Made in under 10 minutes for less than two bucks, this adjustable smartphone car mount was created by one very frustrated Scion XB driver, fed up of not being able to find a suitable cradle.
Using some PVC parts picked up at a hardware store, plastic coated wire and adhesive-backed craft foam, Instructables user NiftyCurly constructed the cradle you can see above, which he describes as being a "rock solid, quick and dirty $2 mount." [Instructables]
Rumors about Microsoft's mobile plan are evolving, weirdly! Today, we've got dueling speculation: from Twitter, evidence of new "Danger" hardware; from Microsoft, mention of "the next generation of Windows Phone." It's mystery meat, this stuff, but at least it's juicy.
Engadget spent the better part of their morning piecing together a puzzle's worth of cryptic, oddly tagged tweets from unknown Twitter users. What was so interesting about these Tweets? See if you can tell:
DANGER. Lots of DANGER. This is the company that made the Sidekick, and that Microsoft absorbed. It's also the division variously implicated in the exclusive Pink phone documents leaked to us back in September, which may or may not actually represent Microsoft's next phone play, rather than a straightforward Windows Mobile X evolution. The kicker? Sidekick devices don't tag their tweets "Danger", and these tweets have been ramping up very quickly in the past week. So!
Microsoft's been giving more direct clues as well, by way of their MIX 10 conference site. MIX is an annual developers' conference held by Microsoft in March, just after Mobile World Congress, where Microsoft is almost definitely making some kind of mobile announcement. Peek the schedule, and you'll find this:
The next generation of Windows Mobile phones. Sounds like a bit of an overstatement for an incremental update like Windows Mobile 6.5.3/6.6/whatever, and why would developers need new guidance for developing on a platform built on the same codebase, anyway? Again: delicious mystery meat.
The wild, scattershot nature of these rumors is actually what keep them interesting, I think. There's evidence that we're soon going to see Pink, and that we're soon going to see Windows Mobile 7. The obvious conclusion, if not a particularly descriptive one, is that we're going to see a new thing—a single new thing—that's the product of all the wild rumors we've heard so far, changing nomenclature aside. And, fingers crossed, it may actually be awesome. [Engadget, MobileTechWorld]
One of the most annoying aspects of the Xbox 360 Marketplace is Microsoft Points, a fake currency used to buy games and add-ons that obscures how much real money you're spending. But that may be on the way out.
In an interview with G4, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg had this to say about the Points system.
We never intended to ever mislead people. I think we want to be transparent about it, and so it is something that we're looking at. How can we be more transparent and let people see it in actual dollars?
This is good news! The Points system is transparently sleazy, with it set up so you can only buy points in chunks that are not easily divided into the amount games and such are sold for. Basically, products are all sold in numbers divisible by 200 (200, 400, 1200 point prices are standard) while you can only buy points in chunks divisible by 500 (500, 1000, 2000 or 5000 points are your only options). This almost always leaves you with an awkward number of points left over that you're forced to pay for. You then need to add more points to that awkward remainder to buy more, which will probably give you another awkward remainder, and so on and so forth. This is absolutely the only reason Microsoft has for not allowing you to just buy chunks of 400 or 800 points at a time.
Combine this with the fact that putting a different number value between a product and it's true dollar value is designed to make you forget you're spending real money (it's easier to justify spending 5000 points than $62.50), and you see why this is a pretty anti-consumer system. So it's good news that Microsoft is considering changing it!
But don't think they're just doing it because they've suddenly acquired a conscience. In all likelihood, if Microsoft moves away from the Points system on Xbox Live, it's because they're planning on expanding the Zune Marketplace and integrating it more with the Xbox 360. The Zune Marketplace is in dollars (or whatever local currency you're using), and it'd be much easier to unify the two systems by switching it all to currency than cramming the points system into the Zune Marketplace.
