as the internet's navigation system in many ways. When you type in a URL/domain name to visit a site, it's attached to an IP address which handles all the dirty work of connecting you to the server the website is stored on. Just like the Wall Street Journal says, this is a lot like the moment when phone companies in the U.S. switched to 10-digit numbers.
The IPv4 addresses theoretically range between 4 and 12 digits, have a size of 32-bits and have 4.3 billion possible address combinations. I'm fairly certain all of you have dealt with IPv4 addresses, which look something like this:
68.127.78.247
(or http://68.127.78.247, when entering them into a browser)
With the change to IPv6, addresses will be 128-bits in size and up to 32 digits long, allowing for 340 trillion trillion trillion unique addresses. When it is finally implemented, it will look something like this:
2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
(or http://[2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334] in a browser)
And with a whole gang of other notation rules, configuring your router is going to be a bitch in the future. Oh, ALSO, we'll all have to get new routers! (Naturally)
But IPv6 is still in its infancy and is still a few years from being put into use on any sort of widespread level. Until then, the Internet will get by on a diet of repurposed and recycled IP addresses. But for a single day in June, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and a couple of other internet giants will switch over to IPv6-compatible servers to test out the new protocol and find out if there are any major kinks in the system.
You're really into MMORPGs when you spend hours repeating the same tasks over and over again to acquire gold. You're way, way too into MMORPGs when you create a custom six-computer setup to do it that much faster.
Zhek Kromtor's "Frankenstein" setup lets him play several EVE Online accounts at the same time so he can farm for gold and minerals more efficiently. Just look at those janky six-way keyboards and mice that let him control everything at once!
You see, he was temporarily banned for running multiple accounts on one computer at the same time. It's against the rules! But doing this, apparently, is not. Probably because they never thought anyone would be crazy enough to do it. But never underestimate the desire of an addict to get that sweet, sweet gold.
Look, maybe you've had your pocket picked a few times and are really paranoid about losing your wallet. But you're not Julian Assange and I doubt anyone is coming after you, so you probably don't need this biometrically secured wallet.
The Dunhill Biometroc Wallet combines a biometric finger reader with a bluetooth alarm and carbon fiber frame to ensure noone can crack into it without destroying it. If you have the Bluetooth alarm activated, the wallet will sound an alert anytime it is more than five feet from your phone.But the damn thing costs $825 and it's not even that great looking.
How can you listen to music as loud as you want without headphones and without annoying people around you? Consider Klang's ultrasonic speakers, which use a 30,000hz frequency to beam an audible wave to a single point.
Designed as part of a project hosted by Bang & Olufsen, the Klang speakers use a satellite dish design and sound physics to focus the beam to one specific point. As Dvice points out, the soundwave is above the threshold of human hearing range, but ultrasonic waves split in three, producing an audible wave encapsulated by two inaudible ones. Sound is only noticeable when it hits an obstruction. And because of this, the left ear can only hear sound coming from the left speaker and the right ear can only hear sound from the right speaker, creating an intense stereo experience.
But what does this mean for you, the user? Well, if these speakers were more than a prototype, you could enjoy porn and/or Justin Bieber as loud as you want without your parents and/or roommates ever knowing. Obviously.
The collapsible camping chair has been a staple of camping sites and tailgating parties for as long as I can remember, but this battery-powered seat warming one from Chaheati is the first I've seen that thaws your keester.
The adjustable heater keeps your nether region toasty at approximately 100 degrees for up six hours. Crank it up to 145 degrees for about 1.8 hours of warmth for more extreme camping.
A tad pricey at $90, with extra batteries costing $35 apiece.
Those ridiculous-miraculous-awesome-awful Vibrams shoes are growing up over the bodies of their fanboys like a symbiotic organism. Their cold-weather boots—FiveFingers Cervinia—now reach half up your leg. I can't wait for them to create a full-body Dune stillsuit. The boots are $160, which is not bad for boots.
When you replaced the old iPhone 3G cover with a transparent case, it revealed a fugly side. But with the iPhone 4, the inner workings and hidden guts are surprisingly good lookin'. Here's how to turn your iPhone 4 transparent.
