February 2004 – Page 3

February 6, 2004

Is That a Camera Phone In Your Pocket?

Motorola has just announced the new v80 phone, which has a swing-around screen similar to the sexy though not terribly popular v70. The v80 has much better hardware, including an integrated 640×480 camera that can shoot in landscape mode when the screen is moved to 90 deg. But the best imrovement is the spring-loaded mechanism that automatically opens at the touch of a button, revealing the keypad in a smooth ballet of technology. You can imagine how this might be inconvenient or even embarrassing if the screen flipped open at the wrong time, though.

Happy release of this phone is Q2, price not yet known.

February 5, 2004

Monster Garage Inspires Cubans

A group of Cuban wannabe-refugees have been turned back to Cuba after trying to flee in a 51 Buick converted into a boat, with nicely built prow and all. The same folks tried to do the same thing last year in a flat-bed truck similarly converted, but were turned back then as well by the hypocritical asylum / immigration policies of the United States.

February 4, 2004

Cory’s New Novel Uploads (and Ships)

Street Tech pal Cory Doctorow’s new novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, starts shipping today. A free e-book version is also now available for download from his Web site He writes:

As with Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, my first novel, I’ve made the whole text of the novel available as a free download in a variety of open, standards-defined formats, under the terms of a Creative Commons license — and I’ve written a short essay explaining why I’ve done it: in a nutshell, this worked really well for my first book, and I’d be crazy not to repeat the experiment with my second novel.

February 3, 2004

Free crappy digital camera from Buy.com

Well, it’ll cost you about $6 for shipping, but I can think of a lot of uses for a nearly disposable webcam. Some of them don’t even involve locker rooms or showers!

There’s a review here, and some sample pics.

Thanks El Rey!

February 3, 2004

X-Box 2 Will Have Multiple Processors

According to DesignTechnica some specs have leaked out suggesting that there may be as many as four processors inside the replacement for the X-Box gaming platform expected next year. Another revalation is that the unit may not include a hard-drive — something that the current X-Box has but that has proven more useful to hardware hackers than for the gaming itself.

February 3, 2004

Spam gotcha down?

Spampal is a Windows(tm) spam filter that works as a mail proxy, so you can use it with any email client.