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Europeans have gotten a nice addition to the smartphone lineup, the Treo 500. Originally announced for the Vodafone network back in September 2007, it is now being offered as an unlocked version for anyone to use and will retail for £269, which is around $526 US.

The unlocked Treo 500 is running Windows Mobile 6 Standard, has a 320 x 240 display, full QWERTY keyboard, tri-band GSM/GPRS connectivity along with 3G support, 256MB flash memory with 150MB available to the user, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2-megapixel camera and microSD storage.

Product [Palm Europe] Via [The Register]

Yesterday, word was that Best Buy is days away from dropkicking the 80GB PS3 off its shelves. Today, the PS380 jumps from the “threatened” to the “endangered” list—Game Daily Biz says another major retailer confirms something is indeed “afoot” with 80GB supplies. And an analyst translates “afoot” to mean “impending doom.” But, there’s a kink in this kerfluffle.

The probably overpaid Janco Partners analyst thinks Sony is putting the plastic bag over the 80GB PS3’s head “because it has failed to meet internal sales projections.” Fair reasoning, except that the 80-gig model outsold the cheaper 40-gig version last quarter according to the NPD. Shocker, right? It surprised me, GDB and Sony, apparently.

So what exactly is going on with the PS3? Or Sony’s head? [Game Daily Biz]

Posted Jan 25th 2008 10:59AM by Evan Blass
Filed under: Household, Robots iRobot may own the market for autonomous indoor cleaning devices, but when it comes to taming that wild jungle you call a backyard, the new king of the hill may well be the LawnBott LB3500. This fourth-generation LawnBott from Kyodo America improves upon its predecessors in nearly every category: even though it weighs ten pounds less than the entry-level LB2000, it offers up a greater coverage area, increased cutting width, greatly improved incline climbing capability, longer runtime, and best of all, a Bluetooth radio for programming or direct control by cellphone. Of course, all these high-end features don’t come cheap, and when the LB3500 does come to market (date: unknown), we imagine that it’s gonna cost a good deal more than the current high-end, $2,500 LB3200. Check out the gallery below for some more angles.

Gallery: LawnBott LB3500 offers Bluetooth control, stylin’ rims

[Via Slashgear]

Search engine RedZee is wanting to change the way you think about using search engines forever. At first glance, when you go to the RedZee site, it doesn’t seem like all that much. You are greeted by an animated red striped zebra-like creature that looks like he stepped out the latest Disney/Pixar production. Other than the cute company mascot, the search site seems pretty unremarkable. However, once you input your desired search in the text box and click on the “Search” button, the magic really starts.

Suddenly, you are whisked away to what you think will be a normal text results page, but instead you are surprised to find yourself gazing at numerous returned results represented as the images of the the websites themselves. Presented in a fanned, Lazy Susan style interface, using a mouse you can rotate through nearly 100 website pages quickly. Other than the URL below each site image, you quickly realize that RedZee is a WYSIWYG search engine–what you see is what you get.

“We believe pictures are worth a thousand words and we’re bringing that philosophy to our search engine,” says president of RedZee Search, John Stewart. “Visuals make it so much easier to see what you like rather than read what you like.”

RedZee reportedly uses revolutionary technology that makes it possible to list the top 100 websites visually as compared to other text-based search engines that list 10 sites at a time.

“There will always be people who like text based search engines,” Stewart continues. “But we believe there are many people who prefer visuals who will appreciate the way we present results.”

See for yourself at RedZee Search.

Posted Jan 25th 2008 11:28AM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: CellphonesWhile it likely won’t come as much of a surprise to those reading this, it seems that Apple’s recently released iPhone sales numbers and AT&T’s customer number don’t exactly match up, leading those ever so insightful analysts to conclude that many of the phones are being sold with the sole intention of being unlocked. What is somewhat surprising, however, is exactly how many phones that might be. As MacWorld reports, Apple says it sold 3.7 million iPhones in 2007, while AT&T says it signed up about two million or so iPhone customers during the same time period. While those aforementioned analysts point out that Apple’s numbers were boosted by 300,000-400,000 sales in Europe, and likely a few sold over the holidays that were yet to be activated, that still leaves over a million iPhones running free out there. If you do the math, that seems to suggest that roughly one in three iPhones sold are being unlocked although, obviously, we’re not about to get a confirmation on that number from anyone.

