Have you already memorized a T9 mobile phone keyboard back in those olden days, memorized a physical and touchscreen QWERTY keyboard layout on your mobile device and finally memorized how to use the Sywpe keyboard input feature on Android phones? Well, if those aren’t enough and you wish to challenge your fingers to be able to type on all the mobile keyboards ever made, here’s one from FlickKey, a note taking app for the iPhone.

FlickKey is said to have the world’s smallest virtual keyboard in the iPhone that is about only an inch in width and length. It comes with 9 letters on each tiny tiles and input depends on how you tap or swipe the tiles – different direction brings different letter. For example, an upward swipe on the left tile brings W, an upward diagonal right swipe is S and touching on that same tile will mean E. Pretty straight forward, and then you realize that your iPhone already has a keyboard that you’re all used to and don’t need that tiny little one.

On the bright side though, this app is not all that useless. Since watches that are paired with your phone are getting so common, it could come in useful in future wristwatches and perhaps the iPod Nano as well?

SOURCE via Gizmodo

Mugen and Honda go together like vanilla ice cream and apple pie. Sure, the pie can stand on its own, but a nice scoop of ice cream takes it to another level. Mugen rolled out a pair of tuned CR-Z hybrids at the 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed, and the blokes from Auto Express asked to spend a day with one of them. Their team also wrangled away the keys to another “unlimited power” vehicle: a Mugen-tuned Ariel Atom.

How do the two compare to each other? Let’s be real here… they don’t. One is a naked track assassin and having one of the fastest lap-time on Top Gear’s test track, while the other is a juiced-up hybrid wearing a body kit. Both vehicles have had Mugen wrenches applied to their engines, but that’s pretty much where the comparison should end. Still, we can’t say it’s not entertaining.

Click past the jump to see how they “stack up” against each other.

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Having a real-life Batmobile in your driveway sounds like a fun idea. Upon closer inspection, however, it’s not going to be that exciting. Most often, Batmobile replicas are powered by something like a junkyard-salvaged General Motors 350, featuring an interior reminiscent of a hastily cobbled together 24 Hours of LeMons racer. A man by the name of Casey Putsch decided he wanted a Batmobile to call his own, but he wasn’t ready to settle for second-rate.

This particular Putsch is the same man behind Putsch Racing, an outfit that restore, designs and appraises all manner of items automotive. When we said that Casey Putsch wasn’t going to settle for a low-rent Batmobile, we meant it. Instead, Putsch has assembled what he says is the only turbine-powered Batmobile in the world. Read more…

Plug Sony’s new 180g portable drive into your PC and you’ll get decent USB 3.0 storage plus some preloaded software that claims to accelerate transfers over USB 2.0. Hook this tiny black brick to your other Sony-branded devices and you’ll unlock even more quest items. Will you actually believe that shit?

Besides storing data, it has other plenty of features at least, to compensate for its VAIO-ish price. It can record broadcasts straight off a Bravia TV, for example, so you can watch them back later on another device. It’ll also hoover up footage directly from a new HandyCam (such as the DCR-SX21E or DCR-SR21), removing the need for a PC. And, when you’re done, you can connect the HD-PG5U to your PS3 and watch all your AVCHD videos back via the Filmy app — again, no PC required.

SOURCE via Trusted Reviews

Generally Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference is a relatively low key affair, but today it caught a few in the tech world off guard by unveiling not one or two, but four new Windows Phone 7 handsets running Mango. Acer and ZTE both have models on tap, as does Fujitsu — which slathered its mobile in pink and gave it a waterproof seal. The biggest news though was Samsung. Microsoft pulled out what is believed to be the SGH-i937, a version of the Galaxy S II that sports the Redmond mobile OS instead of Android.

SOURCE via winrumors

AMD and Nvidia have been biting the hands and necks of each other. Now that Nvidia has thrown in a new flagship for their mobile GPU division for extreme gaming laptops with their new GTX580M, AMD is also going to join in the ring.

The outfit just unveiled the Radeon HD 6990M with DirectX11 and HD3D support, and it insists this is the speediest GPU on the block — specifically, up to 25 percent faster than any other GPU that’s been announced to the public. And yes, AMD’s well aware of that 580M. Just like NVIDIA came out swinging, making pointed comparisons to the Radeon HD 6970M, AMD’s got some fighting words of its own: the company says the 6990M can whip the 580M in the benchmark AvP and games such as Batman Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age 2, Shogun 2, BattleForge, Left 4 Dead, Metro2033, Wolfenstein MP, The Chronicles of Riddick, and ET: Quake Wars. We don’t need to remind you that these numbers merely represent the story each company wants to tell. Still, you get the idea: these are the top-of-the-line cards each has to offer at the moment, and they’ll likely be competing for space in your next gaming rig.

As you can imagine, the 6990M joins other Radeon HD cards in supporting the company’s Eyefinity technology, as well as GPU app acceleration. Let it be known, too, that while the 6990M supplants the popular 6970M as far as performance claims go, AMD tells us the 6970M will still be available for the foreseeable future. Speaking of availability, the 6990M will be offered in the Alienware M18x — right alongside NVIDIA’s 580M.

Additionally, you’ll find it packed inside Clevo’s P170HM and P150HM. And you didn’t think we forgot about specs, did you? Head on past the break to find the full PR, along with a handful of technical details straight from the horse’s mouth.

Having a big, 1280 x 800 10.1-inch screen is just no good if your favorite old Android apps haven’t been updated to use it. Ideally all devs would tweak their products to properly light up those pixels, but that’s not always possible. Google’s stepping in, adding another display option on “a near-future release of Honeycomb” that will simply zoom the app to fit the screen. This is separate from the current stretching option, which sometimes look bad or doesn’t work. When this mode is enabled the app will be rendered at approximately 320 x 480 and that image blown up to fit. Pretty looking results? Unlikely, but a little Vaseline on the lens can only boost the confidence of these aging apps.

SOURCE via Android Developers Blog