Tech news

Vodafone have announced the launch of a number of phones recently.  Obviously the Apple iPhone 3GS has got the majority of the publicity but they’ve also announced; the Nokia N97 mini, the 360 Samsung H1 and the HTC Tattoo all for October/November 2009.

The Nokia N97 Mini has many of the features of the original  N97 including the slide-out Qwerty keyboard, 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and built in GPS navigation.

On the down side the internal memory has been slashed from 32GB to a paltry 8GB which seems pretty mean with the current cost of memory.  You can add a further 16GB with a Micro SD card for a total of 24GB which still isn’t as much as an unexpanded N97.

Interestingly the mini is mere millimetres smaller than the original N97, has the same resolution resistive touch screen and is only £20 cheaper on the Nokia website.

Available free from Vodafone on pay monthly plans of £35 and over from the end of October.

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The e-reader market is starting to take off, with devices from Sony giving the Amazon Kindle a run for its money (not to mention a whole slew of more esoteric devices)

The QUE reader from Plastic Logic will be added to the mix in January at CES. It’s a slimline 8.5”x11” (US Letter) sized reader made from shatterproof plastic with Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Uniquely, it will support “business” file formats (Word, PowerPoint, PDF and Excel) and includes a touchscreen for interacting with them.

Price and full specifications are not yet available.

Last week we reported on the new 37” and 42” Borderless SL 9000 TVs from LG and now we have information on two more.

The SL 8000 (left) is a full HD TV with 200Hz TruMotion starting at 32” and going up to 47”.  It’s another very slim Borderless LCD TV with LED backlighting and shares the green credentials of the
SL 9000 series.  The TVs are also able to playback DIVX, DIVX HD and MKV files from USB drives of up to 1TB. 

The 19” and 22” LU 7000 TVs, (right) are aimed at the smaller rooms in your house. Having a built in DVD player they are ideally suited to the bedroom, kitchen or even a student pad. The DVD player is built neatly into the TV stand which slides open impressively when ejecting the DVD.  The LU 7000 also features LGs Invisible Speaker Technology just like the SL 8000 and SL 9000 so sound quality should be impressive for a small TV. 

As yet there is still no word on pricing for either TV series but, as with the SL 9000, it is said to be “competitive” so we’ll have to wait and see.  Both TVs should be in shops sometime in October. Read the rest of this entry »

LG announced today the launch of their SL 9000 television range.  The SL 9000s are incredibly thin (29.3mm), 100Hz, full HD, LCD TVs with 248 LEDs around the edge of the screen providing the backlighting.   42 and 47” Screen sizes will be available and should be in shops sometime in October.

The killer feature on these new TVs though is their ability to playback DIVX and DIVX HD files from USB drives of up to 1TB – including files in the common .MKV format.

They are described by LG as borderless as there’s no protruding bezel around the screen.  Layers of film give the televisions a smooth flat anti glare and anti scratch front panel that goes right to the edges of the TV.

Picture quality is suitably impressive when watching HD content whether through the HDMI connector or via the USB port.  Having not seen any SD content I can’t comment on its quality.

An “eco” function uses up to 40% less power compared to a similar sized LCD TV by varying the brightness level.  This can be carried out manually or automatically based on ambient light levels.

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Internet archive (the people who maintain the WayBackMachine) have signed a deal with NASA to bring high resolution images to the NASAImages.org website.

Internet Archive’s NASAimages.org offers the first comprehensive collection of NASA imagery in a single, searchable on-line location, providing enthusiasts, researchers, news media and the general public easy, no-cost access to NASA’s vast collection of still and video imagery.

That says it all really. Space photos – Cool!

(The image used to illustrate this post is a composite generated from the 1989 Galileo spacecraft.)

[Via PhotographyBlog]

Samsung are set to launch a new line of point and shoot digital cameras on August 13th. They’re not telling us what the killer feature is, but as a teaser they’ve launched a bizarre website featuring videos of funky urban trendsetters.

If you think that’s you, you can check it out at (wait for it) – www.tapandtake.com.

Samsung are also going to be running a twitter giveaway from shortly after the launch date so if you aren’t down with the cool kids yet you’d better sign up for an account now!

Acording to this article in Mobile magazine, Amazon are close to launching Kindle in the UK – the hope is to have it here this side of Christmas.

Launching the Kindle over here isn’t just a matter of shipping the hardware - the thing that differentiates Kindle from other ebook readers is its ability to download books and newspaper content automatically using a mobile phone network. For that to work, Amazon need to get into bed with a network provider so that users don’t need to fork out for their own separate contract.

It’s a really cool idea in theory – the idea of waking up to have your customised news headlines already on your kindle ready for you to read on the way to work is very appealing.

Before you get too excited though, you might want to read this CNET story about how much control they have over your content - the irony is almost too much to bear.

Various sources today reported that Sky are going to be launching a 3D channel next year.

Running on an existing Sky+HD box, the new channel will need a “3D Ready” TV set. That should be fun – We’ve seen technology demonstrations and Hyundai have a set for sale in Japan but so far I‘ve seen no announcements from anybody regarding the UK so I’d expect some news on that front nearer the time.

In a slightly less exciting (but possibly more relevant) announcement Sky also promised a video on demand for Sky+HD owners. Fun times ahead!

[via MediaWeek]

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, Microsoft are gearing up to launch the next version of their desktop OS, Windows 7.

For a limited time you can get it from select resellers at the discounted pre-order price of £49.99 for Home Premium and £99.99 for the professional edition.

If you’re wondering what the difference is, Paul Thurrock over at WinSuperSite has done a pretty thorough comparison of the different editions. For most of us the extra networking capabilities of Professional won’t make a difference but the inclusion of a licensed copy of XP (for use in the funky new compatibility mode) might just make the extra £50 worthwhile.

If XP mode isn’t important to you then £49.99 sounds like a bargain so head over to your favourite e-tailer and snap up your copy. A list of participating vendors is available from the Microsoft UK pre order page.

Meet the “Nuna 5” – the fifth generation of solar racing car built by a team from Delft university to enter the World Solar Challenge.

What is the challenge you ask? It’s a 3000km race across Australia (from Darwin to Adelaide) using a car powered entirely by sunlight.  Cars must maintain a minimum average speed of 50 KM/H between checkpoints, run standard road tyres and have no more than 6 square meters of solar panels. The rules don’t say much about the drivers apart from specifying a minimum weight, but looking at that car I doubt I’d fit…

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