0 Sprint's ZTE PEEL : An innovation for iPod touch announced

 

Well, everything about the ZTE PEEL from Sprint has been correct so far, including the November 14th launch date, so why not just make things more official with an announcement from the good people at Sprint? This 3G-capable cradle for the iPod touch will turn your portable media player into a VoIP-capable mobile device, retailing for $79.99 with a month-to-month rolling data contract. In simpler terms, this is a 3G mobile hotspot that allows you to share its EVDO Rev.A connection with up to a couple of Wi-Fi clients simultaneously.

Bear in mind that it is unable to work with the first generation iPod touch, so that leaves the second and third generations only. Sprint has touted a 3 hours battery life with its integrated 900mAh battery, alongside WEP 64-bit encryption. As for its aforementioned monthly plan, that is going for $29.99, netting you 1GB in the process with no yearly agreement to make it a decent enough device to pair up with your notebook to go online wherever you are. The 1GB data cap seems rather unreasonable in this day and age though, so hopefully more monthly plans can be offered in due time.

0 Square card : Now accept Credit cards on the go

 

Remember the Square card reader and payment service from our first hands-on video in January at Macworld Expo 2010? Square makes it possible for anyone, whether an individual or small business, to take payments via credit card. Shortly after Macworld Expo, I signed up for the service; I finally received my free credit card reader yesterday.
The reader is a tiny square box that plugs into the audio port on iOS devices or other smartphones. Rather than using an expensive (usually $75 or more) "sled" reader like those used in Apple's retail stores, Square developed a reader that did not use the dock connector or need the blessing of Apple's "Made For iPhone" certification. These readers have no moving parts and are so inexpensive to manufacture that Square can give them away.
Anyone can sign up for the service and get a free reader. If you want to be able to split a bar tab with friends and have them pay you via credit card, you can get a Square account and reader, and then simply swipe your friends cards to get paid. Square takes 2.75% of the transaction + 15¢ per swipe if you can get your drunk friends to provide their finger-written signatures, and 3.5% + 15¢ if they don't sign. Does that sound like a lot? To an individual, it might, but to small businesses who are used to hefty sign-up fees, monthly account minimums, merchant account fees, and higher percentages, Square is a hell of a deal.

Check out the Aquare card gallery below :

0 The super sized 58" multi touch tablet running via iPhone

The guys behind the iPhone-powered 58-inch multitouch table (think Microsoft Surface) have released a video demonstrating how the system works. Essentially, all you do is hook up your iPhone 4 to the table-top display and away you go. The iPhone 4 display is replicated on the 58-inch screen, and behaves the same way a normal iPhone would (save for the 17x size amplification, of course).

The two guys in the video seem to access the Springboard just fine, they swipe between pages and launch the Photos app. It doesn’t look like a fake, as many readers claimed. The iPhone also seems to be able to output UI elements on that bigger screen just fine.

Check out the video below to get a better impression of how it’s working so far. Although this is just a couple of dudes putting a good idea into effect, it would be awesome if we actually see this hit the market sometime down the road.
Video after the break. Would you be willing to slap down your hard-earned cash for something like this if it’s ever released?

0 Memory Cards go faster now with CFast cards from Transcend coming soon

 

Transcend has announced that it has begun to ship CFast cards, the next step forward in the CompactFlash standard. These cards rely on a SATA interface instead of the normal UDMA / IDE interface, offering transfer rates of up to 108MB/s. These CFast cards will be available in capacities of 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB, though pricing or availability haven't been mentioned yet. The cards can be used as bootable drives and include StaticDataRefresh and EarlyRetirement technologies, allowing it to correct data errors, ensuring data reliability and extending the lifespan of their flash memory cells.