Archive for August 16th, 2009

At a quick glance, you might write off this picture as nothing more than a rehash of recently-launched Nokia models. Look closer, though — way closer — and you might notice that the phone in the front is actually an N97 Mini (check d-padless keyboard, for instance). Going around the table, you realize that we’re actually dealing with a who’s-who of new and unannounced gear: a 6760 (Yanks know this as the Surge), an E72, E52, and a chromed-up touchscreen device that looks like it could be the long-rumored 5900 XpressMusic. Who has access to all this awesome stuff? Some retailer, apparently, who’s got a public Flickr account and a happy shutter finger. We’ll take one of each, please.

Update: At the owner’s request, we’ve had to pull the photograph. Sorry, folks!

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Bunch of unreleased Nokias caught chatting amongst themselves originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Y Combinator sees no shortage of startups that apply to be a part of their funding cycles. But they don’t always see all the ideas they’d like to see come out of the classes. So starting with the upcoming Winter 2010 cycle, they have a new idea called RFS, Requests For Startups. Basically, Y Combinator will issue some ideas of what they’re looking for in any cycle, and will accept the ones that pitch the best way to do the idea.

Now, to be clear, Y Combinator will not be forgoing its usual method of combing over any and all startup pitches outside of the ones they lay out. “We don’t expect responses to RFSes will ever be more than a fraction of the applications we accept. We wouldn’t want them to be. Most good ideas should be ones that surprise us, not ones we’re waiting for,” Paul Graham writes on the site today. The hope is that this will help guide some new startups without solid ideas in the direction of something that is missing in the market. Or encourage ones that already have a similar idea to apply.

Y Combinator’s RFSes won’t describe exactly what Y Combinator is looking for, but rather will give a general idea, with the hopes that the startups can come up with even better plans than Y Combinator is thinking of, Graham says.

If you’ve been waiting expectantly for Redbox to launch its much dreamed-of video game rentals kiosks — well, dream no more. Word has come down from on high that it’s happened, and we’ll tell you: we couldn’t be more pleased. For $2 a night (which isn’t really a great premium compared to Blockbuster’s $9 for five nights), you can hit up the kiosk and grab games for Nintendo DS, Wii, PS2 and 3, and Xbox 360. Now — the game selections are really slim so far, but we’re pretty sure that situation will improve quickly, and the launch has only been rolled on in the Reno, Nevada area as of now. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for Redbox to make its way eastward soon.

[Via Zatz Not Funny]

Filed under: Gaming

Redbox debuts $2 video game rentals, pretty lean on titles thus far originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The spec gap between the Magic and the Hero is mighty small — other than the entirely revamped Sense UI, the Hero’s 5 megapixel camera is about the only thing the newer model has over the original, physical design notwithstanding. That gap is on the fast track to getting even smaller, too, now that HTC has issued a press release detailing a Sense upgrade for the Magic (assuming you haven’t already nabbed it off xda-developers, that is). It looks like current owners will get hooked up some time in October for NT$1,500, which works out to about $46; what we don’t know, though, is which Magics will be eligible for the upgrade. Just like HTC’s WinMo wares, we’re guessing that subsidized units are going to be at the mercy of their carriers, which means that T-Mobile, Rogers, and Vodafone customers (among others) should take a somewhat pessimistic view of this announcement until they’ve heard otherwise. Hey, we’re just looking out for your mental health here.

[Thanks, Steve G.]

Update: Depending on how you interpret the press release, HTC could be saying that the upgrade is valued at NT$1,500, but will actually be free. We’re working to get a clarification.

Update 2: Alright, we’ve gotten the skinny on this straight from HTC. The update will be free — thing is, it’s only coming to Taiwan’s Chunghwa so far. The fate of Magics on other carriers remains unknown, but we do know that so-called “with Google” versions will definitely be left out (that includes you, myTouch 3G).

