During a recent roundtable discussion, Mozilla CEO John Lilly announced the final release of Firefox 3 will be available in June. According to the timeline Beta 5 is expected to be available in early April and the first Release Candidate (RC1) is expected in the beginning of May. While a Beta 5 will be nice to see, that almost seems like a formality at this point, RC1 will be the nice step (especially for early-adopters) because at that point we will start to see more themes and extensions beginning to work (or work properly) with Firefox 3.
Current estimates put the use of Firefox 3 beta 4 at around 700,000 users, which is just a very small portion of the total 160 million people running Firefox. Personally I have been running beta 4 on all my machines since its release, which is a mix of Mac and PC’s, and although I should not say write it, I have yet to experience any issues, aside from themes and extensions not working.
The Nuvi 860 will be released in Europe in May 2008 for €600. The gadget features Bluetooth connectivity, voice-guided instructions, speech recognition, FM traffic receiver, FM transmitter, and microSD memory card slot. [GPSandCo]
We now have additional details about one of the recently announced upcoming LG fashion phones, and this time it’s the LG KF300 that’s put in the spotlight. We now find that the LG KF300 will be a Tri-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE cellphone featuring a 2-megapixel autofocus camera, Flash UI, Vector Font, FM Radio, 10MB of internal memory (expandable with a MicroSD card slot) and a clamshell form factor that’s definitely hip. The KF300 will be the mainstream version of the Korea-market only LG Wine released back in 2007, and will surely attract its own base of phone fashionistas. So if you know one, watch out for it in the next few months.
No matter how cool it is to hang a super-skinny flat panel on your wall, virtually every LCD or Plasma television is looking like the same, nondescript rectangular box. So it’s good to finally see that somebody out there is thinking a little outside of that box.
This new design for a Humax LCD television was envisioned by UK industrial designer Tej Chauhan. Combining the curvy lines of an old 1950s television with the modern technology of today’s flat screens, the set is a real stunner.
It’s not been revealed if the set will ever see the light of day as a production model, or if it’s just a conceptual prototype. Either way, it’s good to see something different, and I’m hoping that it does make its way to stores some day. If you happen to be in Milan, Italy between April 16-21, you can check it out in person at the Zona Tortona design show.
SlashGear and its sister site Phone Mag are getting ready to hit Vegas strip to bring you CTIA Wireless 2008 coverage. No, we did not bring piles of greens to gamble away, but we will bet you this – We will bring you one of the best CTIA Wireless coverage around the web. So bookmark our CTIA 2008 coverage tag. While the show starts on the 1st of April, Our coverage will starts on the 31st of March with pre-show.
Byron Lahey and other researchers at Arizona State University are working on this all terrain iRobot modification. He writes:
Robot Create robots are easily programmable and expandable in their functionality, but can only travel on a very limited varieties of terrain (carpet, hard flat floors and other typical interior domestic surfaces). As part of the Arts, Media and Engineering program we are working on systems related to the Mars exploration rovers. To teach about these systems and allow students to test and explore terrain navigation and mapping with robots, we needed robots with expanded terrain navigation capabilities. This video demonstrates an early prototype modification of the iRobot, comparing the performance of a modified and unmodified robot traveling on a rocky surface.
This video first shows how epicly the standard iRobot Create fails on a non-flat surface, then shows how his mods make it work better. Here are some photos of the modifications.
[Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Written by Becky Stern on March 27th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Robotics.
The FCC has just approved Nokia’s newest cameraphone, the N6220 classic which doesn’t look like any of the latest N-series mobile phones. But what the 6220 lacks in the trendy physical design, it made up through its high-end features. Topping the list of these features are a whooping 5-megapixel camera with Xenon flash, GPS and the latest version of the S60 operating system.
The Nokia 6220 either make the other Nokia high end phones pale in comparison or match them up with its own powerful features. The 6220 is better than the Nokia N82 with its built-in geotagging which will embed location of the 6220 users whenever there is a GPS signal in that location. The 6220’s video capability matches up with the N95, N82 and other Nseries phone with its 30fps shooting speed at VGA (640x480) resolution. And the 6220’s TV-out capability is not common among Nokia N-Series models.
With a Nokia phone that packs all those high-end features, some people are wondering why the 6220 will not be released as an Nseries phone model. Unfortunately, the 6220, despite having all those features has no Wi-Fi support. The Nokia developers might have been too busy sprinkling the 6220 with features that they forgot to include one basic feature common to high-end phones today.
Other than the lack of Wi-Fi and the TV-out feature, there is nothing more peculiar about the 6220. This could probably explain why it was not given the N marking. It would not add anything new to the Nseries model.
SlashGear and its sister site 
