Filed under: Cell Phones

A storm’s arrival typically isn’t something to celebrate, but we’re going to make a notable exception here seeing how the BlackBerry Storm is less of a destructive weather pattern and more of an incredibly hot smartphone — arguably RIM’s hottest to date. Fit to its business-savvy roots, the long-rumored handset comes equipped with the most comprehensive global roaming capabilities of virtually any wireless device you’ll find anywhere, featuring EV-DO Rev. A, quadband EDGE, and 2100MHz HSPA for Europe.

Beyond that, the Storm becomes RIM’s very first touchscreen phone, mounting a 3.26-inch 480 x 360 glass display on a unique clickable surface so that the entire thing can be pressed downwards — just like a real button — for tactile feedback when making selections.

The phone also includes a full HTML finger-navigable browser, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint editing capabilities, Bluetooth 2.0, 1GB of on-board storage with an 8GB microSD card bundled in the box, 3.5mm headphone jack, automatic orientation and ambient lighting sensors, and a 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam with dedicated flash, making it a legitimate jack-of-all-trades that seems likely to be able to handle even the most chaotic personal and professional lives users can throw its way.

It’ll allegedly do 15 days of standby or 5.5 hours of talk time on either GSM or CDMA networks.

No word on pricing yet — we’re told all will be revealed “in the coming weeks” — but it’ll launch on both Verizon and Vodafone in November.

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Filed under: Audio/Video, TV

There are a few day and date releases this week, but we don’t think any of them are the biggest title of the week. Sure ‘Sleeping Beauty‘ doesn’t fit in the Blu-ray demographic, it does mark a significant milestone in Blu-ray’s path to replacing DVD. In fact it marks the very first Disney Classic to be released on Blu-ray, which we’re sure will help more than one father convince his wife they need to go Blu. Next up is ‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan‘, which although it looks down right silly, it is sure to be good for a few laughs. The rest of the lineup this week is all Halloween, all the time, as just about every studio goes into its catalog to release every horror classic we can think of. But if you think this is a big week, just wait until next week.

For starters ‘The Matrix Trilogy’ finally drops on Blu, but there are also plenty of other catch up titles from Universal and one or two more from Warner. Those alone would make some week for Blu, but we haven’t even mentioned the latest Indiana Jones movie which is sure to be a hot seller. While no one truly knows the future of Blu-ray, there’s little doubt that we will have a much better look into the future after this holiday season thanks to every studio throwing everything they have to make Blu-ray successful.

Blu-ray

• Sleeping Beauty (Disney)
• You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (Sony)
• The Visitor (Starz)
• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (Sony)
• The Amityville Horror (MGM)
• Beetlejuice (Warner)
• Body Heat (Warner)
• Carrie (MGM)
• The Happening (Fox)
• Interview with the Vampire (Warner)
• The Omen (Fox)
• The Omen Collection (Fox)
• The Original Faces of Death (Dark Sky Films)
• Ray Harryhausen Box Set (Sony)
• Otis: Uncut (Warner)
• Rest Stop: Dead Ahead (Warner)
• Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back (Warner)
• Stuck (Image)
• Young Frankenstein (Fox)

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Filed under: Cell Phones, Green Tech

Toshiba continues to tease us with its prototype liquid fuel cell-powered gadgets: last year it was a Gigabeat media player, and at this year’s CEATEC you can check out a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) that’s been crammed inside a cell phone, lending it a robust six hours of talk time (compared to the paltry three or four hours of a traditional battery). Toshiba won’t reveal the capacity of the DMFC, but they have said that a 50ml cartridge is good for about 15 refills. No release date yet, but the phone “might” be available “as early as next year.” In the meantime, enjoy this picture of a woman holding a flip phone with “DMFC” clearly visible on the display.

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Filed under: Computers

You know those insect-like micro air vehicles (MAV) we’ve been seeing? Well, the ExoFly aerobot is based on that camera-equipped DelFly design, only this time it’s gearing up for a trip to Mars — maybe even Titan or Venus. Turns out flapping-wing flight is perfect for the low-density viscous Martian atmosphere. The current prototype — weighing 17g with a wingspan of 350mm and flight time of twelve minutes — is being tweaked for use in future missions to Mars.

The folks at Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University, who’ve teamed up with Ursa Minor Space & Navigation, plan on increasing the weight to 20g and adding an on-board solar cell, which they reckon should extend the flight distance to 15km. There’s also talk of using the digital terrain and image data gathered to simulate a 3D immersive environment for detailed analysis of extraterrestrial destinations — hopefully viewable by those of us who don’t have the billions to drop on a flight to Mars. [Via New Scientist Space]

Continue reading Robotic Fly Will Go to Mars for Research Missions

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Filed under: Cell Phones, iPhone

The campaign of Barack Obama continues to show that it’s the more tech-savvy of the U.S. presidential tickets. The Obama campaign has released a pair of new mobile tools for iPhone-carrying supporters. In addition to a specially iPhone designed version of its Web page, there is now an Obama iPhone application that has a number of features to help motivate and organize supporters and volunteers.

