Google G0 Android Smartphone Concept: If Only the G1 Was So Slick [Concepts]

Tryi Yeh's Android smartphone concept, cheekily dubbed the G0, is a touchscreen slider, but the slide-out section isn't a hardware keyboard. Instead, it's got a camera and four customizable smartkeys. Still, we like the design, and it looks fairly realistic.

The G0 concept comes with a few equally-conceptual accessories, including what seems to be an inductive charger a la the Pre's Touchstone, as well as some kind of media hookup that uses a very Windows Media Center-like interface. We can't exactly tell what's going on with the slider: It might actually be detachable, though we can't be sure. Make it a hardware QWERTY and we're sold. [Tryi Yeh via DVICE]

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Enhanced Gmail Plug-in for BlackBerry now in beta testing

It's no secret that using Gmail on a BlackBerry is a painful experience -- since the built-in mail client has shamefully broken IMAP support, your only real choice is a variant of the same Java-based Gmail app that runs on ancient featurephones, and that rules out direct integration with either contacts or attachments. Yeah, it's sad, but hope is in the air, as RIM's apparently beta testing something called the "Enhanced Gmail Plug-in for BlackBerry," which promises to bring things up to speed. Features are said to include Conversation View, support for labels, stars, and archiving, and full mailbox search -- you know, Gmail. Of course, it would be even nicer if RIM would just sack up and bring proper IMAP support to the most famous messaging platform in the world, but we'll take what we can get.

[Via BerryReview]

Filed under: Cellphones

Enhanced Gmail Plug-in for BlackBerry now in beta testing originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scientists Create Eerie Ambient Music Using Human Brains, MRI Machines [Brains]

A professor at Trinity College in Connecticut has written what is essentially a MIDI player for the human brain, converting MRI imagery into a sort of bleeping, blooping ambient music.

Here's how it works: people are subjected to a range of stimuli, ranging from a series of flashing lights to a driving simulator to, well, silence, while changes in brain activity are monitored by MRI. The results get passed through software that assigns specific tones to different regions of the brain, netting something like a song for each scan.

These impulses aren't inherently musical—they've been deliberative assigned tones that sound nice together, and even so sound rather chaotic—nor would you expect them to be, since this is just a novel way to present MRI. What's fascinating is how noticeably different the sounds of active and dormant brains, or troubled and untroubled brains actually are. And not to diminish the seriousness of schizophrenia in any way, but the scanned map and accompanying sounds for an affected brain, seen at about 40 seconds into the video, are nothing short of awesome. [New Scientist]

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Rising Stars, Fading Stars, Hit-Driven Stars - http://bit.ly/BWTCM

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Sprint first to offer a 99-cent netbook, but is it worth it?

We knew we'd see cheap / free subsidized netbooks eventually, and here we are: Best Buy and Sprint are offering up a Compaq-branded HP Mini 110c for just 99 cents when you sign a two-year data contract. Yeah, it looks good on paper, especially since AT&T and Verizon will ding you $199 for the same machine, but we just don't think it's worth it: at $60 a month for service, you'll be spending $1,440 for two years of pain with that 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB of RAM and three-cell battery. We'd say you're way better off grabbing a 3G USB stick you can use with multiple machines, or, if you're feeling particularly baller, throwing down for a MiFi and kicking it mobile hotspot style -- it'll cost the same $60 a month from Sprint, but you'll be able to get five machines online at once. But that's just us -- any of you particularly hot for this almost-free netbook?

[Via jkOnTheRun]

Filed under: Laptops

Sprint first to offer a 99-cent netbook, but is it worth it? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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