Gadgets Future

In a recent press release, AT&T announced that it has budgeted $1 billion (double its 2006 budget) to expand its global network reach and capacity. Part of their plan is to increase diversity and reliability into Japan, Asia, Australia and the Caribbean (hopefully eliminating the threat of ship anchors cutting off Internet access to those parts of the world).

They are banking on the demand for new technologies and increases in demand for current technologies to account for much of the spending. Telecom equipment manufacturers should be thrilled about this, since many of the upgrades planned by AT&T will need a significant hardware to implement.

Read [Barrons]

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The Urban Tool perCushion is definitely unique, bring a mono-speaker cushion that features Bluetooth connectivity. Unfortunately, it will retail for approximately $500 which is way too much for what it costs, considering you don’t even get stereo audio from it. The Urban Tool perCushion will ship sometime between October and this Christmas, and works with virtually all Bluetooth audio streaming device.

When the first Rainbow Six Vegas came out, it was one of the standout titles in a quite strong first person shooter lineup in November 2006. Now, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, billed part sequel, part prequel, is just about a week away. It’s the sixth title in the famous tactical shooter series, and it looks like it may be the best game yet.

Vegas 2 will see players taking on the seedier side of Sin City, with more outdoor combat than we saw in the first game. The game ditches the main character from the first Vegas in favor of a character the user creates. And it seems like everything related to that character should be completely customizable for use in both multiplayer and single player campaigns. The “Persistent Elite Creation” system allows players to assign experience points. The weapon set includes everything from RSV, plus another 11 brand spanking new ones.

The coolest feature of the game is that the way you earn kills will change the kinds of unlockable weapons you get a hold of. There are three sets of kills–Marksmanship, Assault, and Close-Quarter battle–which make up the Advanced Combat Enhancement and Specialization, or ACES, system. For example, headshots go to Marksmanship, shooting through a wall counts to Assault, and killing an enemy while blinded by a flashbang counts to CQB. And so after a certain number of headshots, you might get a new sniper rifle.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 makes use of the Unreal 3 engine, and it promises to be a sheer shooting delight. Even if the game just offered more levels of Rainbow Six Vegas, and it does offer 13 more maps, I’m sure it would be a good one. But given all the improvements the series is looking to make, this could be March’s Game of the Month.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 launches March 18, 2008, for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

For more, please see the Rainbow Six Vegas 2 website.

You might think that eating utensils were not a field particularly ripe for innovation, but au contraire. The upcoming International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago will include a slew of new utensil ideas.

Most striking is the Knork, a multitasker that puts your average spork to shame. The basic idea seems to be to include a sharpened side on a sturdily-built fork, allowing the diner to cut meat and veggies and transfer the chunks to his maw with one hand. Supposedly ideal for airplane dining and other elbow-constraining situations, we can imagine opportunities when the Knork would come in handy. We can also imagine being rather concerned about not cutting our lips to hell.

A Knork in the Road [Washington Post]

Posted Mar 7th 2008 2:52AM by Richard Lawler
Filed under: Displays, HDTVSay goodbye to Kuro as we knew (and loved) it, as Pioneer officially announced it’s ending all in-house plasma panel production and will build HDTVs based on panels bought elsewhere. The source went unnamed pending a final agreement, but Panasonic will likely follow up the 42-inch its providing with plasmas of up to 60-inches. Due this fall are Kuro-edition LCDs, combining Pioneer’s ultra-thin speakers and exacting picture quality standards with screens built by Sharp (hopefully this time sans-banding issues) that should see release Europe first. Other businesses affected are car audio, DJ equipment and Blu-ray players, but by streamlining operations and working closely with Sharp, it expects a return to profitability in 2010. Fans of deep black levels and accurate color reproduction probably shouldn’t be alone right now, take look at the .pdf and let the healing process begin in the comments. You’re among friends, you’re strong, you will get through this.

Samsung and Adidas teamed up last year and made some announcements on their new (at the time) SGH-F110 slider style handset, but after the initial announcement they hype seems to have fallen away. With a new announcement, Samsung and Adidas have announced they are planning to release the phone, which is expected to be launched next month, a price has not yet been announced. The Samsung SGH-F110 is an Adidas branded phone that has some good features for anyone with an interest in fitness.

On the phone side, the F110 will be a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM slider and feature a 2-inch display, 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, FM tuner, mp3 player and have 1GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot for additional storage.

On the fitness side, the F110 will have a dedicated fitness button that will offer such specs as your heart rate, the distance you have run, overall run time and the amount of calories you have burned. The fitness features are coming via a “Nike + style system” where you will have a small transmitter that is worn on your shoe. If it was not for the fact that I enjoy running to take me away from being connected and having to carry a cell phone then this just may seem like a nice option. With that it does have some great features for those interested in fitness, the F110 also comes with the miCoach application which acts sort of like a personal trainer, offering up over 220 programs and also stores and tracks your workouts.

Via [IntoMobile]

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Posted Mar 7th 2008 1:34AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment
Announced in early February, both the Silver Satin PS3 and Xbox 360 Arcade are now on sale in Japan. The SS PS3 is a spec-for-spec equivalent of the existing black and white Japanese models. However, this is the first time the entry-level Xbox 360, already available outside of Nippon, makes an appearance on Japanese soil. Guess which one Japanese gamers are more likely to buy? Right, the Wii.

Read — PS3
Read — Xbox 360 Arcade

Posted Mar 7th 2008 12:10AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Desktops
You know that potent 2.6GHz Phenom 9900 CPU that quite a few folks are waiting for? Apparently, exactly one of said chips has escaped the labs (with AMD’s blessing, of course) and made its way into the sponsored (and recently completed) Project: Phenom gaming rig. Of course, the design here is way, way over the top, and while folks allergic to chrome and not so fond of blatant overkill may be scrunching their noses up right about now, there’s no denying that it’s packin’ a nice set of internals. Hit up the read link for a gazillion and one images along with a number of construction videos — just slip on your shades beforehand, cool?

Folks in the office management field, listen up! NEC has just announced its new VT800 digital network-ready projector that targets education and corporate settings. With network functions, you can send images and video from different rooms to create an even more comprehensive presentation within a building. Features of the VT800 include :-

• 2,700 lumens
• XGA native resolution of 1024 x 768
• Contrast ratio of 500:1
• Up to 3,000 hours of lamp life
• 5-watt speaker
• ECO Mode technology
• PIP/ESS for picture-in-picture or side-by-side image configurations
• Built-in wall color correction presets
• 3D Reform

NEC has priced its VT800 at $999 when it ships next month.

Posted Mar 6th 2008 5:40PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Handhelds Details are really light here, but the folks at HEXUS.net caught sight of this pair of MIDs from Universal abit (the company formed by USI’s acquisition of abit) at CeBIT, which they say are on track for a release sometime in the second half of this year. Both of those are unsurprisingly Menlow-based devices (otherwise known as Centrino Atom), and HEXUS speculates that they’ll each likely show up under any number of different brands (a pretty safe assumption, if you ask us). No matter how they’re branded, however, they’re sure going to have plenty of competition by the time they actually get let loose.

[Via Pocketables]