Fujitsu LifeBook U2010 gets official in five different colors

Filed under: Laptops

Fujitsu has been showing off its LifeBook U2010 netbook / convertible laptop for some time now, but it’s just now getting completely official with it, and it’s taken the opportunity to reveal all five colors we can expect to see the laptop available in. That includes the basic black option we’ve been seeing all along (now called Ocean Black), as well as Pink Gold, Cool Silver, Fuschia Red, and Luminous Blue. Otherwise, the laptop’s specs look to be in line with what we’ve been expecting, including a 1.6GHz Atom processor, a 5.6-inch WXGA display, an optional 64GB SSD drive (or a standard 60GB hard drive), a promised 8 hours of battery life from the extended battery, and the usual built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam. Still no final word on a price though, or any indication of a release date for the US-centric U820 model, which the FCC has already kindly let out of the bag.

[Via Pocketables]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Video: pigeon learns to “play” Tap Tap Revenge

Filed under: Cellphones

It’s hard to say if the pigeon you see above actually understood what he / she was doing, but apparently these birds can be taught to at least play App Store games in a very poor manner. The creature’s owner does note that Mr. Pigeon was pretty awful at racking up high scores on Tap Tap Revenge, but the important thing to realize here is that pigeon pecks do register as presses on the screen. Now that this is all out in the open, we fully expect a follow-up video next week of someone teaching their bird to dial a number on command. Vid’s after the break.

Continue reading Video: pigeon learns to “play” Tap Tap Revenge

Read

Share This

Abandoned NASA Trailer Found Roadside, Full of Retro NASA Awesomeness [Retromodo]

Since it came about in the 1930s as the Army’s rocket research lab, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been a part of just about every major unmanned U.S. space mission to date. JPL also has a somewhat surprising history of running major missions out of modular trailers scattered around their Pasadena HQ, which are packed with all of the stuff you need to, oh, I don’t know, monitor a spacecraft on its way to Mars. Photographer Richard Harrington stumbled upon one of these trailers, abandoned on a dusty lot somewhere between L.A. and Las Vegas, and as you would expect, it’s a retro space-tech dream inside.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.It’s a little puzzling as to how something like this could find its way to a derelict desert in the middle of nowhere, but with NASA’s budgetary fluctuations, I guess sometimes you have to rip and run. The whole thing has a definite abandoned-seconds-before-the-apocalypse kind of vibe.

If anyone has any idea what kind of machines we’re seeing here, fill me in. More pics: [Richard Harrington via FFFFOUND]

Share This

Windows Media Center Offers “Olympics on the Go” [Olympics]

If you and your DVR are having trouble keeping up with all of the Olympics coverage, Microsoft is offering Media Center users the opportunity to catch up with on-demand content. All you need to do is launch Windows Media Center on a PC or laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate and scroll down to Online Media. There you will find a link to activate “NBC Olympics On The Go.” (Can also be activated via the NBC site). The content is said to be “up-to-HD quality,” whatever that means, so you should get a decent look at your favorite events. [Olympics on the Go]

Share This

Leaked Marketing Photos for BlackBerry Javelin Show 512mhz Processor, Lens Inside LCD? [BlackBerry]

The folks at Crackberry has obtained marketing photos of RIM’s new non-3G smartphone, the Blackberry Javelin, which gives us the down low on the details of the phone. Javelin will contain a 512 MHz processor, 256 MB of onboard flash memory plus a hot-swappable microSD slot, a hi-res 460 x 360 HVGA+ display, Wi-Fi with UMA and GPS, and a 3.2 megapixel camera. What briefly piques my interest though is the promise of “integrated lens/LCD technology.” Does that mean a second camera hidden behind the display or is it just more ad speak for “the display is pretty”? The release date still seems to be slated for 2009. [Crackberry]

Share This

Lightning Review: Lenovo ThinkPad X200 [Lightning Review]

The Gadget: Lenovo’s ThinkPad X200, the leeettlest member of their revamped X notebooks, with Intel’s recently released Centrino 2 inside.

The Price: The X200 starts at $1434 at Lenovo’s store, though they initially announced it at $1199. The model we tested was close to $1800.

The Verdict: On the whole, the X200 has more going for it than against it. We think 12 inches is the sweet spot for a compact but full-fledged notebook, and the X200 is just 0.8 inches at its thinnest point. It’s actually smaller than it looks—Lenovo seems to employ reverse optical trickery to make it look bulkier than it is.

A few exceptional points: The keyboard really is fantastic to type on. Battery life is damned impressive too, delivering between five and six hours of standard use (browsing, video watching, music playing) with the brightness turned most of the way up. There’s a lot of power and battery management tools too, for the power anal. And it’s got the usual Lenovo build quality.

The potential dealbreakers: There’s no trackpad—it’s just you and the nipple. If you love the nip, ignore this point. Not ignorable, though, is that the screen is way too dim, even on max brightness. On a screen that small, brightness and clarity are paramount. So that’s a big ol’ suck. The mono speaker is fairly atrocious (and our headphone jack was bad on this unit, so it was a definite sore point). Oh, and it’s not pretty. In sum, it’s not a sight and sound machine.

It doesn’t have a built-in optical drive, but honestly, that’s a consideration more than a black-and-white downer. (They do include the external gratis.)

Here’s what the X200 comes down to: If you want a solid but small notebook for reliably getting work done, this is it. If you want more than that, you probably want something else.

Dan Nosowitz contributed to this review.

Share This

Kohjinsha SX3 gets reviewed on video

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

The WOW-POW folks gave us our first taste of the Kohjinsha SC3 on video, and now they’re back with the SX3KP06MA convertible “UMPC” (SX3 for short) in a full video review. We’ll let you watch the 10 minute review at your leisure, but in summary they found the computer faster than its SC3 sibling, despite identical Atom chipsets, and are of course general fans of the DVD-RW drive, 1280 x 768 glossy screen and pretty much all things Kohjinsha. Video is… wait for it… after the break.

[Thanks, Larry]

Continue reading Kohjinsha SX3 gets reviewed on video

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Robots

It looks like the Artificial Life XI conference hosted by the University of Southampton was home to a unsettling number of swarm robots this week, including some we’ve seen and some we haven’t. Among the more interesting of the lot are the matchbox-size bots (pictured above) developed by a group of researchers from the host university, which apparently cost just £24 (or $46) each to produce and are able to independently divide up tasks with no central program controlling them. They’re even able to redistribute tasks if some of the robots fail or are removed from the area, which the researchers say makes them ideal for use in far-flung locations and, as the BBC’s video available at the link below shows, they’re also adorable when set to music.

[Thanks, David]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Via [Engadget]

Share This

Pwnage 2.0.2 released, for reals this time

Filed under: Cellphones

Well, judging by the dozens of tips we just got, it’s time to once again get your Pwnage on with version 2.0.2 (which was released to counter the, um, “fixes” in iPhone firmware 2.0.1). As usual, hit up the read link.

Update: WinPwn 2.0.0.4 is out as well.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read

Share This

BlackBerry Thunder Coming To Verizon On October 13? [Rumor]

According to Boy Genius Report sources, the BlackBerry Thunder looks set to hit Verizon on October 13 as the BB9530. The tipster also sent an inventory list from Verizon, which seems to confirm the model number for BlackBerry’s first touchscreen offering. This seems to fall in line with earlier release rumors for the Thunder, but we’ll see as we get closer to October. [Boy Genius Report]

Share This