If you think the coming wave of tablets is about to make e-book readers obsolete, guess again. Although dozens of tablets are scheduled to hit the market this year — from companies like Apple, HP and Dell, as well as upstarts like JooJoo — executives in the e-reader industry aren’t particularly worried. Instead, they say, tablets and E Ink-based reading devices are likely to co-exist, targeting …  Read More →

As we comb through the updated Apple website for more iPad-related clues, up pops this new picture detailing the physical buttons on the iPad. Now, in addition to the sleep/wake, home and volume buttons familiar to iPhone users, there is a new button named screen rotation lock . And thank God. One of the most annoying things about the auto-rotating iPhone screen is the way it flips into landscape mode if you lie down whilst reading. Some apps... 

JooJoo, the tablet formerly known as CrunchPad, is set to land at the end of this month with several new features that weren’t seen in the early prototype. Most noticeably, the drab, solid-colored home screen seen in the JooJoo prototype (below) has been replaced with an elegantly polished icon grid laid on top of a customizable wallpaper (above). Engadget, who first reported the story, has some exclusive screenshots posted, in addition... 

Intel’s first 32-nanometer, six-core processor is ready for prime time. It’s clunky moniker aside, the chip called the Core i7-980X Extreme edition will offer some serious artillery for gamers and heavy multimedia users looking for a faster processor. The chip is based on Intel’s platform codenamed “ Gulftown ” and will include features that improve on computing speed and power efficiency. Intel launched the first... 

Motorola will be loading Microsoft’s Bing search onto its Android cellphones in China this month, ousting Google on its own smartphone platform. Motorola Android models will get the new feature when they are launched in this quarter. Google isn’t being completely ejected from its own party: Bing, along with an alternative to Google maps, will be offered as a choice to customers when they first fire up the phone. We imagine that,... 

We’d be naive to think manufacturers were twiddling their thumbs while Apple pimps out its iPad. Sure enough, there could be as many as 50 tablet devices from competing manufacturers worldwide this year, according to mobile microprocessor company ARM. In anticipation of the upcoming tablet invasion, ARM has rented out more space at the Computex electronics trade show in Taipei to accommodate the new devices, according to ComputerWorld... 

If you have watched too many episodes of Criminal Minds , you probably already have a panic room in your home, ready for when golf-club and baseball-bat wielding psychopaths invade your house. But what of the other place where you spend so much of your time? What if you car plunges down a steep ravine into the rushing waters below, or you flip your ride on its roof and hang, dangling helplessly from the seatbelt while the gasoline drips ever... 

Pentax has gone large with the new 645D medium-format DSLR. The 40MP monster has a 33  Read More →

Cisco Tuesday announced a new router, the CRS-3 , that it says is capable of delivering 322 terabits per second. Now, we don’t usually cover routers and similar enterprise hardware here in Gadget Lab, but this one’s worth a brief mention. Let’s leave aside Cisco’s breathless hype (it will “forever change the internet” — yeah, we’ll believe that when we see it). And nevermind the fact that, actually,... 

MacHeist, an annual Mac software promotion, is nearing the end of its NanoBundle sale. At the last minute, the bundle just added our favorite Twitter app Tweetie. Other apps in the MacHeist NanoBundle include Flow, an FTP app, Tales of Monkey Island , a five-episode adventure game, and RipIt, a DVD ripping utility, among others. With the retail prices of the eight apps added together, the collection is worth $280 but will cost you $20 as a bundle.... 

My oh my, what have we here? The “NEO SNES/SFC MYTH FLASH CART” is basically a cartridge that you pop into your Super Nintendo (you do still have your Super Nintendo, don’t you?) that’s got 256MB of onboard memory upon which you can load up ROMs. So take a tally of your legally-owned SNES cartridges, download them all in ROM form, and put all the originals in an airtight container for safekeeping. You’ll then be able to play those... 

For years, man has been trying to build a jetpack which would actually be safe and cheap enough to be used by anyone other than Lee Majors on the title sequence of The Fall Guy . It turns out that we’ve been doing it wrong. Instead of starting with a pack and adding on the jet, we should have torn the giant engines from a plane and strapped them to some poor schmuck. This is what the New Zealand Martin Aircraft Company did, resulting in... 

Sony Ericsson’s new Android-based phone interface, like those from other cellphone manufacturers, integrates Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and other social-networking services into one unified portal on your portable. The difference is that Sony Ericsson’s interface–UXP (formerly known as Rachael)–actually looks useful. The company plans to launch a slew of new Android-based phones this year. Top of the list is the Xperia... 

DaringFireball’s John Gruber claims hearing from “well-informed little birdies” that the iPad will ship without some apps that were included on the iPhone. In his blog post today, Gruber responds to a question I posed last week about iPhone apps that appear to be missing from the iPad. Apple’s iPad press materials suggest the device will ship with 12 built-in apps, and noticeably missing are a few wares that …  Read More →

Pixel Qi is on the cusp of shipping its triple-mode LCD screens as straight, swap-in replacements for your existing laptop screen. The Pixel Qi display works three ways, saving power and making it readable in any light. Transmissive mode is the one you are likely looking at now, a backlit LED panel which uses power for both the light and the pixels blocking and coloring that light. Next up is the reflective mode, which switches off the backlight...