Author: Duncan Geere
CES 2009: Palm shows off rumoured touchscreen device – the Palm Pre
The rumours were true. Palm’s got a brand new device to go with its spangly new Nova operating system. All we knew previously was that it had a portrait touchscreen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but now there’s a bit more info to go with it.
That touchscreen measures 3.1″ diagonally, at 480×320 resolution. The slide-out keyboard doesn’t come straight out – it sorta curves. There’s oodles of connectivity – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and EVDO. There’s a removable battery, microUSB connector, support for USB mass storage and – YAY! – a 3.5mm headphone jack.
It’s running the new Nova OS, but more about that in another post. It’ll be available in the “first half” of 2009. In the meantime, for more CES coverage, click here.
(via Gizmodo’s liveblog)
CES 2009: Sony Cybershot G3 – Wi-Fi camera with built-in browser
Gosh, this is rather nifty. Sony’s new Cybershot G3 camera has an inbuilt web browser! Eat that, Eye-Fi. You can log on to a wireless hotspot, and surf the web to your heart’s content. Disclaimer – depending on the sites your heart wants to render, it may not end up 100% content.
Sony provides a “Easy Upload” homepage, with quick links to Shutterfly, Picasa, Dailymotion, Photobucket and YouTube (no Flickr?). It’ll store your login information, too, so you don’t have to type it in on the 3.5″ touchscreen every time. But what about the camera itself? It’s got a 10 megapixel sensor, 4x optical zoom and Face Detection, along with 4GB of internal storage. Available right now, for $500 (£330).
(via Gizmodo)
For more CES stories, click here.
Which? magazine's solution to data privacy – a big hammer
Most people, when selling on a computer second-hand, wipe the data by just deleting it. That’s not quite enough. A simple delete just removes the references to the data on the disk – rather than wiping it clean. Software available free on the net can recover it relatively easily, as long as it hasn’t been overwritten.
Which? bought eight computers on eBay and recovered 22,000 ‘deleted’ files from them in this way. Some of those files contained personal data, which could be used by identity thieves to steal your… etc etc. Yawn. You know all this.
Of course, there’s programs that’ll hard-delete data, too, but Which? prefers another solution. A big hammer. They recommend pulling it out of the PC and whacking it very very hard, until the thing’s in pieces. While I don’t doubt the effectiveness of that method, it’s a lot easier to use a program like SuperShredder to accomplish the same thing. Plus you won’t get bits of disk platter in your eye. Bonus.
Related posts: Which? takes on Davenport-Lyons for “excessive bullying” | Which? Computing names high street shops selling violent games to 15 year-old girls
CES 2009: Windows 7 hits public beta on Friday – here's how to give it a try
As of this Friday – the 9th January, Microsoft is going to release a beta version of its new operating system – Windows 7 – to the first 2.5 million people to download it. The new OS is eagerly anticipated, which Microsoft must be pleased about, given that Vista has been a PR disaster.
Windows 7 promises a tonne of improvements to Windows’ basic functionality. It’s quicker, less bloated and more secure than Windows Vista – which suffered from bloat and compatibility issues on release. Although it’s dramatically improved since, many users are refusing to upgrade from XP, and Microsoft continues to trickle users away to OS X.
CES 2009: Sennheiser announces "world's best headphones"- the HD800s
Sennheiser’s making quite a bold claim here – the world’s best headphones. The HD800s apparently sound better than any other pair of headphones on the planet. I suspect that it might be difficult to prove that one to a jury – surely it’s more than a little subjective?
But let’s not quibble over that – it’s beyond doubt that these are damn good. A brand new “RING” driver, developed specifically for these cans alone, can deliver an amazing 6Hz – 51kHz frequency response. For comparison, your average person on the street can hear about 20Hz to 20kHz. Unless you’re an audiophile, therefore, you’re not going to get much out of these. Sennheiser also claims an amazingly low 0.02% distortion.
CES 2009: Arcam shows off the FMJ T32 Hi-Fi DAB tuner
This is the very pretty, but very expensive Arcam T32 Hi-Fi DAB tuner. As you’d expect from Arcam, it’s a top-end bit of kit, with a top-end price tag to match. Although it’s essentially just a radio, it also comes with a high-end iPod interface.
It’s got a DAB tuner, with band III and L-band reception, it’s DAB+ compatible, and there’s also an AM/FM tuner onboard, too, if for some reason you decide that DAB is too nice-sounding. Lastly, the iPod interface is viewable from the front of the display, so you can scroll through artists and tracks on the LCD screen of the device.
It’s yours for £500. That’s not cheap, but this isn’t a cheapy-made bit of kid. Full details are on the Arcam site.
For more products and releases from CES 2009, click here.
Sony Ericsson announces 'affordable' C510 Cyber-shot, and W508 Walkman mobiles
I always get slightly confused by the way Sony doesn’t group its gadgets by what they are, just by broad product ranges. As a result, there are cameras and phones with the Cyber-shot badge, and MP3 players and mobiles with the Walkman badge. From the product name alone, it’s often impossible to tell what the device is.
Well, to clear up the confusion, both the products here are phones. The first is an ‘affordable’ 3.2 megapixel cameraphone, called the C510. Although there’s a comparative lack of megapixels on the sensor compared to other cameraphones, it’s got plenty of features to make up for it.
CES 2009: Sansa slotRadio – 1000 "hand-picked" songs, you'll hate 95% of em
I’m developing a bit of a love/hate relationship with Sandisk. They swing wildly from releasing great, innovative stuff, to wasting plastic on awful products. Unfortunately slotRadio falls into the latter category.
Sansa slotRadio is an MP3 player that comes with 1000 songs pre-loaded. It’s essentially a music player for people who’ve got absolutely no interest in what music playing, as long as there’s something in the background. The songs come on a Sandisk microSD card, but they’re tied to the card with DRM, so you can’t do anything else with them. If you work your way through the thousand, then you can buy 1,000 more for $40 (£26).
My advice? Save your cash and stick to Last.fm. In the meantime, go check out our other CES coverage here.
(via PC Mag)
Twadio – silent radio station launches on Twitter
Are you listening to music? Turn it down, or off for a moment. Now go visit @tweejay on Twitter, and sing along in your head for a moment to whatever’s at the top. Congratulations, you’ve just enjoyed the delights of Twadio.
It’s the first ‘silent radio station’, where every five minutes, a song is posted. Listeners who sign up are notified via @tweejay, and across the world, the same song suddenly gets stuck in millions of people’s heads. Brilliant, or an evil plot to get “U can’t touch this” in your head? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Tweejay (via @dubber)
Related posts: Britney, Obama and Fox News’ Twitter accounts get hacked | Twitterer liveblogs his own plane crash
CES 2009: LG showing off prototype LG-GD910 watch-phone hybrid device
When I was a wee nipper, I used to talk into my watch and imagine that my friends could hear me. They invariably couldn’t, which is probably just as well, but perhaps someone heard me, and now they work for LG. The LG-GD910 is basically a phone that you wear on your wrist.
As you can imagine, there’s not much in the way of features – “you can wear it on your wrist” being top of the pile. Additionally, though, it’s waterproof, weighs 85 grams, and has voice calling, text to speech, and stereo Bluetooth, which officially makes it better than the iPhone, in one category at least. It’ll have three real buttons, a touchscreen, and weigh 85g. Due for release “this year”.
LG (via IntoMobile)
For more CES coverage, click here.
