TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

French retail giant FNAC is selling contract-free iPhones, and they ain’t cheap. The 8GB model is €800 ($1120) and the 16GB a rather painful €800 ($1261).

This comes barely two weeks after French telecom regulator ARCEP called the exclusive iPhone/Orange team-up a "serious threat" to competition, a decision which itself followed a complaint by rival cell carrier Bouygues Telecom.

Unless you’re Bono*, you will only wear your sunglasses in bright, outdoor light, which is why these Solar Powered Sunglasses are such a great idea. That they are shaped like infinity itself is a mere nerd bonus from the designers of the "Self-Energy Converting Sunglasses", aka SIG.

They’re just a concept right now, but we’d suggest that someone (please, not Oakley) gets making these things soon.

HTC’s G1 phone featuring Google’s Android mobile operating system is a blockbuster hit for the company.

It expects sales of more than one million G1 phones this year, says a HTC executive. The G1 launched on Oct. 22 nationwide on the T-Mobile network.

Still that is lower than the number of Apple 3G iPhones that were sold since the device’s launch. Apple hit sales of 1 million iPhones just three days after it was available in stores starting July 11.

Meanwhile, the G1 has put HTC at the front of the pack when it comes to Android-based devices.Though competitors such as Samsung and Motorola are also betting big on Android, HTC has clearly taken the lead on the platform.

Mac fans angry about a Steve-less Stevenote are going to be holding a "silent protest" at January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

You heard it right: Protesters, led by Mac fan Lesa Snider King (if she gets her way), are going to remain completely silent during Phil Schiller’s Macworld keynote. I’m sure that’ll be effective as opposed to, oh, say, not showing up at the keynote at all.

Apple on Tuesday said it is pulling out of the Macworld trade show after 2009 — ending a 24-year-old tradition. King believes Apple’s move sends the message that the corporation doesn’t care about its fans.

"Apple is sending a message to the entire community–professionals, hobbyists, media, Mac User Groups, and even IDG themselves–that they care nothing for the community who supported them through thick and thin," wrote King.

Well, maybe she’s right. But who cares? What is Apple, a rock band? Did Steve Jobs ever ask people to camp outside a building for his famous keynotes? That’s some maniacal loyalty — and sure, Apple could show some appreciation for that, but it’s certainly not obligated to in any way.

Evernote, the brain-replacement people, might finally have cracked the iPhone note-taking problem.

We’ve taken a few look at iPhone note taking applications and, while many of them offer some neat features, not one has yet achieved proper, over-the-air syncing combined with ubiquity across platforms. Evernote took a stab at this with its last update, which let you mark certain items as favorites to be mirrored across your iPhone, Mac and Windows machines.

Remember the Zaurus? In the early 1990s Sharp introduced a new line of Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs called Zaurus that went on to become a big hit among consumers especially in Japan.

Though initially based on a proprietary operating system, Sharp soon offered Linux-based versions of the PDA. The last model of the Zaurus, the SL-C3200, was released in 2006 and since then it has been all quiet.

With smartphones getting better and now smaller netbooks being all the rage, Zaurus was clearly headed for the deadpool–only Sharp is making it official now.

If you have one of these Zaurus oldies hold on to it. You may want to show it off at the antiques roadshow in a couple of years.

Sharp Zaurus on Wikipedia

Photo: (rachelandrew/Flickr)

Sony’s new voice-recording Walkman has iPhone-killer written all over it — if, of course, you take a sharpie and do the writing yourself.

Calling this little white circle a Walkman is the first warning sign, and shows that Sony is desperately hurling its prestigious and respected brand at anything to see if – like an unwashed sweat-sock hurled at a locker – it sticks. First, it’s not even a Walkman.

An iPhone game rated NC-17 has arrived on the App Store, and it deserves the rating but not your five bucks.

In Amateur Surgeon, developed by television network Adult Swim, gamers take on the role of Alan Probe, a "Pizzaboy/Wannabe Surgeon. Moron" (photo on the right). In the game, Alan either causes or witnesses horrible accidents that require him to put victims under the knife — or rather, his pizza cutter, a stapler and other shady tools in his arsenal.

After years of rumors and brusque denials, it appears the Zune phone is the real deal.

According to Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will announce a Zune-style mobile device during his keynote address at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, on January 7, 2009.

In an article in Barron’s, Chowdhry claims that the company’s new centerpiece will combine the best features of the Zune media player with the hardware design of Danger’s mobile Sidekick, in addition to "motion enhancement features," like an accelerometer.

In many parts of the world, the best way to make people mad is to take their picture without asking.

Some simply see it as a sign of disrespect and others just don’t want their likeness to be abused in potentially demeaning interpretations or by flogging them commercially across the internets.

The super-secret Spy Lens easily circumvents the rules of these pesky people.

The rig includes a shady cut-out on the side of the barrel and a precision mirror inside that pivots 360-degrees.