According to the folks at Electronista, fancy-pants watchmaker TAG Heuer will team up with the French designers at Modelabs to develop a new line of luxury cellphones. The news follows closely on the heels of other fashion icons like Armani and Prada entering the phone biz, but there is no word yet on how the Tag Heuer phone would compare to those offerings in terms of specifications.

As for the design, the cellphones are expected to be as as “contemporary,” “technological” and “timeless” as their watches. Naturally, there is no word yet on any type of advertising campaign, but my guess is that somehow Tiger Woods will find a way to make even more money whoring it out to the masses. [TagHeuer and Electronista]

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Just about everyone has a soft spot for Legos, which is why someone needs to make this BLOC MP3 player concept a reality. Not satisfied with simply looking like a Lego, the BLOC would actually feature Lego-like snap together functionality.

If you want more than the base 50MB of memory, simply snap on another module. If you are looking to sync and share music with your friends, just connect your BLOCs together. Using the lanyard, you could build you own Flava Flav-style necklace or put a whole mess of them together and build some sort of iinsane Lego masterpiece complete with its own crappy soundtrack. [Yanko Design]

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Here’s the Star NX788, a cellphone with dual SIM card slots and matching dual dial keys. Brian says that the best feature, however, is the secret compartment that can hold a Bluetooth headset and charge it at the same time—hopefully only when the cellphone is connected to a power source. I say that the best feature is that it is manufactured in China and it will probably never leave that country. More images and obligatory poll after the jump:

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[HKSincere]

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Today’s most popular headlines are Desktop Evolution: Windows and Mac OS Comparison (116,148 views today), 10 Reasons We’re Doomed: SkyMall Edition (77,140) and 10 Cyber Monday Deals Worth Checking Out (72,486). Today’s most discussed stories are Desktop Evolution: Windows and Mac OS Comparison (95 comments), 10 Cyber Monday Deals Worth Checking Out (52) and The World’s Most Effective Speed Bump (46).

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Not only does the upcoming Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard Update bring parental timers and downloadable original Xbox games, it’s going to allow you to peep in on your buddies’ friends list as well. As long as your friends set their list visibility to “Everyone” or “Friends only” (and not “Blocked”), you can see who your friend friended and send a friend request to them of your own. Think of it as looking through your buddies’ cellphone when he’s not looking, jotting down numbers, then calling people up and asking if they’ll be your friend. [Xbox via Friends of Friends]

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Feeling the whirlwind of GPL diehards buzzing around the internet beating at its face, Asus has released more of the Eee’s source code—specifically the missing Asus_ACPI module, which manages its hardware interfaces. GPL 1, Asus still 1? [Asus via Engadget]

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During the past week, many readers have asked us to compare the physical traits of the second-gen Sony Reader and the all-new Amazon Kindle. (If you feel a bit behind, catch up by reading our full Amazon Kindle review and verdict from last Friday.) The Sony Reader is much smaller, and weighs three ounces less than the Kindle, but the screens are exactly the same size, and use the same E-Ink technology. They have more or less the same comfort advantage over LCDs and other glowing screens—and of course, they have no backlight.

For seven days now, I have comfortably read in many lighting conditions with the Kindle and can safely say it has not been a strain of any kind. I’m a guy who stares at a laptop screen for hours on end, and that can suck. Reading E-Ink from either the Kindle or the Sony Reader is a vacation by comparison. My wife has also stolen it from me every chance she’s had, and especially likes reading the New York Times on an airplane, something she says she wouldn’t normally do because it’s just too much paper. No complaints about readability, guys. I wish you doubters could experience it.

Side by side, fonts appear smoother on the Kindle than on the Reader, and the Kindle has a choice of six font sizes, as opposed to Reader’s choice of three. Both let you bump font sizes up or down on the fly, a major convenience. The Reader has active screens—showing animated status indicators and so on—while Kindle screens are always static. If anything on the Kindle page changes, the whole screen does a full refresh.

Sony has dedicated music player and JPEG viewer; Amazon hasn’t quite nailed that yet. However, the Kindle does have one thing the Reader doesn’t have in this department: a speaker. It’s not bad either, if you’re mostly hoping to hear audiobooks and background music.Even though you can drag and drop files to the Reader, you can only do that with unprotected stuff like PDFs, MP3s and JPEGs. Kindle’s drag-and-drop potential is even less, since you can only drag a certain subset of compatible files over to it.

USB disk folder appearance of Sony Reader:USB disk folder appearance of Amazon Kindle:There’s no way to download books from Sony’s store without using the special eBook Library software, which is cumbersome and works only with Windows PCs.

Using the eBook Library with the Reader, you can get certain views of content that you cannot get in any way with the Kindle, and you can even read books on your computer that are stored on the Reader (though I am not entirely sure why you’d want to do that). Here’s a look at the eBook Library interface: This is not a true to-the-death Battlemodo, but it was an attempt to show you the differences between the two devices, beyond mere specs. I have to say, it is this Windows-only, iTunes-wannabe PC reliance that hurts the Sony Reader more than anything, especially because Sony Electronics will never admit to being as bad at software design as they are good at hardware design. The extra $100 for the Kindle means freedom from PC—if at the same time it means a shackle to Amazon and its potentially limited file friendliness. When you talk to regular non-geeks, downloading books—and those all-important magazines and newspapers—directly to the device makes the most sense. [Sony Reader; Amazon Kindle]

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Eric of Gizmodo pits Microsoft Windows against Apple’s Mac OS to see how each operating system evolved over the years. Click here for first picture in gallery.

The breakdown shows Windows to be making major aesthetic development around the release of Windows 2000. Mac OS took off a little later, with OS 9 looking like a gimped UI in comparison. Mac OS X saw Apple make a large step up in the graphic pants department

[via Gizmodo]

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Alcoholic on the go? Nothing’s worse than getting stuck in the rain without a nip or two to help keep you warm. Well, if you had this sneaky Malacca Flask Umbrella from Swaine Adeney Brigg, you’d never go without. Simply unscrew the bottom of the handle to reveal a glass flask that you can fill up with your favorite hooch. I hope you’re a functional alcoholic with a good paying job, however, as this thing will set you back a criminal $875 thanks to the lowly US dollar. [Product Page via UrbanDaddy]

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“BLOC” is a LEGO-inspired MP3 player that boasts a modular design. It features “an OLED screen, 4-way directional toggle, and 50MB of memory.” Not enough memory? Just snap on an extra memory module. Click here for one more picture.

Should you need more, just snap on another memory module. Wanna share music with friends? No problem - just connect two BLOCS together and get your sync on. Oh and just for kicks, it’ll record voice notes too

[via YankoDesign]

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