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Gadgetcandy: Sony Ericsson’s K510i has been given a model makeover by Julien MacDonald. (…) The funky fashion designer has stripped the mobile of its formerly midnight black and polished purple bod’ and replaced it with a vibrant floral print that would look great on a smock top and paired with skinny jeans.
“The print I decided to use for the Sony Ericsson K51Oi was taken from my spring summer 07 collection,” explains Julien. “The print was inspired by exotic flowers, Orchids in particular, so thought it would be perfect for the spring launch of this handset.” We couldn’t agree more.

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Gadgetstown: Nokia N73 is now available in The GodFather Edition. In retail package of this edition you can see a memory card which stores the full length movie.

The Nokia N73 Music Edition is a stunning multimedia computer with up to 2GB of memory, integrated stereo speakers for optimized audio pleasure, and easy synchronization with Windows Media Player. (…). Complemented with exquisite photography features such as a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and autofocus, the Nokia N73 Music Edition is a bona fide marriage of digital and audio.

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Gizmodo: Here is Sony’s new OLED display. It’s an obscene 9mm thick yet it packs a 1080p resolution along with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

Just as a recap, OLED displays are thinner and brighter than their LCD counterparts and they use less power. Sony was showing this beauty off at this week’s Display 2007 Expo in Japan.

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AVZombie: Forget the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray, the number one concern for most video buyers is storage. After ten years of collecting DVD, we’re all now apparently out of shelf space. And the number one pre-requisite for buyers is not whether a movie or TV series has been newly remastered, it’s whether it comes in new style slim-packs.

Marc Rashba of Sony Pictures Entertainment explained to USA Today: “We conducted research and talked to our retail partners, and the overwhelming response was to create dynamic packages that do not cannibalize shelf space.”

The first move has been to shift anthologies and TV seasons into slim-line cases. Season 5 of Alias is less than half the size of previous editions. Ditto the latest US release of the Rocky movies. Packaging is also getting smarter, with discs mounted on the inside front and back of Amaray cases, allowing more platters per pack to be stored.

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Tamworth Herald: Amid the spate of sat nav thefts from cars in the UK, police in the West Midlands have developed new stickers which can be displayed on car dashboards to warn opportunist thieves that no sat nav is kept in the vehicle.

The initiative has been spearheaded by West Midlands Police and motorists are advised to visit their website for more details.

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Newlaunches: Nintendo has finalised and released the complete web browser for its Wii console, with a number of changes made to the online service following consumer feedback.

The Wii bosses were presented a new System Update recently and the final version of the Internet Channel, powered by the Opera browser has gone live. This final version will be free until June 2007 after that the download will cost 500 points. (…)

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Slashgear: Remember that USB turntable that everyone and his dog was posting about a few months ago (…)?  Well, it’s a pretty fair bet that if a product is successful there’ll come others like it following afterwards; sometimes they’re brazen copies, sometimes you’re lucky and they bring something new to the party.

Stanton DJ, who specialise in professional DJ and club musical equipment, are claiming to have done just that with their T.90 USB High-Torque Turntable. (…)

Pricing for the T.90 is yet to be announced.

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eMarketer: A quarter of online consumers plan to buy a global positioning system (GPS) device within the next year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) “GPS — Exploring Ownership and Interest” report. At an average of $410 (around €300) each, that would mean $4.1 billion in 2007 sales. GPS shipment revenues tripled between 2005 and 2006.

A third of future buyers say they would like GPS in their next mobile phones.

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TV Predictions:  In an online poll at TVPredictions.com, 35 percent of respondents said a Plasma set delivers the best HDTV picture.

Thirty-three percent said a LCD HDTV has the best picture while 27 percent said a DLP rear projection set offers the best high-def images. Five percent said the HD picture is the same on all the sets.

The poll is not scientific. But Plasma’s narrow margin of victory is evidence of the uncertainty in the marketplace over which High-Definition sets are the best performers.

Many people vigorously argue that one set’s technology is better than another. Our readers would prefer Pioneer’s 50-inch Plasma.

The flat-screen war between Plasma and LCD is the scene of most battles. Most industry observers say Plasma looks better in a darker setting while LCD fares better in well lit areas. But even that contention is disputed by some. However, everyone seems to agree that HDTV — regardless of which set you own — looks better than what we all watched before.

More: Pioneer 50-inch 1080p product page

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Electronista: GPS device creator TomTom this afternoon unveiled the RIDER 2nd Edition, the sequel to its popular mapping system for motorbikes.

As was alluded to in a premature site posting, the revised unit has a new RAM mount that adapts to more handlebars and is more easily adjusted for a clear viewing angle. It also comes bundled with a Cardo scala-rider Bluetooth for making phone calls without the rider first removing their helmet.

A new, free Buddies service also adds an element of social networking with friend tracking and notifications when fellow RIDER owners drift into range.

The second version of the RIDER will be ready first in Europe by the end of May, where it will sell for between £300 and £400 (440 to 590 euro) depending on the choice of region-only maps or those covering all of western Europe. (…)

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Yahoo: A proposal to cap roaming charges for mobile phone calls made abroad crossed an important hurdle Thursday when a key committee of the European Parliament voted in favor of a ceiling at 40 euro cents per minute for an outgoing call and 15 euro cents per minute for an incoming call.

The EU assembly’s industry committee went further than EU member states, which proposed a cap of 52 euro cents and 25 euro cents, respectively.

The EU’s executive arm claims network providers are reaping massive profits from high roaming charges that can increase call costs fourfold. The cap — opposed by the telecommunications industry — aims to slash roaming fees by as much as 70 percent. (…)

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Yahoo: Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp. plans to start selling small televisions this year using a screen technology that is a contender for the next-generation screen of flat-screen TVs, a company spokeswoman said Thursday.

Sony plans to begin selling an 11-inch television using an organic electroluminescent screen by the year’s end, spokeswoman Mami Imada said. OEL screens are already used in smaller applications such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants and camcorders. Sony believes their product would be the first such television to come to market, Imada added.

The screens make use of the self-luminscent properties of organic materials. They use less power than comparable liquid crystal display screens because they don’t use a backlight, and are also much thinner — the screen in Sony’s planned 11-inch OEL TV will be 3 millimeters thick. (…)

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