But whatever motivation Microsoft has, moving away from the points system and into real currency is definitely a good thing. Allowing people to pay for only what they want using the normal currency they use every day is just more honest all around, and you can't argue with honesty. [G4 via Kotaku]
You don't know how to use this toilet? Wait, wait, you don't know about the three seashells, either?? How could someone not understand the three seashells? Well, before you are further humiliated, let me explain.
The Home Core Integrated Toilet, a concept by Dang Jingwei, fits a pedestal sink and a toilet into one, eco-friendly unit with a dangerous-looking swivel.
When you wash your hands or brush your teeth in the sink, the system can retain this "gray water" for the toilet. Apparently, your butt excretions are not as picky as your mouth—who woulda thunk—so mixing some toothpaste with what is already wretched waste is no big deal. (Though, I'll admit, it's an image I'm not exactly keen on seeing.)
As for the seashells, those are just there to hold hand jewelry. What were you doing with them? [Yanko Design via DVICE]
Some people want the Apple Tablet to run Mac OS X's user interface. Others think its UI will be something exotic. Both camps are wrong: The iPhone started a UI revolution, and the tablet is just step two. Here's why.
If you are talking hardware, you can speculate about many different features. But when it comes to the fabled Apple Tablet, there are basically three user interface camps at war. On one side there are the people who think that a traditional GUI—one built on windows, folders and the old desktop metaphor—is the only way to go for a tablet. You know, like with the Microsoft Windows-based tablets, and the new crop of touchscreen laptops.
In another camp, there are the ones who are dreaming about magic 3D interfaces and other experimental stuff, thinking that Apple would come up with a wondrous new interface that nobody can imagine now, one that will bring universal love, world peace and pancakes for everyone—even while Apple and thousands of experts have explored every UI option imaginable for decades.
And then there's the third camp, in which I have pitched my tent, who says that the interface will just be an evolution of an existing user interface, one without folders and windows, but with applications that take over the entire screen. A "modal" user interface that has been proven in the market battlefield, and that has brought a new form of computing to every normal, non-computer-expert consumer.
Yes, people, I'm afraid that the tablet will just run a sightly modified version of the iPhone OS user interface. And you should be quite happy about it, as it's the culmination of a brilliant idea proposed by a slightly nutty visionary genius, who died in 2005 without ever seeing the rise of the JesusPhone.
This guy's name was Jef Raskin.
Raskin was the human interface expert who lead the Macintosh project until Steve Jobs—the only guy whose gigantic ego rivaled Raskin's—kicked him out. During his time at Apple, Raskin worked on a user interface idea called the "information appliance," a concept that was later bastardized by the Larry Ellisons and Ciscos of this world.
In Raskin's head, an information appliance would be a computing device with one single purpose—like a toaster makes toast, and a microwave oven heats up food. This gadget would be so easy to use that anyone would be able to grab it, and start playing with it right away, without any training whatsoever. It would have the right number of buttons, in the right position, with the right software. In fact, an information appliance—which was always networked—would be so easy to use that it would become invisible to the user, just part of his or her daily life.
Sound familiar? Not yet? Well, now consider this. Later in his life, Raskin realized that, while his idea was good, people couldn't carry around one perfectly designed information appliance for every single task they can think of. Most people were already carrying a phone, a camera, a music player, a GPS and a computer. They weren't going to carry any more gadgets with them.
He saw touch interfaces, however, and realized that maybe, if the buttons and information display were all in the software, he could create a morphing information appliance. Something that could do every single task imaginable perfectly, changing mode according to your objectives. Want to make a call? The whole screen would change to a phone, and buttons will appear to dial or select a contact. Want a music player or a GPS or a guitar tuner or a drawing pad or a camera or a calendar or a sound recorder or whatever task you can come up with? No problem: Just redraw the perfect interface on the screen, specially tailored for any of those tasks. So easy that people would instantly get it.
Now that sounds familiar. It's exactly what the iPhone and other similar devices do. And like Raskin predicted, everyone gets it, which is why Apple's gadget has experienced such a raging success. That's why thousands of applications—which perform very specialized tasks—get downloaded daily.
