Gadgets

Okay, that headline was a bit mean but I did get to play around with this iClone for a few hot minutes even though it wasn’t actually functioning. Samsung assured me, though that this mock-up of the F700 is identical in size, weight, and feel to the production version. Like the much-maligned Prada phone, the F700 features a touch sensitive screen, but unlike Prada’s offering, it’s also a slider that includes a full Qwerty keyboard for texting/dialing/menu navigation.

Our forward thinking friends South of the border are hoping to curb gun crime by offering computers and money in exchange for weapons. A machine gun will score you a PC and a handgun can be swapped for an XBox or cash.

Microsoft is donating the hardware, and on the first day of the trial in Mexico City, 17 guns were handed in.

No time for breakfast? This multi-tasker will pump out toast and eggs faster than you can brew a pot of coffee. Pour water in the reservoir and crack an egg into the tiny pan suspended above, then toss a few pieces of bread in the double-slot toaster and press a button. While the egg finishes cooking, the toaster’s heat coils cool down to prevent charred toast. The separate steaming tray designed to heat precooked meats only does the job if links and patties are defrosted first. (And who has time for that?) But innovation still wins out: homemade fast food without the dirty dishes sure beats drive-thru.  —Erika Stalder

WIRED Simultaneously prepares toast and eggs in six minutes.

Alas, the Apple iPhone is still months away. While you’re waiting, why not check out Samsung’s UpStage, one of the niftiest music-oriented cell phones running, but not one without its flaws. The innovative design takes some getting used to: At first blush the phone is a standard candy bar handset with a very small LCD. But turn it over and you’ll find a larger, 2.1-inch LCD and a set of media player controls. Pressing a special button tells the phone which side you’re using (only one face works at a time). As a phone, the UpStage works perfectly well, and music sounds excellent, but we never got the hang of the temperamental touch-sensitive "sweep" control system.  —Christopher Null

WIRED Ultra-portable at a nearly-Nano-sized 2.7 ounces and 4 x 1.8 x 0.4 inches.

1. Get xVid working.

This thread at the SomethingAwful.com forums shows how. It’s not for the faint-hearted, and even enthusiastic tinkerers will need to put in some elbow grease, removing the hard drive and mounting it on a standard Mac. The goons are currently working on getting keyboards to work.

2. Upgrade the hard drive.

A Gizmodo reader purports to have accomplished this, but there’s no “howto” yet up. It might be as easy as ripping it it open and swapping out the drive with a similar model (Fujitsu, if you’re wondering).

UK Judge Rules That Selling Consumers Cheaper CDs Is Illegal [Techdirt]
This is the kind of kafka-esque weirdness that always baffled me about my homeland. A British judge has ruled it illegal to buy CDs from a foreign market if they are cheaper than the same item locally, making it unlawful to try and get around geographical price-fixing. Specifically, it targets music imports, fining British music importer CD-Wow the difference between the CDs they bought legally abroad and the price as fixed in the UK market by the music companies. Universally, it means that it’s now iffy in Britain to circumvent arbitrage at all.

Richard Kimber, Google’s Aussie sales supremo, said yesterday that Google’s interest in phones is, currently, in software only.

“At this point in time, we are very focused on the software, not the phone.”

The phone? What phone? Odd phrasing aside, however, hardware isn’t Google’s strong suit—they’re going to be extraordinarily cautious about how they’d approach the development of commodity consumer electronics. Of course, they didn’t deny that there was a phone, though it’s clear it’s not something we’re likely to see anytime near 2007.

This isn’t stopping speculation, however, with Mad4Mobiles suggesting that a Google phone would exist to aggregate search pattern information, based on what you do with your phone and when and where you do it.

The Apple cult rat race will get a kick in the rear soon, with sleeker, redesigned iMacs appearing to obsolete the expensive, fresh 24″ model with which this very blog post is being written. Those bastards.

“For Apple, the impending iMac makeover will represent the first major industrial design overhaul to hit its flagship all-in-one consumer desktop line in nearly three years.

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Italy has banned mobile phones from classrooms in attempt to prevent interruptions and cameraphone abuse.

Violators face penalties ranging from confiscation of the cell phone to excluding students from final exams.

The rule comes after several high-profile incidents in which kids used phones to capture video of students and teachers being abused.

Greece passed a similar ban in December, after similar abuses.

Based on a recent airline incident I endured , might I suggest that the next step for Italy would be to ban public displays of footsex?

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Walt Mossberg reviews the Vulcan FlipStart in today’s WSJ (sub required). Not surprisingly, he finds it too small, underpowered, and likely to appeal only to a tiny niche of gadget-happy techies. Make that rich gadget-happy techies, since when it goes on sale March 27, it will cost $2,000. Even less surprisingly, Mossberg finds a way to work in a disparaging comparison to a supposedly superior Apple product — in this case, an Apple product that doesn’t even exist yet, the iPhone. Everybody drink!

Previously on Gadget Lab: Vulcan’s FlipStart Finally Surfaces