Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio
Nokia’s “free,” all-you-can-eat, music subscription service is set to world premier in the UK next month before hitting continental Europe and Asia in 2009. Nokia already has Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music on board and plans to have EMI signed before launch — in total, Nokia expects to offer some 2.1 million tracks at launch. While touted as free, the service costs will be baked into the price of Nokia’s pre-pay 5310 XpressMusic Comes With Music Edition handset (currently priced between £70-£80 for the pay-as-you-go, non-CwM handset) when purchased though the UK’s Carphone Warehouse. You must then purchase another CwM-compatible device at the end of the year in order to continue downloading tracks. For those not wishing to re-up with Nokia, your 5310 CwM edition phone will continue to make / receive calls and text messages and, like your computer, continue to playback all those DRM-wrapped WMA tracks — they will not play anywhere else. While the approach is interesting, the DRM-enabled time-bomb and device lock-in makes the entire model sound fatally flawed to us — though we’re sure that’ll be hacked away soon enough. Come on Amazon, now is the time to take your MP3 store global and show these fools how it’s done.
Update: Expect the service to launch at, or shortly after, a Nokia Comes With Music press event scheduled for October 2nd.
[Via mocoNews]
Read — FT
Read — Guardian
Read — Nokia press release
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Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds
Be still our hearts! After months upon months (upon months) of waiting, the tight-knit team behind the ultra-potent Pandora gaming handheld has finally divulged the information we’ve been clamoring for: the ARM Cortex A8-powered device will begin shipping before Christmas 2008 for £199.99 in the UK. The first batch will consist of 3,000 units, and the team is hoping that all of those will be sold out before the first one leaves the dock. There’s no word on how costly it’ll be for Americans, though we’re crossing our fingers that it’ll sell for a few bucks less than the $360 we find when simply converting pounds to dollars.
[Thanks, Andri]
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Filed under: Displays, Peripherals
While we imagine that some folks are sick and tired of fighting over the sole display in the house, some people out there are looking for a reason to quarrel over the biggest one. IOGEAR’s DVI Net ShareStation is here to help, providing one display with an Ethernet connection so that any and all computers on the same network can battle for it share. Debuting at CEDIA, the tiny box includes a DVI / VGA adapter and an Ethernet jack, and it supports streamed resolutions up to 1,600 x 1,200. Furthermore, users who just want to add an external display to their system can do so by simply connecting the device to a USB port. It’s available now for $199.95, and the release can be seen in full by clicking through below.
Continue reading IOGEAR’s DVI Net ShareStation networks one display for multiple users
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Filed under: Desktops, Displays
Microsoft had better hurry and get more than one Surface rig out on the market, because there are plenty of other companies working on large-format multitouch hardware — the latest is Finland’s Multitouch Oy, which recently demoed its Cell display for jkkmobile. Just the usual photo pinching demo, but it’s running at an impressively fluid 60fps on desktop hardware, even with multiple users. Multitouch Oy says it’ll run about $7,000 for a 32-inch model when it hits — yeah, we’ll stick with the DIY kit for now. Video after the break.
[Via jkkmobile]
Continue reading Multitouch Oy demos Cell multitouch display
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
First comes smoke, then comes flames a-blazin’. Shortly after hearing that Apple was gearing up to unveil a new iPod nano (at the very least) on September 9th, in flies a curious Best Buy ad that could be evidence of a tweaked iPod touch. According to our tipster, the image in the ad and the image on Best Buy’s website are ever-so-slightly different, and while we’d typically pass this off as the result of a fading ink cartridge, we’ve been expecting new touches for months now. Just a few days left until we figure out what’s really going on here.
[Thanks, Samm]
Update: As a few folks pointed out, it seems the image is a touch on the ancient side. Still, we know new iPod touches are coming in our hearts — we can just feel it.
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Filed under: Robots
While a great many scientists are attempting to create autonomous bots for uses in surgery, a team of Stanford whiz-kids are having a bit more fun with it all. The crew in question has concocted an artificial intelligence system that “enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers.” Dubbed a demonstration in “apprenticeship learning,” the robots can actually learn by observing rather than having to be programmed, meaning that entire airshows could be reeled off by planes that simply keep an open mind when warm-ups are underway. Of course, they could also be used for more serious applications — mapping out hot spots of California wildfires, finding land mines in war zones, etc. — but even if none of that pans out, we’re cool with inventions being used purely for entertainment.
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Filed under: Desktops
British computer maker Scan is mighty, mighty proud of its 3X Great White. Aside from blasting a Silverstone TJ07B case with an astonishingly corny logo, the outfit is also charging a staggering £11,171.18 ($20,225) for the soon-to-be-outdated rig. Granted, it does pack an impressive amount of cutting-edge hardware — three 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 HDDs (alongside two 64GB OCZ SSDs), a 4.4GHz overclocked Core 2 Quad Q9650 CPU, 2GB of Corsair DDR3 RAM, three 1GB NVIDIA GTX 280 GPUs and enough LEDs to light up a small basement (among other things) — but we still can’t justify trading out a good portion of your kid’s college education for a machine very capable of dominating Crysis. But if you can, the buy link is just a few clicks away. Just don’t tell the wife, nor anyone that we told you not to tell the wife.
[Via WebCrunchDeals]
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Filed under: Laptops
Raon Digital hasn’t exactly been keeping many secrets about its
Everun Note “UMPC notebook,” but it’s now finally dropped the veil of mystery around one of the biggest still remaing: the price, and it’s also now detailed everything else in convenient brochure form. As UMPC Portal reports, the Everun Note will boast a suggested retail price of $879, which puts it well below the likes of the
VAIO UX but considerably more than your average netbook, which it also kinda, sorta competes with. Oh, the perils of bucking the usual product categories. Hit up the read link below for the full brochure.
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Filed under: Household, Portable Audio
It may not be ensconced in Swarovski crystals like some of its
other fridges, but Gorenje seems to think it has a winner on its hands with its new Made for iPod fridge, which it says will conquer contemporary kitchens just as “iPod has conquered the world.” Apparently designed specifically for what Gorenje describes as the “the cult iPod touch,” the fridge of course boasts the usual iPod dock, as well as pair of built-in speakers of unspecified kitchen-shaking ability. Gorenje also takes things one step further with its iGorenje web portal, which is, you guessed it, optimized for the iPhone or iPod touch. It’ll not only give you the usual recipes and other information, but control over other household appliances that are connected via WiFi, although Gorenje is quick to point out that’s still only in a test version. No word on a price or release date just, but given Gorenje’s penchant for pricey appliances, you can be sure it won’t come cheap.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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Filed under: Laptops
As we’ve seen countless times by now, the folks behind the
Commodore brand will stop at nothing to keep the venerable name alive, and they’ve now finally hopped on the biggest bandwagon going, with the UMMD 8010/F marking the company’s first foray into the netbook game. Unfortunately, apart from that familiar logo, there’s not too much that stands out here, with the netbook packing a 10-inch screen, a 1.6GHz VIA C7-M processor, an 80GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, built-in WiFi, and optional Bluetooth. The nearly $600 price tag also doesn’t do it any favors, but we’re guessing there’s at least a few nostalgic folks out there that’ll add one to their Commodore collection as soon as they’re available.
[Via GottaBeMobile]
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