Expandable mobile display is on a roll

Telecom Italia and Philips Electronics spinoff Polymer Vision have announced plans to develop what they say is the first mobile device with a rollable display. Yes, the gadget clearly rolls, but we'll have to wait 'til launch later this year to see if it rocks.

While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device, dubbed the Cellular-book, has a display that extends up to 5 inches and can be folded and stored away when not in use. It features 16 gray levels combined with a high-contrast and high-reflectivity display to enable comfortable paperlike reading of newspapers and books, … Read more

Pantech C600 spotted on FCC site

A new 3G Pantech phone has been spotted on the FCC site, and it looks to be the Pantech C600. The quad-band GSM/EDGE/UMTS device is a clamshell with dual color displays and a camera. Not much else to go on, but this would mark the first UMTS 3G Pantech phone for the U.S. market and may be out some time this year.

[Found on PhoneScoop]

The PC fights back

Score one for boring!

One of the side-effects of Apple's popular Mac vs. PC television commercials is that there is now a cottage industry of fakes.

It's time to put aside your personal OS preference (AmigaOS, baby!) and have a good laugh at director Laurie McGuinness's mock PC-vs.-Mac clips. And if you can't...well, you're taking things far too seriously for your own good.

Nevertheless, we've balanced out the bashing with some links to pro-Apple clips below the embedded videos. Enjoy, and ponder whether the video-editing was done on a PC or a … Read more

A Pottery Barn for your kitchen

The MIT Media Lab is ground zero for all things awesome, and Leonardo Bonanni's DishMaker is no exception.

Bonanni's dishwasher-sized machine uses recyclable discs of acrylic to create plates, bowls, and cups right in your home. Once you're done with the plates, you put them back into the DishMaker, where they're recycled and remolded into the dishware of your choice.

The DishMaker does not clean your dishes just yet, but Bonanni's working on it for a next-gen prototype.

According to his Web site, the DishMaker is the same size and consumes the same amount of … Read more

Oodles of cases from Speck

Every day is like Christmas around here: it seems I'm always opening a package or three. This does somewhat take the shine off of the actual holiday, but I can't pretend it's not fun trying to guess what's in each nondescript box. Imagine my suprise at opening one such oversized package from Speck products and discovering that rather than a correspondingly large product, the box contained many, many small ones. Cases, to be exact. Lots of them. Indeed, it appears that Speck has created a protective sleeve for every variety of mobile gadget. This is, of … Read more

Helio gets in on mobile music

Gizmodo reports that Helio has just announced a new over-the-air music download service a la the music stores inspired by the Sprint Music Store and Verizon's V Cast Music. Despite its ties to Sprint (Helio is a virtual carrier operating on Sprint's EV-DO network), its music store model actually mirrors that of V Cast Music. Like its competitor, Helio will offer songs for PC download for 99 cents, which you can sideload to your phone later, or you can download a song over-the-air for $1.99 and have a copy of it ready to download to your home … Read more

Desk + Mini = Mini Desk

I'm guessing this contraption is geared toward the burgeoning demographic of well-moneyed executives who loved their race car-shaped beds when they were kids and still haven't gotten over their affinities for automorphic furniture. This little gem of a desk is shaped just like a Mini, although the dimensions of the desk actually look more spacious than those of the pint-sized novelty car that inspired it. There's even a stereo in the "dashboard."

You can customize just about everything: desk top, color, tires, and license plates. For that last one, I recommend "CORPRT HO."… Read more

A quieter, gentler Xbox 360

Xbox 360s might be getting a bit more quiet. According to the Xbox-scene.com forum, Microsoft has started putting new DVD drives in its Xbox 360s. The forum says that Microsoft is now using BenQ-LiteOn-Phillips VAD6038 optical drives in new 360s, rather than the Toshiba-Samsung and Hitachi-LG drives the consoles previously used.

This new drive might mean quieter gameplay on the 360. Many gamers had complaints that first-run Xbox 360s were uncomfortably loud, and this new optical drive could fix that.

Fears of a clown

Final Fantasy 6 Advance shipped yesterday, but it actually will be hitting stores today. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, or who started with Final Fantasy 7 on the PlayStation, FF6 (FF3M when it was released in America on the Super Nintendo) was one of the greatest entries in the entire Final Fantasy series. It had complex game mechanics that made each character uniquely useful, a truly epic story, and some of the best graphics a 16-bit system could produce.

Most importantly, Final Fantasy 6 had Kefka. Sephiroth might be popular because of his huge sword and pretty … Read more