Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Seems that I am not the only one that reveres Logitech for their well thought out products and supreme ease of use.  The maker of tons ‘o stuff nabbed four Good Design awards from Japan.  The award picks four stand out products from the electronics maker.  This makes a total of 20 designs awarded for Logitech in the past six years; an impressive feat, for sure.

The Good Design Awards is presented for designs that clearly demonstrate merit in the following assessment categories: designs that meet or exceed a certain standard, superior designs and future-oriented designs.

MORE »

The Japanese distributor for Asus has found that a virus has been shipped with the company’s new Eee Box PCs.  The virus, called recycled.exe, is found on the D: drive of the new low cost desktop PC, which launched last week.  When opened, it copies itself to the C: drive and any removable storage device attached to the PC and disables any anti-virus programs it finds. 

It also accesses the users address book and sends itself to everyone in it, visits web pages without the user knowing, disables processes, the Task Manager, the Windows Registry Editor and File Protection system, modifies Windows Security Policies, sends information back to its host (which is presumably a botnet) and more. 

MORE »

In efforts to add to their Gorilla lineup of GPSs, Sanyo has added the NV-BD600DT to the mix. Currently, their Gorilla lineup is only available in Japan.

One of the main features of this GPS is its screen size, which measures in at a very nice 5.8 inches. Additionally, it comes with 4GB of internal memory, 1 Seg TV Tuner, built-in speakers, SD expansion, real time traffic updates, and an FM transmitter. Furthermore, it also plays audio in the formats of MP3 and WMA, and displays JPEG pictures. Again, it is set to only be available in the Japanese market, just like the other models in the Gorilla lineup. It will be available on October 21st, however, there hasn’t been a confirmed price. 

MORE »

Popular Japanese company, Sanyo (which is an average U.S. GPS company), has come out with a new GPS exclusively for the States called the Easy Street NVM-4370. One of the features that stood out to me in the NVM-4370 is its width, which is a lean 0.72 inches.

In addition to its uber-thinness, it comes loaded with a lot of other cool features such as a 4.3-inch touch screen, text-to-speech capabilities, Bluetooth connectivity, video input, a database of over 7 million POI’s, photo displayer, FM transmitter, SDHC memory expansion, 4 hour battery life, and audio/video playback. It also comes with something called Advanced Search, which includes Near Location, Along Route, and By Category searches. Some of the main features about this GPS is its slim form factor, multimedia playback, and economic price, which I will get to in a moment. 

MORE »

In efforts to expand their GPS’s in Japan, Sony recently intro’d two new models. Both of these GPS units are high end models and come loaded with lots of goodies.

The two models, the NV-U3V and the NV-U3 are pretty much identical, except for a few features, which I will get to in a bit. First off, they both sport a nice 4.8-inch LCD touch screen each with a 480 x 272 resolution, which is great for watching videos. In addition, it comes with 4GB of internal flash memory, but can be expanded via memory stick. Both of these GPS’ can play MP3’s and MPEG-4 videos. Going back to the differences, the only main difference here is that the NV-U3V comes with 1Seg TV support, while the NV-U3 doesn’t.

Both are slated for an October 23rd release, and the NV-U3V will retail for 400 Euros or $563, and the NV-U3 costs 350 Euros or $493.

Via [Akihabara News]

She’s not one of the fembots from the Austin Powers movies, but she’s the next best thing.  Her name is EMA, which stands for Eternal Maiden Actualization.  The maker is Sega Toys, and the target demographic is lonely dudes.  That’s right, according to Reuters she’s being marketed in Japan as a female companion.  She can sing, dance, hand out business cards (?), and of course give kisses.  EMA would make a great girlfriend because not only is she very affectionate, she’s also really low maintenance.  All she needs is some battery power, as that’s what she runs on.

She’ll be available in September for about $175, and Sega hopes for first-year sales of 10,000.  Maybe this could be like a Lars and the Real Girl situation, where not just the Lars character but everyone else could come to see EMA as real!  Except EMA is only 15 inches tall.  But her other measurements would make any girl jealous!

Speaking of robot women, check out this video for comments made about Madonna by singer Dan Gillespie-Sells of The Feeling.  Hilarious!  Unfortunately, unlike EMA, Her Majesty has been unavailable for some time.  But she can still sing and dance though.

Read [MSNBC]

Napster has just launched its first mobile music video service, Napster Clips in Japan. This new service puts a premium on unlimited access to a high-quality digital video service that would complement Napster’s music subscription service. In partnership with Japan’s NTT Docomo, Napster is offering this service via the mobile operator’s new N960IL onefone mobile handset.

Napster Clips is highly dependent on the broadband network which is ably supported by NTT Docomo’s communication infrastructure. Hence users are assured of a continuous video viewing experience from the N906il handset through either NTT Docomo’s 3G/FOMA network or the new Home U service. The latter is a high speed wireless LAN connection through home broadband network. 

MORE »

This really has never happened to me, but Japanese Honda manufacturers seem to think it happens pretty often. They believe that their built-in GPS units often lead you to the “bad section” of neighborhoods. So, the executives and the people responsible for creating the GPS units of Honda are revamping their line-up to make sure it doesn’t lead to you someplace you would rather not be.

These engineers are hard at work with the police in Japan, working together to try and figure out just where the bad sections are located and where to not have the GPS direct them. Basically, this includes areas that are prone to high auto theft and vandalism. I’m sure there are some people who probably think this is a silly option, and that you should use common sense and not follow your GPS blindly, but remember this the next time you hear of someone driving off the road because their GPS told them to.

Something to consider though, what happens if you live in the so called “bad section” of town, will the GPS never take you there? Anyway, with certain improvements, I’m sure this could work, and hopefully something similar will follow in the States. For now, it is exclusive to Japan.

Via [Switched]

A prototype for a retinal scanning display that is currently in the works has the potential to change the way we watch movies. Cleverly constructed with a complementary eye-piece and weighing in at a very light 25 grams, Brother Japan’s retinal scanning display scans images and beams them on top of your retina, ala mini-projector. This in turn, makes your eyes look like a little canvas, on which you can see displayed images of what’s before you, clearer and more distraction-free than ever.

The way this works is by beaming low-intensity light on your retina and scanning it with light at a high speed. The resulting image is then displayed on top of your eyes, just like how current age projectors work. Only this time, everything’s miniaturized, and yet still works perfectly fine.

But unfortunately, like Toshiba’s Apripoco, this product is far from its final stages and is still a prototype. However, Brother Japan does hope to commercialize this by 2010. Personally, I’m looking forward to it. Think, no more worrying about the screen size of the latest gadgets. Forget high-def, this is eye-def!

Via [dvice]

Epson has released a new notebook that is scheduled for a release in late April. The Epson Endeavor NA801 runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 processor and offers up a Geforce 8600M GT with 256 of VRAM in terms of graphics power. It also features a 13.3-inch display, HDMI output, Wi-Fi 802.11a/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0. Its also nice to see that power doesn’t have to weigh a ton, the NA801 weighs in at just over 4-pounds.

The Japanese Epson website confirms that the NA801 will retail for around $1000 when it is released, sadly this will be available only in Japan.

Via [Akihabara News]