Filed under: Handhelds

Alright kids, it’s time for honesty. Here’s a tidbit your 3rd-grade teacher isn’t about to admit, but he / she and everyone else in the world crams for tests. Sorry, we know you totally believed that each and every noble student dutifully set aside hours per day to prepare for that big final, but in reality, every kid in your classroom just got on the study train a few hours ago. To that end, LeapFrog has concocted a perfectly named study aid dubbed the Crammer ($59.99; available now), which enables kids to “quickly navigate more than 16,000 mathematics, social studies and science quiz questions based on leading school textbooks.” Additionally, students can create customized digital flash cards for on-the-go cramming, and the built-in Spanish translator even gives you an edge in the foreign language department. Seriously, where was this at when we were using abacuses and carving English reports into stone tablets?

[Via PopGadget]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Yo, Microsoft, step on the gas and get Windows Mobile 7 out the door, would ya? Gartner’s profile of global smartphone sales in the second quarter of 2008 reveals that RIM’s BlackBerry OS has jumped over Windows Mobile to become the number two platform finding its way into pockets around the world, while perennial powerhouse Symbian carries on comfortably with the number one spot (and it’s not UIQ that’s doing the heavy lifting there, if you catch our drift). As a percentage of the overall mobile market, smartphones account for the same 11 percent they did a year ago — but the entire market saw growth, meaning that total smartphone shipments jumped a solid 15.7 percent over the same period. Well-earned kudos to RIM for knocking WinMo off its high horse, but seriously, Microsoft need only look in the mirror if it wants to know exactly how this came to pass.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Unless you’ve been squarely camped out under an atypically large boulder the past few months, you aren’t apt to be taken aback by this news. Sure enough, handset sales declined 22-percent in Q1 2008, though the industry did move some 31 million mobiles during the post-holiday quarter. It was noted, however, that smartphones comprised 17-percent of all mobile sales, which marks a 10-percent increase from the prior quarter. When taking a look at the top five handset manufacturers, you’ll find Motorola shakily perched at the top (27-percent), while RIM slipped past Sanyo to grab the five spot with 5-percent. Check the read link for all the gory details.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV

Ruh roh. Research firm DisplaySearch has just unleashed a new report that takes an in-depth look at the ultrathin XEL-1, and it ended up finding a video lifetime barely half of what Sony promises. Apparently the company ran a couple of Sony’s OLED TVs for 1,000 hours, after which it found that blue luminance degraded by 12-percent, the red by 7-percent and the green by 8-percent. Extrapolating the data it gathered, it estimated that the unit would lose half of its brightness in 17,000 hours — Sony says you can expect 30,000. Of course, Sony is still standing by its numbers, and even we can see that DisplaySearch’s methods aren’t perfectly scientific, but if you were honestly expecting to watch this thing for the next decade (and not a year less), you may want to hit the read link and snoop around.

[Via Yahoo, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Transportation

Oh sure, Americans are adamantly against texting while driving (in theory), but that’s not stopping those mischievous Gen Y-ers from getting their SMS on while behind the wheel. According to a new survey of 1,200 people conducted by Nationwide Mutual Insurance (we know, we know), a third of the Gen Y-ers admitted to “always multitasking while driving,” and while the “always” bit does indeed frighten us a tad, the real juice was in the next statistic: 37-percent said they sent text messages while driving. Before you start belaboring the imprudent youth, think long and hard about your own in-car cellphone usage — remember that time you just had to reply “y w pep plz” in order to salvage your friend’s pizza order? Tsk tsk.

[Via About]

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Filed under: Cellphones

According to a recent, sensational survey from Samsung Mobile, 61 percent of lazy, distracted, and impossibly ignorant cellphone users over the age 18 say they would be comfortable casting their vote for President of the United States via a text message. Meanwhile, the totally serious and meaningful survey found that eight in ten (or 80 percent) of teens under the legal voting age would use their mobile devices to cast a ballot in the election. Additionally, Samsung Mobile discovered that 90 percent of cellphone users would like an ice cream cone, while another 87 percent would like an ice cream cone only after eating a quarter-pounder with cheese. Soon Samsung Mobile hopes to determine what percentage, if any, of the people surveyed know who is running for the office of president.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Those darn kids — they just don’t listen! And soon, according to a report, they won’t physically be able to listen. It seems that modern teens, with their cloaking jackets, space telephones, and telepathic headsets fail to obey the simplest tenet of leisure-time music enjoyment: keeping their iPod and Zune volumes at a semi-natural level. In focus-group discussions, researchers found that high school students in the Netherlands were aware of the potential hearing loss which can be caused by high volume listening, yet had no immediate plans to crank their jams at anything but 11. Typical of our misguided youth, the teens feel that they have a “low personal vulnerability” to hearing loss — researchers also noted that they believed they were bulletproof, could fly, and would never, ever lose touch with people who signed their yearbook. The study’s findings suggest that the answer to this problem may lie with manufacturers of hardware and solutions like volume caps or warning lights, rather than with the self-control of the end user.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

LeapFrog is moving on up the chain, and hitting 3rd through 8th graders with a new study aid, the Crammer Study and Sound System. Crammer works basically as a replacement for those annoyingly handwritten index cards, allowing you to enter data for each side of virtual “cards” and run through them on the 2.5-inch grayscale screen. You can also download study aids for a myriad of subjects, or use the included language tools to automatically translate and pronounce words for study. The built-in music playback is pretty straightforward, and lets kids relax with some songs or listen while they study. We spotted a prototype at the 2008 Toy Fair, and while it wasn’t a functional unit, we got to see the iriver clix-style four-way screen clicking controls, which seem friendly enough. Crammer will be out Fall 2008 for $60, and includes 1GB of built-in flash memory.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Although Circuity City has claimed that its employees are trained and well equipped to handle any questions you may have concerning the digital TV transition, we’d highly recommend taking any advice sales pitches you receive in-store with a sizable spoonful of salt. According to new data from MassPIRG, sales clerks at Best Buy, Circuit City, RadioShack, Target and Wal-Mart “routinely gave inaccurate information about digital TV converter boxes and the government coupon program” when questioned by undercover researchers. Rather than get into what schemes were used (hint: buying a new set was often suggested over picking up an el cheapo converter), here’s an overview of the facts. First off, you won’t even be affected by the cutover if you receive your local broadcast stations via any means other than over-the-air. Secondly, all that’s needed to convert digital OTA signals to signals that your analog set can digest is a (relatively) inexpensive converter box. Lastly, we wouldn’t even recommend paying full price for said box — you know, considering that the government’s handing out $40 coupons to anyone who signs up here. So yeah, next time you catch some young buck trying to push that pricey HDTV rather than actually help you out, feel free to put him / her in their place.

[Via Electronic House, image courtesy of StarBulletin]

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It turns out that 17-year-olds probably aren’t that good at studying electrical interference — and its effect on pacemakers — created by iPods. Unlike the data presented to the Heart Rhythm Society last year by a high-school student, which demonstrated the music player’s ability to interfere with heart-regulating devices, the FDA now says that the gadgets are completely safe for use. Researchers measured magnetic fields produced by four different models of Apple’s ubiquitous device, and found no reason why your grandmother can’t keep jamming to her South of Heaven reissue. Said FDA researcher Howard Bassen, “Based on the observations of our in-vitro study we conclude that no interference effects can occur in pacemakers exposed to the iPods we tested.” We hope the FDA will follow this up with a definitive study on the effects of boomboxes on hip implants.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Half_of_Americans_Want_to_be_Bill_Gates_according_to_Study’; According to a highly dubious study recently released by a maker of paper-shredders, 47-percent of Americans said they would “like to be Bill Gates.” The other 53-percent said they preferred being powerless, poor, and not knowing what to do with Visual Basic.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

According to a recently released report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a telephone study of US youths aged 12-17 found that — get this — kids actually put value on “non-online” meetings, such as “talking on the phone” or “hanging out.” If you believe these so-called findings, 40-percent of teens say they use that archaic and confusing system of wired telephones, while 31-percent claim to spend time “in person” with friends every day, as though they’re not frittering away their time on PCs, DS Lites, and cellphones — interacting virtually, like the rest of us. Our take? Obvious youth-driven cover-up. Hear us out here. If the ‘rents found out kids were growing up so socially disenfranchised, they might just take all those beautiful gadgets away. On the other hand (or OTOH, as the youngsters say on their picture calculators), we don’t exactly take a telephone poll of 935 teens as empirical knowledge, so maybe it’s possible that kids are pretty much the same as they’ve always been — if slightly more distracted. One thing’s for sure — they’ll never experience the pain of not knowing the lyrics to Rock Me Amadeus like we did.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Although “innovative” isn’t exactly the word we chose to use when summing up Palm’s Centro, apparently the public at large sees things a little differently — or, so says this report, anyway. According to a buyer behavior writeup from Strategy Analytics, the Centro “attracted the most attention from nearly half of the tested US consumers who are intending to purchase a new mobile device” in Q4, and it even ranked ahead of the second-place Samsung i760 in the “appealing” department. Both of the aforementioned handsets were hailed as the top choices (saywha?) for folks “seeking a multifunction, fully integrated device,” while the Nokia Prism and LG Rumor also got a few props along the way. Of course, it’s always best to take these “studies” with a healthy serving of salt, but if you wanted something to debate about, you’ve found it.

[Via MobileWhack]

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Yeah, teaching a canine how to operate a computer may sound pretty complex, but considering that one such animal was actually trained to sniff out and snag cellphones for its dubious owner, we guess it’s not too difficult to conceive after all. In a recent study published in Animal Cognition, researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria taught four dogs to use computer automated touch-screens in order to carry out classification tests, theoretically eliminating any “potential human influence.” In experiments that sought to see if dogs could indeed visually categorize pictures and transfer learning to new scenarios, the four subjects “were shown landscape and dog photographs and expected to make a selection on a computer touchscreen.” Eventually, the authors concluded that using computers in animal testing could open up new windows of opportunity in testing cognitive abilities, but c’mon, you know those pups were just clicking around to see if their testing station would in fact play Doom.

[Via TheInquirer, image courtesy of Itchmo]

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

Filed under: Robots

Remember that study which placed a bubbly QRIO in the middle of rambunctious 18- to 24-month old kids in order to better analyze human-robot interactions? We know, it’s probably coming back ever so slowly, but regardless, the findings of the five month trial have finally been published, and the results are less than shocking. Essentially, researchers noticed that children learned to treat the QRIO as if it were another human; the Earthlings eventually felt comfortable touching its hands, covering it with a blanket when it laid down and helping it back up if it toppled over. Notably, kiddos even went so far as to shun the poor bot when it was programmed to dance nonstop, but they forgave the bizarre antics and continued to play nice once the jig was up. The crew involved with the research is now focusing on the development of autonomous bots for the toddler classroom, and while much more testing will likely be done before any conclusions are definitively drawn, results from this go ’round sure hinted at just how susceptible we are to robotic takeover, er, playing nice with harmless androids. Oh, and be sure and check the video after the break!

[Via Slashdot]

Continue reading QRIO befriended by toddlers in study

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

Filed under: Cellphones

While we’ve seen a variety of surveys pitting the iPhone against its most notable rivals, a recent study conducted by the NPD Group breaks down the numbers behind who left what phone (and what carrier) to acquire an iPhone. Not surprisingly, iPhone early adopters were “ten times more likely than other new phone buyers to have previously owned a Treo and three times more likely to have owned a T-Mobile branded phone, such as the popular Sidekick model.” When it came to carriers, Alltel and T-Mobile were said to have lost the most customers to AT&T, as consumers who “switched carriers to buy an iPhone were three times more likely to switch from Alltel or T-Mobile than from other carriers.” Notably, the lack of “corporate email support” was pinpointed as the main reason that many BlackBerry users didn’t make the leap, but it did praise the iPhone for helping to “bridge the gap between consumer-focused feature phones and productivity-focused smartphones.”

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

Filed under: Wireless

Normally, the news that a study into the dangerousness of WiFi signals was to take place would provoke groans of disappointment from these pages: however, the British Government’s statement that such a study is going to take place is a somewhat calming development. The Health Protection Agency, the group tasked with staging the study, will aim for the study to be “systematic” — alternatively meaning “final,” “definitive,” and “complete” — with all areas of potential dangerousness being investigated, with the opening remarks from the chief executive of the agency including affirmations that no evidence has previously been found that 2.4GHz WiFi frequencies cause danger. Schools will not turn off their routers while the study takes place, and the results are expected to be “reassuring.” Sanity has won this battle it seems.

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

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

In today’s episode of “no surprises here,” we look at a recent study published by Piper Jaffray & Company which attempts to take an intimate look inside the minds of high schoolers across the US. As you’d probably expect, none of the results were all that shocking. When asked about MP3 players, some 82-percent of those that already owned some form of DAP stated that it was an iPod, which was slightly up from last fall. Additionally, 64-percent of those surveyed admitted to downloading music illegally, which may actually be an (ever-so-slightly) positive figure considering that the percentage actually dropped from 72-percent in 2006. As for the iPhone, just 3-percent of students claimed that they owned one, but nearly 10-percent stated that they were looking to pick one up “within the next six months.”

[Via CNET, image courtesy of MSN]

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

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Displays, Gaming, GPS, HDTV, Laptops

A national survey of 1,200 consumers conducted by Solutions Research Group found that 3 out of 4 surveyed Americans wanted a new gadget this holiday season. The rankings went a little something like this:

1. HDTV (35%)
2. Windows-based notebook (20%)
3. Digital camera (17%)
4. Windows-based desktop computer
5. GPS car navigation
6. Cellphone
7. Digital video camera
8. Nintendo Wii
9. Sony PS3
10. HD DVD or Blu-ray player

So where’s Apple, the big bad daddy of consumer electronics? Well, their best showing was the MacBook with an 11 ranking followed by the iPhone at number 15. Pretty good when you consider the level of brand awareness this represents in a field of otherwise unspecified laptops and cellphones. In fact, 1-in-6 consumers are hoping for some type of Apple gear under the Chanukazaa tree this season.

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

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Not that you needed any kind of study to prove that your shiny new personal stun gun was safe to use, but Dr. William Bozeman and colleagues have just wrapped up an independent study that “suggests the devices are safe, causing a low occurrence of serious injuries.” The research was conducted at Wake Forest University, and it showed that out of “nearly 1,000 cases, 99.7-percent of those subjected to a taser had mild injuries, such as scrapes and bruises, or none at all,” while the remaining sliver received injuries severe enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. Granted, Dr. Bozeman did admit that tasers could “clearly cause injuries and even deaths in some cases,” but insinuated that the risk was quite low. Tase on, we guess.

[Via Physorg]

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