Gadgets Future

And you thought that Eudora was an e-mail management software all along. This unique piece of furniture lights up at night, offering a soothing glow in your living room without the need to purchase additional lamps. Made from fiberglass, the Eudora is by no means easy on the pockets with a $2,949 price tag, but if you’re the type who spends money you don’t have on things you don’t need to impress people whom you don’t like, then you can’t really go wrong with the Eudora.

iRiver has a spanking new portable media player known as the L-Player, but this will probably be confined to Korea only it seems. The L-Player takes a minimalist approach to its design, featuring a D-click user interface as well as a minimal amount of visible buttons so as not to interfere with the overall design. In addition, iRiver has also developed a pretty interesting transparent speaker dock for the L-Player itself that is pretty nifty. Features include :-

• 2″ LCD display
• SRS WOW
• MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF, MPEG-4, WMV and XviD file format support

It will come in black, chocolate, pink or white colors, and you will be able to choose from 2GB, 4GB or 8GB capacities.

Samsung is pretty adamant on calling its L870’s web browser Safari, which will definitely irk Apple fanboys to no end. Why all the confusion? Well, the handset is widely believed to carry a standard version of the Nokia Mini Map browser, which shares many similarities with Safari’s WebKit rendering engine despite the fact that the phone’s web application is a Symbian Series S60 version of the “Safari browser”, and thus equating it to Nokia software. Hopefully Samsung realizes this discrepancy pretty soon (if they haven’t already and prefer throwing caution to the wind), lest Steve Jobs sics his legal eagles on the Samsung team.

The ultimate film maker’s kit is live from HP.

by Thomas Ricker, posted May 29th 2008 at 5:58AM
Whoa, big day in the land of low-cost ultra-portables. First Dell, now Acer in what appear to be the first shots of Acer’s first sub-$500 ultra-portable. The images above were dumped into the forum over at UMPC Portal and show what appears to be an “Aspire One” branding to the right of the touchpad and what could certainly pass as the rumored 8.9-inch display. And although that UI is very un-Microsoft, there’s no denying the Microsoft flag waving back from the keyboard. We’ll know for sure if this is Acer’s contestant in the race to the bottom next week at Computex.

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Filed under: Laptops

by Darren Murph, posted May 28th 2008 at 9:19PM
Don’t be ashamed, you’re out to get every last morsel of Kickstart goodness before RIM’s first flip phone ever hits the market. On the docket today is a half dozen slides detailing the Flip Experience, essentially spilling the painfully mundane minutiae of how the handset will function while talking, receiving a text message, showing alerts and playing music. Nothing too mesmerizing or unexpected, but the Matt Damon hateration is totally out of left field.

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Filed under: cellphones

I remember liking this breakdancing car commercial for the Citroen:

It seems that Chevy noticed it and realized how irritating something like that could actually be:

They finish the commercial with the phrase:

Chevy Aveo: Get Real

The Chevy Aveo is actually a VERY reasonable car. It’s priced just over $10K and it gets 32-34 mpg. All that without being a hybrid. It’s pretty small, but if you’re commuting to work, it’s better than a Smart Car as far as comfort and cargo space are concerned.

Another added plus. The Chevy Aveo NEVER transforms into a breakdancing queen.

Via: AdFreak: Chevy pokes fun at the Citroën dancing car

VIA Technologies today introduced the new VIA OpenBook mini-note reference design targeted at the rapidly growing global market for ultra-portable notebooks. The OpenBook sports the next generation of VIA Ultra Mobile Platform, C7-M ULV processor and the new all-in-one VIA VX800 digital media IGP chipset. The 1Kg machine also boasts new generation connectivity options such as WiMAX, HSDPA and EV-DO/W-CDMA.
[ Source ]

by Darren Murph, posted May 28th 2008 at 10:04PMWe’re pretty certain the world’s big enough for the both of ‘em, but a graphene-polymer hybrid developed by a brilliant team from Northwestern University could prove to be a suitable — and much cheaper — alternative to polymer-infused carbon nanotubes. Put simply, graphite can be purchased for dollars per pound, while single-walled nanotubes are hundreds of dollars per gram. A breakthrough has found that tough, lightweight materials can be created by “spreading a small amount of graphene, a single-layer flat sheet of carbon atoms, throughout polymers,” and these composites could eventually be used to make lighter car and airplane parts (among other things). We won’t kid you, there’s a lot of technobabble in the read link below, but it’s well worth the read if your inner nerd is up for it.

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Filed under: Misc. gadgets

by Darren Murph, posted May 29th 2008 at 6:31AM
It took Toshiba long enough to get its socket-infused Dynadock onto store shelves, and considering the rough reputation held by the vast majority of USB video docking stations out there, you’ve probably been holding back on this well-spec’d unit due to fear alone. If we just rang your bell, you’ll be glad to know the critics over at Trusted Reviews were able to spend some quality time with the device and test out all those features that may or may not work as advertised. Overall, reviewers felt that the Dynadock performed adequately in everything save for “entertainment,” so be sure and give the article a bit of your time to determine whether or not it’ll handle the tasks you have in mind for it.

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Filed under: Laptops, Peripherals