Be prepared to lose a day to Anthony Voz’s scans of a 1985 consumer goods catalog. Photos Anthony Voz ‘ Flickr

How did the world look back in 1985? While Marty McFly was trying to get Back to the Future, I was probably longing after the kinds of gadgets found in the Argos catalog, a UK store which sells pretty much everything — including gadgets.

And now you, too, can take a look at the state of the consumer tech art from 26 years ago, thanks to an epic project by Anthony Voz. Voz took the 1985 edition of the Argos catalog, scanned every page and posted the results to Flickr. In amongst the lawn chairs and leather goods are the gizmos of yesteryear.

Argos — still going today — is a weird kind of store. The small showroom uses paper catalogs. You browse, write down the number of the item you like and hand the slip to a cashier. You pay, and they give you a number. Then, somewhere in the bowels of the building, somebody grabs your item and sends it up to the showroom, whereupon it is delivered to you at an in-store counter.

The magic of this setup is that a small, city-center store can carry a huge range of goods. And back in 1985, these goods were Commodore 64s, electric typewriters and cheap-o Sony Walkman knock-offs.

If you were a kid during the 80s, you’re going to waste an afternoon looking at the nostalgia-fest. And if you’re younger, take a look at what we used to spend out money on before iPods and cellphones. Amazing.

Vintage British Argos 1985 Catalogue [Anthony Voz / Flickr via Retro Thing]

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Congratulations Bright House Networks customers, your off-brand Time Warner Cable experience now includes live TV streaming on your iPad. The Bright House TV tablet app has hit iTunes and is, unsurprisingly, a direct clone of the TWCable TV app, although it’s not the latest version as it doesn’t have parental controls yet. Otherwise it’s basically the same experience, complete with the restriction to using it at home on your own WiFi network and its initial unfriendliness towards jailbroken iPads. there’s no word on which channels are available, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they also mirror the Time Warner list. If you’re jailbroken, check the MacRumors link below for a workaround, otherwise you can just head to iTunes and download the app directly.

[Thanks, EvilSpock]

Bright House TV app brings rebranded Time Warner Cable TV to the iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flexible displays? Samsung’s got ‘em, too. A few days after Nokia showed off its Kinetic Device prototype under the blue lights of Nokia World, Samsung made mention of its own plans to unleash some bendy mobile devices on the world. A spokesperson for the company was scarce on details, but noted that the flexible displays are targeted for 2012. The technology, which was showcased at this year’s CES, will initially be incorporated into handsets, with tablets following down the road.

Continue reading Samsung to offer flexible displays in 2012, challenges Nokia to a twist contest

Samsung to offer flexible displays in 2012, challenges Nokia to a twist contest originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 Oct 2011 07:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week on the Gadget Lab Podcast: The gang talks about Nokia’s latest troop deployments in the smartphone battlefield, the Steve Jobs biography, the success of iOS 5’s Newsstand app, and a big new update to Google TV set top boxes.

Staff writers Mike Isaac and Christina Bonnington open the show discussing Nokia’s just-announced Lumia series, which runs the new Mango version of Windows Phone, and comes in two flavors: the 710 and the 800 (the latter is a ringer for the Nokia N9 that we saw last week). In the past, Nokia has mostly stuck with the “dumb phone” market, so this is the company’s big foray into the smartphone field.

Next, Mike and Christina talk about Steve Jobs’ biography, the heavily leaked tome that debuted on Monday. The duo then chat about a new feature in iOS 5 called Newsstand, which is proving  to be a huge success for digital publishers — this despite flak from some iOS aficionados.

We finish off the show this week with Mike and Gadget Lab editor Jon Phillips talking about Google’s big update to Google TV. The “next version” of software for the set-top box brings some much-needed improvements to the system, including a revamped UI, the availability of Android apps, a redesigned YouTube experience and more. The Google TV update will roll out to Sony devices first, starting next week, followed by Logitech hardware.

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds.

Or listen to the audio below:

Gadget Lab audio podcast #130

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0130.mp3

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Carson’s portable grill. Try getting on a plane with this, I dare you

What could be better than rocking up to a picnic carry this sleek aluminum briefcase in one hand and a parcel of delicious raw meat in the other, and then flipping the case open to reveal… A rotisserie grill?

Nothing, that’s what (as long as somebody remembered to bring the beer). The Carson Portable Rotisserie Grill is just the thing for camping or tailgating. Everything you need is inside the case.

The included legs screw into sockets on the bottom, the lid of the case becomes the rear and contains the electric motor that keeps the spits turning, and the heat comes from a tray of glowing charcoal that sits in the bottom of the case itself.

The only thing you need to bring is a very, very long extension cord.

There is a little trouble in this grilling paradise: at $720, you might not have much money leftover for meat.

Carson Portable Rotisserie Grill [Carson]

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In the immortal words of Ashford and Simpson, the Porsche-designed Blackberry is h-h-h-h-hot

What would you get if you took a Motorola RAZR (the original), a BlackBerry and a mid-1980s Bang and Olufsen stereo, tossed them in a blender and poured the results to set in a shallow cake tin? You’d get the Porsche Design P’9981 Smartphone you see above.

Specs-wise, the phone doesn’t do anything special. It simply checks the boxes required of a modern mobile telephone: 1.2GHz processor, 720p video camera, 8GB storage, 5MP stills camera and a microSD card slot for expansion. It’s relatively small 2.8-inch, 640 × 480 287dpi screen can be explained away by the backlit hardware QWERTY keyboard.

But design-wise, it’s a rather hot-looking slab of glass and stainless steel (no silvered plastic here), and even has a leather-coved back panel. It probably won’t help BlackBerry pull out of its terrible death spiral, but it will at least make e-mail addicted businessmen look a little less dorky.

Price and availability tba.

Porsche Design P’9981 Smartphone [BlackBerry]

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Newsstand, a new feature of iOS 5, is hitting it big with traditional media publishers thanks to its windfall delivery of new digital subscriptions.

Newsstand appears as a folder on the iOS home screen, funneling all your digital magazine and newspaper app subscriptions into a single location. It provides easy access to these apps, automatically updates them in the background when new issues are released, and — here’s the payoff — includes a built-in store for purchasing subscriptions. Purchased titles are displayed individually on Newsstand’s virtual bookshelf.

“Apple Newsstand is changing the way people buy and read magazines, similar to how people bought and listened to music through iTunes. It’s revolutionary,” says Collin Willardson, director of digital marketing at PixelMags, a digital publishing platform for a number of high-profile media brands, including Esquire, Dwell, Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan.

Numerous publishers are reporting subscription surges for their newspaper and magazine apps. PixelMags reported a 1,150 percent growth increase in the first week after Newsstand and iOS 5 debuted on Oct. 12. It’s now sold over four million digital magazines.

“We quickly started to realize just how big of an impact Apple Newsstand was having on our business when on the morning after launch, I received a phone call from our server company wondering if we were under attack,” said Ryan Marquis, PixelMags’ founder and COO, in a company’s press release. “I told them that we were for sure — from all the new iOS 5 users who wanted to download magazines from us.”

Conde Nast, Wired’s parent company, saw a 268 percent spike in subscriptions since the Newsstand app landed. “It’s clear that the focused attention and greater discoverability that Newsstand provides our brands has been embraced by the consumer,” said Monica Ray, Executive Vice President of Conde Nast.

Without a doubt, Newsstand increases the visibility of subscription-based magazine and newspaper apps, which often get buried under the onslaught of games, social media and photo apps that tend to dominate the App Store’s charts. But thanks to Newsstand, it seems, the National Geographic iPad app managed to reach the #18 spot in the Free Apps chart last week. The New York Times iPhone app is #27 today. And with a button that takes you directly to the magazine and newspaper section of the App Store, the Newsstand app makes it easy to snatch up subscriptions to quickly fill its own empty shelves.

Other success stories: New York Times app subscriptions absolutely soared after Newsstand launched. Its iPad app alone saw 189,000 new user downloads, seven times the number from the week before (27,000). The New York Times saw even more remarkable numbers for its iPhone app: 1.8 million downloads, or 85 times more downloads than the 21,000 of the week before. Meanwhile, Future Plc, a UK-based publisher of niche consumer-enthusiast magazines, saw a 750 percent increase in sales after Newsstand debuted.

But not everyone is happy with the addition of Newsstand to the iOS ecosystem. For some iOS users, the empty, glaring bookshelf of the Newsstand icon has been a source of irritation. Indeed, the addition of Newsstand is listed as one of very few complaints about iOS 5 across the web. Because Newsstand is a folder, rather than an app, you can’t easily remove it from your home screen, but some clever folks figured out a workaround that doesn’t require jail breaking.

These individuals, however, seem to largely be in the minority. Legions of users are filling up those bare shelves with digital subscriptions, giving a much-needed boost to magazine and newspaper app makers, and the publishing industry in general.

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The 4G-capable Droid Bionic next to an iPhone 4. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

When the iPhone 4S spec sheet was officially revealed in early October, consumers were disappointed to learn that Apple’s newest iPhone doesn’t support 4G, or fourth-generation wireless data connectivity, as rumored. But now it looks like a 4G/LTE iPhone will arrive next year. According to sources that just spoke with DigiTimes, Apple will “join the LTE club” in 2012.

DigiTimes is notorious for floating unsubstantiated Apple rumors. Some come true; most don’t. But Forrester analyst Charles Golvin and Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi think it’s very likely that the iPhone 5 will be LTE capable.

Well, here’s a reality check for Apple fanatics who just can’t sleep at night until 4G shows up in an iPhone specs listing: LTE support made no sense for Apple in 2011, and LTE probably won’t rock your world in 2012 either. We’re not saying Apple won’t release an LTE-capable iPhone. But we are cautioning you to temper expectations of how an LTE iPhone may change your lives.

The LTE network infrastructure is currently immature, and while carrier coverage will expand as more and more customers demand 4G support, relatively few people should expect their iPhone 5s to deliver 4G speeds in 2012. Indeed, LTE support isn’t something that Apple can just instantaneously “flip on” for everyone. A host of technologies — from network towers to hardware chipsets – must first converge, and if the short history of 4G deployment is any indicator, Apple’s 4G future could be bumpy.

4G Is Great — If You Can Access It, That is
4G network expansion has been slow and somewhat fragmented for all carriers. There are two competing 4G standards — WiMax and LTE — and when 4G network support has rolled out, it’s been limited to select markets.

Sprint was the first to adopt a fourth-gen network with WiMax as its 4G flavor of choice. Then Verizon rolled out its 4G LTE network, and its speeds and coverage dominated the 4G scene. AT&T began delivering 4G LTE to select metropolitan areas this summer, but previously relied on HSPA+ for 4G-caliber speeds, just like T-Mobile.

Indeed, what constitutes actual “4G” has been hotly debated, and AT&T’s HSPA+ network should really be considered 3.5G if you actually study bandwidth numbers. For that matter, HSPA+ has even been upgraded to 4G status by the International Telecommunications Union, the key agency that defines telecom standards.

The upshot for AT&T iPhone users? You already have 4G service — or at least the HSPA+ variant. All of LTE’s data rate and latency specs are better than those of HSPA+, but it’s all academic if you can’t tap into an LTE network.

But still, gosh dernnit, iPhone fanatics want support for LTE, which is becoming the defacto, must-have 4G industry standard, at least here in the U.S.

Oh, You Care About Battery Life Too?
There’s also another a rub — a rub that Apple is acutely aware of, and has likely influenced its LTE decision-making: 4G phones drain battery life like you wouldn’t imagine. In fact, every 4G phone that I’ve tested has demonstrated terrible battery life (some worse than others, as screen size and battery capacity do come into play).

Also worth noting: Inconsistent data speeds across 4G networks have plagued users, and that’s a customer experience nightmare that Apple wants no part of.

And then there are concerns about design compromises. In a conference call earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “The first generation of LTE chipsets force a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make.” The iPhone 4S, on AT&T at least, provides 4G-like speeds, so we can begin to see why Apple didn’t turn on the LTE spigot for its new phone.

Many consumers anticipated Apple to release a 4G handset this year, but Forrester’s Golvin wasn’t one of them. “In contrast to the network technologies that are in the 4S, which comprise the vast majority of 3G networks around the world, there are very few LTE networks launched today,” Golvin says. Additionally, he says, current U.S.-based LTE networks rely on frequency bands that aren’t widely used across other parts of the world.

“If the iPhone 5 comes in June or later, I think that Apple will likely have LTE,” Milanesi says. She cites battery consumption and lack of voice support as two big reasons why Apple hasn’t yet adopted the technology. Verizon has previewed a voiceover LTE service that would provide better sound quality than traditional cellphone calls.

Another reason why the time wasn’t ripe for a 4G iPhone: The cost of LTE chipsets would cut into Apple’s profit margins, and Apple would also have to develop more phone models to accommodate different frequency bands, reducing Apple’s margins further. Indeed, most current 4G handsets come in one model for the U.S., and one for the rest of the world, all thanks to frequency variations.

Because LTE networks aren’t yet widely deployed, a 4G-capable iPhone 4S would provide benefit for just a small portion of the global population. But by sticking with 3G technology for one more handset generation, Golvin says, Apple has been able to very efficiently produce a single global product that it can sell to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and European carriers.

Golvin says, “A year from now, there will be more LTE networks live in more parts of the world, the chip costs will have come down, and it will likely make sense for Apple to include LTE in its — say it with me now — iPhone 5.”

We’ll believe it when we see it. And then we’ll immediately begin testing the handset in various locations to see just who’s really served by LTE support.

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