The mod was simply done by taking the glass panels off the phone and applying paint thinner to remove the paint. That's all. What you're left with are two clear panes that reveal the innards of the phone.
Hide your cables, hide your plugs! This elegant concept, the Plug Hub, can become real if enough people buy it. Think of the $24 you spend as an investment towards a lifetime of peace, serenity and organization.
Rapper T-Pain introduced this new tattoo he got in Hawaii with a tweet: "I think this ones pretty sweet, unless facebook shuts down soon 0_o". That's what the guy who tattooed MySpace's Tom on his back said in 2002.
It kind of makes sense, this "like" button tattoo, if you consider the phenomenon of bad-tattoo-as-meme (and meme-as-bad-tattoo): Maybe T-Pain is trying to embody the viral success of his music. But it's also sort of dumb, because of the fact that he ruined his body and will be forced to spend his 70s and 80s explaining to young people what his tattoo means, after Facebook is replaced with cranial implants.
According to a new study, overweight people have "far heightened" senses of smell for food compared with people who aren't overweight—in particular after eating a full meal. Science: Making the mean joke so you don't have to!
We were trying to determine what Lady Gaga's forthcoming fragrance should smell like, but rumor has it she's decided. It will supposedly smell like blood and semen. Nasty, but I guess that's exactly what a bad romance smells like.
This itty bitty plastic rifle was recently declared a "firearm" by airport security officials at Gatwick Airport. Which I guess makes the toy soldier it had been attached to an enemy combatant?
Ken Lloyd and his wife were transporting the figurine across country lines after having purchased it at the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Garrison. Officials removed the rifle but let the soldier pass:
Lloyd said his wife had demanded "a reality check".
"The antenna was individually scanned as suspect and as the figurine's SA80 rifle was pulled from the box, the security search officer contacted her supervisor," he said.
The security personnel gave the three-inch bit of plastic back to Mrs. Lloyd, who promptly stuffed it in an envelope and mailed it back home—but not before the airport's customer service department X-rayed the package to make sure there were no very tiny bullets along for the ride.
It seems that Mathias Buttet—the designer for Swiss watch manufacturer Hublot—has found a stash of kryptonite and is decided to use it all in these new watches. Nothing is known about them except that its price will be on the high six and it will be officially presented this March.
Just like you shouldn't kickflip your skateboard grip-taped iPhone case, please don't whack balls with these cases. But, in traditional red, green, blue and black color options, you can at least display your team-colors for $30 here.
Milk jugs, useless. Milk comes in containers, sillies! But this jug is different: Usingscience—a pH sensor—it detects if the milk inside is sour. Which would've saved my granola this morning, truth.
I love stupid single-purpose kitchen gadgets. Inserted into a turkey or chicken, this timer's legs pop up like a boner when the inside reaches 165 degrees—not 180, like most—for perfectly roasted bird. It's $13.
I think I'll judge a book by it's cover on this one. And right now, MeatWater—a protein-rich drink flavored like various meats—sounds like the liquid equivalent of a Dane Cook autobiography.
I mean, I guess we can congratulate Till Krautkraemer for creating liquids that taste like a poached salmon salad, thai beef salad, cheeseburger or Hungarian goulash (best seller!). But doesn't half the appeal of eating meat lie in its physical properties?
The communication components in smartphones and satellites aren't all that different, except that satellite guts are better rated for external factors like temperature and impact. But one British aerospace firm wants to see how well a smartphone fares in space.
Wired says that the University of Surrey and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited are working together to create a satellite, dubbed the STRAND-1, which uses the internals from a commercial Android smartphone to handle all the communication and control, transmitting photos of Earth while it's in orbit.
The researchers are excited by the possibility of using smartphone internals because they cost a fraction of what aerospace-grade components would cost. The satellite, which is 11.8 inches long and weighs under 10 pounds, will initially have an on-board computer that monitors the smartphone components and make sure everything is functioning as it should. If all goes to plan, the satellite will go into orbit sometime this year.
A Best in Show winner at this year's Outdoor Retailer show, the MAKO is a multitool designed specifically for bikes. Which is good! Because I've never been able to figure out what I'm supposed to fix with my regular multitool.
