Just when you thought you've graduated from college and escaped the desk + chair combination furniture, here comes the Thanko Chair-Desk. It's a standard rolling office chair, yes, but it also has an attachment with a desk-surface for writing/computing. Very useful for Japan's 200 sqft. apartments, but definitely useful for a workplace that no desks and cubicles—just a wide open floor full of chair-desks and laptops. We could see lots of rolling around work getting done there. -Jason Chen
File this in the realm of totally false (Logitech said "this is definitely made up"), but here's some fanart of a possible Logitech G25 keyboard. It has their EDGE-line stylings, but combines Optimus style changeable display keys with a scrolling circle pad on the left. Yeah, we could see ourselves using something like this, but if we really had to choose, we'd have them make the keyboard curved, like the Microsoft Ultimate Keyboards. [Thanks Tipster!] -Jason Chen
Apple’s latest media sensation, the iPhone, outsold all other smartphones in the US during July.
According to market watchers, iSuppli, the much-hyped iPhone – which launched at the end of June – accounted for 1.8% of all phones sold in July, outselling the Blackberry series, the entire Palm portfolio, and any smartphones from Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung, among others.
Sales even equalled those of the fashion-friendly LG Chocolate, which is classed as the best-selling feature phone. The iPhone is classed by iSuppli as a smartphone/feature phone hybrid. So, who’s buying these things?
iPhone Demographics
· Approximately 57% of iPhones bought in July were purchased by US consumers 35 years of age or younger.
· Most iPhone buyers were men in July, with 52% of purchasers being male and 48% female.
· Nearly two-thirds, or 62%, of iPhone buyers in July had a four-college degree or more education.
· One quarter of consumers who bought iPhones switched to AT&T service. AT&T is the exclusive provider of service for the iPhone.
So, it’s off to a great start but even iSuppli is cautious be saying much of the early demand could be down to pent-up fans. Still, it forecasts that Apple will flog 4.5 million of them by the end of the year and 30 million by the end of 2011.-Martin Lynch
Sony’s been caught [allegedly] fiddling with the Master Chief, so to speak. We all know that Wikipedia can hardly claim to be the grail of balanced information, but it’s still pretty good. Every now and then an over-zealous believer in one technology embarks on a little entry sabotage of a rival tech and that’s, sadly, par for the course nowadays. As long as you aren’t caught.
One way not to get caught is, for instance, is that if you work for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in Liverpool, don’t use Sony Liverpool’s computers to start altering the Halo 3 Wikipedia entry from work. Oops. The altered paragraph, according to Ars Technica, reads:
“Halo 3, the third game in the best-selling Xbox game franchise, is a highly anticipated first-person shooter under development by Bungie Studios for the Xbox 360 and is expected to "set a new high water mark" for next-generation games, although it won't look any better than Halo 2.”
Obviously, dissing Halo 3’s stunning high-def visual content has sent certain gaming folk into paroxysms of fury while the rest of us expect plenty more sniping in the run up to the September 25/26th launch of what will possibly be the biggest game launch yet.
Somehow, I still don’t it’s grounds to string up the offender who, may or may not be, a Sony employee. Maybe he'd like some Halo 3 mountain Dew?-Martin Lynch
As useless USB gadgets go, the USB Humping Dog certainly takes some beating. It appears that his sole function is to ravage laptops. We are talking world class Casanova-type action here because [thanks to being powered off the USB port] he can hump every port on your lappie, before heading out to Currys looking for some real dual-core, widescreen action.
There are some who believe that inside this Canine Love Machine lurks a useful, Flash-memory drive but they are wrong. This really is that useless.
Still, can you imagine the look on the faces of some office colleagues when they return to their desks only to be faced by the sight of their precious ultra-portable being humped across the desk by a 2in-high dog? Almost, just almost, worth getting fired for. Yours for £6.-Martin Lynch
Sony is back on the rack this week after admitting that there’s a security flaw in some of its USB sticks that could leave your PC open to attack from undesirable folk.
The vulnerability was discovered by F-Secure and confirmed by McAfee, and relates to three of Sony’s MicroVault USB sticks with fingerprint readers. The flaw resides in the bundled software – written by a third-party, Sony was quick to point out - which creates a hidden directory on the PC that could not be detected by the user or anti-virus software scanners. A Sony spokesperson said:
“While the software at the issue was developed by a third-party vendor in conjunction with our outsourced device manufacturer, as a precaution and to alleviate any potential concerns, we will be issuing a downloadable software to address the situation by mid-September.”
F-Secure said Sony’s DRM-infected CD fiasco of 2005 was somewhat similar since the XCP software then also created an exploitable security hole.-Martin Lynch
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
