Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that phone tracking was an extremely widespread phenomenon across US police forces. Now, another of their leaked documents reveals how much cell carriers charge for the services. More »
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1996 also saw the release of the first PDAs developed by USRobotics subsidiary Palm Inc., the Pilot 1000 and 5000, which had more in common with today's smartphones than many of their contemporary devices. They had a touchscreen with only a few physical buttons at the bottom. They had apps you could download. They could sync data with your computer. And they were small and light enough to carry with you at all times. They just didn't make phone calls.
A year later, Palm released the slightly upgraded PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional (with 512KB and 1MB of RAM, respectively), and the ensuing years would see a regular stream of new devices -- not to mention an acquisition by 3Com, and a new spate of Palm OS products from Handspring, a company founded by the folks behind the original Pilot.
But it's those first few devices that come to mind when someone mentions "Palm PDA," and with good reason -- they set a mold that wasn't deviated from much until Palm made the jump into smartphones.
Gallery: PalmPilot Personal review
Continue reading USRobotics PalmPilot Personal review
USRobotics PalmPilot Personal review originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Read - Our biggest regret in life is not being able to spin our $600 cellphone around on a $20 sticky coat hook.
Read - We're expecting the iPad 3 to be able to recreate the title sequence of the Rocky Horror Picture Show without the aid of this case.
Read - If you were into smartphones before they were cool and portable, you'll love the ability to carry around your over-sized retro handset on your jeans.
Read - Nothing evokes the grace, beauty and power of Enzo Ferrari's engineering than these decade-old-spec flip-phones that kinda resemble a Ferrari 966, if you squint from a distance.
Read - This "noiseless microphone" has two functions, and only one is to prevent your karaoke from annoying your neighbors.
Crapgadget: Spring Phling edition originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Got a Rogers wireless account? Then you can now take advantage of a new service that, for a change, won't cost you anything extra. While it's not quite a full-on Google Voice alternative, the company's new Rogers One Number service will let you make phones calls, video calls, and send and receive text messages for free from your computer (Windows or Mac), as well as let you maintain a unified inbox and contact list across all of your devices (assuming you use Gmail or Yahoo Mail). You're also able to switch a call from your cellphone to your computer without hanging up, and then turn that voice call into a video call if you choose, but your options are otherwise a bit limited on the mobile end; you can manage your contacts and such, but not use one number for multiple devices, or take advantage of free calling or texting. Rogers' demo video can be found after the break, and you can get a more in-depth look courtesy of MobileSyrup's hands-on at the link below.
[Thanks, Adam]
Rogers One Number service offers free computer-based calls and texting, unified inbox originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Nike+ FuelBand's internals get splayed at the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Reports are coming in from the regions that Muammar Gaddafi and his sons have fled Libya. Al Jazeera reports that residents in Tripoli have gotten texts telling them to "eliminate agents with weapons." More »
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Why is there a mid-grade Android flip phone on a site full of brazen iPhone fanboys? (Yeah, we admit it. What. WHAT.) It's not the first Android flip phone. It's not the first Hello Kitty phone. It's not even very desirable. More »
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Oooh yeah, let's get ready to rumble! The iPhone 4 is the world's favorite smartphone. John's Phone is the world's simplest cellphone! Which one will win as they battle to the death? More »
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If you haven't already gotten whiplash from the ongoing cellphone-cancer debate, a freshly released scientific review might just do the trick. In the paper, published Friday, a panel of experts from Britain, Sweden and the US conducted a thorough survey of previous studies, before concluding that existing literature is "increasingly against" the theory that cellphone use causes brain tumors in adults. The researchers also questioned the biological mechanisms underpinning this hypothesis, while acknowledging some lingering uncertainties, since data on childhood tumors and longer-term research are still lacking.
The results come just a few weeks after the World Health Organization released its own literature review, in which it claimed that cell phones should be considered "potentially carcinogenic." But Anthony Swerdlow, a professor at Britain's Institute of Cancer Research and leader of the most recent investigation, said his group's work doesn't necessarily contradict the WHO, since the latter was simply seeking to evaluate cancer risks according to its own "pre-set classification system" -- under which things like pickled vegetables and coffee are also considered "potentially carcinogenic." Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that the debate will die down anytime soon, though Swerdlow expects more definitive conclusions within the next few years -- assuming, of course, that all of our brains haven't turned to oatmeal by then.
Cellphones are dangerous / not dangerous: cancer experts say 'What, me worry?' originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 06:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Rumor has it that HP is preparing to enter the cloud-based music storage fray. A reader at PreCentral sent in what purports to be a confidential PowerPoint presentation indicating the TouchPad will launch with an HP-branded music and movie store, as well as a smart syncing service that caches frequently accessed media for local playback. This may very well be the "Music Synergy" that SVP Steven McArthur mentioned to us. Amazon has already launched such an app and it's all but official that Google is planning the same thing, so it only makes sense that the company would want to imbue webOS with similar powers. We can't verify these claims ourselves and the slide above is clearly a wonky Photoshop job, but it's would hardly be surprising after snatching up Melodeo and the streaming music service Nutsie. And, while webOS and Android are working to banish the quaint ritual of plugging your cellphone into a computer, we can only imagine what the Lala team is up to -- maybe Jobs has them washing his turtlenecks.
HP may bless webOS with cloud-syncing music store originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Apr 2011 18:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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What does it take to market a cellphone in Japan these days? Try an immense xylophone contraption that slowly plays out Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire in the middle of a large, mossy wood. More »
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How much information does a phone company collect on you? Given that they know which tower your phone pings every time you use it, try "all of it." That's what one German politician discovered when he sued his carrier, Deutsche Telekom, for all of the data they'd archived for six months of his cellphone usage. More »
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South Korean inventor Mok Young Bak took his apparent obsessive compulsive disorder—an intangible thing—and put it into Caduceus, a very real thing. It serves one, mad purpose: Simultaneous cellphone usage from a remote location. More »
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Cellphone cameras are everywhere. Kids, adults—all armed to the teeth with capable cameras. With so many in so many hands, it's no surprise that a kayaker just captured the best photo ever of an infamous English sea monster using—you see where I'm going with this, yes?—his cellphone. More »
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Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is pissed the Finnish cellphone maker relinquished their market dominance to Apple and Google. Real pissed. Fearing the company has reached a point of no return, Elop issued a no-holds-barred 1,300-word memo to employees, and seems primed to make some bold moves in the next week to help Nokia regain some of its former glory. More »
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It's happened before when Canadian government overturned the CRTC's decision and allowed Globalive to enter the Canadian cellphone market, and it looks like Ottawa is about to again weigh in and reverse an even more controversial ruling by the regulatory agency. As confirmed by Industry Minister Tony Clement on Twitter, the government plans to overturn the recent CRTC decision that effectively imposed usage-based internet billing if the agency doesn't back down and "go back to the drawing board." Citing a senior government official, The Toronto Star further reports that the reversal could come as early as next week. As any Canadians reading this may well be aware, the issue of usage-based internet billing has been simmering for some time, but it reached a tipping point with the CRTC's decision last week that affected smaller internet service providers who rely on the major telecom companies' networks. Under the new ruling, those companies would be have been faced with increased costs that would drastically limit the amount of maximum amount of data they're able to offer to customers each month -- one such ISP, Teksavvy, had in fact already sent out notices to customers informing them that their current 200GB cap would be dropping to just 25GB on March 1st, with any additional data use to be charged by the gigabyte.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Canadian goverment vows to reverse CRTC decision on usage-based internet billing originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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UN: worldwide internet users hit two billion, cellphone subscriptions top five billion originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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