Made of aerospace titanium, the MAKO comes with four 1/4" driver bits, 5 metric box wrench sizes, 2 spoke wrench sizes, and a bottle opener. Because it's not a mulittool if it doesn't have a bottle opener.
The electricity that courses through your body whenever you're together. The way you fit perfectly in her arms, powering you up. The voltage you feel as the relationship sours, when you stick your ring into a wall-socket.
iPhone cases are pretty damn boring, they're like a wasteland of silicone and plastic sameness. Not this one! This case is awesome. The SmallWorks BrickCase ditches those tired materials for Lego, turning your iPhone 4 into a playground for Lego bricks.
It's only $20 on Amazon and works great with any Lego bricks. Go wild, the whole back and top of the iPhone is open for your creative interpretation. This is one of the few times where I approve of adding bulk to your phone.
Sega has installed toilet games in bars and arcades across Tokyo. It's called Toylet and games include measuring volume of urine, measuring power of stream, wiping a wall clean of graffiti and even controlling wind to lift a girl's skirt up.
It sounds insane but also potentially awesome, the games use a pressure sensor attached to an eye level LCD screen for gamers to watch. Those who can pee hard and long will separate themselves from the soft and short. Sega says the games would be available to play only until the end of the month. Take advantage!
I love that crunch-clink sound a chocolate bar makes when I break it in two before stuffing both halves into my mouth. Thanks to this simulation keychain, I can have that sound without any of the calories. Or the oh-so-yummy-taste.
It's the whole "not real chocolate" part that's getting to me, even if the keychain comes inthree flavors—milk chocolate, high-milk chocolate and white chocolate—so I think I'll just get some real chocolate instead.
If you prefer to pretend breaking chocolate with this trinket though, it will be available in Japan for about $7 per bar. If your obsession runs more along the lines of soybeans or bubble wrap though then you don't even have to wait and can order something now.
Let's face it—you're probably up to no good with this keychain tool, which conveniently disguises itself as a key. At about a third of the price of a Swiss Army knife, it has eight handy tools.
That's three different screwdrivers, a pair of tweezers, a wire-stripper, bottle-cap opener, nail file and nail cleaner. It comes with a fake key which the tool hides behind, and a stainless steel key-ring. Just in case the user can't distinguish between a screwdriver and a nail file, the various tools' names are even marked on the key.
Recently some guy decided that perfect way to decorate his 90 square foot apartment was by plastering its walls with 25,000 ping pong balls. For some reason I think he was on to something.
Sounds and looks crazy, but somehow that strange design makes the place feel like the ideal spot for a quick break from work.
If you're annoyed of your iPhone slipping out of your hands, here's an idea: replace the glass back with skateboard grip tape. Sure it might char up your hands but it'll never ever slip again!
Jokes and scratchiness aside, I think it actually looks pretty awesome. It's clean but still full of character. The guy who made this actually made the grip tape iPhone out of necessity, as he dropped his iPhone, breaking its back. He tried other materials first (silicone, sandpaper, etc) but eventually settled on grip tape.
Portion control is the most obvious means to eat better, but how much is too much? ThisWheel of Nutrition dinnerware makes it as simple as putting food on your plate.
In Diet, Extra Ordinary and Super Size configuration, disregarding your health is as simple as shattering the proper strategic place setting—unfortunately, it doesn't look like the design is actually for sale.
Extremely clever, but the fact that each portion is shaped like a pie/pizza/cheese wheel slice won't help dieters one bit. So we'd better start growing celery and grapefruit in wedge form, stat.
At least Vertu can point at its concierge service as one of the reasons its phones are so damn pricey. Mobiado can't even claim its phones are stylish.
Still, the Classic 712ZAF candybar handset is made from aluminum, stainless steel, sapphire crystal and a ceramic coating, so at least it can withstand being dropped when you're pummeled for being such an expensive jerk.
Don't expect much more than a 2.2-inch QVGA screen, A-GPS, 5.0-megapixel camera with LED flash and noise cancellation via the two microphones. It comes in six different colors—namely, black, black satin, silver, grey, blue and red, with the price not yet known.