Back in the '80s, however, this wasn't possible. The computing power wasn't there, and touch technology as we know it didn't even exist.
During those years, Raskin wanted the information appliance concept to be the basis of the Mac but, as we know, the Macintosh evolved into a multiple purpose computer. It was a smart move, the only possible one. It would be able to perform different tasks, and the result was a lot simpler than the command-line based Apple II or IBM PC. It used the desktop metaphor, a desk with folders to organize your documents. That was a level of abstraction that was easier to understand than typing "dir" or "cd" or "cls."
However, the desktop metaphor still required training. It further democratized computing, but despite its ease of use, many people then and today still find computers difficult to use. In fact, now they are even harder to use than before, requiring a longer learning curve because the desktop metaphor user interface is now more complex (and abstract) than ever before. People "in the know" don't appreciate the difficulty of managing Mac OS X or Windows, but watching some of my friends deal with their computers make it painfully obvious: Most people are still baffled with many of the conventions that some of us take for granted. Far from decreasing over time, the obstacles to learning the desktop metaphor user interface have increased.
What's worse, the ramping-up in storage capability and functionality has made the desktop metaphor a blunder more than an advantage: How could we manage the thousands of files that populate our digital lives using folders? Looking at my own folder organization, we can barely, if at all. Apple and Microsoft have tried to tackle this problem with database-driven software like iPhoto or iTunes. Instead of managing thousands of files "by hand," that kind of software turns the computer into an "information appliance," giving an specialized interface to organize your photos or music.
That's still imperfect, however, and—while easier than the navigate-through-a-zillion-folders alternative—we still have to live with conventions that are hard to understand for most people.
As desktop computing evolved and got more convoluted, other things were happening. The Newton came up, drawing from Raskin's information appliance concept. It had a conservative morphing interface, it was touch sensitive, but it ended being the first Personal Digital Assistant and died, killed by His Steveness.
Newton—and later the Palm series—also ran specialized applications, and could be considered the proto-iPhone or the proto-Tablet. But it failed to catch up thanks to a bad start, a monochrome screen, the lack of always-connected capabilities, and its speed. It was too early and the technology wasn't there yet.
When the technology arrived, someone else had a similar idea: Bill Gates thought the world would run on tablets one day, and he wanted them to run Microsoft software. The form may have been right, but the software concept was flawed from the start: He tried to adapt the desktop metaphor to the tablet format.
Instead of creating a completely new interface, closer to Raskin's ideas, Gates adapted Windows to the new format, adding some things here and there, like handwriting recognition, drawing and some gestures—which were pioneered by the Newton itself. That was basically it. The computer was just the same as any other laptop, except that people would be able to control it with a stylus or a single finger.
Microsoft Windows tablets were a failure, and they became a niche device for doctors and nurses. The concept never took off at the consumer level because people didn't see any advantage on using their good old desktop in a tablet format which even was more expensive than regular laptops.
So why would Apple create a tablet, anyway? The answer is in the iPhone.
While Bill Gates' idea of a tablet was a market failure, it achieved one significant success: It demonstrated that transferring a desktop user interface to a tablet format was a horrible idea, destined to fail. That's why Steve Jobs was never interested. Something very different was needed, and that came in the form of a phone.
The iPhone is the information appliance that Raskin imagined at the end of his life: A morphing machine that could do any task using any specialized interface. Every time you launch an app, the machine transforms into a new device, showing a graphical representation of its interface. There are specialized buttons for taking pictures, and gestures to navigate through them. Want to change a song? Just click the "next" button. There are keys to press phone numbers, and software keyboards to type short messages, chat, email or tweet. The iPhone could take all these personalities, and be successful in all of them.
When it came out, people instantly got this concept. Clicking icons transformed their new gadget into a dozen different gadgets. Then, when the app store appeared, their device was able to morph into an unlimited number of devices, each serving one task.
In this new computing world there were no files or folders, either. Everything was database-driven. The information was there, in the device, or out there, floating in the cloud. You could access it all through all these virtual gadgets, at all times, because the iPhone is always connected.
I bet that Jobs and others at Apple saw the effect this had on the consumer market, and instantly thought: "Hey, this thing changes everything. It is like the new Mac after the Apple II." A new computing paradigm for normal consumers, from Wilson's Mac-and-PC-phobic step-mom to my most computer-illiterate friends. One that could be adopted massively if priced right. A new kind of computer that, like the iPhone, could make all the things that consumers—not professionals, or office people—do with a regular computers a lot easier.
This was the next step after the punching card, the command line, and the graphical desktop metaphor. It actually feels like something Captain Picard would use.
Or, at least, that's how the theory goes.
For the tablet revolution to happen, however, the iPhone interface will need to stretch in a few new directions. Perhaps the most important and difficult user interface problem is the keyboard. Quite simply, how will we type on the thing? It's not as easy as making the iPhone keyboard bigger. You can read our analysis of the potential solutions here. The other issues involved are:
• How would Apple and the app developers deal with the increased resolution?
• How would Apple deal with multitasking that, in theory, would be easier with the increased power of a tablet?
• Where would Apple place the home button?
The first question has an easy answer from a marketing and development perspective.
At the marketing level, it would be illogical to waste the power that the sheer number of iPhone/iPod Touch applications give to this platform. Does this mean that the Apple Tablet would run the same applications as the iPhone, just bigger, at full screen?
This is certainly a possibility if the application doesn't contain a version of its user interface specifically tailored for the increased screen real state. It's also the easiest one to implement. The other possibility is that, in the case the application is not ready for the extra pixel space, it may run alongside other applications running at 320 x 240 pixels.
Here is a totally made-up example of home-screen icons and apps running on a tablet at full screen:
However, this would complicate the user interface way too much. My logical guess is that, if the app interface is not Tablet-ready, it would run at full screen. That's the cheapest option for everyone, and it may not even be needed in most cases: If the rumors are true, there will be a gap between the announcement of the device and the actual release. This makes sense, as it will give developers time to scramble to get their apps ready for the new resolution.
Most developers will like to take advantage of the extra pixels that the screen offers, with user interfaces that put more information in one place. But the most important thing is that the JesusTablet-tailored apps represent an opportunity to increase their sales.
From a development point of view, this represents an easily solvable challenge. Are there going to be two applications, one for the iPhone/iPod touch, and another one for the tablet? Most likely, no. If Apple follows the logic of their Mac OS X's resolution-independent application guidelines—issued during the World Wide Developers Conference in June—the most reasonable option could be to pack the two user interfaces and associated art into a single fat application.
Most rumors are pointing at the possibility of multitasking in the tablet (and also on the iPhone OS 4.0). This will bring up the challenge of navigation through running apps that take all over the screen. Palm's Web OS solves this elegantly, but Apple has two good options in their arsenal, all present in Mac OS X.
The app switch bar or a dock
They can implement a simple dock that is always present on the screen or is invoked using a gesture or clicking a button or on a screen icon. This is the simplest available method, and can also be made to be flashy and all eye candy.
Exposé
This is one of those features that people love in Mac OS X, but that only a few discover on their own. Once you get it, you can't live without it. I can imagine a tablet-based Exposé as an application switcher. Make a gesture or click on a corner, and get all running applications to neatly appear in a mosaic, just like Mac OS X does except that they won't have multiple windows. The apps could be updated live, ready to be expanded when you touch one of them. Plenty of opportunity for sci-fi'ish eye candy here.
A gesture makes sense for implementing Exposé on the tablet—as you can do on the MacBook Pro—but they could also use their recently-patented proximity sensing technology. In fact, I love this idea: Make the four corners of the tablet hot, making icons appear every time you get a thumb near a corner. The icons—which could be user customizable—could bring four different functions. One of them would be closing the running application. The other, call Exposé and bring up the mosaic with all running applications. The other could invoke the home screen, with all the applications. And a fourth one, perhaps, could open the general preferences. Or bring a set of Dashboard widgets that will show instant information snippets, like in Mac OS X.
