Filed under: Wireless
3G WiFi routers aren’t anything new at this point, but T-Mobile’s new Mobile Broadband Share Dock is one of the slicker implementations we’ve seen from a carrier — the unit consists of a USB HSDPA modem and a base which shares the connection over WiFi, which means you can unplug the modem and take your access on the road. As long as you don’t need a persistent connection at home and can live with the bandwidth, that makes the £20 / month dock sound like a pretty good deal for someone who lives by themselves, since you’d avoid paying both mobile and fixed data fees — too bad it’s UK only for now. Should be out in the next couple of days, we’re hearing.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video
Rumors of a Zune phone have floated around forever, but we’ve always thought it would make more sense for Microsoft to start by simply making a Zune player for Windows Mobile — a plan Steve Ballmer casually confirmed today in an interview with CIO Magazine. Sure, Ballmer’s hinted at Zune on WinMo in the past, but those were just hints — not like today’s pronouncement that “the Zune software will also be ported to and be more important not just with the hardware but on the PC, on Windows Mobile devices, etc.” That’s a pretty solid declaration of things to come, if you ask us — too bad he didn’t give a time frame. Now, about that 360 integration.
[Via WM Power User]
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Filed under: Laptops
It looks like those
DIY 9-cell Wind batteries could soon be a thing of the past, as some seemingly legit pictures of a supposedly official 9-cell battery for the netbook have now turned up on the Eee PC News website. Apparently, the pictures (more of which are available at the link below) came straight from an unnamed battery manufacturer and, yes, it’s still in prototype form, which hopefully means there’s still some refining to be done. There’s no indication of a release date, unfortunately, but Eee PC News seems confident, for one reason or another, that the batteries could find their way into Winds as soon as November.
[Via Laptop, thanks Kevin]
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Filed under: Transportation
Nissan’s Nuvu is making its debut this week at the Paris motor show, and while it isn’t the all-electric vehicle that the company has promised for 2010, it’s a step in the right direction. Resembling something from a Pixar movie, the Nuvu has that special mix of “vaguely futuristic” and “somewhat impractical” that we look for in a concept car: it’s less than ten feet long, seats three (un)comfortably and the space behind the driver is claimed by what looks like an end table with a conduit extending to the ceiling. Many of the cabin materials are either recycled or made from organic materials and since the vehicle is electric, it should be whisper quiet — offering maximum clarity for your Medeski, Martin and Wood CDs. More photos at the read link.
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Filed under: GPS, Wireless
Skyhook’s WiFi positioning service hasn’t really appeared in many devices despite its high-profile usage in the iPhone, but now it looks like it’s set to become downright ubiquitous — Broadcom is planning on building it directly into its extremely popular WiFi chipsets. Just like Skyhook’s deal with SiRF, the idea is to use WiFi positioning to supplement GPS in mobile devices, allowing location-based services to function indoors and in densely-built cities where GPS doesn’t always work well. No word on when we might see any devices with Skyhook-enabled chips in them, but given Broadcom’s reach in the market, we’d guess it won’t be too long.
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