There’s nothing more depressing for a gadget guru than to pick up favourite camera or media player etc… and have it lay dead in the palm of his hand. Diagnosis? A dead battery. Bummer.
It’s really been a given for the past century. Batteries waste. Sure the Duracell bunnies would have us believe otherwise but they do. Even rechargeable batteries which can be found in everything from cameras to electric scooters can die due to being worn out. However, that’s all about to change. A new type of lithium-ion rechargeable battery has been introduced which is said to last over twenty years (around 10,000 charges). Now that’s value for money.
A Japanese company by the name of Eamex have cured the cause (<– link requires a subscription to read) of batteries burning out. With normal rechargeable batteries, the negative electrode deteriorates over use. This new design aims to coat the negative terminal in a special protective film (tin coated resin) which will protect it. This will last a regular user over twenty years.
So in theory, you could have five or six digital cameras but only one pair of batteries! Pretty cool. Expect to see these new batteries later this year.
I’ve actually been keeping my eye on this one for a few weeks now. It’s the up and coming Sony Ericsson Aspen. The reason it caught me eye is threefold. Firstly, it has a touch screen. Secondly, it has a Blackberry-style keypad. And lastly, it’s running WinMob 6.5.3. Oh, and it looks great too!
Now, a video has emerged which shows a Russian or Eastern European guy reviewing the phone. Unfortunately, it’s all in a foreign language but you can still make out some of the great features of the phone. He first shows you the exterior casing and build quality. Then he powers up the phone and takes you through some of the very impressive 6.5.3 menus and functions. The media player and messaging options are displayed in great detail.
Lastly, he compares the device alongside devices from other popular Smartphone manufacturers such as Apple and RIM. Check out the new Sony Ericsson Aspen below.
Less than a month ago, FourSquare, a location based social network commonly used to post your location on Twitter, announced that they were getting an update every second from their users. So that works out at around 600,000 updates per week. Not bad for a small start-up. However, in less than thirty days their user rates have doubled.
They shared with the world yesterday, via a tweet that they were getting over a million updates per week. 1.2 million to be exact.
That is a phenomenal increase in user ratings which most companies can only dream of achieving. I’ve noticed this increase myself on Twitter and am strongly considering using the service. After all, it’s more fun than our standard geo-location tweets, more social and have cool games to go along with it!
A bit of an embarrassment for Mozilla Firefox – and it comes at a a bad time too, right when they’re loosing their dominance in the browser world as Chrome catches up.
Mozilla has been known as a very safe browser as compared to its old enemy, Internet Explorer. In fact, many people used it for just that reason. So the last thing Mozilla needed was reports of Malware in two ad-ons which were available for download from their website.
“Two add-ons in the experimental section of addons.mozilla.org were found to be containing malware,” Mozilla said on its security blog. “These were not originally detected with the anti-malware scanning tools that we have been using. We have since increased the number of scanning tools, and will be taking additional steps to minimize the risk of further incidents.
It is thought that well in excess of 4,000 downloads of the ad-ons have taken place since they were first released in September. So are you one of the thousands of people who inadvertently infected their own machines? Well if you downloaded Sothink 4.0 and all versions of Master Filer then there’s a good chance you are. These installed Win32.LdPinch.gen and Win32.Bitfrose.32.Bitfrose Trojan respectively. So if you have downloaded these, I suggest running a scan of your system ASAP.
As I write this article, and as you read it, thousands of developers are scrambling to update their apps so they’re compatible with the iPad and to make better versions which suit the device. Nobody knew what was going to be in store for the app world with the launch of the iPad the other day. Many expected a Mac laptop without the base. Fortunately for app developers, it’s basically a big iPod touch!
This brings a whole new market to the app world. And a new market needs to be monitored for usage and revenue. Motally, who currently offer remote services for iPhone app developers have said that their service will be extended to include iPad SDK devices. That way, developers will be able to keep track on how popular their app is and what users are doing when on the app. Data which can be taken include page views, time spent using app and when the app is most frequently in use (time of day).
Developers will be able to get daily updates delivered straight to their own iPads or iPhones and can view complete statistics on the Motally website. Currently, the small start-up is quite successful and has helped some big clients keep track of their apps. These include Twitter, Yelp and Verizon.
Finally, VoIP calling has been given an official place on the iPhone after much confusion and anger when several VoIP apps were rejected or restricted by Apple last year.
iCall is a new service which has just been announced for the iPhone 3G and the iPad SDK. This comes just hours after Apple dropped restrictions on VoIP services (maybe in an attempt to sugar coat the iPad given the lack of phone features?).
Despite the ‘Why?’, this is great news for all iPhone users. Skype should now be able to flourish on the iPhone and Google Voice will undoubtedly be given a place in the app store even though it was previously banned and the two companies are now at war with one another.
I’m looking forward to trying out some 3G video conferencing and testing out the quality of VoIP over a 3G network. The fact that the iPad doesn’t have a camera may hold it back in this regard but I guess it’s better than nothing.It’s about time Apple started paying attention to the needs of the customer instead of bowing to every demand of AT&T.
More tablet news now, except this one wasn’t expected by anyone. It’s not too often that you hear of company prototypes being sold for over a grand on the black market, but it appears that it’s just happened.
PC Online managed to get their hands on an early version of Dell’s Tablet which is still in development. It was unmarked on the exterior but a model number under the battery read ‘M01M’.
This leak has confirmed many of our suspicions about the Mini 5.
5 Inch Touch Screen
80×480 resolution
Running Android 1.6 OS
1Ghz of CPU power (not to shabby, Dell)
Wifi
Bluetooth
3G capabilities
Good quality 5Mp camera with a dual-LED flash
A front Facing Camera for video conferencing etc…
and a 1530mAh battery to power the device
So how much does a prototype Dell Mini 5 cost you on the black market? $1,100. But keep in mind that’s on the black market. The actual retail price will be much lower. At least I hope!
More and more people around the world are signing up to Twitter. The service is constantly updating and releasing new features. ‘Lists’ which launched towards the end of 2009 hasn’t really taken off that much but I think Local Trends might just.
Basically, you have the option to take the current trending topics and make it more localised. So if there’s something happening in America which is of no relevance to your area, it won’t be displayed in your Trending Topics because people from your area won’t be tweeting about it. Obviously, big global events such as the Haiti disaster or G8 meetings will attract attention from all over the world, but localised Trending topics can get quite annoying. Twitter sums it up as follows:
“Twitter trends began as a way to shed light on popular conversations. It’s interesting to know that one topic can now spread across the world in real-time, and Trends help us discover which of those topics are paramount on a global scale.”
“The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation, but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you? Or the slight differences in the way Californians perceive an event, like Obama’s election victory, versus those São Paulo, Brazil?” said @jennadawn on the Twitter blog. today.
They also say that the new feature will be monitored and improved through their API and via feedback. Nice to know Twitter cares about small European and Asian countries, as well as the North American market. Also, if you happen to live in a big country such as the US or France, you can localise the feature further by selecting cities instead of countries!
The world of smart phones is flourishing. With that prosperity comes the smart phone wars with each rival manufacturer trying to get their share of the market. The main players are companies like Apple, Nokia and of course, Microsoft.
The Windows mobile range has been around for many years – originally as black and white PAs then eventually catching up with Blackberry. But their technology has become dated and has only ever been modified and given updates – now Microsoft say they’re recoding their entire thing and hope to get WinMo 7 out in the world by September.
They say that they’re working towards finalizing the coding for Win 7.0.0 by the summer months. LG have recently leaked that they will be launching a Windows 7 mobile phone in September, so this is starting to look very promising indeed.
In reality though, it’s about time Microsoft caught up. This overhaul is long over due and I’m sure it will be massively anticipated as September approaches.
Asimo has be hailed as the world’s cutest robot. He has been in development by Honda now for over five years and has evolved repeatedly from his original state which restricted him to basic, pre-programmed tasks.
Now, they’ve taught him how to dance and sing. Actually, they’ve taught him how to ‘learn’ how to dance which is crucial when making humanoid robots.
When a song is played,it is analysed by Asimo and then signals generated from the beat of the music are sent to his limbs which enable him to move in a fluid motion – just like humans dance.
The singing is done much in the same manner. Words are recorded and analysed. As are the pitch and tone of the voice. Asimo will then be able to convert this into his own voice and sing along with the song!
While this may seem like a pretty basic task, I must stress that the important aspect of this is that the robot learns how to do this for itself. Nobody pre-programmed words, songs and movements for it.
Maybe in a few years we’ll have thousands of Asimos serving us tea and getting us the newspaper without any aspirations for world domination and the extinction of their creators.
There’s nothing more depressing for a gadget guru than to pick up favourite camera or media player etc… and have it lay dead in the palm of his hand. Diagnosis? A dead battery. Bummer.
