So far the G1 has only been available in the US and UK, but it looks like T-Mo’s about to take Android international — we’re told the HTC-made handset will hit the Netherlands, Austria, and the Czech Republic on January 30, Germany on February 2, and Poland a bit later. No detailed pricing information, but it’s confirmed that Germans will be able to score a G1 for just €1 ($1.33) with a two-year contract. Hopefully we’ll see that pricing make its way Stateside soon — although the G1 is currently doing quite well at $179, $1 sounds even better.

[Via TalkAndroid]

Filed under: Cellphones

T-Mobile schedules the G1’s European tour originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Robots

You know those insect-like micro air vehicles (MAV) we’ve been seeing? Well, the ExoFly aerobot is based on that camera-equipped DelFly design, only this time it’s gearing up for a trip to Mars — maybe even Titan or Venus. Turns out flapping-wing flight is perfect for the low-density Martian atmosphere. The current prototype — weighing 17g with a wingspan of 350mm and flight time of twelve minutes — is being tweaked for use in future missions to Mars. The folks at Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University, who’ve teamed up with Ursa Minor Space & Navigation, plan on increasing the weight to 20g and adding an on-board solar cell, which they reckon should extend the flight distance to 15km. There’s also talk of using the digital terrain and image data gathered to simulate a 3D immersive environment for detailed analysis of extraterrestrial destinations — hopefully viewable by those of us who don’t have the billions to drop on a flight to Mars.

[Via New Scientist Space]

Continue reading ExoFly: Mars’ first tourguide

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Filed under: Displays

If you don’t like spoilers then look away, now — seems Forbes has all the details related to iRex’s 22 September announcement. The Netherlands-based group is set to release an evolved iLiad e-reader called the iRex Reader 1000. Like Plastic Logic, iRex is targeting business users with its new 10.2-inch E-Ink e-reader able to display “any file format” including PDF, Word, and HTML-rendered documents — sorry, no video, no color. The Reader 1000 brings a stylus with touch-screen for making notes and markups for up to 80 hours on a single charge. The base Reader 1000 is boldly expected to start at $650 (compared to the $359, 6-inch Kindle). It then ramps to $750 for the writable screen version before topping out at $850 to add WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G data connection. Now get to it CIOs, we suspect you’ll need some time to argue the case why some personnel require a laptop, smartphone, and e-reader to get through the day.

[Via mobileread, Thanks Spencer H.]

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Filed under: Cellphones

var digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/TeliaSonera_nabs_iPhone_rights_for_Nordic_and_Baltic_market’; Ok ok, we hear you tipsters, iPhone now official for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia “later this year” thanks to a deal between Apple and TeliaSonera. At this point, only The Netherlands seems to be out of the loop in Europe.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

April 2008. That’s the date when the notoriously progressive Dutch government goes open source. The plan was approved unanimously yesterday in a meeting of two parliamentary commissions. The policy dictates that government organizations at the national level must be ready to save documents in the Open Document Format (ODF) by April, and the state and local level by 2009. Use of proprietary software and file formats from the likes of Microsoft will have to be justified under the new policy. The government expects to save $8.8 million a year on city housing registers alone by making the switch. Tough week, eh Microsoft? You’ll have to get your OpenDocument plug-ins for MS Office ISO approved on the quick if you want to avoid further trouble.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones

Last we heard from the seemingly endless Nokia / Qualcomm kvetch-fest, the former company was soliciting the ITC’s help in barring US Qualcomm chip imports, but for those wishing on their lucky stars that this spat would simply vanish into the night, we’ve got marginally good news. Apparently, a trio of judges in a Dutch court ruled that it didn’t have jurisdiction to rule on the phone maker’s claims outside of The Netherlands, thus, the patent-licensing case against Qualcomm was dismissed. Aside from claiming that its “jurisdiction was limited,” the court also stated that Nokia’s gripe was “too broad to give a reasoned decision.” Of note, a German court also dismissed the case just last month on “similar grounds,” but if you were counting on Nokia to just take the news in stride, we doubt you’ll be pleased to hear that it’s already “considering if it will appeal the decision.”

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: GPS

TomTom just lit up its High Definition Traffic, premium traffic service in The Netherlands. Announced in parallel is the ONE XL HD Traffic navigator, for what’s a traffic service without a GPS device to take advantage of it? The ONE XL HD Traffic shares the same 4.3-inch LCD of its ONE XL brethen only now with the addition of 1GB of built-in storage and a new SIM card (no activation or configuration required) for live traffic data feeds over Vodafone’s GSM network. Traffic information collected anonymously from Dutch Vodafone mobile phones and third party traffic authorities is updated every 3 minutes — that’s 5x the traffic updates and 10x the road coverage of typical traffic systems according to TomTom. Available in TomTom’s home country of The Netherlands this month (UK in first half of 2008) for €399 (about $581) including a one year HD Traffic subscription renewable for €9.95/month. An HD Traffic accessory for existing TomTom products will be available in early 2008.

[Via Pocket-lint]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Robots

Having read the title above, we ask you: how do you feel? Titillated at the prospect or fearful for the little babies? Either way, if artificial intelligence researcher David Levy of the University of Maastricht is to be believed, we’ll be consummating relationships with our anatomically correct Roombas by mid-century. Ironically, even though the city of Maastricht sits in free-livin’ Netherlands, Levy predicts that Massachusetts will be first to legalize human-robot marriage due to its liberal attitude toward same-sex marriages. He envisions those early man-machine marriages falling victim to the same cultural taboos affecting interracial marriages. However, just as those are accepted over time, so will committed robot-hookups be seen as “normal” as the practice becomes more common. According to Levy, “once you have a story like ‘I had sex with a robot, and it was great!’ appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.” Here that Digg users? The cure to nerdonic-celibacy is all up to you. Still, 2050? Not likely… just like those Disney inspired space-age dreams of Tomorrowland, technology never progresses quite as rapidly as we think, or even uh, would like it to.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

About a year after the Dutch government began seriously worrying about the integrity of e-voting machines, they’ve literally pulled the plug on the venture. The biggest flaw was the lack of a paper trail according to a special committee which reported its finding this morning. As such, Nederlanders will return to the “red pencil method” in upcoming elections until an automated paper-counting solution can be deployed… and then hacked.

[Thanks, Wol]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!