Hey kids! Want to know what we really, really need? Another music download service! From HP, of all people! They’re pre-loading Omnifone’s MusicStation service on laptops sold in Europe from today, with a month’s access to the music catalog costing 10 Euros (around $14). Don’t you just wish you could smack the person at HP around the chops who suggested they could take on iTunes with this hair-brained idea? [Reuters]
If I had a backyard big enough for a home office, the MercuryHouseOne is what I’d be saving all my pocket money up for. It’s a mobile solar-powered lounge, hard and space-age on the outside but warm and soft inside.
It was shown off recently at the Venice Biennale art exhibition by the Architecture and Vision design firm, and while it’s not on sale I hope Ikea or another retailer can rip it off, err I mean, take inspiration from it. It’s made from Italian Carrara marble, and the outer top half is covered with solar panels for powering up the inside. Check out the gallery below for more pics of this awesome space age playroom. [Architecture and Vision via Inhabitat]
If you thought a boogie board was a salt-water vessel that lets you skim the waves, think again. Improv Electronics‘ Boogie Board is a pressure-sensitive tablet that uses a watch battery for power. It’s like a digital blackboard!
The Reflex LCD doesn’t need any power to keep the scribbles and drawings on the screen, with the watch battery only being put into use when the screen is erased. The watch battery will last for 50,000 erases, which makes the $29.97 board cost 15 times less for each erase than a normal sheet of paper. It’s ideal for kids, or perhaps artists who care about the long-term saving associated with the Boogie Board. [Improv Electronics via CrunchGear]
Wouldn’t it be great if we could recycle all those old clothes lying in the back of our wardrobes, turning them into flexible batteries? By dipping fabric into an ink comprised of carbon nanotubes, their electrical properties are transferred over.
It’s being worked on by some Stanford University scientists, and follows their efforts in turning paper electrical. Because of the nature of fabric, it’s still flexible and can even be washed in water without affecting the carbon nanotubes residing in the fibers.
At its present state, it can’t do much, but the Stanford University bods will be working on it some more to actually turn it into a functioning battery, or even solar panel apparel. If they can make a hoodie that charges your smartphone as you’re in the sun, that’d solve a lot of problems. [BBC]
Count out the calories of the delicious cake you’re about to digest, with some retro cake molds. Each pack comes with seven microwave-friendly silicone molds, which lets you literally cook by numbers. [SuckUK via SwissMiss]
The MacBook Air hasn’t been refreshed since last June, but even then it was a pretty minor upgrade. We’ll have to keep on waiting for a newer model apparently, if a shortage in ULV Core i3 and i5 processors is anything to go by. [Hardmac via Slashgear]
Norway already boasts the world’s first floating wind turbine, and is apparently the windiest coastline in Europe, making it perfect for even more turbines. Or a turbine city, like On Office‘s proposal which shows a stunning vision of the future.
The Turbine City concept from the architectural firm not only harnesses all that valuable wind, it also shows a smart tourism scheme housing a hotel, spa and museum. The offshore wind turbines would be connected together like an archipelago of islands, and would provide a base for passing sailors and holidaymakers. If this is the future, I’ve got to find myself a cryogenic freezer. [On Office via Designboom]
Yet more to-ing and fro-ing about the Windows Mobile 7 launch, this time with Digitimes pointing at a Mobile World Congress announcement of an end-of-2010 launch. It’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but they’re piling up thick ‘n fast now.
HTC hasn’t been too sure on whether the HD2 will be upgraded with WinMo 7, but there’s talk of a new HTC phone in town—the Obsession, or Diamond3, which Boy Genius Report believes will be offered on AT&T and T-Mobile. LG is also readying a phone for the big Microsoft push, called the Apollo—which WMPowerUser and Let’s Go Digital are claiming will have an enormous amount of spec.
It’s all pretty dubious, to say the least—a WinMo phone with a 10-megapixel camera and 720p video recording? Let’s Go Digital has published a picture of the supposed device, which looks just like the Viewty Smart running Windows Mobile 6.5. I honestly don’t know what to think about Windows 7 anymore, just make it all go away while I lie down and whimper for a while. [Digitimes]
Fox News. When they’re not talking of celebrity chests, they’re opining about Apple rumors! They got next week’s event date wrong, but now they’re quoting sources saying Apple “is in talks” with both Verizon and AT&T for the tablet.
Supposedly there’ll be two versions of the tablet, one offered on CDMA with Verizon’s and the other on AT&T’s GSM network. Interestingly, they suggest that Apple is still having those discussions, with nothing tied down firmly yet—which could certainly add weight to the speculation that the tablet won’t actually hit shelves until June. But hey, it’s Fox News. How ’bout those celebrity chests, eh? [Fox News]
It’s not the Android phone that Asustek’s president was bragging about yesterday, but the WinMo 6.5.3 model we heard whispers of actually looks nicer than expected, if this Taiwanese pre-order picture extravaganza is anything to go by.
The listed specs are exactly what Asustek president Benson Lin promised they’d be, namely a 3.5-inch WVGA resistive touchscreen, 5.0-megapixel camera, Qualcomm 7224 600MHz processor and GPS functionality. At least we now know that it’s also sporting 512MB RAM and the same again for internal storage, with a microSD card slot for extra back-up funsies.
As is typical with these Garmin-ASUS collaborations, the M10 will be tailored for drivers and will come bundled with a car holder. It’ll be $435 when it goes on sale in Taiwan, in early February just like Lin said. As you can see from the branding on the base of the phone, it’s under the Nuvifone range—looks like they haven’t been too scarred by the reaction to the G60 and M20, then. [ASUS Taiwan via Slashphone via Engadget]
It was sadly predictable, especially after the exact same thing happened last October when Google released their free turn-by-turn navigation. Cheer up though TomTom and Navigon—at least you’ve got iPhone apps, right? Oh. [Yahoo Finance via TechRadar]
For all four minutes and 34 seconds of the video below, I just zoned out listening to the relaxing noise of wind passing through the Winduino II‘s Bluetooth board. I fell into a kind of blogger coma.
The Winduino II is made from an Adruino BT Bluetooth board, and is inspired by the Aeolian harp that was used in ye olden days. Hung outside, the wind makes the various sensors tinkle with harmonious sounds of music, and a USB port keeps it charged up if the solar panels on top aren’t soaking up enough rays. [Fascination Workshop via Matrixsynth via MAKE]
The Winduino II from Fascination Workshop on Vimeo.
After giving Archos 5 owners the Android 1.6 update and then taking it back again cruelly, Archos has rereleased Donut (with new Quick Search feature) for the masses. [Engadget]
Made in under 10 minutes for less than two bucks, this adjustable smartphone car mount was created by one very frustrated Scion XB driver, fed up of not being able to find a suitable cradle.
Using some PVC parts picked up at a hardware store, plastic coated wire and adhesive-backed craft foam, Instructables user NiftyCurly constructed the cradle you can see above, which he describes as being a “rock solid, quick and dirty $2 mount.” [Instructables]
Weighing just 3.5kg, it’s small enough to fit in your hand like a little kitten. It’s about as powerful as other Dysons, so sucking up all those cat hairs shouldn’t be too much of a problem for the City DC26.
It’s apparently been in the works for five years, according to vacuum god James Dyson:
“It took us five years to painstakingly compress and rebuild every single component before we had a machine that was a third smaller than its predecessor, yet could still tackle dirt like bigger machines.”
On sale from this weekend in the UK, it’ll cost £249.99 and will be available in “satin blue.” No word yet on worldwide availability, apart from Japan where it’s already on sale, though when it launches in the US we’ll let you know. [Dyson]
A year ago, the satnav people at Garmin made an alliance with Asustek, the computer people. A while later, the G60 and M20 went on sale. In October, we branded the G60 with a ‘DO NOT BUY’ review tag.
