(Credit:
LG)

The next phone on the list is the LG Decoy, which we mentioned in an earlier rumor about the phone’s release. As you’ll recall, the Decoy is the first ever phone to have a stowaway Bluetooth headset integrated into the back of the device. The Decoy is a slider phone, and will also have V Cast and VZ Navigator support. It will be in stores on June 16.

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LG Chocolate 3

And last, but definitely not least, is the LG Chocolate 3. Instead of its predecessor’s slider form factor, the Chocolate 3 will be in flip form with the music player control wheel on the outside. Features include an FM transmitter, an MP3 player of course, V Cast support, dual speakers, stereo Bluetooth, 1GB of internal memory plus a microSD card slot, a 2.0-megapixel camera, and more. According to reports, the Chocolate 3 will arrive in stores in July as well.

(Credit:
LG)

LG Dare

LG just dropped some heavy cell phone news this morning with the announcement of three new handsets for Verizon Wireless. The most intriguing of the lot is the LG Dare, a phone that will join the ranks of the LG Vu, the Samsung Instinct, and the Apple iPhone as a full-fledged touch-screen handset. The one difference seems to be that the Dare has a stylus, with “advanced handwriting recognition” plus a virtual QWERTY keyboard (EDIT: Verizon says the Dare does not have a stylus, which makes the “advanced handwriting recognition” statement a little confusing). It will have V Cast support, a 3.2-megapixel camera that promises to adapt to low light levels, a built-in photo editing tool, plus the capability to upload the photos to a “social networking site” (MySpace or Facebook, perhaps?). Not a lot of information on the Dare yet, but we hope to learn more once it launches in July.

It certainly looks like LG has been very busy, with all these devices coming out around the same time frame. No pricing information yet, but we’ll definitely keep you updated on these phones, and keep a look out for our reviews as soon as we get them.

LG Decoy

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(Credit:
Panasonic)

On Sale Now: $299.99
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Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5

On Sale Now: $399.99
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Panasonic follows up last year’s compact megazoom Lumix DMC-TZ3 with two models. The DMC-TZ4 and DMC-TZ5 have similar feature sets, which include an optically stabilized 28mm-280mm 10x zoom lens and the next-generation Venus Engine IV image processing; Panasonic claims the latter provides improved noise reduction, faster performance, and more responsive stabilization.

The cameras differ mostly by resolution and LCD size. The TZ4 incorporates an 8.1-megapixel CCD and 2.5-inch display, while the TZ5 uses a 9.1-megapixel CCD and 3-inch display. The latter also supports 1280×720 30 frames-per-second movie capture.

Color choices for the $299.95 TZ4 are silver or black, while the $349.95 TZ5 will come in silver, black, and blue. Both cameras are scheduled to ship in March.

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It can be purchased with a tablet PC to operate it, too. That’s doubtless handy, because a single high-resolution file is 307MB in raw format, the company said.

The 6×17 Digital employs a digital scanning back made by Dalsa. Scanning cameras employ a linear light sensor detector similar to that used in flatbed scanners; it moves across the field of view to take the photo rather than using a two-dimensional sensor that captures the entire scene simultaneously. It’s a good way to get high resolution, but it comes at a cost: it takes a single second to take a full-resolution 7,500×21,500-pixel image.

The mammoth device is able to take an image measuring 60×170mm, a big notch up from high-end SLRs with a 24×36mm frame. It’s got huge handgrips on either side that cry out to be grasped, but it’s 18 inches wide and weighs 10 pounds, so it looks either like a great workout or tripod material to me.

(Via Gearfuse.)

Got $45,600 burning a hole in your pocket? Try out Seitz Phototechnik’s 160-megapixel 6×17 Digital camera. And save a bit more of your allowance for a lens, too.

Seitz's 160-megapixel 6×17 Digital camera

(Credit:
Seitz)

$16 pens at Osaka's Shinsaibashi branch of Loft.

(Credit:
Sinobyte)

Well, did you get it? From the Pen Spinning Association Japan comes the Penz’Gear line of sticks to spin artfully in your fingers, complete with an instructional DVD to teach you techniques for the following techniques: Normal, Reverse, FingerPass, BackAround, Harmonic, and Tornado.

