Nokia 7230
(Credit: Nokia)Nokia announced two new slider handsets at its Finnish headquarters Tuesday. We don't know exactly which markers will get the phones first, but models include support for North American cellular networks.
The 6700 Slide is a variation of the previously announced Nokia 6700 classic. It comes in six bright colors: aluminum, pink, blue, red, lime, and purple. Its features include a 5-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, a speakerphone, messaging, a personal organizer, e-mail and chat, an FM radio, a music player, and Bluetooth. Set for a first quarter, 2010 release, the 6700 Slide should cost about $240.
Nokia 7230
(Credit: Nokia)The 7230 has a slight oval shape and comes in silver and pink. Inside you'll find a speakerphone, a 3.2-megapixel camera, messaging, access to social networking and Nokia's Ovi Store, a microSD card slot, a FM radio, Bluetooth, and a personal organizer. The 7230 also should be out in the first quarter of next year; the price will be about $150.
While April surely wasn't anything to write home about, May promises to be a month filled with highly anticipated releases. There are plenty of reasons to get excited if you're a gamer, so make sure you check out our slideshow of our top picks for this month.
The classics get an upgrade in May as Bionic Commando and Punch-Out!! make their debuts. While both titles greatly differ in terms of content, each developer has remained true to the title's respective roots in order to satisfy gamers both new and old.
May also sees the first-ever PSP game to be released digitally. That's right, no UMD for Patapon 2; it's a download-only title.
Nintendo Wii owners may want to check out EA Sports Active. It's very much in the vein of Wii Fit, as the game is designed to help you exercise.
What games are you looking forward to in May?
Will the new PSP look more like the Mylo?
(Credit: Sony)After rumors surfaced last week that the next-generation PSP would do away with the UMD optical drive in favor of direct downloads to flash memory via the PlayStation Network, Eurogamer is reporting something similar and adding a new twist to the mix: the new PSP will have a "sliding screen" and will feature a more compact, narrower design.
In typical fashion, this is all according to an anonymous "development source close to Sony," so take it for what it's worth. Said source claims that the next PSP--it may be called the PSP 4000 rather than the PSP 2--will allow you to play games using only the shoulder buttons while the sliding screen is in its closed position. Apparently, most of the controls will be inaccessible when the screen is closed.
The Eurogamer article notes, "The screen is basically the same as the one in the PSP 3000--except it slides."
Personally, I don't care much about playing LocoRoco style games; rather, I'm hoping that underneath that screen there will be a keyboard along the requisite PSP gaming buttons. I've been begging Sony for a couple of years to marry its Mylo Communicator and the PSP into one highly versatile unit, but alas, the chatter doesn't include any talk of a keyboard.
(Source: Eurogamer via Kotaku)
As always, feel free to comment.
While the Nyko Wand took our Best of CES gaming award, we were also fans of a few additional accessories the company announced for the Nintendo Wii.
We really like the Kama Wireless Nunchuk we reviewed a few months ago, and Nyko has decided to improve on the item again. We know Nintendo had a fairly unpublicized grievance with the Kama's ...
Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
We chose the Nyko Wand as a Best of CES gaming finalist because the product not only improves on the original Nintendo design, but because of the controller's innovative Trans-Port interface.
Check out our slide show detailing the features of the Wand and see how it will combine with accessories like the Pistol Grip.
Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)
One of the cool features of the iPhone is its ability to handle photos in a way that allows you to flip through the images very easily or view them as a simple slide show. However, after a while it gets mundane.
For this reason, I was excited that Moblyng announced on Thursday its slide show application for the Apple iPhone. Being an amateur photographer, I decided to try it out. And it delivered!
Almost immediately I appreciated its improvement over the phone's built-in photo-managing tool. It was very easy to pick either existing photos or take new ones with the phone's camera to make a new slide show or add to an existing one.
The app offers five ways (themes) for you to run a slide show. One of the themes is called "Antique" that makes all images appear in black and white, which is really cool. You can also change the speed and choose different skins.
I didn't try sharing my slide shows with any social networks, as I don't have an account with either Friendster or MySpace, the two networks the app supports. However, when I tried to share it with a different phone number, the app crashed. I hope this will be fixed with later updates of the app.
Nonetheless, Moblyng Slide Shows is a very fun app, and best of all, it can be downloaded from the App Store for free. It's definitely worth a try. Other smartphones users can also try a similar app at Moblyng's mobile site: m.moblyng.com.
Together with the application, Moblyng also announced today that it received more than 1 million monthly unique visitors to its mobile site in September. This number is rather significant as the site was launched just a month earlier, in August.
(Credit:
Ion Audio)
At this point, it's safe to assume that most of your photo collection is digital and stored on your computer and (hopefully) a backup disk or two. But what about those boxes of slides sitting at the bottom of your closet (or in your parents' basement) that are slowly but surely fading and yellowing as the years progress? Now, you could go out and easily drop a $1,000 on a film scanner from Nikon, or you could go out and grab Ion Audio's Slides 2 PC scanner for $100. Its 5-megapixel (1800dpi) scanner will leave you with 2,592x1,680-pixel files. Ion Audio (you know, the PC turntable and miscellaneous audio peripheral maker) touts the scanner's four-glass optical element along with automatic exposure and color balance to deliver accurate scans. It throws in a photo editing app from ArcSoft in case you still want to make tweaks. Included in the kit are two slide trays, each of which holds three slides at a time, and a negative tray. With a single USB connection and one-touch scanning, you might be able to set your folks up with this thing with the expectation of fielding only a minimal amount of tech support calls.
(Via Everything USB)
The Samsung CLP-315W is designed for working professionals and entrepreneurs who want a laser printer for speed but also need to print out documents, photos, and presentations in full color. This version also has a wireless print server built into the device, a convenient feature if you have several computers attached to the same network that will share the same printer. Unfortunately, the CLP-315W is not without its serious flaws.
First, the quality of the printouts are simply unacceptable. The printer has trouble separating subtle gradations in color and tends to blur together close sections on the color gamut. Also, forget about printing even the lowest-quality photos with the printer--in our experience, even small portraits on a presentation slide look smeared in some spots. We do like the small footprint, the easy wireless setup, and the separate color toner cartridges, but the output quality and sluggish print speeds take the overall score down to just an OK 2.5 stars.
So long T-Mobile Sidekick Slide.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)If you own a T-Mobile Sidekick Slide, you might want to hang onto it as a collector's item, since the messaging handheld is no more.
After hearing rumors of the Slide's discontinuation late last week, we talked to a T-Mobile rep Monday morning who officially confirmed that the carrier will no longer sell the Sidekick Slide.
Here's the official statement: "As with all of our products, they have a lifecycle. The T-Mobile Sidekick Slide has reached the end of its lifecycle. It is available in limited quantities at T-Mobile retail stores however the Slide is no longer being manufactured. T-Mobile will continue to support the product from a customer service perspective."
We pressed for a little more information as to why this decision was made, but were essentially given a "no comment" response. If you'll remember, the Sidekick Slide was the first model to be manufactured by Motorola instead of Danger/Sharp and had problems from the get-go.
Just a few weeks after its official release, the Slide was temporarily pulled after users reported that some devices were powering off after opening and closing the phone. Though that problem was resolved, it looks like it's lights out for good now. So long, Sidekick Slide, we hardly knew ye.
If you work with a computer, temptation is all around. Just think how often you've lost yourself in a "quick" game when you ought to be analyzing that report. Uh-huh. We thought that might ring a bell. Give yourself one Slacker Point for each of these notorious time-sucks that makes mincemeat of your productivity.
