Last Friday we had the pleasure of some of the UK’s top tech and style bloggers at an exclusive event at London’s May Fair Hotel to have a look at the new LG Secret (KF750). A good crowd turned up, and as well as meeting us in the flesh, they got a chance to hear from Jeremy Newing, UK head of marketing for LG Mobile.
Jeremy first went through the phone’s features with a presentation, and then he fielded a really engaging Q&A with the audience, talking about the progress LG Mobile have made, LG’s plans for the future, including more open development for our phones, collaborating with users more, and designing phones with “Web 2.0″ in mind. After that our guests got a chance to try the phones hands-on.
I won’t go into to too much detail, as I think it’s best to read what the bloggers there thought instead, so why not check them out - from SMS Text News, Gaj-It and one part truth. There’ll be more to come (including video of the event) over the coming week, so keep an eye out for more…
Today in London, we revealed the name of the third in the LG Black Label line of phones - the LG Secret. The Secret (KF750) is a slender & stylish handset with a slew of enriched technological features, including a 5MP ISO 800 camera, a 120fps QVGA video camera and DivX-certified recording and playback. The camera also boasts a range of filters and modes, as well as on-camera photo editing.
The phone has a touchscreen and an accelerometer motion sensor. It also has auto luminance control, adjusting the screen brightness automatically, saving both battery life and making it more comfortable for your eyes. Inside, the phone boasts an MP3 player and FM radio, a reader for Word, Excel and Powerpoint and is loaded with a specialised Google Package that with a dedicated interface for Google services such as GMail, Google Maps, YouTube and Blogger. It also has Bluetooth AutoSync to synchronise data seamlessly with your PC, and on the fun side a range of games that hook into the motion sensor.
With the philosophy of “style that lasts”, it’s been made out of some of toughest materials around, including carbon fibre and tempered glass, with neon touch navigation buttons that gently light up the interface.
Over at TechDigest comes this nice laptop pillow, to not only stop your laptop digging into your legs but help keeping it cooler and not burning your legs. TechDigest raves about the log one (pictured below) which I like a lot for its colour and playfulness. However it’s not the only one - check out the whole range - the variety is what I like, something for those who prefer the functional as well as design lovers.
Laptop pillows are nothing new - PCWorld blogs about a nice design for those laden with accessories - you can pop your mouse or external drives & cables into the pocket beneath. Of course you don’t have to splash the cash - you can go with a DIY approach instead - the comments section on this Lifehacker post is a great selection of homebrew laptop rest solutions. So whatever you want, if you’re suffering from a hot or heavy laptop on your knees, there’s no reason to put up with it at all.
Thanks to Product Reviews for the news that Ricky Gervais is to appear in Grand Theft Auto IV:
The comedian will play himself in the game as he is a stand up act performing in the comedy club in Liberty City. Going into this comedy club might just be a welcome break while you hang out and have a rest, and you will also be able to watch Gervais as he performs some new material that he has written especially for Grand Theft Auto 4.
Although the thought of Rick Gervais in a latex suit for the 3D modelling process is a little distracting, the bit about performing new material is what really got me interested. Games have been incorporating other form of entertainment for some time - for example GTA is famous for the range of radio stations you cam ‘tune in’ to while playing & slaying, both classics and exclusive music. But comedy’s a new one for me, and to go to the effort of accurately modelling Ricky Gervais and asking him to write new material for it, sets a new standard for the future. Will the comedy stage tour soon be thing of the past as comedians go entirely virtual and tour different games and 3D worlds?
Speaking of video game music, and seeing it’s the weekend, courtesy of BB Gadgets here’s a wonderful video of a remote control car playing the Mario theme on wine bottles. Trust me, it makes sense once you see it:
37 years ago today the Apollo 13 splash landed in the Pacific Ocean four days after an oxygen tank explosion in space which spawned on of the most endlessly misquoted quotes: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
Apollo 13 was supposed to land in the Fra Mauro area but the explosion 3 days into the mission forced Apollo 13 to circle the moon without landing. In case you aren’t familiar with the plight of Apollo 13, everyone survived.
