spank, spank spank. An oh-so common and tragic sound around the Gizmodo offices, but up until this point we had no way to compete with each other for the best spanker in the land. Enter the Spankometer. This device works similar to a pedometer. Strap it on and begin spanking. The Spankometer will record time taken, number of strokes and can even calculate figures as part of your diet or workout. Yes, this is a completely serious and yes, mine is already ordered and shipping. – Travis Hudson
surprisingly a simple gadget like this is really awesome and useful. Anyone who has used some kind of a device with an LCD screen, whether it be a GPS, satellite radio receiver, portable media player, etc. in a car knows of the horrendous glare that covers the screen for most of the day. Well how the hell are you supposed to let TomTom find your way to the nearest strip club when you can't even see the screen?
This is where the GlareStomper comes in. It is just a little visor that goes on top of the GPS or other unit and prevents some of the glare. It is a pretty damn good idea, but you may be better off just making your own visor to match the size whatever gadget you have rather than paying upwards of $20 for the GlareStomper that may or may not fit your device correctly. – Travis Hudson
Imagineer Russ Nelson has taken it upon himself to improve the keyboard, a device that hasn't seen any real innovations for ages, seemingly. His Mark line of keyboards, the latest being the Mark VIII, are designed to be used with just one hand. Considering much of it is made out of cardboard, the low weight shouldn't surprise anyone.
The Mark VIII is designed in such a way that there's no support base underneath the palm—all weight, as little as there is, is pushed against the thumb. This leaves the other four fingers free to type. As you can imagine, his design went a couple of revisions before his latests, which is currently just lacking CPU code, which he calls "the easy part."
Practical? Debatable. ?œbernerd cool? Even money. – Nicholas Deleon
Logitech has made wireless mice for notebooks for a while now, but now it brings laser technology into the mini-arena with the V450 Laser Cordless Mouse for Notebooks. There's a tiny USB receiver stored inside, and it also has that Tilt Wheel Plus Zoom, for semi-useful side-to-side scrolling.
One of these days there will be a wireless mouse that's the equal of its corded brethren, but Logitech has come the closest so far. Its notebook mice are plenty small, but we're thinking that the slightly reduced suitcase space required by one of these mice is not worth the sacrifice in comfort or efficiency. But that's just us. It'll retail in July for around $50, much less on the street. – Charlie White
Make is featuring a breadboard-based timer that turns off your front bell for a pre-set period of time, thereby ensuring day sleepers will get their 10 hours rest.
It doesn't look very complex—but then again I couldn't even mod my PS2 without burning it up, so I'm useless with electronics—and seems like an excellent and easy hack. – John Biggs
The Edgewing is a little hunk of plastic that sticks to your desk and offers a bit of wrist support for heavy mousing. While it is niether amazing or super cool, it actually works. I slapped one to my desk today and it's quite comfortable. You can buy one or two or get them with your business logo on there for giveaways. $9.95 each, but your carpal tunnels might thank you.
Buffalo has released an accessory that might tickle the diehard laptop users pink. This is a simple numpad with an included mini-USB hub. Unfortunately, the USB hub only has 2 ports, and because the numpad itself will take up one of your laptop's USB ports that leaves a USB port differential of +1—damn, I've been watching too much soccer. So, not that terrific. The numpad also includes a 00 key for those really hardcore Excel-ers. With a price tag of $25 this isn't too shabby of a device. – Travis Hudson
This isn't a real product yet, but it seems that Nokia has a patent for a metal-detecting phone. While it was originally designed to assist folks with bad hearing, the induction coil in the phone can double as a metal detector for wanding down your friends and neighbors. Don't look for this in the next E61, however, because it sounds too creepy to actually end up in a product. – John Biggs
One analyst predicts iPod delays of three months or more, and Apple's stock takes a dive. But why the delay? According to American Technology Research analyst Shaw Woo, Apple switched chip suppliers. As a result, he says the much-anticipated widescreen video iPod probably won't see the light of day until the first half of 2007 instead of the originally-anticipated (or guessed at) 4th quarter of this year.
But we know Steve Jobs is a master of arm-twisting, and maybe he isn't putting a lot of pressure on those parts suppliers because of his imbroglio with the Hollywood studios. They're locking horns because he wants a consistent $9.99 price for each movie, while the studios want a tiered pricing scheme. This stalemate could go on for a while. So what's the rush? Releasing a widescreen video iPod without much video content? The player would be all dressed up with no place to go. – Charlie White
If you spend any amount of time online, you should know by now that Apple's been having some problems with its MacBooks, namely that big ugly stains appear on the palm rests. Needless to say, this makes the MacBook look pretty janky. Now it seems that Apple may be fixing the problem, at least on a case by case basis.
"He didn't even look at the MacBook to see the discolorations, he just gave me a new one," the customer wrote in a post on Apple's MacBook support forums. "I was so impressed that I used the money I was planning on using to pay restocking fees and invested into the applecare 3 year warranty."
Ok, so one case does not a recall make, but as history has shown before, Apple doesn't usually try to jerk its customers around if they're at fault. Best bet is to just keep bothering Apple until they get off their iPod-covered behinds and get into action. – Nicholas Deleon
Pioneer announced that they will be jumping on the exclusive-branded store bandwagon by opening up a Pioneer joint in Costa Mesa, Calif. Besides allowing customers to completely design and install an audio system with expertise help and hands-on trials, Pioneer will also use the Costa Mesa store to experiment with foreign products over here in the states. One of the products confirmed for testing there is the Pure Malt Speakers that are constructed of recycled whiskey barrels.
This massive, 3,200 square foot store is slated for an August opening. – Travis Hudson
Today is National Camera Day, no kidding, and being the contrarians that we are, we present an alternative view of this snap-happy society. For those who think something didn't really happen unless they've taken a picture of it, an English photographer is urging people to step away from the camera and experience the world with their own eyes on "Non-Photography Day." Becca Bland is trying to publicize July 17 as the day when people put down their cameras and appreciate the moment.
"Experience life in an unmediated fashion, without anything in front of your eyes. Live in the moment. When you simply take photos of something, without fully engaging with it, you're assuming that all you can have and take is the actual appearance of a place -- rather than other creative factors that exist in the place."
To insert a personal anecdote, I once covered the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger for a news network, and after the launch was finished, I realize that I hadn't really watched it—I had seen it through the viewfinder of a camera. To this day, I wish I would have just locked down that camera and simply watched the launch with my own eyes. I could have experienced reality, first-hand. However, the other reality would have been losing my job for missing the shot. Readers, similar experiences? Does taking pictures of an event detract from your experience of it? – Charlie White
Well, it only took nine years and a now dwindling technology to settle this dispute over the patent of the PDA keystroke technology that Palm called Graffiti and Xerox called Unistrokes. Palm began incorporating this Graffiti keystroke technology in their PDAs way back in the day while Xerox believed they owned the patent on this technology with their Unistrokes.
Nine years later this keystroke technology is nearly obsolete thanks to the integrated mini-keyboards in a lot of devices, but Xerox still won the battle and Palm will have to pay $22.5 million to settle the patent dispute. Sucks to be Palm, but at least you still have the Treo. What does Xerox have? Copiers? Ha! – Travis Hudson
Getting paranoid these days? Taiwan's Kouwell offers its KW-7292 fingerprint disk, an external hard drive that won't let you access its data unless you've got the right fingerprint.
Its encryption can be configured more precisely, too, where you can designate specific folders that can only be accessed with fingerprint authentication. It's also able to synchronize its data with a PC via Outlook. Pricing and availability wasn't announced yet. – Charlie White
You don't have to pony up 60 Large for our Gizmodo dream Lexus to indulge yourself in techno-goodness, because now Ford has announced its Connection Series that brings high tech down to earth.
The option-stoked Ford Fiestas and Focuses will have voice-activated control, keyless entry and starting, Bluetooth compatibility and MP3 connections to let you play your tunes through the car's sound system. The company is also adding techno-style trim to give the illusion of something high-tech going on, too.
Pricing for the Fiesta Connection starts at $16,055 and for the Focus Connection will set you back $22,055. – Charlie White
Vonage, the VoIP company with an incredibly annoying theme song ("Woo Hoo") just released the V Phone, a VoIP phone contained inside a USB thumb drive which we mentioned a few days ago. I've been playing around with it for a while and can state conclusively that, yes, it is a phone and, yes, it does work.
As the hype from Vongage suggests, it really is just a matter of plugging the USB drive into a Windows-based PC's USB port (again, us Mac and Linux folks get the shaft) and waiting for under a minute for the software to automatically run. From there, a simple GUI greets the user, where the only input field visible is the space for a phone number. I gave our favorite New Editor John Biggs a call and his sweet, soothing voice came through just fine. It doesn't sound as good POTS, but since we've gotten used to cellphones that sound like 9s7f4m NES sound effects, the V Phone gets the job done. The included headphones resemble the earbuds packaged with the iPod and the mic works well enough for what it's tasked to do.
As an added bonus, I took to repeatedly inserting and removing the V Phone from the USB port with properly unmounting the drive first, just to see how durable it really is. Several insertions and removals later, it still worked, so there should be no problem if you forget to properly unmount the drive first.
The Vonage V Phone works as advertised and if you're already a Vonage customer, the $39.99 price tag isn't unreasonable. But if you're not a Vonage customer, there's really no need to all of a sudden become one, especially since its much touted portability is no match for that cellphone you've got in your pocket. – Nicholas Deleon
When it comes to storage, the tinier the better, and Sony jumps into the fray with its wee Micro Vault Tiny USB 2.0 drives that are just 1.45cm x 3cm x 2.7mm. About half the size of conventional USB key drives, they're available in capacities of 256MB, 512 MB, 1GB and 2GB. They'll first find homes in Korea, and are certain to find their way to US shores before too long. – Charlie White
Okay, we kind of understand that not everyone out there is an iPod fanboy like us. Some people would actually prefer buying a different portable media player. Fine, we will cave and help you non-Apple lovers out with a list of the top five iPod alternatives. This list was compiled by T3 and it is pretty spot on, for the most part.
Coming in at numero uno on T3's list is the Meizu miniPlayer, followed by the Creative Zen V Plus, iRiver T10, Sony Ericsson V630i and lastly the mobiBLU US2. From looks alone I would have liked to see the US2 higher up on the list and maybe swap out the Sony Ericsson V630i with the more U.S. friendly Sony NW-E505. We'd suggest going with one of these, only if you absolutely hate Apple, because they are obviously top dog. – Travis Hudson
This week Napster announced their latest flash player to work with the Napster subscription music service. The player itself seems pretty mediocre, but it has a decent price tag—with a catch, of course. The player only has 1 GB of storage space and supports MP3, WMA, WAV, MPEG-4 and JPEG. It includes a FM radio tuner and rechargeable battery capable 35 hours of playback time. It will retail for $120, but if you sign up for a year of Napster To Go service at a ball-busting $14.95 per month, this player can be yours for only $50. Not too bad, really, and a pretty good deal if you actually want to use Napster To Go. – Travis Hudson
Once you've acquired a taste for espresso, it's hard to go back to everyday java. That's why aficionados of the burnt coffee want to take it with them, brewing up espresso al fresco, even on a ice-capped mountaintop.
Here's a guy who took his Preva xSport portable espresso maker on a long hike, heating up some water and pressing it through the grounds, after just three minutes giving him a pick-me-up even on top of the world. Well, 4400 feet above sea level, but who's counting? – Charlie White
We've seen those crazy bone conduction headphones in the past and now they just keep getting weirder. These headphones—named the Vibone EZ-80WP—work a little like shaking baby syndrome, for adults, underwater. Bone-conduction headphones use your skull to send musical vibrations to your brain. That sounds fine and dandy on dry land, but would it still work as well underwater? – Travis Hudson
Computers are getting even smaller, and this CM-X270 from Compulab of Israel is the size of a credit card. It's a real PC, with four USB ports, a PCI bus, 128MB of RAM, a 512MB flash memory card, AC '97 audio, all running on an Intel XScale processor. Plus, it hooks up to the rest of the network with WiFi. Intended to be embedded inside various products we'll be seeing fairly soon, if you buy 10,000 of them, they'll run you $47 apiece. – Charlie White
Our intrepid cameraman Rich threw together a few highlights from last nights Digital Experience event here in sunny New York City. In it we see the cock-fighting ring where Memorex put its Blu-Ray and HD-DVD writable disks, the Nokia E70 keyboard phone, and the N-series wireless gear from Belkin. Also, look for the Burblbrox D8G04D. – John Biggs
Although we've seen these floating around in the wild, SapphireTech has now officially announced the availability of its Sapphire Radeon X1600Pro graphics card. What's so unusual about it? Well, well, looky there—it's an HDMI port on its business end instead of the usual DVI. The 256MB card has SP/DIF coaxial digital audio, too, and the digital audio can also be passed through that HDMI port.
Competitor nVidia told us graphics cards like this were coming, but this is the first we've seen with such a port, well-suited for home theater use because it's HDCP (High bandwidth Digital Copy Protection) compliant. Next up with a card like this will be nVidia, at least that's what they told us a couple of weeks ago. – Charlie White
Here come the cellphone watches, with this $499 Dick Tracy-esque model from SMS Technology Australia being the second one we've seen this month. Called by its maker "the world's smallest wrist phone," My MobileWatch has an internal antenna, voice dialing and hooks up to Bluetooth, so imagine yourself wearing a tiny headset and just nonchalantly using your watch as a phone.
From what we could gather on the company's website, the MobileWatch is not quite ready to ship yet, but they're telling us to hurry because there will only be 30,000 watches available. Both of those little pieces of information make us slightly nervous. With its GSM functionality, the company says you can place an existing sim card into the unit, and then you'll be making phone calls from your wrist. Hey, it's just like Dick Tracy used to do, but better. His was just a two-way radio, with no Bluetooth!
What's intriguing about the MobileWatch is that it looks like it's just about the same size as a normal watch, unlike other attempts at this concept we've seen. One to watch. – Charlie White
The microphone on my Powerbook G4 is decent, but it’s not quite good enough when we’re trying to hold a Skypecast. Solution? The Sennheiser M 145 USB Skype Approved headset.
The headset consists of what you see above connected to two 3.5mm plugs, one for the mic input and one for the headphone output. It also comes with an adapter which attaches to those two plugs and gives turns it into a USB connection. Your choice whether you want to go USB or 3.5mm—say if you’re running out of USB ports on your MacBook.
Remember how TaxCut was shipped on a Kingston 256MB Flash drive? This is kind of like that, except the drives come with free software like OpenOffice, Migo, Pass2Go and ACDSee—though the last three are demos. The USB drives come in 512MB, 1GB and 2GB sizes. An interesting idea for people who don't have broadband to download OpenOffice or demos.
Taking advantage of their swanky new w i d e s c r e e n format, Lifehacker's posted a screenshot tour of Windows Vista beta. If you haven't tried it, or tried an older version but not Beta 2, go over and take a look. We're just as excited about Windows Vista as we are about OS X Leopard, but that's probably because we're such Neophiliacs.
This is kind of interesting. The Logitec USB FM transmitter plays back USB and WMA files from your USB device—think thumb drive—while being powered from your car's lighter outlet. An interesting alternative to FM transmitters that just transmit the sound from a standard MP3 player. There's six colours/textures, and is available for import from Japan.
Just when we thought the LG Breathalyzer mobile phone couldn't be more useless, they go an introduce this anti-drunk dialling feature. The phone can be set to block certain people in the book, say, your ex, your boss, and your pastor, from being dialled when the phone detects booze on your breath.
The LG LP4100 is going to be released later this year, and has already sold 200,000 phones in Korea. We're still waiting for them to add an anti-ugly-drunken-hookup mode.
With HD DVD and Blu-ray finally hitting the shelves there are still a lot of questions to be answered before deciding on a format. Dan Costa over at PC Magazine has an excellent write-up of what you need to know when it comes to choosing a new DVD format. Thanks for the information, Costa. I even learned some stuff that was still a little confusing in my head. This is definitely worth a read for any home theatre nut—or any movie watcher for that matter. Knowledge is power!
The Fatman iTube is a dock compatible with all iPod except the Shuffle. The iPod docking portion reminds me of a treadmill, which is kind of ironic because the company is called Fatman. The other dock section is a valve amplifier that can export your music and movies onto a television or speaker system easily with the included remote. Looks damn cool, probably gets the job done, has a neat name, to boot—yeah, we'll give this iPod speaker dock our seal of approval. Oh wait, it costs £299. Yeah that is a downer.
What better way to feel good about yourself than to have a piece of technology insult you everyday. The Japanese might like a bit of schoolgirl pop and whipping but the Brits might be more at home with a good old tongue-lashing from the Monty Python crew.
Who’da thunk it? It seems that men and boys no longer hold exclusive rights to being lazy, tech-crazy, timewasting gits. A new US study of people that play games on their mobile phones has discovered that women represent almost 60 per cent. On top of that women comprise 61 per cent of those playing games 1-to- 4 hours a month and 58 per cent of all those that play for more than four hours a month.
If you want this tiny, credit card sized phone you're going to have to do without a keypad. Tough titties! The N908 is only 12.8mm (0.5 inches), but the small size doesn't mean it skimps on the features. The phone supports MP3/AAC/AAC+/3GP/MPEG4 playback and has a 1.3 megapixel camera. There's USB and Bluetooth for syncing and a microSD card for extra storage.
The N908 is going to be released in Asia in Q3 for an unknown amount of yuan/dollars. – Jason Chen
spank, spank spank. An oh-so common and tragic sound around the Gizmodo offices, but up until this point we had no way to compete with each other for the best spanker in the land. Enter the Spankometer. This device works similar to a pedometer. Strap it on and begin spanking. The Spankometer will record time taken, number of strokes and can even calculate figures as part of your diet or workout. Yes, this is a completely serious and yes, mine is already ordered and shipping. 
surprisingly a simple gadget like this is really awesome and useful. Anyone who has used some kind of a device with an LCD screen, whether it be a GPS, satellite radio receiver, portable media player, etc. in a car knows of the horrendous glare that covers the screen for most of the day. Well how the hell are you supposed to let TomTom find your way to the nearest strip club when you can't even see the screen?
Imagineer Russ Nelson has taken it upon himself to improve the keyboard, a device that hasn't seen any real innovations for ages, seemingly. His Mark line of keyboards, the latest being the Mark VIII, are designed to be used with just one hand. Considering much of it is made out of cardboard, the low weight shouldn't surprise anyone. 
Logitech has made wireless mice for notebooks for a while now, but now it brings laser technology into the mini-arena with the V450 Laser Cordless Mouse for Notebooks. There's a tiny USB receiver stored inside, and it also has that Tilt Wheel Plus Zoom, for semi-useful side-to-side scrolling.
Make is featuring a breadboard-based timer that turns off your front bell for a pre-set period of time, thereby ensuring day sleepers will get their 10 hours rest.
The Edgewing is a little hunk of plastic that sticks to your desk and offers a bit of wrist support for heavy mousing. While it is niether amazing or super cool, it actually works. I slapped one to my desk today and it's quite comfortable. You can buy one or two or get them with your business logo on there for giveaways. $9.95 each, but your carpal tunnels might thank you.
Buffalo has released an accessory that might tickle the diehard laptop users pink. This is a simple numpad with an included mini-USB hub. Unfortunately, the USB hub only has 2 ports, and because the numpad itself will take up one of your laptop's USB ports that leaves a USB port differential of +1—damn, I've been watching too much soccer. So, not that terrific. The numpad also includes a 00 key for those really hardcore Excel-ers. With a price tag of $25 this isn't too shabby of a device. 
This isn't a real product yet, but it seems that Nokia has a patent for a metal-detecting phone. While it was originally designed to assist folks with bad hearing, the induction coil in the phone can double as a metal detector for wanding down your friends and neighbors. Don't look for this in the next E61, however, because it sounds too creepy to actually end up in a product.
If you spend any amount of time online, you should know by now that Apple's been having some problems with its MacBooks, namely that big ugly 
Pioneer announced that they will be jumping on the exclusive-branded store bandwagon by opening up a Pioneer joint in Costa Mesa, Calif. Besides allowing customers to completely design and install an audio system with expertise help and hands-on trials, Pioneer will also use the Costa Mesa store to experiment with foreign products over here in the states. One of the products confirmed for testing there is the Pure Malt Speakers that are constructed of recycled whiskey barrels. 
Today is National Camera Day, no kidding, and being the contrarians that we are, we present an alternative view of this snap-happy society. For those who think something didn't really happen unless they've taken a picture of it, an English photographer is urging people to step away from the camera and experience the world with their own eyes on "Non-Photography Day." Becca Bland is trying to publicize July 17 as the day when people put down their cameras and appreciate the moment.
Well, it only took nine years and a now dwindling technology to settle this dispute over the patent of the PDA keystroke technology that Palm called Graffiti and Xerox called Unistrokes. Palm began incorporating this Graffiti keystroke technology in their PDAs way back in the day while Xerox believed they owned the patent on this technology with their Unistrokes. 
You don't have to pony up 60 Large for our Gizmodo 
Vonage, the VoIP company with an incredibly annoying theme song ("Woo Hoo") just released the V Phone, a VoIP phone contained inside a USB thumb drive which we mentioned a few days 
When it comes to storage, the tinier the better, and Sony jumps into the fray with its wee Micro Vault Tiny USB 2.0 drives that are just 1.45cm x 3cm x 2.7mm. About half the size of conventional USB key drives, they're available in capacities of 256MB, 512 MB, 1GB and 2GB. They'll first find homes in Korea, and are certain to find their way to US shores before too long. 
Okay, we kind of understand that not everyone out there is an iPod fanboy like us. Some people would actually prefer buying a different portable media player. Fine, we will cave and help you non-Apple lovers out with a list of the top five iPod alternatives. This list was compiled by T3 and it is pretty spot on, for the most part.
Coming in at numero uno on T3's list is the Meizu miniPlayer, followed by the Creative Zen V Plus, iRiver T10, Sony Ericsson V630i and lastly the mobiBLU US2. From looks alone I would have liked to see the US2 higher up on the list and maybe swap out the Sony Ericsson V630i with the more U.S. friendly Sony NW-E505. We'd suggest going with one of these, only if you absolutely hate Apple, because they are obviously top dog. 
This week Napster announced their latest flash player to work with the Napster subscription music service. The player itself seems pretty mediocre, but it has a decent price tag—with a catch, of course. The player only has 1 GB of storage space and supports MP3, WMA, WAV, MPEG-4 and JPEG. It includes a FM radio tuner and rechargeable battery capable 35 hours of playback time. It will retail for $120, but if you sign up for a year of Napster To Go service at a ball-busting $14.95 per month, this player can be yours for only $50. Not too bad, really, and a pretty good deal if you actually want to use Napster To Go. 
We've seen those crazy bone conduction 
Computers are getting even smaller, and this CM-X270 from Compulab of Israel is the size of a credit card. It's a real PC, with four USB ports, a PCI bus, 128MB of RAM, a 512MB flash memory card, AC '97 audio, all running on an Intel XScale processor. Plus, it hooks up to the rest of the network with WiFi. Intended to be embedded inside various products we'll be seeing fairly soon, if you buy 10,000 of them, they'll run you $47 apiece. 
Here come the cellphone watches, with this $499 Dick Tracy-esque model from SMS Technology Australia being the second one 
The microphone on my Powerbook G4 is decent, but it’s not quite good enough when we’re trying to hold a Skypecast. Solution? The Sennheiser M 145 USB Skype Approved headset. 
Remember how TaxCut was shipped on a Kingston 256MB Flash drive? This is kind of like that, except the drives come with free software like OpenOffice, Migo, Pass2Go and ACDSee—though the last three are demos. The USB drives come in 512MB, 1GB and 2GB sizes. An interesting idea for people who don't have broadband to download OpenOffice or demos.
Taking advantage of their swanky new w i d e s c r e e n format, Lifehacker's posted a screenshot tour of Windows Vista beta. If you haven't tried it, or tried an older version but not Beta 2, go over and take a look. We're just as excited about Windows Vista as we are about OS X Leopard, but that's probably because we're such Neophiliacs.
With HD DVD and Blu-ray finally hitting the shelves there are still a lot of questions to be answered before deciding on a format. Dan Costa over at PC Magazine has an excellent write-up of what you need to know when it comes to choosing a new DVD format. Thanks for the information, Costa. I even learned some stuff that was still a little confusing in my head. This is definitely worth a read for any home theatre nut—or any movie watcher for that matter. Knowledge is power!
The Fatman iTube is a dock compatible with all iPod except the Shuffle. The iPod docking portion reminds me of a treadmill, which is kind of ironic because the company is called Fatman. The other dock section is a valve amplifier that can export your music and movies onto a television or speaker system easily with the included remote. Looks damn cool, probably gets the job done, has a neat name, to boot—yeah, we'll give this iPod speaker dock our seal of approval. Oh wait, it costs £299. Yeah that is a downer.
What better way to feel good about yourself than to have a piece of technology insult you everyday. The Japanese might like a bit of schoolgirl pop and whipping but the Brits might be more at home with a good old tongue-lashing from the Monty Python crew.
Who’da thunk it? It seems that men and boys no longer hold exclusive rights to being lazy, tech-crazy, timewasting gits. A new US study of people that play games on their mobile phones has discovered that women represent almost 60 per cent. On top of that women comprise 61 per cent of those playing games 1-to- 4 hours a month and 58 per cent of all those that play for more than four hours a month.
Those sneaky Frenchies are stirring up the DRM debate again with the news that Virgin France has been fined heavily for music piracy.
If you want this tiny, credit card sized phone you're going to have to do without a keypad. Tough titties! The N908 is only 12.8mm (0.5 inches), but the small size doesn't mean it skimps on the features. The phone supports MP3/AAC/AAC+/3GP/MPEG4 playback and has a 1.3 megapixel camera. There's USB and Bluetooth for syncing and a microSD card for extra storage. 
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
