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When the Jabra BT4040 popped up in my RSS reader, my first thought was “A headset with a screen? What next? A touchscreen and internet browser?” Anyone who has ever tried to work out what is going on inside their Bluetooth earpiece, though, will appreciate the minimal LCD display which gives some useful feedback.

The BT4040 doesn’t rely on just this one trick, either. It weighs 10 grams, incorporates digital signal processing (DSP) and has a claimed battery life of six hours. Price and launch date are to be announced.

Jabra BT4010 is handsfree with display [Phone Arena]

Every market research firm worth its salt has spent some time studying this peculiar creature known as the iphone user. To date, we know they tend to gravitate to the mobile web. But what about other insights? Do they, for instance, enjoy using their mobile devices to talk with other human beings? According to a recent survey from iSuppli, not so much.

The firm found that, on average, owners of all types of mobile handsets here in the U.S. use their phones for good old fashion voice communication about 72 percent of the time. IPhone users, by contrast, spend only 47 percent of their time gabbing.

Instead, they seem to enjoy accessing the internet (12 percent), listening to tunes (12 percent), e-mailing (10 percent) and texting (15 percent). That leaves an unaccounted for 4 percent, which we’ll guess is devoted to some sort of “convergence high.”

[Via iSuppli]

Photo: Flickr/alexanderljung

Google’s Android mobile phone OS is being talked about a lot this week.  Yesterday, AT&T wireless Chief, Ralph de la Vega, says that after careful review, Android is “something we are going to want in our portfolio”.  Hot diggity.

Joining the ranks of T-Mobile and Sprint, AT&T would be the biggest player so far to make a commitment to the open OS.  Perhaps an in house battle is waging for AT&T, pitting Yahoo!, the companies official partner for mobile web search vs Google.  Certainly this feud will grow as the mobile advertising space continues its unfettered growth.

The Android operating system for mobile phones is designed to be a simple platform that can serve ads and be easily tweaked by carriers to their liking.  Its open source base has tech consumers excited.

Web browsing advances is said to be one of Andriods biggest leap forward.  Indeed, web browsing is one of the major well-executed functions of the iphone and a function even Microsoft has spent some time on with their Windows Mobile 6.1 tweak announced earlier this week.

Read [Breitbart]

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Flesh Eating Plant Selection - Venus Fly Trap, Body Snatcher And Scary Ghost Plant
It’s tempting, of course, to describe these chlorophyll-filled insect-haters as non-gadgets. Yet, in their sheer beauty, power and destructive cleverness they’re among nature’s most cunning. And supremely effective they are, too. For these plants are flesh-eaters. Carnivorous. Deadly. And coming to a window-sill near you.

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Calling something “theft-proof” is like calling something “hack-proof”. As the Blu-ray inventors found out, it’s an open invitation to be proved wrong. Hubris aside, the TheftProof bike looks like a very smart concept.

Many cyclists remove the saddle and lock it to the frame. The TheftProof makes a virtue of this normally tiresome task and integrates a cable and lock into the seat, which can be removed to secure the wheels to the frame. You won’t want to use the cable to lock-down the actual bike: cables are too susceptible to cutting, but as a neat two-in-one solution, we like it. So do the judges at Core77, who awarded the TheftProof first prize in their Theft Proof Bicycles contest .

Theft Proof Bike Designs an More [Bicycle Design]

The iPhone Dev Team has released version 1.0 of its Pwnage utility. The app blows the lid off of any iphone allowing you to do essentially anything you want with the device. You can find Pwnage here.

For a full explanation of the benefits of Pwnage, please visit Matt Hickey’s in-depth run through over at CrunchGear.

Finally, and this is important, if you’ve somehow come in possession of iPhone firmware 1.2, make sure that it’s version 5A147. Any of the other versions, like 5A225c, floating around will not work and will simply brick your device.

Sony may have scored a winner once again in the handycam department with their latest model – the HDR-TG3E.  The Sony HDR-TG3E has several features that are setting a record in the digital handycam history. For one, the HDR-TG3E is the world’s lightest and smallest full HD camcorder in the 1920×1080 handycam series. It also boasts of being the first handycam to utilize pure titanium for its body with scratch-resistant premium hard coating.

The HDR-TG3E is equipped with ClearVid CMOS sensor with Exmor technology and BIONZ image processor to produce high-definition picture quality. It also utilizes face detection technology which automatically adjusts focus, exposure, color balance and skin tone. For recording sound, the HDR-TG3E is packed with a built-in zoom microphone with Dolby Digital sound. And lastly, the HDR-TG3E synchronizes well with BRAVIA to control playback functions using TV remote.

In addition, the Sony HDR-TG3E also has an LCD touchscreen. All the other functions of the handycam can be accessed by thumb lever and buttons located on the edges of the handycam. For storage, the Sony HDR-TG3E utilizes the memory stick duo media with 4GB capacity.

But make no mistake though, because despite its sheer size, the Sony HDR-TG3E managed to produce a handycam that is capable of recording full HD images. And since HD quality videos consume a lot of storage space, it would still be advisable to use the memory stick. Files stored on this memory stick can burn directly to DVD using Handycam Station.

The Handycam HDR-TG3E is currently available for pre-order and is expected to be available in May 2008.

Read [MarketWire]

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Thirty-five years ago today, the first ever public cellular phone call was made by Martin Cooper. Cooper, who invented the portable cell phone, placed that call on April 3, 1973 while he was the general manager of Motorola’s Communications Systems Division. That first call, placed to Cooper’s rival at AT&T’s Bell Labs from the streets of New York City, was the beginning of a revolution that has changed the lives of three billion people worldwide. A cell phone call is a call to a person in contrast with wired phone calls that are to a place.

“People are mobile,” said Cooper. “Given the choice, people will demand the freedom to communicate wherever they are, unfettered by the infamous copper wire. We vividly demonstrated that freedom back in 1973. In a time when there were no cordless or cellular phones, normally blasé New Yorkers gaped at the sight of me making a phone call while strolling down Lexington Avenue. The first cell phone was mammoth by today’s standards – weighing two and a half pounds and was 10 inches long. The phone could be used for only 20 minutes before the battery died.”

Although cell phones and service have come a long way in the past 35 years, Cooper and his wife, Arlene Harris were disappointed that cell phones were becoming unnecessarily complicated for many people. They decided to re-create the cell phone into a device that embraced the same simplicity as the original cell phone; a cell phone without a camera, mp3 player, or Web browser; a cell phone that was optimum for talking and listening.

Harris, herself a wireless and telecom industry veteran who has been referred to as the “First Lady of Wireless” and Cooper created the Jitterbug, a radically different cell phone and cellular service. The Jitterbug is now used by tens of thousands of people throughout the U.S.

Ms. Harris was recently inducted into RCR’s Wireless Hall of Fame – the first female innovator to receive that distinction.

Tags: cell, phone, wife, Wireless

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Adds some shine to your Xbox 360 the XCM-branded chrome Xbox 360 case replacement for HDMI-enabled models. Get this baby for $60.
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Hey guys, ThinkGeek is offering the Horntones, a car horn which can be customize using MP3s through an integrated USB port. You can assign up to 10 triggers to play your favorite tones, you can also assign the sounds into themes so you can easily find the right tones for the right situation. Cool… I can’t imagine if someone putting a horny tones…haha. It is priced at $300.
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