Rumor Update: Sony Killing Off 80GB PS3?

Yesterday, word was that Best Buy is days away from dropkicking the 80GB PS3 off its shelves. Today, the PS380 jumps from the "threatened" to the "endangered" list—Game Daily Biz says another major retailer confirms something is indeed "afoot" with 80GB supplies. And an analyst translates "afoot" to mean "impending doom." But, there's a kink in this kerfluffle.

Mobile Firefox Might Make Safari Feel a Little Touchy

Remember that mobile Firefox announcement from a couple of months ago? Turns out, there's two flavors in the works: a regular version for vanilla cellphones, and one that's for touchscreen smartphones like the iPhone. The goal is be functionally consistent with Firefox 3, though Compiler thinks it looks "remarkably similar" to mobile Safari. But could Firefox be better than Safari? Would you switch?

Motorola Patent For Folding, Roll-Up Phone: Moto ROLR?

A newly unearthed patent application from Motorola has revealed a design for a cellphone that features a foldable / roll-upable display and keypad. While the concept is nothing new, it appears that Motorola believes that it can overcome many of the structural problems that these devices face by incorporating a reservoir with electrorheological fluid beneath the foldable display or keypad. When electric current is applied, the fluid becomes solid. When the current is absent, the opposite occurs.

Verizon, AT&T Respect Your SMS Privacy

Verizon and AT&T have both gone on record saying they do not record SMS communications. The privacy debate is one that, understandably, gets emotions stirred, but you can all rest a little easy knowing the official stances of two of the major cellular networks.

Erica Sevilla, a Verizon spokeswoman, said:

I think people can feel comfortable we're not storing information that can later be used against them. Unless you have something stored on your phone or on a recipients' phone, it does not stay on our network for a long period.

AT&T said they do not store SMS messages beyond 72 hours, which are only kept for delivery purposes. In both cases, once deleted from the system, there is no conceivable way to check your text message communications short of physically going through your phone.

You may want to breathe a collective sigh of relief, but Rebecca Jeschke, spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, seems to think otherwise:

"We trust so much of our communications and thoughts, even, to these third parties who are capturing this information and storing it in various ways. It's time for us to think about it."

Gosh, we just want our private willy jokes remaining private. After all, it's not fair everyone knowing about Mark's miniscule member. [AP]

Retro Woodgrain Phone Invokes Synthesizers of Old

The idea behind this phone concept is that it brings ideas together from past and present with its wood styling and smartphone functionality. The designer says the wood and rock casing is supposed bring together nature and technology, but it just looks like a piece of 70s tech to me (see the bluetooth headset with analog knobs).

Microsoft Windows 7 leaked?

We already heard news about the next-gen Windows OS, Windows 7 Ultimate. Well, the fellows at Think Next are offering up a video, which they claim shows the "Milestone 1 code drop," all in shaky video glory. Check it out by hitting the video below.

Dell's Aluminum Laptops Causing Electric Shocks

The folks at CNET were surprised to discover that using some Dell laptops can result in electric shocks that "vary in strength from a gentle tingle to a sudden jolt." They also noticed that the shocks occur when connecting peripherals to the laptops. It appears that the offending devices have been isolated to versions that feature a brushed-aluminum finish —namely the XPS M1330 and XPS M1530. Furthermore, they believe the shocks are the result of a power adapter that isn't grounded properly because its 2-prong connector lacks a third pin.

NYC Installing Gigantic 120-Foot Waterfalls Under the Brooklyn Bridge, in the East River

While this image of a gigantic waterfall cascading down from beneath the Brooklyn Bridge looks like some wacky photoshop, it's actually something that's being installed this summer. A new art project will have four waterfall sculptures installed in New York City from mid-July to mid-October, spewing water from heights of 90 to 120 feet, or about as high as the Statue of Liberty.

Windows 7 To Be Released Ahead of Schedule?

According to insiders and Microsoft partners, a "Milestone 1 code drop" has been released of the next-gen Windows OS. This, along with an updated roadmap leaked to TGDaily, points to a release window of 2nd Half 2009. Among the new features seen in the really, really early M1 release are combining multiple graphics cards from different vendors into one graphics system, and a new version of Media Center. It's still unclear when the first beta versions will be available (meaning when the developer community at large will be able to test it), but guesses point to early 2009. COME AND GET IT!

Ultralight Lenovo X300 Series Thinkpad Leaked?

It appears that Lenovo have themselves a new ultralight X300 series Thinkpad—and outside of the price and release date, we have all of the specs that you need to know. At a glance, some of the major features include: a 13.3-inch LED backlit 1440X900 screen, an ultralight 2.5 pound form factor, and Intel Merom Santa Rosa Dual Core CPU (2.0 Ghz / 880 Mhz ), a 64 GB SSD, up to 4GB of DDR2 PC2-5300 memory, and 4 hours of battery life. Hit the gallery for the full details. [Thanks Tipster!]

