Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

New Orleans mayor is expected to announce a plan that provides free wireless internet for the entire city. Initial speeds will be 512kbps and later downgraded to 128kbps, to adhere with state regulations. The city is hoping that this will help jump-start business and revitalize the city since most wired connections were ruined from the storm.

Read [MSNBC]

DynaScan has popped onto our radar as a company that is developing and selling 360 degree LED displays. They seem to hold patents on the placement and speed of rotation of the LEDs on the display. The units have 1.4 million pixels or 1.5 more pixels than HDTVs.

These look sweet! Has anyone ever seen one of these in person, let us know.

Read [Gizmag]

Well now that you scored an unbelievable deal on a great 42” plasma of Black Friday, how do you prevent burn-in? There is no burn-in for LCD, DLP, or LCoS TVs and is much less likely to affect direct-view tube TVs. Yes, those of you who snagged the 37” Westinghouse LCD at Best Buy are safely enjoying 1080p.  Read on for more.

Burn-in can be caused by those hated black bars, or a single steady image, for extended periods of time (CBS logo, DVD menu, video game systems). Filling the screen with a moving picture is the safest way to view non-wide-screen content on 16:9 plasma flat-panel and CRT-based rear-projection displays. Leaving the black bars on for an extended period of time can cause permanent damage to the display called burn-in or image retention, which often isn’t covered by the warranty.

Both plasma and rear-projection CRT sets are particularly vulnerable to burn-in during the first 100 or so hours of use. During that time, we recommend you watch without vertical letterboxing at all, and that you avoid still images, such as paused games or television shows. After this initial period, the danger of burn-in is greatly reduced.

Other easy measures to avoid burn in include: find a set or a source that produces gray bars instead of black (like ESPN HD does for non-HD content) to either side of the 4:3 image, turn contrast down to 50 percent or lower, balance your 4:3 viewing with more wide-screen material (sports and animation make good candidates for stretching).

CNN is reporting that Vonage may be prohibited from signing up additional customers in various markets because they have failed to meet FCC deadlines for 911 compliance. It is likely that AT&T and other VoIP companies face these issues as well. Current estimates state that only 67% of all subscribers currently have 911 capabilities.

“In its compliance report to the FCC, Vonage said only 26 percent of its customer base had full E911 services. The company—which has more than 1 million subscribers—said it was capable of transmitting a call back number and location for 100 percent of its subscribers, but that it still was waiting for cooperation from competitors that control the 911 network.”

“Citing public safety concerns, the FCC in May ordered companies selling Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, to ensure that callers can reach an emergency dispatcher when they dial 911. The dispatchers also must be able to tell where callers are located and the numbers from which they are calling.”

Read [CNN]

This Motorola PDF is a great presentation of where the company has come from, current product and market share status, and what the future holds.

Previews include the Moto ROKR E2 (pictured above) and mention of the Moto SLDR, ROTR, and PDA. Of course, there are many slides about the original RAZR, magenta RAZR, Verizon RAZR, the newly launched PEBL, and Moto Q. If they can carry the positive momentum that these recent product have, Motorola will sit alone on top of the cell phone industry.

So you thought you’d seen everything Google had to offer, right? Well think again. Google is currently in talks with the Manchester United Football Club to display the company name on their jerseys. The opportunity came about when Vodafone (the club’s current sponsor) chose to back out of their $15.5 million contract two years early.  The new contract would be valued at much more.

Don’t get your hopes up though; Google is competing with other major international brands such as Yahoo!, Coca-Cola and Levi-Strauss for the sponsorship.

[Thanks Bock]

Read [Playfuls]

Rumors are floating around of a possible video/mp3 player coming from Creative in the next few weeks.

All we have so far is this terrible pic, event information, and Creative has release a teaser site which can be found here.  Their announcement about the event will be held in London at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts… quite a teaser isn’t it?  You think they’re hinting at anything with the location?

Sony released a firmware upgrade for PSP earlier today, bringing the version to 2.6.

The new PSP firmware (version 2.60) offers RSS newsfeed support, WMA-format playback support, and Chinese-language options for the Web browser. The new firmware also adds a volume control to the LocationFree TV player’s control panel, so users that stream media through the PSP can finally adjust their volume. Sony says the firmware upgrade also includes the ability to download “copyright-protected video data” directly to the PSP’s Memory Stick Duo.  We’re not really sure what “copy protected video” Sony is referring to (maybe from iTunes or a future Sony video download store?).

Read and Download [Sony PSP]

Mozilla not only launched Mozilla.com (they were previously Mozilla.org) but they released Firefox 1.5, this afternoon.

Version 1.5 upgrades the browser to include: drag-and-drop tabs, search text, and RSS features; faster performance; incremental updates; new security features. The one downside I’ve witnessed thus far is the requirement to update any extensions you currently use.

While this is nothing so huge for most of us, the release and domain change will help to spread the fire (no pun intended).

Download it here.

If you missed out on getting an Xbox 360 last week, another chance is coming soon.  There’s been word that Microsoft will be shipping more units to stores sometime this week.  If you’re in Europe or Japan, you haven’t experienced the madness yet.  Let me tell you… it… is… madness.

According to USAToday, Microsoft’s Molly O’Donnell says the company has “a weekly replenishment strategy.” The first follow-up shipment “is on the way, and it should be on retailers’ shelves by the end of the week or for the weekend.”

Apparently, Microsoft won’t release information about how many systems have been sold so far, but USAToday reports that American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy estimates 300,000 to 400,000.

More about the XBox 360 coming soon from Gadgetell.

Read [USAToday]