Here's an illustration—again, totally hypothetical—of what this sort of Exposé interface might look like:
The physical home button in the iPhone and the touch plays a fundamental role, and it's one of the key parts of the interface. Simply put, without it, you can't exit applications and return to the home screen. On the small iPhone, it makes sense to have it where it is. On this larger format—check its size compared to the iPhone here—things are not so clear.
Would you have a single home button? If yes, would you place it on a corner, where it could be easily pressed by one of your thumbs, as you hold the tablet? On what corner? If you add two home buttons, for easier access, wouldn't that confuse consumers? Or not? And wouldn't placing a button affect the perception of the tablet as an horizontal or vertical device? This, for me, is one of the biggest—and silliest—mysteries of the tablet.
What about if Apple decides not to use a physical button? Like I point out in the idea about Exposé, the physical button could be easily replaced by a user definable hot corner.
With these four key problems solved, whatever extra Apple adds—like extra gestures—is just icing on the iPhone user interface cake that so many consumers find so delicious. The important thing here is that the fabled Apple Tablet won't revolutionize the computing world on its own. It may become what the Mac was to the command-line computers, but the revolution already started with the iPhone.
If Apple has interpreted its indisputable success as an indication about what consumers want for the next computing era, the new device will be more of the same, but better and more capable.
Maybe Apple ignored this experience, and they have created a magical, wondrous, an unproven, completely new interface that nobody can imagine now. You know, the one that will bring universal love, world peace and pancakes for everyone. I'm all for pancakes.
Or perhaps Steve Jobs went nuts, and he decided to emulate el Sr. Gates with a desktop operating system.
The most logical step, however, is to follow the iPhone and the direction set by Raskin years ago. To me, the tablet will be the continuation of the end for the classic windowed environment and the desktop metaphor user interface. And good riddance, is all I can say.
We knew this day was coming, but it may be sooner than we realized. The LA Times is reporting that Hulu is looking to introduce a pricing model within the next six months.
One plan being considered by Hulu would allow you to watch the five most recent episodes of a TV show for free, while the back catalog beyond that would require a $5/month subscription to access. They're looking to include at least 20 shows in the package to make it appealing to users, but of course the issue won't be how many. It'll be which ones.
This all comes on the heels of Boxee's announcement yesterday of plans to charge for premium content, and Pandora's pay service announced in May. Five bucks doesn't seem like much, but it does all start to add up. [LA Times via Business Insider]
Mania has dutifully compiled a list of seven sci-fi movie technologies that have come to fruition. All I can say is well done, humanity! And don't worry, Sleeper fans: we'll get those Orgasmatron booths before you know it.
The usual suspects like Minority Report and Total Recall make the cut, along with a much-deserved nod to the Star Trek franchise. The list strays a little off target when it comes to non-gadget predictions like "geopolitical milieu," but it's otherwise a sobering reminder that with multitouch displays, private spaceflight, and even clamshell cell phones, we're all incredibly lucky to be living what other previous generations only dreamed. Or, in the case of Draconian, full-body x-ray scanning, feared.
Also: if you're going to have that much Arnold Schwarzenegger on that list, you really shouldn't forget Junior. [Mania via The Daily What]
In some interesting research by Siemens, wireless data has been successfully, wirelessly transmitted at 500Mbps using white LEDs.
(The former record was 200Mbps.)
While light data transmission sounds less convenient than RF, there are many instances, like hospitals, when you don't want extra radio frequencies floating around. As for the system's range, apparently five LEDs can combine to beam data over "long distances," though we're not really sure what that actually means.
Still, it's interesting to see more and more uses come from LEDs. [Siemens via Engadget]
Apple is quietly padding the buffer on new, completely stock 27-inch iMac shipments to 3 weeks, for reasons we assume are tied to their well-documented manufacturing issues.
