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Sure, you read reviews and take recommendations from friends before you buy a new cellphone, but have you ever stopped to consider what the inventor of the cellphone uses on a daily basis? C-SPAN has, and recently took the opportunity to ask the man himself, Marty Cooper, that very question during a wide-ranging interview. While Cooper said that he has used an iPhone previously, he recently passed it on to his grandson in favor of a Motorola Droid , which he says he chose because he wanted to get more experience with Android. But that’s not all, Cooper also revealed that he…

We’d already gotten word of HP’s new $40 million “Let’s Do Amazing” ad campaign earlier today , but the company has just now rolled out its first series of ads to give us some indication of how all that money is being spent. Somewhat curiously, for an ad campaign partly intended to reintroduce the HP brand to consumers, the ads stray pretty far beyond HP’s consumer products (including a trip to a UPS sorting facility and the Venetian’s IT department), but we do at least get to see Dr. Dre extol the benefits of HP Beats audio — not to mention a little beatboxing …

Hmmm, it looks as though everything needs to have a touchscreen display these days, otherwise it will not be deemed as chic. Well, the Infinity Bath you see here has its own custom waterproof touchscreen that allows you to control a plethora of conditions including aromatherapy settings, water temperature, music and hydro-massage modes. Unfortunately for those who have opened their chequebooks, ready to write down the amount to bring one home, this is but a concept at point of publishing so you will just have to give it a pass. Permalink: Infinity Bath comes with own touchscreen display from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

Dolby’s Axon surround sound technology isn’t exactly new (it’s already used on a number of PC titles), but to date, it has yet to make a stand in the online console and Mac gaming sectors. All that changes today at GDC , with the aural company introducing an Axon software development kit that will make it possible for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and OS X titles to integrate the technology. According to the company, this here solution provides improved audio chain processing (noise suppression and echo suppression), surround sound voice chat over stereo headsets, 5.1 playback and support for any stereo headset. We’re told that the ports should be available for devs starting in April, though only time will tell how long it takes for …

Need a bit more evidence that the e-book download business is a whole lot different than the music download business? Then look no further than Barnes & Noble , which has just announced that it plans to make its B&N eReader app available for the Apple iPad “around the time” of the device’s launch. Details are otherwise a bit light, but the app will be free, and is apparently “designed specifically” for the iPad, giving you access to all of the books, magazines and newspapers available in Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore. Could a Kindle app be far behind? Barnes & Noble promises B&N eReader app for iPad near launch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Opera Software launched an Android version of the company’s Opera Mini 5 mobile browser Thursday that promises to significantly improve page loading and speed on compatible smartphones. The beta release continues the company’s campaign to increase the visibility of its browser on a global basis. Opera Mini 5 works in tandem with Opera’s servers to compress web-page content up to 90 percent before the data is sent to mobile phones, noted Opera Vice President Dag Olav Norem. “Opera Mini will give Android users fast and cost-efficient access to their favorite web sites and services,” he said. A Desktop-Like Experience Opera Mini 5 now includes popular browser features from the company’s platform for desktop PCs and notebooks, such as speed dial, tabbed browsing, password management, and bookmarks. The…

Opera Mini 5 Beta was first introduced about 5 months ago, but owners of Android-based smartphones had to wait until now to get their hands on Opera’s nifty mobile browser. This version is nearly identical to the Opera Mini 5 Beta for other handsets; biggest improvements are speed dial, tabbed browsing, password management and better optimization for touchscreen phones. Compared to the old Opera Mini 4.2, it’s a world of difference, so if you’re an Opera Mini user, you should definitely try out, even though it’s a beta. To get Opera Mini 5 Beta, point your mobile browser to m.opera.com/next , you can also search for “Opera Mini” in the Android Market. Tags: Mobile 2.0 , opera mini , web browsers

Digg, the San Francisco-based social media company, is dropping MySQL and instead betting its future on Cassandra, an open-source data store. It’s just the latest sign of the growing popularity of the software, which was developed (and open sourced) by Facebook to search through its inbox. While Facebook has since backed off Cassandra, Digg plans to open source all its work on Cassandra and champion the software’s development and adoption. In a blog post on the Digg blog, John Quinn, Digg’s VP of engineering, writes : Perhaps our most significant infrastructure change is abandoning MySQL in favor of a NoSQL alternative. To someone like me who’s been building systems almost exclusively on relational databases for almost 20 years, this feels like a…

Just yesterday we were saying that Casio’s built-to-be-beaten G’zOne Brigade would be launching today — and sure enough, it just went live on Verizon’s web site. Read the rest at MobileCrunch > >

Lucid Imagination , the startup that commercially distributes the open source Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Shasta Ventures with Granite Ventures and Walden International participating in the round. This brings the company’s total funding to $16 million. Lucid powers enterprise search technologies using the open source Lucene/Solr search. Customers include Zappos, Nike and Netflix. The new funding will be used to accelerate the adoption of Lucene/Solr search technology. Launched in 2009, Lucid is seeing revenue in the “millions,” and counts Google’s enterprise search product as a direct competitor. CrunchBase Information Lucid