Computer Gadgets New

Purported photos of Best Buy’s inventory list suggest that the electronics store will soon be carrying some of the latest and hottest cell phones, including the Google Android-powered G1.

The Boy Genius Report came across these photos, indicating that a slew of hot new phones will arrive in the store Oct. 26. From the looks of it, Best Buy will be selling the unlocked Treo Pro smartphone — a highly anticipated (albeit not all that exciting) handset from Palm. It also appears the much more exciting BlackBerry Pearl Flip (in red) — the first flip version of the popular blackberry smartphone — will make its way on shelves.

Finally, one of the photos indicates the T-Mobile G1 — the first handset to run Google’s open platform Android operating system — will arrive at Best Buy on Oct. 26 as well. However, the screen says the phone won’t start selling until Nov. 16, which is odd since the official release date of the phone is supposed to be Oct. 22.

Strange. What do you think about these photos, Gadget Lab readers? (More below the jump.)

Palm Treo Pro, Pearl Flip 8220, T-Mobile G1, and more coming soon to Best Buy [BGR]

Photo: BGR

There are many Facebook Applications out there created by regular people or companies.  Some of these apps are actually useful and cool and some are just, well, plain old stupid and pointless.  This app, depending on its popularity, could actually be pretty useful and work the way the company, Smarter.com, intended for it to work.  Smarter.com is, in case you didn’t know, a website which shows comparisons between products and helps you make an educated purchase.

The new app, called “What would you buy?” is a poll in which you ask your friends whether they would buy this product or this product and why.  For example, a person can poll their friends on whether they should buy T-Mobile’s G1 or Apple’s iphone and hopefully their friends would be nice enough to comment why they chose the cellphone.  Users can add the product of their choosing from any website using a form on the App.  Smarter.com touts that the purchase doesn’t even have to be something big such as a cellphone, it can be something small such as a Halloween costume.

In case you didn’t want to poll all of your friends on what you wanted to buy/wear for Halloween, you can set some privacy restrictions and have the App only poll your close friends or whatever you choose.

Paul Willmes, MeziMedia’s vice president of product management, had this to say about the new App:

“The Smarter.com ‘What would you buy?’ application for Facebook is an exciting new offering for MeziMedia, with the goal being to incorporate many of the social aspects of the offline shopping experience into the online medium, and I think we’ve hit the mark.”

Like I said before, this App could potentially be very useful if many add the App and participate in the polls their friends make. If you want to get this App for your Facebook, then hit the Facebook link below. Let us know what you think of the App and if it’s worth getting.

Read [Facebook] Via [Business Wire]

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You are looking at the Windation wind powered energy generation unit.

It sits on 70 square feet of your roof and generates 6,912 kilowatts an hour. It’s quiet. It won’t massacre birds. It has an integrated turbine, a design that has been in use since 1904. If the wind is blowing, it provides electricity for approximately 1000 square feet of office space.

Why doesn’t every house have one of these on the roof?

Their website is sadly missing all the important information like cost, availability and installation. They seem to be marketing these to business and urban buildings, but homes could profit from this just as well. Does that mean the cost exceeds the grasp of the ordinary homeowner?

I’ve contacted them for information, but until then, I eagerly await. As soon as I find out specifics, I will update this entry.

Via: Twitter / anntorrence: This could be a gamer-chan …

If your kids missed the Tamagotchi craze because they were too young back then, here is yet another similar concept that will appeal to budding marine biologists. The Sega Toys handheld aquarium features different kinds of fish (depending on the model you purchase, you can choose from an Angelfish or Dolphin) that will interact with you, depending on you to remain alive. It will grow in due time as it remains “underwater” in the virtual world, and you get to entertain your marine pet with three mini games to keep it happy and healthy. Good thing there isn’t any pool or tank to clean with this $59 purchase.

With a little more than twenty days until the official release of the G1 we are already beginning to see some in-the-wild unboxing images starting to appear.  Sadly, the use of the word “unboxing” is used a little loose here because they include just a few images of the box and a few of the handset still in the box and nothing of any great detail.

More than anything, these just serve as a little teaser for anyone waiting to get their hands on a G1.  These pics, of course, came from an anonymous source, but its a safe to think that they possibly came from either a T-Mobile or Google employee. Otherwise the photographer would have taken the standard pictures of the handset in hand from every angle possible.  Sadly, at this point, that earlier user manual gave us a little more in detail information. Continue on to check out the rest of the in-the-wild images…

Via [TmoNews]

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You are looking at the Windation wind powered energy generation unit.

It sits on 70 square feet of your roof and generates 6,912 kilowatts an hour. It’s quiet. It won’t massacre birds. It has an integrated turbine, a design that has been in use since 1904. If the wind is blowing, it provides electricity for approximately 1000 square feet of office space.

Why doesn’t every house have one of these on the roof?

Their website is sadly missing all the important information like cost, availability and installation. They seem to be marketing these to business and urban buildings, but homes could profit from this just as well. Does that mean the cost exceeds the grasp of the ordinary homeowner?

I’ve contacted them for information, but until then, I eagerly await. As soon as I find out specifics, I will update this entry.

Via: Twitter / anntorrence: This could be a gamer-chan …

While cell phone camera technology has been getting better and better, who would’ve thought that they would actually be able to help count infected blood cells without relying on lens optics? That’s the discovery boffins from the University of California, Los Angeles managed to do using simple camera phone CCD sensors to distinguish between normal and infected cells in blood samples.

First published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Lab Chip in 2007, the LUCAS technique, developed by UCLA researchers, demonstrated a lens-free method for quickly and accurately counting targeted cell types in a homogenous cell solution. Removing the lens from the imaging process allows LUCAS to be scaled down to the point that it can eventually be integrated into a regular wireless cell phone. Samples could be loaded into a specially equipped phone using a disposable microfluidic chip. The UCLA researchers have now improved the LUCAS technique to the point that it can classify a significantly larger sample volume than previously shown — up to 5 milliliters, from an earlier volume of less than 0.1 ml — representing a major step toward portable medical diagnostic applications.

I’ll never look at my cell phone camera in the same way ever again…

[CEATEC 2008] I had heard about this mobile internet device (MID) back in April, but all we had then was paper marketing materials. I’m glad to see this MID in the flesh plastic. The device is supposed to have an extension in the back (wired Ethernet+GPS+40GB HDD), but this was not shown on the show floor. However, even without the extension, this device has respectable specifications:

• 5” WSVGA display (1024×600)
• Atom CPU
• 4GB SSD
• Linux or Windows OS
• WiFi-G, Bluetooth, W-SIM

The battery life is unknown and the lack of keyboard kind of kills it for me, but may be others won’t mind using the stylus with the touch-display. I don’t know what the price is, but here is the European distributor site (with more technical info too!)

Are you currently rocking to the Samba De Amigo game on the Wii? Well, why not enhance that experience with the Wii Samba DE Hammer that features a slot for you to snap in your Wiimote as well as Nunchuk, waving and shaking away madly as you attempt to complete the game? This $15 kit is definitely not the first Wii accessory range around that touts to enhance the gameplay experience, it also won’t be the last - that’s for sure.

by Nilay Patel, posted Sep 30th 2008 at 8:42PM

Laptops with built-in WWAN modems aren’t anything new, but there’s a hodgepodge of hardware and services available — a situation the GSM Association is trying to simplify with the new Mobile Broadband standardization initiative. Sure, it’s mostly an excuse to get another sticker on your gear, but companies like Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, Toshiba, Qualcomm and a bunch of carriers are on board to ensure that Mobile Broadband-certified machines will be ready and able to connect in some 91 countries around the world — and what’s more, they’re committed to spending a cool billion dollars in the next year promoting MB as a “compelling alternative” to WiFi and WiMAX. That should be an interesting dilemma for the carriers that also run hotspot networks, but we’ve got a feeling everyone’s happy as long as the sub fees keep rolling in.

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Filed under: Laptops, Wireless