Does Jack Dorsey right a bell? Yup, he’s the man responsible for bringing Twitter to the world, and we all know how successful that is. It turns out that he’s also the one piecing the Square iPhone puzzle together which says a lot about the technical know how of the guy heading this ingenious project. Of course, Twitter is totally different from Square being that the former is a social networking platform while the latter is a bit more on the serious side as it deals with financial transactions, but who knows, he may just have another hit on his hands here.

[via engadget]

Make your precious data a priority target for casual thieves and professional armed robbers with Chinagrabber’s new knock-off 999.9 gold bar USB flash drive. While we don’t think it’s such a good idea for one’s own personal use, it should be a great gift for your favorite boss or uncle.

Here’s what Chinagrabber has to say about it:

If you are tired of looking at your old normal shaped flash drive but need large amounts of memory space for all of your data, this is the flash disk you have been looking for. Very small, made from high quality metal, with full USB 2.0 connection speed, and compatibility with most popular OS’s, this little memory gadget has it all. Get an item that is sure to stand out from your competition in your own online store or eBay storefront at an incomparable low wholesale price direct from China to you.

It’s a 4GB drive in almost real pure gold for only $19.99. I wonder why they didn’t include a built-in MP3 player and white iPod earplugs.

[via Chinagrabber]

There’s a dongle you attach to the earphone jack where you can swipe the card, and the accompanying app then requires the user to enter the amount and signature of the payee. The receipt will then be emailed to the buyer while geotagging is used in recording each transaction. It sounds really interesting, but you should be aware, though, that there’s a surcharge to the service and it’s not yet commercially available as it is still currently in its early alpha testing stage at the moment. Nonetheless, this looks like a very promising accessory for those who love using their iPhone and have a mobile business to run as well.

[via engadget]

The new multi-touch technology from Synaptics offers enough space for 10-finger touch control. The ClearPad 3000 has 8 inches of multi-touch screen space. In their demo sample, the ClearPad 3000 is usable enough for dual-player gaming mode. ClearPad 3000 right now is still too expensive to mass-produce but it won’t be too long before manufacturers can out the technology on store shelves.

Maybe we’ll see this in a Macbook Nano Touch.

[via pocket-lint]

The RK2808 is a new processor from Rockchip Electronics that is capable of supporting Android on a mobile phone. Android-ready processors seems to be in Rockchip’s immediate future.

If you’re a regular visitor of PMP Today or have owned a cheap PMP from China, you might have heard of the rockchip processor. The company behind it is threatening to develop a rockchip processors that will be capable of running Android and will retail for a lot less than the competition. They have already released such chip, the RK2808. Now, of course, no one has tested it yet but it is plainly evident that rockchip processors will be more powerful in the future. The company also promises to release an RK2808-based PMP this July or later and by October we may see an official Chinese Android phone powered by rockchip RK2808.

[source]

It sports a similar form factor to what Nokia is offering though the keyboard on the xpPhone is noticeably more crammed and has what appears to be a mini touchpad. It also boasts of a 4.8-inch 800×480 touchscreen display, 1.3-megapixel camera, an AMD processor, 1GB RAM, 64GB SSD, WiFi, and various cell radio supprt, but what truly sets this apart is that it runs on Windows XP just as its name suggests. We’re not completely sure how successful it’ll be in providing consumers with an all-in-one device, but just by looking at it alone, this might just be another case of a jack-of-all-trades device that ends up being the master of none.

No price or availability date was mentioned. However, if you’re within the vicinity of Computex, you can check xpPhone out for yourself.

[via engadget]

Which leads us to “Pink”. The new but more reliable rumor from ZDnet provides us with a tasty glimpse of the new Microsoft product, probably not ZuneHD but a smartphone running Windows Mobile 7:

• Powered by Snapdragon and Nvidia Tegra and will be based on OMAP 3
• 3.5-inch touchscreen
• WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometer, 3 MP camera and a compass (everything iPhone has and the new iPhone will have)

Engadget is saying “Pink” is software (read), which does not discount a Zune phone or a new Windows Mobile phone, but Microsoft like Ballmer had implied several times, is already on the mobile phone business via WinMo and will not a branded hardware to prove that.

Tommasco Gecchelin has virtually confirmed that a MacBook tablet is coming. There’s no mention of a MacBook Nano Touch, however but, then, we’re only really interested in the multitouch feature on a MacBook. The new design will be groundbreaking in not just the touch panel implementation on an Apple laptop but the inclusion of a screen that actually folds flat on the table. You can’t do this on current MacBooks which only go so far.

The MacTouch will weight around 1 kilo and will feature a very wantable OLED screen. OLED screens aren’t only better with wider viewing angles than current LCDs, but they are also flexible. Imagine what Apple can do with OLED. Unfortunately, since the designs are only coming out now, it’s most likely we’ll have to wait for at least another year before seeing prototypes of Tommasco Gecchelin’s MacBook Touch. [designer is a Yanko Designer and does not officially work for Apple.]

More info: The MacBook Touch will come with a magic dock. It’s netbook-size with a touchscreen keyboard that’s a continuous part of the screen. Folded completely flat, it’s a desktop screen. There’s an iPen and an interesting Magic Dock. Alsom black Macbook comes back. More photos after the break.

[9to5mac via I4U]

The Archos 5 and 7 internet tablets will now enjoy ntive HD videos with the $20 HD Plug-in accessory after they update to Firmware 1.6.03.  These are 720 x 1280 videos playing at 24fps. The firmware update also fixes several bugs: recording bu on the new Archos TV snap-on, and bugs in the Music Library, TV Program Guide and in the GUI, including the animated wallpaper failing to go fullscreen. And the new features:

• HiDef Video Plug-in support
  - WMV/VC1 AP at 720p, 24 fps, 6 Mbps maximum
  - MPEG-4 ASP w/o QPEL and GMC at 720p, 24 fps, 6 Mbps maximum
• Network: Now display only one Hidden SSID item in the access point list even if several are detected (Note: previous Wifi configuration is lost after firmware update)

[more at dapreview]

As far as touchscreen phones are concerned, Samsung is definitely one of the leaders in the industry. As a testament to this, Samsung proudly claims that they now control 25% of the touchscreen phone market. In addition to this, their Samsung F480 is reported to do quite well despite being a bit outdated already as more than 500K units continue to ship out every month. Likewise, the Samsung Omnia i900 isn’t doing so bad either taking up 18% of the smartphone market in Germany, 17% in France, and 15% in Italy. That’s quite an impressive feat, but that’s all last year. This year is a brand new ball game, and it will be an even bigger challenge for Samsung to sustain their remarkable performance in 2008.

[unwiredview via cellphones etc]