Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, August 01, 2008

Judge Rules Early Termination Fees Are Illegal and Violate California Law [ETF Fees]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/351932712/judge-rules-early-termination-fees-are-illegal-and-violate-california-law

A California County Superior Court judge has just ruled that early termination fees from cellphone companies violates California state law and are illegal. What's this mean to you? Sprint Nextel has been ordered to pay $18.2 million in reimbursements to customers who already paid their ETF, and to stop trying to collect $54.7 million from customers who canceled and refused to pay. But if ETF fees are illegal, does that mean 2-year contracts—which in turn give you subsidized price on your cellphones—will be a thing of the past? Tough to say, but we're headed towards some change. [Mercury News via Yahoo]

iPhone Apps We Love: NetShare - Share Your 3G/EDGE Connection With Your Computer [IPhone Apps]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/352096056/iphone-apps-we-love-netshare-+-share-your-3gedge-connection-with-your-computer

NetShare is one app we never thought would make it onto the official iPhone App Store. All it does is set up a SOCKS5 proxy for you to get your laptop/computer online through use of the 3G/EDGE connection. Does it work? Yes. Yes it does, much to our surprise. EDGE works just fine, although Mahoney says it's slow as balls. 3G impressions in a sec. Be careful of how much bandwidth you're using, since your provider probably makes a frowny face at you using their network to power your laptop, however "unlimited" your plan may be. [NetShare - Thanks Matthew and Ryan!]

Update: Having problems setting it up on my iPhone 3G. I follow the instructions and the phone seems to "connect", but that's about it. No connections shown in the NetShare app, and nothing goes through.

Update 2: Now we're getting the message that it's not available in the US store. Sucks.

Mint V10: World's Smallest Pocket Projector [Projectors]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/352446142/mint-v10-worlds-smallest-pocket-projector

Australian company Mint Wireless is claiming their Mint V10 is the smallest commercial pocket projector in the world. At 125 x 55 x 23 mm, this bulge in our pants means we are happy to see that, even while it means we will have to go to Sidney to get one. The aluminum and plastic sandwich has a 20,000-hour LED lamp which, according to them, doesn't need warming up. The company also says the $600 projector battery offers "hours" worth of viewing time at 640 x 480 pixels, either from your computer or using its SD card slot or 1GB of internal memory. [Mint Wireless via Gizmodo Australia]

Honeycomb Skyscraper Has No Internal Structure, Attracts Giant Killer Wasps [Architecture]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/352481434/honeycomb-skyscraper-has-no-internal-structure-attracts-giant-killer-wasps

Design goodness hunters Dezeen got this pictures of the 1,174-feet-high Sinosteel International Plaza in Tinajin, China, designed by architects MAD—or just mad architects. The external white honeycomb structure, with huge hexagonal windows that vary sightly in size, is not just for the pretty looks: it will sustain the whole building without the need for any internal structure. And make it look like a huge wasp nest to me. From the inside, however, each room looks like a space station.

The variable size of the windows is not just to make the building more interesting. According to the architects, the pattern was created to adapt to the wind and sun:

By mapping the different air flows and solar direction across the site, we were able to position different sized windows accordingly, minimizing heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer.

The building—located in a port city one hour east of Beijing—will be finished in 2012, including the big office tower and the smaller one, which will be dedicated to a hotel. [Dezeen]

Video: Camera-based concept turns any surface into a DJ deck

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/351413878/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

DJ MoCAP, master of time and white space, has developed a camera-based controller for the TRAKTOR Scratch DJ System. Just sketch the deck onto a piece of white paper and turn any high contrast surface into a mixing table. There seems to be a bit of latency but overall the system looks fairly responsive. Why? Why not, we say. Video demonstration after the break.

[Thanks, Brian]

Continue reading Video: Camera-based concept turns any surface into a DJ deck

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Dell Vostro 2510 laptop pops up in flier, $899 for Core 2 Duo and 256MB GPU

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/351583937/

Filed under: Laptops

The Inspiron-like Dell Vostro laptops have been haunting us for weeks now, but the mystery deepens with this Vostro 2510 that was spotted in a flier. The August 2008 Dell Business flier reads as such: "Coming this month: New! Dell Vostro 2510. Style meets performance." As far as listed specs, we've got an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 160GB hdd, 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GPU, and integrated webcam. Pretty decent specs for the $899 price tag, we gotta say. The URL listed in the photo is indeed for the Vostro lappies, but the 2510 is, as of right now, mysteriously absent.

UPDATE: The Canadian Dell site has some official Vostro 2510 information and specs. [Thanks, jorvay!]

[Thanks, Dirk]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

FujiFilm FinePix Z200fd gets stateside release and price, couples beware

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/351665246/

Filed under: Digital Cameras

The 10-megapixel, 1/2.3-inch CCD, 5x image stabilized optical-zoom lensed FinePix Z200fd is finally coming to the states in September for a price of $299.95. Fuji has kept all the consumer-friendly features like dual image stabilization, dual shot mode, and a novel group timer mode that only takes the picture once it sees four faces in the frame. For you budding journos, a potentially handy blog mode automatically resizes images to 640x480 for all your important updates. And let's not forget about the couple timer, which waits to take a shot until the lovebirds are deemed close enough.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Nokia dropping phone prices, going in for the kill

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/351700092/

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia's doing far better than rivals like Sony Ericsson and Motorola, but it's not going to let up while it's ahead -- the cellphone maker is reportedly cutting prices across the board in order to increase pressure on the competition. The biggest cuts are on the 5310 / 5610 music phones and the 8GB N81, but most other handsets have seen price decreases of up to 10 percent as well. The move is something of a surprise, with one analyst calling it a "Crazy Ivan," which is probably the first time The Hunt For Red October has ever been employed to describe the actions of a multinational corporation. So, Espoo -- does this mean the Tube is going to be crazy cheap, or what?

[Via Phone Scoop]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sylvania's G netbook gets some specs

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/351749613/

Filed under: Laptops

We weren't expecting much out of Sylvania's followup to its random Cloudbook rebrand, but some specs on the new netbook just hit the wires, and they're pretty respectable -- especially if this thing comes in at the $299 price target. Sure, it's still ugly, but you'll be getting a 1.6GHz Intel Atom, 1GB of RAM, an 80GB disk, and an 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 screen with an integrated webcam with either XP or Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is a pretty hot deal -- you listening, ASUS?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments