A lot of people complain about their gadgets getting scratched every now and then, and it is the same story with iPods, cell phones, PDAs and the like. There are many protective covers available for most products, but it looks like Nokia is trying to reinvent the concept. The Finish house, in fact, is developing a new coating for cell phones made with diamond-like material.

The manufacturing process is not that simple, check out the description: “To make the material electric current is fed through coal graphite. This creates plasma, which is directed towards a plastic casing by high-voltage electrodes. The coal ions penetrate the surface and bond to form an amorphous, diamond-like coating less than 100 nanometres thick. The process works at room temperature, meaning even cheap plastics can be coated this way.” Read the rest of this entry »

Proporta have just released a new case for your mobile phone that has the classic luxury leather look and feel but also incorporates stainless steel sides to protect your device from knocks and bangs. Presently it’s only available for the Treo 700 but other models will follow.

One of the things I like about Proporta is they actually listen to their customer and respond accordingly, so if you can think of any other improvements drop them a line. Further info over on the Proporta site.

The development of the iPhone took more than 2 years, and during all the time a legion of Apple fans dreamed about the mythic device that was suppose to redefine the rules of the mobile communications industry.

January 9th and Apple finally unveils its long-waited mobile phone. The press and the stock markets acclaimed the announcement while consumers all over the world shuddered by the thought of possessing one.

So far so good. But what if the iPhone turns out to be a flop? What if Apple’s strategy reveals to be wrong and the iPhone sales do not live up to the expectations? The Innovation Zen site has an interesting list titled “10 reasons why the iPhone might flop”. Below you will find the first 3 items on the list:

1. The mobile phone market is not the digital music one: Apple did something unbelievable with the iPod, redefining a whole industry (the digital music one) and placing its MP3 players in hands of more than 70 million people. No wonder they are so confident about exporting the iPod success into new segments. When Apple entered the digital music segment in 2001, however, there were no dominant players and the segment was relatively immature. Most of the people purchasing an iPod had no prior experience with MP3 players, meaning that Apple only had to convince them about buying the product (and not about ditching an existing one). The mobile phone industry represents quite a different situation, where virtually every single person already has a phone, sometimes with complex subscriber plans on the background. Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently Steve Jobs was holding back at last week’s Macworld Expo. Apple’s new iPhone can do a lot more than just play music, movie and make phone calls.

As you can see from this video, the research staff at Late Night with Conan O’Brien were able to uncover all of the iPhone’s features including camera, movie player, remote control, electric razor…

If you want to copy this video off of YouTube and save it on your hard drive, then check out this tutorial: Copy Videos Off YouTube.

social: youtube | digg story | methodshop

If you were paying attention to all the hype building up to the Apple iPhone announcement on Tuesday, then you might recall the little snag concerning who actually owns the “iPhone” name.

Even though Apple unveiled the iPhone in San Francisco this week, Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems Inc., announced a product called the iPhone on December 18th, 2006. The Linksys iPhone is a Web-enabled telephone handset capable of making calls over the Internet using voice over Internet protocol (VOIP).

So how can two different companies lay claim to the “iPhone” name? That’s the problem… they can’t.

Linksys, actually owns the “iPhone” trademark because of a Cisco acquisition. A company called Infogear registered the “iPhone” name in 1996. Then Cisco then absorbed the “iPhone” trademark when it acquired Infogear in the year 2000.

So what happens now? It’s all up to the lawyers. Cisco filed a lawsuit against Apple yesterday in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Basically Cisco and Apple need to reach a settlement or Apple will have to call their iPhone something different like iChat Mobile.

According to the NY Post, Cisco thought it had reached a deal with Apple. The two companies were reportedly engaged in heated talks over the “iPhone” name the past few weeks leading up to the Apple iPhone announcement.

“We sent them final terms on Monday, but we never got approval back,” Cisco spokesman John Noh told The Post. “We’re very open to sharing the trademark. We made that clear. But then they went ahead and used the name without our permission.”

Apple has been trying to get the iPhone name away from Cisco since 2001 when they first released the iPod. Will Apple finally be successful? They obviously have something up their sleeve or they wouldn’t have halted talks with Cisco and just announced the iPhone this week. It will be interesting to see what happens these next few months.

Apple plans on releasing the iPhone in June 2007.

digg story | methodshop

I’ve seen some awesome sights at CES (especially since the Adult Entertainment Expo is next door :)) but the booth with Nancy in the hot tub became a regular meeting point and navigation spot. Nancy demonstrated the skins-mobile a pretty interesting way to keep wet stuff and grime off your device. A big thanks to Charlie of Gizmodo for the video, enjoy!

One of the perils of walking around a trade show is that people will walk the isles shovelling random leaflets into your hands as you navigate the show floor. Such was the case with Shadownumber. Much as services like Mailexpire can give you a one time email address, so Shadownumber gives you a temporary extra phone number attached to your existing mobile line.

Neat enough idea although I’m not sure you just shouldn’t be more careful who you give your number to in the first place! If I’m reading it right it’s 30 bucks a month so you’d have to really want it but you can see the details for yourself at www.shadownumber.com

At the CES show in Las Vegas, Trimble has announced a way to get more use out of the GPS ready phone that you likely already have.

The full expected rollout is late January 2007 for their Guideworks GPS solution.

What it does is use your existing phone’s GPS chip in cooperation with their software, together you can use them to:map out a trip, tag pictures taken with your phone with GPS coordinates, share trip data online,a compass and even geo-caching adventures.

This suite and the other solutions they’ve created make your phone do more than you ever thought it could (ok, so

some of your surf the web for who knows what on them, but this is really cool too!) Now you can even track your workouts and play them back over google earth! Not too shabby!

The best thing about this is that it likely uses a phone you probably already have. It’s very simple software to activate.

I was lucky enough to be able to see this in action a few weeks ago with a simple Java applet running on a regular handheld phone. While a buddy and I streaked across the farmlands of central California we could see a little dot (that was us) moving along a scrolling google map. It was really something! Read the rest of this entry »