You’re not going to catch me saying that this proves “the Japanese” are weird. On the contrary, I was the only one paying attention to this display in a very busy store. It is fun, however, to think about the folks who made the video and whatever process of retail selection (or payoffs) that might have given it this prominence.

I can only hope that this post brings out a subculture of people who are better at playing with pens than I am to explain to me how a properly weighted pen is essential to the art. As for me, I’m back to doodling.

(Credit:
T-Mobile)

A short, but sweet, news bulletin for BlackBerry fans: on Wednesday, T-Mobile announced the immediate availability of the red RIM BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 smartphone. It joins the black version, which has been on sale since October 13. You can get either colors for $149.99 with a two-year contract. The Pearl Flip is the first BlackBerry to sport a clamshell design. For more information, read our full review of the RIM BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220.

Designer Gordon Murray, best known for his work on Formula One racing
cars, detailed on Monday a new city car design called the T.25 that is aimed at reducing congestion and lowering pollution.

The planned T.25 in green compared with (going left to right) a VW Golf, a Fiat 500, a Smart Car, and a Mini Cooper.

(Credit:
Gordon Murray Design)

Compared even with existing compact cars, the T.25 will be small: it can be parked headlong against the curb, allowing three cars to fit in one parking space.

Gordon Murray Design is about halfway through its two-year planning process and plans to have a prototype on the road early next year.

To lower the car’s carbon footprint, the company has rethought the cradle-to-grave lifecycle of the car. For example, many of the parts, including the capacity and body, can be recycled and the manufacturing process is being set up with a minimal number of parts to reduce energy use during fabrication.

The first versions of the car will run on either gas or diesel and get about 60 miles per gallon, the company told Greentech Media.

No more driving around the block to wait for a space. Three T.25's fit in the space for one car.

(Credit:
Gordon Murray Design)

The company intends to work with outside manufacturers to lower the cost and sell the car to city dwellers in Asia and Europe for between $10,000 and $11,000, it told Greentech Media.

Overall, the car should have low or zero emissions, the company says.

Compact cars are already more popular in Europe and Asia than in the U.S. Automakers have helped create demand for SUVs and trucks as passenger cars. But with rising fuel prices and growing environmental awareness, city cars appear to be staging a comeback.

The Smart Car is already cruising European and American streets. And Think Global from Norway intends to market its all-electric city car, called the Think City, in Europe and the United States next year.

Revenue for the quarter rose 11 percent to $28.3 billion, the company said Tuesday.

Those figures beat analyst estimates of earnings per share of 85 cents and revenue of $28.1 billion, according to Thomson First Call.

Earnings excluding one-time items were $2.1 billion, or 80 cents a share.

HP forecast revenue for the third quarter to be about $27.3 billion to $27.4 billion and earnings per share excluding items to be 82 cents to 83 cents.

HP raised its full-year revenue forecast to between $114.2 billion and $114.4 billion, from previous guidance of $113.5 billion to $114 billion. Full-year per-share earnings excluding items are forecast to be $3.54 to $3.58.

Analysts were forecasting third-quarter earnings per share of 82 cents and revenue of $27.35 billion and full-year earnings per share of $3.53 and revenue of $114.2 billion.

eBay’s new program is only in its nascent stages of development. But the company says its pro sellers that already use advanced selling features in Selling Manager will be able to find and subscribe to third-party tools the same way they do now for eBay-developed tools.

It’s very likely that in a few years time we won’t think about open source as a strategy for opening up packaged software, but rather a strategy for making web applications richer and more relevant to a wider body of people. The business models behind open source will change in the process, as Stephen O’Grady suggests.

“Opening eBay.com directly to third-party applications through the Selling Manager gives developers an immediate channel to growth-minded eBay sellers,” [An eBay spokesman said].

