Filed under: Cellphones

Color us fairly skeptical friends, but the word from the web is that Moto’s new line of multimedia handsets are going to be dubbed Motorola ZiNE — yeah, we thought the same. We’d heard rumors that new and wildly unoriginal ideas would be rolling out of the labs and design studios at Motorola in the near future and (fingers crossed) hopefully these’ll bring a change of fortune. Apparently the “ZiNE” line will feature a Z10 successor with a big touchscreen, WiFI, and GPS and an 8 megapixel monster with optical zoom purportedly created in conjunction with Kodak. Of course, all of this is fluff and smoke ’til we see the real deal, but know we’ll be posting the dodgy and blurry pics if and when we get our hands on ‘em.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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King Khan’s closeness with the Reliance honcho Mukesh Ambani is well known to every one.
On the night of November 9, Mukesh and wife Neeta attended the premiere of Om Shanti Om at the Empire theatre, in London, as Khan’s personal guests. London based steel tycoon Laxmi Mittal and Parmeshwar Godrej also attended the private bash.
Shah […]

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Filed under: Computers

Most of us here at Switched H.Q. are old enough to have lived through the ergonomics disasters that were early personal computers. Computers from the 70s and 80s were revolutionary, but their manufacturers were still trying to figure out what people wanted their keyboard to do, This resulted in some far-out and, often, completely unusable designs. And, since everybody likes lists of things, PCWorld.com has gathered their 10 Worst PC Keyboards of All Time.

The one most people will find familiar is that big, ugly, brown Commodore 64 keyboard (which actually was the computer), coming in at the number 10 slot. Far more problematic was the Atari 400, number seven on the list, which used a “membrane” keyboard that offered zero feedback to would-be BASIC programmers of the day, feeling a little like the flat buttons on Motorola’s RAZR.

The number one worst keyboard on the list is the 1984’s IBM PCjr, which on paper sounded great. It was wireless, something that’s still considered a bit of a luxury today, and featured dedicated keys for Backspace and for moving the cursor about (surprising rarities in those days). However, the infra-red wireless connection meant the keyboard had to have a clear line of sight to the computer itself, and the thing’s hunger for batteries was unmatched, leaving it dead more often than not.

This list only includes personal keyboards, so those thumb-crampingly bad keypads found on many mobile phones today weren’t eligible. However, we expect that list to be compiled shortly and hope that it won’t take 20 years for cell phone makers to get those perfect.

From PC World

Related Links:

• Apple Making Databases and Spreadsheets… Fun?
• Folding Electric Piano Keyboard Has Great Touch
• Handheld Supercomputer On the Way

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Trusted Reviews has reviewed the Elonex LNX Cube Multimedia System and here’s their verdict on it.

Once again Elonex has raised the bar when it comes to the amount of features you can squeeze into one box. The level of media functionality in the LNX Cube is simply staggering. Yes the remote is horrible and the USB browser unpleasant, but you’re just getting so much for so little. I expect that Santa could be delivering a lot of these to good children everywhere!

The £129 price tag puts it in pole position to appear below Christmas trees this holiday season.

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Filed under: News

Two years from now, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick believes, the PS3 and 360 need to hit the $199 console price sweet spot or die in obscurity. We’re exaggerating, but the fact remains he believes that price is what will gain both consoles a mass market appeal. This is sort of like saying sugar is sweet. At that price, how would the mass market not get interested in the two most powerful consoles on the market?

He made this point by pointedly pointing at the Wii. “he Wii at its price point is now setting a standard and an expectation, and people say, well, the Wii is less complex technically. I don’t think that really matters as much to the consumer … you can imagine Nintendo will be down to the $129 price point over the next few years.” This is the reasoning behind the $199 sweet spot for the PS3 and 360. Don’t quote us or anything, but with all the price cuts both consoles have had recently (PS3 in particular), hitting $199 in two years isn’t likely. Still, at that price, everybody would have all three consoles for the price of one, sort of.

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Filed under: Gaming

Following up on yesterday’s news of Rock Band hardware concerns, developer Harmonix has issued a software patch meant to mend issues that players have been having with downstrumming. Unfortunately, the software fix doesn’t seem to be taking for everyone — some users are reporting fully functional axes, while others are still plagued by the strum problem. Worse yet, other gamers are reporting that the patch has caused their strums to double up — thus making the game considerably more crappy. On the silver-lining flip side, EA is actively honoring warranties for the Rock Band gear, though they say guitar replacement will take nearly two weeks — which will put you dangerously close to not being able to jam through X-mas.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Products and services, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL)

The Wall Street Journal is out with a story today shedding a little more light on Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) online storage plans. The WSJ article claims hat the search giant is planning on launching an online storage service in the next few month to enable users to store documents, pictures, and music on Google’s servers. Google already provides some level of storage via its image hosting service, Picasa, and Google Docs, Google’s online stab at competing with Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Office Suite.

The rumored Gdrive is one step closer to reality. This will probably be a two-tiered service with a free version and a premium version for which users will have to pony up some money. Don’t look for this to provide short-term meaningful revenues for search behemoth. Something more important, though, is happening.

As I’ve written about previously, Google is certainly gunning for Microsoft, though they are not taking on Mr. Softie straight-on. Instead, Google is trying to take over the desktop from the application-level, using search and other applications to gain control of the user experience. Desktop search allows users to search their computers with the same great functionality and usability as they search the web.

And that’s really where Google’s got game. The line that divides the hardware that sits on my desk (or my lap, for that matter) and the environment on the web where I spend most of my time is being blurred. Light, small applications run on my desktop but much of the computing processing is happening on Google servers.

My documents are hosted at Google, published online, and shared with my colleagues. Gmail enables me to open documents directly into Google Docs, without ever having to download a file. I can access most of this stuff when I’m at work, at home, or on the go via my mobile device.

This, in my humble opinion, strikes at the heart of Microsoft. The software powerhouse is a great software shop in its guts. It writes code, it builds software packages, and it distributes it via distribution channels. Google is becoming more and more a lifestyle product, giving me what I need/where I need it, via an Internet browser and tying it all together by helping me locate data I need and organize the information I possess.

Zack Miller is the Managing Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund. Author holds a long-term position in Google.

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