Best Gadgets World

by Darren Murph, posted Apr 9th 2008 at 5:06PMWouldn’t you know it? No, really — didn’t you completely understand that Nintendo wouldn’t be releasing something as magnificent as a stark white GameCube controller in the States? Okay, so maybe NoA hasn’t made that official, but we’re betting the unit you see there on the right will be a (highly coveted) Japanese exclusive. Apparently the Big N is re-issuing a Wii-white GameCube controller in its homeland this month with an extended (3-meter) cord, and while we can’t glean any pricing information from the crumb of information out there right now, go ahead and start stacking those pennies for use on your favorite importer.

[Via Joystiq]

Update: Apparently it’ll cost around $20. Thanks, Chebwa!

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Filed under: Gaming

I argue that they really could have named the product something better than “Floral titi,” but the gadget itself looks quite good.

Unfortunately, it’s only been released in the Korean market by GDIS. The Floral titi is a clip-type mp3 player coming in 1GB and 2GB varieties. The colours available are more varied than a rainbow’s: lavender, ice blue, aqua, mint, strawberry, carrot, sweet pink, mocha, and vanilla. The Floral titi weighs a mere 10 grams so it’s basically negligible when you pin it in your clothes–the only problem is that it might be TOO negligible, it becomes easy to lose. The Floral titi has can store enough power per charge for eight hours of playtime and sells in Korea for ₤21 and ₤29 for the 1GB and 2GB versions respectively.

via

Posted Apr 9th 2008 11:07AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: cellphones, Features
Remember that sweet little magnifying glass from the iphone SDK demo? Well apparently we all weren’t having a shared hallucination — it’s in the enterprise version of firmware 2.0. Thanks to a tipster, we’ve now got shots of the search bar clearly hanging out at the top of the contacts list. While we’re unraveling mysteries, you’ll be happy to know that the little drawer button — which did nothing in the regular old firmware we had — is actually a meeting invitations folder, which displays the number of requests just like the SMS and mail icons. Other changes? Enterprise users don’t get the app store or iTunes store icons. Boo. Check out the gallery below to see just exactly what we’re talking about. Now, on to finding JFK’s real killer!

Gallery: iPhone contacts search and meeting invite revealed

iRiver Japan has introduced the company new line-up, Mplayer Season 2. The new Mickey Mouse features 1GB of memory and comes with 10 new colors. It will be available from 11th April 2008 and suggested price is 7980 Yen (approx US$79).

[ via iRiver Japan ]

iRiver, Mplayer, Disney, MP3 Players

Posted Apr 9th 2008 8:44AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: StorageNot even a month after we heard that Iomega was warming to a revised takeover bid from EMC, the two lovebirds have finally let their true feelings be known. Announced today, EMC is acquiring the famed Zip Drive manufacturer for $213 million. The final figure is nearly $7 million higher than the one proposed in March, and the all-cash agreement worked out to $3.85-per share — 5.8-percent higher than Iomega’s Tuesday closing price of $3.64. Also of note, Iomega will be picking up the tab on a $7.5 million termination fee to the shareholders for a canceled deal involving China’s ExcelStor Group, and EMC stated that it didn’t expect the acquisition to “have any material impact on its full-year earnings.”

[Thanks, Khattab]

Posted Apr 9th 2008 9:13AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Desktops
Some seven months after AMD first tooted its horn about creating the “world’s most advanced x86 CPU,” the quad-core Opteron is finally shipping. Effective today, consumers eager to wrap their brains around all that purported power can find the chips residing in a variety of HP machines (read: servers) as well as in systems from other “distributors, system integrators and specialized OEMs.” Unfortunately, little is said about the widespread availability of the CPU beyond that, but at least it’s getting out the door in one way or another, right?

