Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Wadja.com, the mobile web, media and messaging service, announced today that it will power Twe2 free Twitter SMS alerts - Twe2 is an international Twitter SMS service.

Last year free text message updates from Twitter were stopped in the UK – but this new partnership between Wadja and Twe2 sees the service reinstated.

• The new service offers free Direct Message and @Reply alerts by SMS to Twitter users both in the UK and worldwide.
• Wadja’s API service enables other platforms, like Twe2, to access its SMS capabilities and offer them to their audience.
• Wadja’s SMS APIs include free SMS messaging and SMS Plus bulk messaging.

And don’t forget to follow us @mighty_gadget

The Sony X Series walkman is now available to order on Amazon. The NWZX1060B 32GB version is currently listed at £229.99. The NWZX1050B 16GB version is available for £179.99

In the next few months we should be seeing the release of Sony’s new flagship X series Walkman. From its features it looks like it could be a real winner for Sony with its 2 best features being the 3-inch OLED touchscreen and the built in noise reduction.

The OLED screen should provide far better picture quality than the likes of the iTouch and should improve battery life.

More interestingly the noise reduction /cancelling is a feature that has not been built into a player before and should help give Sony some kudos points compared to Apple. If you look at current noise cancelling earphones they are expensive and have a bulky battery pack. The cheapest I could find we could find were the Sony MDRNC22 earphones which are £49.99 on Amazon so you are basically adding 50 quids worth of features into your player straight away and you are also losing the annoying battery pack.

However there is one issue that has been raised about this technology. Basically noise cancelling works by picking up the background noise then playing the opposite sound and therefore cancelling them out. So for noise cancelling to work properly it needs to be picking up accurate background sounds. This would not be the case if the microphone for the noise cancelling was built into the player itself. I am assuming the majority of people carry their MP3 player in their pocket so this would have a completely negate the noise cancelling effects.

We contacted Sony to find out exactly how the noise cancelling will work on the Sony X Series Walkman and we received the following reply:

“In the X series, there are two noise cancelling microphones which are built into the L&R headphones. Therefore the noise cancelling measurement is taken just outside the ear.
Most noise cancelling in-ear headphones have the electronics/ battery built into the cord, but the mics are in the earbuds themselves. The X series has the electronics built into the Walkman itself, reducing the bulk of the headphones and removing the need for a separate battery.”

So it looks like the noise cancelling wont be completely gimped, however it does look like you will be forced to use the Sony supplied headphones if you wish to use the noise cancelling technology.

It is a bit frustrating to be restricted to one set of headphones, and I am guessing replacements won’t be cheap however in Sony’s defence I am not entirely sure it is physically possibly for everything to be contained within the device as the sounds the mic picks up will be completely wrong. Sony have also stated they will be high end earphones so you won’t be getting some crappy cheapo ones like Apple.

Even though I will reluctantly be forced to use the supplied I still think their is a good chance I will buy one, and hopefully Sony will allow us to review one first!

Mike Hickey from Janco Partners, a set of Analysts, is claiming that Sony needs to hack $100 off the price of the PS3 [bringing it down to $299] to make it more popular with cash-strapped consumers and that the cut is imminent.

In a note to investors, Hickey wrote:

"Recent channel checks indicate increased speculation for a PS3 price cut announcement from Sony in the next couple of days. We think the company needs to reduce the current price by USD 100 to effectively restart unit velocity at retail. We believe the market is expecting a PS3 price cut in April or by June at the latest."

Without the cut, he argues that the PS3 will clog up shelves and developers will abandon it.

"If Sony does not cut the price of their console, we expect the continuation of languishing PS3 hardware sales and the potential for publishers to accelerate their reallocation of resources away from the PS3 console."

Hickey also points to additional rumours that Sony is planning to introduce a PS3 without the Blu-ray drive in order to compete at the low-end with the likes of the Xbox 360. We really don't see that happening though.

Sony has since come back and said it "definitely has no plans" to issue a price reduction anytime soon and that it's still on target to hit 10m units sold for its fiscal year.

Via: gamesindustry.biz

AMD’s triple-core X3 CPUs are actually a quad core CPU with one of the cores disabled. According to Playwares, you can enable the fourth core of the Phenom II X3 710 simply by selecting Auto in the Advanced Clock Calibration setting on a Biostar TA790GX 128M motherboard.

The site has posted some interesting screenshots that show a test system’s start-up screen before and after the BIOS change. It starts off detecting a Phenom II X3 710 that’s been overclocked to 3.12GHz, but after the BIOS setting it then detects the CPU as a 3.12GHz Phenom II X4 10, complete with four cores.

The site has also run CPU-Z on the CPU before and after, which appears to show the same CPU with four cores after the BIOS change.

The site also ran the CPU tests from 3DMark06 on the system, and the score increased from 3795 to 4776 with the extra core enabled.

According to Bit Tech it is in theory possible that the 4th core with have stability issues. AMD use a native quad core system which means if one core if faulty they could just disable it and sell it.

Philips has expanded its range of Prestigo universal remote controls with the new Prestigo STR9320. Personally I use the Logitech Harmony One but I find it has one major flaw and that is the lack of dedicated coloured buttons which are used on TVs and Sky in the UK.

The Prestigo STR9320 has fewer buttons that the Harmony but it does include these dedicated coloured buttons. I also think it looks pretty nice.

One concern is that the form Philips SRU8015/10 does not have the best review, certainly compared to the Logitech Harmony One.

Featuring a 2.8-inch touch sensitive full colour screen, the STR9320 will allow users to to control up to 20 devices from one handset.

There are 300,000 devices in the Prestigo memory that you are able to sync up, and it's all done on the remote without the need for complicated programming sequences or codes.

The touchscreen area on the remote allows you to set up activity based keys, which will activate all the necessary devices without you having to do it individually. For example, "watch a film" would turn on the DVD player and adjust the TV to the right channel.

Furthermore, the Prestigo touchscreen can be personalised with channel icons for fast and easy access of favourite TV channels.

The SRT9320 comes with rechargeable batteries and a mains charger adapter so there's no worry of searching around for new batteries when they go flat.

No word on pricing but we should be seeing this on our shelves from the end of March.

via Pocket Lint

World Of Apple has posted some screenshots and a video detailing UI changes in the upcoming Snow Leopard.

You can now navigate the the folder structure in Stacks (view video below)

More images after jump

Read the rest of this entry »

I doubt this is something I will ever use but it is a pretty neat invention. The Phantom is an emergency oxygen pack specifically for divers it is designed to be fixed to the front of a wetsuit, providing divers with 5 minutes of air supply in case they’re running out of air. Unfortunately, it’s just a concept at this stage, but it looks like something that could come in very handy.

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