Filed under: Displays, GPS, Transportation

Despite cries of privacy invasion from the city’s many drivers, interactive entertainment / advertising / navigation platforms are still being rolled out in New York’s 13,000+ cabs, with major player TaxiTech’s eTaxi solution the latest to receive approval from the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission. One of four companies certified by the TLC to fill a mandate requiring these rigs in all cabs by October, TaxiTech has teamed up with hardware partners Apriva, Ingenico, and Grey Island Systems to offer a very polished looking setup centered around a 15-inch touchscreen capable of delivering a whole slew of valuable infoswag. (Click here to check out a video of the eTaxi interface). Like Digital Dispatch’s SmartCab system before it, eTaxi gives passengers the ability to track their route in real time (no more pricey “shortcuts” for unsuspecting tourists), kick back to some ad-supported video or music content, bone up on historical info about the city, and even pay their fare with a credit card, tacking on a pre-calculated tip with the push of a finger. Sounds pretty convenient to us; let’s just hope we don’t have to start eating part of the multi-thousand dollar per car annual fee it’s costing cab companies to install these luxuries.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Laptops

Much as they did back at the time of Vista’s launch, Sony decided to refresh a bunch of its laptops in one fell swoop, today announcing no less than 21 new VAIOs in four different model ranges. Those include the VAIO A, BX, FZ and G series, which each get upgrades of varying degrees. The top end of the lot are the VAIO A series laptops, which pack 17-inch displays (1920×1200 on the higher end model), T7100 or T7300 Core 2 Duo processors, up to 2GB of RAM, two 120GB hard drives, an optional Blu-ray drive, and NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics. Taking things down a notch, the FZ series laptops each boast 15.4-inch displays, along with Core 2 Duo processors and slightly smaller hard drives, while the VAIO BX models will give you a choice of 14.1 or 15.4-inch displays, Core 2 Duo processors, up to 2GB of RAM, and a max 120GB hard drive. Rounding out the line-up is the VAIO G, which is lightweight in more ways than one, boasting a 12.1-inch display, a Core Solo U1400 processor, 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive. Look for all them to roll out in Japan over the course of July, with them starting at just ¥109,800 ($900) and going all the way up to ¥400,000 ($3,285).

[Via Impress and Akihabara News]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Yesterday when Steve showed us 10 of his favorite new Leopard features, he left out at least a couple we were a little more than interested in: HD DVD and Blu-ray support. While Tiger does have support for HD DVD and Blu-ray drives, it’s not able to play back Hollywood movies from either format. Someone at MacRumors has discovered that the new DVD Movie Player.app in Leopard now includes preferences for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Sure, Tiger included a preference pane for “HD”, but this was for discs with H.264 encoded HD video created in Apple’s DVD Studio Pro — or the like. Of course, this isn’t the only thing needed to add next-gen Hollywood movies to Leopard, but we’re hoping Apple can pile on the rest before October, like AACS, HDCP, VC1 and of course an actual drive shipped with a new Mac.

[Via AVSForum]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Handhelds, Portable Video

While it’s not like we expect e-dictionaries to hop on the fast track of upgrades or anything, it’s been way too long since Sharp’s flagship Papyrus received any attention, but the day has finally come for a successor to take over. The PW-TC920 picks right up with a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 resolution touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, handwriting recognition pad, SD flash card slot, internal handwriting translation ability, and is offered in both red and black color schemes. The real kicker, however, is the 1Seg TV tuner that allows you to kick back and enjoy a television show in between study sessions, and the headphone out jack ensures that the crowd around you won’t become annoyed with your antics. Unfortunately, there’s no word yet surrounding a future price or release date, but hey, school’s out for the most of us anyway, right?

[Via Electronista]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

While some of you may be holding out for a 1GB Radeon HD 2900 XT, those looking to spend a little less can get a bit of instant gratification. ATI has just announced that the Radeon 2400 HD and 2600 HD are now shipping to board customers, meaning that a few more DirectX 10 graphics cards will be hitting store shelves in the not too distant future. Both cards will also include the company’s Unified Video Decoder (UVD), are based around a 65-nanometer chip, and will support HDMI and HDCP. Time to start scouring the neighborhood couches for spare change, eh?

[Via TGDaily]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!