This is really cool. Facebook, MySpace, and a range of others have been increasingly opening their platforms to outside developers, making the web a bit less like a series of silo’d fiefdoms and more like a communal pool of code.

commentary

Open source has made a significant impact on the “offline” world of packaged software, but it’s arguably having a more important impact on the web world. In the latest sign of the importance of openness to development in a SaaS world, eBay announced that it wil be opening up its Selling Manager auction tool to outside developers:

One of Twiddla’s killer applications is the built-in screenshot tool. It will snap the current iteration of the whiteboard and save it into both your saved media folder and the meeting’s history archive. For photo or Web design consulting, this gives you the option of coming back to a work space and editing content asynchronously.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Read Web pages at the same time with others, and make live markups to a site on the fly. You can also chat live with others either via text or VoIP conference calling.

Collaborative whiteboarding applications can be handy tools for small groups looking to do some brainstorming despite geographical displacement. Meet Twiddla, a free tool that lets you mark up media and live Web sites, or simply organize ideas together on a virtual whiteboard. It also tacks on live communication with text chat and free VoIP conference calling that doesn’t require additional plug-ins or software.

I’m holding off on giving Twiddla a thumbs up for the time being. It simply didn’t perform as well as I think it should to make me ditch some of the alternatives. However, I’m happy to see some little guys come up and show WebEx and others like the recently Google-acquired Marratech what can be done on the user interface side to make these tools simple and attractive.

The application won an award for technical achievement at last night’s SXSW Interactive Web Awards. While technologically fantastic, in my testing I ran up against some noticeable speed and local resource problems. At times I found the application to be nearly unusable despite its simple interface and snappy menus. At other times it was incredibly responsive.

But I wonder whether history’s not repeating itself–with a twist. Bear with me on a short detour.

But as these debates play out among the usual cast of characters on TechMeme, pay close attention to the new rules of media engagement–and I’m using “media” in the widest possible sense here–where the blogosphere awards points to some favorite companies while giving the cold shoulder to many others.

Most of what passes as worthy of comment in the 24-7 chatter cycle tends to focus on one part of the tech story. But I wonder whether another, more important piece of the narrative is getting shunted aside in the process. Autonomy’s not alone. Each week I receive a stream of e-mails and phone calls from PR people representing infrastructure software companies. Some are more interesting than others but we’re not talking about stuff that sets pulses beating harder. Guaranteed, not a one will ever lead the pages of the news aggregators unless their CEO first gets outed as a cross-dresser.

Last week I attended a briefing by Autonomy, a company based in the United Kingdom and San Francisco. On Monday, Autonomy will announce a product designed to assist companies with governance compliance. This likely will be a big deal for IT administrators and law firms that are scrambling to enact internal information management policies in the wake of the subprime mortgage and credit crisis. You can find out the details on Autonomy’s site but I’ll wager that most people reading this post have near heard of the company.

Just to put that statement in context, that’s always been the case and it predates the birth of the Internet, long before the idea of a media conversation ever got born. Back then, the major tech companies could afford the biggest marketing budgets and they dominated the news cycle even more than they do now. As for companies that fell out of favor or were too small or too difficult to explain–well, let’s just say they had a rough time getting to center stage. Personally, I’m not waxing nostalgic for the way things used to be. I remember the frustrations voiced at the perceived favoritism (or laziness) of the media. Too many good and interesting stories got lost because smaller companies didn’t have the resources to buy the services of fancy PR operatives.

With the annual Web 2.0 conference only a week away, we’re about to get bombarded with the latest avalanche of marketing hype about technologies that are supposed to change our lives. And if past is prologue, I’m quite sure the 24-hour attention cycle will again be dominated by more monotonous debates about the future of social networks and news feed platforms.

If we judge a firm’s importance by the amount of attention it invites these days, you would conclude that a firm like Autonomy is of little or no relevance to the wider technology world. Yet the company enjoys a $4.5 billion market capitalization and ranks as one of the leading commercial ventures in the field of the contextual understanding of electronic data. Unfortunately, it’s a complex story to sell in a sound bite or two and it probably doesn’t help that Mike Lynch, who founded Autonomy, built a business around his understanding of Bayesian inference and Shannon’s information theory. That’s a mouthful to get out and the product line is a lot more difficult to understand than compared with, say, Bebo or Flickr.