It’s a Good Thing the World’s Thinnest Phone Has a Gorilla Glass Screen - The NEC Medias

It'll run on Android 2.2 when it goes on sale mid-March with the NTT Docomo carrier, and will no doubt be a hit with Japanese girls (and slender businessmen who don't want to ruin the line of their suits.)

It's just 7.7mm thick, other components that have been crammed into the 105g body include a 4-inch Gorilla Glass LCD screen with 854 x 480 resolution; a 5.1MP camera; 1Seg TV tuner; NFC tech, and the usual other sensors and connections.

Live outside of Japan? It's back to the Galaxy S II for you.

The Only Folding Credit Card Knife I Want in My Wallet

The Creditor, as its called, was designed by knife-maker John Kubasek and recently won an award for Most Innovative Knife Design. It's made of carbon fiber, D2 tool steel, and titanium and weighs just 40 grams. It has a detachable money clip—with the clip, it's the thickness of three credit cards; without it, it's as thick as just one.

They Won’t Know That Tiny Toy Cam On Their Desk is Actually Recording Them

Slide a microSD card into the $95 Mame-Cam from Japanese purveyors-of-USB-craziness Thanko, and be on your way taking sneaky pics and vid on the sly. Video is shot in VGA res at 30fps, and the battery is good for 36 minutes' shooting. You can find it here.

Nokia Giving Developers Free E7 And Nokia WP7 Handsets

Nokia's fighting an uphill battle to retain its community of developers as it switches focus to Windows Phone and Microsoft's Windows Phone Developer Tools from what was a joint Symbian / MeeGo smartphone strategy unified under the Qt development framework. Launchpad members will receive about $1,000 in free hardware in the form of Nokia's new flagship E7 QWERTY slider and a "Nokia WP7 device" just as soon as it's available.

Nokia's also tossing in a few other incentives like free access to the next Nokia World / Nokia Developer Summit, three months free tech support for all Nokia technologies (limited to 10 tickets), a free User Experience evaluation for one app, business development assistance, and help publishing apps on the Ovi store. How to become a developer.

Samsung: "No Need" For 3D Cell Phones, But Good Luck With Them Anyway

Samsung's head of product management in its UK mobile division has gone on record as saying the company has no plans to battle rival LG in the 3D cell phone sector. There's no point or demand and it makes phones needlessly thicker. That's the summary. Here are his actual words:

"We are world leaders in 3D, but we haven't seen a need for 3D on mobiles as yet ... we just don't see [3D] is needed yet—good luck to the innovators though, it will be interesting to see if it works, and if it does you'll see a response from Samsung quickly"

  

NEC Busts Out An Android Netbook, The LifeTouch Note

NEC has debuted its first Android netbook, the humbly-named LifeTouch Note, in Japan. Spec-wise, the Note runs Android 2.2, has an NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU, up to 8GB of memory, a 7-inch backlit (800 x 480 resolution) resistive touchscreen LCD, GPS, WiFi, SD and SDHC slots, and a 2 megapixel webcam. There will also be a 3G variety for a little extra cash, of course. Other than that, there's no word of when this will be available in Japan, but we do know that it start at around $540.

 

 

Batman, Robin, Joker and Catwoman Shrunken Down to USB Collectables

Do you like Batman? Robin? What about USB sticks? Well, now you can have both in one awesome package. These newly released jump-drives arrived at the International Toy Fair -- they're actually quite detailed in design. The flash drives will cost you a pretty penny if you want more storage -- a 2GB dongle is $20 while the 16GB version is $60. If you're a DC Comics junkie and think that the company has sold out, ask yourself this: why so serious?

This Is The First And Only iPhone 4 Case To Meet Military Specifications

If you want to protect your shiny iPhone 4 from the harshest conditions known to man, you may not have a better option than the Ballistic HC.

The $50 case went through a myriad of tests for drop damage, vibration, extreme temperatures, humidity and dust to gain certification. It also has connector seals, water-resistant meshes and tough lenses to make sure that dust, dirt and other harmful materials don't damage your phone.

The cases are available for both iPhone 4s, some Blackberry Curve models and the HTC Evo. 

