Although I’d like to get it out of the way that I do not under any circumstances enjoy Hello Kitty products and think that grown women look silly using them, this would be a great gift for a young girl.  After all, kids are becoming far more tech savvy than their parents, so they might as well enjoy technology such as this as well.  Having around a digital picture frame would give them the ability to display a lot of photos without the clutter of a lot of picture frames.  The only downside to this is that someday they may outgrow their Hello Kitty phase.

Actually, make that hopefully someday they’ll outgrow the Hello Kitty madness.  If they did, then there would be a digital picture frame with no one to enjoy it.  The up side with Hello Kitty is that there never seems to be a shortage of fans though, so you could always resell it.  The frame was announced by Sanrio Japan.  There will be two 7” Hello Kitty frames with 6MB of internal memory.  There is also the ability to plug in a SD/SDHC, MMC, CF or a USB drive.  There is no word on pricing just yet or when these are expected to be out, but you can expect to see them around sometime in the future.

Source: Akihabara

Excerpt from:
Sanrio announces two Hello Kitty Digital Picture Frames

It’s funny that I should come across this trashcan now, since I just this morning remembered that I tossed a touch of raw meat into the trashcan two days ago.  Two days old raw meat that sits in room temperature makes for a charming smell in the kitchen.  Even after I took the trash bag out, the damage was done, so now my kitchen has a fairly strong odor to it that will take a little while to go away.  Now, if I had this trashcan around, none of this would have ever happened.  The food wouldn’t have spoiled so quickly and I wouldn’t need a face mask to toss things into the trash.

This odd looking trashcan does all this by utilizing a UV light and keeping your trash cool.  If the trash stays cool and you have a UV light to kill off the bacteria, you wouldn’t have nearly as much of a problem with stinky trash.  Of course this is only a concept design, as most brilliant ideas tend to be.  There is also the snag that adding that much technology to a trashcan means that you’re going to be paying quite a bit for such a small convenience.  For now, we’ll just have to attempt to remember to take out the trash a bit sooner when we toss away something that could spoil.

Source: OhGizmo

The rest is here:
Minus Trashcan Concept eliminates trashcan odor

When you’re lazing about in the pool, that is the one time you should never ever be lacking music.  Without music, you’re left listening to your own thoughts or even worse, birds.  We all know that’s no fun and not fulfilling in the least.  You need music to play and loudly.  Well with this speaker around you can float it right alongside of you and never have to worry about getting out of the water to crank the volume.  Just add a little alcohol to the mix and you have the perfect at home vacation.

Since it uses Bluetooth, you’ll have to have an MP3 player with Bluetooth or a phone with MP3s on it, such as an iPhone.  As long as you have that handy, it’ll play your music, but be sure to keep it within 30 feet of the speaker.  When a call comes in, it’ll just stop playing music.  One down side to setting your device so far away is that in order to skip a song you would have to get out, unless you get a waterproof case for that as well.  You can pick up the speaker for $40 on Chinavasion.

Source: Technabob

Here is the original post:
The Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker

We always heard that where there is a will, there is a way. Said mantra has never been more exemplified than in the video past the break, as someone halfway across this great planet has seemingly procured what could be the very first shipping N97. Still, we’d like to point out a few things here: first, Nokia has yet to officially ship these things, so there’s at least a sliver of a chance that by mashing play, you’ll actually be watching a KIRF unboxing, and in turn, supporting terrorism. Also, we can’t understand a word the unboxer says, so again, he could be explaining just how elaborate of a fake it is, and we’d never know. Needless to say, you should definitely proceed at your own risk.

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia’s N97 unboxed on video — somehow, someway originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 May 2009 12:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If this cellphone release date stuff keeps up, we’ll be seeing a cellphone releasing every day in June. The latest we can add to the list is the Nokia N97.

It’s the first Nokia N-series to sport a touchscreen, and you pre-ordered earlier this month, it will arrive around June 15 with the the S60 5th Edition OS on board.

European support pages for the phone are already up and running, in case you dig that sort of thing [BGR]

Original post:
Nokia N97 Set To Ship Alongside Those Other Two Phones in June [Cellphones]

My, my Olidata — why on Earth have you been depriving our wandering eyes from this beauty for so long? After being originally introduced at CES, we’ve heard precisely nothing since… until now, obviously.

