Archive for October, 2007

Disturbing goings on in Atlanta: The new iPod Nano is hot. But one Douglasville man said his old Nano got even hotter — hot enough to burst into flames. “So I look down and I see flames coming up to my chest,” said Danny Williams. Williams said the burn hole from the pocket of his pants marks the spot of his 15 seconds of flame. He said he had an iPod Nano and an glossy piece of paper in his pocket. He believes the paper shielded him from being burned. “I’m still kind of freaked out that after only a year and a half my iPod caught fire in my pocket,” said Williams. The [...]

Verizon offers up 3 new phones, including one targeted at the iPhone: Verizon Wireless unveiled three new cell phones on Wednesday for the holiday season, including a high-end handset named Voyager that will compete with Apple Inc’s iPhone. The Voyager, made by LG Electronics, trumps the iPhone by offering faster wireless Web access. But in a nod to the Apple device, which is only available to AT&T Inc subscribers, it has a large touch screen and full Web browser. Verizon Wireless hopes the new phone will attract customers put off by the iPhone’s lack of a traditional keypad — [...]

Microsoft’s Zune 2 media players were announced yesterday, and there are some cool features — including wireless syncing and a touch sensitive navigation pad. Read the ComputerWorld story for more details. Excerpt: The three new models include 4GB and 8GB flash players — Microsoft’s first — that will retail for $149 and $199, respectively, when they go on sale in November. Both sport a 1.8-in. color display and, while comparable in price to Apple’s recently redesigned iPod nano, are narrower and taller. A new black-only player equipped with an 80GB hard drive [...]

Toy Wishes magazine released their Hot Dozen list of Christmas toys for 2007, including some pretty cool tech toys: American Idol Talent Challenge ($49.99) Connect it to your TV, pop in a DVD and test your singing skills! Eye-Clops ($49.99) Take any household item and use this digital device to magnify it by 200 times. It plugs right into your TV so you can explore the microscopic world right from your living room. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock ($99.99) This hard-rocking video game features a guitar that you plug right into your PlayStation, Xbox or Wii. Rock on with tracks from Alice Cooper, [...]

Palm’s CEO Ed Colligan said during a conference call that a new Linux-based Palm OS would be out by the end of next year. Unfortunately, I think that’s about 2 years too late to save the company. As a long-time palm user and enthusiast, I can hardly believe how much goodwill this company has squandered by refusing to innovate beyond the Treo 600 while still pushing an operating system with a user interface from 1997. Clunky hardware coupled with clunky software do not make a market-leading product.

HypeBot has a roundup of the current DRM-free music purchase sites available, with brand-new Amazon MP3 at #1. I meant to try Amazon MP3 this weekend, but got sidetracked by other stuff while looking for tracks. Most reports are positive, though.

Techmeme’s top 100 list is live. It’s hard not to notice that most of the sites are group blogs and big media blogs. Still a useful list though — worth bookmarking.