Devices Site

I’ve been looking forward to the current-gen version of Turok for quite some time now. You can check out a Turok interview I conducted in early November to get an idea of how the game is shaping up. But now, we’re just a couple weeks away from its release, and I’ll be able to get my hands on the dino action title.

For Turok fans and for folks who are also looking forward to the title, Propaganda Games and Touchstone have released a couple of behind the scenes documentaries, called “Awakening the Giants.”

Awakening the Giants Part I

Awakening the Giants II

In some ways I think it’s unfortunate that Turok wasn’t ready for the holiday season. Mainly, I would like to have been playing the game since November. But I am always a fan of companies waiting and releasing more finished products, rather than putting out bad products early. These two behind the scenes looks are reassuring.For more, check out Turok’s official website.

After the recent bad news regarding Intel for the OLPC project it is good to see that they have set up offices in the US and are looking to expand through state governments and get the XO laptop into the hands of the poorest kids in the US.

The XO laptop costs $188 which is almost double the initial target of $100, and with $10,000 spent per annum on each primary school child in the US compared to $20 in Bangladesh it is likely that the project is looking to boost sales of the XO in the US to help support the sales in the poorer nations, but as the poorest kids in the US benefit at the same time it seems like a win-win situation to me.

Via [BBC]

Various boffins at CNET are reporting problems with stray electricity leaking out of Dell’s latest high-style laptops. Folks testing the XPS M1530 and M1330 have experienced repeated electrical shocks from touching the sleek aluminum cover or connecting peripherals. Voltage varies from a mild tingle to a serious jolt.

Suspected culprit is a lacking of grounding, which may be peculiar to the European models. Dell’s response so far is an assurance that sudden, smoking death is is highly unlikely.

Dell laptops in electric-shock shocker [CNET]

Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a certification that vouches for the interoperability between wireless devices. It has been created to improve the communication between connected entertainment devices, like home media servers and wireless multimedia players.

In practice, it means that you could share the media content created by your N95 with your home server, or stream from the media server to watch a movie on your N95, instead of your 42” Plasma TV… huh?

Posted Jan 18th 2008 12:12PM by Chris Ziegler
Filed under: Cellphones
With the bleak news out of Sprint’s camp this morning, employees, stockholders, analysts, and subscribers all have to be wondering pretty much the same thing: what’s going wrong? Xohm’s just around the corner, so these guys have a pretty good lead on the competition in the race to 4G — but is there something far more systematic about Sprint’s core business that’s causing paying heads to leave in droves?

What’s wrong with Sprint?

Awful handset selection!Customer service (lack thereof, that is)If I could get a signal, I’d tell you.Its data network isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.Plan pricing and / or features need some serious retooling!It’s everything, man. Pack it in and call it done.La la la, nothing’s wrong! I can’t hear you!Vote

Fujitsu rules the subnotebook category with an entire field of entries, coming in every size and shape from true UMPC and up. It’s also the first to announce a new model since Apple stormed along with the MacBook Air. The Fujistsu P1620 is lighter, cheaper, and packed with features the Air doesn’t have — while lacking some of those it does.

Being an update of an earlier model—and well over an inch thick—it’s not got much on the Air’s curious, distinctive design. Its U7600 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo won’t outrun it, either. But with 2GB of RAM, WWAN, an SD card slot, wired Ethernet, PC Card slot and dual USB, road warriors have a hard choice ahead of them. It weighs 2.2 lbs, a little over two thirds of the Air’s 3lb loadout, and is a convertible tablet PC to boot.

It also has WiFi, BlueTooth, a $300 32GB flash drive option to replace the standard 100GB hard drive, a 9" display, 75 percent size keyboard and a fingerprint reader. Though perhaps a little small for the big-fingered (or the bleary-eyed) this is like a little, neatly-packaged box of criticism leveled against Cupertino’s upstart.

This sweet fishtank setup features a gigantic water bridge that connects two tanks, allowing the fishy inhabitants to travel between the two habitats at their leisure. It was housed in the former Evanston, IL coffee shop the Liquid Potion Lounge, and it was amazing. Sure, it’s highly unlikely that the fish even realized that the bridge actually connected two things, but fishtanks don’t exist for fishes amusment: they exist for ours. And this one fits that bill just fine.
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[The Contaminated via Oh Gizmo!]

Posted Jan 18th 2008 8:12AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: CellphonesTeenager George Hotz, aka GeoHot, the original iPhone unlocker is back. In a post to his personal blog he states that he has successfully unlocked a 1.1.2 firmware and bootloader 4.6 iPhone. Better yet, he posts the not-for-dummies version of the instructions to downgrade the bootloader to version 3.9 in preparation for running AnySim. We haven’t tried this ourselves so remember, as GeoHot himself states, this hardware method “could brick your iPhone.” You haven’t upgraded to 1.1.3 already have you? If so, you’re stuck with AT&T.

[Thanks, fantastico]

IPhone Atlas has discovered a couple of nice, unnanounced extras in the latest v1.1.3 iPhone update. The first is an increase to the amount of SMS messages the iPhone can store. The limit has been upped from 1000 to “about 75,000″. Lord knows why. The next thing will be PCs with more than 64k of memory.

Also, and probably more useful for the average user, is two-fingered (or two-thumbed) typing. You thought you already had that feature? Well, you didn’t. Previously, you had to lift a finger from one key before hitting the next, effectively slowing typing speeds, already a much moaned about problem with the iPhone. Now it will keep up with you, and also take input from two keys at once, allowing quicker use of the shift key, for example.

Anybody out there have any other discoveries?

iPhone 1.1.3: 75,000 text message limit, enhanced typing [iPhone Atlas via iPhone Hacks]

I can’t lie—as funny as every parody of the easy target the Macbook Air will be, I want one. Sure the computer’s sealed tighter than Jessica Alba’s underwear when the director pitches her a nude scene, but such technological chastity brings about a laptop that’s sexy without being pornographic and graceful/delicate without cracking in your hands (yet).

Still, until I can justify the $1,800+ on a computer I’ll almost never use, does anyone know where I can find some manila envelope-themed lingerie? [via digg]