Ford, who recently announced dealer installed WiFi in Sync-enabled vehicles, has now announced that some vehicles will have HD radio and iTunes tagging in 2010.
Ford is the first automaker to announce this technology which will turn normal radio into nearly CD-quality sound with an added bonus of being able to tag songs for later purchase on iTunes. And it is a very simple process as well. Users simply need to hit the “TAG” button on the radio display when they hear a song they want to purchase. The vehicle is able to store up to 100 “tags” so unless you decide you like every single song you hear as you drive from California to New York, you should be fine.
Once you hit that tag button, the data is transferred to a connected iPod. Then, once you sync your iPod to your iTunes, you’ll be able to view all the songs you tagged and decide if you like them enough to purchase them or not.
So now, if your like me and always tell yourself “Ok, I want this song!” as your driving down the road but forget by the time you got home, you are in luck. Ford is promising amazing quality music and the ability to purchase it later. Pretty cool in my opinion. Big question though, if your in a car that is a roaming hotspot, why would you need to tag your songs if you can just pull up your laptop and purchase them before you go into the hardware store?
For our readers who live in China, you may be excited to learn that Acer and Asustek may be manufacturing 3G cell phones specially designed for China. As of now, it is still a rumor until we hear concrete confirmation from either Acer and Asustek, but as of now there are only some reports and rumors.
Acer and Asustek will be working with China Mobile and China Unicom (some Chinese carriers) to market the specially designed 3G cell phones in 2010. The new cell phones will be operational on TD-SCDMA and WCDMA. Asustek, in terms of cell phones, is perhaps best known for their Garmin-Asus phones. Therefore, it makes sense Asustek plans to tweak, upgrade, and customize the Garmin-Asus smartphones to fit China’s technology. Meanwhile, Acer already has plans to launch around eight smartphones for European and Asian countries in 2010. So, it would not be out of the realm of possibility that they will be offering customized cell phones for China.
USB 3.0 is slowly becoming mainstream in the gadget world. But we haven’t yet seen a 3.0 flash drive until now. Power Quotient International Co., Ltd (PQI) is making three versions of its U366 flash drive, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. It comes in an aluminum casing with a plastic cover and will ship in either blue or grey colors. Dimensions are 87mm x 22mm x 12mm. Big news is that it will be USB 3.0.
USB 3.0 means that these flash drives could possibly be capable of bandwidth up to 5GB/s while retaining backwards compatibility with older standards. PQI also states that the U366 will have transfer speeds of up to 97MB/s.
Before the Google Nexus One has even touched a consumer’s hand, Seidio has announced they will be providing “the ultimate accessories.” Since Seidio has manufactured many accessories for BlackBerry, HTC, LG, Apple, and Samsung, we can assume the accessories they will create for the Nexus one to be of high quality, and useful.
While nothing has officially been announced yet, the accessories will probably be along the lines of screen protectors, travel chargers, desktop chargers, docks, and Bluetooth accessories. Unfortunately, there is no word on pricing or availability, mainly because there is no exact retail date for the Nexus One yet. As soon as a date becomes available, I’m sure Seidio will post product pages with pertinent information for the various accessories they have planned.
It is interesting to note the timing of Seidioi announcing they will have the ultimate accessories for the Nexus One. They are letting the public know well ahead of the official launch date for the phone, which is early January. It seems as if Seidio is banking on the Nexus One to be very popular ensuring people will buy their accessories.
It looks as if January 5, 2010 is going to be the day that we find out the details on the Nexus One. And thankfully it will be the official details which will be coming straight from Google.
According to a recent posting over on Engadget, Google has announced plans for an “Android press gathering” in Mountain View on January 5th. And yes, that was correct, the event is taking place in Mountain View and not at CES in Las Vegas.
Now, assuming we see the unveiling of the Nexus One and it becomes available immediately…who is going to be willing to part with their hard earned cash?
E-readers seem to be the hot thing this season; evidenced by the amount of Kindle sales this season. But one company claims to be going on the offensive in this booming market. Paradigm Shift Sourcing and Manufacturing will introduce two e-readers during CES next month. One will have a 5-inch display and the other will have a 7-inch display. The kicker is that both of these readers will have high resolution, high contrast, full-color display.
But another cool thing is that they claim that these E-readers will be more than just E-readers. The 5-inch EER-051 will double as an MP3-player and photo viewer. It will come with 1GB of memory built-in, expandable with an SD expansion slot; and it will support many E-book formats including; ANSI, Unicode TXT, DOC, PDF, HTML, FB2, PDB and unprotected EPUB.
The 7-inch EER-071WF will have even more in it because it will run Windows CE with a full touchscreen display, built-in WiFi, and the ability to read DRM encrypted E-books. Paradigm Shift is calling this one more of a UMPC rather then just an E-reader because it will be able to use chat programs through E-buddy and be able to access and view videos on YouTube. It will also be able to read Microsoft Word and Excel files, PDF files, flash video and AAC, and MP3’s. It will have 2GB of memory built-in expandable by a microSD expansion slot.
