Apple dazzled customers with an armful of shiny new iPods during a press conference last week, but a number of fans groaned at a less pleasing sight: the new iTunes 10 icon (above). Gone is the legendary icon of a compact disc, replaced by a blue bubble containing a music note. A Wired.com reader even [...]
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Windows Phone 7 Office Image via Microsoft. Traditionally, Microsoft has been a software company, leveraging its office suites and operating systems, but selling applications for any compatible hardware and platform. For smartphones in particular, its strategy has been to supply the software and let other companies worry about developing the phones. So why not go [...]
I regularly laugh and snicker at the Great British Power Plug and Socket, a pair of devices so safe, so mollycoddling that they are almost physically wrapped in cotton-wool. But today I will not laugh, at least not at this particular British shame. Today I shall point out that this over-protective system actually solves many [...]
Image of RFID-enabled recycling bins via RecycleBank The long-promised “internet of things” is here — and already, it’s in the trash. Cleveland is equipping new trash and recycling cans and carts with radio frequency identification (or RFID) chips and bar codes. If you don’t bring your recycling bin to the curb for a few weeks, [...]
I’m not writing this post only because the company involved has the awesome name of Schlumpf, but it certainly played a big part. The gadget in question is a new kind of belt-drive for bikes, the Advanced Belt Drive System, or ABDS. The innovation here isn’t in the belts: the drive uses standard 14mm-pitch belts. [...]
Most of us can’t fully succumb to our technolust until we’ve seen a finished gadget in use. Here’s the dirty secret, though — none of your perverted fantasies about multiple-touchscreen smartphones can be realized until someone makes a dual-core chip that would know what to do with them. Samsung’s new Orion 1GHz dual-core ARM microprocessor [...]
Abvio’s trio of motion-tracking iPhone fitness apps have been updated with a major new feature: they know when you stop. This information isn’t used to detect the lazier amongst us, but to give more accurate readings of your times and average speed. The three apps, Cyclemeter, Runmeter and Walkmeter, now use GPS signals to detect [...]
Nikon’s new P7000 compact camera smacks right up against Canon’s G11 (and forthcoming G12). It’s a tough, rangefinder-style camera with looks and specs which are almost word-for-word the same as those on the Canon. And that’s a good thing. First, the similarities. Both the Nikon and the Canon have 10-megapixel sensors, both of which are [...]
A journalist captured in Afghanistan told the world he was still alive by tweeting with a prison guard’s cellphone. This remarkable tale about a tweet kicks off a new meme here at Gadget Lab that we’re calling Tweet of the Day, where we’ll post our favorite tweets from just about anybody in our orbit: gadget [...]
The iPhone gets all the hype, but the iPod Touch is Apple’s second weapon of mass consumption constituting nearly 40 percent of the company’s mobile device sales, according to a report. Apple has sold 45 million units of the iPod Touch over its lifetime out of the 120 million iOS devices shipped overall, according to [...]
