Is Japanese wireless carrier SoftBank planning for a new version of the Apple iPhone, or are sales just a bit slow? Who knows, but from Friday through the end of May, anyone can sign up for an 8GB Apple iPhone 3G in Japan for 100% free.

AppleInsider and CrunchGear report that starting Friday, SoftBank’s new “iPhone for Everyone” campaign (read translated webpage) will offer the 8GB Apple iPhone for free, as long as you sign up for a new 2-year contract. The promotion will runs through May 31.

In the meantime, SoftBank will sell the 16GB Apple iPhone for a bit discounted price—just 11,520 yen (about USD $119), and you can even pay for the smartphone in monthly payments, which come out to less than $5 a month during the 2-year agreement.

SoftBank subscribers will still have to pay monthly voice and data charges, of course, although as AppleInsider notes, the carrier is chopping its standard data plan (about USD $62 per month) by more than 25%.
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Don’t bother to be near your TV screen when you want to watch movie or etc! Researchers say those dark days may soon be left behind us: Contact lenses that can beam video programming straight into your eyes may be only ten years away from reality.

Ian Pearson, a futurist (he’s not an engineer), says that logically our body heat would provide all the energy needed to power-up the high-tech lenses. And that’s not all: “Digital tattoos” could also become reality to allow us to literally feel the emotions & feelings that the director wants you to feel. Per the piece: “This would allow James Bond fans to feel the thrill of outdoing the enemy or sports fans to experience the elation of jubilant players.”

It’s a long way?: 10 years seems like a quite short time frame for these developments & researchers. The technology for injecting an emotional state (is it legally & safely) via a skin patch is awfully out there, and Contact Lens Television suffers from the problem that our eye simply cannot focus on objects that too close. Some type of projection system or complex light-focusing arrangement could be a solution to the problem, but both of those technologies in a device the size of a contact lens are, again, currently too far from us? People may also feel a bit squeamish about dropping a television into their eye socket…

The closest we can get to eyeball TV today? Head-mounted displays like the Vuzix line of “video eyewear.” Throw in a super-sized Mountain Dew to simulate “the elation of jubilant players” and you’re one step closer to the future.

credit(image): University of Washington

The big Apple’s not the only IT company out there that loves to announcing new products.

Last week, the giant IT company: Microsoft unveiled its new generation computer mouse: “BlueTrack” technology (via Engadget) that will be featured in two new upcoming mice, One the model is: Microsoft Explorer Mouse and the other is Microsoft Explorer Mini Mouse. The new BlueTrack-powered technology utilizes wide-angle “specular optics architecture” to improve the mouse’s ability to work on rough or not-so-friendly surfaces, such as wood, granite, and carpet.

But this time, we’re not entirely sure how specular optics works, but this new features/technology sounds like it will be super useful to travelers or business people.

The Explorer Mouse will be retail at $99, while the Explorer Mouse Mini will retail at $79. This might be the hit for Best Buy in November. Beside that, all of the gamers must be waiting for the gaming version of this BlueTrack mouse from Microsoft. Maybe Intellimouse Explorer 3.0: BlueTrack Edition

So, do you have any suggestion or comments to Microsoft? Wanna say goodbye to laser mouse?
Watch Microsoft BlueTrack Mouse videos here.

Sony Corporation from Japan has launched a voluntary recall for their laptops of 438,000 Sony Vaio notebooks a.k.a portable computers, this is because of a potential hazard that could cause the laptops to easily overheat and possibly catch fire/burn a user.

This is one of the biggest computer recalls since in 2006 when Dell Inc recalled a sum of 4.1 million notebook computer batteries because they could overheat and catch fire. This Sony’s laptop recall affects 72,800 computers in the United States, said a Sony representative.

So far, Sony received about 15 reports of overheating, including one of a consumer who suffered a minor burn, said U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission.
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Got password protection enabled on your Apple iPhone? Recently we’ve discovered there’s a real easy way for attackers to skip the password prompt screen and get access to your contacts, browse the Internet, read all your e-mails, and even make a calls. Luckily, there’s a fix/patch released for that security hole.

According to Ars Technica, posters on the MacRumors forums discovered the security hole, and it’s a pretty big one.
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