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC to offer Sense upgrade for Magic in October, might be free? (update: free, only coming to Taiwan so far) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Firefox 3.5, which we’ve ranted about recently, is not playing nicely with Twitter. In fact, for the last week at least users (including me, including today) have had a lot of problems updating status messages and following new people if they use Firefox 3.5. The site just hangs forever.

Twitter knows about the issue and says they’re working on it. And the odd thing is that the issue seems to come and go.

The worst part about this is that Twitter was actively promoting Firefox 3.5 downloads in July, and a lot of Twitter users are probably using it. This version of Firefox alone has around 4.5% market share already.

Here we go again. The newspaper industry is blaming online news aggregators for its dwindling profits and inability to adapt to a world of links and truly-free flowing information. (They like it when information flows freely into their pages, but not so much when it flows out).

On Thursday, paidContent ran an essay by media consultant Arnon Mishkin called “The Fallacy Of The Link Economy” which was misguided on so many levels.

The newspaper industry wants to go back to the world before the Web, when each newspaper was a small media bundle packed with stories, 80 percent of which sucked. But it didn’t matter because you’d gladly pay a dollar to read the one or two stories that caught your eye on the front page, hoping there would be more inside. Well, guess what? The media bundle is dead. News sites can no longer capture reader’s attention with 20 percent news, and 80 percent suck

Due to Nokia’s continued dismissal of the ripe-for-the-picking E81 model number, the diligent folks at “Nokla” (fresh off their E97 design win) have seen it fit to issue a second handset under that fake moniker. Surprisingly, this one actually boasts a rather unique swivel design — even beating Nokia’s own effort in this regard — a QWERTY keyboard and some decent specs. There’s even a mirror on the swivel-up back (we hear that women love mirrors), along with a hole at the swivel hinge for working a lanyard through. We’d venture to say it’s the best E81 Nokia never made.

[Via Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]

Filed under: Cellphones

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXXXII: Nokla strikes again with E81 rehash originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Dubbing itself “the industry’s sole bright spot in 2009,” Microsoft has spun some depressing console sale decline numbers from NPD into a self-congratulating piece on the Xbox 360′s singular success this year. Through the first seven months of 2009 the console has shown 17 percent growth, despite July’s losses for the Big Three’s respective slabs of home hardware. Microsoft also points out that the 360 has been the number one platform for third-party sales through the entire year. Of course, this is nothing Sony can’t rectify with a bit of dirt cheap PS3 Slim magic, right? Right? Nintendo meanwhile probably can’t hear Microsoft’s bragging through the thick, cash-lined vaults it’s built for itself off the back of ceaseless peripheral sales.

Filed under: Gaming

Xbox 360 ‘only console to show growth this year’ according to Microsoft originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

We’ve been gushing for weeks now about the latest Chromium builds for Mac. Every day, they seem to get better. The problem is that every day, several updates are released and you have to manually go to the site and scroll down a long list to find the newest version to download. So we’ve made an application that allows you to easily ensure that you have the latest version at all times.

Our Mac Chromium Updater was built with the help of Greg Rosen, who created a script to check your version of Chromium versus the latest build. Then one of our developers, Hunter, created an Automator process so you don’t have to deal with installing something like Wget on your machine. The end result is a simple app that you run and let it update Chromium for you. You can find it here.

Facebook has submitted v. 3.0 of their iPhone application to Apple, Joe Hewitt says via Twitter: “Just uploaded Facebook for iPhone 3.0 to the App Store for review. ”

Hewitt also says he’ll post screen shots and more detais on this Facebook page for the iPhone app next week, and that he’s looking forward to getting started on v. 3.1 tomorrow.

We’ve been tracking 3.0 since details first became available in July. A list of some of the much needed improvements is here. And as a bonus, Hewitt said he’d be able to include video uploads to Facebook from iPhone 3Gs phones as well. And from our most recent post (yes, Hewitt has been teasing this out for weeks):