Today Sony Ericsson unveiled a new Walkman-themed phone. Dubbed “Live with Walkman”, the new smartphone brings several worthy bullet points to the table including: Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), 1 GHz processor, 3.2″ 480 x 320 display, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera w/ flash and 720p video recording and several deeply integrates social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter.
Look for the Sony Ericsson to hit “select” markets in Q4 of this year for an as of yet undisclosed price.
Jumping onboard HP’s webOS love fest early on may have seemed quite rewarding — until the company CEO went crazy and decided to completely kill off all in-house hardware, and in this case, your precious TouchPad. But the real slap in the face is the heavily discounted TouchPad tablets. Where you spent upwards of $500, some 100,000+ people just snatched one (or more) up for $100 a piece today. Thankfully HP has somewhat of a heart. They’ve announced that they will be honoring full refunds for HP TouchPads purchased via HP’s website. They’ve also stated a willingness to refund the difference between the price you paid for your TouchPad and the new fire sale price. But honestly, why wouldn’t you take the full refund…?
All that’s needed on your part to reclaim your prize is 30-60 minutes on hold with HP’s Home & Office phone support. Those of you who picked up a TouchPad from a 3rd party retailer should get similar treatment given HP’s announcement stating retailers are to honor the same fire sale pricing. (We’ll see how that all goes.)
For now it’s not known how far back in purchase history HP is allowing full refunds for. We’d like to hope that it’s from the beginning of TouchPad sales (which isn’t all that long anyway). Still, we’ll keep you posted.
Anyone pick up a TouchPad today?
HP’s mobile hardware business is now dead. Pre and TouchPad owners are no doubt filled with vast amounts of sadness. Add to that a pretty bleak future for the webOS software and you’ve got plenty to be sad about. Still, if a fancy new TouchPad is just the thing you’ve been looking for you might want to get in on the action while there’s action to be had. Tomorrow the 16 GB TouchPad will go for $100 while the 32 GB will be priced a tad higher at $149.
The links below still lead to the normal $399 and $499 pricing, but starting tomorrow morning at ~7am the price tag blood bath begins. So much for reselling those TouchPads…
Update
We’re now seeing the 7am time price drop scheduled for tomorrow is for Canadian users only. When US, UK, EU (and more) markets will get access to the new pricing isn’t immediately known.
Residents of the island nation “Niue” (~1500 miles north of New Zealand) will soon pocket the nerdiest/coolest legal tender anywhere in the world. Thanks to New Zealand Mint, over 40 different Star Wars themed coins will be created and bonus, can be used in the real world outside of a fancy case! The plated coins will set you back $23.50 per while the actual silver coins will weigh in on your wallet quite a bit more heavily at $380 (USD) for a box of 4.
We’d totally buy all 40+ coins this very second but we really don’t feel like ending a Friday in prison after attempting to rob a bank. Just sayin’…
Catch the rest of the coins detailed after the break.
German state institutions within Schleswig Holstein’s have until the end of September to remove Facebook Like (German: Gefällt mir) buttons under a new privacy push by Thilo Weichert, the head of the Independent Centre for Privacy Protection. According to Weichert, the data that is transmitted across the ocean to Facebook’s U.S. based servers includes far too much information about the user and violates numerous European and German privacy laws.
“A broad individual and for members even a personalised profile. Such a profiling infringes German and European data protection law. There is no sufficient information of users and there is no choice; the wording in the conditions of use and privacy statements of Facebook does not nearly meet the legal requirements relevant for compliance of legal notice, privacy consent and general terms of use.”
Weichert is urging German citizens to “avoid clicking on social buttons” and to “avoid setting up Facebook accounts” as well as threatening state institutions who don’t remove the offending “Like” buttons from their websites by the end of September with several different penalties ranging up to a 50,000 Euro fine.
Facebook has already responded to Weichert’s claims, stating that they are well within Germany’s (and Europe’s overall) laws regarding consumer privacy.
Gadgetsteria’s take: Weichert is overstepping his boundaries. If an individual consumer doesn’t agree to Facebook storing the data they receive, they don’t have to click on the button. No one’s holding a gun to anyone’s head…
Oh thank everything holy (or non-holy if that’s your cup of tea)! Game publisher Ubisoft has announced that they have “listend to customer feedback” regarding the “always-on” internet connection requirement for their new “Driver” game and decided to do away with it. While you’ll still need to have an internet connection to “log in” — to what? — at the game’s launch, it’s far less annoying and intrusive than the former option. Maybe some day Ubisoft will learn that DRM is useless at actually stopping any form of piracy and only annoys their loyal customers.
Oh look! Not only did Apple manipulate (illegally) 10.1″ Galaxy Tab photos for their ongoing European and Dutch courtroom battles with Samsung, they also applied their magic shrink ray to the Galaxy S phones as well. How (if at all) these new allegations and evidence of image tampering coming to light affects Apple’s various lawsuits against Samsung remains to be seen.
We’ll go out on a limb and say Apple’s whole case against is BS/straw grabbing to slow competition. At the same time, TouchWiz is hideous. And we like Samsung hardware. Make of it what you will…
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