Hottest Electronic Gadgets

Archive for September, 2009

True, Panasonic’s 103-inch 3D television is more desirable, but Panny’s new 50-incher will be more affordable when it comes time to buy your first 3D set. The 1080p TV requires viewers to wear special specs, naturally, in this case, Panasonic’s active “shutter” glasses. As the name implies, the lenses switch in sync with the TV so that the right image is seen by the right eye and the left image is seen by the left eye. All that quick image swapping requires new PDP materials and chips to maintain screen brightness. The new prototype will be on display at Ceatec show in Tokyo next week with plans for commercialization in 2010. You know, assuming anyone wants it.

Filed under: Displays

Panasonic’s 50-inch 3D plasma announced, seeks fine family home originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Credit: CNET)

While we’ve been hearing about a possible fall update to the iMac line, including Blu-ray options, for a couple of weeks now, the online rumor mill has now consigned itself to expecting new MacBook laptops as well. And not just any laptops, but the mythical, long-awaited, low-cost …

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What you are looking at here is a) a seminaked stunning blonde in transparent lingerie, b) a great ad for the new Axe Day and Night, c) the best use of SMS technology yet, or d) all of the above.

Click image to enlarge

It is pretty simple and absolutely brilliant: To launch a new deodorant in Uruguay, the Lowe Ginkgo agency in Montevideo created an incomplete ad. The ad showed a purrty neekeed girl in a suggestive pose. It didn’t, however, show any of her naughty bits. Instead, it came with blank spaces and the following text:

To complete this ad send AXE to 2345 after 9 pm.

The message made a server to send a multimedia message to your cellphone with the rest of the ad, so you could admire the complete image. The Mad Men would be proud. [Direct Daily]

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You’re surely aware that your cellphone bleeds radiation into your face the whole time you’re on the phone with your mom, best friend or lover, right? Yes, it’s a fact we try not to think about most of the time, but now there’s a tool out there on the internets for the more reality-facing folks among us. The Environmental Working Group’s launched a website dedicated to rating cellphones on their radiation output alone. Ranking highly (meaning they put out the lowest levels of radiation) are the Motorola RAZR V8, and AT&T’s Samsung Impression. In fact, it seems that Samsung is cranking out the healthiest phones these days! Phones with poor showings includes T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G and the Blackberry Curve 8830. So hit the read link and tell us, how does your phone rate?

[Via bookofjoe]

Filed under: Cellphones

Website rates best and worst cellphones by radiation output levels — how does yours stack up? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, those smart rascals at Microsoft are on a roll. I love their Courier tablet concept, and now they may have found the way to make on-screen multitouch keyboards actually work great–even for touch typists like me.

The problem with screen keyboards is that you actually have to look at …

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Construction on what would become the world’s longest marine causeway, connecting Qatar and Bahrain, is due to begin next year, and what a project it is: We’re talking about a bridge more than 13 miles long, costing around $3 billion.

Somewhat adorably named the Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway, this massive bridge is expected to take around 4.5 years to complete and cost somewhere between $2.3 and $3 billion, but should be a great help for travel between Qatar and Bahrain. The trip currently takes more than four hours and will be reduced to 30 minutes on the bridge, and those in charge expect 10,000 to 20,000 vehicles per day to use it.

For a sense of scale, here’s a chart that compares the bridge to other very large things. Of course, I need a scale chart to tell how big a blue whale is, which sort of defeats the purpose of measuring this bridge in blue whales, but still: This is one large bridge. [Mena Infrastructure via Reddit]

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Hey, thought that $99.99 Amazon deal for a Palm Pre was really snazzy? Well today, Walmart appears to go one better by cutting the smartphone’s price down to a staggering $79.99 (on contract and with mail-in rebate). If prices keep going this low, you can probably expect the Pixi to show up for about nothing (zero, zip, zilch) sooner rather than later. If you’ve been looking for a deal to get into the Pre, this is it… but too bad if you dropped $200 a few months ago.

[Via everythingpre]

Filed under: Cellphones

Pre drops to $79.99 at Walmart originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Meet the latest e-book reader: the Irex DR800SG.

(Credit: Irex)

Didn’t get around to reading every word on Crave this week? Luckily, our trusty Crave roundup can help catch you up on some of the big stories you missed while you were doing other, more important things (though <…

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Oh, those smart rascals at Microsoft are on a roll. I love their Courier tablet concept, and now they may have found the way to make on-screen multitouch keyboards actually work great—even for touch typists like me.

The problem with screen keyboards is that you actually have to look at the screen to hit the keys correctly. With real keyboards, touch typists have a physical reference to position their hands. That’s why they type blind. With a flat screen keyboard, however, you lose the physical reference frame.

The patent for this screen keyboard, however, uses multitouch technology to automatically align the keys to the position of the hand. Since the keys are always in the same relative position to your fingers, you will always have a physical point of reference: Your own hand. That way, you can blindingly hammer your keys against the screen, knowing that your fingers will always hit the keys they are aiming for.

The patent also details the way this virtual keyboard would appear anywhere on the screen: Just place your hands as you would normally do while typing, and the keyboard will pop up. [USPTO via WMPowerUser]

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It’s not doing anything crazy like lowering the price, but it looks like Mad Catz is at least set to give fighting game fans a few more options when it comes to choosing their peripheral of choice. As usual, the headliner is the company’s Tournament Edition fightstick, which dials things back after the explosion of color on the Comic-Con exclusive edition, but otherwise remains identical inside and out. Those that honed their Street Fighter skills on their SNES or Genesis can also now choose from a new range of fightpads, featuring artwork with your choice of M. Bison, Guile, Zangief, C. Viper, Cammy, or Sagat. No firm release date just yet, but the whole lot should be out sometime this fall for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the fightstick setting you back the usual $149.99, and the fightpads running a considerably more affordable $39.99 apiece.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Mad Catz announces ‘Round Two’ Street Fighter IV fightpads and fightstick originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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