Electronic Gadgets And Gizmos

Unlike other models we’ve seen, this roll-up mouse pad doesn’t just have some random, empty cylinder hanging off the side, spiting you like an empty tallboy through the workday. Instead, it uses this otherwise empty space to store a 4-port USB hub and a speaker complete with 3.5mm in and outputs. In other words, you can charge your MP3 USB gear while playing it right back through your mouse pad. Priced at $22, it’s not especially easy on the eyes, but its casual disregard for style is kind of what makes it great. [Gadget4All]

More: continued here

Jason, I was in LA for a bit yesterday, helping Jalopnik cover the LA autoshow with my long lens. (It was a boring show with nothing too interesting other than the Electric Mini and Honda Concept.) But it was coincidentally the same day JJ Abrams was showing off some scenes from the new Trek movie, so I stopped by. This is funny: When they asked me if I had any recording gear in my bag, I had a heart attack. Most people had a mere cellphone, but I had my full journo-blogger-battle messenger and so I ended up checking like 4 pieces of AV gear and a laptop. So embarrassing.

Inside, I don’t usually get star struck, but how can a geek not get excited seeing both Harold from Harold and Kumar and Sylar in the same theater sitting in the same row watching themselves on the screen. And it was Trek! Not the old Trek, and Not even Next Generation, but a new kind of Trek with the origins of the old characters and how they met up. Shields up, spoilers ahead.

They first showed the new trailer, previewed in theaters playing Bond, which you can see here.

Then they went through the scene were we see a trouble Kirk getting into a bar fight with cadets until a man stationed on his father’s ship realizes who he is, stops the fight and asks him if he wants to do something better with his life. Kirk takes him up and joins. The next scene involves Kirk working with Bones to smuggle him aboard the Enterprise and he saves them from walking into a trap. The next scene involves a fight scene with John Cho (HAROLD and Sulu) and Chris Pine (Kirk) vs some filthy Romulans, skydiving (yes, skydiving) and a saber fight. And the final scene involves Spock and Kirk meeting Scotty.

The Trek Dorks are currently a bit polarized, a few upset over rewriting canon and a few worried about the stylistic updates. But I really like the New Trek, and I think it could break out of the category of Films Only for Nerds. You’ve got more action, humor, and heat than you did in the old ones. Even if its a bit less intellectual than previous movies at times, if the preview was any indication, it doesn’t seem to ever slow down. And most importantly, it’s impossible to not resonate with the young cast playing the classic characters as they express the old mannerisms; Kirk runs like Kirk, Bones complains like bones, and Scotty, well Scotty is 100x more funny than the old Scotty. Come to think of it, everyone with an accent is extremely funny, but maybe because I’m a bit racist. (In a loving way.) Someone should have done an origins movie long ago, but within a year, we’ll have a modern telling of the heroes many of us grew up with. If you’re like me, you’ll probably find the story of how they all got together as cadets and juniors as important as the actual adventure they go on. Maybe we can do an io9/Gizmodo reader meetup movie night.

Here are my favoritest Giz stories today:
• BlackBerry Storm Review (Verdict: Not Quite a Perfect Storm)
• Future iPhones May Have Always-On Display
• Giz Explains: Every Video Format You Need to Know
• 10 Takes on the Blackberry Storm
• Dealzmodo Hack: Accessorize Your iPod/iPhone Like MacGyver
• At Gizmodo Gallery: The Red One Camera
• A Look at the Nokia Damage Test Labs

More: continued here

While most smartphone manufacturers have released at least one fancy touchscreen model, RIM has pretty much stuck with their Blackberry’s standard businessman-pleasing form, a squat candybar design with QWERTY and a tiny screen. That was, until they announced the BlackBerry Storm, the first full touchscreen Blackberry on the market—and also the first smartphone to transform a normally cold, lifeless touchscreen into one big clickable button.

So what did the press think? They loved it…and they hated it…depending who you talk to.

CNET
…its 3.25-inch VGA glass display also demands attention for its sharpness and brightness, showing 65,000 colors at a crisp 480×360-pixel resolution. We weren’t as impressed with the Storm’s screen as the BlackBerry Bold, but it’s still beautiful.

PCMag
A solid voice phone, the Storm has fine reception, and earpiece and speakerphone volume are both very loud. There’s also some pleasing in-ear feedback of your own voice. Transmissions sounded steady on the other end, with just a little background noise coming through, thanks to the phone’s dual-mic noise cancellation.

Laptop
One thing’s for sure: The Storm puts the iPhone 3G’s speaker to shame. When playing Keane’s “Perfect Symmetry,” the sound was quite loud even at medium volume, and the music application displays large album art that nicely takes up most of the screen.

Wired
When you want to select anything, be it a multimedia app or the number five, you have to press the screen down a millimeter, it’s roughly the same sensation you get when clicking a mouse. But that small press makes a huge difference. Text messaging is amazing — pounding out a long-winded SMS (with a lot of compound words and no abbreviations) is just as easy as typing one out on a MacBook’s keyboard. This is the single killer feature of the Storm and if not for a few glaring flaws a good reason to go out and buy one right now.

PCWorld
The decision by Research in Motion to differentiate the Storm by giving its capacitive touch screen a mechanical component (the entire screen functions as a button for confirming selections or initiating actions) turns out to be more confusing than helpful. Ultimately, the Storm’s touch interface feels like a failed experiment.
Popular Mechanics
With a little practice, we were able to get used to [the virtual keypad] and speed the typing along, but it was never quite as fast as typing with a real mobile keypad, or even with the iPhone’s virtual keypad.

The Wall Street Journal
The Storm also has a keyboard oddity that I found annoying, and that may put off others. It presents you with a full virtual keyboard only when you are holding it horizontally. When you hold the Storm vertically, you get a mashed-up keyboard, like the one on the narrower BlackBerry Pearl, which has multiple letters on each key.

DVICE
Why would BlackBerry addicts want to give up buttons for a touchscreen typing system that is almost, but not quite as good? The trade-off is for the big, beautiful screen that you get when you’re not using the keypad. It’s far better for reading emails, using GPS or playing BrickBreaker than any BlackBerry that’s come before.

JKOnTheRun
…the web browser on the Storm, new to OS 4.7, is very good. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as the browsing experience on the iPhone but it’s pretty darn close, certainly close enough. Web pages are rendered quickly in full page mode and when you double tap on the screen the browser zooms in to column mode…Simply hit the Back hardware button and you instantly zoom back out.
InfoSync
The camera on the BlackBerry Storm should have been much better. After all, with auto focus, a 3.2-megapixel sensor and plenty of advanced settings for shooter, you might expect the camera will take decent photos…[yet] colors seemed sapped out of even the most exciting scenes, as Times Square and our little hot pink action figure were both rendered drab. Noise was somewhat of a problem, though there was a nice amount of detail in pics when the auto focus was doing its job correctly.

Bonus Take: Gizmodo
I think that the Storm falls short of what RIM was aiming for, and ultimately what all the hype is driving people to expect. Some of this is fixable: The damn thing needs to crash less often. But SurePress is not the end-all, be-all of touchscreen technologies—it’s not really an evolutionary step forward, even.
The Storm will be available tomorrow (November 21) for $200 after Verizon rebate.

More: continued here

The most anticipated BlackBerry of the year (sorry, Bold) is just a day away from release on Verizon — and naturally, we’ve got the full rundown.Want to know if this is the phone for you? Click the pic or the link below to get the scoop!

Continue on to read the full BlackBerry Storm review

Filed under: Cellphones

In case you missed our BlackBerry Storm review… originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Nyko didn’t like seeing fellow third party manufacturer Penguin create a 4x Wiimote charger first, so Nyko fired back with the Charge Station Quad for Wii. Priced at $50, the Nyko Quad includes four NiMH rechargeable battery packs, four rubber Wii Remote battery covers and, of course, a four-port Wiimote battery charger that’s loaded to the brim with LEDs. Shipments start in December, but it doesn’t look like Nyko is taking orders just yet. [Nyko]

More: continued here