Philips Clock Radio AJL308 Why not add meaning to your daily routine with a beloved photo, favorite song or video by your side? The Philips Infotainment Digital Photo Frame / Alarm Clock Radio with 7″ colour display and handy USB/SD card slot can help you start your day right. If you’ve ever wanted to pop up Dashboard outside of the desktop, this is probably as close as you can get. Phillips’ multi-purpose clock radio / photo frame comes across like a swipe from the widget world, with its pleasant blue backdrop, “Polaroid” photo section, and cutesy little calendar page. Most of the times, a digital photo frame is the main function of a device, but Philips has taken one step further with the AJL308 that offers new stuff. (Read the full post about ‘Philips Clock Radio AJL308′…)

Sony has rethought how it wants to go forward with online gaming, and with that market sector continuing to grow strongly the company is making a few changes to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).

Kaz Hirai, the president and group chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., will take the helm of the online division. John Smedley, the current president of the online division will now report to Hirai.

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You thought credit cards were a problem in the U.S. The Swedes have a problem that’s even worse. That’s because they can send a text message via their mobile phones and instantly receive a loan, which is automatically deposited into their account. It seems the simplicity of the technology is causing some Swedes to get into some serious debt problems, according to a report by AFP.

These are 30-day loans, which–if not paid back–result in high interest rates and late charges for customers. The average loan amount is around US$500.

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Posted Mar 14th 2008 10:38AM by Paul MillerFiled under: Misc. gadgets These chips won’t be blazing through Crysis any time soon, but there’s certainly room in the world for mechanical nanocomputers, and thanks to DARPA we might seem them in the real world sooner rather than later. The chips harken back Babbage’s 13 ton difference engine, but with a whole lot more nano. They’re also more robust, generate less heat and consume less power than their solid-state counterparts. (Read the full post about ‘DARPA hard at work on nanomechanical chips’…)

A USB hub is a USB hub, right? Wrong! Evergreen has decided to take the humble USB hub another step further by including photo frame capability inside. So what you perceive to be a digital photo frame here is also a 4-port USB 2.0 hub in reality. Just make sure you do not have pictures of your secretary there instead when the wife barges through to the office. Tags: home cinema, digital, gprs, technology (Read the full post about ‘USB Hub Photo Frame’…)

The LED drawing machine that you see here is a 2-axis device that does wonders when coupled with time-lapse photography. In Chris McDonald’s (the inventor) own words, “Gertrude uses two stepper motors to move an LED in a very high resolution x/y plane. The movement of the LED is photographed using exposures usually between 30 and 90 seconds. Gertrude can either be programmed to “print” a design automatically or controlled live via a joystick.” Sounds deep, dude. Tags: speaker, tests, Ogg Vorbis, gizmos (Read the full post about ‘LED Drawing Machine’…)

We are slowly but surely getting more details on Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X1, we have seen the announcement along with rumors of a delay that were later (and thankfully) proven untrue, now we are beginning to get some pricing details. One thing that seems to be sure is that the XPERIA X1 is not going to be a cheap phone, but of course I think we could have all guessed that. A few online retailers have begun to list the XPERIA X1: MobileCityOnline has it listed for $999 WirelessGalaxy has is listed for $990, but it currently on sale for $670.99 Smart Mobile gadgets has it listed for $979.94 CellHUT has it listed for $899.99, but it is currently on sale for $699.99 Clove Technology has it listed for £395 (around $796 US) To be fair to SE, these prices are still not yet considered official, or at least subsidized and will most likely be less expensive for those signing an agreement with their carrier, and we could only hope for some instant rebates, but that may be a bit much to ask for. (Read the full post about ‘Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X1 preorder pricing revealed’…)

The iPhone 2.0 software update (which reads on the iphone itself as v1.2) has already been leaked and cracked, as we saw yesterday. Now the trickle of evidence has turned into a deluge, with screenshots appearing all over the web. Here we see the home screen, featuring the new App Store, courtesy of Sam, a member of the iPhone Dev Team. Below we have pictures of the iPhone using a VPN, connecting to an exchange server and making mass deletions of email. Sam notes that there are a few interesting changes. The addition of a parental control feature means that the iTunes Store and the App Store do not appear by default. They have to be enabled, which should stop the kids running up huge bills. (Read the full post about ‘More iPhone 2.0 Details Revealed’…)

Posted Mar 13th 2008 5:34PM by Nilay PatelFiled under: cellphonesYou know, we’ll actually be a little sad when the endless legal battle between Nokia and Qualcomm actually comes to an end — but until then, we’re going to revel in all the dirt that comes out of having over a dozen simultaneous lawsuits going worldwide. Nokia now says that it owes Qualcomm nothing for its “early” CDMA patents, because it’s dropped a cool billion dollars into license payments for them over the past 15 years and those deals have expired, so it’s in the clear now. As you might expect, Qualcomm disagrees, and says that if Nokia wants to keep using its tech, it’s got to pay up — that’s on top of the estimated $500 million a year Nokia’s already paying Qualcomm for other patents. (Read the full post about ‘Nokia says it’s spent over $1B on Qualcomm patent payments, can it please go now’…)

Posted Mar 13th 2008 6:07PM by Darren MurphFiled under: Digital Cameras, Displays, HDTV, Household We can’t say we’ve really spent any huge amount of time wondering just how converged kitchen devices can become, but apparently, the designers at Pandigital have. Announced today, the Kitchen HDTV / Digital Cookbook / Digital Photo Frame (really, that’s the name) stays true to itself in three big ways: acting as a 15-inch 720p HDTV (ATSC / NTSC tuner included), a digital cookbook (with pre-loaded recipes and space for more) and a digital photo frame. Packed within, you’ll find half a gigabyte of memory, a built-in alarm clock and an integrated 6-in-1 media card reader. (Read the full post about ‘Pandigital teases your kitchen with HDTV / digital cookbook conglomerate’…)