(You've probably heard us talking about the iMac's production problems with yellow and flickering screens, but if not, follow the Faulty iMac Saga here.)
Notably, Apple has not delayed shipments on 21-inch iMacs, even though they, too, can be afflicted. In all fairness, however, I've found reports of 27-inch iMac problems to be far more prevalent.
While Apple hasn't released a statement as to the reasons for delays, we can only hope the company has decided to pin down whatever issues are occurring as opposed to mailing out more broken computers and hoping nobody would notice. [AppleInsider]
Let's take a moment to appreciate Viewsonic's new Android tablet while we can, before it gets crushed in the tidal wave of coverage that a certain other tablet's debut will get next week. And it's got some things worth appreciating!
The VTablet 101 will come equipped with Tegra T20 graphics, a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, an 8.9-inch (1024x800) display, a front camera, and 4GB of flash storage. You can also make phone calls from it with Bluetooth hooked up. It has Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, though the latter only through an external modem, and will be available for $441 whenever it ends up being released. Android tablets are bound to get it right at some point, right? Aren't they?
Okay, okay, you can all go back to your breathless iSlate iPad Apple tablet anticipation now. [Cloned in China via Engadget]
Weighing just 3.5kg, it's small enough to fit in your hand like a little kitten. It's about as powerful as other Dysons, so sucking up all those cat hairs shouldn't be too much of a problem for the City DC26.
It's apparently been in the works for five years, according to vacuum god James Dyson:
"It took us five years to painstakingly compress and rebuild every single component before we had a machine that was a third smaller than its predecessor, yet could still tackle dirt like bigger machines."
On sale from this weekend in the UK, it'll cost £249.99 and will be available in "satin blue." No word yet on worldwide availability, apart from Japan where it's already on sale, though when it launches in the US we'll let you know. [Dyson]
A year ago, the satnav people at Garmin made an alliance with Asustek, the computer people. A while later, the G60 and M20 went on sale. In October, we branded the G60 with a 'DO NOT BUY' review tag.
So why do I think Benson Lin's (the president of Asustek's mobile division) boasts of a new Garmin-Asustek phone are worth mentioning? Well, the fact that it's running on Android has something to do with it. There have been murmurings about an Android device for some time now, but with Lin claiming we'll be seeing it at Mobile World Congress next month, it's sounding a lot more realistic.
The Nuvifone range of phones (all two of them, so far) made by the two companies haven't exactly fared well in tests. In our own review, we moaned about the resistive touchscreen, lack of homescreen button, faulty accelerometer, poor browser, shitty camera and strange interface, and that wasn't even half of it.
A phone running Android would certainly help clear up some of those problems, but obviously hardware will still be an issue if Garmin and Asus can't see fit to put a homescreen button on the device.
In addition to the Android phone, Asustek's going to reveal a Windows Mobile 6.5.3 phone called the M10 at Mobile World Congress. It'll have a 3.5-inch WVGA resistive touchscreen, 5.0-megapixel camera, run on a Qualcomm 7224 600MHz processor and surprise surprise, will also have GPS. The M10 will go on sale in Taiwan in just a few weeks time, for the equivalent of about $435.
Lin is already talking sales figures, despite this mysterious Android phone not being shown off yet—they're hoping to ship one million Android and Windows Mobile devices, with as many as five models expected to launch this year. There goes our notion that this relationship would just be a passing fad. [Digitimes]
This isn't just a treehouse. This is an actual man's home, in Portland, Oregon.
Natural wood ceilings and floors, curved edges, round windows, plenty of wooden beams, it's a naturalist's dream. And possibly a naturist's too, with all those windows. [The Wilkinson Residence via Giz Mag]
Image Credit: Cameron Neilson
Could this be evidence that Apple's little touchscreen portable thingamybob won't be called the iSlate? Developer iBuiltThis may have a case on his hands if Apple rips the name off, seen as how his app has been available since November 2008.
