Gizmogs

"Better known for its porky attributes is actually Windows Vista, whose early incarnation was called “a pig” by the manager of the project"

Your gift list has increased, while cash in the bank has decreased. Time to ramp up the savings. Here are some websites that help you to save money on your Holiday gift giving. Enjoy!

Some people are so obsessed with beauty, it seems. Take the STC Wireless Router

from Saudi Telecom, for example. Now how attractive could a wireless internet router get? Pretty much eye-catching, is what one would conclude looking at this one.

f you are looking to drop a lot of dough on a seemingly fragile speaker system then you might want to check out the Harion. These speakers made of Heat-resistant glass are manufactured by Hario, a glass maker in Tokyo. They will cost about 16 million yen or $168,000. You get a center speaker, a sub woofer, a couple of tweeters and mid-range speakers. It sounds like a lot of the cost comes from the long and difficult development.

Egad, we haven't mentioned the BlackBerry Storm yet. In case you've been on Mars, the Storm is RIMM's long-awaited just-released entry into the touch-screen phone market, available only with Verizon.

This will be is a shock to BlackBerry devotees, but the Storm is the first BlackBerry without a real keyboard. Instead, like the iPhone, its keyboard is virtual--only the Storm has a technical twist that is supposed to give you something like a real keyboard tactical experience.

here's nothing like having your (smart)phone work for you: Nokia is coming up with the Home Control Center, an application that could help in many areas like home security, energy usage monitoring or device/lighting activation. The cool thing is that Nokia isn't trying to do the heavy lifting by themselves. They will let third-party companies create applications and plug-ins, thanks to an extensible architecture.

What no beige?

No grey?

Finally, some design engineer was thinking outside the box !

This is a sleek all black design with rounded edges that actually looks good on my desk ….oh and its compact so it fits on my desk too.

How it ships

Here is a Pic of the stuff right out of the box

Next in a long line of contenders for the so-called “Smart Phone.” Featuring a very limited button selection, camera, color screen, and hiding feature, (and not much else,) here comes the “Cute Phone!” It requires only one more feature to be true to the culture: a hole to hang colorful keychains and blinky beads!

Blinky trinkets is what this phone needs! You know, the kind you buy in the whole of Europe, street vendors in Rome, London, and most important: the entirety of Japan.

A quick lesson in Japanese! The word “Kawaii” in Japanese is close to the word “Cute” in English. The difference is, there’s a large “counterculture” tied to Kawaii. A whole lifestyle!

What started as a concept earlier this year is actually coming to fruition as a real retail product this December. The Cowon S9 will retain all the proposed specs; sleek body, curved back, 3.3″ AMOLED touchscreen display with 16 million colors, 500Mhz DUAL CORE CPU (hello!), T-DMB, bluetooth, FM radio, voice recorder, dictionary, USB 2.0, T.V. out, and tilt sensors. Hardware wise - it’s a win. Now lets see the interface. If it passes that, the only thing holding it back is price but knowing Cowon, it’ll be surprisingly affordable.

Designer: Cowon

As wonderful as the iPhone is, it leaves out anyone visually impaired. This Silicon Touch iPhone case works in tandem with an app to allow special accessibility functions like text to speech and moon type tactile feedback. The case is engraved with modified bas-relief buttons each corresponding to a modified home screen on the iPhone. None of the phone’s functions are compromised. Multi-touch and finger flick scrolling are all intact. BRILLIANT!

And you know what that means right? LUNCHTIME! Everyday at noon butterflies flutter around this clock called “Scent of Time” because they’re drawn to the sweet smell of roses in bloom. Lets extend that concept further by allowing you to designate what each hour smells like via tiny fragrance capsules. Once you train your brain to the hourly smells, you’ll be able to gauge the exact hour of the day. Mmmm 7 AM smells like toast and eggs. YUMMY!

Designer: Hyun Choi

Okay, maybe not from the ground up. You do start with a Trek bike (name synonymous to race quality) but you choose the colors, the components, and accessories. It’s bike couture because it’s custom fitted to you, not just aesthetically but for your body too. I built mine to a cost of $4,500 with a 30-day build period. Even if you can’t afford one, it’s fun just building out your dream bike.

Link: Project One

Just in time for the holidays and all the photo-friendly activities that come with the season, Sprint and VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media announced today an enhancement to Sprint Picture Mail that allows Sprint customers to send digital photos and videos straight from their phones to popular social media sites, including MySpace, Photobucket and YouTube.

Possibly the next innovative way of getting a large display screen with a smaller phone body size, Samsung SDI has presented their foldable AMOLED display prototype during the FPDI 2008. There are 2 pieces of thin AMOLED displays placed side by side, creating a almost perfect large WQVGA display screen. You can only see a very thin line at the joint of 2 AMOLED displays. Check out the video here.

I have to admit that first impressions of the Samsung YP-U4 got me a little over-excited. I looked at the unit, checked out the price, and thought I'd just found this year's best MP3 stocking filler. Last year's, if you remember, was the SanDisk Sansa Clip. Even one year on at £22 to £50 for 1GB to 8GB varieties, it's still a great sounding, tiny player that thrashes the iPod Shuffle for features and pricing. Pulling out the YP-U4, however, I thought it finally had a decent rival.