Author: Katherine Hannaford
Acer is next to jump onto the sub-notebook craze with the rumoured Mini-Note Aspire One
Cor – hot on the heels of yesterday’s news about the Dell sub-notebook, and the 3K we just wrote about, Acer has jumped onto our radar with the rumour that they’re to release a Mini-Note, as pictured above.
Codenamed ‘Aspire One’ for now, it looks like it has an 8.9″ screen and runs on Windows XP SP3. It’s been spotted at the Computex show in Taipei, and whilst the information is hazier than a foggy morning, it looks like it’ll cost 299€, placing it in direct competition with ASUS’ Eee 900. Considering Acer…
3K's 7-inch sub-notebook RazorBook 400 goes on sale for $299
First unveiled a month ago, the 3K sub-notebook has just gone on sale in the US for $299, according to AVING.
Rivaling the Eee PC, MSI Wind, Mini Dell and countless others, it has a 7-inch screen, and weighs just 900g. It runs on an Ingenic 400MHz processor with Linux (just like your friendly Eee), and has a 4GB solid state drive, 512MB of RAM and a full-size keyboard.
At $299, it’s the same price as the original Eee is in the US, with with double the RAM and storage capacity…
More pictures of the clamshell BlackBerry KickStart revealed
Boy Genius may’ve revealed the BlackBerry KickStart to the world earlier in the month, however CrackBerry.com has brought us more news (and pictures!) of the clamshell smartphone.
They’ve also detailed the experience of using the first flip BlackBerry, saying it “will be like all Flip phones” when using the calling-function, so when a call comes through simply flipping the phone will connect you, and closing the flip will cancel the call. As you can see from the picture above, there’s an external…
Shiny Video Review: LG KF700 mobile phone
There’s a 3″ touchscreen display, alpha-numeric keypad and shortcut dial for the most-used functions. HSDPA, a 3.0-megapixel camera, and MPEG4 video player round off some of the more notable specs – check out what Susi thinks of it in the video review, above…
S60 Summit 2008: Experience
0818: The second day of the S60 Summit kicks off with Esa Eerola, who is the Head of S60 User Experience Marketing at Nokia, taking to the stage. He begins the day stating that “total user experience is a result of many factors”, including the software platform (of course), the ability to personalise the device, adding wallpapers, ringtones etc as well as applications and add-ons, and finally, having available form factors, whether that be a candybar, slider, clamshell, or smartphone.
0830: Eerola cries out that new requirements are needed for handsets, improving multitasking, making the navigation nicer to look at, calling upon the use of widgets for easy personalisation, and expanding the way to present system and event based notifications….
Live-blog will be updating continually
Shiny Video Preview: SuperSmoker electronic cigarette
This video is hilarious, as most Zara videos are. We’ve seen her review countess vibrators and sex toys, but nothing compares to seeing her puff away on the SuperSmoker electronic cigarette. They’re legal to smoke indoors, and cost £79. Watch the video, I implore you – it’s bloody amazing, albeit hearing her say ‘smoking is cool’ makes me rather alarmed…
Nokia hints at a gesture-controlled UI and claims "maybe touch is not good for everything"
I grabbed the opportunity to speak to the Director of Product and Technology Marketing at Nokia, Sari Ståhlberg, about the still-unconfirmed Touch Tube handset and the patent application for a gesture-controlled UI (pictured), who unfortunately couldn’t say too much about it, but did “confirm there will be a touch device coming out later this year.”
She acknowledged that “touch is something the market wants…it’s a great thing, it is a way to access all the things we have in the S60 platform”, but that “maybe touch is not good for everything”.
That gave me the opportunity to ask about the patent application that was flying around the internet a few weeks back, showing a gesture-controlled UI involving sensors and emitters sending out soundwaves. “Sensors are a big thing for us, like motion in the Nintendo Wii…we have been announcing we’ll be bringing sensor frameworks for the S60 platform, a framework where you can plug in some kind of sensor, like motion, light, humidity and sound”….
Customers didn't embrace video-calling as they're vain, says Nokia (I paraphrased)
Speaking at the S60 Summit in Barcelona today, Ukko Lappalainen, the VP Category Manager for Nokia’s Nseries, claimed that users “aren’t interested” in video-calling, mainly because they find the angle a handset must be held at for the best quality video-call “isn’t very flattering”.
He went on to say that when people take photos, it’s generally from a higher angle, looking down on the person, as it makes for a better photo, and that the location of a webcam on a laptop or PC monitor is always on the top, for the same reason. Users want to look good when they video-call, which is why the function never really took off when it was introduced to the market in 2005, Lappalainen announced to the 500 or so audience members at the Summit…
S60 Summit 2008: Innovate
1324: After a lengthy lunch and demo session, my laptop is fully charged again, ready for Lee Williams, who is the Senior Vice President for S60 Software at Nokia. Grabbing my attention, he claims that mobile internet is a ‘geek’s wet dream’. It helps the user with day-to-day activities.
1335: Williams describes Python, which allows you to innovate and design applications ‘out of the box’. Williams mentions their attempt at acquiring Trolltech, as they want to preserve these investments for the future. Web Run-Time is the most sophisticated mobile engine, he claims, although Microsoft’s Silverlight and Adobe Flash are also mentioned as being other companies Nokia has struck up relationships with. Nokia recognises the importance of what these companies are doing in the innovation space, and they hope to integrate them more so into their S60 platform…
S60 Summit 2008: Reach
1015: José Antonio Moujadami, who is the Head of Applications and Open OS Devices at Telefonica, takes to the stage. He believes that hybrid applications in mobile devices are even more important than in PCs, due to the higher diversity of platforms, amongst others. Mobile devices are always connected, in contrast to PCs, however issues such as limited memory and browsers need to be addressed in order for growth to appear.
1023: Hybrid applications, on the S60, Windows Mobile, and Linux operating systems include binary compatibility, web based UI such as html and flash, scripting and access to native capabilities. As an operator, Telefonica is aware of mash-ups, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and other web 2.0 applications, and is started to provide APIs for future hybrid applications to deliver capabilities for mash-ups with telecom services and internet services…