The app is described as a "digital clapper board that can help video enthusiasts add a touch of Hollywood magic to their videos," and while the last update was May 2009 it's still available to download now for $2.99. OR maybe Apple uploaded the iSlate app to the App Store themselves, hoping to throw everyone off the scent? Yeh, I'm probably watching too many X-Files eps. [MobileEnt]
With phones, cameras and computers packing projectors nowadays, it's only fair for HP to want in on the portable projector scene considering they've conquered the attractive home office projector market. Attractive for PowerPoint professionals, anyway.
According to the Vice President and manager of personal computing systems group at HP Taiwan, Monty Wong, HP's working on a tablet PC and notebook launch for this year, both with integrated pico-projectors.
While they haven't shown off any proper tablet prototypes (like their rival Dell has, with the Mini 5), if you cast your mind back a few years you might remember HP Touchsmart tablet PCs were all the rage for a while. It was certainly fun playing Solitaire on them with a stylus, anyway.
This isn't the first time we've heard whisperings of a tablet stuffed with projector components. Apple's impending tablet/iSlate was rumored to have a projector, but that idea has pretty much been discarded now due to cost repercussions.
Wong claims HP is looking at placing a projector at the top of a laptop screen, similar in location to where a webcam is normally placed. A couple of years ago, ASUS showed off a prototype just like it, though we haven't seen anything since. Raise the PowerPoint flag, children—shit's about to go down! [Digitimes]
Following Google's momentous news last October about free turn-by-turn navigation on Android phones, Nokia's just now abolished the price-tag for 74 countries. That's 73 more than Google offers it to. And even better news—it's available now.
You'll need a Nokia phone with Ovi Maps (which runs on Navteq's digital mapping, who Nokia bought out in 2008), for getting free drive and walk navigation; maps updates; and events, Lonely Planet and Michelin guides. Currently it's only available on the X6, N97 Mini, E72, E55, E52, 6730 Classic, 6710 Navigator, 5800 XpressMusic, 5800 Navigation Edition and the 5230.
If you've got one of those phones, hit up Nokia over here and download it now. Let us know how you get on with it—supposedly it works offline? [Nokia Maps via Nokia Conversations]
Google may've delayed the Chinese launch of Android phones from Motorola and Samsung, but Sony Ericsson sees no problem with wading into the censorship row between the big G and big C. They're launching their Android phone there in spring!
The X10 will be available worldwide around March/April time, for anyone who still hasn't realized that most manufacturers make better handsets than Sony Ericsson does. [Reuters]
2010 looks like the year YouTube will leap back into headlines for non-Susan Boyle-related reasons. Thank god for that. After yesterday's live cricket streaming deal was mentioned, their move into online movie rentals should make indie movie lovers happy.
Taking on Netflix, Apple TV, Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, YouTube's new rental service will launch on the 22nd of January—as in, 22nd of January TOMORROW.
If you suddenly have grandiose plans of streaming the entire back catalog of John Hughes films, think again. There'll be just five movies available at launch, titles which launched at the last two Sundance Film Festivals—The Cove, Bass Ackwards, One Too Many Mornings, Homewrecker and Children of Invention. Anyone? No, me neither.
Prices will be $3.99 for four of those films (the fifth price is unknown), and only those living in the US will be able to live-stream them. Over a 48-hour time slot.
This is all well and good, but if that dirty little rumor concerning iTunes.com being turned into a streaming service actually comes good, consider YouTube's indie frolicking as being as good as dead. [BBC News]
HTML5 is a major part of Google's plans for the future, including Chrome OS—check out this interview for more on that—and one step towards that is getting YouTube to work without a Flash plugin, which they've now achieved. It's not perfect yet (no ads or annotations) and it only works on certain supported browsers (Chrome and Safari, at the moment) but it's still a taste of what's to come. You can hit up TestTube to check it out. [YouTube]
Corsair's Dominator GTX 2333MHz is the fastest RAM you can buy that's 
