Gizmo Geeks

We’re not exactly up on our French, let alone our French telecommunications law, but we’re hearing that Apple’s supposed launch of the iPhone in that country is being held up by two different regulations that prevent the iPhone from being the locked-down revenue-generating machine Apple wants it to be. The first, a law passed in 1998, requires that carriers unlock any phone upon customer request — for a fee during the first six months of a contract and for free after that. Notably, all three major French carriers — including Orange, which was supposed to get the iPhone — have lost lawsuits challenging this law. The second, which we’re slightly less clear on, apparently requires carriers to sell both locked and unlocked phones. Tensions over the regulations have apparently strained the relationship between the companies to the point where Orange spokespeople are saying things like “the risk we’re evaluating this week is that Apple crosses France off,” but really, who expected Apples and Oranges to mix without someone getting a little bruised?

Read — French unlocking law with unlocking provision at end of Article II
Read — Les Echoes report on Apple / Orange tension

Disclaimer: Although this post was written by an attorney, the attorney in question only met his university’s foreign language graduation requirement by reciting an Eddie Izzard routine verbatim, so this post should not be considered legal advice or analysis of any kind.

via engadget.com [Original post]

Liked it? Share it:

iRiver is sirening the world with its brand new DP350 media player.

We’ll directly come down to the specs:

• 4 GB Internal Memory
• 1.8″ display; resolution: 128 x 160 pixels
• Supports MPEG4, WMV, AAC, OGG, MP3, WMA, and WAV formats
• Integrated FM Radio
• Integrated Voice Recorder

Cool specs hmm. But the price tag of US$ 153 doesn’t really seem to suit the specs, because better PMP specifications are offered by other players at the same tag.

Liked it? Share it:

Rock has launched two laptops that offer HD-DVDs and claims to be the first to feature HD-DVD as standard.

They have got some cool looks to support their hot specs.

For more on the specs check out their models: Pegasus 670 & Xtreme 770.

The Pegasus series starts at £999.00 & the Xtreme starts at £1399.00.

Liked it? Share it:

Here’s a cool concept Vaio laptop with a holographic technology compressed into a thin glass, which acts as the screen.

Switch it off and the screen will go completely transparent and the keyboard turns opaque. Switch it back on and the touchscreen holographic capabilities are back.

Yanko Designs claims that such technology is not very far away on the technology timeline.

Let us wait and find out how long we need to wait to put our hands on to such amazing gadgets.

Liked it? Share it:

Not a lot of information is really available about this one, but it is definitely worth a mention.

The AMP speaker is an innovation that doubles up as a desk and with built-in amplifiers, so all you need to do for the AMP to start crunching your numbers, is to connect it to your laptop, iPod, music player, radio or any other music device. There’s an audio jack that is used for this purpose, which ensures that you can connect it to any portable music device you have.

To round it up, it is equipped with a MOSFET amplifier and a 3-way speaker cone set.

It has been designed by Pieter Mae, but it is unclear from his website whether it is still a concept design or has it actually been engineered. Whatever may be the case, it doesn’t really seem very healthy for a laptop though, because of the highly charged magnetic fields it shall bear and the heavy vibrations that it might produce.

Liked it? Share it: