Before my World wide web connection decides to be a bitch again—you have no idea how annoyed I’m right now—let me swiftly mention this AT&T rebate. The wireless carrier is handing out $50 rebates with the purchase of a BlackBerry 8110 (and a qualifying plan!), which is just the Pearl but with built-in GPS. If you […]

Before my Internet connection decides to be a bitch again—you have no idea how annoyed I am right now—let me swiftly mention this AT&T rebate. The wireless carrier is handing out $50 rebates with the buy of a BlackBerry 8110 (and a qualifying plan!), which is just the Pearl but with built-in GPS.

If you have access to the Hubble Telescope, you can analyze the flyer, care of BGR, for yourself.

Via [crunchgear]

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Matching smells with media has been tried in the past. There were movies that provided the audience scratch-and-sniff packets, and some experimentation with smell-o-vision. Neither became popular and the idea was dropped. But it seems the Japanese company NTT DoCoMo is giving this idea new life. New mobile phones from the company will be equipped with fragrance cartridges that release various odors.

NTT DoCoMo plans to partner its smellphones with content providers that match scent with a person’s horoscope, the weather or favorite music. Odor has been known to trigger powerful memories in some people, so this might be a gimmick that plays well to a certain demographic. If it isn’t successful for people, the smellphone might become wildly popular among dogs. Dogs will smell anything and it doesn’t seem to bother them

Via Mobilecrunch

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Apparently there are nerds in space, too. This was spotted in variable star V838 Monocerotis of the constellation Monoceros and, holy moley, it looks like the Firefox logo! Whatever. I’ll be impressed when we see a celestial body that looks like an iPod. [EE Times via CrunchGear via New Launches]

Via [Gizmodo]

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Via [Gizmodo]

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Latest acquisition!

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A few months back, we broke news on Lenovo’s ultra-thin, ultra-functional X300 laptop. Now we’ve gotten an update on what the company’s been up to during the interim. All of their lines are seeing a major refresh, but the biggest news is that starting this September, the famous X300 will have a family.

Soon joined by the 12-inch X200, the 14.1-inch X400 and the 15.4-inch X500 (all armed with 45nm Penryn processors), customers will be able to pick the precise display size of their choice on one of the most lust-worthy laptops on the market. The X-Series will also feature HSDPA and EVDO, 25% improved battery life, beefy 6MB L2 cache and lots of fanboy drool.

Here’s the rest on Lenovo’s new ThinkPad line-up:

R-Series (refreshed)
This line will continue representing the entry level. We’re light on specs, but we know it will include the R400 (5.1lbs) and R500 (6.4lbs). Expect these to be refreshed in July 2008.

T-Series (refreshed)
This line will continue to represent the mid-range, featuring 256 or 512MB ATI HD3650 discreet graphics that can be turned off to conserve battery life. We don’t have sizes, but the T400 will weight 4.3lbs and the T500 will clock in at 5.8lbs. Shipping starts June 3rd, 2008.

W-Series (brand new)
The W-Series is a completely new line. Where the “W” used to stand for “Widescreen,” now it stands for “workstation replacement.” Described to us as less bulky than similar machines from Dell, the 15-inch W900 will feature the same discreet graphics as the T-Series. A 17-inch version is in the works for the future.

And here’s the good stuff:

Many or All Models Will Have:
• 6MB of L2 cache
• Turbo Memory option (think Ready Boost, up to 2GB)
• Blu-ray drive option
• Two PCI Express Slots
• 1.6GHz DDR3 RAM
• LED Backlighting (excludes R Series)
• HSDPA and EVDO (Lenovo claims to have no deals with Sprint)
• 9 cell batteries (same form factor as former 6-cell, 25% more life)
• GPS, WiMAX, and wireless USB are scattered through models
• The x300’s solid say hard drive option (excludes W)

Lenovo is starting new ThinkPad manufacturing in May so that there are plenty of units to fuel demand. And from the sound of it, some of the X300’s most appealing features are making their way to the entire ThinkPad line. We’re just wondering what the pricing will look like between the X200 and X300. Will we be paying a premium for size or for screen space?

Thanks Odd Job!

Via [Gizmodo]

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Here we’ve it, Nokianauts, the first official image of the Nokia Tube. Is that a forward facing camera I see? I hope so! The Tube, or 5800, is Nokia’s touch-sensitive answer to the iPhone. We’ve been seeing leaked photos for a while, but now we know that they were right on. We still don’t know much about […]

Here we’ve it, Nokianauts, the first official image of the Nokia Tube. Is that a forward facing camera I see? I hope so!

The Tube, or 5800, is Nokia’s touch-sensitive answer to the iPhone. We’ve been seeing leaked pics for a while, but now we know that they were right on.

We still don’t know much about the device, but one thing we can tell from this image is that the display is true 16:9, where as the iPhone isn’t. That’s a point in the Tube’s favor.

I really don’t like calling it the Tube.

Via [crunchgear]

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The internet’s an exciting, lively place, full of innovation and wonder, right? Wrong. It’s dying. The cancer that’s slowly killing our internets: the iPhone and Xbox. While it sounds like some fool’s jibba-jabba, it must be true, because an Oxford professor with degrees from Harvard and Yale states so.

Basically, Jonathan Zittrain argues that the wild, woolly nature of the web, with viruses, identify theft, Rickrolling, etc., are frightening for people like your mother, who want a neatly tied-up-in-a-bow kind of experience, even if that extra security means less freedom. (Current event analogy alert!) So, he sees people moving to “tethered appliances” controlled by dictatorial manufacturers, like the iPhone or Xbox, rather than good ol’ open PCs. End result, states the prof is the death of innovation and the web as we know it.

Of course, this ignores the explosion of open source, which is basically everywhere now. And more and more infamously tight-assed companies are claiming or trying to prove how open they are: Verizon, Microsoft and Comcast, just to name some of the biggies. If anything, it looks like we’re moving toward more openness—and hey, don’t forget that iPhone SDK, doc. [PC World]

Via [Gizmodo]

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