Hot girls holding Nokia phones

OK, so Nokia released a new phone, the Nokia 6700 Slide – who gives a shit, right? Not us, but those canny people at Nokia Hong Kong thought it would be a good idea to use two rather hot Chinese girls to hold up the phone for promotional shots. Those PR people certainly know how to get our attention.

The phone itself is like, erm, a slider phone. One of those Symbian ones which everyone always sort of puts up with. Camera happy Neonpunch have a whole gallery of the model’s photos. We approve. Well done to all involved. We’ll certainly be in the market for the yummy girl in the rose-patterned top.

HP buy Palm

Well it’s official – Hewlett-Packard have bought the ailing Palm. The acquisition cost $1.2 billion, mostly in cash, which works out around $5.70 per share. The deal will go through at the end of July.

What does it mean? Well, HP will own Palm’s webOS which they consider a “prized asset” and intend to make it available on a range of products – smartphones, tablet PCs and netbooks. Palm will still continue development of webOS, and Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein will remain with the company.

So with HP’s backing, we might end up seeing webOS on a range of phones and tablet PCs. It could be good news then.

New series! Korean girls not holding things

If the title to this post sounds like a flimsy excuse to post pictures of the delectable Hwang Mi Hee then that’s because it is. What can we say? Sunday is just too far away to wait.

“You can’t buy our computers, now f*ck off”

In the latest in a series of dick moves, Apple have now banned Japanese shops from selling their products online. Well done there Apple…

Apparently Apple think it makes their brand “cheaper”, but clearly it’s just an attempt to remove the competition and force all online sales through their own online store. Except you can of course just go into a real shop and buy an Apple product, so banning sales online is really just causing inconvenience to customers and screwing over the distributors.

This seems to be the norm for Apple lately though, what with banning Adobe from recompiling Flash applications into iPhone ones, sending the cops into Gizmodo’s offices and generally treating the whole world like morons. Nice one Steve Jobs!

Sunday Girl

Ok, we admit, we were too busy looking at the image to pay any attention to the name. Regardless, we thought we should share this lovely Chinese girl with you for this week’s Sunday Girl. Happy Sunday!

Dell’s Looking Glass Android Tablet

As previously mentioned, it’s been a big day of new hardware leakage for Dell. We’ve covered their new phones, which look quite sexy we have to say. One of the other big highlights is the Dell Looking Glass, an Nvidia Tegra 2 powered Android tablet PC.

It’s not too different from the previously shown Dell Streak, their 5″ Android tablet, although the Looking Glass is of course bigger and powered by a much beefier Tegra 2 chip (as opposed to the Streak’s Snapdragon CPU).

The Looking Glass is essentially billed as a portable media player and web browser, with a built-in 3G connection (so yes, it is technically a phone too). Having the 3G connection means Dell can sell the device with the Android Market enabled – being a phone is one of Google’s stipulations for using the market. It also makes it a viable, cheaper alternative to the iPad (it runs Flash for starters).

The spec list is quite healthy. There’s that Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, the 7 inch 800×600 screen, 4GB RAM, 4GB flash storage + SD slot, a 1.3 megapixel camera, GPS, WiFi and of course 3G. All packed into a system a bit smaller than an iPad, and lighter at just 500g. It’s due for release this November, and if the price is right it could be good.

Dell’s Thunder, Flash, Lightning & Smoke Phones

Dell had a bit of a mass leak today, with a flood of new phones. Some of which are actually quite impressive. Possibly the best amongst the bunch, is the Dell Thunder, pictured above. It’s an Android-based smartphone with a 4.1″ WGVA OLED screen and Dell’s own custom ‘Stage’ UI on top of Android (it’s also speculated to have a Snapdragon CPU, although that’s as yet unconfirmed). It looks quite nice indeed, and reminds us of HTC’s EVO 4G or Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10. It’s due for release at the end of this year.

Engadget also has coverage of all the other new phones Dell leaked, including the Windows Phone 7 based Dell Lightning phone (which has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard), the quite sexy Android-based Dell Flash which is a bit like a smaller, metallic version of the Thunder, the oddly designed Dell Smoke (a candybar phone with a QWERTY keyboard, also running Android), and Dell’s big Tegra 2 powered 3G tablet known as the Dell Looking Glass. That’s a lot of stuff!