It’s safe to say they didn’t enjoy the ride though - there was a lack of food, water and power, making sleep almost impossible because of the cold, it was also calculated that the crew would run out of water - needed both for them and for the cooling systems - before reentry. As a result the crew had to be very strict in their conservation of their resources and became severely dehydrated, they also set a record among all the Apollo missions: the crew lost a total of 31.5 pounds, nearly 50 percent more than any other crew. Probably not the kind of fame they had hoped for!
On the subject of technological failures, I’m sure we’ve all had our share of nightmare gadgets. Wired’s readership certainly have and they’ve decided they’re not going to take it lying down! Check out Wired’s Top 10 Gadget Revenge killings if you’re brave enough… I’m not sure it’s safe viewing for the technologically squeamish - I feel a bit more protective of my gadgets now!
Yes, for the woman on the go who needs to know she looks good and can read that card anywhere… It’s an interesting choice of pairing and it certainly hasn’t been done before but I’m not sure there’s really a market for this, is there?
The mirror is able to read different types of memory cards, including MicroSD, T-Flash, SD, Memory Stick Duo, and can be yours for just $15.
Personally I think I’ll stick with the mirror I already own and get the slightly cheaper Pocket-sized Memory Card reader ($10) instead. Although perhaps the attraction is in knowing you can do a sly teeth/lippy check while looking like you’re doing something with the card reader, which could be handy at lunch meetings.
Blast.. I think I’m talking myself into wanting one now!
Last week LG announced the ‘Viewtyful World’ online photo contest, which runs until 11th June. The eight-week contest is running in association with Yahoo, Flickr, Kelkoo, and National Geographic magazine which features some of the highest-quality photojournalism in the world.
The competition was devised to provide opportunities to explore the spaces surrounding our lives and rediscover the wonders and attractions of these worlds through photography.
You can enter the contest through the Viewty site on Flickr, you can also see others entries and vote for your favourites!
There are three Viewty phones on offer as weekly prizes - two of which will be decided by the online votes and the best photo will be selected by a renowned National Geographic photographer.
The grand winner - chosen from eight candidates selected through evaluation by National Geographic magazine - will have the honour of seeing his/her prize-winning work featured in a Viewty advertorial in National Geographic magazine and receive a copyright fee of US $10,000 for his or her work. Kerching!
I’m a bit of a sucker for touchscreen technology - the possibilities are enormous and can take us away from the decades-old paradigm of keyboards and numeric pads. Of course, we’re still at the start of this transition but it’s exciting to see what pioneers are doing. Over at Tech E Blog they’ve got a video of BumpTop, which is a bit like Microsoft’s much-talked about Surface:
I like the ability to put lots of things in one pile but the really nice stuff is the 3D desktop - you’re inside a giant room, effectively and you can spin the room round and play with the “walls” as well as the “floor”. It’s all in software (so no need for new hardware), which is a bonus. The best thing is that you don’t need a touchscreen to get started with it - you can use a mouse or two mice to explore if you don’t. But it’s obviously a lot cooler with the touchscreen, so it’s a good transitional step between the two.
Every time a digital innovation comes out, the analogue lobby always defend the original with a “well, it will never be able to replace a key aspect, such as this…”. And then digital works out a way of fulfilling that need. For example, with digital downloads, many said people would still buy physical records for the cover artwork. So then the digital geeks incorporated the cover artwork into the download and hey presto, we now have cover flow navigation in our software.
I was reminded of this today, as over at Red Ferret I saw this magentic fridge-mounted digital photo frame. So now one of the qualities of analogue printed photographs (i.e. pinning them up on the fridge) can be done with digital as well - a great idea for all the proud parents (and grandparents). And it doesn’t have to be just photos - technically it should be able to display any digital image - so if junior’s been mucking around in MS Paint their work can be proudly displayed as well.
I know USB drive designs are ten a penny these days but there’s something about these I like. Maybe it’s the squishiness - USB drives are often (relatively) protruding solid sticks, so to have something more organic and flexible makes a refreshing change. Maybe it’s the colour - you could have a whole load of them like fruit pastilles (just don’t get confused and try to eat one) - colour-coded depending what task they perform. Maybe it’s just because they’re so dinky and small. I’m not sure. What do you think?
Special Monday morning treat - we’ve got a sneak preview of the third in the highly stylish LG Black Label series of handsets, following in the footsteps of the successful LG Chocolate and LG Shine. Like its two predecessors, the phone is a combination of cutting edge tech with brilliant design, and it will be one of the slimmest 5MP cameraphones out there. With the philosophy of “style that lasts”, it’s been made out of some of toughest materials around, including carbon fibre and tempered glass, to give the phone a timeless elegance.
The new phone’s name is still a secret, but all will be revealed on April 24th at our European launch. In the meantime we can give you a cheeky sneak peek with the photo to the right - enjoy. You can also see shots of the phone from the back, closed and alongside others in the same range. Enjoy!
Today is the 35th anniversary of the first mobile phone call.
On April 3rd, 1973 Dr. Martin Cooper, Motorola’s Corporate Director of R&D and patent holder for the “Radio Telephone System”, used the DynaTAC handset to make the first ever portable phone call. Who did he call? Joel Engel, Head of Research at Bell Labs and his rival in the field, to let him know he was too late! I’m not sure I could’ve resisted making that call in his place.
Martin Cooper holds a Motorola DynaTAC (for DYNamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage), a 1973 prototype of the first handheld cellular telephone.
Photo: Eric Risberg/AP
Last year it emerged Cooper only began working on portable communications because of an episode of Star Trek -
“Suddenly there was Captain Kirk talking on his communicator. Talking! With no wires!”
“To the rest of the world it was a fantasy. To me it was an objective.”
In the same article you discover Cooper is not alone in having Kirk and co as his muses:
Robert Haitani, the designer of the Palm Pilot, revealed to the San Francisco Chronicle, “my first sketches were influenced by the Enterprise bridge panels…Years later the first Treo (a combo phone and wireless PDA) had a form factor similar to the communicator. You could stand there and talk into it like Captain Kirk.”
The UK is getting some new money. Rather than a different design on each, they are (except the pound) all fragments of a greater design, like some shiny jigsaw. Very postmodern. What do you think - innovative emblems of 21st century Britain or tinkering with something that should not be changed?
I’ve talked about the KF600 in brief before but having played with it the past week I thought it apt to talk about the LG KF600, our new mid-range touchscreen phone.
The phone’s most distinctive feature is the dual screen. The first screen is a 240×320 pixel 2″ LCD screen, the same top-quality screens on many of our other phones. The second is a 240×176 pixel touchscreen called the InteractPad. The InteractPad replaces the standard navigation keys on the phone with a set of contextual icons that change according to what you’re doing. For example, when navigating the menu it displays a set of arrows, while when composing text messages, it provides buttons to change input settings or insert symbols.
The InteractPad is customisable, so you can have your favourite functions available on the main screen. It also allows for handwriting recognition, either via a stylus (availability varies according to country) or just your thumbnail (which I found surprisingly easy after a little bit of practice). Like the touchscreen on the Viewty, the InteractPad has haptic feedback (i.e. it vibrates with every press), meaning pressing it is more intuitive to handle. The overall effect is a compromise between full-touchscreen phones like the Viewty, and more traditional interfaces, with an ultimate focus on being as user friendly as possible.
Both screens can be skinned according to eight different themes, including four by the renowned late pop artist Keith Haring, or customised with your own wallpaper. Speaking of pictures, the phone comes with a 3.0 Megapixel camera (capable of video), and also has an MP3 player. It come with 25MB of internal storage and an SD card slot capable of taking up to 4GB capacity.
It has a warm feel to the hand and is pretty slimline, at just 14.1mm thick and weighing 107 grammes. It comes in pastel pink, shiny pink, wine red or good old-fashioned black. For a closer look, take a look at the KF600 Specification, or better still check out the demo video below to get a real feel for it:
