TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Yesterday – Christmas Day – Russia successfully got the last three of its GPS rival satellites into orbit. The system, known as GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System), consists 24 satellites and will interoperate with the US GPS network.

Despite setbacks in the 1990s when the USSR collapsed, the GLONASS system has still managed to beat out the red tape tangled Galileo, Europe’s attempt at a satellite positioning network.

GLONASS will come fully online in 2009, and will offer an instant fix of position once the satellites are located.

If you are looking for a legitimate after-Christmas deal on a top LCD TV today, look no further: Amazon has a 33% off sale on the Samsung LN-T4065 40-incher, down to $1,269.96 (with free shipping) from its $1,900 listed price. This deal places the TV at exactly half the price it was listed only a few months ago and it corresponds with recent news we discussed on the enormous price dips LCD TVs are taking as a result of falling production costs.

Blockbuster, still struggling to keep from being rendered irrelevant by Netflix, has changed its subscription pricing in an obvious move to compete with the mail-order DVD giant. The bottom line is:

Mobile Magazine is predicting Canon will announce a new digital SLR on Jan. 24, most likely an update to the consumer-focused Digital Rebel line. Purported upgrades include enhanced sensor dust removal and an ISO boost.

Given that the PMA trade show, the photo industry’s main American trade show, starts at the end of January, you can count on Canon coming out with something biggish the week before.

Big Canon DLSR News To Drop January 24th [Mobile Magazine]

Yes, they might win the award for most-ridiculous-name-for-a-peripheral-ever. But even though they sport a goofy sounding moniker and lack true surround-sound, these quality, noise canceling cans provide the cleanest stereo we’ve heard for under $200. Whether fragging n00bs or blasting tunes, everything from gunfire to a deep bass guitar solo was pumped through with crystal-clear precision. If they just looked as good as they sound, Able Planet might just convince me to take them out in public. —Sean Hollister

WIRED Just you, your headphones, and ear-tingling audio quality. No battery? No problem. Headphones will work without them (albeit without noise cancellation.) In-line volume slider.

Ah, mon cheri — it is a tragedy, no? You’re Your sweet little unlocked iPhone, it is not so unlocked after all.

That’s the word from French weenies who paid beaucoup euros for an officially unlocked iPhone and have now found that "unlocked" does not mean "use it wherever you want." Try to use a SIM card from anywhere other than France, and you’ll still be stuck with hefty roaming charges. Upshot: Keeping hacking if you want to be the master of your iPhone’s destiny.

It says much that Apple’s excellent reputation leaves an obvious joke lacking any traction.€” It has only a relative handful of hits (at least by internet standards), and most of them seem to be simple typos. Leftbrained.co.uk cooked up something in photoshop: here’s a more fitting color scheme, based on a photo of unknown provenance, but probably stolen from ColorwarePC.

We used to look to spy-tech with gadget-lust. Even the real stuff had a James Bond exoticism. Now, though, it just seems lame – pitifully trailing behind the consumer market and always overpriced.

Exhibit A: The Book Camera. A pedestrian setup consisting of a book, a camera and an LCD screen, all of which can probably be found on your desk right now (the latter two in the same box).

So, you have your shiny, handmade microphone dongle for your iPod Touch, but recording messages to remember the milk is getting a little old. The next step in iPod Touch VoIP has been reached by hackers Eok and Samuel, who have compiled the Nintendo DS SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) application – SvSIP – to run on the iPod.

Currently, there is no sound (which is usually essential for phone calls), but the Touch can place calls and receive them, albeit through a command line interface. Having got this far, though, it can’t be long before the microphone and headphones are hooked up and all bundled into a shiny GUI wrapping.

In my day, we called a radio with pictures a "television". Not so today. A radio with pictures is now a user experience enhanced by glanceability.

BBC Radio 1, known for unsuccessfully chasing youth audiences for years, has been experimenting with adding video to digital radio broadcasts, even filming live concerts to accompany the audio.

Skeptical? Me too, but Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt makes some good points in favor of diluting the pure, audio only nature of radio.