Using VPN to watch BBC iPlayer & Hulu

This is a brief How To Guide, for those of you who wish to use a VPN connection to watch blocked (IP-restricted) content on foreign websites such as BBC iPlayer, 4OD, Hulu, ABC, Fox, etc. This can be really useful if you’re overseas for work or play, or just want to watch US online television in the UK, or vice versa.

• First you need to sign up to a VPN service. Generally you have to pay for them, at least $5 a month. There are plenty to choose from – we quite like 12VPN because they provide automatically configured software for you to download and install, as well as providing you with both a UK and US IP address.
• Download and install VPN software, such as OpenVPN for PC or Viscosity for Mac. (12VPN provide pre-configured OpenVPN and Viscosity downloads for their members.)
• Configure your VPN client with the details of the service you subscribed to (you can skip this step if you downloaded a pre-configured client).
• Click connect on your VPN client. You may be able to choose which country/IP you wish to connect through.
• Go to a blocked overseas website such as BBC iPlayer or ABC – enjoy watching as the website thinks you’re in the UK or USA.

Here’s some nice high quality F1 racing streaming on BBC iPlayer, through the VPN connection – speeds are generally very good for streaming video at normal quality with no stuttering or delay. Higher quality video streams may need to be pre-loaded for a couple of minutes. There can be a tiny latency (delay) when loading some sites, but it’s fine for streaming video.

Note that this summer, the BBC are live streaming all of their World Cup 2010 games on BBC iPlayer (they show more than half the matches, including the final). So if you want to watch the World Cup with the BBC’s excellent commentary, you can do that online and from anywhere in the world.

New iPhone 4G leaked

It’s been flushing around the internet for a couple of days – reports of ‘prototype’ iPhone lost in a bar, apparently the new iPhone 4G – though at first it smelt like bullshit, a story too contrived, with people at MacRumours commenting that the design looked like a “cheap Japanese fake” (they don’t seem to realise that China makes the cheap knock-offs, not Japan).

Now though Gizmodo have posted an in-depth article on the new iPhone, which they claim is proof that the thing is 100% real. We’re moderately convinced now.

In a surprising twist, the Apple sites which previously called this a “cheap Japanese knock-off” now recognise it to be a stunning piece of “Apple industrial design that fits in perfectly with the product line” (nice turnaround, Apple fanboys!).

Gizmodo don’t know much about the new iPhone hardware, as they can’t seem to turn their device on, but they do report it has an improved camera, an extra front-facing camera, a higher resolution display, a few more buttons, and uses a Micro-SIM slot rather than the standard SIM card. It’s basically the same size and weight as the current iPhone, just a little bit thinner. We still don’t know what type of CPU it has, whether it uses the same A4 chip as the iPad or not (probably, we’d guess).

So there it is. It seems quite real. You can probably buy one in June or July.

HTC Droid Incredible Reviewed

Engadget have just posted a review of the HTC Droid Incredible, what is in effect the US version of the HTC Desire, the latest Android smartphone with HTC’s Sense UI.

As we mentioned earlier the Incredible has a few upgrades over the Desire, such as an improved 8 megapixel camera, 8Gb of built in storage, and a few other subtle tweaks (as well as looking quite different).

It seems like the guys over at Engadget loved it, saying “the Droid Incredible is the best Android device that you can purchase in America right now. It’s better than the Droid, better than the Nexus One, and certainly beats the pants off of any previous generation handsets.”

Sunday Girl: Song Hye Kyo

This week’s Sunday Girl is the adorable Song Hye Kyo, a famous Korean model and actress. She has appeared in many lovely adverts. If she advertises something, we’d probably buy it. Even though we have no use for Laneige face moisturiser.

Korean girl holding a thing

It’s that time again – time for Korean girl thing holding! This time it’s a cute Korean girl holding what appears to be a Dell Inspiron Mini notebook computer. We hear notebook computers are all the rage in Korea. Keen viewers will also realise she’s standing in front of a Volkswagen Beetle. What this has to do with anything, we don’t know. Perhaps she accidentally wandered into the Volkswagen display area, or someone crashed the Beetle into Dell’s stand. Does this demonstrate a certain violent rivalry between Dell and Volkswagen? That would seem unlikely, given that the companies aren’t even in the same industry. We hope the cute Korean girl remained safe during the incident.