The 5-inch version will come in a variety of colors including white, pastel blue, pastel periwinkle, pastel pink, black and silver and cost $150. But the 7-inch, more professional version it seems, will only come in black and white and cost $200. Paradigm Shift claims that the devices will begin shipping in late February.
BGR managed to obtain a T-Mobile release which contains information on Google’s plan with the Nexus One. Instead of having various wireless companies sell the phone, Google will completely sell the handset via the web. If you decide to purchase the phone, you can then go to T-Mobile and they will provide the voice and data services.
In addition, the phone is set to be available in early January, presumably after CES 2010. Interestingly enough, Google alongside HTC plan to field all support questions, instead of T-Mobile. I guess that makes sense since they are the ones who designed all the hardware and probably know the device the best.
Now all we need to know is the pricing for such a phone and whether T-Mobile customers will be willing to flock to Google and pick up a Nexus One.
FROM APPLETELL - Pedal Brain is here to help motivate your feet to start pedaling, and does so by tracking your rides and driving you to do better. MORE »
At this point many of you that frequent Gadgetell have most likely noticed the Chrome advertising that Google has been doing on their search page. And for those that have not, the ad was placed in the upper right hand corner and displayed a small Chrome logo with text that read “A faster way to browse the web.” Of course, it also gave a link to download, but as a whole the ad was small and unobtrusive.
That said, there are now some new (or maybe ones that I am just noticing) ads that are beginning to show up online. The latest that I found was on YouTube, granted it was all the way on the bottom, just above the comment box. But hey, for some reason people love to comment on YouTube so I guess the placement is actually pretty decent.
That and, the ad, which can be seen below is promising a way to view YouTube “in a fast, new web browser” and seems to imply that by using Chrome you will be able to see your YouTube videos a little faster.
Either way though, its nice to see Google making such a push with Chrome. While I would not try and convince everyone to make the switch, it does go back to the whole theory that competition brings better products for everyone.
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According to some whispers on the street heard by HDGURU, DirecTV is on the precipice of offering 3D HDTV television channels service as early as March 2010. If this report is true, then chances are DirecTV will have an announcement at CES 2010 in early January.
Interestingly enough, DirecTV will soon be launching a new satellite into orbit giving them the flexibility to offer higher quality broadcasting, which they intend to use with a 3D channel and other HD channels. A move to incorporate a channel featuring 3D entertainment makes sense because they would then become the only American broadcasting company to offer such content. The satellite is set to become fully functional in March 2010, which would probably be the earliest we would see 3D content being broadcast.
You might be thinking, if I’m already a DirecTV subscriber, will I have to purchase additional equipment to receive 3D broadcasting? And the answer is no, because DirecTV will simply have to push out a firmware upgrade to existing HDTV set top boxes. However, you will need a HDTV capable of playing 3D content, and there will definitely be a variety of capable TVs on display CES by many major manufacturers. Additionally, Mitsubishi already has their DLP lineup of HDTVs that support 3D content using a 3D converter box. Lastly, 3D glasses will also be needed.
Available 3D content includes movies, sports, news, etc. It will definitely be interesting to see if DirecTV makes an announcement regarding 3D entertainment at CES 2010.
I rarely watch television that is not recorded, but sometime I have a channel on while surfing the web and a commercial will come on and catch my attention. And while that is rare, it is extra rare when that commercial is from a company that normally would cause me to change the channel even faster.
Yup, its the Geek Squad and the commercial was showing off remote support. Sure its nothing new, we geeks have been doing it for years in an effort to fix the computers of our loved ones. But for some reason, it was funny to watch.
If you followed technology news closely a couple of months ago, you might have heard a blip about the xpPhone. In theory its a minicomputer that runs XP. Now whether or not this is a good idea, video proof has now shown us that is now closer than ever to production.
The phone has impressive specs…for a netbook. But nevertheless it has 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive or 64GB solid state drive, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, 3.0-megapixel camera, and of course a QWERTY keyboard. I’m going to go out and say it. I’d rather get a cabled phone then carry this around. And, although this video proof does say that it will hit shelves eventually, whether anyone will actually buy it is beyond me.
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At this point many of you that frequent Gadgetell have most likely noticed the Chrome advertising that Google has been doing on their search page. And for those that have not, the ad was placed in the upper right hand corner and displayed a small Chrome logo with text that read “A faster way to browse the web.” Of course, it also gave a link to download, but as a whole the ad was small and unobtrusive. 
If you followed technology news closely a couple of months ago, you might have heard a blip about the xpPhone. In theory its a minicomputer that runs XP. Now whether or not this is a good idea, video proof has now shown us that is now closer than ever to production.
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