340mph Acabion GTBO Motorcycle Now In Production

Get a load of this: the cockpit-like Acabion GTBO features a a 750bhp, turbocharged Hayabusa engine that is capable of hurling the bike down the road at 340mph with a 30 second 0-300mph acceleration time—and, amazingly, that speed is capped. If all of that wasn't eye popping enough, the bike is also fuel efficient. It can get 100mpg at 100mph and 25 at 250. Designer Peter Maskus is releasing the Acabion to the public in extremely limited quantities, although the price is a little steep at €1.87million or around $2.7 million US. Plus, you have to wait for 3 years while the bike is built. Its probably just as well though. I mean,where would you drive it? And even if you could, the odds seem pretty high that you would end up as a stain on the road should you ever decide to open it up. More photos at Jalopnik.

HD Downloads Are Pretty Much Lies?

George Ou over on Zdnet wrote an excellent piece outlining why those too-good-to-be-true HD downloads we see in Xbox 360, ABC.com and even Apple TV are a bit bogus. He points out that while these services deliver on their 720p resolution promises, the encoded bitrates are so low, compressing the data to such small proportions, that the image within the said resolution has inadequate fidelity. And though we have some major reservations regarding Ou's theory, it's tough to entirely disagree when you see the cold, hard numbers

The Console Wars: 2007 Update

We don't keep you updated with every Wii sold like our friends at Kotaku, but the NPD's 2007 sales numbers have been released, so we thought that the occasion merited a rundown to fuel your fanboy flame wars. Here are the total consoles sold in the United States during 2007:

Nintendo DS - 8,500,000
Wii - 6,290,000
Xbox 360 - 4,620,000
PlayStation 2 - 3,970,000
PSP - 3,820,000
PlayStation 3 - 2,560,000

So what about the total cumulative US sales numbers to date? Those numbers paint a slightly different picture

New Xbox 360 Failure Rates Still Around 10 Percent?

Site 8bitjoystick, the same people who seem to have broken the news that Bungie was splitting from Microsoft, claim to have scored an exclusive tell-all interview with an Xbox 360 designer regarding the console's notorious stability. Most of the piece really just confirms that which was already suspected (reasons for the RRoDs, early Xboxes failed around 30% of the time, etc) but what caught our eye was the insider's estimated failure rates on new, smaller and cooler-chipped Xbox 360s seem to still be around 10%

iPhone Sales Fall 5 Percent Below Expectations in the UK

The Financial Times reports that UK sales of the Apple iPhone weren't quite up to par, selling 190,000 phones against a target of 200,000 in the first two months. Some analysts even projected sales in the range of 350,000-400,000. Many cite the high price of the phone, saying the average phone is free and the average plan is under £30. In the UK the iPhone goes for £269 and the plan is £899 over 18 months. In U.S. Dollars thats $529 for the phone and $98/month for the plan. Ouch.

Fujitsu Announces 8.9-Inch Tablet PC

Fujitsu began taking orders Friday for their 8.9-inch Lifebook P1620 convertible tablet PC. The computer weighs only 2.2 pounds, comes with a 1.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 60 GB HDD and 512 MB of RAM for $1749. The high-end model comes with 2GB RAM, an 80 GB HDD and Bluetooth for $2224. This announcement comes on the heels of Fujitsu's upgrade of previous tablets with HSUPA technology.

Skype Coming to Sony PSP

Sony's all for loading multimedia functions onto their consoles (portable or otherwise) to add value, so the addition of VoIP via Skype is something we can definitely see them doing. The feature's listed on Sony's CES site, along with internet radio and a few other features we already know about, like Remote Play. So it's not a matter of whether the PSP will grab Skype, it's a matter of when the firmware update will be released. Hit the jump for the note in question.

Garmin Mobile PC and GPS 20x Dongle Turns Your Laptop into a Garmin GPS

The Skinny: Garmin's Mobile PC, a software suite that provides Garmin's GPS capabilities on your laptop with any GPS receiver. It's available by itself for $59, but if you want a more integrated approach, you can buy it with the Garmin GPS 20x sensor (USB dongle) for $99. Both will be available in April. Both versions will give you free access to Garmin's online service that feeds you weather, flight status and hotel rates.
The Catch: Using a laptop as a GPS only won't get you killed if you have a passenger, or have something secure in your car to mount it with

Mulholland Dr. Director David Lynch Hates People Who Watch Movies on the iPhone

Nokmate for Nokia N95,N73,N82,N93i

Maxtor Black Armor

The Goods: Maxtor's BlackArmor portable hard drive differentiates itself from other portable HDs—a market already crowded with schway-looking options—by being a data security badass, the most hardcore of any external storage. It uses gov't-grade AES encryption at the hardware level, so everything on the drive is encrypted and it's harder to bust. Did we mention it looks like straight off an Area 51 drone's office desk? The Drag: It's only 160GB (there's way bigger), and aesthetically pleasing peace of mind is expensive, almost a buck a GB at $150

iRiver Wing UMPC

The Goods: The iRiver Wing is a cute little UMPC with a touchscreen and 4GB of flash storage. It's got Wi-Fi, obviously, and supposedly is instant-on. No word on the battery life. The Bads: It runs Windows CE Pro for the OS, and the keyboard looks like it could be difficult to pound on.