So why do I think Benson Lin’s (the president of Asustek’s mobile division) boasts of a new Garmin-Asustek phone are worth mentioning? Well, the fact that it’s running on Android has something to do with it. There have been murmurings about an Android device for some time now, but with Lin claiming we’ll be seeing it at Mobile World Congress next month, it’s sounding a lot more realistic.
The Nuvifone range of phones (all two of them, so far) made by the two companies haven’t exactly fared well in tests. In our own review, we moaned about the resistive touchscreen, lack of homescreen button, faulty accelerometer, poor browser, shitty camera and strange interface, and that wasn’t even half of it.
A phone running Android would certainly help clear up some of those problems, but obviously hardware will still be an issue if Garmin and Asus can’t see fit to put a homescreen button on the device.
In addition to the Android phone, Asustek’s going to reveal a Windows Mobile 6.5.3 phone called the M10 at Mobile World Congress. It’ll have a 3.5-inch WVGA resistive touchscreen, 5.0-megapixel camera, run on a Qualcomm 7224 600MHz processor and surprise surprise, will also have GPS. The M10 will go on sale in Taiwan in just a few weeks time, for the equivalent of about $435.
Lin is already talking sales figures, despite this mysterious Android phone not being shown off yet—they’re hoping to ship one million Android and Windows Mobile devices, with as many as five models expected to launch this year. There goes our notion that this relationship would just be a passing fad. [Digitimes]
This isn’t just a treehouse. This is an actual man’s home, in Portland, Oregon.
Natural wood ceilings and floors, curved edges, round windows, plenty of wooden beams, it’s a naturalist’s dream. And possibly a naturist’s too, with all those windows. [The Wilkinson Residence via Giz Mag]
Image Credit: Cameron Neilson
Could this be evidence that Apple’s little touchscreen portable thingamybob won’t be called the iSlate? Developer iBuiltThis may have a case on his hands if Apple rips the name off, seen as how his app has been available since November 2008.
The app is described as a “digital clapper board that can help video enthusiasts add a touch of Hollywood magic to their videos,” and while the last update was May 2009 it’s still available to download now for $2.99. OR maybe Apple uploaded the iSlate app to the App Store themselves, hoping to throw everyone off the scent? Yeh, I’m probably watching too many X-Files eps. [MobileEnt]
With phones, cameras and computers packing projectors nowadays, it’s only fair for HP to want in on the portable projector scene considering they’ve conquered the attractive home office projector market. Attractive for PowerPoint professionals, anyway.
According to the Vice President and manager of personal computing systems group at HP Taiwan, Monty Wong, HP’s working on a tablet PC and notebook launch for this year, both with integrated pico-projectors.
While they haven’t shown off any proper tablet prototypes (like their rival Dell has, with the Mini 5), if you cast your mind back a few years you might remember HP Touchsmart tablet PCs were all the rage for a while. It was certainly fun playing Solitaire on them with a stylus, anyway.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard whisperings of a tablet stuffed with projector components. Apple’s impending tablet/iSlate was rumored to have a projector, but that idea has pretty much been discarded now due to cost repercussions.
Wong claims HP is looking at placing a projector at the top of a laptop screen, similar in location to where a webcam is normally placed. A couple of years ago, ASUS showed off a prototype just like it, though we haven’t seen anything since. Raise the PowerPoint flag, children—shit’s about to go down! [Digitimes]
Following Google’s momentous news last October about free turn-by-turn navigation on Android phones, Nokia’s just now abolished the price-tag for 74 countries. That’s 73 more than Google offers it to. And even better news—it’s available now.
You’ll need a Nokia phone with Ovi Maps (which runs on Navteq’s digital mapping, who Nokia bought out in 2008), for getting free drive and walk navigation; maps updates; and events, Lonely Planet and Michelin guides. Currently it’s only available on the X6, N97 Mini, E72, E55, E52, 6730 Classic, 6710 Navigator, 5800 XpressMusic, 5800 Navigation Edition and the 5230.
If you’ve got one of those phones, hit up Nokia over here and download it now. Let us know how you get on with it—supposedly it works offline? [Nokia Maps via Nokia Conversations]
