The Original Kindle Was So Ugly Because of the BlackBerry

Looking back at the Kindle's history, that original Kindle was pretty rip your eyes out ugly, huh? An odd shape with quirky buttons and even stranger scroll wheel...God who thought of that? Apparently, RIM. Jeff Bezos loved his Blackberry so much he based the Kindle's design off of his favorite gadget.

A hardware designer on the first Kindle told the NY Times Bits Blog that:

"Jeff Bezos would come into our design meetings and say he loved his BlackBerry and the ease with which he could find e-mails and respond to people. That's why the first Kindle was so boxy, had the funky square keyboard and that strange scroll wheel on the side; it was all inspired by Jeff's BlackBerry."

Which is incredibly funny now because the Amazon Kindle Fire looks exactly like a Blackberry Playbook (because it is), though I'm 99.9% sure that the Playbook can't possibly be Bezo's favorite gadget anymore. Either way, it's funny to see that companies were once inspired by RIM and how now everything's just slate after slate after slate.

Happy 40th Birthday, Disney World!

Today marks the 40th birthday of the largest, most visited amusement park in the world, Walt Disney World. Part of Walt Disney's dream for the theme park was a planned community where people could live with the technology of the future, today. Although that dream was never literallyrealized, the spirit of technology runs strong throughout the park. Disney World has always been about creating the most magical experience possible with the most cutting edge technology available.

Paris Rolls Out a Fleet of Rentable Electric Runabouts

While Paris isn't nearly as god-awful as Mexico City in terms of traffic, it's by no means a commuter's Shangri-La. So, Parisian officials are testing a new fleet of electric four-seaters to ease its congestion woes.

The concept of shared-vehicle rentals isn't exactly new and is already establishing itself here in the US but this vehicle-sharing scheme is a first for the City of Light.

The initial two-month pilot program will allow enrolled members to rent one of 66 Autolib Bluecars for up to 30 minutes at a time for about four to eight euros. Membership fees for the program range from 10 euros a day to 144 euros a year. If the program gains popularity, the 66 currently available vehicles (and their 33 charging stations) could expand out to a total of 3,000 vehicles with an excess of 1,000 stations by the end of 2012, according to Paris' Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

The initial set of vehicles were supplied by entrepreneur Vincent Bollore (pictured above) and the program itself is being managed by Autolib, the same firm that maintains Paris' public bike fleet. "We want to persuade people to shift from the concept of owning a car to that of using a car," Autolib General Manager Morald Chibout told Reuters.

 

 

MadCatz now Shipping Tritton Detonator Headset, Official Xbox 360 Stereo Sound for $80

PS3 owners have been sportin' their own official gaming headset for a few weeks, and now -- after months of teasing -- Mad Catz is finally granting Xbox 360 owners a similar privilege. The company's announced that its Tritton / Microsoft co-branded Detonator Stereo USB gaming headset is available and shipping, priced at $80. Positioned as the first of a trio of its upcoming headsets -- including its wireless brethren, the stereo Devastator and Dolby 7.1 Warhead -- the Detonator keeps it to the FPS-pwning essentials. The cans are loaded with massive 50mm drivers and along its cord you'll find an inline remote for adjusting game / chat volume, voice monitoring and mic muting. Impressively, aside from its detachable boom mic, the inline controller is also removeable, allowing you plug straight into your PMP when you're done trash talkin' on Xbox Live, scheduled to ship this holiday season.

 

 

Kodak Is on the Verge of Being Worth Zero Dollars

Have you taken a look at Kodak's stock today? Get a good look while you can, because it's shitting the bed worse than a disemboweled E. coli patient-already down 60%, to less than a dollar. This is how it ends.

We've known the company's in dire financial shape, but this looks like the beginning of the crew abandoning ship. You can't even order off the Dollar Menu with a share of Eastman Kodak. At a certain point that I doubt is too far off, there's not going to be any value left. Their lawyers might soon be charging up their camera phones for bankruptcy court.

 

 

Symbian. Today, Officially Passed the Torch

After placing all bets on Windows Phone, Stephen Elop announced that Nokia would slowly phase out its OG operating system, Symbian. Today, it's officially passed the torch, handing over all Symbian-related duties to Accenture, a consulting and outsourcing firm. 2,300 former Nokia employees will also be repurposed, getting a new name on their paycheck as they tend to the ill-fated OS. The Finnish mainstay says the arrangement will last until at least 2016, and plans to continually roll out updates during this time. Not everyone is hanging on another five years though, as it seems that at least 500 employees have jumped ship or found new gigs within the company since the original announcement predicting 2,800 reassignments. 

 

 

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Packing 1.2GHz Dual-core CPU and Coated in Honeycomb

Samsung has just unveiled a rather unexpected addition to its fleet of tablets, with the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. Available in both 16GB and 32GB varieties, this new slate is fueled by a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb and features a seven-inch LCD with 1024 x 600 resolution. It also packs a two megapixel front-facing camera, along with a three megapixel shooter that supports 720p video, boasts 1GB of RAM and ships with Sammy's TouchWiz UI baked-in. 

In terms of connectivity, you'll find support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3G with 21Mbps HSPA and the usual smattering of Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS capabilities. In addition, this little guy offers WiFi 802.11, along with support for channel bonding and apt-X Codec for Bluetooth. Pricing has yet to be announced, but the 7.0 Plus is slated to hit Indonesia and Austria by the end of October, before rolling out internationally. 

 

 

Chrome’s About to Knock Firefox to Third Place

Internet Explorer, the old, fat, mad king of the online kingdom still reigns uncontested. But beneath him, a power struggle between Chrome and Firefox, the latter of which has clung to the number two spot. But that's about to change.

According to internet stats firm StatCounter, Chrome's grown in use by 50%—and is on track to take the silver medal by December. StatCounter is just one company among many that do the exact same thing, so these figures aren't ironclad. But the trend definitely is—IE languishes, and Firefox hasn't done much to excite us in a while. Chrome, on the other hand, at least has Google beating its drum; a luxury afforded by, you know, being owned by megarich Google. The long term trend here—emphasis on long—is the gradual decline of IE. Eventually, I'd expect Firefox and Chrome to take the number one and two spots. It's just a matter of when, and who'll be the new king.

The Panasonic Lumix Phone 101P Might Not Suck at Being a Camera or a Phone

Oh Japan, why do you always get the coolest stuff first? This phone looks amazing. It's like a Panasonic Lumix camera and an Android phone had a baby. And it's waterproof?

This thing is going to pack a 13.2MP CMOS Lumix sensor. In case you don't know, the image sensors in Lumix cameras are pretty great. It's also going to have a 4-inch QHD LCD screen with 960×540 resolution and a 1Ghz TI OMAP4430 dual-core processor. It's waterproof, like all gadgets should be, it runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)

Traditionally, the cameras on phones have been not so great, and it's no wonder; trying to smash a camera into something as thin as a phone creates a ton of challenges and severely limits the size of the image sensor and the lens. No camera phone will ever replace your SLR, but if Panasonic gets this right, they might just be able to replace your point-and-shoot. As someone who hates having several large items in his pockets, I'm really rooting for them to knock this one out of the park.

No mention of pricing or if this will be available stateside (or anywhere outside of Japan).

 

 

Another Dead Satellite Is Blindly Plummeting to Earth

So apparently dead satellites blithely falling from the sky is a thing now. After last week's UARS debacle, the now-defunct German Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT) is scheduled tocrash to Earth in late October or early November.

The ROSAT was originally an X-Ray observatory developed by Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom and launched in 1990. Its design life was 18 months, but it functioned fully through 1994, and was only shut down for good in 1999. And now it's coming to kill us all.

For its part, the German Aerospace Agency promises to provide frequent updates, similar to NASA during the UARS scare. Though apparently the ROSAT's orbit means it could land anywhere from Canada to South America, which sounds totally reasonable and not at all incredibly horrifying. And the odds of its debris crushing a human being are a less optimistic 1-in-2000, compared to UARS's 1-in-3200.

The danger period is still a pretty wide window, so you certainly have time to get your affairs in order before you're crushed to death but a 2.4-ton molten German satellite.

 

 

Twitter Is Ready for iOS 5

We know Twitter will be integrated into the core of iOS 5. That's a big deal. So what is the SF startup doing to prepare for the onslaught of traffic they're sure to face? Well, nothing.

According to Twitter's VP of Engineering Michael Abbot, they're already pretty comfortable with the state of their current infrastructure, and feel like the upgrades and improvements they've made to their servers over the past year is built to handle any extra action iOS 5 will throw at it.

"During the last nine months, there's been more infrastructure changes at Twitter than there had been in the previous five years at the company," said Abbott, who joined Twitter in May 2010. "So that whether it be the death of bin Laden, or someone announces a pregnancy, we can handle those issues and you're not seeing a fail whale."

  

ASUS TOUGH 7-inch Wwater and Dust Resistant Honeycomb Tablet Lands in Japan

ASUS has revealed a new seven-inch tablet that's water and dust resistant -- perfect for a spot of bath-time browsing or... desert rallying. The ASUS TOUGH-ETBW11AA has rubberized bezel and strips across the back, contributing to the substantial 22.2mm profile, but that hefty frame can survive drops from the heady height of 76cm. Aside from its tough-guy credentials, there's a 1280 x 800 screen, five megapixel camera, Tegra 2 dual-core 1GHz processor, WiMAX connection and the staple WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS medley. It comes with 16GB of well-protected storage, but there's room for more via microSD. For those seeking a slate that'll survive the bumps and scrapes of the business world -- and not look ridiculous -- it'll be available to enterprise customers of Japanese carrier KDDI this November.

