Now available for pre-order, ClarityLife mobile phones would be perfect for kids from one to ninety-two. It’s a simple, dumbed down version of a cellphone that only offers a few buttons and a large, highly-readable display. It also comes with a one touch emergency response button, that can be pre-programmed to call or text message up to five numbers in case of, er, emergency. It’s going to be available this summer, in case you’d like to buy one. I’m trying to picture myself using this thing when I grow older, and I… can’t… never mind. Maybe I’m turned off by the monochrome display. I mean, I’m all for affordability, but a color screen will beat a monochrome any day on readability. (Read the full post about ‘ClarityLife, a mobile phone for the aged’…)

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.

(Read the full post about ‘35th Anniversary of First Cellular Phone Call’…)

Panasonic ain’t too shabby when it comes to plasma displays - after all, they’re the ones with the monster 150″ display at this year’s CES.This time, they’re bringing a new iteration of its plasma technology to cell phones, aiming to take on OLEDs as well as other display technologies found in handheld and mobile devices. Surprisingly, this new small sized plasma display sips a mere 1.5 volts of power and is pretty close in terms of thickness and weight when compared against other portable displays. Panasonic also claims that this display boasts richer color and contrast ratios than most LCDs. The first plasma-enabled Panasonic cell phone will be made available in Japan sometime in the near future. (Read the full post about ‘Panasonic Bring Plasma To Cell Phones’…)

Together with its announcement of redesigned laptops in its Satellite series, Toshiba has also announced a new technology called Sleep-and-Charge USB ports. As you can guess from its name, this allows the USB port to charge up your mobile devices whether the laptop is powered on, shut off or in sleep mode.

The new USB port answer’s the shortcomings of today’s USB ports. That is, their dependence on the laptop or desktop for power supply. With the new Sleep-and-Charge USB ports, Toshiba has eliminated this problem. Now, for as long as the laptop or desktop where the USB port is plugged in to an electrical outlet, the USB port will continue to provide power.

(Read the full post about ‘Toshiba unveils Sleep-and-Charge USB ports, charges even when PC is off’…)

Posted Apr 3rd 2008 4:05AM by Thomas Ricker
The typically rigorous Ars technica claims to have intercepted an internal email sent to a few Apple employees yesterday. In it, Apple claims to be the number one music retailer in the US — a boast supported by that screenshot of an NPD MusicWatch Survey. You seeing what we’re seeing? Right, the data is from January 2008 and likely reflects people cashing in those iTunes gift cards and the giddy purchases made by new ipod owners. In other words, it’s a spike on the total sales picture in NPD’s weekly MusicWatch survey. Then there’s Apple’s own claim on February 26th that it was now the number two music retailer in the US. (Read the full post about ‘Debunk: Apple iTunes now #1 music retailer in US? Probably not… yet.’…)

Opera Mini 4.1 has just been released. The new mobile browser version includes various features that make the Opera Mini 4.1 even more useful for mobile browsing purpose. Some of the key features introduced in this newest iteration of the Opera mini browser include; automatic completion of web addresses, tools for attaching files to web-based email, uploading photos to blog or other site, downloading attachments from email for storage to phone and saving and viewing features.

Opera Mini 4.1 beta offers an enhanced mobile web browsing experience with 50% faster speeds. Heavy sites that used to take an eternity to upload, such as Facebook and the BBC, are now faster to load, almost at par with desktop speed.

(Read the full post about ‘Opera Mini 4.1 now available, still in beta’…)

Posted Apr 3rd 2008 2:52AM by Darren Murph Fresh out of the FCC’s lair comes a new pair of QChat-enabled mobiles ready to launch on Sprint: Sanyo’s Pro-200 and Pro-700. (Read the full post about ‘Sanyo’s Pro-200 and Pro-700 Direct Connect handsets get official’…)

I’m sure we were not prepared for the digital era of photos. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great that all of us have cheap digital cameras that allow us to download our greatest pics into our computer, but most of us still have piles of old photos that really need to be made digital. That sounds like more than just a weekend project.

The solution is here with the USB Photo Scanner. This device uses a 5 Megapixel CMOS sensor to scan photos in just minutes. Sure, you could do that on a scanner, but that would take a lot more time as the USB Photo Scanner does it a lot faster.

In fact, it is designed for that purpose, as you put your photos in a tray and then slide it into the converter.

(Read the full post about ‘USB Photo Scanner: A much-needed device’…)

CNET Australia reviews the LG KF600 and writes, “For a 3-megapixel camera we expected it to be a little sharper but it didn’t perform as well as we expected, particularly in low light due to the lack of a xenon flash. There is an LED photo light, but you shouldn’t expect it to illuminate your photos. That said, if you just want to take photos for MMS messages and small prints, it does the job.”

Read more about the LG KF600.

Tags: electronic toys, TV, Ogg Vorbis, cameras

Posted Apr 3rd 2008 1:07AM by Thomas RickerFiled under: Laptops Here we go, the official launch of Intel’s second generation Classmate PC. After watching it trickle out in Malaysia, there’s not much left to say about the rugged, Internet-centric platform of portables Intel is now calling “netbooks.” However, if you’re in the 95% of the world’s children said to be without PCs or Internet, you’re surely stoked at the prospect of your government handing you a 7- to 9-inch laptop with 6-cell battery, 512MB of memory, 30GB disk loaded with XP or Linux riding a Celeron M processor — not Intel’s newest Atom (though that’s coming in future Classmates according to Intel). (Read the full post about ‘Intel launches second generation Classmate PCs for current generation of kids’…)