prada

The 404 945: Where wow, you guys are a lot taller than I thought you were (podcast)

Big thanks to everyone who came through last night's 404 Meet-up at the CNET Gotham holiday gift guide. Friendships were made, business ideas launched, and plenty of stickers were given; it was one of our most productive meet-ups to date!

We'll wrap up last night's event and show a quick interview segment on today's show, then launch into the headlining news of the day: Logitech has announced that it made a huge mistake with its Revue Google TV set-top box, and the company has no plans to upgrade or reinvent the existing hardware. Tune in to find out your other options for streaming Web content to your TV.

We'll also chat about near-field communication (NFC) chips making their way to luxury goods like Louis Vuitton wallets, Prada bags, and Nike sneakers to battle bootlegers, a six-year project to tweet the events of the second World War, and Jeff gives us his quick-take of "Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword."

We've been talking about games like Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City, and Uncharted 3 a lot on the show, and Blockbuster just gave us two copies of each game to give away in conjunction with Blockbuster's promo running through Nov. 22 where if you buy a copy of the game in-store you receive a free month of unlimited game and movie rentals!

We have PS3 and Xbox 360 copies for Battlefield 3 and Batman: Arkham City and two copies of Uncharted 3 for PS3 to give away. Here's how to enter:

Follow The 404, Justin, Wilson, and Jeff on Twitter. Tweet out a message that includes #GimmeFreeGames and @The404.

And that's it! Just remember that you need to be a U.S. resident to be eligible and the contest ends November 22. We'll select the winners at random, so good luck!

Stream or download today's show after the break!… Read more

Trying out the LG Prada 2

The LG Prada 2 isn't new, of course, and our European and Asian cousins have had the chance to get their hands on it months ago. In fact, our friends over at CNET UK have given their own hands-on impressions of the device. However, I finally had a chance to get my hands on it at CTIA 2009, and I was excited to try it out.

The LG Prada 2 is definitely designed for the fashion-conscious, with its smooth glossy black surface and slim profile. The touch-screen display is a 3-inch capacitive multitouch interface with active Flash user interface … Read more

Why LG speaks Prada

SINGAPORE--Four years after LG Electronics and Prada began their cross-industry collaboration combining technology and luxury goods, mobile phones today remain the focal product of their partnership.

Matteo Sessa Vitali, vice president and licensing director at Prada, noted that a mobile phone is very much a personal accessory, with many similarities as the other products offered by the luxury goods company. "You carry it with you and it tells something about you," Vitali told ZDNet Asia in an interview.

The ability to add LG's technology in Prada's portfolio gives "a lot of value" to the company's product, he said.

Chang Ma, vice president of marketing strategy at LG Electronics' mobile communications division, said the partnership with Prada provides LG much-needed insight to the luxury goods market.

Chang said, during the interview, that Prada's strong understanding of this market and its openness to innovation encouraged LG to introduce luxury goods--an initiative it would not have undertaken alone, due to the company's limited knowledge of the market segment.

He noted that the first Prada phone the partners collaborated on was a "full" touch-screen-enabled phone, launched some four months before Apple introduced the iPhone.

The executives were in town Thursday for the local launch of LG's latest edition of the Prada phone.

Preserving the original touch-screen design of its predecessor, the new LG-KF900 features a QWERTY keyboard that slides out. Other upgrades include 3G support and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, and a 5-megapixel camera. … Read more

LG's line of phones you can't get

We didn't see too many new U.S. devices from LG this year at CES 2009, but we did get a good look at some of the company's handsets that are only available in Europe or Asia. Of course, the LG Watch Phone stole the show earlier in the week, and that's slated for a Europe-only release date. We also got a hands-on with the LG Renoir, the 8-megapixel wonder with camera features we only wish we could have in our standalone point-and-shoots. And finally, we take a brief look at the LG Prada II and its … Read more

LG Prada II Web site comes alive, we find matching Bluetooth watch

Not that the LG Prada II will make it stateside any time soon, but LG has recently launched a celebratory microsite for the Prada II, officially welcoming it into the world (Flash haters beware; the site is very Flash heavy).

As you might recall, the device has some pretty impressive features--dual-band HSDPA, quad-band GSM, Wi-Fi, a full HTML browser, stereo Bluetooth, FM radio, TV-out, a document viewer, 60MB of internal memory plus a microSD card slot, a 5-megapixel camera, and a luscious-looking 3-inch capacitive multitouch display with active Flash UI (we're almost certain the iPhone has a patent on … Read more

Second Prada phone gets QWERTY keyboard

We reviewed the original Prada phone more than a year ago and loved its style but weren't happy with its lack of support for 3G. On Monday, LG announced the second generation of the phone, and guess what? It will support 3G and more.

Design-wise, the new Prada will look almost identical to the original, with one major difference: a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from under the handset. The keyboard is very thin and therefore won't make the phone much thicker.

The keyboard is definitely a welcome addition for those who like typing on the phone. You … Read more

Leaked specifications of the LG Prada II

Last month, we showed you a sneak peek of the LG Prada II, which will supposedly have a slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well as touch-screen controls. Well, the Boy Genius Report has dug up some supposed specs of the Prada II, and it looks to be quite good. Features include quad-band GSM/EDGE as well as dual-band HSDPA (!), a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with flash and VGA recording, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, a motion sensor, and an FM radio.

We're pleased with the dual-band HSDPA announcement, as it means we'll probably see it stateside. Whether it'll be picked … Read more

LG Prada II comes with a keyboard?

Remember the LG Prada? Yeah, that fashion touch-screen phone that preceded the original iPhone by a few months.

Well, according to this tidbit by the Boy Genius Report, apparently LG is planning to release the LG Prada II, but this time it'll have a slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well. Little is known about the Prada sequel so far, but there is this picture of it floating around, and it does look like LG just slapped a QWERTY keyboard on the old hardware.

We hope its features will improve upon the original with a better megapixel camera, more internal storage, … Read more

Okay, okay, I'll get an iPhone 3G!

My very first meaningful blog post here (after an introduction), from June 23, 2007, was titled "Why I'm not getting an iPhone".

Let me review my reasons at the time:

The original iPhone couldn't really do any more for me than my Palm Treo 650. The iPhone couldn't be used to connect my laptop to the Internet. No voice-memo support. No 3G networking. Not enough storage capacity. No native apps from third-party developers. No high-res screen.

Okay, what's changed?

Well, the iPhone 3G still… Read more