At long last, the striking Conte ultraportable has found its way outside of the lab over in Italy, sporting an ultrathin frame, chiclet-style keyboard, a bezel that’s a bit too wide for our tastes, an HDMI output and a price tag starting at just €799 ($1,129). From what we can gather, a few versions of the machine will be available, one of which sports an SU2700 CPU, 13.3-inch LED-backlit display, a 120GB hard drive, 3GB of RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi and a multi-touch trackpad. Another variant is slated to include a Core Solo SU3500 CPU and a 120GB HDD, while yet another gets a Core 2 Duo SL9400 and a 128GB SSD.

Peek the read link for a few more looks, including one of the most bizarre advertisements we’ve ever seen for a mere laptop.

[Thanks, Andrea]

Filed under: Laptops

Olidata Conte ultraportable finally shows itself, looks mighty good originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 May 2009 11:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Fotonauts debuted at last year’s TechCrunch50, I called it a “gorgeous photopedia” because it promised to turn your photo albums into collaborative Web pages about different topics and subjects. Fotonauts is a desktop photo client which helps you tag, organize, and share your photos in a live feed, and is still in private beta. But you can see a glimpse of what the Web-facing version will look like at Fotopedia, which just soft-launched. A message at the top of the page states: “Fotopedia, a sneak peek. This site is an in-progress read-only preview of what we are going to launch in a few days.”

One of the features of Fotonauts which has yet to be turned on is the ability to turn any photo album into a Web page, complete with tags, associated Wikipedia entry, and Google map information where available. Fotopedia showcases some of the same public albums you can see in the Fotonauts client, plus it adds a few twists. Each photo can be voted up or down or flagged as inappropriate. There is an Encyclopedia tab, which shows albums by topic/tag. For instance, you can see albums about Volcanos, butterflies, or Venice.

There are nearly 150,000 high-quality photos already, organized into 4,289 “articles.” Each article is a Web slide show, along with the associated Wikipedia entry and Google Map. Each photo contains a lot of metadata making it search-engine friendly. Fotopedia is supposed to be a cross between Flickr and Wikipedia, an= long-lasting archive of “images for humanity.” Fotonauts founder Jean-Marie Hullot explains in a note: “Flickr and other photo sites give you exposure for only a brief window in time, and adding photos to Wikipedia proved too complicated for the average user.”

In addition to the photos, there is also an active community. You can follow other people or follow specific albums. You can also see individual profiles when you are logged in. You can also share albums as widgets. (I’ve included ones for Volcano and butterfly albums below).

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Originally posted here:
Fotonauts Offers a Sneak Peak At Its Upcoming Fotopedia

Or perhaps it ended with literally nothing at all. Regardless, it appears as though the netbook debate, started by Psion and now purportedly given a finishing move by Intel, is over.

French web site Blogeee reports that the two companies, locked in a somewhat ridiculous legal dance for the past several months, have reached a settlement.

Few details have surfaced regarding the settlement, but according to Blogeee, Psion all but gave up the fight and has agreed to “allow” other computer makers to use the term netbook. Mum’s the word on what concessions, if any, Intel gave up to Psion.

So, the long terrible debate over who could say netbook and who couldn’t is apparently over. It’s also a Sunday, so, there’s that too. [Blogeee via Liliputing]

Originally posted here:
Rumor: Netbook Debate Ends With A Quiet Settlement? [NetBooks]

Cool in theory but a mess in reality, the Auto-Cannibalistic Table starts life off strong, but finishes with a whimper as a mound of dirt and vegetation on your family room floor.

Now, if artist Ate Atema could get this thing to recycle old cellphones or something, instead of old egg cartons, that’d be something. Until then, my herbs stay rooted in the garden. Outside. [Inhabit Blog via Neatorama]

Read the original:
Auto-Cannibalistic Table Eats Itself Into Dirty Mess On Your Carpet [Furniture]

The world woke this morning to the sight of some of screens from the iPhone 3.0 firmware, proving that we must remain vigilant every single day until WWDC next week. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll see images of the iPhone’s biomimetic skin?

These pictures show the compass – in photorealistic color – and a few of the sub screens including video recording and MMS sending.

The full post from Hong Kong shows even more goodies including a shot taken with the new phone’s camera.

Maybe I’m just getting old but this is pretty much BFD for me right now. A compass? What am I, Mark Trail?

See the rest here:
Shots of the new iPhone’s interface surface