The iPhone application access your contacts and reorganizes them so that contacts in battleground states are listed at the top, instead of simply using alphabetical order. The application counts how many calls you make through the app and anonymously sends the tally (but no other data) back to the Obama campaign. The app shows how many calls you’ve made and how many calls the application has been used to make nationwide, motivating users by making them feel like they are part of a larger community.

The application also can access the iPhone’s GPS to locate the nearest Obama campaign office and local events. It also comes with “issues” and “media” links, which delivers statements and videos of Obama’s stance on issues.

The McCain campaign responded by asking, “What’s an iPhone?” [From: CNET and USA Today]

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Filed under: Video Games

Here’s an interesting one. That red / black Xbox 360 controller that was showcased back in July is now available to any ole consumer in the US, Canada, Latin America New Zealand and Asia, and it comes bundled with a Play & Charge Kit and red rechargeable battery for $64.99. For whatever reason, Microsoft’s totally missing a golden opportunity to cash in on the holiday shopping season by reserving the green counterpart as some “promotional item.” C’mon guys, is it really that hard to understand how irresistible a red and green gamepad tandem would be in late December?

[Via IGN]

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Filed under: Computers, Google

Web-mail sites like Gmail and Hotmail are incredibly convenient, but when doing things online, security should be a major concern and not all Web-mail systems are as secure as you might think. Your personal data may especially be at risk when accessing your e-mail from a public Wi-Fi hotspot if you don’t take the proper precautions.

Thankfully, Wired has started a wiki to collect tips for how to secure your Web-mail accounts. Most of them are pretty simple tricks that only take a moment to set up — turns out most of them just aren’t always that obvious. For example, you can force Gmail to always use an HTTPS (a secure connection that scrambles sent and received data) connection by checking a box in your Gmail settings. Similarly, Hotmail has an enhanced security mode, and you’ll find the link on the log-in page, just under the password box.

Check out the page for some more tips, and add your own if you have any. [From: Wired]

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Filed under: Computers

Here’s another mouth-watering concept on display at CEATEC today: Toshiba’s Media Server — not to be confused with some kind of nefarious explosive device from an early episode of Doctor Who. It uses NFC to download files from your cell phone, which in turn can be displayed on a TV via WirelessHD. But best of all, it’s shiny and looks nothing like some of the mundane media servers we’ve seen in the past, which is reason enough for us to want one, or perhaps a pair to make 2d12. Here’s hoping it gets past the concept stage.

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Filed under: Audio/Video, TV

What we’re watching tonight:

• CW (1080i) has season premieres of ‘Everybody Hates Chris‘ at 8 p.m. and ‘The Game‘ at 8:30 p.m.
• CBS (1080i) brings the season premiere of ‘Ghost Whisperer‘ at 8 p.m., series premiere of ‘The Ex-List‘ at 9 p.m. and season premiere of ‘Numb3rs‘ at 10 p.m.
• MNT (1080i) has the season premiere of ‘WWE: SmackDown’ at 8 p.m.
• Cartoon Network (1080i) premieres ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ at 9 & 9:30 p.m.
• TBS (1080i) brings MLB playoffs action with White Sox/Rays at 6 p.m. and Red Sox/Angels at 9:30 p.m.
• History (720p) has ‘Gangland‘ at 9 p.m. and the season finale of ‘Shockwave‘ at 10 p.m.
• Sci Fi (1080i) has the series premiere of ‘Sanctuary ‘at 9 p.m.
• TLC (1080i) has ‘What Not to Wear‘ at 9 p.m. and ‘Say Yes to the Dress‘ at 10 p.m.
• NBC (1080i) has ‘America’s Toughest Jobs‘ at 8 p.m. and ‘Life‘ at 10 p.m.
• ESPN (720p) has Cincinnati/Marshall college football at 8 p.m.

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Filed under: Video Games

Of all the video game properties we’re excited to see get resurrected, ‘Punch-Out!’ certainly has the most difficult pedigree to live up to. ‘Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!’ is one of the greatest games to ever grace a console, and ‘Super Punch-Out!’ was a worthy follow-up that featured fantastic cartoonish graphics (for a Super Nintendo game).

The Wii will be getting its own ‘Punch-Out!’ installment next year with slick looking cel-shaded animations. Classic characters, including the protagonist Little Mac, Glass Joe, and King Hippo, are back to reap some arm-flailing chaos on your television.

We just hope that the control scheme is more carefully developed than that of ‘Wii Sports: Boxing‘ which, as far as we can tell, was developed with epileptic chimpanzees in mind. [From: BoingBoing]

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