The only time we use Bluetooth is to yap about in our cars while we’re driving or for transferring photos to and from our computer, but Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bleill is using it to help him walk again. The Iraq veteran has dual prosthesis with Bluetooth transmitters on board that sends signals between each motor, which updates each piece of the legs on what the others are doing, how it’s moving, and whether or not they need to make adjustments.

Older models of computer-controlled legs have to be “programmed” via wire by laptop computers before the amputee can use them. Those legs required more movement from the amputee’s remaining thigh muscle to generate motion in the prosthetic leg. Because of built-in motors, the Bluetooth legs allow Bleill to walk longer before he tires.

“We’ve compared walking several laps in both sets of legs and one, your legs come out burning and tired and these, you know, you sometimes are not even breaking a sweat yet.”

We weren’t kidding when we said it helps him kick ass. “So sometimes the leg kicks harder than I want it to, or farther, and then I start perpetuating, and I start moving faster than I really want to.” [CNN]

Southwest Airlines has announced they will begin to test in-flight Wi-Fi as of the summer of 2008. Following on the heals of JetBlue and American Airlines, they are the latest to announce the start of a testing period. The access is a satellite-delivered service that will be provided by Row 44, who claim to be the current leader in airborne broadband communication. Initially the testing phase will be on just four planes and will allow passengers access to e-mail, music, shopping and virtual private networks.

Row 44 is also preparing to work with Alaska Airlines this Spring. In addition Virgin America is also promising in-flight access. Maybe in-flight Wi-Fi will be a good thing and catch on, hopefully the in-flight use of cell phones will remain a no-go. As of now the roll-out date for Southwest has not been announced.

Via [Switched]

The Japanese have yet another device to remind you of just how much damage your waist has taken over the last holiday season’s gorging - the AB-101 from Tanika Corp. is capable of giving you a precise, abdominal fat reading within half a minute. That is, after you strip down and lie calmly on your back without moving while it does its thing. Retailing for approximately $2,750, I don’t think you need to fork out so much to let a machine tell you it is time for some much needed exercise. Better spend all that money on a gym membership instead.

The Mozilla Security Blog has a post concerning a vulnerability that exists in the Firefox browser even when fully-patched. The vulnerability relates to extensions installed for Firefox that are “flat” rather than contained within a .jar.

A “flat” extension is different because it allows someone to travel outside the extensions directory to locations that are known about on a hard drive. An attacker could therefore explore what other software a machine has installed using this vulnerability. That, in itself, is not a threat, but it then allows that attacker to attempt to use vulnerabilities in those other pieces of software they know you have on your machine.

The blog post states:

A visited attacking page is able to load images, scripts, or stylesheets from known locations on the disk. Attackers may use this method to detect the presence of files which may give an attacker information about which applications are installed. This information may be used to profile the system for a different kind of attack … Users are only at risk if they have one of the “flat” packaged add-on installed. Examples of popular add-ons that are vulnerable include: Download Statusbar and Greasemonkey.

The vulnerability was originally discovered on hiredhacker.com before being detailed on the Mozilla Security Blog. A comment posted in response to the blog entry by Girgio Maone points out that the vulnerability can be stopped by using the NoScript extension, although this has not been verified yet by Mozilla.

Read more at PC Pro and the Mozilla bug report.

Matthew’s Opinion

At least with this threat it can be prevented by not using the flat packaged extensions, or possibly through using the NoScript extension. The security rating of the vulnerability is low as it should be due to there being preventative measures you can take.

The unfortunate aspect about bugs like this is that not everyone out there using Firefox is going to read articles like this detailing the exploit. Some users may therefore fall foul of it, and these same users are likely the ones who have not got the latest patches for the other software on their machines.

It is encouraging to see the Firefox community reacting to a vulnerability such as this so quickly. For example, a version of Download Statusbar has already been released that uses .jar instead of being flat packaged.

In typical Valentines Day anticipation we are beginning to see a whole range of pink gadgets coming. The latest addition comes from Verizon in the form of the Blackberry Pearl 8130. The specs will be the same as the regular silver 8130 which includes Broadband Access Connect, built-in GPS, 2-megapixel camera with flash, video capture, microSD storage and Bluetooth.

The Pink 8130 is not officially for sale yet, currently its just listed on their upcoming handsets page, however the rumored date is January 28.

Product [Verizon] Via [PhoneMag]