Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, VoIP, Mobile  If the report over at Business Week were to be believed, Verizon may very well be announcing new Skype-supported phones at the Mobile World Congress on Tuesday. Verizon announced that they will be holding a joint press conference at the MWC next week. What else could they be announcing apart from release of new Skype phones? Nowadays people are making fewer traditional voice minutes-based calls, and with the up rise of VoIP, it is perfectly reasonable for Verizon to let customers utilize their 3G data plans for Skype calls.
Verizon isn’t the only carrier looking to support Skype phones. AT&T will be opening up support for VoIP services on Apple iPhones as well, and Skype is currently working on an updated iPhone app which should be ready real soon. Let’s just wait for the MWC next week to see what they have in store for us. Read [Business Week] Via [Gizmodo] Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile Photos of Samsung S8500 “Wave” have just emerged all over the web. The Wave is Samsung’s first phone which features the all-new Bada operating system with Touchwiz 3.0. It measures at only 10.9mm thin, and sports a 3.3” AMOLED capacitive touchscreen capable of playing 720p HD videos! Other specs include a 1GHz processor, a 5mp autofocus camera with flash, 2GB internal flash memory, microSD slot, HSDPA and WiFi 802.11b/g/n connectivity, and a 1500mAh battery. One thing that’s missing from the spec sheet is Bluetooth, which I presume was a mistakenly excluded from the list. The Wave comes with tempered glass and a brushed aluminium finish, which should give a nice feel to it when held in your hands. No word on when it will be released though, but more information may surface at the MWC next week. Read [Daily Mobile] Via [Gizmodo] Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Google We’ve got to admit that Google Buzz’s auto-following model is really crappy. I’ve had some random eBay sellers (I bought some stuff from them a long time ago) auto-following me on my Google Reader ever since I activated Buzz. Sure, in a way, it’s quite convenient because you don’t have to spend time setting up, but things gets bad when it starts to auto-follow people you don’t intend to follow. Just recently, Google addressed a privacy concern regarding the display of lists of followers. Today, Google made another change to the way Buzz works by switching to an auto-suggest model, rather than an auto-follow model. When you first activate Buzz, it will give you a list of suggestions from which you can add/remove before actually following people. Buzz will also no longer connect to your Picasa and Google Reader automatically. There’s also a “Buzz” tab in your Gmail settings, allowing easier access to Buzz settings. Read [Official Gmail Blog] Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile 
According to the FCC filing, Sharp has built a new phone that approximates the rumored Turtle design. Sharp built the Sidekicks for Danger back in the day and the suggestion here is Sharp is again building phones for Danger, now a part of Microsoft. If this rumor proves true, we should see an announcement from the Mobile World Congress. The image above is from the FCC filing and it looks similar to a slider phone dubbed Turtle that Gizmodo has floated. While not the prettiest device out there, it seems a bunch of the MS Danger team has been tweeting with “from Danger” and the hashtag #Tmdp. Danger did pretty well with the Sidekick bringing lots of kids into the fold, Microsoft could use some of that mojo again. The Turtle device they have been testing has 4G of memory, at least the prototype does. Tester Wojtek Chmielewski (poor kid had to learn to spell that growing up) tweeted this: cleaning a 4gb inbox sucks!!! #tmdp
1:59 PM Jan 9th from Danger
Interestingly, my unofficial research has shown that kids prefer flip-style phone instead of the slider form factor which this Sharp phone seems to have. So what gives? Also, and this could just be coincidence, but Xbox comes up an aweful lot in the tweets, could Xbox have a tie-in with this new phone? Read: [FCC filings] via [Neowin] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
Section: Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Transportation  The 33rd America’s Cup is now underway in Valencia, Spain with USA’s BMW Oracle Racing vs. the Swiss Alinghi. This year, the boats are radically different: US using a trimaran (3 hulls) and the Swiss with a catamaran (2 hulls). But another factor is in play: the US boat is using a wing instead of a main sail as their primary engine to drive the boat forward.
The wing, just as it sounds is more like a plane wing than traditional sail. The over 200 foot tall wing has 5 flaps for micro-adjustment. The wing creates lift, only in a horizontal plane which pushes the boat forward. The wing produces so much forward power, the US boat will frequently take down it’s forward sail (jib) as it just isn’t needed. The wing built for this boat race is the biggest ever made, whether for airplane or other use (it’s 80% bigger than a wing of a 747 according to BMW Oracle Racing). The wing is a two element wing, meaning there is a gap between the two elements. How the elements position themselves to one another, controlling how fast the air moves over the wings. Flaps are used to further control how the wind attaches itself to the sail. Wings are not totally new. Back in 1988, USA’s Stars and Stripes used a wing sail in the light winds off San Diego, CA. However, that was only on a 60 foot boat while the new boat racing in the 33rd Cup is 90 feet long. On Friday, both boats were able to hit 22 knots of speed (roughly 25 mph) going upwind with a 7 knot breeze. Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 
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