 

 

Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac OS Goes Gold, Hits The Mac App Store

It's been available since October in beta form, but Microsoft has just turned its Windows Phone 7 Connector product to a shiny shade of gold, giving Mac owners a solid (if not Zune-free) option for hooking up their Windows Phones without firing up Boot Camp. There aren't any new features in the latest build worth noting, so you'll get the same options as before: media synchronization, iTunes compatibility, and support for Windows Phone firmware updates, it's now in the Mac App Store.

Fuel Cells Get Stronger, Potentially Cheaper With Graphene, ITO

As the sustainable Juggernaut of fuel cell vehicles (FCV) powers ever forward, a group of scientists are cooking up ways to make the alternative energy source more durable and even cheaper. By combininggraphene -- think pencil lead -- and indium tin oxide (ITO) nanoparticles, the team produced a catalytic material that is both stronger and more chemically active than the usual catalytic combo. Fuel cells typically use a chemical catalyst like platinum, sitting atop a base of black carbon or metal oxides, to break down oxygen and hydrogen gases, creating water in the process -- thing is, carbon is easily eroded by the resulting water, and metal oxides, while more stable, are less conductive. 

Using graphene -- which because of its porousness erodes less quickly -- in combination with the stable ITO and platinum nanoparticles, researchers have created what could be referred to as a super fuel cell -- a stronger, longer lasting, and potentially cheaper version of the alternative energy source. Unfortunately, without enoughhydrogen filling stations, these super fuel cells won't come to anyone's rescue anytime soon.

 

 

Intel Core i7-990X Stealthily Hits Shelves, Origin PC Overclocks One To A Lap-melting 4.6GHz

These days it's less about the megahertz and more about the cores, but custom PC maker Origin isn't leaving either benchmark untouched. It's taken the as-yet-unannounced six-core, 3.46GHz Intel Core i7-990X processor and pushed it up to 4.6GHz -- a full 200 hertz more than the company's previous hotness, a 4.4GHZ Core i7-980X. 

The 990X is now available in the company's desktops as well as theEON-17 laptop -- which is honestly pushing the boundaries of lapablity. You'll find the Core i7-990X at the likes of Mwave and Newegg for what sure is a perfectly reasonable $1,050 right now.

Qualcomm's Ultrasonic Pen Demo Transcribes From Paper To Device

The pen can be equipped with an actual ink pen or a simple nub, and there's a battery-powered transceiver inside. Using standard, off-the-shelf microphones on a mobile device, your future phone or tablet could pick up vibrations from the pen with a radius of around 30 centimeters.

Underlying Epos software is used to convert vibration and coordinate information into text, and from there, any 'ole text app can be used to field the results. It's a fairly impressive feat, and there's some pretty obvious usage case scenarios here -- this could easily reinvent the art of note taking in class, where those who prefer to jot down reminders on paper will be able to log those same bullet points on their laptop as they scribble.

 

 

Disposable 'Fleshkus' Drives Ensure Your Memories Some Day Hit The Dump

We're a little less of a disposable society than we used to be, but that's not to say we wouldn't embrace an opportunity to get back into our formerly carefree and wasteful ways. This concept spotted over at Art Lebedev, designed by Alexei Lyapunov and Lena Ehrlich, could get us there, eight or 16GB thumb drivesprinted on cardboard and produced so inexpensively that you can simply tear one off, scribble on it, then give away to friends to share files -- just a concept at this point, but this vision of tomorrow seems awfully likely to us.

One of Apple’s iPhone 5 Prototypes Has A Hardware Keyboard?

Apple leaks say that there are three different prototypes being tested for the next iPhone. The weirdest one seems to be one that looks like an iPhone 4, but has a case that slides out to reveal a hardware keyboard. The slide-out mechanism sounds similar to the Keyboard Buddy, is pretty unlikely, since Apple has pushed the touchscreen-only train so hard the past few years.

The other two prototypes are said to be exteriorly similar to the current-gen, maybe just 1/3 smaller. If the rumors are right, we shouldn't expect a huge aesthetic change, just improvements like an 8-megapixel camera and an upgraded battery.

It's also interesting to note that there are three different prototypes at this stage of the game (February). It could be that Apple still hasn't made up their mind about which unit to release. If this were April and closer to when they needed to test the final design more thoroughly, we'd guess that two of those three prototypes are just decoys, made to throw people off from what the real iPhone is, to avoid what happened with the iPhone 4 last year. Perhaps that's what's happening already?

Sonim XP3300 Force Claims Insane Ruggedness, Longest Talk Time In The World

The Force has a unique claim: it alleges to offer the longest talk time of any cellphone in the world at 20 to 24 hours, which can be traded in for 20 to 24 hours of continuous GPS tracking, along with 800 hours of standby. Sonim hangs on to its ruggedness chops by casting the Force in a fiberglass shell with 1.5 millimeters of Gorilla Glass over the display, all adding up to an IP-68-rated device that can withstand a two-meter drop onto concrete, two meters of submersion in wastewater (yes, not water, but wastewater), and temperatures ranging from 20 below zero to 55 degrees Celsius (-4 to 131 degrees Fahrenheit). Pricing and availability are yet to be announced.

 

 

Power Gadgets Using Nothing But Water

PowerTrekk hasn't revealed the price of its portable fuel cell/battery back combo charger, but if it's fair I might just have to scoop one up for my next camping trip. Let's hope I never get into the difficult quandary of deciding what to do with my last tablespoon of water—power my gadgets up, or drink to survive.

Connect devices such as your phone, camera, or gaming device by USB to the PowerTrekk, and it uses the PowerPukk packs and water to power them up. Obviously you don't need to rely on the sun here, making it a good choice for below-ground explorers.  

 

 

Nokia: 'Our first priority is beating Android'

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop on stage at MWC in Barcelona had a few choice things to say about the recent announcement that Nokia will partner with Microsoft to create devices which run Windows Phone software. Elop told the crowd assembled there that Nokia's "first priority is beating Android," and he also took a moment to let everyone know that Nokia is not interested in being the only company producing Windows Phones -- countering some recent exclusivity chatter.  

 

 

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro

Sony Ericsson has just announced the mammoth Xperia Pro Android phone -- a slider device with a full QWERTY keyboard.

The device sports a 3.7-inch, 854 x 480 display (which uses uses the company's Bravia graphics engine technology), runs atop a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, and is sporting SE's customized build of Gingerbread (Android 2.3). The phone has an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash, 2 megapixel front facing camera, and will be available in silver, red, and black.

Microsoft Rolls Out Long, Long-Awaited Windows Update to Disable AutoRun for USB Drives

It's already changed the behavior in Windows 7, and Microsoft has now finally rolled out an update for earlier versions of Windows that prevents a program from executing automatically when a USB drive is plugged into a PC. That behavior has been blamed for the spread of malware in recent years -- including the infamous Conficker worm -- and Microsoft had actually already made it possible to disable the functionality back in November of 2009, albeit only through an update available from its Download Center website. It's now finally pushed the update out through the Windows Update channel, though, which should cause it to be much more broadly deployed (particularly in large organizations). 

Microsoft has decided to simply make it an "important, non-security update" rather than a mandatory update, as it doesn't technically see AutoRun as a "vulnerability" -- it was by design, after all. That means you'll have to look for the option in Windows Update and check it off to install it -- if you choose, you can also re-enable it at anytime with a patch.

 

 

For the First Time In Human History We Have a View of the Entire Sun

NASA was only able to directly view the Earth-facing side of the Sun. We could see solar storms as they happened, but not necessarily as they developed. Now, thanks to STEREO, we can see all sides simultaneously.

Our limited view was due to the fact that the Sun's roughly 27-day rotation hid the far side from our current crop of observational instruments, like the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. The SDO and its companion the Michelson Doppler Imager, while invaluable, can only produce a reconstruction of the activity on the far side of the Sun.

In a technologically-dependent world such as ours, this limited view was dangerous. Solar storms and coronal mass ejections, commonplace in our solar system, could easily build on the unmonitored far side of the Sun before launching toward Earth to knock out our satellites and on-world electronics. We could be, and have been, caught unaware.

To better prepare for these storms, NASA launched STEREO in 2006. Short for the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, this pair of spacecraft follows Earth's orbit—one ahead and one behind—to offer unprecedented views of our life-giving Sun. As of today, they've finally reached a point along our orbit that gives a full 360-degree view of the Sun:

The current mission will continue for another eight years before STEREO A and B switch places on the far side of the Sun, and begin again.