[Via CNET]

Read - Opteron heads to select partners
Read - Opteron now available in OEM platforms

CTIA exposed a bunch of new companies getting into the voice to text game and it is expected to be a fast growing area.  This morning saw my post on Nuance, a company bringing voice to text to GPS (in addition to a voicemail to text service), last month we saw Spinvox get $100 million in investment to grow internationally.  Today, I got the opportunity to mix it up with James Siminoff, CEO of SimulScribe whose company is a leader in voicemail to text serivce and get the pulse of his company and where he believes the market is headed.  Simulscribe also extended a 30 day free trial for Gadgetell readers.  See the end of the post for link.

Gadgetell: CTIA has brought has fleshed out a bunch more players in your sandbox, nervous?

JS: Nope.  SimulScribe, besides investing over $4 Million in our company and technology, is the leader in voicemail to text functionality.  We’ve worked extremely hard to gain our loyal customers.

Gadgetell: This morning I noted that Nuance is bringing their experience to the game with voice to text for GPS and they claim to be courting the teleco carriers.  What do you make of this?

JS: Nuance is a company I really like, they have fantastic experience with their Dragon products.  However, I don’t understand how they can do that.  Truely, I don’t get it.  I think they are a great company but to put a package together for a carrier is scary.  They may get a deal or two, but to not have the experience of handling in volume and make that pitch is tough.

Gadgetell: Is it safe to assume SimulScribe is working with carriers as well?

JS: We do work with Vonage, M5, Broadsoft and others.  We like the unique opportunities where our service is going to be valued.  You can’t get the value proposition across to an AT&T who only sees how much they are bringing to the table.

Gadgetell: So, say if other services tie up the carriers, will SimulScribe survive?

JS: Absolutely.  SimulScribes real value is in the unified messaging solution.  Your work, home and cell phone can all be tied into our service, giving you one contact point for all your messaging.  It doesn’t matter if your work has AT&T, your home is Verizon and your cell phone is T-Mobile, they all work equally well on our unified system.  No one can match our offerings.

Gadgetell: Many of these other new players want to bring voice to texting and voice to searching and voice to everything on your phone.  Is this a direction SimulScribe will head?

JS: No.  Our focus is voicemail, it is what we know best.  You won’t see a non-voicemail product from SimulScribe.

Gadgetell: Let’s talk Spanish for a moment?  Are you ready to roll out Spanish translation?

JS: Almost.  We’ve been hard at work on this and it is in beta now.  Today, we get lots of calls from bilingual customers that we deliver and we’ve turned on the service randomly to see how it reacts.  This will be rolled out in the near future.

Gadgetell: *nervously* You’ve made war with some bloggers, is that just a marketing tactic or is it personal.

JS: *laughs* You mean TechCrunch?

Gadgetell: We can start there

JS:  techcrunch put something out there, I couldn’t help myself.  It was the wrong thing to do, we’ve made up and made friends with TechCrunch and Michael.  We are (and I am ) willing to speak out.  Sometimes I am wrong.  Spinvox is trying to drown us with some sizable offers.  We’ve tried to be friends to the bloggers.  I am happy our comments are more edgy; the world doesn’t need a boring start-up.

Gadgetell: I couldn’t agree more.  Thanks.

See what all the hubbub is about and try out SimulScribe for 30 days by visiting here.

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Posted Apr 9th 2008 2:48AM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Peripherals, StorageThe 1394 Trade Association is already talking up FireWire S3200, but Symwave is taking baby steps, demonstrating a 1.6Gbps system known as S1600 (shocking) that’s backwards-compatible with FireWire 800 and 400 this week at a conference in China. That’s great and all — transferring 1000 four megapixel images in five seconds sure sounds like a good time — but speeds like that probably aren’t going to cut it when FireWire 800 devices are already thin on the ground, everyone’s looking forward to S3200, and the 4.8Gbps USB 3.0 spec is already making appearances on schedule for a launch in 2010. Not to mention that Wireless USB 1.1’s target speed is 1.0Gbps — you know we’ll take a slight speed hit if we can ditch the cables.

[Via PC World; Warning: PDF read link]