 

 

Ferroelectric Transistor Memory Could run on 99 Percent Less Power Than Flash

We've been keeping an optimistic eye on the progress of Ferroelectric Random Access Memory (FeRAM) for a few years now, not least because it offers the tantalizing promise of 1.6GB/s read and write speeds and crazy data densities. But researchers at Purdue University reckon we've been looking in the wrong place this whole time: the real action is with their development of FeTRAM, which adds an all-important 'T' for 'Transistor'. Made by combining silicon nanowires with a ferroelectric polymer, Purdue's material holds onto its 0 or 1 polarity even after being read, whereas readouts from capacitor-based FeRAM are destructive. Although still at the experimental stage, this new type of memory could boost speeds while also reducing power consumption by 99 percent. Quick, somebody file a patent. Oh, they already did.

 

 

YouTube to Launch ‘Channels’ That Are Like TV Channels

Our favorite Internet place for watching the stars of tomorrow and the stars of yesterday is reportedly preparing to launch at least a dozen new channels in 2012. Unlike Vevo and other existing "channels" that offer whatever unscheduled clips, these new channels will be just like TV channels, with scheduled programs and, one hopes, seemingly endless commercial breaks. Apparently Google, which owns YouTube, wants to pull folks away from their televisions and toward their computer screens? As long as people are staring at some kind of screen, everything will be okay.

Where Were You When Google Was Born 13 Years Ago Today?

Anyone notice the party that is going on at Google's website today? In case you forgot, September 27th is the date Google chose for their birthday.

It's an arbitrary date selected in 2005 to celebrate Google's September milestones. Google first registered Google.com on September 15, 1997 and the company was incorporated on September 7, 1998. Instead of either one of those two dates, Google selected the 27th because they're Google and they can.

It's hard to believe the search engine is now officially entering the troubled teens.

 

 

The iPhone 5 Event Is Officially October 4th

Well, we pretty much knew it already, but now it's Super Apple Official: the next iPhone will show up on Tuesday, October 4th at Apple HQ.

It's a nice looking invitation, ain't it? The icons are perfect: the date is the date, of course, the Maps icon is where to show up (Apple's campus), the clock icon provides the time, (10 AM PST), and the phone icon? That, paired with "Let's talkiPhone" might be a clue that Assistant—Apple's rumored talk-control iOS feature—is going to take a big chunk of the spotlight. We'll see! Start saving your pennies—it could be on shelves only a couple weeks later.

 

 

T-Mobile reveals HTC Amaze 4G

Europe may be enjoying the Sensation XE, but today at Mobilize, T-Mobile's announced that it's getting the exclusive on HTC's Amaze 4G ($259.99 on a two-year contract), while also confirming the hardware whispers. With its 4.3-inch qHD screen and 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, it's one of the first smartphones able to connect to T-Mobile's upgraded 4G (HSPA+ 42Mbps) network and is the first HTC phone featuring an NFC chip.

Pushing its photography credentials, the Amaze 4G's eight megapixel shooter can record 1080p video, with a dedicated camera button (and even a direct-to-camcorder button) to make the most of the handset's promised "zero shutter lag." Its also got that backlit sensor found in its sibling, the myTouch 4G Slide. On the software side, it's running Android 2.3.4, coated in the inevitable Sense veneer and supporting the likes of HTC Watch and T-Mobile TV. Will it be enough to steal the network's king of Android crown away from the Galaxy S II when it ships October 12th? 

 

 

Fujitsu-Toshiba Unveils Waterproof Phone With 13 Megapixel CMOS Sensor

Toshiba may be bowing out of its mobile joint venture with Fujitsu, but not without bestowing this Gingerbread-munching flamingo upon the Japanese market. The Wimax-enabled Arrows Z ISW11F, unveiled today by Japan's KDDI au, is juiced by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, sports a 4.3-inch 1280 x 720 LCD and, most notably, rocks a 13 megapixel CMOS sensor. It also features a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera and supports 1080p video, along with your standard suite of 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities. Oh, and to top it all off, it's waterproof, too. No word yet on pricing, but KDDI plans to bring this bubblegum to the Japanese market sometime in November.

Samsung's Omnia W: Mango, 3.7-inch Super AMOLED, 1.4GHZ processor

Samsung just took the wraps off its Omnia W, which looks like a non-US variant of the Focus Flash. The handset will debut in Italy and start spreading across the Old World and Latin America from next month. It'll sport Windows Phone 7.5 out of the box, a 3.7-inch 800x480 Super AMOLED display, 1.4GHz processor, VGA webcam on the front and rear 5MP shooter with 720p video recording. Iit'll go head-to-head with HTC's 3.8-inch Radar when the War of the Mangoes finally kicks off.

 

 

Facebook Cookie Tracks Users Even When They’re Logged Out

It's no secret that Facebook and privacy have had some issues. Take today, for example. Thanks to a modified cookie, Facebook knows where you are online—even when you're not logged into Facebook.

So says hacker Nik Cubrilovic anyway, after he discovered during a series of tests that Facebook alters its tracking cookie code the moment you log out, instead of deleting them. Then, when a user being tracked in this manner heads to a web site that contains a Facebook button or widget, the browser continues to send "personally identifiable information" back to Facebook.

"With my browser logged out of Facebook, whenever I visit any page with a Facebook like button, or share button, or any other widget, the information, including my account ID, is still being sent to Facebook," Cubrilovic wrote in a blog post describing the find today. More here.